Two Xie Jinghes appeared in Shi Linchuan’s dream.

One large, one small.

The larger one sat by the edge of the bed, reaching out a hand and instantly strangling the smaller one out of existence.

The bedroom light wasn’t turned on; light from the living room crawled in through the half-open door. Shi Linchuan turned his face sluggishly, noticing that the figure beside the bed was sculpted sharply by the play of light and shadow, looking so vivid it felt as though he could touch it if he simply reached out a hand.

It was warm.

The palm felt somewhat damp, with a slightly raised scar.

Out of habit, Shi Linchuan tugged the person into the blanket. The other figure leaned down with the momentum of his force, but his other hand braced against the headboard, foreheads pressing together as he gently coaxed, “Linchuan, your body is burning up. Let me take you to the hospital to get checked out.”

“I’ll go after I wake up.”

Shi Linchuan responded offhandedly, continuing to pull and tussle with him. Quite unceremoniously, he clamped his hand around the back of that slightly sweaty neck, pulling him downward. In his ear, he could hear Xie Jinghe’s hurried breathing, along with the quiet whimpers squeezed out from the back of his throat:

“I didn’t change my clothes before coming out. I’m dirty all over.”

Shi Linchuan’s movements paused slightly. He blinked his dry eyes a couple of times, only then noticing that a black mask was still hanging from one of Xie Jinghe’s ears. The windbreaker draped over his shoulders was left unbuttoned, revealing a rather mismatched loungewear collar underneath, with a small bear’s head embroidered on the left side of the chest.

However, there was no point in trying to reason with someone whose brain was cooked by fever.

Frowning, Shi Linchuan simply felt that the moment Xie Jinghe appeared, even his own dreams slipped out of his control. Thus, with an increasingly unyielding attitude, he tried to yank the man into the blanket, behaving like an autocratic monarch who brooked no disobedience, asserting his authority over the intruder.

Helpless, Xie Jinghe kicked off the slippers on his feet.

The bed was a bit damp.

Clamped around the waist by the man’s arms, even making a single movement would draw a frown from him.

With great effort, Xie Jinghe shed the somewhat stiff windbreaker, then reached his hand beneath the bottom hem of the man’s shirt to feel his back.

A hand full of sweat.

Coupled with the man’s downright muddled behavior at this moment…

Xie Jinghe thought to himself:

Even if we don’t go to the hospital right now, he can’t just lie here like this.

Not in the dead of winter.

Shi Linchuan seemed to hear a mosquito buzzing near his ear, speaking in Xie Jinghe’s voice—it sounded almost like chanting a scripture, making him want to shove his head under the pillow. Yet that voice remained pressed against his ear, nagging incessantly on and on.

“Let me up so I can go find the thermometer.”

“Where did you put the fever medication you took?”

“Have you eaten today? If you don’t eat, your immune system will weaken.”

The quiet, dormant world was gone, never to return.

Xie Jinghe’s voice surrounded him like 3D surround sound, impossible to shake off.

Shi Linchuan was both sleepy and exhausted. His excessively high body temperature raised his intraocular pressure, making his already blurry vision even worse and fueling his growing irritability. Yet the fellow in his arms refused to settle down, now touching his back, now touching his face…

It fit his stereotype of Xie Jinghe perfectly.

Clingy, annoying, exasperating.

Yet this very person possessed a reservoir of strength, constantly pushing Shi Linchuan to the brink of losing control.

He intensely detested this feeling, as if a neural pathway in his brain had grown specifically for Xie Jinghe. The moment the other raised a hand, this nerve would leap and throb in utter chaos.

It was truly so annoying!

How could loving someone make one feel so annoyed!

If it were a month ago, Shi Linchuan could probably have done some bastardly things and said some bastardly words without a second thought to quiet the storm inside his heart. But time couldn’t turn back…

Nor was this reality.

So, he merely let out a soft sigh, holding the person in his arms even tighter. His voice was thick with nasal congestion from the cold and fever, raspy and intensely magnetic, paired with a rare, soft tone that sent a tingling sensation right through the base of Xie Jinghe’s ears.

“Stop bothering me, alright?”

The man’s tone carried a hint of grievance.

Xie Jinghe’s heart felt like a marshmallow being roasted over an open flame—wrapped in a firm outer shell, yet melted into syrup inside. Hardening his heart, he countered, “No, you must let me measure your temperature first. You’re a bit confused right now.”

After saying that, he added:

“You even think I’m fake.”

Shi Linchuan: “…”

No matter which Xie Jinghe it was, he was so hard to deal with.

A terrorist, indeed.

However, in the very next second…

Shi Linchuan suddenly felt two soft lips press against his jawline. The seam of those lips parted slightly, and a small tip of a tongue brushed against his skin before pulling away, touching him again and again, accompanied by a series of very subtle clicking sounds in the room.

Xie Jinghe always loved kissing him like this.

Lowering his posture a bit, it was filled with an intent to coax and please.

As if Shi Linchuan were the center of his universe.

Following that, the kisses crawled up from Shi Linchuan’s chin, brushing past the side of his face, crossing over the outer corner of his eye, and finally arriving at his forehead.

Mwah.

Xie Jinghe planted a firm kiss on his forehead.

At the exact same time…

Shi Linchuan’s heart vibrated uncontrollably, and the brain curled beneath his forehead was blown into a blank state by the storm, yet it instinctively craved to obtain more…

For the past three years, Shi Linchuan had been constantly fighting against his instincts.

He was truly so exhausted.

So, taking a short break in a dream shouldn’t matter, right?

Shi Linchuan opened his eyes in silence, meeting a pair of glowing eyes in the dim room. It seemed as though no depth of darkness could obscure the emotion overflowing from those eyes—an attachment that could never be wiped away, an obsession that could never be dispelled…

It was Xie Jinghe’s deep affection for him.

It was also the addiction that Shi Linchuan had failed to kick even after trying for three years.

Regarding this, his body seemed to have developed muscle memory. In the past, he was used to covering those overly bright eyes with his palm to block the view, as if doing so could keep his heart from beating so violently.

At this very moment…

Shi Linchuan didn’t raise his hand to cover those eyes. He simply stretched his neck, pressing his dry, peeling lips against the back of the ear of the person in his arms. He forced the rounded earlobe to fold forward, finally taking it into his mouth to bite and nibble gently.

The warm air exhaled as the man spoke seeped incessantly into Xie Jinghe’s ear canal, penetrating his eardrum and reaching straight to his billions of neurons.

Shi Linchuan said to him,

“Don’t look away.”

“Keep watching me, always and forever.”

Half of Xie Jinghe’s face went completely numb. With his earlobe being gently bitten and held by the man, occasional brief, swallowed sounds escaped from between his lips. Like a newborn animal, he nodded eagerly with a compliant posture, displaying his docility with his entire body.

In the next instant…

Shi Linchuan heard the mosquito buzzing again,

“But, let me get up first right now.”

Shi Linchuan: “…”

Shi Linchuan dreamed all night.

Xie Jinghe walked back and forth in his dream: one moment making him hold a thermometer under his armpit, one moment scrubbing him all over with a towel, one moment shoving things into his mouth—he was endlessly busy. Every now and then, he would slump over his body, drawling his tone:

“Let go of me.”

“I need to change the bedsheets, it’s too damp.”

“Lie down on the sofa to rest first, be good now.”

“All done!”

“You can get back on the bed now, move slowly.”

As the old saying goes: Things in dreams are always the opposite.

Faced with this scene, Shi Linchuan strongly agreed—according to common sense, the person lying on the sofa unable to move right now should be Xie Jinghe, while the person walking back and forth in the room should be himself, all while having to deal with the other’s clingy behavior.

The dream was very long, but it was coming to an end.

Reluctantly, Shi Linchuan closed his eyes, feeling a layer of ice-cold, soft fabric resting over his eyes. Xie Jinghe’s hand caressed the side of his cheek rhythmically. He couldn’t resist turning his face slightly, and despite the other’s words of deterrence, he kissed the scar on the palm.

Xie Jinghe’s fingertips curled slightly.

Immediately after, he heard the man say in a voice thick with nasal congestion, “They always say ‘what you think about by day, you dream about by night.’ Xie Jinghe, it seems I kind of miss you. How annoying.”

Xie Jinghe choked up slightly.

He paused for a long time before asking softly,

“Linchuan, what should I do so you won’t push me away anymore?”

After a long while…

With his head resting on Xie Jinghe’s palm, the man’s already hazy consciousness seemed to grow even foggier after taking the fever medication, making even his words slur, “But, I…”

“I can’t give you the marriage and love you want.”

“Sooner or later, you’ll be disappointed in me.”

“Sooner or later.”

A long night would inevitably pass, and the sun would rise.

In recent days, the weather in Tongcity had grown increasingly dry and cold. Dawn did its utmost to break through the leaden grey clouds, raising the light levels of the world by a few notches, painting a stroke of bright orange light across the cold grey tones of the city.

A certain mid-to-high-rise apartment remained dim, however.

Especially the bedroom.

The curtains were drawn tight, blocking the light outside, leaving only the hazy outline of two tall, slender figures snuggled together on the bed. A small water basin sat on the nightstand, with no sign of the towel.

The towel was over Shi Linchuan’s eyes.

Shi Linchuan had been awake for a while now.

He was thinking.

His virus-ridden brain had finally returned to normal, and the hippocampus storing his memories was presenting its owner with a complete set of short-term memories. Meanwhile, the warmth in his arms at this moment signified that the busy, chaotic dream of last night wasn’t actually a dream as he had thought…

Which meant…

The Xie Jinghe in his arms was the real Xie Jinghe.

After realizing this point, Shi Linchuan’s mind flashed like a magic lantern, rapidly replaying the words he had spoken, the things he had done, and the various reactions of the other party in front of Xie Jinghe last night…

Suddenly, he didn’t want to wake up anymore.

Shi Linchuan: “…”

Truth be told, he wasn’t someone who cared about external opinions; otherwise, he wouldn’t have shown his ruthless side without any reservation on the variety show. But science proved that human endurance had its limits.

Shi Linchuan felt he had hit the ultimate limit.

Right at this moment…

The person in his arms suddenly moved.

Shi Linchuan instinctively held his breath, unable to help feeling somewhat fortunate that he still had a piece of “shame-covering cloth” over his eyes right now. Immediately after, he heard Xie Jinghe let out a sleepy murmur, as if wondering how he had fallen asleep.

In the next instant…

This person, caught between waking and sleeping, unexpectedly raised a hand and flicked off the gauze over Shi Linchuan’s eyes, preparing to continue applying the cold compress to the man.

Shi Linchuan: “…”

Their eyes met.

Shi Linchuan’s eyes were no longer dry, and he clearly saw Xie Jinghe freeze for a second before a very happy smile bloomed across his face. He then stretched his neck and leaned over, presumably wanting to kiss him.

Shi Linchuan instantly turned his head away, rejecting the kiss before it could happen.

After a short pause…

He said reluctantly,

“It’s contagious.”