Despite being force-fed a big bowl of ginger tea, Jiang Shi still came down with it the next morning.

At first, he didn’t realize he was sick. He woke groggy, struggled to open his eyes, and glanced to the side.

Great—looked like the cabinet had grown legs and was wobbling.

From outside came Jiang Xue’s clatter of cleaning, then it stopped, followed by her voice: “Cheng Ye, here to hang out so early?”

“Auntie Jiang,” Cheng Ye said. “I came to check on Jiang Shi.”

“He’s still sleeping.”

“Can I go in and see him?”

They were both boys, so Jiang Xue didn’t think much of it. “Go ahead, his room’s inside. But that kid’s got a nasty wake-up temper. If you rouse him, be careful he doesn’t snap at you.”

Burrowed soft and limp under the quilt, Jiang Shi thought he had no such temper.

A creak. The door opened a crack, and Cheng Ye’s voice sounded from the threshold. “Jiang Shi?”

Jiang Shi tried to answer, but his body had gone strange—no strength at all. Forget speaking, even lifting a hand was an effort.

He squirmed and squeezed out a sticky little groan.

That sound was all wrong. Cheng Ye pushed the door open at once.

The room was dark. The bright red quilt burned like fire; the flood of red made the one patch of white stand out sharply in the eye. The boy’s face was like a peeled lychee, fresh and dewy in the pillow, black lashes and soft hair as delicate as down.

The contrast hit hard. Cheng Ye stood at the door for a long moment without moving.

His Adam’s apple bobbed; shadow clouded his gaze. Only when Jiang Shi hummed again did he step forward.

He lifted the quilt—like unwrapping a wedding gift—and scooped him up. The boy wore a loose T-shirt; pale collarbones showed at the neck. A sheen of sweat covered his skin; his temperature ran too high, flushing his complexion rosy beneath the heat.

Warm to the touch.

“Jiang Shi.” Cheng Ye pinched his jaw lightly; his fingertips slid along the boy’s chin and came away slick with cold sweat. “You’ve got a fever. Can you hear me?”

The only reply was a sticky, muffled whimper against his neck.

Cheng Ye found a jacket and draped it over him, then hoisted him onto his back and carried him out.

Startled in the courtyard, Jiang Xue asked, “What’s going on?”

“He’s got a fever. I’m taking him to the clinic.”

Jiang Xue dropped her broom. “You carry him first—I’ll grab money and come right away.”

Jiang Shi felt tossed into magma, then hurled into a freezer—hot and cold by turns. His eyelids were so heavy they might as well have been weighted with lead.

After a long while he pried his eyes open and saw only the ground rocking below.

“Cheng… Cheng Ye…” he rasped.

Cheng Ye’s steps didn’t falter. “You’re awake? How do you feel?”

“I…” Jiang Shi swallowed. “What’s wrong with me?”

“You’ve got a fever. We’re headed to the clinic.”

He slumped bonelessly against Cheng Ye’s shoulder, processing none of it—until they arrived.

The doctor was the same old man who’d sold him allergy medicine last time.

He had Jiang Shi take his temperature, raised the thermometer to the light, and said, “A bit high. Needs a shot.”

Jiang Shi blinked dumbly.

The doctor glanced at Cheng Ye. “Take off his pants.”

“??”

On the brink of death, Jiang Shi snapped upright and clutched his waistband. “Why do you need to take off my pants?”

Still rummaging in a drawer, the doctor said, “To give the shot. How else?”

“I’m not—”

“You’re nearly at 40°C,” Cheng Ye said, pressing him by the shoulder. “An IV is too slow. He needs an injection.”

As he lowered his gaze, Jiang Shi’s jacket slid off in the struggle. The T-shirt tucked awkwardly into his waistband, exposing a narrow swath of waist—softly rounded below in a clean arc.

The doctor came over. “Done yet?”

Jiang Shi fought harder. “I don’t want it! I know my own body. I’m fine. I can just take medicine.”

“Fine my foot,” the doctor said, syringe glinting. “Hold him down and pull ’em down. If that fever keeps climbing, he’ll fry his brains.”

Cheng Ye sat beside him, hand braced around that slim waist. He pressed somewhere, and Jiang Shi went limp in his arms.

His waist caved in, making the curve look even rounder and perkier.

Cheng Ye’s other hand settled at the waistband; his fingertip hooked beneath it as he lifted his eyes, reluctant, toward the doctor.

“What are you looking at me for?” the doctor snapped. “Pull them down. Quit dawdling.”

Cheng Ye tugged lower; his breathing grew heavy.

By the time Jiang Xue reached the door, a pig-slaughtering shriek split the air.

She burst in to find Jiang Shi gripping his pants for dear life, face flushed—whether from fever or something else—and simultaneously cursing and kicking at Cheng Ye.

With that flailing, he clearly had no strength. In less than a minute, Cheng Ye’s trouser leg was dust-streaked.

He didn’t dodge, brow knit, thoughts unreadable.

“What are you doing—what are you doing!” Jiang Xue pulled Jiang Shi away. “Why are you always picking on Cheng Ye? He’s the one who realized you were sick, carried you all this way to the clinic, and you kick him for it?”

Jiang Shi’s ears were scarlet; mist glazed his eyes—half shame, half fury.

“Maybe check what Cheng Ye did first!” he fumed. “How could he… he…”

Ugh… his virtue was not intact.

The doctor chuckled. “It’s just a jab in the butt. Who hasn’t had one? Kids younger than you don’t even cry.”

Finally understanding, Jiang Xue sighed. “What a fuss. A backside’s a backside. Everyone’s got one, they all look the same. We’re all boys—what’s there to be shy about?”

Jiang Shi’s face collapsed into a scowl.

If he’d known he’d be getting a shot this morning, even if Cheng Ye had begged with tears last night, he still wouldn’t have drunk that ginger tea.

A loss—a complete loss.

And the culprit for all of it was Cheng Ye.

Jiang Shi didn’t speak to him all day, not until they returned to school that night.

The fever had broken, but he was weak. He fell into bed and slept the moment he hit the dorm.

He woke again itching.

Something at his lower back prickled, numb and itchy. He reached back to scratch—and the more he scratched, the itchier it got.

He tried to twist around to look, but couldn’t see anything.

The other roommates had gone out to eat; Cheng Ye sat at the desk working through Jiang Shi’s holiday homework.

From the bed, the boy shot him a quick look, then withdrew his eyes.

Cheng Ye tapped his pen against the page and, in his heart, counted to three—then caught a furtive glance snaking over.

He smiled inwardly and kept writing.

Sure enough, two minutes later, Jiang Shi had bundled the quilt in his arms. Seeing Cheng Ye absorbed in “studying,” he couldn’t help it. “Hey!”

Only then did Cheng Ye look up.

“I—” Jiang Shi began, but a wave of itch flared at his lower back. He forgot his words and started scratching again.

After a couple strokes, Cheng Ye crossed the room in two steps and caught his hand. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. My back’s super itchy. Can you check it?”

Cheng Ye gently drew his hand from under the shirt and lifted the hem—only to see a rash of tiny red bumps all over the small of his back.

He frowned. “You’re having an allergic reaction. To what?”

Jiang Shi looked more baffled than he did. “Huh? Allergic? Since when? How did I not notice?”

Judging by the rash, it likely started when they went to sweep the tombs. With the fever, his body had been too wrung out to register it. Only now, after he’d scratched it raw, did the symptoms show.

Cheng Ye let the shirt fall. “Don’t scratch. I’ll go buy ointment. Stay here.”

That reminded Jiang Shi he was technically still mad. “I’ll go myself. Don’t pretend to be nice.”

Cheng Ye tucked the foot he was swinging back under the quilt, pulled the covers up and bundled him snug, and crouched by the bed. “A day later and you’re still mad?”

Jiang Shi’s hair was a mess; his chin buried in the quilt, a fever-flush still clung at the corners of his eyes.

“I’m not,” he said.

“How about I make it even?” Cheng Ye asked.

He set his hand at his own waistband—as if a nod from Jiang Shi would have him drop his pants on the spot.

Jiang Shi’s eyes went wide. “Who wants to look at you?”

“Just didn’t want you to feel cheated,” Cheng Ye said, deadpan.

“…”

Looking would be the cheating part, okay?

He grabbed his pillow and hurled it. “Get out.”

Regretfully, Cheng Ye “got out” to buy medicine—and dinner. When he returned, Jiang Shi was asleep again. The other four roommates were quietly reading. The boy’s face was half-buried in the pillow; he lay curled up, brows pinched uncomfortably.

But his hand rested neatly at the bed’s edge—obediently not scratching.

Cheng Ye tugged his own blanket down to hang from the rail of Jiang Shi’s upper bunk, blocking the view of the bed, then knelt and climbed onto it.

He looked at that sleeping face for a while, then woke him gently and passed over warm water and pills. “Take your medicine.”

A light sleeper, Jiang Shi woke at once to his voice.

He sat up, glanced at the makeshift curtain, then at Cheng Ye as he uncapped the ointment. He said nothing and took the pills quietly.

After swallowing them, he mumbled, “I can put the ointment on myself…”

“Lie down,” Cheng Ye said, patting the small pillow.

“…”

After your butt’s been seen, what’s a glimpse of lower back? Resigned, Jiang Shi sank into the pillow, shut his eyes, and gave up.

Cheng Ye lifted the shirt.

The red was shockingly vivid; the white was even more so—narrow and fine.

He squeezed ointment into his palm and smoothed it over that strip of waist.

The body beneath his hand twitched like a sensitive fish, tensing at first touch; the slim waist quivered under his fingers.

Sea-swell rolled through his eyes.

Cheng Ye lightened his breath and spread the white ointment in a thin layer.

His palm measured the width and felt the curves—the spine dipping down, then winding up again into height.

He’d seen the rest of it—jade-white peaks that swayed faintly under a light press of the fingertip.

“Jiang Shi…”

His voice was hoarse; in low Yi language, he murmured a sentence.

Jiang Shi turned his head. “What did you say?”

Cheng Ye opened his mouth and repeated it.

It sounded like a spell. Jiang Shi sighed. “Can you speak human?”

Cheng Ye’s palm lay warm against that pale waist; his rough finger pads traced over it, offering no reply.

The draped blanket cut out the light. Kneeling on the bed, head lowered, Cheng Ye’s eyes reflected white—yet his expression stayed dark as midnight.

What he’d said was:

—Young master, your butt is really white. Looks so enticing.