Kiss you at Sunset (BL) - Chapter 9

Although Yang Jin’s tone was calm, as if he was making a casual joke, the rise and fall of his chest was visibly pronounced.

Zhou Shiluo couldn’t quite grasp Yang Jin’s temperament after two years, but he could tell that the man was probably angry.

But he had no idea what exactly he was angry about. There were too many possibilities—each one of them could be enough to provoke Yang Jin.

The dim incandescent light cast a stark, lifeless glow over the room, making the air feel just as dead.

Zhou Shiluo’s face darkened instantly. It took him a long moment to regain his composure. He felt like he was being too eager—after all, apart from making Yang Jin cry a lot as a kid, he hadn’t really done anything too excessive.

His gaze fell on the corners of Yang Jin’s lips, where traces of a mocking smile still lingered. He spoke indifferently, “Yang Jin, let’s talk.”

Yang Jin’s smile froze for a second before he withdrew it completely. He met Zhou Shiluo’s slightly upturned, almond-shaped eyes but didn’t respond.

Zhou Shiluo didn’t care about his attitude. He turned around, pulled a chair from behind him, and sat down directly across from Yang Jin. He crossed his legs, tugged at his collar irritably, and prepared to lay out all the confusion that had been piling up inside him.

“Why are you at D University? And why didn’t you tell me?”

Yang Jin sat up straight, shifting backward slightly. His long legs rested on the ground as he leaned against the headboard, looking relaxed.

The alcohol had dulled most of his thoughts. His wine-reddened eyes blinked sluggishly. He frowned. Though throwing up had relieved the nausea, the feeling of alcohol numbing his nerves still annoyed him.

He exhaled lightly, turned his gaze to Zhou Shiluo, and responded in a low voice, “Am I the one with a bad memory, or is it you? Did you forget that you deleted me?”

It was a solid argument. Zhou Shiluo was momentarily speechless. It was indeed him who had deleted and blocked all of Yang Jin’s contacts.

But he didn’t think he was wrong. After what had happened, didn’t he have the right to be angry?

Back then, he had treated Yang Jin like a younger brother. Every day after the college entrance exam, he had been making plans—where to take Yang Jin once he got into a university in the capital.

If Yang Jin had been a little more proactive afterward, a little more thick-skinned, maybe Zhou Shiluo would have been able to let go of that incident sooner. Maybe he could have pretended nothing had happened and kept things as they were.

“When you were a sophomore, I was in my third year of grad school. You could’ve come to find me anytime,” Zhou Shiluo reflected. The thought made him sigh—fate really was unpredictable. They had been in the same university for a whole year but had never run into each other.

Hearing this, Yang Jin suddenly let out a laugh—one that lasted for quite a while, as if Zhou Shiluo had just told the biggest joke in the world. When he finally stopped, he replied in an offhanded tone, “Why would I go out of my way to tell you? What are we to each other?”

Then, as if he had just realized something, he dragged out an exaggerated “Oh,” before answering his own question, “Right, I remember now. We slept together once. I guess that barely qualifies us as… friends with benefits?”

“You—”

The first wave Zhou Shiluo felt was anger—so strong it left him tongue-tied. Then, his ears burned red. His bl00d surged wildly, gathering in his head.

He hadn’t expected Yang Jin to be so blunt, leaving him no room to prepare.

Yang Jin chuckled, his voice slipping into Zhou Shiluo’s ears, amplifying the irritation inside him. It was as if the only one still hung up on that night was him.

Zhou Shiluo wanted to turn and leave. But there was a thought lingering stubbornly in his mind, one that had appeared the moment he told Yang Jin to get in bed. He needed to ask.

After two years, Zhou Shiluo finally tore down the walls he had carefully built. He stepped out of his safety zone and asked, “That night… were you really drunk?”

As soon as he spoke, his hand instinctively slipped into his pocket—a habit he had developed whenever he felt irritated and wanted a cigarette. He had quit smoking, yet some habits seemed to be engraved in his bones.

Instead of a cigarette, his fingers brushed against a slip of paper. He hesitated, puzzled, before realizing it was the 200-yuan fine for illegal parking.

What a goddamn night, he thought.

He lowered his eyes, unwilling—or perhaps afraid—to see Yang Jin’s expression. He wanted to know the answer so badly, yet he was scared Yang Jin would say he hadn’t been drunk, that he had done it on purpose. If that were the case, the excuse Zhou Shiluo had worked so hard to construct would collapse completely.

From then on, they would be nothing more than two parallel lines, never intersecting again.

He waited for a long time—so long that he began to wonder if Yang Jin had fallen asleep. He licked his teeth and finally resigned himself to looking up.

Yang Jin wasn’t asleep. His half-lidded eyes, tired and drowsy, met Zhou Shiluo’s. Then he asked in return, “What about you?”

Zhou Shiluo was taken aback. “Huh?”

Yang Jin, unhurried, pressed on, “Were you sober, or drunk?”

Drunk, of course. Zhou Shiluo had no doubt about that. He had spent over twenty years as a straight man with zero interest in other men. If he hadn’t woken up to find that it was Yang Jin, he might have been angry enough to kill someone.

“I was drunk. I don’t remember anything from that night,” Zhou Shiluo admitted.

There was another pause before Yang Jin let out a helpless chuckle. He closed his eyes for a moment, then reopened them. Finally, he pulled out a cigarette, ignoring Zhou Shiluo entirely as he lit it and took two slow drags. Then he said, “Well, that’s convenient. I was drunk too. I don’t remember a thing.”

Zhou Shiluo let out a breath, feeling an odd sense of relief—he had never felt so light before. He was about to follow up when something small and dark suddenly flew toward him without warning.

It hit his chest, bounced to the floor, and slid a little before coming to a stop.

He looked down. It was the cigarette pack that Yang Jin had just been holding.

It didn’t hurt, but Zhou Shiluo’s simmering frustration instantly flared up again. “What the hell is wrong with you now?”

Yang Jin exhaled a cloud of smoke, his hoarse voice tinged with laziness. “Well, since neither of us remembers, I don’t mind helping you relive the experience.”

Zhou Shiluo’s eyes widened in shock. His mind went blank. He hadn’t even been drinking, yet he suddenly felt drunk. “What… do you mean?”

Yang Jin sat up, snuffing out his cigarette in the ashtray on the nightstand. Then, slowly, he leaned toward Zhou Shiluo.

Gripping the armrests of the chair, he blocked off Zhou Shiluo’s escape. Bending slightly, he enclosed the man beneath him.

Zhou Shiluo instinctively leaned back until he had nowhere left to retreat. He gritted his teeth and growled, “Yang Jin, don’t make me hit you.”

Yang Jin wasn’t fazed. He had never taken threats like this seriously—not in the past, not now, and certainly not in the future.

He inched closer, their noses almost touching. Then he stopped. He gazed into Zhou Shiluo’s angry, hazy eyes. Only when he saw his own reflection in them did he finally shift his gaze downward—lingering on Zhou Shiluo’s lips.

Zhou Shiluo’s mind went blank.

Just as he snapped back to reality and moved to push Yang Jin away, Yang Jin grabbed both his wrists and pinned them above his head.

With his hands trapped, Zhou Shiluo felt the ache in his wrists as Yang Jin murmured in a low, taunting voice, “If you don’t leave now, I wouldn’t mind fucking you a second time.”