WP 27

Jiang Yibai hummed a tune as he sat in front of his computer, typing away.

It was a Friday night. He had just seen his student out the door. When he closed it, his boyfriend, who had been working in the bedroom, somehow appeared behind him without a sound. He turned around and crashed right into his arms, and then…

Jiang Yibai grinned to himself, practically drooling. The places his boyfriend had just taken care of were still tingling. He opened his writing software, but his mind was still filled with the image of his boyfriend flushed and panting. His heart had turned into a puddle, and all he wanted now was to drag his boyfriend back into bed and keep going until dawn.

Unfortunately, his boyfriend was a romance-impaired “straight man.” After they finished, he had only kissed him and said he was going back to work.

Jiang Yibai, still buzzing and unsatisfied, had no choice but to watch as his boyfriend returned to the guest bedroom.

He remained steeped in the taste of their passion, even carrying the scent of his boyfriend’s usual shower gel on his skin. After a moment’s thought, he finally opened a new document for the first time in nearly three months.

The story he had written on a whim, A Few Things About Me and My Male God, had been reported because it was wall-to-wall smut. But he still wanted to tell that story. So he created a new folder and decided to rewrite it in a first-person forum-style post:

“Couldn’t hold it in anymore in the middle of the night, so here I am to spill the story of me and my male god. I’m a guy, and of course, my male god is a guy too. But he never even considered dating men at first, so things between us were pretty damn complicated.”

“He’s three years older than me, a Leo, my favorite sign. That’s a lie. I never believed in that star sign nonsense. But I liked him, and he was a Leo, so I decided I liked Leos. The way I fell for him goes way back. At the time, my male god was still a nobody in his field…”

“He works freelance. I won’t get into the specifics. He’s the kind of person who works hard, always quiet and steady, never trying to stand out, and never compromising on his values no matter what anyone says. In a world like ours, where everything runs on connections and money, a guy like him, if not for some natural talent, sheer grit, and a lucky break, might never have gotten anywhere. Because these days, hard work alone just doesn’t cut it. Honestly, I didn’t even pay attention to him at first. I was doing some freelance creative work myself, and right around graduation, I teamed up with a bunch of friends to start a business. It ended in failure, but that wasn’t what crushed me. What really did it was seeing the truth about people during that whole mess…”

Jiang Yibai rarely sat down to write anything properly. Even this story about his male god had begun on a whim, so it could hardly be called serious, but compared to his earlier works, this one was more proper by far.

Writing out his experiences with Si Shaorong in that half-true, half-fabricated, exaggerated way gave it the feel of a diary, a keepsake. That subtle feeling snuck in and made him unknowingly reveal some pieces of his real heart.

Before he realized it, it was already past midnight. He cleaned up the typos and went ahead and published it.

He was nowhere near as disciplined as Si Shaorong when it came to writing. Skipping updates for a week or two was normal. Daily updates were never going to happen. Updating every other day was already considered diligent for him.

After posting it, he shut down his computer, washed up, and went to bed, completely unaware that in the room next door, his boyfriend had just received an excited message from one of Jiang Yibai’s fangirls.

The editor was in the middle of discussing plot points with Si Shaorong when she got a notification from her “favorites” feed on Weibo. It was a post from Jiang Luanyu.

She kept talking as she clicked it open, only to find a link. The comments under the Weibo post were already in chaos. Everyone was saying that Jiang Luanyu had suddenly become “rich, democratic, civilized, and harmonious,” and they had not been prepared for it.

Some readers said they were curious about the two main characters. The setup was pretty cute and totally different from Jiang Luanyu’s usual character designs.

The editor’s curiosity was piqued. She clicked in to take a look and immediately let out an excited squeal: “So adorable! Totally my type!” Then she sent the link straight to Si Shaorong.

“Great Master, Jiang Luanyu posted a new story!”

Si Shaorong blinked.

The editor said, “This setup is really interesting. You should take a look too, just for fun.”

Si Shaorong opened the link. The first thing he saw was a plain white cover. Jiang Luanyu always made his own covers. They were simple, minimalistic, and oddly distinctive.

This time, the plain white background featured only a few large black brushstroke characters. A Few Things About Me and My Male God, by Jiang Luanyu.

Si Shaorong’s heart gave a thump. He glanced at the summary. It was extremely brief:

Summary as the title suggests, some this-and-that with my male god, yeah.

First-person POV. Enter with caution. Might have smut, might not. We’ll see.

Short story. Writing whatever whenever. Feel free to bookmark and fatten it up. No KY, no drama, no personal attacks. If you try to go after me, don’t blame me for firing back. You’re not the only one with a mouth and an opinion.

Si Shaorong could not help but laugh. He was still on a voice call with his editor, who asked curiously, “Great Master?”

Si Shaorong quickly cleared his throat and said, “His summaries always have that aggressive tone.”

“Can’t be helped,” the editor laughed too. “He gets flamed so much it’s basically a trend now. If you don’t take a shot at Jiang Luanyu, people think you’re not really in the fandom. Those who get it, get it. Those who don’t, just aren’t his crowd. But at the very least, he always makes his stance clear. We’re all born the same way, two eyes, one nose, one mouth. Just because someone doesn’t show you their heart doesn’t mean you get to stomp on them and spit. If people won’t respect him, then he sure as hell won’t back down.”

Si Shaorong gave a soft “mm” in reply. He rarely read the comments under stories, because everyone had different opinions.

But this time, after hesitating a little, he clicked open the comments section beneath the story he had just read. As expected, there were both positive and negative ones. Some of the arguments, though, were completely irrational, escalating into full-blown thread wars, creating a noisy, suffocating mess.

After glancing through a few, Si Shaorong frowned and closed the page. Just then, the editor spoke again. “Hey, Great Master, didn’t you say you moved recently?”

“Yeah.”

“This story’s about a shared apartment too. Feels kind of interesting.”

Just seeing the title gave Si Shaorong a bad feeling. He sighed inwardly, but couldn’t stop himself from clicking into it.

Jiang Yibai had only posted two chapters so far, and even together they didn’t add up to the length of one of Si Shaorong’s usual chapters.

Still, Si Shaorong read through it seriously. So seriously, in fact, that he didn’t even register when the editor spoke to him.

She had to call his name several times before he came back to himself. “Ah—yeah.”

The editor yawned and said, “It’s getting late. Let’s leave it here for today. We can work on the rest of the outline next time.”

“Alright.”

“Oh, and I’ve already sent the outline and the first 10,000 characters to the publisher. They’re old contacts of ours. They want to sign it first… Great Master?”

The more Si Shaorong read, the harder his heart pounded. He suddenly felt flustered, and his voice came out uneven: “That Jiang Luanyu… his parents passed away?”

“I think so? I heard about it years ago.” The editor replied, “He’s been writing since college, though it was pretty on and off back then. He wasn’t well-known yet. Then near graduation, one of his stories did pretty well, but he suddenly stopped updating. Vanished for a long time. Almost a year, I think?”

She thought about it. “I can’t quite remember. I wasn’t following him then. I only heard from others later. The story that was doing well just died off, and people said he was quitting writing, that something had happened in his family. About a year later he came back. Only his reader group had any updates. They said his parents had passed, but no one could confirm it. Why are you asking all of a sudden?”

Si Shaorong’s heart was pounding like a drum. Even with the air conditioner on, he broke into a cold sweat. His hand on the mouse was frozen.

The cursor rested over a particular paragraph in Jiang Luanyu’s story:

“…After my parents died, so many things I used to care about suddenly felt pointless. I didn’t even know what I’d been chasing anymore. In the end, you realize you can’t hold onto anything. You can’t even protect the people you care about. I know it sounds dramatic, but at the time it really felt like life was nothing but suffering. Just suffering. Nothing else.”

“Losing my parents and the failure of my startup hit me one after another. I couldn’t recover. The team fell apart, and we parted on bad terms. Maybe life had been too smooth for me until then. I guess I needed some waves to realize how hard it really is. But the price was too steep. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. And then, I came across the male god’s work. It was just a coincidence, really…”

Si Shaorong recalled many of his past conversations with Jiang Yibai. There had always been a subtle sense of dissonance, but he had never thought too much of it.

He had asked Jiang Yibai about his parents, but Jiang Yibai hadn’t answered. He had assumed it was a personal matter and left it at that.

He had asked about the incident at the bar, and Jiang Yibai had just brushed it off as old drama, never offering any context.

He had asked how Jiang Yibai’s parents reacted when he came out. What had he said?

Si Shaorong’s face turned pale. He remembered that Jiang Yibai had only smiled and said, “Well, by the time they couldn’t accept it, there was nothing they could do.”

Si Shaorong abruptly ended the voice call and rushed out of his room to the master bedroom. He raised his hand to knock, then froze mid-motion.

If Jiang Yibai had chosen not to bring it up, what right did he have to ask?

And this was just a story, after all. Maybe the character’s background was just a narrative device. Even if Jiang Yibai had drawn from their time together, wasn’t that still just “material”? If he asked about it and it turned out to be fiction, wouldn’t that be laughable? If it was real, then he would be tearing open old wounds.

They were living under the same roof, and Jiang Yibai had never once mentioned any of this. What position did he even have to question him? As a boyfriend? But what if Jiang Yibai simply said, “That’s private”?

Then this whole “fake relationship for research” would be out in the open, and all his silence these days would look like a joke.

For a moment, Si Shaorong stood frozen in the hallway, mind blank. His clothes were damp with sweat by the time he turned back to his room. His legs and arms were covered in swollen mosquito bites.

He thought to himself: he didn’t know Jiang Yibai at all. Maybe Zhen Zhen had been right. Maybe Jiang Yibai had planned a way out from the very beginning, while he had blindly thrown himself in.

But could he really blame Jiang Yibai? Jiang Yibai had made the terms clear from the start. If there was any deception, perhaps there was, but hadn’t he agreed to it too?

One willing to play, the other willing to be played…

Si Shaorong sat at his desk for a long time, feeling like a victim with no one to plead his case to. His gaze fell again on that story, and after staring at it for a while, he suddenly made up his mind.

He had never been someone who dragged things out. Once he made a decision, he never hesitated.

Before, he hadn’t been sure what he wanted, or how deep his feelings went. After all, they hadn’t been living together that long.

But then he thought: sometimes you just know. One look is enough to tell if it’s right. Why keep making excuses?

If he were going to regret it, he should have walked away from the beginning. But he had to admit he couldn’t walk away. So what was there left to say?

Even if it was a trap, he had walked into it. And now that he was in, Jiang Yibai could forget about getting out.