SYU 28. Bastard

Wu Jinshan realized that Chen Xiucheng had not forgotten to bring clothes. He had deliberately packed only two pairs of underwear.

He opened a shopping app on his phone, asked about Chen Xiucheng’s preferences and size, and rushed an order for two sets of casual clothing. The delivery rider brought them over from a mall two kilometers away early that morning.

Chen Xiucheng sat at the dining table with a dispirited expression, hugging the shopping bag full of clothes like a failed schemer. Forced to reconcile expenses with Wu Jinshan, he pointed to a line on the final total where two yuan and fifty cents had been deducted. “What’s this?”

“I tore one of your underwear in the school cafeteria restroom that time. This is compensation.”

Wu Jinshan had itemized every expense in exact detail, listing the price of each clothing set, the platform service fee, delivery fee, tip, taxes, and applied discounts, all the way down to the last cent. It was as precise as a ledger, fully professional and completely impersonal.

Chen Xiucheng gave a sidelong glance at the man sitting ramrod straight beside him. Judging by how Wu Jinshan calculated things, he figured it would not be long before the man brought up the cost of his stay, or even the food and care he had received while recovering from his injured foot.

The more he thought about it, the more annoyed he felt. In a sour mood, he deliberately stirred things up. “That pair of underwear was three yuan and ninety-eight cents. I want double the compensation.”

A few minutes later, his phone received a transfer. Five yuan and forty-six cents, precisely.

After a not-so-harmonious lunch, Wu Jinshan drove Chen Xiucheng to the tourist area of the Liangshan Pasture.

He arranged for a guide to accompany Chen Xiucheng and told them he would pick him up again before the park closed. Then he drove off to the stables.

At around two in the afternoon, Wu Jinshan returned home to retrieve a document. When he opened the study door, he was surprised to find Chen Xiucheng already back.

He must have just woken up. He was sitting up on the bed, staring blankly toward the door.

The blanket had slipped down to his calves. He was not wearing a shirt. He sat casually, legs spread, wearing nothing but a pair of briefs. His chest had reacted to the chill, and the dusky nipples were stiff. The white fabric of his briefs was stretched thin between his thighs, making the bulge underneath more prominent than ever.

Wu Jinshan tried his best not to look where he should not. He picked up the remote from the desk and raised the room’s temperature slightly. “Why are you here?” he asked in surprise.

“Came back,” Chen Xiucheng replied lazily. His hair was a little messy as he looked up at Wu Jinshan with a half-hearted tone.

“So soon? Who brought you back?” Wu Jinshan turned to the bookshelf on the other side of the room. Based on the usual return schedule, Chen Xiucheng could not have been in the tourist area for more than an hour.

“I ran into your second uncle. He brought Yashan along to visit the tourist area. He asked if I wanted to go to the stables since you were working there. I said no, so they just brought me back.”

Wu Jinshan gave a faint snort through his nose. That sneaky pair, one grown and one still a kid, really knew how to play tricks, and Chen Xiucheng was just gullible enough to fall for them.

Chen Xiucheng waited for a while, but Wu Jinshan said nothing. He turned his head slightly to peek over. Wu Jinshan stood before the bookshelf, lips pressed tight, showing no expression, focused on searching for something.

He could not help asking, “Will you come with me tomorrow?”

Wu Jinshan did not answer the question. “Was the guide today not good enough? I’ll arrange a different one for tomorrow.”

“No need,” Chen Xiucheng muttered. He pulled his gaze back and stared blankly at the wooden floor in front of him. “If you’re not going, then I won’t go either.”

“I thought you said summer break was long and you wanted to experience everything in detail?” Wu Jinshan turned around with a folder in hand. When he saw that Chen Xiucheng still hadn’t put his clothes on, he grabbed the shirt and pants draped over the back of the chair and tossed them onto his lap. “What, the ranch wasn’t fun?”

“Exactly! It was no fun at all!” Chen Xiucheng snapped in defiance.

“So you want to go home?”

Chen Xiucheng abruptly looked up, his eyes suddenly tinged with red. “So when you said you’d take me to play for free, what you meant was you’d bring me here and then make me entertain myself for free?”

Wu Jinshan looked perfectly justified as he replied in a flat tone, “What else did you think? Were you expecting a companion? This is a proper ranch. We don’t offer that kind of service.”

“Wu Jinshan!”

The clothes hit the ground. The man was kicked out the door. The study door slammed shut with a bang that made the entire old house tremble three times. Chen Xiucheng’s voice, sharp and powerful, pierced through the wood. “Go to hell, you fucking bastard!”

Wu Jinshan raised his pinky to scratch at his ear as if it itched, silently chalking it up to a bad mood from just waking up. He didn’t take it personally.

After sitting back down on the bed for a while to cool off, his ragged breathing gradually steadied, but the anger only grew worse. The more Chen Xiucheng thought about it, the more bitter he felt. When he realized that Wu Jinshan was still standing outside, he pulled out his phone, turned on the speaker, and called her mother.

Professor Lin showcased her expert scolding skills. She vehemently opposed her son’s idea of coming home after less than two days at the ranch and criticized him for having the attention span of a goldfish. No patience, no planning, no structure. One moment he was like this, the next moment he was like that. She demanded that he figure things out on his own and strictly forbade him from coming back to disrupt her and Mr. Chen’s passionate summer of rekindled love.

For once, Chen Xiucheng agreed with his mother’s lecture. It was well said and deserved praise. He reopened the study door, and sure enough, Wu Jinshan was still standing there with his arms crossed. Chen Xiucheng lifted his chin and declared with renewed vigor, “You heard her. My mom said I can’t go home so soon.”

“I’m homeless now,” he said, spreading his hands in mock helplessness. “Tomorrow I’m going out to look for work. Don’t worry. I’ll manage on my own.” He slammed the door shut again, full of self-righteous flair.

What Chen Xiucheng seemed to have forgotten was that this was Wu Jinshan’s study.

The sudden silence made even the moisture in the air feel frozen. Chen Xiucheng’s chest was tight with frustration. In the past, Wu Jinshan would have at least argued with him for a bit. But now there was no reaction at all, no splash from the stone he had thrown, just a lifeless blankness that only made his mood worse.

Remembering that Wu Jinshan had been looking for something earlier, Chen Xiucheng walked over to the bookshelf and began pulling books down one by one, tossing them onto the bed in a fit of anger.

Wu Jinshan’s study wasn’t very big. Aside from a desk and chair and a single bed for temporary rest, the books and documents took up nearly two-thirds of the space. Two floor-to-ceiling shelves lined the walls, a shorter shelf stood in the middle of the room, and even the floor was stacked with books.

The content was diverse. Livestock farming, appliance repair, astronomy, microbial cultivation. Some were notebooks with neatly written entries, others were printed documents whose purpose was unclear. Everything had originally been arranged in an orderly fashion, but now they had all been implicated, toppling this way and that, as if suffering punishment in their owner’s place.

Footsteps finally sounded at the door. Wu Jinshan walked away slowly, but instead of heading downstairs, he went into the bedroom next door and turned into the en suite bathroom. A moment later, the sound of the shower could be heard. He was bathing again.

Chen Xiucheng thought for a moment. Wu Jinshan had been showering rather frequently these past two days. While it was not unusual to shower more often in summer, showering at night, again in the morning, then once more at the staff dormitory before returning home, and again after arriving, wasn’t that a little excessive?

Just then, a photo album on the upper shelf of the bookcase suddenly tilted and fell, hitting his arm before dropping to the floor. Several photographs scattered across the floor with a sharp rustling sound.

There were some old photos of a young woman who looked very much like Wu Jinshan, along with a few pictures of a little boy being held in the arms of two elderly people. From a baby to about three or four years old.

Chen Xiucheng picked them up one by one and realized they must have been childhood photos of Wu Jinshan. Back then, the little Wu Jinshan actually smiled in pictures, with a round face and rosy cheeks, standing tall with pride, looking both adorable and full of confidence.

But from the time he entered kindergarten, there seemed to be no more personal photos. Aside from the occasional class graduation shot, there were no candid snapshots at all.

Chen Xiucheng had no idea what had happened to Wu Jinshan during that period. In the final high school graduation photo, the expressionless face was already the cold and unsmiling version of him that he knew now.

Suddenly remembering something, he grabbed his phone and found the candid photo he had taken of Wu Jinshan inside the white circular decorative building. He removed the pixelated filter and pulled up the original image.

He placed the photo of Wu Jinshan on his phone side by side with the emotionless figure in the graduation picture. By comparison, the one he had captured seemed so much more vivid, so much more human.

His fingertip brushed lightly over Wu Jinshan’s features on the screen. Then, almost instinctively, he slid his hand into his underwear. When it felt too uncomfortable, he pushed the fabric down to his knees, took hold of his hardening cock, and began to stroke.

Was it something everyone went through during adolescence, that inability to bear loneliness and emptiness, chasing fleeting pleasure instead of seeking something stable and lasting?

Chen Xiucheng did not know if Wu Jinshan felt the same. After all, the two times they had had sex, Wu Jinshan had never said anything.

Especially that first time in the hotel, he had not explained anything. He had just gone at him the whole night. Chen Xiucheng had passed out partway through, and when he woke up to find Wu Jinshan sleeping peacefully, he had been furious. Afterward, Wu Jinshan had not offered any explanation. He just spewed a bunch of high-minded, meaningless excuses.

Who the hell wanted to hear that crap?

It had pissed him off so badly that he punched him. No, actually, he had punched him twice.

What if Wu Jinshan had said he liked him back then?

Chen Xiucheng thought about it. Maybe he would have been willing to give it a try.

But why would Wu Jinshan ever say he liked him? The only things he ever said about him were that he was noisy and annoying. Chen Xiucheng could not recall any other evaluation.

He lowered his gaze in disappointment and drew a question mark on the floor with his fingertip. He was not even sure whether Wu Jinshan hated him or not.

He did not know if having sex with him meant Wu Jinshan just wanted a casual hookup.

But he himself did not want that.

If it were just about needing relief, his own hand was enough. There was no need to take the risk of involving someone else. Maybe he really just disliked complications.

Love was different though. Love wasn’t rational. Like the way physical stimulation triggered pleasure, like the body’s uncontrollable urge to climax, both love and sex could drive people mad, make them impulsive, and strip away their reason.

He wanted to call out Wu Jinshan’s name. He imagined Wu Jinshan standing in front of him, looking down at him on the floor, hands sticky with cum and face flushed from release. He wanted to stick out his tongue and kiss him.

He did not think of himself as gay. He had never had this kind of feeling for any other man. He still liked anime girls on his phone. But if Wu Jinshan wanted to give him a blowjob, or fuck him, he thought maybe he would agree.

He did not know what that made him.

He pulled a few tissues from the box and wiped the floor clean. The air still carried a faint musky scent. Leaning back against the bed, completely spent, Chen Xiucheng let his heavy eyelids fall shut.