TT Chapter 37. Voice Acting

That night, Chen Ting was pinned against a tree by Pei Yiyao for nearly half an hour. His lips were swollen from the kissing, but he still could not break free. Pei Yiyao finally let him catch his breath, though his arms remained locked tightly around his waist. He lowered his head, unable to resist burying his face in Chen Ting’s neck, lips brushing against smooth skin and leaving a trail of trembling heat.

Chen Ting was not drunk, but it felt like he was. He did not know whether to push him away or let him keep going.

But then the clock struck eleven. Cinderella’s spell had worn off, and the dorm gates were about to close.

Pei Yiyao followed the sound and reached into Chen Ting’s pocket to silence the alarm. His brows knit together, and his hold around Chen Ting tightened.

Chen Ting looked up at him and could not help but remind him, “I should head back.”

Pei Yiyao sighed silently. He rested his forehead against Chen Ting’s for a long moment before finally letting go. “Sleep early.”

“Okay.” Chen Ting gave a quick reply. The very next second, he slipped nimbly from Pei Yiyao’s arms, took a step back, and said, “Your dorm’s closing too. You don’t have to walk me tonight. I’m going first. See you tomorrow!”

He waved and turned to run.

Pei Yiyao watched his curls bounce in the wind as he ran off, and a helpless smile tugged at the corner of his lips. Of course he had noticed that mischievous glint in Chen Ting’s eyes just now. From this moment on, he decided to update Chen Ting’s alcohol tolerance to: one liquor-filled chocolate.

And he fully intended to go back and order a whole box of them.

Chen Ting, on the other hand, firmly believed that the only reason he had gotten so bold and flirty was because he was drunk. As for whether Pei Yiyao would come back for revenge later, that was none of his concern. Because the next day, Ting Ting had entered study mode.

The professional English Level Four exam was coming up. He also had to prepare for the interpreting certificate. And in the new semester, it seemed like every teacher had fallen in love with role play. One particularly mysterious course was called Film English, which mainly consisted of watching movies and doing voice-over dubbing.

By now, Chen Ting could practically recite Pride and Prejudice backwards. The English teachers all adored it.

“Oh, my dear, what do you think we’ll be dubbing this time?” Yang Shulin raised his voice into a fake noble accent and walked with an exaggerated aristocratic gait, once again pretending to be Mr. Darcy.

Chen Ting kept a solemn face. “No pride, no prejudice. Just peaceful coexistence and mutual care. Thank you.”

Wu Yingwen nodded seriously. “Yeah. No matter how hard we act, we’ll never turn into Mr. Darcy. The girls won’t like us anyway.”

Yang Shulin was so outraged he nearly fainted. He looked like he was about to throw down a glove for a duel.

After much negotiation among the three of them, they finally settled on Sherlock Holmes. Yang Shulin always chose hot over noble, so he took Sherlock.

Chen Ting picked Watson without much thought, and Wu Yingwen became Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft.

With exam prep and class performances on his plate, Chen Ting had very little time left for Pei Yiyao. And Pei Yiyao was not so free that he could go chasing after him either, so the time they spent together shrank dramatically.

An entire week passed. They saw each other only twice.

The first person to raise concern was, surprisingly, Yang Shulin. “Ting Ting… lately… uh, how come you and Pei Yiyao aren’t hanging out?”

Chen Ting blinked at him. “Isn’t it obvious? I’ve been busy. And we still message each other.”

Message each other? Yang Shulin looked skeptical. Chen Ting showed no signs of someone in the throes of passionate love. His phone sat idle on the desk for hours without moving once. And when Yang Shulin peeked at this so-called chat history, he could not help rubbing his eyes in disbelief.

“This is your idea of chatting? I’m telling you, if you reply to each other only once every half hour, people would drag you out and beat you! And the frequency between you two is pathetic!”

Yang Shulin seriously suspected that he and Chen Ting might talk more than Chen Ting and Pei Yiyao did.

Chen Ting blinked again. “He’s busy.”

Yang Shulin’s mind conjured up the image of a scummy boyfriend. That pig had already snatched his little cabbage and still did not cherish it properly? Busy? Busy with what? Was the truth of the universe really going to fall apart if he took a few seconds to reply?

What he did not know was that Pei Yiyao was sitting at his desk at that very moment, glancing at his phone every few minutes, wondering why Chen Ting still had not replied.

Back in their dorm, Yang Shulin was still passionately lecturing Chen Ting about a series of love-life tricks he had picked up from some group chat. He went on so earnestly that even Chen Ting began to see him in a new light.

But that newfound respect did not last long. One of the press corps members called Chen Ting to tell him that Gao Duo had shown up again.

After teasing Pei Yiyao a few times, Gao Duo must have gotten bored of playing the same trick over and over. Now he had set his sights on the press corps. He was especially free these days. So free, in fact, that he had plenty of time to stop by and “offer guidance.”

Yang Shulin could not exactly refuse him. Not when he still wanted Gao Duo to agree to an interview.

He took off in a whirlwind. Chen Ting picked up his phone and messaged Pei Yiyao.

Donghu Crab King: I was just running lines.

Pei Yiyao: Running lines?

Donghu Crab King: Yeah, for an in-class performance. But now that Yang Shulin’s gone to the press group, I’m the only one left.

Pei Yiyao: What scene?

Donghu Crab King: Want to do it with me?

Pei Yiyao went quiet for a few seconds before replying.

Pei Yiyao: I don’t know how.

Donghu Crab King: I don’t know how either. I’ve just been winging it.

Donghu Crab King: Can you do Sherlock? He’s my Watson’s partner.

Chen Ting sent the messages in a flurry, not giving Pei Yiyao a chance to say no. Pei Yiyao had zero interest in voice acting, but this was a request from his little boyfriend, so he could not turn it down.

More than that, he really did miss hearing Chen Ting’s voice.

Soon, Chen Ting sent over a section of the script.

Pei Yiyao: You sure you want to do this part?

Donghu Crab King: Yep, that one.

Pei Yiyao stopped replying. Chen Ting waited and waited. He went from sitting upright to eventually sprawling out on the bed, all in under ten minutes. Face buried in the blanket like a guilty little ostrich, he wondered if Pei Yiyao had changed his mind.

Just as he was about to message again, a voice note popped up.

His heart skipped. He hurriedly pressed play and held the phone to his ear. A deep, magnetic voice, laced with arrogance, shot straight into his eardrum.

“Shut up, everybody. Don’t move. Don’t speak. Don’t breathe. You lower the IQ of the whole street.”

“Agh…” Chen Ting flushed and buried his head into his soft bear-paw pillow. A few seconds later, that guilty little hand of his pressed replay.

He listened to it twice in a row. Then he sternly told himself not to overdo it. Acting as if nothing had happened, he prepared to casually respond with a line of his own. But before he could, another voice message arrived.

“Anything else.”

Pei Yiyao did not know how to voice act, so his Sherlock still sounded exactly like himself. But his remarkable voice and naturally aloof aura shaped the role into something irresistibly compelling.

Don’t move. Don’t speak. Don’t breathe.

Arrogant. Icy. Regal, as though born to rule. It made people want to fall to their knees before him.

Chen Ting loved Sherlock. He loved mystery, loved deduction, and he loved Pei Yiyao. When the two came together like this, how could he not be thrilled?

But under no circumstances could Pei Yiyao ever find out that this particular line was never part of their rehearsal script. Chen Ting had added it himself. They were two of his favorite lines, spliced in from another scene.

Pei Yiyao would definitely get jealous.

What if he asked, “Do you like Sherlock more, or me more?” How was Chen Ting supposed to answer that?

Knowing when to stop was one of the defining virtues of a modern university student.

Donghu Crab King: That’s all. I already ran the rest of the lines with Yang Shulin. I just wanted you to help me test it out.

Sorry, Brother Saint Laurent. I always use you as a human shield, but please believe that I really do love you. Just as you love me.

Pei Yiyao did not ask anything else, so Chen Ting thought the whole thing had quietly passed.

Three days later, during their Film English class, when the Stinky Cobbler Trio went on stage to perform, Chen Ting swept a glance toward the window, and nearly jumped out of his skin when he spotted Pei Yiyao outside.

He was doomed.

Absolutely doomed.

What was he supposed to do?

One liquor-filled chocolate would not be enough to fix this.

Maybe two?

That one second of distraction made him miss a line, which drew a round of laughter from the class. They finally finished their performance, but there were still twenty minutes left in the session. Chen Ting glanced out the window again and realized Pei Yiyao was gone.

Had he just imagined it?

Did that mean his two chocolates were safe?

He hesitated for a moment, then decided he should not let love interfere with his studies. He activated his signature “whatever” mode.

When the bell rang twenty minutes later, he deliberately dawdled until everyone else had left. Only after the crowd had completely dispersed did he slowly make his way out of the classroom.

“Ting Ting, what are you doing? Hurry up!” Yang Shulin called to him from the doorway.

“Coming.” Chen Ting looked around to confirm that Pei Yiyao was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he had shown up, but it must have just been in passing. He stepped out with confidence, thinking the coast was clear, but then saw Yang Shulin walking off toward the restroom.

The restroom was at the far end of the corridor. After saying he would be right back, Yang Shulin ran off, and Chen Ting wandered over slowly, hugging his books.

He had barely taken a few steps when the classroom door beside him suddenly opened. The person inside looked out just as he turned his head, and their eyes met. Of course, it was Pei Yiyao.

“You…” Chen Ting was startled.

Pei Yiyao, however, looked like he had planned this. His eyes swept the empty hallway in both directions before he grabbed Chen Ting by the arm, pulled him inside, shut the door, and leaned in close.

If Chen Ting still could not figure out what this was about, then all his time in college had been wasted. Pei Yiyao must have seen the dubbing performance, understood the source of the dialogue, and now had come to settle the score.

Sherlock.” Pei Yiyao said the name in a low voice, his breath brushing against Chen Ting’s ear. “When you added those lines, were you thinking of me, or just Sherlock?”

Chen Ting’s heart pounded wildly. All he could think about was one liquor-filled chocolate, then two, then five, then six, then eight, then nine, then ten.

Three minutes later, Yang Shulin stepped out of the restroom and stared blankly at the empty hallway.

What the hell? Where did they go?