Irresistible You (19 Days) (BL)

16.

"Since when did you care about rising over the bottom five in the class?" Nianzu laughed, before his smile sobered into an empathetic grimace.

"So, uh, things are that bad at home, eh boss?"

"I'll break your neck." Guan Shan snapped. "I told you to come help me at the shop and you went off to play around with some girls."

Chen Fang nodded with a serious countenance. 

"Nianzu has been getting rather promiscuous as of late, that definitely needs to change for the better. Else we'll have a couple of bastard kids running around in no time."

"You give me too much credit." Nianzu had a shit-eating grin. "But alas, you are wrong. He Tian will definitely surpass me in no time at all!"

Guan Shan's face darkened like thunder, and Nianzu gulped.

"No really, look ahead if you don't believe me! He Tian is already rutting with chicks in broad daylight."

It was reflexive. he couldn't help but switch his furious gaze from the concrete below to the scene unfolding in front of him. Nianzu was right, to a certain extent. He Tian was a few feet in front of them, creating a protective cocoon of his own from the throng of students who rushed past them with a barrier of female fans who swooned and fussed over their darling's 'fatal' head wounds.

"Oh He Tian xué zhǎng, are you alright? Do you want me to take you to the nurse's office? Lei, you witch, move away! I'll care for xué zhǎng. Isn't your boyfriend waiting for you back at the school temple anyway?" 

The girl who was talking had an unpleasant, condescending look on her face.

"Liar! I don't have a boyfriend, you wench! Don't listen to her, He Tian—"

The other girl—Lei—screamed, grabbing onto He Tian's arm with such force that Guan Shan winced. That bastard wasn't made of iron, and how he tolerated those loud harpies was beyond him.

It was the same, after all. Nothing had changed and He Tian would have a nice, lavish Chinese wedding following all the six etiquettes, exchanging the nuptial cups and all, before settling in a posh home with two kids or whatever. Unlike him, He Tian's life was all set. The bastard had things handed over to him like it was nothing. He didn't owe He Tian anything, and had even helped the bastard when he was bleeding his brain juices out when Lay Yin had done him in. He owed nothing to He Tian.

Even so, as Chen Fang and Nianzu trailed behind him, lost in their hushed conversation, his gaze found He Tian's. The bastard gave him an unperturbed, smug smile and a smooth salute to go with it. The girls simpered, pushing their soft bodies up against He Tian. Dumbfounded, Guan Shan shook his head, and strode over the steps of the school building. There was no way they were going to cross paths, and he was going to make sure of that.

___________

That was what Guan Shan had thought. In hindsight, that was too abrupt of a conclusion. A pained expression crossed his face as he hid beside the blossoms of a bramble shrub in a corner of the school playground. He heard a horrible cluster of voices arguing with one another. He Tian's voice was a low, convincing baritone. Lay Yin's, on the other hand, was high pitched and agitated. Why in Buddha's name was he hiding like a stuck swine out here?

After he had given the admittedly average midterm exam, he had snuck out with Nianzu and Chen Fang in the break to get some cold baijiu across the road beyond the heavily fenced school borders. Chen Fang had just turned eighteen the other day, and the boys wanted to take advantage of it by drinking some liquor. 

It was just supposed to be a quick business of jumping over the fence and skipping class. The last thing Guan Shan wanted to do was have the school authorities notice and make a riot, bringing his mother's attention to it and making the whole thing messy.

He hadn't expected to find He Tian near the fence, and ducked behind a bush immediately. Nianzu and Chen Fang fell into a crouch in tandem with him as well.

"Boss?" Nianzu sounded confused. "Why are we crouching like this?'

One corner of Guan Shan's lips curved in a smirk. These two really were the most obedient, weren't they?

"Go ahead an' get the baijiu." He ordered. "I'll come later."

"But boss—" The boy protested, but stopped as Chen Fang grabbed a fistful of his collar.

"Didn't you hear him?" Chen Fang complained, his tone low. He Tian was still arguing with the bastard Lay Yin in one corner. Guan Shan tried to peer through the bramble, but it was too dense. "We'll go sneak out and be right back. Mo Guan Shan will be fine."

He nodded in affirmation.

With that, the two boys crawled away and he was left behind, stalking that bastard He Tian in a way that was too obsessive to be counted as natural curiosity, if anyone had enquired. Furious, Guan Shan kicked himself internally.

Why? He cursed. Why had he reduced himself to this eavesdropping, stupid, bizarre mess of a man?

"—you are done for, Lay Yin." He Tian's voice sounded friendly, yet had an undercurrent of danger to it. "And this time, there are no cheap tricks you can grab onto while you are at it."

Lay Yin's voice was tinged with consternation. "You will pay for this!"

"For what?" He Tian laughed. "All because I managed to snag a few pics of your shady drug business here in school? Don't worry, I won't rat you out to the authorities. Really, your ex-girlfriends were so kind in giving me the evidence. You must have been making a lot of paper from that little racket of yours."

"You—you—"

"I usually prefer beating shit heads like you in till you can't crawl anymore." He Tian sounded bored. "But, if you ever come near red—"

Guan Shan's heartbeat quickened when he heard his infamous nickname. He ran his fingers through clumps of his red hair, breaths quickening. Gripping the stems of the shrub a little harder till the thorns cut through his skin, he forced his breaths to be shallow.

"—then I'll obviously settle for more, permanent forms of mental torture. Oh, and a word of advice, don't scorn naïve girls. You never know who'll leak precious things about you in revenge."

Silence.

"Fine." Lay Yin wheezed out. Guan Shan couldn't see his expression from his covert position, but he could picture an ugly, vengeful sneer on that little shit head's face. "My gang won't be happy with this."

With that, he heard the crunch of soles on fresh grass, and was left with the noisy garble of crickets chirping.

"You can come out, red." He Tian called out. "Did you miss me that much?"