Back in the dormitory, Ye Yao, who couldn't stand the smell of sweat, went to take a shower, while Lu Xun, who was in a good mood because of Ye Yao's promise, sat at his desk and casually played with his mobile phone.
With a smile on his lips, Lu Xun browsed around on various apps before clicking on the school's anonymous forum.
Lu Xun didn't often use the school's anonymous forum, so he was surprised seeing how busy it was. The first page of the forum was full of posts made only a short time ago, and there were three posts that were the most lively -
[I'm straight and my boyfriend must be straight too, you know?]
[Ye Beauty - Hei Zi - Don't Enter!]
[A new Lu Xun picture, at your service]
Lu Xun raised an eyebrow and clicked on the first one on a hunch.
Once inside, the first thing that came to Lu Xun's attention was a photo that had been photoshopped.
The photo was from that game that afternoon, and in the centre of it, he and Ye Yao were gazing at each other across a few silhouetted teammates, and the poster added pink bubbles to the two of them, with their gazes at each other drawn in red lines.
Poster: [Oooh, this stare-down, I don't believe it when they say they are friends, there must be an affair between them!]
This picture was so pink and dreamy, and with Ye Yao's slightly aloof face, Lu Xun couldn't hold back his laughter.
Lu Xun saved the image and happily continued to read on, seeing more pictures of the duo and speculation about his relationship with Ye Yao.
For example, when he handed Ye Yao a half-drunk glass of water, he must've been trying to assert his sovereignty with an indirect kiss in public.
For example, by putting his arm around Ye Yao's shoulders and retreating from the stage, he was telling his rival and his crush that these two school grasses had hooked up and that the stragglers should back off.
Lu Xun curled his lips, although he hadn't had these thoughts in mind when he made these moves, he wasn't offended by the good-natured banter. It would have been normal for him and Ye Yao to joke around with each other, and the pictures were well taken.
Lu Xun saved all the pictures in the building with one click and left satisfied.
Then, Lu Xun clicked on the second post - "Ye Beauty 舔颜楼".
More than the interaction between the two, the pictures in that post focused on bringing Ye Yao's face to maximum clarity in the shot.
Although Ye Yao always said that Lu Xun is the school's it boy, he was not bad looking himself at all.
Unlike Lu Xun's handsome features, Ye Yao's features were more refined and softer. He was the kind of man who would be called a beauty if he had long hair and wore women's clothes.
His was a gender-neutral look, so naturally there's no shortage of people taking photos and licking their screens. The building was brimming with all kinds of beautiful photos and all kinds of licking statements.
Lu Xun slowly scrolled down the thread, carefully saving every single photo of Ye Yao, while going to see what others had to say.
Perhaps because it's an anonymous forum, people have no qualms about speaking up.
[Oooh, my husband's skin looks so thin, see the blush on his face, it's not because his face is hot from exercise, it's because he's shy from seeing me!]
[Ye Yao held me for half an hour because you said that.]
[I can't even bear to break your fantasy, after all, he has to hold me to sleep every night. The previous one is right, his skin is really thin, and when you gently bite his Adam's apple when you're having sex, you can see him slowly turning pink, hehehe, it smells great.]
Lu Xun stared at the last comment for a few seconds, opened the top left corner of the comment and clicked on report.
Bullshit, he was the one who slept with Ye Yao every day, how come he didn't know if Ye Yao would turn pink when he licked it or not?
It was everyone's responsibility to maintain a clear atmosphere on the forum.
Lu Xun continued to scroll down in a spirit of disbelief, and his face suddenly sank when he saw a certain number of messages.
Unlike the jokes of flirtatious nature that preceded it, the messages that followed were full of instant malice.
[A sissy, only you girls with no aesthetics will like him, not a bit of masculinity, disgusting, I'm gonna vomit].
[So pretty, you'll be crying for a long time after a punch. Oh, Mr. Ye, it's better to take a bodyguard with you when you go out, otherwise who knows what might happen.]
[What normal man would play with him? Normal men look down on him, laughing.]
Those sort of messages made the rest of the building explode.
[Red lips and white teeth and cleanliness is a pussy? I know you're fat and greasy!]
[So fond of cursing with mother, do you have no mother?]
[I said Hei Zi, don't enter, don't understand human language? Get out!]
In this moment, Lu Xun understood why the words Hei Zi Do Not Enter were in the title.
"Fuck, here we go again, you guys can't even match Ye Yao by a finger, bunch of stinkers!"
The sound of angry cursing reached Lu Xun's ears and when he looked over, he saw Wen Ke tapping his phone furiously, as if he was cursing at someone.
Lu Xun's gaze caught Wen Ke's attention and he looked up at Lu Xun for a moment before swishing his phone back behind him.
"Lu, Brother Lu, you're in the dormitory too, I forgot all about you since you didn't say anything." Wen Ke laughed awkwardly.
"You're reading that post too?" Lu Xun asked succinctly, "What's going on?"
"....Brother Lu you saw it too." Wen Ke scratched his head and sighed, "There's a bunch of trash that always attack Ye Yao's looks on anonymous forums. It used to be fine, but since Ye Yao is getting more and more popular with the girls, those people have become more and more vicious. I think it's better to hide it from Ye Yao and not let him get upset about the anonymous forums, those people wouldn't dare to push in reality."
The sound of the water in the bathroom stopped and Ye Yao opened the bathroom door, coming out.
The wide white shirt made him look even more pale and slender and he held a towel in one hand to wipe the drops of water from his hair. Then he went to the clothes pole in the other side to collect the clothes hanging on the balcony.
After collecting his own, Ye Yao turned back to the house and looked at Wen Ke, "Do you want me to help you with your clothes?"
"Yes!" Wen Ke adjusted his mind and gave Ye Yao a heart gesture, "There's no other reward, I'll give my body in return!"
"That won't work, there's a proper court, no concubines." Ye Yao smiled and turned back to help the others put their clothes away.
With a raised hand, his body shirt got pulled and outlined his lean, narrow waist like an upright bamboo.
Looking at the back of such a figure, Lu Xun remembered something Ye Yao had told him in high school.
He was then quite curious as to why a standard good student like Ye Yao was fighting, not to mention being so skilled that he was on the verge of rivalling him as a professional bad student.
So after they had become acquainted, Lu Xun asked him about his doubts. At that time, Ye Yao looked at him with the delicate softness of a young man's features.
Lu Xun had finally found out why.
At the age when Ye Yao was in primary and junior high school, before his features had grown, Ye Yao looked like a girl, even if he had his hair cut short.
And such a boy was too easily targeted by all sorts of strange people and was easily ostracised against and bullied by the boys in his class, so fighting was simply a necessary skill for him to learn.
Ye Yao had used his strength to silence those people, but when he went to university, the vitriol grew again and hid in the gutter to discredit him.
"Brother Lu, I know you're angry, but watch your expression when Ye Yao comes out," Wen Ke whispered to Lu Xun, "There's nothing we can do about them saying that in the anonymous section, and letting Ye Yao know will only make his angry for nothing. We can't do anything about it."
Lu Xun pushed his phone back into his pocket and took a long look at Ye Yao's back.
"Who says there's no way." He stood up and curled his lips, "How can you have a proper court without some skills?"
*
The night atmosphere was thick and even in a busy metropolis there were dim places where the lights don't shine.
Two short, chubby young men walked in a pair down a dimly lit path while exchanging thoughts about a fun night out.
"The one I found this time was quite a hit, slutty enough and good looking. Screams like a singer, you try it next time." The triangle-eyed man reminisced.
The other garlic-nosed one shook his head, "Yours is too expensive, I'll stick with mine, it's good value for money, and a little innocent, hey, I love that."
"It's okay," the triangle-eyed man scratched his hair and made a style from his hand, not knowing what came to his mind, a smile appeared on his lewd face, "That girl praised me for being handsome. I'm only a hundred times more handsome than that Ye Yao. Those girls in the school really have no vision."
The garlic nose gave a mock vomit, "That's enough, what are you comparing yourself to him for, isn't that trashing yourself? If you give him five hundred years of effort he won't be able to catch up with your masculinity, just that little sissy, with skin as white as a woman's, he's not a man."
The two men were like-minded and conversational and the excitement of degrading someone who wasn't even there made them ignore the taller figure that appeared in front of them.
Both men were dumbfounded when they were kicked to the ground.
"Who the fuck are you, you're sick!" The triangle-eyed man raged.
No one could swallow the anger of being beaten up for no reason on the road, so they immediately got up from the ground and charged at the tall figure, waving their fists.
Two against one, they're going to show this guy who messed with them what it meant to regret today!
But the attack was deflected lightly and the light was too low for them to see how the man on the other side was moving before the pain came from their bodies and they were knocked to the ground again.
"Scream, why don't you keep screaming?" Lu Xun sneered as he stomped on the body of the triangle-eyed man.
"Argh!" The man who was so arrogant and unbeatable just then was trembling, his voice took on a curt tone under the absolute crushing force value, "I have no enmity with you, did you identify the wrong person brother?"
"No grudges, no hatred." Lu Xun repeated these words, his foot's pressure intensifying as the person he was stepping on let out a cry of pain, "Do you not know this so well when you hide in anonymous forums and attack people?"
At this point in the conversation, the two men who had fallen to the ground understood: "You're here to take it out on behalf of Ye Yao? How did you.... know it was us, you hacked the forum to check the IP? You got the wrong person -Ugh!"
The words came to a screeching halt and the triangle-eyed man curled into a ball of agony as Lu Xun brought his feet up.
"I don't even want to get my hands dirty beating you." Lu Xun laughed coldly, "Those who can't control their lower bodies, don't you even take a look in the mirror? You think you are better?"
No one passed by the remote and dark path and the fight, which was so vastly different in strength, was unseen.
Lu Xun ended the fight and was about to leave when he heard the voices of the two men who couldn't suppress their resentment: "We are all men, what are we pretending ...we can't control our lower bodies, how much better can Ye Yao be. How many times has he let you fuck him that you are so protective of him? Ha, just you alone, can not satisfy his hunger!"
Lu Xun stopped in his tracks, his face sinking a little as he listened to the words.
How could Ye Yao... develop such low-level desires. It was disrespectful to Ye Yao just to think about it in your head and to associate it with Ye Yao.
Ye Yao was the pure white lotus he had seen in the mud and chaos, unsullied and never tainted with filth.
Lu Xun sneered and turned around, once again walking towards the two men who had fallen to the ground.
*
Ye Yao had no idea what had happened and was as clear-headed as an immortal in Lu Xun's mind. He lay on his bed and sent Lu Xun a message and put his mind at ease when he received Lu Xun's message- [I'm almost done with my big homework mistake, I'll be right back].
After a moment's hesitation, Ye Yao clicked into the anonymous forum.
Ye Yao ignored the post about himself and clicked into the post about Lu Xun.
There was a trail of Lu Xun photos, which Ye Yao saved one by one in a private album, pausing again when he saw a particular photo.
It was a picture of Lu Xun wiping his sweat with the hem of his jersey raised as he played, his abdominal muscles and the sweat on them covered with a warm glow from the setting sun, making the whole picture look even more sexy.
Ye Yao pursed his lips and somewhat distractedly poked his finger at the photo on his phone screen.
He knew the feel of those abs, the warmth of that skin and knew the longing he felt from the bottom of his heart at every intimate touch, the desire to go further.
Solely because Lu Xun didn't know, he would try to keep his distance as a good friend and keep this secret buried in his heart, forever. Forever.