Orange Storm chapter 33
Dream
After saying this, all the indescribable sounds lingering in the living room disappeared simultaneously. Jiang Zhijin pressed fast-forward, skipping this segment directly, and then removed his hand that blocked Fang Xing’s view.
The room regained its brightness, and Fang Xing first turned his head to glance at Jiang Zhijin beside him. They locked eyes for a second, both wearing very serious expressions.
Jiang Zhijin asked, “Still watching?”
Fang Xing couldn’t speak for a moment.
Actually, he hadn’t considered whether to continue watching this romance movie that he didn’t quite understand. He was just startled by Jiang Zhijin’s sudden move and didn’t know how to react.
But Jiang Zhijin obviously misunderstood. After waiting for a while and seeing Fang Xing not speaking, the initially serious expression on his face suddenly became subtle. A faint smile appeared, and he cleared his throat.
“Do you want to—”
Jiang Zhijin paused, trying to make his tone sound calmer and the smile on his face less obvious.
—Go to the bathroom?”
“What—”
Fang Xing realized what Jiang Zhijin meant when he was halfway through his sentence.
… he took a deep breath, feeling like smacking Jiang Zhijin. He was extremely grateful that he didn’t say he wanted to go to the bathroom just to avoid awkwardness, which would have put him in an even more embarrassing situation.
“No need!”
He said these two words rather abruptly. After saying them, he subconsciously spread his legs a bit. Feeling that it was not right, he decided to sit cross-legged on the sofa, making himself look more at ease.
Jiang Zhijin raised his hands in a surrender gesture, laughing, “Sorry, adolescence, you know. I thought you—”
He didn’t finish his sentence. “Sorry.”
Fang Xing glanced at him and, without much thought, blurted out, “You don’t have it either, do you?”
“Of course, I don’t.” Jiang Zhijin smiled, “I don’t watch this kind of thing.”
Fang Xing then remembered Jiang Zhijin’s orientation.
If the embarrassment was only on his side just now, the awkward atmosphere had now permeated the entire living room. Fang Xing felt a warmth lingering in his ears. To ease the tension, he even casually picked up the half-cup of water on the table and took a sip.
The lukewarm boiled water made him realize that this was probably the water Jiang Zhijin had drunk while taking medicine earlier, drinking half of it and leaving the rest.
… Damn.
He quickly put the water back.
Fortunately, it seemed that Jiang Zhijin didn’t notice. He resumed playing the movie. Because of the skip, the plot had progressed to the part where the two protagonists quarreled and broke up.
In the noisy background of the movie, Fang Xing stared at the screen for a while but found that he couldn’t focus on anything.
Amid the movie’s background noise, he hesitated and slowly spoke up.
“How did you know?”
“Know what?” Jiang Zhijin turned to look at him for a few seconds, understanding Fang Xing’s meaning. “About Liking men?”
Fang Xing didn’t look at him, staring at the TV screen motionlessly, and replied, “mmh.”
Jiang Zhijin smiled, turned back to watch the movie, and slowly said, “At first, I felt like I wasn’t interested in girls, never thought about finding a girlfriend, and as for the rest, it goes without saying.”
Jiang Zhijin chuckled with a hint of meaning and continued, “Later, I found that I seemed to prefer men.”
“Then you—”
Fang Xing spoke halfway and stopped, watching as Jiang Zhijin pursed his lips slightly. Jiang Zhijin looked at him for a while, smiled, and said, “Had a relationship.”
“…Ah,” Fang Xing said.
“After I retired, we broke up.”
Fang Xing stared at him for three or four seconds, then shifted his gaze away, also looking at the TV screen.
“Oh.”
Actually, he wanted to ask what kind of person Jiang Zhijin was, how the two of them dated, and why they broke up. However, these questions were on the tip of his tongue, and he didn’t say them in the end.
Although he was indeed very curious, asking them seemed too strange.
At the end of the movie, the male and female leads broke up. The female lead went to study in a distant place, and upon her return, the male lead had already gotten married. When they coincidentally met on the street, neither of them even turned around.
The ending was somewhat plain. Fang Xing couldn’t discern any sadness, and Jiang Zhijin, already looking tired, had been nestling on the sofa without moving until the ending credits started playing. He then sluggishly sat up.
“Alright, let’s go to sleep.”
Fang Xing also got up from the sofa. Tang Yuan, who had been sleeping in one corner of the sofa, was awakened by the movement and hurriedly darted back to its cat bed.
Ignoring the cat, Fang Xing said to Jiang Zhijin, “Shall we check your temperature again?”
Jiang Zhijin had already walked towards the bedroom. Hearing Fang Xing’s words, he turned around with a helpless expression.
36.6°C. Fang Xing placed the thermometer back into the medicine box.
“Remember to take your medicine.”
“… You’re quite caring,” Jiang Zhijin chuckled and reached out to playfully ruffle Fang Xing’s hair.
He wasn’t too gentle, and Fang Xing instinctively tilted his head. As Jiang Zhijin’s hand moved, his fingertips slid from the top of Fang Xing’s head down to his left ear and neck.
This unexpected development left both of them in a daze for a moment. Jiang Zhijin quickly withdrew his hand, and his tone remained lazy.
“Alright, go to sleep—cover yourself well, it’s going to rain tonight.”
After taking a shower, Fang Xing found that it had indeed started raining again before going to bed—light and fine raindrops tapping on the window, creating a faint but continuous sound.
It resembled the scene from the movie.
Perhaps for this reason, Fang Xing had an untimely dream.
Continuous rain, a dim and cramped room, the air filled with humidity and stuffiness. Fang Xing was kneeling on the bed, with someone lying underneath him.
Because the room was too dark, he couldn’t see the other person’s face clearly, but he could vividly see the person’s beautiful waistline—clean and sharp, without any extra flesh, almost reflecting light in the darkness.
The two were very close, and Fang Xing could even hear the other person’s breathing. His hand was pressing on the person’s waist, sliding down to the front, and finally, slowly gliding to the lower abdomen.
The person underneath let out a low hum, the voice somewhat husky, somewhat familiar.
The rapid sound of breathing drowned out the rain, and the air in the room seemed to be boiling. When skin touched skin, sweat blended together, sticky and scorching. Fang Xing subconsciously lowered his head and kissed the side of the other person’s neck in the darkness.
The other person chuckled, reaching out to touch Fang Xing’s head, sliding down to his left ear, and then down to his neck and collarbone.
His movements were slow, lazy, and somewhat casual. Yet Fang Xing felt that this action was somewhat familiar.
Fang Xing lifted his head, finally seeing the other person’s face.
Jiang Zhijin.
He woke up abruptly.
The rain had stopped, and outside the window, it wasn’t yet bright. There was only a faint light in the room. Fang Xing lay on the bed without moving for a while, and his chest rose and fell with slightly rapid breaths.
When his breathing finally calmed down, he lay on the bed for a moment, then frowned irritably, reaching out to grab a few tissues from the desk.
When he looked at the time upon getting up, it was five fifty in the morning.
After taking a shower, he washed the sleepwear and underwear he had just changed out of—just to avoid any awkwardness, he even washed several more sets of outerwear and pants.
By the time everything was done, it was almost seven o’clock. Fang Xing returned to his room but didn’t feel like going back to sleep. He randomly picked up an English vocabulary book.
Essential words for the college entrance examination, essential sentence patterns for the college entrance examination, essential essays for the college entrance examination—how did I end up dreaming about Jiang Zhijin?
Dreaming like this is… ridiculous.
He was more inclined to think that it was influenced by yesterday’s movie, but if that were the case, why would the other person be Jiang Zhijin?
Although the person’s waist in the dream did resemble Jiang Zhijin’s, from the time he helped him take medicine…
Have you gone mad, Fang Xing?
After struggling for ten minutes without memorizing a single word, he felt a bit irritable. He closed his eyes, covering his face with the book.