Lu Yan pressed the strings with his left hand and hummed half a line. He remembered that Xiao Heng didn't seem right downstairs just now. And he was soaked like that. What if he caught a cold, got a fever, and died in his house...

Lu Yan put down the guitar and found a thermometer in the medicine box.

But when he turned his head, he found that this young master actually had some self-awareness and wasn't sleeping on the bed.

His sofa wasn't big; there was no room for a larger one. Usually, even he felt cramped when he lay on it to take a nap.

Xiao Heng looked even more cramped lying there.

But he was probably too exhausted. He had turned his head and was about to fall asleep, his whole face buried in the crook of his arm. His semi-dry, choppy hair covered the rest of his face, revealing only the lower half of his chin and the wound on the corner of his mouth, which had just scabbed over and split open again.

"Sleep later," Lu Yan reached out to touch his forehead. "Take your own temperature."

Xiao Heng buried his face deeper and said in a low voice, "Don't bother me."

'How come this guy, whether he's awake or asleep,'

'is in such a bad mood???'

Lu Yan directly poked his chin with the thermometer. "Get up."

Xiao Heng half-opened his eyes.

In a half-dreaming, half-awake state, that black star was very close to him.

On Lu Yan's wrist.

It was a very unique tattoo, completely filled in with black. The tattoo covered the area around the pale blue veins, and sharp points jutted out from this patch of black.

How many points?

Three.

Four.

Five.

...

Xiao Heng didn't count them clearly before Lu Yan's hand flashed past his face.

After forcibly stuffing the thermometer under his arm, Lu Yan simply sat cross-legged in front of him and started revising a song.

Lu Yan held a pen, writing and crossing things out on a piece of paper. When enough time had passed, he didn't even raise his head. Relying on instinct, he raised his hand to pull the thermometer out from under Xiao Heng's arm.

Just then, Xiao Heng's hand, which was resting on the edge of the sofa, unconsciously drooped a little.

—Lu Yan grabbed his hand directly.

"..."

The rain outside gradually stopped.

Lu Yan immediately let go.

The number displayed on the thermometer was 37.4°C.

A slight fever, not too big of a problem. He would probably be fine after a night's sleep.

It was just that the two of them slept for quite a long time.

Lu Yan stayed up until three in the morning before the client finally nodded and said, 'This is the feeling.' While cursing internally, 'Isn't this fucking the first version,' he typed back, 'Dear, I'm glad you're satisfied,' and cleanly collected the final payment.

By the time he woke up, it was already afternoon.

After getting up, Lu Yan felt hot and habitually lifted his shirt, preparing to take it off, completely forgetting that he had just picked someone up last night. He stared at two bowls of instant noodles, trying to choose between pickled cabbage flavor and braised beef flavor.

'Which one to eat?'

'Or should I go out to eat?'

Lu Yan pondered as he pressed the power button on the CD player beside him.

'I'll decide what to eat later.'

'Let's play some music first.'

A powerful sound wave exploded from the speakers, jolting awake Xiao Heng, who was lying on the sofa, his body aching from sleep.

"Fuck..."

He raised a hand to press his temples, and then his gaze fell on Lu Yan's bare back. Following the smooth lines of his spine down, he saw the man's lean waist, the bones sharp and prominent, with the final section dipping slightly, tucked into low-rise jeans.

Lu Yan was startled by the song and the "fuck."

Only then did he remember, a beat too late, that there was another living creature besides him in this small space of less than twenty square meters.

In fact, the CD he had grabbed was their own band's. Li Zhen had held it in for a year to squeeze out a song, insisted on adding it, and insisted on singing it himself. Besides the super-intense sound waves, Li Zhen's uniquely charming voice—unable to hit low notes, unable to reach high notes, and fond of going off-key—was also quite suffocating.

But he made up for it with confidence, the kind of "I am the king of songs" confidence.

Lu Yan immediately switched the song.

Xiao Heng's hair was a mess. He pushed himself up into a sitting position. "You're not wearing a shirt?"

Lu Yan: "...I'll put one on."

Xiao Heng asked again, "Is food included?"

Lu Yan pulled his shirt back on and casually picked up a cup of instant noodles, tossing it to him. "Don't be picky. This is all there is, no choice. Check out and get the hell out as soon as you're done eating." Xiao Heng had a bad temper when he woke up, especially cranky right after waking, but it wasn't convenient to act up in someone else's house. He took the cup of noodles and composed himself for a moment. "...Your phone, let me use it."

"What about your phone?"

"Threw it away."

Lu Yan was starting to believe his "601 asset theory." He pulled his phone from his pocket and threw it straight at him. "The password is six eights. You don't even have a phone, what do you have left?" Xiao Heng didn't speak.

What did he have left?

Xiao Heng himself didn't know.

The song changed to the next track.

It was Lu Yan's voice.

Every beat of the intense rhythm seemed to pound against one's eardrums, but when Lu Yan's voice came in, that feeling traveled down from the eardrums, as if striking the heart: "In a deserted wilderness where all the world's lights have gone out

Take a deep breath

To pass through the dark night

Never stopping

..."

Xiao Heng held the phone, and only after a long moment did he remember to make a call.

His first call was to Zhai Zhuangzhi. That idiot was clueless, and he was afraid that if Zhai Zhuangzhi heard some news from someone else, he would definitely search all over the streets for him.

Zhai Zhuangzhi's first reaction to the unfamiliar number was confusion. "Who is this? Wrong number?"

"Me," Xiao Heng said, "Your dad."

Zhai Zhuangzhi: "!"

Lu Yan didn't want to eavesdrop on someone else's phone call, but he was washing up in the bathroom, and he could still hear everything clearly through the door.

Lu Yan turned on the faucet and cupped some water in his hands.

'This shitty soundproofing.'

Lu Yan heard Xiao Heng briefly describe how he had left home. He spoke of it lightly, saying with a very cold and annoyed attitude that he had nothing to do with the Xiao Family anymore. Zhai Zhuangzhi might not have sensed it, but Lu Yan had seen him sitting on the flower bed last night, soaked like a drowned rat by the rain.

After hearing what happened, Zhai Zhuangzhi immediately said, "Boss, where are you now? I have an empty villa in the city, why don't you stay there for now? Don't worry about money either..."

Xiao Heng shut him down with one sentence: "Are you a person or an ATM?"

Zhai Zhuangzhi: "..."

Xiao Heng: "No need."

?

'What do you mean, no need.'

Lu Yan wiped his face.

'He's already in this state, and he doesn't even have a key to his only asset, 601. In his current condition, he probably can't even afford to pay for a locksmith.'

When Lu Yan finished washing his face, Xiao Heng had hung up and returned the phone to him. "Thanks."

"Thanks for what," Lu Yan opened the instant noodles. "Meeting is fate. We're all friends. You were on the phone for two minutes just now. Should we charge the standard rate? You can give it to me along with the two hundred later."

Xiao Heng: "..."

While waiting for the noodles to cook.