Chapter 39 - The Person Standing in Front of Him was His Beloved
When he woke up again at ten in the morning, Sun Zinan was alive once more. He felt a little better and didn’t want to eat in the bedroom, so he slowly rose up while supporting his waist and drank a small bowl of porridge before being quickly driven back to bed by Tang Kai.
He had a fever after the first time he slept with someone; this made the rookie driver very nervous. Although Sun Zinan repeatedly stressed that this was an individual difference because he was much more likely to get sick over the smallest things, Tang Kai was still chasing his tail anxiously. He acted like a filial son, pouring tea and water in the front of Sun Zinan’s bed. He held his breath in fear, afraid that he’d blow something over if he spoke. Sun Zinan had originally wanted it to be quiet, but was bothered by him moving around until his head was about to explode.
Tang Kai put a thermos on the nightstand, chasing him around like a mother hen and asking, “Do you want to drink some hot water? Don’t show your shoulders, put your hands back, it’ll be too cold.”
The son was both hungry and cold. “I just have a slight cold,” Sun Zinan said helplessly. “Would you please stop acting like I’m having a baby?”
Tang Kai was probably going stupid from his baseless anxiety. “You have to drink hot water when you’re pregnant. Drink this cup of water while it is hot. I’ll go boil some more.”
Sun Zinan, “…”
“Okay okay, stop circling around me.” He said weakly, “Honey, darling, all of our country’s scientific progress is resting on your shoulders. I can’t afford to delay that; just take it as your husband begging you, please go to work this afternoon.”
“…” Tang Kai looked at him numbly, silent for a while before asking, “Is this another kind of ruthlessness? So cruel?”
The two of them stared at each other for three seconds, then suddenly started laughing.
The awkward embarrassment and bewilderment they had towards each other since that morning finally disappeared and turned into a daily warmth.
“Didn’t I tell you that you did well? What are you still panicking about?” Sun Zinan pulled one of Tang Kai’s hands over and played with it. “Are you worried I was just being polite?”
“No, not that.” Tang Kai seemed a little embarrassed, his thumb unconsciously rubbing at the blue vessels on his wrist. He thought for a while before admitting, “I might have been a little overenthusiastic.”
Sun Zinan laughed out loud without leaving him any face.
“There are four joys in life. It’s normal to go overboard.” He finished laughing and patted Tang Kai’s hand gently. “Since you’re done overreacting now, can you let me rest for a bit?”
Tang Kai raised his brows and said cunningly, “I’ve finally been able to take leave. I can’t waste it. What do you want to eat for dinner? I’ll cook for you?”
Sun Zinan had met his enemy. “You dare? I’ll call the police.”
In the blink of an eye it was New Year’s Day. As per tradition, Tang Kai’s neighborhood committee held an annual competition of chess and cards. It was said that the prizes were rich, including a massage apparatus, a rice cooker, a foot bath, and other such items.
When Sun Zinan went out to buy food the day before yesterday, he had chatted with a grandmother downstairs. The enthusiasm of the other party was difficult to parry, and somehow in his confusion, he was roped into participating. When Tang Kai came home, the two of them came together and realized he had also been fooled, mostly because Professor Tang really wanted a massager for his home.
Sun Zinan said in despair, “Why can’t you be a good little dignified university professor instead of fighting for a massager with a bunch of elderly people.”
Tang Kai replied, “You’re the unprofessional one! A healthcare product salesman brainwashed by an old lady, how shameful!”
This sentence successfully infuriated Sun Zinan. That night, Professor Tang regretfully ate a table of stir-fried celery, bean sprouts, and corn kernels.
On the day of the competition, the two of them dressed up and snuck over to the community center in defeat. Sun Zinan faced the A4 white paper print of the event on the wall and frowned for a while before carefully saying, “I must be crazy, coming over to play with a bunch of school geniuses…I’ll just sign up for Fight the Landlord, at least I know it.”
Tang Kai said, “Then I’ll do the same.”
The auntie responsible for the event registration asked enthusiastically, “Are you only signing up for one event? A person can sign up for up to three events! There’s a participation award, a bag of laundry detergent. Won’t this save you the effort of buying it? Don’t waste this chance!”
Tang Kai, “Thank you, there’s no&#k2026;”
He didn’t finish before the auntie interrupted, “Young man, you won’t play checkers? The sign-ups for this aren’t filled yet, I’ll put it down for you. Anyways all the contestants are little kids. You can win top three with your eyes closed.”
Sun Zinan looked at Tang Kai’s pinched look and was very amused. He couldn’t restrain his laughter.
Tang Kai wasn’t satisfied with being the only person rolling in the mud. He had to pull Sun Zinan into the water with him and immediately dragged him over to the aunt. “This is my partner, please take a look. What event should he participate in?”
Sun Zinan secretly elbowed him.
“Then how about this, fun puzzles, okay?” The auntie wrote Sun Zinan’s name neatly into the sign-up sheet. “Both of you can register for one more event.”
“No, two is enough.” Sun Zinan said sincerely, “Thank you elder sister, we don’t lack any laundry detergent. We should leave that opportunity to the people after us.”
The auntie was teased into smiling and complimented how sweet and handsome he was. Sun Zinan’s self-rescue was successful and he stealthily pulled Tang Kai away.
The Fight the Landlord match was a single elimination system. There were three people at each table and each match had three rounds. Everyone had an initial score of ten points and the score was recalculated at the end of every round. The one with the highest score would enter the next round. Sun Zinan tried to avoid sitting at the same table with Tang Kai early on, but in the last four groups, the two of them were inevitably divided into the same group.
Tang Kai had good cards this round and called the landlord position. Sun Zinan and another young father were the peasants. Sun Zinan quickly calculated the scoreboard in his mind. Tang Kai’s ranking was roughly ninth, while he was eleventh or twelfth. In the next round, only the top nine would get promoted. Both of their scores were at a dangerous spot; whoever lost this round would be directly eliminated.
Sun Zinan’s base score was low. The young father in his team happened to be seventh place. If in this match Tang Kai won three rounds in a row, his ranking would soar to fifth or sixth place and he would win a lot.
Sun Zinan could just act as a pawn to send Tang Kai to victory.
He looked at Professor Tang’s focused side profile and wondered to himself, this was obviously just a little neighborhood match. He wouldn’t lose his house if he lost this game. How did it come to such self-sacrifice tactics?
But winning or losing was not within his consideration. He just wanted to coax Tang Kai into happiness by helping him achieve his desired massager.
After this round, Tang Kai was promoted and Sun Zinan was eliminated.
While the tables were being changed, Tang Kai leaned over and whispered, “Did you lose on purpose?”
Sun Zinan glanced at him faintly and said as if nothing had happened, “With your advanced skills, do you still need others to lose on purpose?”
“That’s true.” Tang Kai patted him on the shoulder and said solemnly, “Don’t be sad, wait for me to win that massager for you.”
Sun Zinan looked baffled. “What do I have to be sad about? What use do I have for it?”
Tang Kai said righteously, “To give you a massage. Ah, don’t you often feel back pain?”
Sun Zinan, “…”
Damn, what a sore spot.
He rolled up the paper tube in his hand and bitterly knocked on Tang Kai’s forehead as he gritted his teeth and said, “Who’s to blame for that? You still have the face to say!”
Although Director Sun had devoted his life to love, it was a pity Professor Tang’s skills did not live up to expectations. Eventually, with a very small margin, he became runner-up and won a small rice cooker.
In front of others, he had always seemed aloof and refused to take a group picture with the rice cooker. He could only hold it in one hand and stand there with a cold gaze, letting the staff take an individual picture of himself.
After taking a look at the photo, the background didn’t even need to be mentioned. That ethereal temperament, that out of body expression, it was like a tall male model carrying a Louis Vuitton rice cooker.
Sun Zinan posted the photo to his WeChat moments and came up to him contentedly. “A rice pot with a rice scooper. Congrats, I’ll use it to make rice for you today.”
Tang Kai took the two bags of laundry detergent from his hands and the two walked home slowly together. “You cheapskate, we could’ve won a massager.”
Sun Zinan squinted at him. “Why not have me have a try? Afterwards I’ll buy you a massager.”
“It’s too hard. How could I let you do any labor?” Tang Kai immediately said, “You better lie there and just enjoy it.”
As they spoke, the two of them entered his apartment.
The weather had not been good since that morning. Even until now, the sky was overcast like it was about to snow. The room was dim; it was brighter closer to the window, but the other parts were shrouded in the darkness of the approaching night.
Tang Kai carried the rice cooker into the kitchen and readily turned the lights on to unpack it. He turned back to ask Sun Zinan, “Darling, where should I put this pot?”
Since Sun Zinan moved in, the small kitchen had become his territory. The originally empty counter now held a lot of things. In accordance with the Virgo standard, they were all lined up in a legion of bottles and cans.
Tang Kai didn’t dare touch anything in the fear of messing it up. He had to temporarily put the rice cooker in the only open space and beckoned Sun Zinan over to see.
The kitchen was very old and small. There was only one light bulb on the ceiling. At this moment, it suddenly flickered unstably several times.
Sun Zinan rolled his sleeves up and entered the kitchen. “Let me do it, you—”
The sound of his words didn’t even land before a bang sounded above, as if something had exploded on the ceiling. The lights went out instantly and the kitchen fell into darkness. Sun zinan stunned expression has not yet frozen, he has not even reacted to what happened, Tang Kai rushed to hold him, after the back to the sky posture, his whole person firmly protected in his arms.
The broken glass splattered around them like rain.
The two of them were both stunned.
It was difficult to say what motivated someone to choose to use his own body to protect another in that 0.1 seconds it takes to recognize danger. Or perhaps he hadn’t realized what was about to happen, but instinct told him to rush over without time to think—
Sun Zinan was still standing by his side.
The two of them stayed in this posture for more than ten seconds under the dim winter sky, until Sun Zinan’s hand comfortingly patted him twice on his back and said, “It’s okay. It should be the bulb that blew up. Come here and I’ll see if the glass has hit you.”
Tang Kai shook his head and brushed off the glass pieces. He turned Sun Zinan around in his arms and pushed him out the door. “Let’s go out first. The glass flew everywhere. It’s too dark to see, let’s not use the kitchen today.”
Sun Zinan looked back at him almost in a daze. His lips moved, as if he had something to say, but he remained silent.
In the brightly lit living room, Sun Zinan placed Tang Kai on the sofa and poked around his collar, carefully checking again. Only until after he had confirmed there were no scratches did he stop feeling uneasy. He sat down next to him and asked, “What were you thinking?”
It was just a light bulb today, but it could be an explosion next time.
But just from listening to that sound, who could tell whether it was a light bulb or a gas explosion?
‘Love desperation’ was usually used to describe a state of full-hearted commitment, a love that extended beyond life and death…but love was an illusory thing while life was the real deal.
Tang Kai replied very succinctly, “I didn’t think of anything.”
He used to be suspicious, thinking himself some kind of Sherlock Holmes, and had thought that one day he would fall for someone else, or even throw his reason aside to use his back to block an explosion or his chest to block a gun.
But what could he do?
The person standing in front of him at that moment was his beloved.
“The hero saved a beauty, he deserves a reward. I think someone should kiss me right now.” Tang Kai changed the topic and poked Sun Zinan. “Ai, take the initiative. I’ve been waiting here for a long time.”
Sun Zinan stared at him for a long time. “You…”
He sighed, then got up from the couch. He placed his hands around Tang Kai’s shoulder and kissed him.
The first snow of the winter finally fell slowly from the dark sky. The cold wind whistled outside the window, and on the narrow sofa in the living room, the two of them entangled together, warm almost to the point of sweating.
“…”
“Did it scare you?”
“No.”
“Do you particularly love me now?”
“Yes.”
“What if there’s no dinner today?”
“You can eat me.”