Chapter 114: Cloud (5)
114 – Cloud (5)
Dong Jun: “Want to keep sleeping?”
Lin Xun: “No more.”
Dong Jun: “Dinner?”
Lin Xun: “Haven’t eaten.”
Dong Jun placed him on the sofa.
No, that’s not quite right—actually, Dong Jun sat down on the sofa himself, but since he was still holding Lin Xun, Lin Xun ended up indirectly being placed on the sofa. Lin Xun thought to himself that he wasn’t some delicate, clingy girl, afraid of crushing his idol, so he detached himself and instead leaned against him, rubbing his eyes.
Dong Jun pulled his hand down, stopping him from rubbing.
Dong Jun asked: “What did you do this afternoon?”
“A little bit,” he said, while subtly explaining what he had been up to: “It’s still that friend of mine, the one named Qi Yun. He doesn’t have an assistant, so a lot of things are inconvenient for him. I spent the afternoon hanging out with him on set.”
“Hmm.” Dong Jun’s voice was faint: “Tired?”
Lin Xun immediately picked up on the subtext—Dong Jun was questioning how just hanging out on set could have tired him out so much that he slept the entire car ride home.
He wasn’t without a way to handle such questioning.
He whispered: “It wasn’t from this afternoon.”
Dong Jun: “Hmm?”
He: “It was you who kept me up last night.”
Dong Jun didn’t respond.
Lin Xun had long noticed that the word “you” had a peculiar effect on Dong Jun. He thought, “you” was a term used when addressing someone senior, placing oneself in a weaker position—perhaps it could awaken what little conscience Dong Jun had. Dong Jun’s hand seemed to casually stroke his hair. Then, Lin Xun heard his slightly lowered voice, tinged with a pleasant rasp: “Why did I keep you up?”
Lin Xun: “?”
Shifting the blame back to me?
He: “I didn’t mean to provoke you.”
“Oh.” Dong Jun: “Is that so.”
What a cold “is that so.”
Lin Xun bit him, only to be pulled into his embrace, tangled together on the sofa, and at some point, they began kissing.
After enough fooling around, Lin Xun, panting, moved to the other end of the sofa. Zhi Zhen, done playing with the robot, also jumped onto the sofa and sat between them, elegantly licking its paws.
Dong Jun reached out, and Zhi Zhen walked over, quietly lying down to let him stroke its fur.
After a while, the cat grew lively again, hugging Dong Jun’s finger and extending its claws, pretending to bite.
Dong Jun pushed it aside.
Lin Xun’s lips still hurt a little—the corner of his mouth had been bitten and broken, and his shoulders felt warm after being firmly pressed and then released. He coldly eyed this idol of his.
—When it’s well-behaved, you pet its fur; when it starts acting up and crosses the line, you toss it aside. In the end, a man who has stood at the top for too long, whether out of habit or nature, still prefers those who are obedient.
And while he was generally compliant, sometimes, he couldn’t exactly be called very obedient.
How much this person could tolerate, he didn’t know. Lately, he had been treated too well, making him feel as though Dong Jun had no bottom line when it came to him. But one couldn’t keep dreaming forever.
He called out to Zhi Zhen, and the cat crawled into his lap, softly purring.
Dong Jun stood up and walked over. Lin Xun looked up at him.
Dong Jun: “What do you want for dinner?”
“Let me think…” Lin Xun said: “I want century egg and lean pork congee.”
Dong Jun reached out to tidy his hair. Afterward, his fingers moved downward, his thumb gently brushing the slightly swollen part of Lin Xun’s lips, pressing inward.
Lin Xun nibbled lightly at the tip of his finger, a completely subconscious gesture. He felt conflicted. At times, he thought he barely knew the man before him, wavering between hope and fear. At other times, those instinctive intimacies felt as if they had known each other for many years.
He suddenly asked, “Can you play the piano?”
In a daze, he thought he glimpsed a trace of gentleness in Dong Jun’s expression.
Then he heard Dong Jun reply, “Yes.”
Lin Xun: “Could you play for me?”
Dong Jun’s fingers slowly traced the edge of his lips as he said, “Alright.”
Lin Xun followed Dong Jun into the piano room he hadn’t dared to enter during the day.
No preparation seemed necessary. When Dong Jun sat before the piano—his neatly pressed black shirt, the silver buttons gleaming under the light, his straight and upright posture, and his slender fingers resting on the keys—it was as if he had come solely to play a piece.
This man was always like this, forever composed and effortless.
After a few irregular notes, a coherent melody began to flow.
The soft light in the piano room fell on Dong Jun’s profile, blending with the piano’s melody. Perhaps it was sweet, yet an inescapable, lingering sadness pervaded the air.
It was a gentle piece, without grand gestures, and the player was equally serene. Like the first petal falling on a spring night.
Lin Xun watched Dong Jun. For a moment, he recalled those faint, elusive dreams and the fragrance that drifted through the night. But in another moment, he suddenly felt that Dong Jun’s expression while playing the piano was no different from when he was coding.
Still so effortlessly composed, as if everything was under his control—mistakes, accidents, oversights, such things never seemed to occur in his life.
Yet, faced with such an expression, Lin Xun thought of Gao Liao from earlier that day. Watching the mermaid among the rocks, Gao Liao’s eyes had revealed a deep admiration and a hint of madness. In that moment, Lin Xun believed he had a lifelong pursuit for something.
But now, looking at Dong Jun before the piano, Lin Xun wondered: perhaps this man was fully immersed, perhaps not. In truth, he seemed distant. He didn’t seem like a living person; he was looking down at the piano keys. Perhaps he was also looking down at the keyboard.
Someone who truly loved coding wouldn’t have sealed away their keyboard for two whole years.
At this moment, Lin Xun felt a sudden confusion.
What did this man before him truly love? Was there anything in this world he was willing to devote his life to pursuing?
He didn’t know.
The piece came to an end.
A night breeze drifted in through the window, and Dong Jun turned to look at Lin Xun.
The moment their eyes met, Lin Xun was slightly taken aback.
This man gazed at him, with a look in his eyes that felt strangely familiar.
Lin Xun pursed his lips and finally said only, “It was beautiful.”
Dong Jun smiled, his hand resting lightly on the keys. “My father didn’t like listening to me play the piano.”
Lin Xun: “Why?”
Dong Jun said, “He said there was no emotion in my playing. There are many things in the world that can be done well without emotion, but music isn’t one of them.”
Lin Xun: “Is coding one of them?”
Many people believed writing code was tedious, repetitive mechanical work. Perhaps in Dong Jun’s eyes, it was merely a skill honed through practice, but Lin Xun didn’t want to hear such an answer.
Dong Jun: “No, it isn’t.”
Lin Xun blinked.
Dong Jun: “Code needs to have a soul.”
Lin Xun rolled his eyes. “Then does your code have a soul?”
“So I will go and find its soul for the code,” Dong Jun said. “For a long time before, it didn’t, but…”
Before he could finish, Lin Xun said, “You!”
Dong Jun raised an eyebrow slightly.
Lin Xun laughed. “You’re so annoying.”
Dong Jun: “Annoying how?”
“I wanted to discuss some serious questions with you, not listen to this kind of—”
He was dragged by Dong Jun, who held his wrist, over to the piano lid.
Dong Jun: “This kind of what?”
Lin Xun: “…This kind of nonsense.”
Anyone who had ever taken a proper computer science class knew that “the soul of code” was always a poetic term for algorithms. Combined with the context, this person’s answer seemed serious on the surface but was not actually answering the question earnestly.
“I can’t be serious right now.” Dong Jun’s voice brushed against Lin Xun’s ear, low and slow, repeating the words he had sent earlier that day.
—”Love you.”
His voice carried a gentle magnetic field, governing monsoons and ocean currents. Migratory birds would follow its guidance, flying south with steady wingbeats until they plunged into warm seas.
Anyway, Lin Xun plunged in.
What happened afterward, he didn’t want to describe in detail. If these things had occurred in the world of The Shell, the two of them would undoubtedly have been expelled by the system, their accounts locked, and barred from accessing it again for three days. Besides, tonight was originally supposed to be time for reading papers, but that didn’t happen either.
It turns out that not only does puppy love affect studying—late love does too.