WHF Ch 60 – My Feelings for You

Both of them widened their eyes, staring at each other, their eyes communicating.

Who are these people coming in? Yu Tianbai’s eyes were asking.

Don’t mind how I know, just hide first! Xiu Ma’s eyes were answering evasively.

Of course, neither of them could really read sentences from each other’s eyes. The people outside the stall were clearly not drunkards who had come in to find a place to relieve themselves, because besides the footsteps, a distinct sound of metal scraping could be heard.

It was the sound of a crowbar scraping against the tiled wall, a sound that made one’s jaw ache just hearing it.

However, this group of people were not as decisive as their posture suggested. The person in the lead just walked around the restroom, from the door to the urinal, and then back to the door, before starting to shout:

“There’s no one in the restroom either. You called us brothers over here, it’s like a red-light district looking for ducks, not a single person to be seen—I told you the person must have already run away, believe it or not! When the time comes and Brother Lin’s people can’t catch them, it’ll all be your fault!”

A new character appears—this was a voice they had never heard before. It sounded like a sizable Northeastern man, at least two hundred pounds.

The man stomped back to the door, and the one who answered him was a somewhat familiar voice.

“But the intelligence our boss received was right here. Why don’t you have your brothers search each stall?”

Yu Tianbai turned his face back, and Xiu Ma was also looking at him. Their gazes met. They both recognized who it was. It was the bespectacled butler from the entrance of the seafood restaurant.

“Search what, search what!” You could tell from the sound that the man was shouting with spittle flying. The bespectacled man definitely did not dare to raise his hand to wipe his face. “You had us brothers twist and turn just to look in the restroom—when the time comes, are you going to have us find some shit in every restroom for you to take back? I’m telling you, what kind of idiot would hide in a restroom? You should have listened to me and searched the back door long ago!”

After saying that, he turned the conversation to his so-called brothers:

“Let’s go, let’s go! Go block the back door!”

The bespectacled man had no say. The footsteps at the door gradually faded away. His footsteps were the last, weak and timid. It actually sounded a bit pitiful.

The noise faded away, and the decadent music of the bar returned to the corridor. The two were still looking at each other. Yu Tianbai was standing, his back against the side wall of the stall. Xiu Ma was standing facing him. For these few minutes, they had a brief moment of intimacy.

Yu Tianbai was the first to speak: “I should have known they would come looking for us.”

Xiu Ma leaned against the wall and moved his gaze away: “Local snakes.”

What a simple truth. Posing as a big client on a local snake’s territory, exchanging Hongmen banquets, and putting on a grand play—and then expecting to get away unscathed?

Yu Tianbai did indeed think so.

He did not know if it was fate’s favor or social factors, but Yu Tianbai had done countless reckless things like this, yet he always managed to escape death. But he was fearless when he was alone. Now he was really a little afraid of being targeted by others.

Mainly because of the person currently blocking him.

Yu Tianbai had wanted to curse from the beginning. A perfectly fine bar had installed a large pink light like a hair salon in its restroom, completely disregarding the feelings of old-fashioned customers like him who conducted themselves properly—but such bad taste had one benefit. The young master’s blond hair turned into a purplish silver-white here, with a kind of beauty that seemed not to exist in humans.

“Lighter colors suit you better,” Yu Tianbai lamented.

In such a confined space, having just escaped a great danger, Xiu Ma did not immediately react to what Yu Tianbai was lamenting about. He was stunned for two seconds before turning his head back.

His head was numb from drinking. Yu Tianbai let out a helpless hum and explained again:

“I’m complimenting you on your good looks.”

Xiu Ma finally reacted to something. His mouth opened, but he was interrupted by Yu Tianbai again:

“Don’t compliment me back. Just accept it when I say you’re good-looking.”

After saying that, his gaze lingered on Xiu Ma’s face for a moment, then slowly moved down to his waist, and then he reached out his hand.

At this moment, Xiu Ma expected him to do something, something unexpected, something impossible. But Yu Tianbai’s extended hand was only to pull the latch of the stall door.

The door opened. Yu Tianbai stepped out and stood on the tiled floor looking at him, reminding him with great concern:

“If we don’t go, those big brothers from just now will be back.”

Not only would the big brothers be back, but the crowbar would also be back, and their underlings would come along too. Then it would not be a question of whether they could run away or not.

Xiu Ma pulled his arm, which was still propped against the side wall, back, stood up straight, and stepped into the aisle. He stood behind Yu Tianbai and suddenly said, “Let’s run away.”

Yu Tianbai stopped in his tracks, then turned to look at him and replied:

“We are indeed going to run away. After all, someone is after us.”

“I’m not talking about that,” Xiu Ma moved his eyes away and scratched the hair on the back of his head. “I mean that group of people. I don’t care if you can win me back or not. I’m willing to go with you, to run away together.”

So there was still a table of people waiting in the room. Yu Tianbai had long forgotten. Of course, he had not forgotten the initial challenge he had given, which was to win Xiu Ma back.

The feeling of winning without a fight was not so good, but now was not the time to stubbornly go back and insist on a showdown. He did not want anything to happen to the young master because of him.

“Do you have a plan?” Yu Tianbai asked.

He meant how to escape. Both the front and back doors must be guarded by people now. He had not expected Xiu Ma to actually have a plan.

“The bar is opened by a relative of the hotel upstairs. There’s an internal elevator that goes directly to the hotel lobby—let’s hide in the room I booked first.”

Yu Tianbai fell silent. He thought for a moment before asking, “You’re not going to be a shill for this bar too, are you?”

“Not to that extent,” Xiu Ma denied his idea, but quickly added, “The boss mentioned it. I said I have schizophrenia and my ears will fall off if I drink too much.”

Such a reason left Yu Tianbai dumbfounded: “You don’t have to curse yourself like that.”

At eight in the evening, the busiest time for the bar. The elevator was at the end of the corridor where the restroom was located. Compared to the liveliness outside, this was a forgotten backyard. Just like the backstage of a concert, like the rest area of a large party, this kind of place was most suitable for escaping.

So the two of them practically ran all the way there. The elevator doors opened, they slipped inside, leaning against the doors on the left and right, each panting.

Xiu Ma pulled out the room key from his robes. From swiping the card to selecting the floor and closing the doors, his eyes were fixed on Yu Tianbai. After their gazes met, they both laughed without any warning. Their eyes were shining.

Yu Tianbai laughed as he looked up, staring at the dust accumulated on the elevator ceiling light, then at the constantly rising floor numbers. Xiu Ma, however, could not stop laughing, his hands covering his face, leaving only the red tips of his ears under his golden hair.

This feeling was very strange, strangely good, and strangely hard to get used to. Yu Tianbai dared not think too deeply, because the current feeling was as if they were already together—too far, Yu Tianbai dared not think.

He knew the young master was very happy. With so many people to play with, and someone coming to his door to look for him, or the feeling of escaping death by a hair’s breadth—what twenty-one-year-old kid would not be happy?

But Yu Tianbai could not share his mood at this moment.

“Stop laughing, we’re here, we’re already here,” he reminded Xiu Ma. The elevator had been stopped for a while.

Yu Tianbai extended a hand and held the elevator door from behind. Xiu Ma took his hands off his face, pursed his lips, and looked at him again before turning to walk towards the elevator entrance.

The hotel was much quieter than the bar. It was carpeted with old-fashioned patterns, lavishly decorated, but also old. It was clear that the business of high-end hotels was not doing well in small cities. As he passed by the window, Yu Tianbai looked down. The window faced the main entrance, and he could vaguely see a few people. He did not know if they were the big brothers who had come for revenge. The streetlights cast long shadows, making it hard to see clearly.

“This room,” Xiu Ma poked his head out from around the corner and reminded him.

Yu Tianbai quickly responded, glancing down at the window a few more times as he walked, until he could not see anything clearly, before following Xiu Ma into the room.

His mood was actually not that good right now.

Putting aside the matter of having provoked the local snake. He had not drunk like this for many years. He was not a person who loved to drink. When he was in a good mood, he would have no more than two liang. Not to mention, he had entered this bar today with suppressed anger.

What was more interesting was that he could not pinpoint where his anger came from. It could be the words by the Songhua River, or the three days he had spent looking for Xiu Ma, or the teenagers in the bar who spoke without a filter, or the beer, red wine, and foreign liquor mixed with juice and Sprite in his stomach. But it was more likely that all these factors were at play, attacking him, a poor twenty-nine-year-old man who just wanted to lie down and rest for a moment.

The root of his anger could be further investigated, just like delving into the relationship between the mountain-like Fatty Lin in the seafood restaurant and the raspy-voiced hero in the restroom. But before that, he had other things he wanted to ask.

Yu Tianbai walked through the doorway with his hands in his pockets and closed the rather ostentatious thick wooden door.

The room the young master had booked was a damn suite. Floor-to-ceiling windows, blue and white leather armchairs, a patterned carpet, and the walk-in closet floor lights that automatically lit up as he walked. Yu Tianbai saw his extremely ordinary self in the mirror, the same as every other day.

He had already walked past the walk-in closet, but he took a few steps back because he saw the coiled dragon black silk shirt, which had been taken off the young master, hanging on the coat rack directly opposite the walk-in closet mirror—he had thought this thing would be thrown into a trash can along the way by the young master, who would then walk around in a short-sleeved shirt in the minus-five-degree spring.

“I say,” Yu Tianbai finally asked the question he wanted to ask, “how did you know just now that someone was chasing us?”

He was referring to when they were in the men’s restroom. The bar music was so loud, and both of them had been playing with minors with their heads full of alcohol, without any sense of crisis. He did not believe the young master had precognitive abilities.

The young master was already sitting on the long sofa in the living room, holding the remote control to turn on the TV. After hearing Yu Tianbai’s question, his hand holding the remote control froze in mid-air for a few seconds.

“I saw it in the mirror. The mirror faces the door,” he said, putting down the remote control. The evening news was playing on the TV.

He was lying.

Xiu Ma stared at the TV nonchalantly. He could feel the phone in his side pocket getting heavy. The reason he chose to lie was simple. The moment before he stepped into the restroom stall, the mysterious person on the other end of the phone had sent him another message.

“Don’t tell anyone else about my existence.”

Why? Was this person something he had imagined?

Between following his words and not following his words, Xiu Ma chose a third option, which was to follow his own wishes and muddle through the topic in his own way.

Yu Tianbai did not reply, but opened the drawer next to the walk-in closet. In this suite belonging to a VIP businessman who had come to the small city by chance, there would of course not be the objects found in a small inn. In the drawer were a cigar cutter and a laundry card, and in the corner were oil remover and a beechwood brush. None of these were things Yu Tianbai would normally use when he went out. After all, in the drawers of the small inns he had stayed in, there were all sorts of rubber condoms and lubricants. In his boring moments before bed, he would amuse himself by looking at the bizarre names given by the manufacturers.

Then he thought that it was somewhat inappropriate to have these thoughts when he was alone in a room with the young master.

He decisively closed the drawer, using the crisp sound of it closing to interrupt his own filthy thoughts.

“So,” he asked Xiu Ma, “have you been staying here these past few days?”

“Or what,” Xiu Ma retorted, “were you expecting me to sleep on the street?”

A good question. Although Yu Tianbai knew that the young master could be quite adaptable at times, a young master was a young master after all. He would certainly not sleep under a bridge with his clothes on. In comparison, his own situation seemed a bit pathetic.

He licked the corner of his mouth, looked up at the luxurious chandelier in the suite, and stepped onto the living room carpet with his hands in his pockets. Xiu Ma’s eyes did not follow him, but continued to stare at the TV.

It was still the heating season. The hotel windows were opened high, and he could not see the boiler chimneys that could be seen by looking up from the residential area on the ground. He walked along the living room, walking straight between the young master and the TV without looking sideways. It seemed that the suite not only could not see the boiler chimneys, but also could not feel them. There was no dust on the windowsill. He could overlook the slightly barren night view of Jiamusi.

“Do you think I’ve looked for you these past few days?” Yu Tianbai turned his head back from the floor-to-ceiling window. The young master’s gaze had just moved away from him.

That person’s reply was light and casual: “Probably.”

He could feel that the bit of warmth from when they were in the elevator had already passed. Now they were back in their proper roles, that is, the young master who had confessed twice and failed but still held his head high, and the object of his confession who had ignored him both times.

Yu Tianbai asked again, “Then have you thought about coming back?”

The TV flickered calmly. Xiu Ma’s gaze almost moved horizontally to him, then he said, “I don’t know.”

Before the person by the window could open his mouth, he continued, “Actually, the hotel doesn’t just have a front door and a back door. There’s also an employee passage. You can go down the safety passage and leave, coming out from the market next to it. But I didn’t tell you, because I just wanted to be alone with you for a while.”

Only then did Yu Tianbai realize that the TV was muted. Xiu Ma’s words echoed in his ears again.

“I just wanted to be with you for a while.”

How pure, how wonderful, what a moment that needed no words to express. Faced with such words and such a moment, Yu Tianbai also had something he wanted to say.

There were two low sofas facing the floor-to-ceiling window. Yu Tianbai dragged one over, turned it around, placed it facing the young master, and then sat on it, smoothly, just like in the bar.

“And then?” he asked. “Be with me for a while, and then what?”

When he asked, he was almost smiling. He could see that the look Xiu Ma gave him had changed, and he also knew how heartless his own words sounded.

Just enjoy your time with me. After all, I don’t care about your little feelings. I only care about how much longer it will take for you to stop liking me—this was probably what Xiu Ma heard, but Yu Tianbai knew that what he himself wanted to express was in a completely different direction.

He took a deep breath, crossed his left leg over his right, stretched his shoulders and back, the smile on his face a little tired:

“Did you think I have no feelings for you at all?”