WHF Ch 33 – Is It Soft?

When Yu Tianbai was down to the butt of his second cigarette, the young master made a grand entrance. It wasn’t that he was striding with particular grace across the cracked asphalt of the parking lot, but whenever he appeared, he was undeniably the center of attention.

“Ready to go?” Yu Tianbai raised his voice to ask, making no mention of what had happened in the diner earlier.

Xiu Ma shot him a glance, then opened the passenger door, settled in, and closed it. That single look was his only response.

Fine. Yu Tianbai was used to the kid’s cocky attitude by now.

There was a hint of spring in the northern wind. Yu Tianbai let out a chuckle, tossed the cigarette butt onto the ground, and watched the mark darken on the patchy snow. Then he opened the driver’s door.

“Throw the cigarette butt in the trash,” the passenger said bluntly.

Yu Tianbai glanced back. The butt had already blended into the less-than-pristine snow. He gave up. Once inside the car, he noticed Xiu Ma hadn’t even looked at him when he spoke. Instead, he was staring at a map in his hands.

Did top students these days prefer paper maps?

“Why are you looking at that? The car has navigation,” Yu Tianbai said, resting his hand on the steering wheel and leaning toward Xiu Ma. It was indeed a printed paper map, black and white with color accents, specifically for the three northeastern provinces.

Back when they first met, Xiu Ma would’ve kept his distance from someone who’d just been smoking. Now, he didn’t flinch, not even when their shoulders brushed.

Yu Tianbai leaned in a bit closer, testing. Still no reaction. They were practically pressed together now, so he had no choice but to look at the map too. The winding lines confused him, so his gaze followed Xiu Ma’s, tracing from the national highway to Mudanjiang before stopping. He had a hunch the kid was about to bring up something related to the glass factory.

Yu Tianbai was ready to tell him to drop it, but the young master asked an unexpected question.

“Who’s Yan Guoxian?”

Salt too salty? Pickled too fresh? Oh, Yan Guoxian. In Yu Tianbai’s distant memories, there was indeed such a person.

He did clerical work under Sun Jiu. His father-in-law was a master named Sun, not a mentor, and Yan was assigned to the factory as a secretary. In his thirties or forties, a bit chubby, with a kind face. He was the one holding a thermos in the office, always reading classic books, quoting scriptures in conversation, but unable to say anything useful when it mattered. Serious and scholarly, he seemed melancholic, like a talent unrecognized, but probably a good person.

Until one day, Yu Tianbai saw him using a photo—Yu Tianbai’s own photo—as his screensaver.

In the van with the heater running, Yu Tianbai shivered. Xiu Ma looked up from the map but didn’t turn his head to face him—they were too close.

“Who is he?” the passenger asked again.

“Don’t meddle in things that don’t concern you,” Yu Tianbai said, slowly straightening up. This kid always wanted to dig into anything related to Sun Jiu. “I’m done with them.”

Without looking away, Yu Tianbai heard Xiu Ma fold the map slightly.

“I heard Fang Hui stayed in contact with him after leaving the factory. I’m only interested in their business,” Xiu Ma said, implying he didn’t care about Yu Tianbai’s past. Just in case Yu Tianbai had forgotten the Songyuan incident, he added helpfully, “Xiaojuan asked me to look into it.”

Xiaojuan, Xiaojuan, the village girl named Xiaojuan. Yu Tianbai had almost forgotten her and the whole thing. His mind was preoccupied with whether Xiu Ma cared about his history with Sun Jiu.

Wasn’t that a kind of defeat?

Yu Tianbai stared ahead, blinking, then glanced at the rearview mirror. The young master’s face looked fine, not turning red again after just a few minutes. Maybe his threshold for embarrassment had risen, or maybe physical contact alone wasn’t enough to fluster him.

“The factory’s secretary. Clerical work, no real power,” Yu Tianbai said, his mind elsewhere but his mouth answering properly. He admired his own multitasking. “Nice guy, honest. Fang Hui’s disappearance probably has nothing to do with him.”

So why had the kid been embarrassed earlier?

Maybe he was hooked on playing detective. Yu Tianbai leaned back in his seat as Xiu Ma fired off more questions—about the factory’s structure, its surroundings, and things Yu Tianbai’s ears caught but his brain didn’t process. He was lost in irrelevant thoughts until the young master’s summary snapped him back.

“I want to go to Mudanjiang, to the glass factory.”

“Huh?” The statement was so surprising that Yu Tianbai’s first response sounded rather dim-witted.

As if anticipating a rejection, Xiu Ma sighed first. “It’s not that far. You wrote ‘company-funded travel’ in the job posting.”

“I’ve already taken you on a month-long company-funded trip,” Yu Tianbai said, delivering his rejection after a quick summary. “And I don’t agree.”

“You said you’d go see him again. Isn’t this saving you the trouble?” To jog Yu Tianbai’s memory, Xiu Ma added, “My knife’s still with him.”

Then, for good measure, he clarified, “It was taken by you first, then by him, so it’s in his hands.”

The guilty-as-charged unlucky boss, at your service.

“I’ll get it back after you leave,” Yu Tianbai said, sighing and looking out the window. “Grown-up matters are for grown-ups. He’s in his mid-thirties, way older than you.”

Unless Yu Tianbai brought up age, Xiu Ma tended to ignore the fact that they were nearly a decade apart. Maybe he was too mature, or maybe Yu Tianbai was too immature—the latter seemed more likely. Though he didn’t care about their age gap, the word “grown-up” always irked him. One word could shut him out, push him back, or divide them into groups of adults driving sports cars and kids playing in the sand.

Xiu Ma wasn’t content with playing in the sand. He wanted to kick it up, preferably all over the so-called adults’ heads and faces.

In the rest stop parking lot, the driver and passenger looked in opposite directions, each lost in thought. The passenger was plotting how to break down the adult-kid barrier, while the driver was wondering why the passenger had been embarrassed earlier.

The conversation had reached this point when Xiu Ma shifted to a new goal. “Or just drop me off there. I’ll meet the guy who took my knife and come back.”

Yu Tianbai wasn’t listening. After a long “Hmm,” he suddenly figured out why Xiu Ma had been embarrassed in the diner.

Watching the unreliable boss suddenly lean into the back seat, Xiu Ma asked, exasperated, “Are you even listening to me?”

The unlucky boss returned, holding something. “Hmm… huh?”

Clearly, he hadn’t been listening.

Xiu Ma let out a long breath, pinching the bridge of his nose. It felt like explaining homework to a struggling student—thrilling.

“I said let me go to Mudanjiang. I’ll get the knife back myself. Don’t you want to avoid seeing that Sun guy?”

This time, Yu Tianbai finally caught what he was saying. Unwrapping something in his hands, he replied, “No way.”

The passenger didn’t back down. “If you don’t let me go, I don’t want the knife. You keep it.”

As he spoke, Xiu Ma stared at the side mirror, catching Yu Tianbai’s chin and tightly pressed lips but not what he was fiddling with. An inexplicable irritation crept up.

“Can you, for once, when I’m talking—”

Before he could finish, his hand was grabbed—not his wrist or palm, but two fingers, middle and ring. Yu Tianbai pulled them, and in the next second, pushed them into something. The entrance felt tight, but the inside was soft, neither wet nor warm, like some sea creature—sea slug, oyster shell, or maybe human tissue.

Human tissue?

Xiu Ma whipped his head around. Yu Tianbai was staring at him. After five seconds of eye contact, his gaze dropped, and he realized what his hand was inside.

The Soft Gel Comrade Pleasure Portable Masturbation Cup—inside it.

Though Boss Yu had only said the name once, Xiu Ma remembered it instantly. That absurdly outrageous name wasn’t just etched in his mind; now it was being put to use—unwillingly, unexpectedly, unintentionally.

Yu Tianbai pushed his hand deeper and asked, “Is it soft?”

Very soft. Of course it was soft.

“It vibrates too,” Yu Tianbai added.

That part he hadn’t felt yet.

The guy on the left seemed to realize this, looking down to find the switch. He switched to his left hand, grabbing Xiu Ma’s still-stiff fingers.

Fingers still stuck in some indescribable bionic organ.

The world roared back to life. The feel of artificial silicone, the smell of a bionic product, Yu Tianbai’s tone when he asked, and everything that had just happened flooded Xiu Ma’s brain, knocking him for a loop. It wasn’t just a mental stumble—real-world Xiu Ma reacted too. He yanked his hand back so fast that Yu Tianbai didn’t have time to respond, leaving only the reluctant sucking sound of the container.

Snap.

After the crisp sound, silence returned to the van. Yu Tianbai was looking at him; he was staring at some vague point in space. After a long pause, the driver spoke first.

“Not fun?”

That’s what he asks? After that turbulent silence, that’s what he asks?

Xiu Ma’s expression must have been off because Yu Tianbai quietly leaned back, turning the object in his hands. He glanced at the base, then at the entrance—where Xiu Ma’s fingers had just been.

“I thought you turned red in the diner because of this thing,” he said, looking up at Xiu Ma. The kid’s face showed no trace of embarrassment now. “Guess not?”

Not only was there no embarrassment, but his expression looked pretty grim.

Was he angry?

Yu Tianbai looked away. The passenger finally spoke.

“Can you not do stuff like that next time?”

He was really angry.