Fu Songcheng held his wine glass, gently swirling the liquid inside, while calculating in his mind.
Yu Huaiting had better have the tolerance to keep up with the liquor he’d ordered—otherwise, at this rate, he’d drink himself under the table. And if Yu Huaiting got drunk, should he escort him back to the rest point?
Fu Songcheng very much wanted to wash his hands of it, but on second thought—if Yu Huaiting got ambushed in the tavern, he’d be dragged down too.
At that thought, Fu Songcheng felt a pang of regret and let out a self-mocking smile.
An extremely brief, yet extremely vivid smile.
The corners of his eyes lifted slightly, like a fox watching its prey escape—cunning, faintly regretful, carrying a lethal allure.
Yu Huaiting, who had been staring at him all along, felt his breath catch.
The tavern’s noisy music and the chatter of the people around them all seemed to recede in that instant.
In Yu Huaiting’s eyes, only that fleeting fox-like smile at the corner of Fu Songcheng’s mouth remained.
He felt as if his heart had been struck hard by something, its beating rhythm instantly thrown into utter chaos.
The alcohol burned in his veins, slowing his brain, but an emotion he’d never felt before was growing wildly in his chest like weeds.
Yu Huaiting swallowed. His throat felt unbearably dry.
He stared dead at Fu Songcheng, his body unconsciously leaning forward, his arms braced on the table. “Fu Songcheng, you…”
Fu Songcheng’s smile faded. He raised one eyebrow, his gaze probing, quietly waiting for him to continue.
“Have you ever thought, the two of us…”
Yu Huaiting’s heart pounded like a war drum. He opened his mouth, but couldn’t hear his own words clearly.
“Aiya!”
A coquettish cry suddenly cut off Yu Huaiting’s words.
Then, a soft body reeking of heavy perfume stumbled over and fell straight into Yu Huaiting’s arms.
Caught completely off guard, Yu Huaiting was knocked back against the sofa. He looked at the person before him.
An extremely beautiful girl.
The flamboyant, garish kind of beautiful.
She wore a tight red dress that barely covered any skin, her face made up with exquisite precision.
The girl straddled Yu Huaiting’s lap with practiced ease, her soft, boneless arms hooking around his neck.
She tilted her head up slightly, her pale fingers brushing over Yu Huaiting’s face, stiff with shock.
“Mr. Yu~”
The girl’s voice was soft and sweet, her eyes brimming with watery light.
She lay limply in Yu Huaiting’s arms, her lips almost pressed to his earlobe, her breath like orchids. “You haven’t come to see me in so long. I’ve really missed you…”
Boom—
Yu Huaiting’s mind exploded.
He sat there frozen as if under a binding spell, the hot blood rushing through his body rapidly cooling.
He whipped his head around to look at Fu Songcheng opposite him.
Fu Songcheng still maintained the posture of holding his wine glass.
He didn’t even frown.
Yu Huaiting’s face went white in an instant.
“Get off!”
Like being electrocuted, Yu Huaiting violently shoved the girl out of his arms.
The girl clearly hadn’t expected such a big reaction. She let out a scream and tumbled onto the aisle beside them, drawing glances from the surrounding players.
But Yu Huaiting didn’t even look at her.
He shot to his feet. His movement was so violent that his knee slammed hard into the table, several liquor bottles wobbling and toppling, spilling liquor across the tabletop.
He scrambled around the table and strode to Fu Songcheng’s side.
He wanted to grab Fu Songcheng’s arm, but his hand stopped dead in midair.
“Let me explain!”
Yu Huaiting’s voice was shaking. He looked urgently at Fu Songcheng’s ice-cold face, defending himself incoherently. “I don’t know her! I don’t know this woman at all! I have no idea where she popped out from!”
As Yu Huaiting drew closer, the smell of hard liquor mixed with women’s perfume hit Fu Songcheng in the face.
Fu Songcheng frowned slightly.
He didn’t speak. He simply, very naturally and without any attempt to hide it, shifted his body a little toward the other side of the sofa.
Just that one small movement, that attempt to widen the distance.
It was like a basin of ice water poured over Yu Huaiting’s head.
“Your business has nothing to do with me.”
Fu Songcheng lowered his eyelids, his gaze falling on his half-finished fruit wine. “You don’t need to explain your private life to me.”
No need to explain to me.
Because he didn’t care.
Because in his eyes, Yu Huaiting was nothing more than a temporarily bound, temporary teammate. Who he slept with in private, who he flirted with—Fu Songcheng didn’t care at all, and didn’t want to care.
Yu Huaiting stared dead at that inch of distance Fu Songcheng had moved away.
That inch of distance was like an insurmountable chasm—mocking, shredding, and then viciously trampling the stirrings and hopes that had just risen in him, before they could even be voiced.
A nameless fire—mixed with the ferocity of alcohol and the humiliation of being utterly belittled—erupted violently in Yu Huaiting’s chest.
The laughable thing was, Yu Huaiting still wanted to explain.
Fu Songcheng didn’t care about him at all!
It was clearly Fu Songcheng who’d been teasing the Sympathy Doll from the very beginning! What right did he have to think the two of them had nothing to do with each other!
A breath mixed with sourness and fury lodged in Yu Huaiting’s chest, choking him until his eyes went red, nearly costing him his reason.
To hell with calm! To hell with explanations!
To hell with Fu Songcheng!
In the instant Fu Songcheng was completely off guard, Yu Huaiting suddenly threw a punch.
Carrying a howling wind, carrying fury that had no outlet, it smashed mercilessly toward that face he’d just found so captivating.
Fu Songcheng’s pupils contracted sharply. At the critical moment, he jerked his head aside.
The fist wind whistled past his cheekbone, trailing a burning sting, a few strands of hair lifted by the gust.
Before Fu Songcheng could steady himself, Yu Huaiting lunged at him like a maddened beast, reeking of alcohol and fury.
With a loud bang, the two crashed heavily onto the floor.
The red-dress girl shrieked in fright and scrambled away into the crowd, vanishing in an instant.
The other patrons in the tavern merely glanced over coldly. Someone even raised a glass and whistled.
In this place, there were far too many lunatics who threw punches at the slightest disagreement—no one bothered with such trifles, let alone cared who was rolling around on the floor.
Fu Songcheng felt a sharp pain in his back, his internal organs jolted out of place.
He let out a muffled grunt and immediately raised both arms to shield his face.
“What gives you the right to not care?!”
Yu Huaiting’s eyes were bloodshot. Straddling Fu Songcheng, he drove another heavy punch into Fu Songcheng’s defending forearm with a dull thud of flesh.
“Am I just a joke you summon and dismiss at will?!”
“Yu Huaiting, what the hell is wrong with you!”
Fu Songcheng gritted his teeth, sharp pain shooting through the bones of his arm.
He tried to drive his knee up to push the man off, but Yu Huaiting was stronger—he couldn’t budge him.
“Wrong with me? Yes, I’ve gone mad!”
Yu Huaiting’s voice carried a grievance even he hadn’t noticed. “I care about you so damn much, and you treat me like thin air!”
In the chaos, Yu Huaiting’s fist broke past Fu Songcheng’s guard and slammed into the corner of his mouth.
A faint taste of blood instantly spread through his mouth.
Fu Songcheng’s eyes turned completely cold—true killing intent stirred.
He loathed this feeling.
Being pinned down, unable to break free.
Chen Muhuai had been like this. Yu Huaiting was like this too!
He was accustomed to strategizing, to looking down on everything. Arrogance ran in his very bones.
From childhood to now, he had always been the one in control.
He absolutely would not allow himself to be beaten like a stray dog, pinned to the filthy floor of a system tavern.
“Get off.” Fu Songcheng’s voice was ice-quenched, every word squeezed through his teeth, carrying a bone-piercing chill.
“I’m not getting off! You’re going to make things clear today!”
Yu Huaiting raised his fist high, his chest heaving violently, the bloodshot red at the corners of his eyes as if about to drip blood. “Do you or do you not…”
However, just as the fist was about to fall again, Yu Huaiting’s movement suddenly froze.
The fury and stubbornness in his eyes scattered midair, replaced by emptiness and confusion. The aftereffect of that glass of high-proof liquor finally seized his brain completely at this moment.
“Fu… Songcheng…”
He mumbled indistinctly, his raised arm falling limply.
Then, his tall frame—like a collapsing iron tower—toppled forward without warning, crashing with a thud squarely onto Fu Songcheng.
The heavy weight pressed down so hard Fu Songcheng nearly couldn’t catch his breath.
He turned his head aside in disgust, avoiding the thick alcohol fumes Yu Huaiting was breathing into his neck.
“Yu Huaiting!” Fu Songcheng shouted coldly.
No response.
The person sprawled on top of him was now breathing heavily and evenly, even smacking his lips.
He had passed out completely drunk.
The fury in Fu Songcheng’s eyes burned madly.
He took a deep breath, suddenly exerted force, and shoved Yu Huaiting away, kicking and dragging the massive body off him to the side.
Fu Songcheng sat up in extreme disarray.
His combat suit was covered in the tavern floor’s dust and some unidentifiable liquid; his hair was disheveled too.
He raised his hand and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with his thumb, staring coldly at Yu Huaiting lying on the floor.
Fu Songcheng slowly clenched his fist, his knuckles going white with force.
Hit him back.
He would not allow anyone to trample on him like this.
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