Xia Yiyang never expected that after escaping the wolf’s den, he’d end up not in a tiger’s lair, but in a cow shed and a stable.
—A wage slave works for the boss during the day, and sleeps on the boss’s couch at night. If that’s not a cow shed and stable, what is?
Sure, Sheng Lin’s couch was wide, soft, and more than enough for one person—even more comfortable than the hostel’s single bed—but it was still a couch!
The young master was so mad he could moo like a cow.
Sheng Lin brought him a mattress pad for the bed and a thin summer blanket, then asked if he needed anything else.
The young master was picky: “It’s so hot in here. Why isn’t there air conditioning?”
“The electrical wiring on the second floor is pretty old. I only had air conditioning installed for the shop on the first floor. If I install one up here, it’ll trip the circuit breaker.” Sheng Lin brought out the only fan from his bedroom, placed it next to the couch, adjusted the angle, and aimed it at Xia Yiyang.
Xia Yiyang stared at the fan for a moment, then quickly looked away and muttered, “You gave me the fan—what are you going to use?”
Sheng Lin: “I’m not as sensitive to heat as you are. I’ll just take a cold shower later.”
“You might as well just say I’m delicate.”
“I never said that.” Sheng Lin reassured him. “I’ll have an electrician come take a look at the second-floor wiring sometime soon and get an air conditioner installed as quickly as possible.”
Xia Yiyang’s eyes darted around. From what the boss was saying, it sounded like he was planning to let him stay long-term—even going so far as to rewire the place and install an AC unit just for him…
He asked cautiously, “Boss, I’m not going to have to pay for the air conditioner, am I?”
“No.”
“And the electricity bill for running it?”
“Of course not.”
“Then what about water bills, rent, food costs…”
“Xia Yiyang,” Sheng Lin’s tone grew a little heavier—not harsh, but annoyed that the boy didn’t trust him. “I’m the one who pays your salary. I know exactly how much money you have better than you do. Keep it for yourself. I said you can stay here for free, and I’m not going to come up with excuses to swindle you out of your money.”
Only then did Xia Yiyang feel at ease. He couldn’t help it—he had PTSD now. Whenever someone was nice to him, he worried they were eyeing his little nest egg (a grand total of 1,652 yuan!).
If Sheng Lin really wanted to scam him, he might as well just go ahead and take his virginity instead—it’d be more straightforward.
After a moment, the boy raised one finger again: “But I still have one more question.”
Sheng Lin held back his impatience. “Go on.”
Xia Yiyang blinked. “This couch is so wide and big—it’s such a waste for someone as small as me. How about we switch? You take the couch, and I take the bed?”
“…………” Sheng Lin let out a laugh of exasperation. “How about this: I take the bed, and you sleep under a bridge.”
Fine. The young master shut up.
Couch it was. He could bend when needed—what was wrong with a sofa bed that came with free meals, free lodging, and a fan blowing on him?
Best of all, it was right above the ice jelly shop. The shop opened at ten, so he could sleep in until 9:50… no, 9:55! Then just wash up and head downstairs! From today on, he could sleep in every single day without worrying about being late. Just thinking about it felt amazing.
Even though it was Xia Yiyang’s day off, he’d been through so much that day that he was completely exhausted. He didn’t bother unpacking—just took a quick cold shower, crawled into his little makeshift nest on the couch, and the moment his head hit the pillow, he was out like a light.
The fan hummed its mechanical, repetitive low-frequency noise, swinging from left to right, then right to left. When the cool breeze swung left, the curtains nearby rustled softly; when it swung right, the panda plushie on the coffee table toppled over onto its butt.
The night was ordinary in every way—and yet, precisely because of that ordinariness, it felt extraordinary.
When Sheng Lin walked out of the bathroom, this was the scene that greeted him—the boy was fast asleep, his phone still on, looping some funny video. He was so tired that his breathing was a little heavy. The thin blanket was clutched between his legs, his pajama top had ridden up, exposing a slender, pale waist and a round little dip at his flat belly, rising and falling gently with each breath.
Above the navel, if one’s gaze were to slip beneath the loose pajama top, one might catch a glimpse of…
The man didn’t keep looking.
He walked over to the couch, straightened Xia Yiyang’s rumpled pajama top, turned off the still-lit phone and the overhead light, then carefully extracted the tangled blanket from the boy’s arms, unfolded it, and gently laid it back over him.
Xia Yiyang’s hair was still damp, plastered against the side of his face. He was definitely going to wake up looking like a dandelion puff tomorrow.
The fan swung back around, ruffling the still-damp ends of the boy’s hair.
Sheng Lin thought to himself that he’d need to remember to remind Xia Yiyang to dry his hair from now on. Even though Rongcheng was hot, sleeping with wet hair could still give you a cold.
……
Xia Yiyang spent a quiet, restful night—a sense of security he’d never felt at the hostel.
A dark, sweet dreamland wrapped around him tightly—until a pair of hands gently shook his shoulder, followed by a low voice that shattered his peaceful slumber.
“Xia Yiyang, how much longer are you going to sleep?” The man urged him. “It’s nine o’clock. Time to get up.”
“No… it’s only nine…” Xia Yiyang mumbled groggily, cracking his eyes open. The events of the previous day flooded back into his brain the moment he opened his eyes, so he didn’t make the mistake of asking something dumb like “Why am I sleeping on my boss’s couch?”
The living room curtains were all pulled wide open, and the room was blindingly bright. Sheng Lin stood right in the sunlight, his athletic tank top and matching shorts hugging his body tightly, outlining his perfect muscular physique.
The man’s tanned skin glistened with a sheen of sweat—traces of it running down his body. Even just standing in front of the couch, Xia Yiyang could feel the waves of heat radiating off him.
Xia Yiyang looked up dumbly from where he lay. Since he was lying down and Sheng Lin was standing, his gaze, tilted upward, landed right on the man’s firm, well-developed chest. Because Sheng Lin had just finished working out and his muscles were still pumped, each rise and fall of his chest made those strong pecs shift slightly.
—Oh wow, he was about to pass out from man-boob overload!
“What are you staring at?” Sheng Lin noticed the shock in his eyes.
Still half-asleep, Xia Yiyang’s mouth clearly wasn’t keeping up with his brain, and he blurted out: “Boss, how come I never noticed before that you’re so big?”
Sheng Lin: “……???”
Xia Yiyang snapped wide awake in an instant, realizing just how ambiguous that sentence sounded! He couldn’t forget that Rongcheng was a city known for its “gay vibes”—how could he just casually compliment another man on being “big”?
He stammered out an explanation: “I mean… I didn’t mean… uh, what I’m trying to say is… I’m not talking about other kinds of big, uh, uh… I mean, your chest muscles are so big.”
Ugh. He might as well not have explained at all.
Sheng Lin was speechless. “What exactly goes through your head all day? Get up and wash up.”
With that, he turned and headed straight into the bathroom to take a shower.
His retreating back looked oddly flustered.
After a workout, Sheng Lin was used to showering immediately to refresh himself. His hair was short, so he washed up quickly—he was done in just ten minutes.
After his shower, he changed into clean clothes and checked himself in the mirror repeatedly to make sure nothing was out of place.
He thought to himself: having another person in the house was a bit inconvenient. Before, Sheng Lin was used to walking straight from the bathroom to his bedroom naked after a shower, at most wrapping a towel around himself. But now that there was a guest in the living room, he couldn’t exactly strut around in his birthday suit.
They were both men… well, Xia Yiyang barely counted as a man—more like a boy. Sheng Lin didn’t want to scare him.
He tugged at his loose T-shirt and found himself a little amused by the compliment Xia Yiyang had blurted out earlier.
“Just chest muscles?” He couldn’t help striking a bodybuilder-esque pose in front of the mirror—and immediately darkened his expression when he realized what a stupid thing he’d just done.
…Had he caught Xia Yiyang’s dumbness?
Sheng Lin stayed in the bathroom a while longer, waiting until most of the steam had cleared before stepping out.
He’d assumed that by now Xia Yiyang would have gotten up and changed. To his surprise, the boy was still in bed!
There he was, hugging the panda plushie he’d brought from the hostel, his whole body sunk deep into the blanket, only a pair of drowsy eyes peeking out—clearly still hovering somewhere between sleep and wakefulness.
Zzz… zzz… zzz………….
“Xia Yiyang!” Sheng Lin raised his voice to urge him. “Time to get up!”
“No.” The boy rolled over, turning his back to him and facing the inside of the couch, grumbling. “Work doesn’t start till ten.”
“It’s 9:15.”
“Plenty of time… I can still sleep another half hour…”
“Are you seriously planning to get up at 9:45?” Sheng Lin had never seen anyone so good at sleeping in.
Xia Yiyang was so sleepy, half-dragged back into dreamland, he still managed to answer his boss: “Ten minutes is enough for me to wash up, get dressed, and head downstairs.”
Sheng Lin: “Then you’re not eating breakfast?”
“I never eat breakfast! The time I’d spend on breakfast is time I could use to sleep another ten minutes…”
“…” Sheng Lin was at a loss. So this was why Xia Yiyang had been coming to work on an empty stomach every day. He’d always wondered why the boy devoured his lunch like a whirlwind—he’d assumed it was because Xia Yiyang was still growing, but now it was clear: it was pure hunger!
Working on an empty stomach was way too easy a way to get low blood sugar. Just thinking about how Xia Yiyang didn’t take care of his own body made Sheng Lin feel oddly unsettled.
“Xia Yiyang, get up and eat right now,” Sheng Lin repeated in a low voice. “I don’t want to have to tell you a third time.”
The boy burrowed deeper into the blanket. “Don’t bother. Just pretend I’m already dead.”
Sheng Lin: “A tofu pudding vendor with a carrying pole passed by downstairs just now. I got you a bowl.”
“…” The blanket went quiet for a few seconds, then a muffled voice came from inside. “Did you get the sweet one or the savory one?”
Northerners love savory tofu pudding, southerners love sweet tofu pudding, and the internet is always full of the great sweet-versus-savory tofu pudding debate. But Xia Yiyang was different—he loved both! He firmly believed that everyone should approach every flavor of every food with an open and inclusive mindset. A narrow palate only leads to a narrow life!
Sheng Lin paused for a moment, deliberately building up Xia Yiyang’s anticipation, then revealed the answer: “—Neither. It’s spicy tofu pudding.”
The next second, the boy shot up from the couch like a rocket—faster than a launch. Wrapped in his blanket like a little bear, only a pair of sparkling eyes visible, there was no trace of the drowsy, half-asleep look from just moments ago.
“I want it, I want it!” He couldn’t wait, hopping off the couch barefoot. “I’ve never had spicy tofu pudding before!”
He’d literally just said that eating breakfast wasn’t worth giving up sleep—but the moment a steaming bowl of tofu pudding was placed in front of him, he completely forgot his own words.
Ten minutes later, Xia Yiyang had washed up, gotten dressed, and sat down at the table.
The dining table was set up on the terrace, and the fan had been moved over too, blowing on them with a steady hum that chased away the sweltering heat of July. The camphor trees by the roadside were thick with leaves, their shadows forming a natural canopy against the sun. Cicadas chirped one after another—irritating at first, but after a while, they became just another part of the background.
Two bowls of spicy tofu pudding sat side by side on the table—one with more chili oil, the other with less. Needless to say, the one with less chili was specially prepared for Xia Yiyang.
The boy had won a battle yesterday, but his face was still banged up, so he couldn’t handle anything too spicy.
Spicy tofu pudding is a common breakfast in Sichuan Province. The key is for the tofu pudding to be tender without falling apart, and for the chili oil to be fragrant without being overpowering. The tofu pudding serves as the base, topped with soy sauce, garlic water, sesame oil, crispy fried peas, pickled mustard greens, and finally garnished with chopped scallions—and most importantly, the soul of the dish: chili oil!
Every tofu pudding shop has its own unique chili oil recipe. Before coming to Sichuan, Xia Yiyang had no idea there were dozens of different varieties of chili peppers. A trip to the spice market would leave any tourist dazzled by the sheer variety. These peppers, each with different aromas and levels of heat, are fried in hot oil to create each owner’s secret house specialty.
He couldn’t wait to stir the tofu pudding, mixing the seasonings into the snowy white tofu—and then took a big bite!
“!!!” His eyes lit up, as if fireworks were going off in his head.
Seeing his expression, Sheng Lin, sitting across from him, asked, “Is it really that good?”
“This isn’t just ordinary good.” Xia Yiyang shook his head with glee. “This is ‘ba shi de hen’!”
He’d tried his hand at a bit of Sichuan dialect—his pronunciation wasn’t quite right, but he was so proud of himself that it made the man across from him laugh.
Sheng Lin: “Enjoy it, but don’t eat too fast—it is spicy, after all.”
Xia Yiyang nodded in agreement.
He took a couple of big bites first to settle his stomach, letting the fragrance of the tofu pudding coat his entire tongue, then slowed down to savor it spoonful by spoonful.
Sheng Lin said, “If you just wake up half an hour earlier, you can have a leisurely breakfast and enjoy the street view downstairs. Isn’t that better?”
Xia Yiyang immediately declared, “I got up today, but that doesn’t mean I’ll get up tomorrow. Boss, I only got out of bed today because of the tofu pudding. You can’t force me again tomorrow.”
Sheng Lin sighed helplessly. “Is waking up early really that hard?”
“Of course! How many people in this world actually like waking up early?” Xia Yiyang nodded vigorously, then suddenly remembered seeing Sheng Lin in his workout clothes earlier. “Boss, what time do you get up every day? Were you out running just now?”
“I get up at seven,” Sheng Lin replied. “And yes, I was running.”
Xia Yiyang was shocked. “You get up at seven, and now it’s nine… you run for two hours every day?”
“Of course not.”
Xia Yiyang breathed a sigh of relief.
Sheng Lin: “I usually start with a five-kilometer run to warm up, then head to the gym for some equipment-based strength training.”
Xia Yiyang: “…”
Usually, start with, five kilometers, warm up… They were all Chinese words, so why did they sound like pure fantasy when strung together?
Sheng Lin added, “Besides running and lifting, I also have a swimming pass at Rongda. Alternating between them is better for my knees. But the pool opens a bit later—not until eight—so I can only swim for an hour before I have to come back and open the shop.”
Terrifying. Xia Yiyang thought: this man is terrifying.
There really were people in this world who exercised before work every day and then stayed energized enough to run the shop for twelve hours straight?
No wonder Sheng Lin’s chest was so big—it was all from lifting weights!
Xia Yiyang got distracted thinking about it, scooped up a spoonful of the spicy tofu pudding without looking carefully, and shoved it into his mouth. The next second, some plant with a mix of fishy, earthy, and metallic flavors exploded on his tongue—like a biochemical weapon striking without warning!
He couldn’t suppress his physical reaction at all—his whole face scrunched up.
“Something in the tofu pudding just beat me up!” the boy said in horror. “I just saw my great-grandma!”
Sheng Lin immediately understood: “It must be houttuynia cordata (fish mint).”
So this was the infamous fish mint?—Whether lucky or unlucky, Xia Yiyang had been in Sichuan for over half a month and this was his first time crossing paths with it.
He decided to take back that line about “a narrow palate leads to a narrow life.” Yes, he was a very narrow person—his throat was so narrow it couldn’t even pass a single strand of fish mint!
Xia Yiyang couldn’t stand the lingering taste in his mouth. He rushed to the living room to get some water. After rinsing his mouth several times, he finally managed to suppress the fish mint flavor—but by then, his appetite for the spicy tofu pudding was completely ruined.
The tofu pudding was delicious, but the fish mint hidden beneath its pristine white surface was terrifying—you never knew when it might jump out and kick your tongue. Xia Yiyang didn’t want to take any more mine-sweeping risks.
Dejectedly, he walked back out to the terrace, about to tell Sheng Lin he was done with breakfast—but when he saw the scene at the table, he suddenly froze.
—Sheng Lin had pulled Xia Yiyang’s half-eaten bowl in front of himself, swapped to a clean pair of chopsticks, and was carefully picking out the tiny pieces of fish mint hidden beneath the tofu. The fish mint was chopped very finely, each piece no more than half a centimeter long—and Sheng Lin was picking them out one by one, doing his best not to break up the tofu.
Soon, a small pile of fish mint had accumulated on the napkin beside him.
“I think I’ve gotten them all out.” Seeing Xia Yiyang return, Sheng Lin slid the bowl of spicy tofu pudding back to its original spot and looked up at him. “You can eat it without worry now.”
The man’s tone was unusually calm, as if he’d just done something utterly trivial.
As if taking care of Xia Yiyang was the most natural thing in the world.
The breeze drifted gently across the terrace, carrying away the summer heat and bringing the sound of cicadas.
In that very moment, in that very second—
The boy’s heart suddenly began to pound, his mind spinning.
Was it because the weather was too hot? Was he getting heatstroke?
This midsummer was simply too long.
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