AVRL 21

In truth, Meng Chi had only moved his fingers and made no other movements. At any other time, this would not have seemed particularly intimate, but it happened to be at this very moment. At this moment, Meng Chi’s cheeks were flushed with a faint pink, the corners of his lips slightly upturned, and that slightly frivolous smile between his brows and eyes was most stirring to the heart.

Yu Tingzhi admitted that he had been drawn in by Meng Chi’s little gesture, his heart itching with desire. But soon, Meng Chi released his hand and stepped back, putting distance between them while also shifting his gaze to the photographs hanging on the wall.

Perhaps the lighting on the photo wall was a bit too artful; after looking up for a while, Meng Chi began to feel a little dizzy. He closed his eyes and shook his head, but could not shake off the heaviness in his mind.

“Have you been drinking?” Yu Tingzhi, who had been watching him all along, asked.

Meng Chi let out a low “mm” from his throat, tilted his head with a smile, and said, “Didn’t drink much, it’s nothing.”

Yu Tingzhi said nothing, only kept his eyes on him. Upon closer inspection, he noticed that Meng Chi was not quite the same as usual at this moment—his movements were somewhat sluggish, and his tone of voice carried a hint of stickiness and warmth that was normally absent.

The two of them continued walking through the exhibition hall one after the other. The surroundings were quiet, with only the occasional sound of “left, left, right, right, right, right” drifting over from She Shan’s direction, like someone rapping.

At that thought, Meng Chi suddenly let out a low chuckle.

“What are you laughing at?” Yu Tingzhi asked.

Meng Chi suppressed his smile, glanced toward where She Shan was, and said, “Listen, doesn’t he sound like he’s rapping?”

Yu Tingzhi was startled for a moment, then turned his attention to listen. Over there, She Shan was shouting in exasperation: “I told you to go left, but you insist on going right. If you can’t tell left from right, why are you showing off? Gently, gently, don’t bump it—oh my god, my head hurts.”

“Single rhyme!” Meng Chi exclaimed in summary, then added, “If She Shan can’t make it in the photography world in the future, he could try his hand at the rap scene—he’d definitely make a name for himself.”

Yu Tingzhi stared at him for two seconds, then couldn’t help but laugh. “I’ll pass along your suggestion to him.”

Meng Chi laughed as well, and the atmosphere between the two immediately relaxed, as if the distance between them had noticeably narrowed.

Watching Yu Tingzhi’s smiling face, Meng Chi’s gaze unconsciously grew a little fixed.

Yu Tingzhi’s looks were not actually aggressive; his phoenix-like eyes only curved up slightly at the outer corners, hooking into an alluring arc. His brow ridge was not high, the tail of his brows had a clear curve, and the contours of his brows and eyes were sharply defined. Because he always kept his face taut and expressionless, he appeared very aloof.

But now that he was smiling, a touch of softness was added to the corners of his eyes and brows. Though it still could not erase his innate aristocratic pride, it was already a rare show of approachability.

This guy Yu Tingzhi really is a bit beautiful when he smiles, Meng Chi couldn’t help thinking to himself.

While Meng Chi was admiring Yu Tingzhi’s smile, Yu Tingzhi was also observing Meng Chi. Noticing the hazy, mesmerized look in his laughing eyes, with a hint of infatuation, Yu Tingzhi could confirm that Meng Chi was probably a bit drunk.

Yang Zile was right—his alcohol tolerance was indeed poor, but he probably wouldn’t go crazy.

Before long, Meng Chi stopped laughing and came to a halt in front of a 4K-sized photograph. The image showed Meng Chi’s bare lower back and Yu Tingzhi’s paint-stained hands.

Previously, when he had glanced at it hastily on his phone screen, it hadn’t seemed like much. But now, facing it directly, looking at this photograph in person, Meng Chi suddenly understood why She Shan hadn’t deleted it, but had kept it, retouched it, enlarged it, printed it, and framed it.

Given Meng Chi’s level of artistic appreciation and cultural knowledge, he couldn’t come up with any elegant critique. He just felt that this photograph looked quite beautiful and possessed a strangely sensual quality, hovering on that subtle boundary between suggestive and provocative.

It seemed to explain why he had let his imagination run wild over Yu Tingzhi’s hands and had that absurd dream.

Meng Chi was indeed a little tipsy; the alcohol amplified his emotions, allowing him to reveal some of the thoughts he usually kept hidden, but it had not yet reached the point of completely letting himself go.

Yu Tingzhi was right beside him, so after looking for a while, he withdrew his gaze, cast those romantic thoughts aside, and continued walking forward.

Before long, he came across another photograph that impressed him greatly. It was small and placed in an inconspicuous spot, but Meng Chi still noticed it at first glance.

Only after seeing this photograph did he suddenly realize that when Yu Tingzhi had painted on his back, he had not completely covered the scar on his side with pigment. Instead, he had incorporated it, using the scar as a foundation to paint green sprouts, as if giving new life to that scar.

“This one’s great. I like it—very imaginative,” Meng Chi said.

What he actually meant to say was “creative,” but under the influence of alcohol, his mouth couldn’t quite keep up with his brain.

Yu Tingzhi smiled. “I like it a lot, too.”

“Great minds think alike!” Meng Chi rolled his eyes, glanced sideways at him, and pointed at him. “Good taste, Teacher Yu.”

Yu Tingzhi found Meng Chi increasingly amusing at this moment. It seemed he had temporarily shed the deliberate distance he usually maintained, revealing the genuine approachability in his nature, which was very endearing and made Yu Tingzhi want to seize the opportunity.

“When I first saw your painting, I actually didn’t understand it at all. I just thought it was a bunch of random paint smeared around,” Meng Chi paused, then said, “But now, looking at it, it seems like I can sort of understand it.”

“Is that so?” Yu Tingzhi asked. “Then what did you understand?”

Meng Chi looked at the large swaths of green in the photo, tilted his head in thought, and then shook his head. “I can’t put it into words. I just think it looks really nice, and it’s like… this scar has become easier on the eyes, not ugly anymore.”

“It was never ugly to begin with,” Yu Tingzhi said.

Meng Chi glanced sideways at him, and their eyes met. Seemingly moved by the sincerity in his gaze, Meng Chi broke into a smile.

After a moment, Yu Tingzhi withdrew his gaze and looked back at the photograph. He suddenly asked, “How did you get this scar?”

“This scar, huh,” Meng Chi repeated. He took two steps forward, reached out, and touched the green in the photograph. After a moment, he pulled his hand back, and his tone returned to its usual casual flippancy. “When I was a kid, I got into a fight with my dad. He was going to hit me, so I fought back. I didn’t hit him, but I ended up crashing into the corner of a table myself. And that’s how it happened.”

Meng Chi said this in a very offhand manner, even with a hint of self-deprecating laughter, as if he found his childhood self ridiculously immature.

Yu Tingzhi, however, fell suddenly silent, his gaze resting on Meng Chi with a moderate weight, seemingly lost in thought.

“I wasn’t very obedient when I was little, and I didn’t do well in school. I got hit a lot. Later, my parents divorced, and no matter how disobedient I was, no one hit me anymore. Well, actually, there was someone—later, when I was learning tea ceremony, if I did something wrong, my master would always hit my hand with a ruler.” Meng Chi said this with a smile. He looked at the scar for a while longer, then turned his head to meet Yu Tingzhi’s deep, steady gaze. He studied Yu Tingzhi for a few seconds and said, with a hint of disdain, “Why are you looking at me like that? Pitying me?”

Yu Tingzhi: “No.”

He had just suddenly wanted to know a little more—a rare thing, Yu Tingzhi thought to himself.

Meng Chi made a skeptical “tsk” sound, and then heard Yu Tingzhi ask, “Learning tea ceremony was pretty hard, wasn’t it?”

“It was okay,” Meng Chi said with a smile. “Probably easier than learning calligraphy, like you did.”

Yu Tingzhi smiled faintly and offered no comment.

“When you were learning calligraphy as a kid, did you ever get hit by your dad?” Meng Chi suddenly asked.

After a moment of silence, Yu Tingzhi shifted his gaze to the photograph. “I don’t have a father.”

“Huh?” Meng Chi was stunned. It took a moment for his brain to process what Yu Tingzhi had just said.

What did “don’t have a father” mean?

Oh, his calligraphy was taught by his grandfather.

But why didn’t he have a father?

Was he dead?

“This time,” Meng Chi thought through it and asked cautiously, “is it what I’m thinking?”

Yu Tingzhi glanced at him, let out a laugh, and said, “I don’t know if he’s alive or dead either.” ???

What did that mean?

Meng Chi, already slow in his thinking, was now even more confused. He stared blankly at Yu Tingzhi, his lips parting and closing, unsure how to respond or whether he should say something to comfort him.

But before Meng Chi could speak, Yu Tingzhi turned his head and explained, looking at him: “My mother had me through artificial insemination at a sperm bank. Even my mother doesn’t know who my biological father is.”

Whoa, that’s possible?

Meng Chi felt his worldview shaken. His face showed a tangible look of stunned bewilderment, and he blurted out, “For real? You’re not messing with me, are you?”

“For real.” Seeing him so dazed and foolish, Yu Tingzhi couldn’t help but laugh. “My mother, well, she’s always been quite unconventional. It’s hard for most people to understand her thinking.”

The Yu family was a scholarly household, and Yu Shu, as the only daughter of Yu Zhengmao, had been raised in the palm of the hand since childhood and subjected to strict discipline.

From a young age, she was cultivated in various interests, from calligraphy and painting to music and dance. Probably tired of being the perfect obedient girl, at eighteen she suddenly began to go against the grain. Using prize money she had won from competitions, she bought sperm and produced Yu Tingzhi.

As if using Yu Tingzhi as a bargaining chip, she traded him for her own freedom from Yu Zhengmao. The year after giving birth, she began to roam the world freely, doing whatever she pleased.

She went to music schools to study music and became a singer; she joined a renowned dance troupe and toured nationwide; she even entered the entertainment industry and made a few films. Now, she is abroad studying literature and writing novels.

She had experienced everything in this world that interested her, except, uniquely, the experience of being a mother.

After Yu Tingzhi was one month old, he was basically raised by his grandfather and a nanny. His mother, Yu Shu, rarely came back; she treated Yu Tingzhi well, but was not close to him.

When Yu Tingzhi was young, he also wondered why he had no father and why his mother was not at home with him, leaving only his grandfather to look after him. At the age of eight, he took advantage of a time when Yu Shu was home and asked her. Yu Shu briefly explained his origins in a few words and told him that not having a father was not anything strange—many people in the world did not have fathers, and he was no different from anyone else.

If there was one thing that set him apart, she said, it might be that his genes were better than average, since she had carefully selected high-quality sperm.

Probably because he had grown up used to Yu Shu not being around, Yu Tingzhi had no particular need for a “mother.” When he calmly told these things to Meng Chi, there was no emotional fluctuation in his voice.

But Meng Chi was dumbfounded and even began to stutter: “Truly, biodiversity at its finest—no, wait, your mom, she’s really something, huh!”

Yu Tingzhi was amused by him, and the low mood that had momentarily settled over him while recalling the past lifted again.

“She certainly is quite something,” Yu Tingzhi said.

Meng Chi looked at Yu Tingzhi and once again thought to himself that this guy was really damn beautiful when he smiled. His thoughts strayed for a second, then he pulled them back. He felt that Yu Tingzhi seemed to have already accepted Yu Shu’s way of life and his own unusual origin, and that he needed neither comfort nor pity.

“No wonder you’re so talented—you were already winning at the starting line, genetically speaking,” Meng Chi said with a sigh of admiration.

Combining the high-quality genes of both sides, Yu Tingzhi was beyond the ordinary in both looks and intelligence.

Meng Chi thought for a moment and added, “So that means your genes must be very strong too. If you ever had a kid, chances are they’d be a genius.”

Yu Tingzhi looked at him for two seconds and suddenly said, “It doesn’t matter how good my genes are; you can’t give birth anyway.”

Author’s note:

Meng Chi: Huh??????