AVRL 24

Before Meng Chi could make up his mind to walk over and greet Yu Tingzhi, She Shan appeared out of nowhere, walked straight up to Yu Tingzhi, and then the suited man opposite him stood up and left.

As the man turned around, Meng Chi got a clear look at his face. He wasn’t exactly ugly, but there was a harsh, mean-spirited quality between his brows. Though he wore a smile, there was a hint of dissatisfaction in it, as if he hadn’t gotten the reception he’d hoped for.

“Meng Ge, what are you looking at?” Song Min asked as he came out of the restroom.

Before Meng Chi could respond, Song Min had already followed his gaze. Spotting the person in question, his deer-like eyes immediately lit up: “It’s Tingzhi gege—what a coincidence.”

With that, Song Min lifted his foot to head that way. Noticing Meng Chi hadn’t moved, he turned back and asked, “Meng Ge, aren’t you going over to say hello?”

Hell no. Right now, just the sight of Yu Tingzhi made Meng Chi remember the absurd things he’d done last night.

“You go ahead,” Meng Chi said with a stiff smile. “I’ll pass.”

Song Min, a little tipsy, didn’t notice Meng Chi’s brief awkwardness and happily trotted over to Yu Tingzhi.

“Who’s that?” She Shan sat down opposite Yu Tingzhi and asked casually.

Yu Tingzhi: “Don’t know.”

“Don’t know?” She Shan glanced at the retreating figure. “Someone hitting on you?”

Yu Tingzhi grunted in affirmation, then added, “I just ordered a martini. Order whatever you want yourself.”

She Shan nodded, waved over the bartender, and ordered a whiskey. Yu Tingzhi also had him take away the drink the previous man had sent over.

“That face of yours sure attracts people as always. This isn’t even a gay bar—shouldn’t it be a pretty girl instead?” She Shan said. “Or can gay guys just tell at a glance if someone’s one of them?”

Yu Tingzhi: “He said he’d seen me at Yuqu before.”

Yuqu was a gay bar in the new district. Yu Tingzhi had indeed been there twice, but he’d left both times shortly after arriving, annoyed by all the people hitting on him. In truth, he had no impression of the man just now either.

“Oh.” She Shan nodded, then rubbed his chin and looked at Yu Tingzhi. “But is that how you always turn down these suitors?”

Actually, She Shan hadn’t missed everything. He had come in at a fortunate moment and overheard Yu Tingzhi say to the man, with an air of great haughtiness: “You don’t arouse desire in me yet. So you may go.”

“Tsk tsk tsk, I never realized you were this cocky before,” She Shan said with a laugh. “A few years apart, and you’ve gotten this wild, huh.”

Yu Tingzhi glanced at him without comment.

She Shan laughed out loud, squinting toward the direction the man had gone. “That guy wasn’t bad-looking either, but yeah, he’s definitely not your type.”

“Oh?” Yu Tingzhi cast a sidelong glance at him. “What’s my type?”

“Someone like Song Chen,” She Shan said without hesitation. “That’s who you dated, isn’t it?”

Yu Tingzhi said nothing, still looking at him.

“No? Then it’s…” She Shan thought for a moment, recalling Yu Tingzhi’s lack of composure during that shoot, and his tone suddenly rose. “Someone like Meng Chi?”

Seeing Yu Tingzhi look away and fall silent, She Shan knew he’d guessed right.

“No way?” She Shan raised an eyebrow, then asked thoughtfully, “So is he gay or not?”

Yu Tingzhi didn’t answer directly. Instead, he said, “He’s pursuing Song Min.”

“No way!” She Shan swore again. After a moment’s thought, he added, “But I get the feeling Song Min might be a little into you, though.”

Yu Tingzhi neither confirmed nor denied it. She Shan slapped his thigh and said, “Well then, you two are love rivals.”

Yu Tingzhi leaned back slightly against the sofa, interlacing his fingers and kneading his hands with moderate pressure, his half-lidded eyes growing darker and deeper.

He thought of the questions Meng Chi had asked him last night. Even Meng Chi could tell that Song Min had special feelings for him, so of course he knew—he just had never taken it seriously. Since Song Min hadn’t made his feelings clear, there was even less reason for Yu Tingzhi to bring it up.

She Shan sorted through the tangled relationships in his head. After a moment of silence, he suddenly said, “Actually, I think Song Min’s pretty good too. The kid’s well-behaved and cute, and you already know his background. Why not consider him?”

“Not considering,” Yu Tingzhi said flatly.

“Why?” She Shan asked. “Because he’s Song Chen’s little brother?”

Yu Tingzhi looked up at him. “That has nothing to do with whose brother he is.”

“Oh, got it,” She Shan said with an understanding nod. “You just simply don’t like him, right.”

“Yeah.”

Hearing that “Yeah,” Song Min, standing in a dim corner, immediately pressed his lips together. His hands, hanging at his sides, clenched into fists. His small face, which had been so cheerful moments before, was now clouded with nothing but a lost, desolate look.

It was as if all the sounds around him were fading away, leaving only that phrase—”you just simply don’t like him”—echoing in his ears. Only when a man brushed past him and bumped his shoulder did he snap back to reality, turn around, and retrace his steps.

As Song Min walked briskly toward Yu Tingzhi, Meng Chi had also turned and left the restroom area. He didn’t go back to the booth Chen Yan had reserved, but instead headed toward the back door of the bar, wanting to get some air.

As he rounded a corner in the corridor, he nearly bumped into two people talking in a secluded spot. Meng Chi glanced up and saw that one of them was the suited man who had been speaking with Yu Tingzhi earlier.

In front of the man stood a young man in a bartender’s uniform, holding a tray with a red, mixed cocktail on it.

The suited man cleared his throat and asked, “So this is your bar’s signature martini?” The bartender confirmed it and even began explaining how it was made.

As Meng Chi passed by them, his peripheral vision caught the suited man reaching for the glass and tapping his fingertip twice on the rim—as though something had fallen into the drink.

Meng Chi gave it another look, but seeing nothing unusual about the glass, he didn’t dwell on it and continued on into the back alley.

The cool night breeze blew away the restlessness picked up inside the bar. Meng Chi let out a light breath of stale air, his unfocused gaze fixed on the moths fluttering beneath the streetlamp. One moment he thought of Yu Tingzhi’s teasing smile; the next, of Song Min’s bright, shining eyes.

The low, murmured folk songs from the bar drifted over from afar. The jumble of thoughts in Meng Chi’s head refused to sort themselves out, leaving him feeling only a vague irritation.

He hadn’t been standing there long before Chen Yan texted him, asking where he’d gone. Song Min had come back, but he’d disappeared—had he fallen into the toilet or something?

Back at the booth, Song Min had indeed returned and was drinking deeply from his glass in big gulps. His energy was even lower than before, wilted like a plant that had been hit by frost.

“What’s going on? Did you upset him?” Chen Yan leaned over and whispered in Meng Chi’s ear. “He went to the bathroom and came back like he’d lost his soul.”

Meng Chi had no idea what had happened either and could only comfort him again. No matter how Chen Yan asked, Song Min wouldn’t speak, just kept drinking in silence. Chen Yan let out a helpless sigh, patted Meng Chi on the shoulder, and said quietly, “Keep an eye on him.”

Meng Chi acknowledged him. When Song Min opened another bottle of beer for himself, he reached out and stopped him.

“What are you doing?” The alcohol had flushed Song Min’s cheeks, his eyes were hazy, and even with his unhappy expression, he looked pitifully endearing.

“Stop drinking. Any more and you’ll be drunk,” Meng Chi said.

Song Min snatched the bottle back. “I want to drink. You drink with me.”

Meng Chi had no choice but to sigh and drink a couple of glasses with him.

“Being drunk is good,” Song Min muttered as he drank. “When you’re drunk, you can treat it all like a dream, like you didn’t hear anything.”

Meng Chi caught his mumbled words and immediately guessed that he must have overheard something he shouldn’t have when he went to see Yu Tingzhi just now—something that had hit him hard.

With that heartbroken look, it couldn’t be that he’d walked in on Yu Tingzhi flirting with someone else, could it?

“Who made you unhappy? Tell me, and I’ll go beat them up for you.” Meng Chi had little experience comforting people, so he instinctively parroted the kind of thing Yang Youran had once said when standing up for Yang Zile.

Song Min took another swig and pouted, saying, “No one bullied me. He just doesn’t like me.”

Even without Song Min spelling it out, Meng Chi knew who “he” was.

Though he didn’t know exactly what had happened when Song Min went to see Yu Tingzhi, it was clear that Song Min had been rejected.

Meng Chi wasn’t at all surprised that Yu Tingzhi didn’t like Song Min. It felt as though he had known all along—his mind even recalled Yu Tingzhi’s voice saying, “I don’t like him.”

Both the tone and the expression were crystal clear. A faint tail of memory flickered past, and Meng Chi froze for a moment, but he couldn’t grasp anything.

“He doesn’t like me. He could never like me,” Song Min kept repeating mournfully, his eyes glistening with tears—clearly far too drunk.

Meng Chi felt a surge of pity, but he really didn’t know how to comfort people. He could only say, “It doesn’t matter. If he doesn’t like you, there are others who do.”

Song Min looked up at him and asked, “You? Do you like me?”

Meng Chi wasn’t someone who beat around the bush—otherwise, he wouldn’t have admitted his sexuality so frankly when Yu Tingzhi asked. But this time, he fell silent, neither denying nor confirming.

After two seconds of silence, Song Min let out a snort of laughter, then said in a low voice, “Meng Ge, I don’t like you. And don’t you like me either. Liking someone who doesn’t like you back is exhausting and painful.”

Song Min’s voice was low and downcast, the sadness on his face turning into mist, gathering at the corners of his eyes and falling as tears.

Though he had been rejected, Meng Chi didn’t feel upset—only a little sorry to see Song Min in such a pitiful state.

“All right, don’t be sad. Head back and rest early,” Meng Chi said, taking the glass from his hand and patting his head.

This time, Song Min didn’t argue. He closed his eyes and let out low, weak sobs. Meng Chi helped him up, ready to take him home. The others at Chen Yan’s gathering were also wrapping up, each gathering their things and preparing to leave.

Meng Chi supported Song Min out of the bar and took out his phone to call for a designated driver—only to find his phone was missing. Remembering that he’d left it on the bar counter, he handed Song Min over to Chen Yan and went back inside to look for it.

The phone wasn’t lost; it had been turned in to the front desk by the server clearing the booth. As Meng Chi got his phone back, he received a call from Chen Yan.

“Did you find your phone?” Chen Yan asked.

“Yeah,” Meng Chi said, walking out while still on the phone.

“Good. So what’s up with you and Song Min? I told you to take him home, but he flat-out refused, jumped in the car, and said he was going back on his own.” Chen Yan had a high tolerance and showed no sign of drunkenness after drinking all evening.

Meng Chi sighed inwardly. What else could it be? He’d been rejected and now wanted to keep his distance.

Meng Chi: “Nothing. You take him back, then.”

Chen Yan said “Okay” and hung up.

The mingling smells inside the bar were making Meng Chi dizzy. The lingering hangover from yesterday hadn’t fully passed, and he’d had a few more drinks just now—his head was starting to throb again. He raised his hand to rub his brow and quickened his pace, ready to head home and sleep.

As he waited for the designated driver in the parking lot, Meng Chi suddenly heard a clatter of noises, followed by a low, angry shout: “Get lost!”

That familiar voice immediately made Meng Chi’s heart tighten. Following the sound, he spotted the Lexus he had once driven—and, leaning against the car door, unsteady on his feet, his face flushed crimson, was Yu Tingzhi.

And standing opposite him was that suited man.

Meng Chi remembered the martini. Squinting his eyes, he strode over quickly.