LCP Ch 9

Liang Ce pulled his mask up higher to cover more of his face. He pushed open the door: nobody was home, only a dog.

Chi An wasn’t off work yet. He let out a breath of relief, yet felt a trace of disappointment—Liang Ce couldn’t quite understand himself. Fortunately, the dog rushed over in time to interrupt his train of thought. Chi An’s dog was named Yaoyao, with the full name being Money Tree. So every time it wagged its tail into a full propeller spin like right now, it seemed particularly auspicious.

Yaoyao had taken a great liking to Liang Ce recently. The last time Liang Ce had walked the dog with Chi An before he started sleeping at the company, he mentioned that although he often saw people saying dogs were clingy, he had never met a dog that clung to him growing up: “Dogs don’t really like being held by me. Even when I place them on my lap very carefully, it doesn’t work. Why is that, Doctor?”

Chi An had smiled: “Yaoyao loves being held; it’ll jump right into your arms on its own initiative. Let me teach you—just say ‘jump up.'”

Unbuckling the dog’s collar for a moment, Liang Ce had stood across from it and said rather uncertainly, “Jump up!”

The Border Collie leaped toward him with crisp agility and was caught securely in Liang Ce’s arms. The fifty-plus-pound dog excitedly licked his face, as if feeling it could finally trust humanity again.

Completely oblivious to the excitement in Yaoyao’s heart, Liang Ce was astonished by how easily one could feel happy simply by having their arms filled. For a moment, he even forgot to play the part of the person Chi An loved more, his voice turning light: “So impressive! When did you teach it?”

A fleeting stiffness crossed Chi An’s expression as he brushed it off: “While you were at work. Border Collies learn things very fast.”

Then he quickly shifted the topic: “It’s gotten fat again recently and feels very heavy. Hurry up and put it down.”

“It’s not heavy.” Liang Ce didn’t let go, letting the Border Collie nudge his neck with its head. Amused by Yaoyao’s shameless devotion, Chi An stroked the dog’s head and asked, “Is it really that comfortable?”

Stealing a glance at him, Liang Ce played a little trick and asked, “Why don’t you try?”—He wanted to hold Chi An like this, too.

“That won’t do,” to his surprise, Chi An said seriously. “If you hold me like this, I’ll get an erection.”

Then he even pressed: “Wouldn’t you?”

Liang Ce’s hands trembled, causing the Border Collie to slide down halfway. He took the opportunity to set the dog back on the floor, feeling that this winter was a bit too hot. “Why did you study veterinary medicine?” He shifted the topic as well.

“Cornell doesn’t have an undergraduate veterinary program; you have to finish undergrad before you can apply. I majored in Animal Science for undergrad and spent some time interning on a farm in between,” Chi An took back the leash Liang Ce had reattached, talking as Yaoyao pulled him along. “Back then, I felt that vets get hurt very easily, but being able to save small animals through being hurt felt so magical.”

Chi An seemed to regard getting hurt as something worth looking forward to, which made Liang Ce feel uneasy. Tightening his grip on Chi An’s free hand, he heard him continue: “…But not every injury was for the sake of saving animals. Once, after I helped vaccinate a horse, the farm owner allowed me to ride a couple of laps. Unexpectedly, the horse got spooked and bolted onto the highway. Fearing it would get hit by a car, I pulled on the reins with all my might, only to get thrown onto the road instead.”

Liang Ce looked at him intently. Thinking of how this story had eventually been warped in rumors, he felt a surge of anger. After a moment of silence, he asked what he wanted to know most: “So how did you get back? Did anyone take you to the hospital?”

Chi An shook his head: “No, I limped all the way back, and even got scolded.”

Just then, Yaoyao went over to the grass to check its “social feed.” Liang Ce and Chi An stopped in place, letting the retractable leash extend. Liang Ce lowered his head and kissed the top of Chi An’s head.

“If only I had known you back then,” he said softly.

Chi An could utter plenty of dirty talk, but he couldn’t hold up against a kiss packed with deep affection. Lowering his eyes, he allowed himself to reveal just a tiny bit of loss and gloom: “If you had known me, I could have called you to vent after getting scolded.”

Liang Ce followed his lead to complete the story: “Was the internship location far from the university?”

“Not very far.”

“Then before the phone call even ended, I would have already arrived.”

Chi An couldn’t help drifting into a fantasy: lying on the highway in deep pain, barely dragging himself to the roadside to call Liang Ce: “I fell off a horse!” The moment he said that, he would definitely cry, and a not-yet-so-composed Liang Ce on the other end would comfort him in a panic, constantly promising he’d be there right away.

Wouldn’t that be far too wonderful? Snapping back to his senses, he pulled himself out of the fairytale-like storyline and comforted himself: “Even if you arrived, there’s nothing you could have done.”

“I could have accompanied you to the hospital and held you the entire time,” Liang Ce stated with absolute certainty.

Just then, Yaoyao returned. Seeing both its owners standing there with flushed faces, even the dog was at a loss for words.

Chi An recalled his friend’s firm assertion: Hugging someone you like feels amazing! Hugging is just for the sake of hugging! Could it really be like that? He really wanted to try it.

Having unexpectedly learned a piece of Chi An’s past, Liang Ce was flattered and instinctively offered his own in exchange: “I actually really wanted to go to Cornell for summer school during my sophomore year.”

Chi An’s attention was drawn away by this sentence: “Why didn’t you come?” He thought about the timeline… Was it because he was in a relationship?

“Because my mom kicked me out of the house,” Liang Ce explained calmly, making a major event sound trivial. “Since I didn’t have the money to go, I didn’t go.”

As they walked past a streetlamp, Chi An looked up at him under the dim yellow light. Liang Ce could feel that the other person had so many questions to ask, yet Chi An ultimately asked nothing. Liang Ce began weighing his options: Should I keep talking? Why was I kicked out? How did I finish undergrad? Just how much have I changed… Would the answers to these questions be what Chi An wants to hear? Probably not. He didn’t want Chi An to know that the old Liang Ce was too different from who he was now—not the type he liked. He feared Chi An would lose interest.

Without elaborating further, he let his previous answer serve as the conclusion to the topic, opening a new paragraph naturally: “I might be extremely busy next week… If I don’t have time to come back, I’ll just sleep at the company.”

“Okay.” Chi An was still looking at him, tightening his grip on Liang Ce’s hand, offering a promise with overwhelming solemnity: “But I’ll be waiting at home for you to come back.”

Packing his suitcase now, Liang Ce recalled Chi An’s answer from that day. He realized in hindsight that his lover had used that sentence to counter his past ordeal—upon hearing that he had once been kicked out of his home, Chi An told him that he would be waiting at home for him to return. Was Chi An feeling distressed for him? Asking nothing that day wasn’t because he didn’t want to know, but because he was afraid I’d feel sad?

Should I have said a bit more back then? Zipping up his luggage, Liang Ce left a quick meal behind, said goodbye to Yaoyao, closed the door, and got into the car, his mind still wandering with these thoughts.

Arriving at the airport and meeting up with Lu Xi, Liang Ce temporarily slipped back into work mode. While waiting for Lu Xi to order noodles at the lounge bar, he found a small sofa to sit down and reply to messages. An acquaintance who was an independent agent asked if Lu Xi had any upcoming content topics suitable for a hair dryer product placement. Building a plan from scratch, Liang Ce aligned several unexecuted topics and sent them all over, using rebate incentives to tease the possibility of an annual framework deal. Typing at lightning speed with fluent emoji usage, he exited the chat box every time he waited for a reply, scrolling up and down the screen to check his pinned chat.

The person in his pinned chat was still named “Propose to him.” After Chi An changed it last time, Liang Ce never changed it back, so he could be reminded every day.

While packing his bag earlier, he had messaged Chi An to say he was going on an unexpected business trip to Ganzhou and would likely return tomorrow night, but Chi An hadn’t replied at all. Usually, this meant Chi An was busy saving another small animal, so Liang Ce could only wait in line.

Twenty minutes later, they left the lounge and arrived at the gate just as boarding began. Scanning his electronic boarding pass, Liang Ce walked past his seat absentmindedly—contrary to his usual self, he didn’t even hear the flight attendant ask if he needed his coat hung up, keeping his head down as he stared at his phone.

With takeoff imminent, a flight attendant came over to remind him to switch his phone to airplane mode. Liang Ce had just pulled down the control center when he suddenly remembered something. Quickly switching back to the chat interface, he let the final two lines send out:

I forgot to leave a note.

Breakfast is in the microwave. ♥

Half an hour later, Chi An finished performing surgery on a Maine Coon. Walking out and opening his phone, he saw the heart emoji at the end of the message and felt as though his heart had been struck by an arrow.

Liang Ce was so cute. Chi An wanted to kiss him immediately.

In his urgency, he called twice, but the phone was turned off—he had likely taken off.

Chi An opened a flight booking app to check how long it took to fly to Ganzhou from here. Calculating the time the message was sent, it would probably take another three hours. So he opened the stopwatch, staring at the numbers ticking by one by one on his phone, only allowing his eyes to blink to the rhythm of the jumping digits. His hand unconsciously reached for his own earlobe, his fingernails pinching into the flesh again and again—”Chi An, I’m heading out after my shift!” His colleague walked over with a backpack to say goodbye. Chi An snapped awake, quickly lowering his hand, exiting the clock interface, and showing a proper smile to say goodbye to the intern.

He seemed a bit abnormal; luckily, Liang Ce hadn’t seen it.

Chi An was re-experiencing the boundary between normal and abnormal. During this time dating Liang Ce, he did many true-or-false judgment questions every day: staring with his eyes open at Liang Ce sleeping for an hour, then immediately pretending to sleep the moment Liang Ce woke up—did this count as loving him, or count as being a pervert? Scrolling through Liang Ce’s ex-boyfriend’s Weibo while tapping “not interested”—did this count as loving him, or count as being a pervert? Wanting Liang Ce to tattoo his name on his neck—did this count as loving him, or count as being a pervert?

Chi An had been a pervert for a long time and was only an extremely novice normal person, only able to confirm bit by bit which behaviors needed correcting so that people wouldn’t find him disgusting. Normally, he would go to Mo Fan. Mo Fan had the most wholesome, healthy relationship Chi An had ever seen and would patiently resolve his confusion. Thus, Chi An often asked such unabashed questions: “When I saw him turning a pen in front of his computer with a frown, I just wanted to drop to my knees and blow him—does this count as—”

“I beg of you! Before saying these things next time, ask me if I’m on speakerphone! My girlfriend is right beside me!” Sensing that his wholesome relationship was about to perish, Mo Fan yelled desperately into the phone: “This counts as you being insanely horny, okay?! Your heart is the same color as your hair! Next time say something that can actually be written down—hanging up!”

Chi An learned his lesson: that one was probably a pervert thing. So later, he merely stole the pen that Liang Ce had twirled.

Now, that pen was in Chi An’s pants pocket. Whenever he didn’t need to wear medical gloves, he kept one hand in his pocket, looking very cool on the surface, while secretly touching his boyfriend’s pen with his index and middle fingers. He didn’t know how to spin it; he just held it between his fingers.

Leaning against the corridor wall like this, Chi An calmed down as he rubbed the pen. Just as he started pondering how to reply to Liang Ce, he saw his colleague return: “Chi An, there’s a kid at the door holding a dog. He says he knows you…”

Chi An froze for a second: “Knows me?”

It wasn’t raining outside, but a boy soaked through stood in the lobby, his hair and sweater exuding a foul odor, tightly holding a small white dog whose hind legs were a bloody mess. Chi An picked up his pace alongside his colleague toward the boy. The puppy seemed to recognize Chi An as the person who had saved it last time, its head moving weakly.

It was that same Maltese that had suffered from parvo last time. Chi An had cared for it for nine days, and it had been discharged only a few weeks ago. When the boy took it away back then, the puppy could already jump and run around, its tail wagging like a large piece of cotton candy hiding a spring inside.

Chi An furrowed his brows. His intuition told him something was off about this boy, but there was no time to overthink it now. Prying the puppy’s mouth open slightly, he saw that its gums were practically pale and its jaws were slowly clenching shut: “There might be internal bleeding; we need an ultrasound right away.” Making the diagnosis while detaining his colleague, the two led the boy toward the examination room together: “What happened?”

“I… I went out to walk Xiaofu today, and suddenly a motorcycle came speeding over. I don’t know what happened either, but by the time I snapped back to my senses, Xiaofu had already been sent flying…” The boy wiped his tears wildly with a sleeve stained with the puppy’s blood, whimpering in recollection, “That motorcycle didn’t stop at all… and I had no way to chase after it…”

Chi An glanced down—there was no collar on the puppy’s neck. How had the boy been walking the dog? Where was he walking it?

Before he had time to ask further, he went to operate the ultrasound and blood tests first, while his colleague took over the questioning: “Where are your parents?”

“My mom… passed away a few months ago. My dad is away on a business trip…” Speaking of his parents, the boy cried even louder.