GBROTAH CH91

The early morning sunlight pierced through the window, its rays falling into the room. The person sleeping on the bed seemed to sense the light, their brow furrowing unconsciously. They murmured a few indistinct words and buried their head deeper into the pillow.

Like a dozing cat finding the light too harsh, using its paw to cover its eyes.

The next second, a black shadow climbed up from the corner of the wall, extending upwards. In an instant, blackness covered the entire window, and the room plunged into darkness, as black as the dead of night.

Xie Yuanxing’s brow slowly relaxed, and he fell into a deep sleep again.

After an unknown amount of time, the eyeballs under his thin eyelids began to move. He slowly opened his eyes, and light streamed in.

Xie Yuanxing was still not fully awake when he sat up in bed. “Shen Bianye, I want to drink water.”

As he spoke, there was no response from outside. Xie Yuanxing yawned, raised his voice a little, and called out again.

The room was quiet. No one answered. The person on the bed blinked slowly, their eyes gradually clearing.

How could he forget?

Shen Bianye was already dead.

Xie Yuanxing lost the mood to get up and lay back down on the bed. His body was very tired, and the soft bed gently received him.

So tired, he didn’t want to do anything. Let’s just sleep a little longer.

He closed his eyes, but he wasn’t sleepy at all. His stomach was protesting, growling with hunger. Xie Yuanxing reached for the phone by his bed and only then realized it was already eleven in the morning.

No wonder he was so hungry.

Thinking this, he had no intention of getting up to cook or go out to eat.

Xie Yuanxing lay on his side on the bed, his hand between his face and the pillow, his cheeks soft and slightly squished. His other hand held his phone, as if he were playing with it, but the screen remained on the system’s home screen.

On his phone, this screen interface was a photo of him and Shen Bianye together.

Shen Bianye had been worried that he wouldn’t be able to move on, afraid that he would be sad if he saw him. Before he died, he had personally put away everything that showed his likeness, telling him to open it and look only when he was no longer sad when he thought of Shen Bianye.

If he really couldn’t bear it, he could also take a peek. That’s what Shen Bianye had said.

This was only the first day. Xie Yuanxing stared at the system wallpaper of this new phone, tracing the image of Shen Bianye in the photo on his phone.

He stared at the wallpaper for a long time, until his eyes felt dry. Only then did he slowly blink. When he looked away, he saw the shadow below his arm.

Grayish-black, on the pillow and the bedsheet, along his body, forming a shadowy outline.

It was normal for a person to have a slight shadow when lying in bed. Xie Yuanxing just felt that the color was a little dark. He reached out and touched the shadow on the bedsheet, then withdrew his attention.

Xie Yuanxing, who had just lost his lover, had also lost his keen perception of his surroundings. Subconsciously, he felt that something was not right, but his brain ignored it.

To the point that he didn’t notice that when his hand was still a small distance from the bedsheet, a black tentacle had extended from the shadow and licked his fingers.

What he couldn’t perceive even more was that under his body, a large area of the bedsheet was pitch black. It wasn’t the bed that was supporting him, but a black shadow.

His bare ankles, his long, slender, fair neck, and the sliver of a narrow waist revealed where the corner of his clothes had curled up, all fell into the perception of the black shadow.

All were being toyed with, being licked and kissed.

Xie Yuanxing, sleeping on the bed, slowly began to feel an itch on his body, a strange itch, as if something were nibbling at his skin.

He couldn’t sleep anymore. Xie Yuanxing sat up with a frown. The black shadow quickly retreated. When he turned to look, the bed was clean and white.

Was it time to change the bedsheets?

But in his memory, this set of bedsheets had only been changed a few days ago.

The sound of his phone ringing interrupted Xie Yuanxing’s thoughts. He answered the call, and an enthusiastic voice came from the other end:

“Hello, delivery service. Your takeout has arrived. Can you open the door to pick it up? Or should I leave it at your door?”

Xie Yuanxing was stunned for a moment. “I didn’t order takeout.”

The delivery person was also stunned. “I looked at the order, it’s the right address. Are you Mr. Xie?”

Xie Yuanxing pursed his lips. “I am.”

He got up and walked to the door to open it. The delivery person at the door was wearing a suit, holding the food with white gloves. After seeing him, he handed over the takeout. “Hello, your takeout. Enjoy your meal.”

Xie Yuanxing reached out and took it, speaking politely, “Thank you.”

The delivery person was about to say “you’re welcome” when he suddenly felt a wave of coldness, as if he had fallen into an ice cave. He shivered in the summer heat.

The feeling came and went quickly. In just an instant, the door closed in front of him, and the cold feeling disappeared.

The delivery person looked at the closed door in front of him, then turned to look at the corridor behind him. Was it a cross-draft? It must be, right?

With a door in between, Xie Yuanxing placed the takeout on the table and untied the exquisitely packaged bag.

Sea bream, pan-fried bullfrog legs, shrimp balls, a bowl of golden rice, and a dessert.

Out of place with all this was a thermos. He opened it and saw steam slowly rising from the mouth of the cup. There was nothing inside but a cup of warm water.

Xie Yuanxing was stunned. He subconsciously looked up. It was very empty. Besides him, there was no one else here.

He pursed his lips tightly, almost forming a straight line.

, am I going crazy?

Xie Yuanxing had a habit of drinking a cup of warm water when he got up. This meal was probably ordered by Shen Bianye before he died. Was he worried that he wouldn’t eat properly during this time?

How could he have even thought of him waking up late today?

Xie Yuanxing pulled out a chair and sat down. He sat alone at the dining table and slowly finished all the food.

The dark phone was placed on the side, and one after another, messages and missed calls were swallowed up.

Zhou Chao: “Are you awake? The delivery guy said he couldn’t reach you. Are you okay? Are you doing all right?”

Zhou Chao: “The takeout was ordered by Shen Bianye before he died. No matter what, you still have to eat. The morning delivery guy couldn’t reach you, and you didn’t answer your phone for the noon one either.”

Shen Bianye?

Who’s that?

A tall, dark shadow appeared behind Xie Yuanxing. He looked at the messages and deleted them one by one. He wanted to find information about this person from other places on his phone, but he couldn’t find any trace no matter how much he searched.

The dark shadow tutted silently and put the phone back.

And from Xie Yuanxing’s perspective, his phone had been on the table the whole time, not moving at all.

After eating, he went into a daze again. After thinking for a while, he got up and turned on the robot vacuum, then walked to the balcony and watered a foxtail grass.

He and Shen Bianye had been together for nine years. In those nine years, they had traveled, had fun, skied, dived, went to Antarctica to see penguins, went hiking, read useless but funny books, and carefully planted a foxtail grass seed that had been blown into his hand by the wind.

The memories were still there, and the foxtail grass had already grown into shape, but he was the only one squatting here, looking at how the foxtail grass was growing.

Xie Yuanxing had wanted to plant this foxtail grass. The wind had blown the seed into his palm, a gift from the wind.

And he felt that after it grew, it would be fluffy, like the tail of a cat or dog, and it would be green.

Shen Bianye had laughed at him, but he had still actively prepared a flowerpot, hired a professional flower and grass cultivator, and consulted on how to grow foxtail grass. He conscientiously took pictures every day to send to the horticulturalist, and he had raised a common weed from the roadside with the same care as if it were a rare and precious flower.

Xie Yuanxing, on the other hand, became a hands-off manager. But later, Shen Bianye’s health deteriorated rapidly, and this pot of foxtail grass became his responsibility.

Even later, there were many things, and he couldn’t take care of it anymore, and he also forgot to take this pot of already grown foxtail grass to the hospital for Shen Bianye to see.

On the empty balcony, Xie Yuanxing squatted on the ground, looking at this pot of foxtail grass.

He reached out and fiddled with it, and so, the foxtail grass began to sway gently.

Xie Yuanxing pursed his lips and smiled. “See, a little cat is wagging its tail.”

See?

Who’s looking?

Is baby letting him see?

The dark shadow stood silently behind Xie Yuanxing, unusually conflicted. He was very afraid that appearing rashly would scare his baby, but baby had spoken to the empty room twice today. Had he discovered his existence?

Or was baby too lonely and liked to talk to himself?

He was still struggling with it when he saw the smile on Xie Yuanxing’s face slowly disappear, turning sour, like a soaked lemon, from which tears could flow with just a taste.

A subtle panic rose in his heart. Without time to think, he reached out and also fiddled with that foxtail grass.

The movement was urgent, and the foxtail grass swayed at a high frequency.

Xie Yuanxing stared blankly at the foxtail grass in front of him, which was swaying rapidly in the wind. The tail was wagging so fast, as if someone were responding to him—look, look, a little dog is wagging its tail.

Xie Yuanxing bit his lip hard, closed his eyes, and suppressed the sourness in his eyes. He got up and left the balcony.

Returning to the bedroom, the bedsheet was still as he had left it.

Xie Yuanxing still remembered the strange itch on his body just now, but he didn’t want to change this set of bedsheets for the time being.

It was very clean, and… Shen Bianye had slept on it. It still carried Shen Bianye’s scent.

Xie Yuanxing was a beta. He didn’t need scents to comfort him. He didn’t need to be like Shen Bianye during his susceptible period, lying in a pile of his clothes, sniffing obsessively and crazily, when he wasn’t back home.

But at this moment, he lay back down on the bed, clenched his fists, and grabbed the thin quilt, sniffing the area to the right side of the quilt.

A very faint smell of embers, like it had been roasted by a flame.

It was Shen Bianye’s scent.

Xie Yuanxing didn’t have scent glands and wouldn’t be excited by this faint smell, but he slowly reached out his hand, and like Shen Bianye, he began to comfort himself.

During Shen Bianye’s susceptible period each year, the scene Xie Yuanxing often saw when he came home from work was his clothes scattered messily on the bedsheet, with Shen Bianye lying on top, wrapped in a close-fitting piece of clothing, moving up and down.

Xie Yuanxing would blush every time he saw it. Now, recalling it, his already sour eyes slowly became wet. He imitated Shen Bianye even more closely, even wrapping himself in the quilt.

Where he couldn’t see, a dark shadow silently covered the quilt. Tentacles extended from the quilt, touching, wrapping, and sliding with Xie Yuanxing’s clumsy rhythm.

Xie Yuanxing suddenly clamped his legs together. His mind was hazy, and something was blurring his perception, making him unaware that in the wet and soft place, the fabric of the quilt was slowly being squeezed in.

The dark shadow hidden in the darkness had an excited and sticky look in its eyes. It licked its lips silently, its tone strange, “Baby, how did you get so hungry?”

“Shall I let you eat the real thing tonight?”

Xie Yuanxing couldn’t hear. He was like a cooked red shrimp, arching his body in embarrassment, his breathing a blurry pant.