Chapter 74: 第 74 章

It was late August. Chuan Da University and Chuan Shi University both started in September, so Fei Bolin had come early specifically to rent an apartment first.

He'd found a place online a couple days ago and set up a time with the agent. The moment they got off the bus today, he grabbed Wen Fu and all their bags and headed straight for the rental.

Back home he'd grilled the agent about every detail to avoid a wasted trip, so today was just about seeing it in person. If nothing major was wrong, they could basically sign and move in on the spot.

The station was far from the rental, but it was still noon and the agent had hours left before getting off. Fei Bolin grabbed a boxed lunch from a restaurant at the station, planning to let Wen Fu eat at the apartment while he went to look around.

After over an hour on the bus, they finally reached the Residential Complex.

Fei Bolin had called the agent on the way, and the guy was waiting for them at the gate.

The location was solid—right in the middle of the business and transit hub between the two universities, with everything around it: supermarkets, hospitals, parks, and close to a subway entrance. Fei Bolin had done his homework before coming.

The only downside was the size.

The listing said about fifty square meters, and at a thousand a month for that location, Fei Bolin thought fifty was a steal—his own place back in Rongzhou was only sixty. But when he asked, the agent said "about" fifty actually meant forty-five.

Well, alright, Fei Bolin figured—forty-five for a thousand a month in this area was still pretty rare.

But when they got there, those forty-five turned out to include shared hallway space and wall thickness. Actual living area was thirty-seven.

What does thirty-seven even mean? A tiny living room, a tiny bedroom, and a bathroom and kitchen so small that two people standing in them would feel cramped.

No wonder the rent was lower than other places nearby.

The only thing Fei Bolin couldn't give up was the soundproofing.

The apartment was special—tucked into the most out-of-the-way building in the complex. The developer hadn't wanted to waste the whole plot on greenery, so they'd squeezed a building in here. But it couldn't fit facing north-south like normal, so they'd oriented it east-west instead, awkwardly cutting across a big stretch of lawn, far from the other buildings and totally out of place.

Which meant noise here didn't carry to the other buildings.

Exactly what Wen Fu needed for practicing singing and playing.

Plus they were on the first floor. The agent said both the first and second floors belonged to the same landlord, who'd leased them out together to some out-of-towners planning to open a Management Studio. The offer wasn't high enough, but the landlord wanted to rent the whole thing at once, so they compromised—the landlord partitioned one of the units into this thirty-seven-square-meter suite, and the rest went to the out-of-towners. But those guys signed the contract, paid the deposit, then bailed halfway through opening the Management Studio, wanting to break the lease and get their deposit back. The landlord wouldn't refund and couldn't collect the rest of the rent, and the place was full of Management Studio equipment. Bound by the contract, he couldn't rent to anyone else. The two sides had been fighting it out ever since—probably wouldn't be resolved for a couple years.

Which meant for a long time, only Fei Bolin and Wen Fu would be living on these two floors. Practicing wouldn't bother anyone.

On top of that, the apartment had a brand-new Air Conditioner.

Their place in Rongzhou didn't have one, and neither did their high school. In summer, the only AC Wen Fu ever got was the few minutes he spent with Fei Bolin at the supermarket.

Fei Bolin knew Wen Fu hated the heat. Right after graduation this year, he'd already been browsing AC brands online.

But Wen Fu had accidentally seen Fei Bolin's notebook where he'd been calculating every future expense, and when he noticed Fei Bolin looking at ACs, he told him not to buy one.

"A fan's plenty," Wen Fu had said back then, sitting on the balcony during a power outage in an oversized sleeveless tee. "When it's hot, we eat watermelon."

Fei Bolin dropped it, but when he was looking for apartments, he specifically checked whether the listings had AC. When he saw this place had a brand-new one nobody had used, he was sold.

While he was weighing whether a thousand a month was worth it, he caught Wen Fu wandering around the small apartment, then drifting to the window to look out at the view.

He walked over, bent slightly, and looked out with him. The agent waited patiently behind them.

"You like it here?" Fei Bolin asked quietly.

Wen Fu nodded, his dark round eyes slowly scanning the green lawn outside.

"But it's tiny," Fei Bolin said.

"I like small houses," Wen Fu said. "If Bo-ge calls me, I can get to you fast."

Fei Bolin smiled down at him. "It'll get really sunny in the afternoon."

"I like the sun," Wen Fu said. "Bo-ge likes it here too."

Fine.

Fei Bolin actually liked it here too.

He turned to haggle with the agent.

The location was great, but the size and orientation made it hard to find willing tenants, and anyone who did rent would commit for a full year. The agent figured that out too, called the landlord, and got Fei Bolin to sign at nine-fifty a month.

Normally they'd have to wait until the landlord came to sign and handed over the keys the next day, but the agent saw all their luggage and figured they were college students who'd just arrived. He talked to the landlord and gave Fei Bolin his spare key so they could move in that night.

The apartment was fully furnished with water and electric, but it had been empty a while—dust everywhere.

After the agent left, Fei Bolin started cleaning. He sorted and organized every last item with sharp efficiency, and Wen Fu trailed behind him hauling water and handing him rags. After half an hour of busywork, the thirty-seven-square-meter apartment was transformed. Fei Bolin's touch made it feel spacious—looked like two people could live here with room to spare.

It was the height of summer, the sun brutal, and Fei Bolin had worked up a rare sweat.

Wen Fu cast a sneaky glance at the only Air Conditioner in the bedroom, itching to turn it on.

Fei Bolin noticed, dragged over their only plastic stool, climbed up, and wiped down every part of the AC he could reach. He looked down at Wen Fu: "Go ahead."

Wen Fu's eyes lit up. "Yeah!"

The click of the remote was short and satisfying.

Cool air rolled out in waves. Fei Bolin climbed down and shut the windows, and soon the whole place was cool.

Small had its perks—one AC cooled both the bedroom and the connected living room.

By four in the afternoon they were dizzy with hunger, crouching by the little tea table in the living room, wolfing down the boxed lunch between them.

Once they had a little energy back, Fei Bolin sent Wen Fu to shower and started unpacking, sorting all the daily necessities they'd brought from home.

Toothpaste, toothbrushes, clothes, shoes, sheets, blankets—even a lunchbox and band-aids. Anything Fei Bolin could sneak out of the house, he'd brought a little of it to Jin City. In less than an hour, the apartment he'd just emptied was packed full again.

When Fei Bolin went to wash up, Wen Fu did as he was told—took the trash downstairs, then stopped by the supermarket to grab noodles, a pile of seasonings, pots and bowls, and even hauled back another plastic stool.

Everything they'd brought to Jin City was carried by hand. Only Wen Fu's Guitar, Fei Bolin had shipped via Shunfeng—wouldn't arrive until the next day.

One boxed lunch had only half-filled them. Fei Bolin came out of the shower feeling fresh, ducked into the kitchen, and boiled up two big bowls of noodles. Then he sat on the plastic stool with Wen Fu and they silently demolished the food. So stuffed they slumped on the couch in silence for half an hour before Fei Bolin dragged Wen Fu off to wash up.

Finally, exhausted, they lay in bed and decided—revenge-style—to leave the AC on all night.

The room was cool in a way Wen Fu had never experienced back in Rongzhou.

He blinked at the dark ceiling. "Bo-ge?"

Fei Bolin was beat. A few seconds passed before he answered, voice low and drowsy.

"Hm?"

"This is our home from now on?"

"...Yeah." Fei Bolin's eyelids were fighting each other. "We'll live here through college."

Just before he dropped off, he remembered he hadn't finished his thought and mumbled the rest, unsure if Wen Fu heard: "After that, there'll be a real new home."

-

Poor people who suddenly come into money—if they don't have any sense of proportion, they'll suffer for it. Same logic applies elsewhere.

Like letting two kids who haven't had AC in over a decade blast it all night.

Next morning they dragged themselves up, stood in the bathroom brushing their teeth, sneezing back and forth at the mirror.

Within half a day, they'd both collapsed sick.

Fei Bolin rarely got sick, but this one time hit him harder than Wen Fu.

Splitting headache, took a fever reducer and held up for a day, then spiked again in the middle of the night.

Of course, Wen Fu wasn't doing much better.

Just a slightly lower fever than Fei Bolin.

One at 37.8, the other at 38.5.

So on the night of Fei Bolin's nineteenth birthday, they leaned on each other all the way to the hospital and sat head-to-head through a night of IV drips.

Three days of drips. After looking at the blood work, the doctor said besides the chill from sweating then getting blasted by AC, they also had a bacterial infection. After the IVs they'd need to pick up meds—three days' worth, three times a day.

The moment he saw licorice tablets on the prescription, Wen Fu earnestly told the doctor he felt perfectly fine after the drip—no back pain, no leg pain, could go run a kilometer—totally didn't need any more medicine.

The doctor listened to his sandpaper-rough voice, kicked him out, and insisted he take the meds.

First day back from the hospital, Fei Bolin was still wiped. Before going to wash up, he figured since they were both sick, they should shower separately for a while. So he took his own meds, watched Wen Fu swallow his, and left.

Coming back, he saw a few crumpled tissues in the trash can but didn't think much of it. He hurried Wen Fu to shower and collapsed into bed.

After the second day's drip, Fei Bolin was much better—still weak compared to normal, but his head was clear and his body didn't feel heavy. As for Wen Fu, aside from a hoarse voice, he was already bouncing around.

That night Fei Bolin took his meds with Wen Fu as usual, went to shower first, came back and saw the trash can—which had been clean before Wen Fu's shower—had another crumpled tissue in it after just ten minutes. He started thinking.

Third day at noon, after watching Wen Fu swallow his meds, Fei Bolin didn't leave. Arms crossed, he said: "Open your mouth."

Wen Fu clearly froze.

Then he pressed his lips together and opened: "Ah—"

Fei Bolin leaned in—no pills in his mouth, he'd actually swallowed them. He said nothing.

That evening's last dose, same routine—Fei Bolin took his and headed for the shower. Halfway there he suddenly turned back, walked as silently as he could, and just as he reached the bedroom door, caught Wen Fu with his head tipped back, spitting a pile of pills he'd hidden under his tongue into the trash, then grabbing tissues, crumpling them, and tossing them in to cover his tracks.

Fei Bolin took it all in, then calmly continued to the bathroom.

Fourth morning, Fei Bolin told Wen Fu: "Your voice still sounds bad. One more day of meds."

Wen Fu opened his mouth, his voice attacking Fei Bolin's ears like an erhu with a snapped string being forced to play: "My voice is fine."

Fei Bolin said flatly: "Either no more AC ever, or you take your meds today."

"..." Wen Fu drooped his head, muffled, and in a defeated, ugly voice croaked out: "I'll take them."

When it was time to take them, Wen Fu symbolically put the pills in his mouth, symbolically sipped water, and made a fake swallowing motion.

Logically Fei Bolin should have been satisfied and gone to wash dishes in the kitchen. But today he didn't move. First he praised him for being obedient, then sat across from him scrolling through his phone.

These past few days Fei Bolin had managed to join a few local part-time job groups. Whenever he had nothing to do, he scrolled through them looking for work he could do.

Group messages could keep him busy for ages. Fei Bolin could take his time, but Wen Fu couldn't wait—pills held in the mouth slowly dissolved, and the taste was awful.

Just as Wen Fu was about to crack, Fei Bolin closed his phone, stood up, gathered the dishes, and went to the kitchen.

Wen Fu exhaled in relief, eagerly hooked the trash can over with his foot, spit the pills out, and silently spat a few more times. Just as he was looking for water to rinse the bitter taste, in the quiet living room, Fei Bolin's ghostly voice drifted coldly from behind his head:

"Holding licorice tablets in your mouth. Not bitter?"

Wen Fu: "..."

Wen Fu: !!!

Wen Fu sat back down hard.

Wen Fu's eyes went wide.

Wen Fu gave Fei Bolin a live demonstration of being scared out of his fur.

Then got grabbed by the back of the neck and force-fed a pile of pills.

For the next three days, Wen Fu didn't dare play any tricks—took his meds obediently and recovered just in time for military training.

Both their schools required on-campus living during the month of military training. Only on weekends could they come home.

Fei Bolin was naturally easygoing with people—good-looking and easy to get along with. He hadn't had any conflicts with his classmates and had even won class monitor during training.

Wen Fu, on the other hand, wasn't exactly pleasant on the outside—good-looking but hard to get along with, cold and silent in how he handled things, and occasionally said things people didn't want to hear. For example, one night during a break in group training, a guy in his dorm publicly confessed to a girl he'd known less than a week. The girl stood silently in the middle of the rose-and-heart arrangement the guy had set up, not saying a word. Everyone in the dorm except Wen Fu was cheering him on, but in the end the girl turned him down.

Wen Fu got back to the dorm after training and heard his roommates comforting the guy.

"You're so handsome! She's the one with no taste!"

"She'll regret it later!"

"She doesn't get it now—laughing on a bicycle now, crying in a sports car later!"

"Honestly her looks don't even match yours. Good she didn't get with you, or you'd be the one losing out!"

"Yeah, Wen Fu, say something."

Wen Fu was holding his basin, about to go wash clothes on the balcony. Hearing someone call him, he turned to look at the guy being comforted and said: "She's really pretty."

The dorm went quiet for a second.

Wen Fu continued: "You're not good-looking."

"..."

"She was right to reject you."

"..."

He'd countered every single one of their points.

So Wen Fu got isolated by his dorm.

And so, while Wen Fu hadn't exactly had conflicts with people in his department, not many were willing to keep trying to talk to him after being brushed off repeatedly.

On the weekend Wen Fu came home and told Fei Bolin about it, Fei Bolin didn't comment much—just told him to check QQ more often and watch the class group for notices, so he wouldn't miss announcements nobody would bother telling him about and end up losing credit.

Wen Fu couldn't make friends and didn't want to, so Fei Bolin taught him to look after himself in college and just do what needed doing.

Fei Bolin's plan was simple: he wanted both of them to win every award they could, run for everything they could, and if nothing else, study hard for grades—do everything possible to get scholarships and postgrad recommendations.

As for Britain, a lot of things were still up in the air.

When his father's lawyer would contact him, when he'd have to go to Britain, what he'd have to do there—everything was unknown.

Xu Wei wasn't wrong. The Fei Corporation's domestic group had almost changed its surname to Xu. Half the partners had defected after Lin Yuanyi left. Fei Bolin's father was critically ill, having fallen into comas multiple times in recent years, with massive sums spent keeping him alive while the Xu Family used every excuse to dilute his shares and made him the legal representative of the company. By the time he realized, it was too late to fix. And his will—changing the heir to Fei Bolin after the younger son's death—was already too late to matter.

The Xu Family had peeked at the will long ago and exploited every loophole in it. Even the lawyer had been controlled through a mix of threats and bribery. If the Zou Family hadn't been unwilling to accept it and turned against the Xu Family, using Zou Qi to secretly get Fei Bolin's contact info, Xu Wei and his people would have completely run the show and voided the will.

But even though the lawyer tried everything to contact Fei Bolin, the Fei Family Estate was still a complete mess right now.

If Fei Bolin went to Britain, he wouldn't enjoy any benefits—he'd have to clean up the pile of messes his father had made.

The father's personal account's liquid assets had been swindled and siphoned by the Xu Family over the years, leaving only tens of millions. But the Xu Family's numerous fake accounts were all registered under his name. To take down the Xu Family, those fake accounts would have to come to light—and those tens of millions, compared to fake accounts with billions in flow, was like a fistful of cotton against a bottomless pit. Even dumping it all in wouldn't make a dent. And unfortunately, the father had changed the will and heir—if the Xu Family were exposed, the Fei Corporation would collapse, and Fei Bolin might even get sued alongside them and made to pay back debts.

Fei Bolin didn't want to think about any of it.

If the lawyer never contacted him again, it meant the Xu Family had completely shut him down. He'd just quietly go to college, work his part-time jobs, keep studying, and live well with Wen Fu.

If the lawyer did contact him—even with just a sliver of a chance to fight back—he'd take Wen Fu and head to Britain without hesitation.

Even if it meant bleeding himself dry, fighting until he had nothing left—he'd make Xu Wei kneel at Lin Yuanyi's grave and kowtow thirty times, and make every single member of the Xu Family pay for that half-urn of ashes.