After Reuniting, My Beautiful Ex-Lover Fishes for Me Every Day - Chapter 20

Chapter 20: Epiphyllum (Night-Blooming Cereus)

Yan Xu’s eyes reflected a glint of light from the bedside lamp. The distance between them was so small that Wei Changli could almost see the intricate patterns of his pupils.

Being stared at, the man didn’t speak; he seemed not yet fully awake, and he quietly closed his eyes again.

Wei Changli stiffly withdrew his hand, praying in his heart that the other had only instinctively opened his eyes because he was touched.

However, after a few seconds of buffering, Yan Xu, with his eyes still closed, reached out and tested Wei Changli’s body temperature.

Wei Changli leaned his head back against the pillow, wanting to dodge, but was held firmly in place.

The man’s voice was very soft: “Don’t move.”

Wei Changli froze. Knowing that his clandestine actions had been clearly felt by the person involved, his expression became somewhat awkward.

After checking his temperature, Yan Xu placed his hand on the young man’s wrist, feeling the emotional fluctuations in his heart, and raised his eyes.

Wei Changli’s gaze instinctively drifted elsewhere. Suddenly realizing something, he asked: “You know how to take a pulse?”

“Just the basics,” Yan Xu didn’t explain much, only saying, “Someone in the family knows how.”

Wei Changli had long heard that the Yan family was full of talented people; the clan was born with certain intellectual traits that surpassed ordinary people. Three years ago, Yan Xu would occasionally reveal random skill sets, so Wei Changli wasn’t surprised.

Yan Xu: “Is there anywhere else you feel uncomfortable?”

Wei Changli shook his head. To be honest, he didn’t even remember what had happened at the hospital; he only had a vague, distressing impression before running into Yan Xu by some twist of fate.

Not long ago, he had uttered harsh words about “parting ways for good,” yet less than a week later, he was collapsing into the other’s arms. Wei Changli felt a bit of a loss of face, but given the circumstances, he couldn’t exactly give a cold shoulder to the man who had rescued him. He could only say: “I don’t like going to hospitals… I’m fine now that I’ve recovered.”

Wei Changli had been this way since childhood. According to his brother, Wei Changjun, the cause was a kidnapping he experienced as a young boy.

A transnational human trafficking gang had used him to threaten the Wei family. Thinking the ransom wouldn’t be paid, they prepared to harvest his organs—while he was still alive. By the time little Wei Changli was rescued, he had been frightened senseless. It took a long time for him to recover, but the trauma was irreversible.

Yan Xu knew about this deep-seated habit of avoiding doctors, yet he had never initiated substantial treatment—perhaps because he didn’t want to use psychological intervention to reawaken painful childhood memories.

Compared to this chronic ailment that wasn’t easily cured, he was more concerned with why Wei Changli was in the hospital in the first place. He took a miniature glucose meter from the nightstand and, without brooking any argument, pricked a drop of blood from the young man’s fingertip.

Wei Changli flinched from the sting and looked at him with some dissatisfaction.

Seeing that his overall blood sugar levels had returned to a normal threshold, Yan Xu’s expression relaxed slightly. He said: “I heard you’ve been in a fasting state for at least two days.”

Wei Changli silently withdrew his finger and gave a muffled “Mm.”

Yan Xu said slowly: “Can you tell me why?”

The man’s voice was very soothing—on the surface, a sign of great patience—but strangely, Wei Changli could sense the emotion Yan Xu was suppressing.

None of your business.

Wei Changli wanted to say that, but after thinking it over, he decided against it. He used the same excuse Zhai Wo had used to deceive people: “I took that Zhuohua advertisement; the weight requirements for actors are very strict.”

Yan Xu didn’t say whether he believed him or not, only speaking in a business-like tone: “From now on, carry some sugar in your pocket. Fruit candy is best; it raises blood sugar faster.”

Wei Changli gave a perfunctory response, knowing he couldn’t fool Yan Xu at all.

His hands unconsciously clasped together. He weighed his options for a long time before squeezing a faint truth from his throat: “It’s because… I can’t find Mischief anymore.”

Yan Xu paused upon hearing this.

“Mischief is gone,” Wei Changli’s palm was pressed into shallow pits by his own fingers. “I searched for him for so long. At first, it was just me, then I hired people, but there was no result… It’s like he doesn’t want me anymore.”

The expression on Yan Xu’s face receded like a silent, subtly timed tide.

“I had negotiated a price, but the people helping to find the cat got annoyed and raised the price on the spot. I paid it. The landlord came to press for rent—his family had an emergency, it was urgent—so I paid that too… and then I had no savings left.”

The former Young Master Wei spoke about his “poverty” with an almost resigned attitude, adding:

“I took that commercial job. I was originally just an extra, the ‘work now, pay later’ type. It was impossible for that money to arrive early, so I went hungry for two days… It’s not like I ate nothing, I had a little to pad my stomach, so the sudden fainting… even I find it quite miraculous.”

Yan Xu’s lips moved, about to say something, when Wei Changli suddenly remembered something and added:

“Going to the hospital probably involved an ambulance. Xiao Zhai probably covered it for me? I haven’t earned any money yet, and now I’m in debt… but since I signed a contract, it should count as a work injury, right? Why… why are you looking at me like that?”

Wei Changli looked up inadvertently, meeting Yan Xu’s heavy gaze, and his tone wavered.

Noticing his look, Yan Xu stared back for a long while before choosing his words carefully: “The money spent looking for Mischief—can we split it?”

Wei Changli was stunned. Thinking that the other was speaking in such a tone probably out of concern for the “settling of scores” from his previous visit, he rubbed his nose awkwardly.

“Sure.” After all, it was a cat they had raised together; Wei Changli didn’t refuse.

Thinking of Mischief, his voice grew hoarse: “I was just worrying about not being able to find him. If you have time, then… then help look for him.”

Another silence.

After a moment, Yan Xu said, “Okay.”

Wei Changli raised his eyes, looking thoughtful.

Regarding what had happened to Mischief, Yan Xu did not want to puncture this bloody wound at a time when Wei Changli had nothing left and had pinned all his emotions on the cat. It would do no good for the deadly stress responses that occurred from time to time.

During this period, Yan Xu had sent people to investigate, but that area was a chaotic transit point for all sorts of people. The rental house happened to be in a surveillance blind spot. Even with the power of the Police Commissioner’s office, there were no results.

Yan Xu had even considered using external means—without alarming Wei Changli—to get him away from that peril-filled rental. However, the police department in charge of maintaining stability and security disagreed. The investigators believed that such a chaotic environment was more conducive to making the Wei family fugitives lower their guard. Just because the cat-killing stalker couldn’t be traced didn’t mean other movements after increased surveillance couldn’t be.

In other words, the police investigators were using Wei Changli, the last lead to the Wei family, as bait. Yan Xu, after all, was not a leader of that specific department and had no right to interfere with their decisions.

“What are you thinking about?”

Wei Changli’s voice came from beside his ear. Yan Xu snapped back to reality and saw the young man staring at him without blinking, as if trying to see something in the depths of his eyes.

The young man’s sharpness was extraordinary. While Yan Xu considered a reason to rationalize his distraction, Wei Changli suddenly leaned closer. The sharpness that had been temporarily masked by illness suddenly showed signs of erupting. His gaze, in the soft halo of the lamp, seemed to glint with the coldness of snow, carrying a probing chill.

“What are you thinking about?” he repeated.

“Nothing.” Yan Xu realized that allowing Wei Changli to probe further would definitely not help settle the stress response that had just subsided. So, he denied it and reached out to help him lie back down, only to have his hand swatted away.

The atmosphere between the two, which had been in a strange balance, suddenly dropped in temperature.

Actually, Yan Xu’s change in expression just now had been extremely subtle, like the ripple caused by a one-ounce feather brushing across the water’s surface. Yet Wei Changli could sense a complex web of emotions from that faint change—emotions whose final destination was a thread of hidden, unexpressed sorrow.

“Do you think… Mischief is dead?”

Unexpectedly, when Wei Changli spoke again, his voice wasn’t irritable; instead, it contained an extremely faint element of cautiousness, like someone trying hard to recount a nightmare in a state of daze.

Death. A word he had spent these days searching frantically, never daring to stop for a moment, to the point of exhausting his physical strength just to escape it.

Mischief was all he had left in his current life. Relying on a cat for survival always sounded a bit absurd, but it was the truth.

Yan Xu looked back at him. Logic coldly issued a warning: the optimal response was to fabricate any reason to explain his distraction and to use absolute determination to embellish the hollow lie that “Mischief is still in this world” to soothe Wei Changli’s precarious emotions—but his entire voice was choked in his throat. Upon seeing the other’s trembling eyelashes, he was suddenly struck speechless.

“He’s not dead,” Wei Changli’s fingertips had long ago dug into his palms, and that familiar yet unknown sense of nausea surged up again. He suddenly grabbed Yan Xu’s wrist, repeating obsessively, “Mischief won’t die.”

Yan Xu pulled the man into his embrace, calmly guiding him to breathe in an orderly fashion. Wei Changli’s entire body had begun to shake abnormally, but when the familiar scent of Epiphyllum from the man’s body entered his nostrils, it had an unexpectedly soothing effect on him.

Slowly, Wei Changli calmed down within this warmth-scented air, like a lucid wandering soul suddenly dragged back into its shell.

For a moment, he began to suspect that this fragrance—which lingered on Yan Xu year-round—contained some medicinal sedative component, and a potent one at that, capable of suppressing emotions on the verge of boiling over.

Through the shirt, Yan Xu lightly patted his arched back, speaking softly in this calm yet agonizing silence: “To find Mischief, shouldn’t you take care of yourself first?”

Wei Changli didn’t answer, only using force to push the other away. He tidied up his loss of composure and said hoarsely to dismiss him: “Get out.”

Yan Xu didn’t let go until he confirmed that the other’s emotions were stable and there was no major issue. He followed his wishes, stood up to leave, and closed the door behind him.

The room was silent, with only the small bedside lamp casting a soft halo on the wall.

Wei Changli buried himself completely under the quilt, imagining himself as a cocoon that could neither see nor hear, hoping this action would provide a bit of security.

After this ordeal, his already overextended physical strength was completely drained. With the dark and warm environment combined with the long-lingering scent of Epiphyllum, he actually closed his eyes and fell asleep again.

This sleep wasn’t long or particularly steady. Wei Changli was soon awakened by the sound of the wind hitting the window frame. He sat up, moving his joints that felt as if they were rusted, and looked out the window. It was pitch black outside, the wind unabated; he expected tomorrow would not be a nice day.

Wei Changli got out of bed and pushed the door open to go downstairs for a glass of hot water. Except for the wind whistling through it, the entire house was silent. The other rooms on the second floor were closed; he didn’t know if Yan Xu was still there, so he lightened his steps as he went downstairs.

He poured the water. As the hot liquid entered his throat, Wei Changli finally felt his throat was a bit more comfortable, and he tilted his head to drain the glass. He checked his phone; it was four in the morning. He debated whether to leave now or wait until dawn.

Should I tell him…

Wei Changli hesitated. He stood in the empty living room when something suddenly nuzzled his pant leg.

In the middle of the night, this experience was truly a bit terrifying. A series of goosebumps rose on his arms. He looked down and met the eyes of a small, fluffy creature.

It was a kitten with a familiar coat pattern.