Why is This Clingy Snow Leopard Acting So Innocent? - Chapter 52

Chapter 52: Sincerity — What to Do When Your Boyfriend Is Angry?

“…….”

Su Wen was stunned for a moment. Before he could say anything, a sharp clack echoed through the room—the porcelain bowl had snapped in half against the stone sink.

Yun Shu’s voice was heavy, his tone sounding like he was deliberately suppressing something: “Why did you exchange contact information with him?”

“Ah, so it’s that…” Sure enough, it was exactly as Su Wen suspected. He nodded, as if it were expected, then softened his voice and patiently explained, “He’s technically a colleague on this shoot. We might run into him again in the future.”

“Besides, he’s already married. There’s no need to be jealous of him, right? Hmm? Yun Shu?”

After he spoke, the air fell silent for a second.

Yun Shu turned around. His gaze landed on Su Wen, his eyes filled with an emotion Su Wen couldn’t quite decipher.

After a long while, he asked: “Why did you say you liked me?”

Su Wen’s heart skipped a beat. He froze where he stood.

“Since you were thinking about breaking up from the very beginning,” Yun Shu’s voice slowed down as he suppressed his emotions, each word sounding like an indictment, “Why did you say you liked me? Why did you start a relationship with me?”

Su Wen was stuck, paralyzed by the question. In reality, any defense at this point was useless. The words had already been spoken; there was no taking them back.

The silence stretched on, long enough for the drifting snow outside to begin drumming against the glass window in rhythmic waves. The tightly sealed house began to let in a trace of the mountain chill.

Yun Shu leaned his hands on the edge of the sink, head bowed. His gaze was fixed unblinkingly on the broken shards of the bowl still covered in soap suds.

A long time later, he straightened up, appearing to have regained his composure. He picked up the two pieces of porcelain, tossed them into the nearby trash can, and rinsed the foam from his hands.

Su Wen felt a rare sense of panic. He stood to the side, watching Yun Shu dry the edges of the sink. Yun Shu didn’t say another word. Even though his temperament seemed to have returned to normal, it felt as though those previous words were just a gust of wind—without a response, they had simply dissipated.

Su Wen wanted to say something, but the moment he opened his mouth, he reflexively swallowed his words as Yun Shu turned toward him.

“I’m going to sleep,” Yun Shu said.

He said he was going to sleep, but his feet carried him toward the small room in the corner. Su Wen couldn’t help but ask: “Aren’t you coming to the bedroom?”

“No.”

Before Su Wen could react, a sharp click followed, and silence reclaimed the house.

He stood there for a long time, realizing in hindsight that he had truly messed up. Before the realization of his mistake fully set in, a wave of late-coming guilt washed over him.

There was no one else around. The silence was so deep that only the crackle of firewood in the heater remained. He stood there blankly, instinctively looking at the tightly shut door in the distance, feeling an odd sense of displacement.

Ding—

His phone notification rang.

He opened it to see a reminder: Two-day countdown to Valentine’s Day. It was a notification he had set back when Yun Shu had a cold.

Su Wen tossed the phone aside, covered his face, and collapsed onto the bed. He didn’t even notice the charger cable poking painfully into his back.

A long time later, he grabbed his phone and opened the search bar.

— What to do when a boy is angry? Search result: Child Psychology.

Su Wen: “……”

A few seconds later, he exited and searched again, changing the content: What to do when your boyfriend is angry? Search result: Act cute / Coquetry.

Su Wen felt a headache coming on.

He tried another one: What to do when your boyfriend is angry because you mentioned breaking up? The results turned into sharing posts: How to cope when you’ve “acted out” so much your boyfriend actually leaves?

He was about to become a member of that specific community.

Among all the random, mismatched posts—some labeled for “1s” (Tops), some for “0s” (Bottoms), some waiting for a new flame, some flaunting their love—Su Wen finally found an answer that somewhat fit his situation: Demonstrate the sincerity of your apology.

Su Wen picked a burner account and followed up on a comment: How exactly do I do that?

He set the phone aside, expecting his question to sink into the digital abyss, but the phone dinged almost immediately.

The person replied: You can prepare an apology gift. At the very least, a sincere apology letter. Most importantly, it must be something you’ve prepared seriously.

Su Wen didn’t even need to think about it. In this desolate, snowy mountain wilderness, there were absolutely no conditions for preparing a gift. Even if the postal service came into the mountains, it was only once a month; this month’s window had likely just closed, and he’d have to wait another month for the next one. By the time he got a gift, the apology would be half a year late.

— What if there are no conditions for quickly preparing a gift?

The person seemed a bit impatient, perhaps thinking he lacked even a shred of sincerity: If you have no money, surely you know how to cook?

Su Wen held his phone in silence for a long while: I don’t know how to cook.

He waited for a long time, but no more messages came. Su Wen tossed the phone aside again, preparing to look for another way. Just as he was trying to think of something, his phone dinged again.

Su Wen hurried to open it: You useless thing. Just wash yourself clean and lie in bed waiting to be dealt with.

Are gay men nowadays all this aggressive?

Su Wen: “……”

Fine, he would consider cooking.

But in his entire life, the only reason he had ever entered a kitchen was to find snacks. Forget cooking—even knowing how to turn on the stove was a problem. At this moment, he finally remembered the kindness of the housekeeper auntie who used to come twice a day. She was truly an angel.

Fortunately, he still had her number.

When she received a call from her long-unseen employer, she was first surprised, and then even more surprised when he asked how to cook.

“Oh, baby! You want to cook?”

“Yeah, Auntie. Is there anything simple?”

The auntie thought for a long time, searching her brain for the most suitable thing to teach him: “How about frying an egg, baby?”

“That’s simple. You can definitely do that one.”

That was simple. He had seen her do it: heat the pan, add some oil, drop in an egg, fry it a bit, and done. So, he hung up and planned for tomorrow.

The problem now was that when he looked in the fridge, from top to bottom, there was nothing but meat and dried vegetables—some of which he couldn’t even identify.

“Are there any eggs at the patrol station?”

It was around seven or eight at night, not yet bedtime. It was noisy on Cheng Daozhi’s end; everyone except her was chirping away.

Su Wen heard a familiar voice in the background: “The eggs I bought last month, I brought them back. They finally arrived.”

A few seconds later, Cheng Daozhi said something to someone else and then replied: “If you want them, come get them tomorrow.”

“I’m going right now.”

“Oh,” Cheng Daozhi paused for a second. “What?”

Su Wen didn’t feel like explaining. He just said, “Remember to open the door in a bit,” and hung up.

He stood at the door. Outside was pitch black, but he could faintly see the lights of the patrol station in the distance. Having walked this path many times, it wasn’t too difficult.

Su Wen turned back, his gaze lingering for a few seconds on the tightly shut door in the corner, before turning and stepping into the darkness.

After the iron gate slammed shut behind him with a bang, he stood dazed for two seconds, only to be knocked off balance by a headwind.

Impulse is a devil. By the time he realized this, he had already walked a good distance. Because of the snow and the moonlight, the night on the snow mountain wasn’t completely pitch black.

Tap, tap, tap—

A sudden, light sound of footsteps echoed.

Su Wen took two more steps forward, and the sound followed.

Su Wen stopped; the sound stopped.

He held up the weak light of his phone’s flashlight and shone it all around, but found nothing.

Thump— Something suddenly darted out from the snow.

Su Wen was so startled by the sound that he staggered backward, slipped on the snow, and landed hard on the ground. He tremblingly pointed his phone toward the source of the noise and let out a massive sigh of relief.

It was a pika that had either been kicked out or had come out to forage in the middle of the night.

He stood up and prepared to keep walking. He thought the noise would surely stop, but the further he walked, the louder it became, and the louder it became, the faster he walked.

Su Wen was on the verge of a breakdown. Just as he was considering calling Cheng Daozhi to have someone come pick him up, a wolf’s howl echoed in the distance.

After the howl came several intermittent responses.

In his twenty-five years of life, this was the first time Su Wen had encountered such a situation. His whole body went rigid—he couldn’t tell if it was from the cold or the terror. He stood paralyzed, unable to move a single step, holding his phone up stiffly.

He thought that today there were only two possibilities: either he would freeze to death in this icy wasteland, or Yun Shu would realize he was missing and come out to rescue him.

The intermittent howling stopped, and the surroundings fell back into a heavy silence. Before he could recover, that light tap-tap sound drew closer and closer.

Su Wen instinctively wanted to run, but his legs wouldn’t obey. He collapsed onto the ground again. He had barely taken a step before he fell.

He turned around with difficulty. His phone had fallen to the ground at some point, leaving only a weak beam of light nearby. Su Wen didn’t have the heart to care about it; he propped himself up with one hand, slowly moving backward. He felt the sound getting closer, accompanied by a chill that seeped slowly out from his body.

The moment the sound stopped by his ear, Su Wen instinctively squeezed his eyes shut.

The pain of being torn apart by a wild beast that he expected never came. Instead, before he could open his eyes, a low sound suddenly echoed by his ear.

“Awoo—awoo—”