Did Not Say Anything About My Feelings - Chapter 24. It’s Fine

After Lin Ye caught a flu, he was unable to continue his task of waking his teammates up. On the day that he had almost recovered from his flu, an employee came over to inform him that they would arrange for the trainees to go to a salon to dye their hair on Thursday. They arranged for the two groups to go at different times, Group A’s slot was in the afternoon while Group B’s slot was in the morning.

When the other was speaking, Lin Ye happened to lower his head to cough and only heard the first half of the sentence without hearing the words that were said after. Naturally, he thought that everyone had to gather in the classroom at eight o’clock sharp. When he woke up on Thursday, Lin Ye even thought that he had overslept. He got off his bed and hurriedly brushed his teeth and washed his face. He took two pieces of chocolate from the container on his table and throwing them in the pockets of his trousers before he headed straight for the classroom.

After he entered the classroom, he saw that only Yan Changfei was there, practicing. Cheng Chi and Qi Huan were eating breakfast and he did not see anyone else from his team or Group B. He asked Qi Huan, “Aren’t we supposed to go to the salon in the morning?”

Qi Huan was drinking his porridge, biting on his straw as he answered in a muffled voice, “It’s Group B’s turn in the morning, we’re only going in the afternoon.”

He had gotten the time wrong. Lin Ye searched for the chocolate in his pocket and placed it in his mouth, turning around. He walked towards the door as he told Qi Huan, “If Jiang Lian and the rest come, help me tell them that I went to the can—”

He had yet to finish when he bumped into someone who was walking into the classroom.

Jiang Lian took a step back before steadying himself, raising his eyebrows to ask, “What did you want to tell us?”

Lin Ye froze for a moment.

Jiang Lian had already walked into the classroom, Wen Mian one step behind him. Jiang Lian nodded his head and glanced at the people sitting on the floor eating breakfast, “The dance yesterday was very messy, after you two are done eating, stand up. Let’s practice the dance a few times.”

When he said that the dance was messy, the only two people that were dancing messily were Cheng Chi and Qi Huan.

With everyone looking at them, the two people that knew they had dragged everyone down were too embarrassed to keep everyone waiting. They instantly put down the breakfast in their hands and stood up to say, “We’re done eating, let’s start now.”

The few of them quickly got into the formation but Lin Ye was still standing at the side and did not move. Jiang Lian looked at him, “What else do you have to do?”

Lin Ye was silent for a moment. Finally, he decided to just go with it and gave up on the idea of going to the canteen to eat breakfast. He shook his head and said no, before taking off his down jacket and walking to his position.

There was no music in the classroom and Jiang Lian, who was standing in the center counted the beats. The whole team danced according to Jiang Lian’s counting. When it came to the second quarter, the team moved into a triangle shape. Everyone needed to extend their arms before bringing them back, bending their waist, taking a step, and resting a hand on their knee.

Cheng Chi and Qi Huan did not have any problems but Jiang Lian frowned and stopped counting, looking at where Lin Ye was standing in the mirror, “You were too fast.”

Lin Ye stood up straight and closed his eyes, “Sorry, let’s do it again.”

The six of them tried it one more time.

The one who made a mistake again was Lin Ye. He was not too fast this time, but he was too slow by half a beat.

Jiang Lian stopped again and looked at Lin Ye, saying coldly, “Do you need me to tell you what the issue is here?”

Lin Ye pursed his lips and apologized for the second time, “I’m sorry, I was distracted and couldn’t keep up.”

The team danced the second quarter for the third time.

Lin Ye bent his waist and stepped out right on beat, but when everyone brought their legs back in and stood up straight, Lin Ye lowered his head and rested his hands on his knees, not moving. Jiang Lian had probably run out of patience and walked out from the team formation, walking to Lin Ye to ask him what was going on. When he opened his mouth, his voice was very cold, “Have you not recovered from your flu?”

Lin Ye did not raise his head, “I’ve recovered.”

Jiang Lian scolded him in front of everyone, “Since you’re already well, why are you still in such a bad state? If you don’t want to practice, you can tell us directly, but don’t think that because of your talent, you can simply waste everyone’s time.”

Lin Ye did not eat breakfast, and he often had low blood sugar. At that moment, he suddenly felt dizzy, and the questioning voice of Jiang Lian made him feel upset. He frowned and straightened out, but before he could blurt out the sarcastic words he wanted to say, his vision went dark for a moment and he fell towards Jiang Lian.

His teammates were stunned.

Jiang Lian, who was closest to him, had a shocked look on his face. He stood in place and stretched out his hand to catch Lin Ye.

His teammates returned to their senses and immediately gathered around to ask, “Did he get dizzy because of a high fever?”

Jiang Lian put his right hand around Lin Ye’s waist and freed his left hand to touch Lin Ye’s forehead.

Lin Ye turned his face to avoid the other’s hand, before raising his eyelid and asked, “What are you doing?”

Jiang Lian’s expression was mild, but his tone was a little warmer, “I’m trying to see if your fever had made you silly.”

Lin Ye wanted to stand up but still felt quite weak. He simply gave up and lowered his head to rest on his shoulder, sniffing on the shower gel fragrance on Jiang Lian before answering in a distracted manner, “I don’t have a fever, but I’m very hungry.”

His teammates instantly felt that it was a false alarm. Wen Mian immediately said, “I was wondering why you came so early today, and it turns out that you didn’t have breakfast yet.”

Their practice had to be temporarily suspended. Wen Mian went to the canteen to help him buy breakfast while Cheng Chi and Qi Huan continued eating their breakfast that was still warm. Yan Changfei lay on the floor and shut his eyes. Lin Ye sat against the wall and waited for breakfast while Jiang Lian went to the windowsill to get water to drink.

The classroom instantly became quiet. No one was talking.

Lin Ye caught a glimpse of Jiang Lian, who was standing in front of the windowsill and drinking water. Lin Ye also saw the other’s bobbing Adam’s apple and he suddenly recalled the event in the classroom that night. It was also on that windowsill, he was sweating as he sat in Jiang Lian’s arms, his fingers accidentally touching Jiang Lian’s Adam’s apple in the dark.

It felt like it had happened yesterday. He was even able to recall which two fingers and which hand. Lin Ye lowered his eyes and instinctively raised out his left hand, rubbing his thumb and his index finger together lightly.

The next second, he used his right hand to stop his two restless fingers, licking his chapped lips as he raised his head and said in Jiang Lian’s direction, his voice neither high nor low, “I want to drink some water too.”

Jiang Lian heard it and held his bottle, turning sideways, “Which?”

Lin Ye squinted for a moment to look at the bottles before raising his hand and pointing to Jiang Lian’s side, “The blue one is mine.”

Jiang Lian put down the water bottle in his hands and bent over to throw the blue bottle into Lin Ye’s arms. Lin Ye held the bottle and waved it at Jiang Lian as thanks before he unscrewed the lid and raised his head to drink water. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Jiang Lian bending his legs and sitting down next to Lin Ye.

After drinking the water, Lin Ye did not talk to Jiang Lian. Suddenly, it seemed like he remembered something and he turned to the side to find the other piece of chocolate in his pocket. He tore off the wrapping paper and lowered his head and used his mouth to hold onto a small corner of the chocolate.

The wrapper floated down and landed next to Jiang Lian. Jiang Lian picked up the torn wrapper and glanced at it, remembering the scene many days ago when he had found chocolate in Lin Ye’s pocket at the stairway outside the classroom. He scrunched up the wrapper into a ball and asked slowly, “You have low blood sugar?”

Lin Ye bit on the chocolate and nodded his head.

Jiang Lian did not say anything else and his gaze landed on Lin Ye’s face, “Does the chocolate taste good?”

Lin Ye’s voice was muffled as he answered, “You didn’t eat the chocolate the previous time?”

“I didn’t eat it,” Knowing what he was asking, Jiang Lian’s expression was as normal, “Ming Rang ate the chocolate.”

Lin Ye said, “If you want to try the chocolate, I can bring some for you next time.”

Jiang Lian lifted the corner of his lip and he slowly said in a low voice, “I want to try it now.”

When the other was speaking Lin Ye was lifting his chin, trying his best to make the chocolate that was half exposed enter his mouth. When he heard Jiang Lian’s words, he stopped moving and turned to face Jiang Lian, “This is the last piece.”

Jiang Lian said, “Isn’t there half a piece left?”

After he said that, Lin Ye had yet to react. Lin Ye even suspected that his blood sugar was so low that he was unable to even understand what someone who speaks clearly has said.

Jiang Lian did not give him much time to think. He propped himself up on the floor with a hand and turned his body to the side, his expression mild as he leaned over, opening his mouth to bite on the part of the chocolate that was still not in Lin Ye’s mouth.

Their gazes met, their shoulders touching each other’s, thighs close together. The breath between their lips mixed, separated by just a piece of chocolate.

The feeling of their lips touching from that night once again appeared in his mind.

However, Lin Ye’s face was stiff. Although he had low blood sugar because he did not eat breakfast tha morning, he was not an intermittent amnesia patient with a brain issue. He did not forget that at that moment, Jiang Lian and him were sitting in the brightly-lit practice room and not behind the curtains in the dark.

There were three pairs of eyes behind them and four cameras above them.

Lin Ye could clearly hear the crisp sound of his tensed nerves breaking in his head.

His eyelids twitched but he saw that Jiang Lian had retracted with a piece of chocolate in his mouth. Lin Ye was in a trance, when he finally returned to his senses, what he heard was the sound made by Jiang Lian as he bit off the chocolate.

Lin Ye’s jaw was tense as he looked around.

Yan Changfei was still lying on the floor, his eyes closed as he napped. Cheng Chi and Qi Huan had their heads lowered as they whispered to each other. Aside from the camera in the corner that was slowly shaking its head, no one had noticed them.

Lin Ye lowered his head, not looking at Jiang Lian, but his tone was incredulous, “Do you want to quit the competition? There are cameras here.”

Jiang Lian said, “What’s the problem?”

Lin Ye smiled, but it did not reach his eyes, “What do you think is the problem?”

Jiang Lian’s expression was mild, “You’re able to accept sharing a pair of chopsticks with others, but you can’t accept sharing a piece of chocolate with other people?”

Lin Ye was stunned, but was clear-minded and refuted him, “That’s different.”

Jiang Lian asked, “What’s the difference?”

“Everything about it is different,” Lin Ye turned his head to look at Jiang Lian, a very calm look in his gaze, “I wouldn’t share the same chopsticks with others in front of the camera.”

“I’m not silly, I know what this means,” He had a mocking look in his eyes, the youthfulness that he had slowly lost due to his past experiences was showed in that moment, “I don’t think that I need to rely on other people’s fans and popularity to survive on this stage.”

“Even if you’ll only be able to go on stage once?” Jiang Lian opened his mouth.

Lin Ye did not understand, “What?”

Jiang Lian raised his eyelids, an unreadable expression on his face, however, his gaze was sharp and seemed to have some profound meaning, “Even if you’re ranked last and will be eliminated in the first round of voting, will you still think that way?”

Lin Ye’s expression was one of shock. He did not talk for a long time. He was not able to answer Jiang Lian’s question.

He looked down on those methods to gain fans that have been labelled by people as ‘blood sucking’, but had no confidence that he would be able to stay till the end. When he was truly met with the difficult situation where he was about to be eliminated, if someone reached out to him and was willing to help him, he would probably be moved.

(T/N: Kinda like a parasite, making use of other people to gain popularity)

Lin Ye was unable to give an answer in the end, because Jiang Lian did not seem to really want to know his answer. Jiang Lian had probably gotten the answer to his question from the change of expression on Lin Ye’s face.

Lin Ye heard the other say, “Don’t worry, that clip won’t be broadcasted.”

He was speechless for a moment, even feeling a little annoyed that Jiang Lian was always so easily able to read him. He then remembered Jiang Lian’s business-like coldness during rehearsal just now and felt even more annoyed.

He raised his head and looked to the front, “Is the chocolate nice?”

Jiang Lian said, “It’s too sweet, I don’t like it.”

Lin Ye was not surprised that the other did not like it. He simply lifted up the corner of his lips, and said, his tone unhappy and questioning Jiang Lian, “You were scolding me five minutes ago about my dancing, but five minutes later, you’re snatching my chocolate. What do you treat me as?”

Jiang Lian answered normally, “What do you want me to treat you as?”

Even Lin Ye did not expect that and subconsciously raised his eyes, accidentally meeting Jiang Lian’s eyes, that were as dark as a pool of ink. This made him speechless for a short period of time.

“Work matters and private matters are to be kept separate. Shouldn’t you be scolded for dragging your teammates down while dancing? Furthermore, we don’t even have a relationship in private. Unless,” Jiang Lian lifted his eyes and folded his long legs, his gaze sliding lightly over Lin Ye’s face, his voice mild but deep, “You want to have some other relationship with me.”