I Treat You as a Brother - Chapter 23

After being stunned for a few seconds, Fang Mo released the arm that was holding Zou Shun like an electric shock.

Zou Shun was finally free, and cursed while bowing his head to straighten his collar, “Suddenly acting like an animal in public and messing up my clothes, Fang Mo comrade, I advise you to have some manners and to not offend public morals all day.”

Fang Mo lowered his voice and fiercely said, “You shut up.”

“Ah?” Zou Shun was stunned.

He raised his head and followed Fang Mo’s line of sight to the passerby who was still standing in the same place staring at them. After a moment, he finally realized that something wasn’t right.

“You know this person?” he asked Fang Mo.

Before Fang Mo could speak, Yang Lin said, “Aiyo, I thought I saw wrong, is it really you, Fang Mo xuezhang?”

What he had just said, from the content of his words to the tone of his voice, was very peculiar, and it was completely different from how he talked to Xu Xiran.

Although Fang Mo felt a bit of guilt, seeing him like this naturally put him in a bad mood: “What do you want from me?”

“Nothing,” said Yang Lin, “I’m just a little curious. It’s pitch dark, and xuezhang and this fellow here… what are you two doing in a place like this?”

Zou Shun suddenly spoke up, “That’s none of your goddamn business?”

He stood up, slowly paced in front of Yang Lin, looked him up and down, and then turned his head away in a contrived manner, and let out a “heh.”

Although he didn’t say anything, from his body language alone, his amount of peculiarity was more than ten times higher than that of Yang Lin.

Yang Lin immediately showed displeasure: “Was I talking to you?”

“What’s that smell?” Zou Shun ignored his question completely, frowned, raised his hand to cover his mouth and nose, and looked back at Fang Mo, “Momo, do you smell something funny?”

Fang Mo opened his mouth: “Eh…”

Yang Lin always had a faint smell of fragrance on his body, which smelled nice and wasn’t too pungent. Zou Shun obviously wanted to humiliate him on purpose. Fang Mo was willing to cooperate, but although he wasn’t a goody-two-shoes, he was not good at confrontation, and for a while, couldn’t think of how to help.

Fortunately, Zou Shun didn’t need to count on him. Seeing that Fang Mo was acting like a fool, he turned around again, sniffed, and looked around, like he was following the scent to find the source. After putting on this act, he leaned forward slightly and stopped at a distance of fewer than twenty centimeters from Yang Lin.

He looked at Yang Lin’s face again, and after a few seconds, he made an expression of sudden realization, and his tone was of many twists and turns when he opened his mouth: “Oh~!”

Yang Lin’s face was filled with anger.

“I see,” he said, taking a step back and pointing at Fang Mo, “Just you wait.”

After he said this, he immediately turned around and quickly walked away.

“What is this?” Watching him leave, Zou Shun came back and instantly returned to his usual appearance, “Who is this person? How lowly of them.”

“You’re really awesome,” Fang Mo gave him two thumbs up with a long face, “but I think you might kill me.”

Zou Shun blinked twice: “Why do you say that?”

~

God would only know what Yang Lin had misunderstood.

This small garden was dimly lit, which was why he chose to chat with Zou Shun here, since Fang Mo really did not want to be seen. Generally, if there were two people huddled in the corner at night in such a garden without streetlights, nine times out of ten, they would be talking about love. Under normal circumstances, most people would not get close when they see this from a distance.

Little did he know that Yang Lin would be so bored that he would deliberately come to poke his nose into their business.

He had tried to accuse Fang Mo in front of Xu Xiran, and only retreated after he misunderstood the relationship between Fang Mo and Xu Xiran. Now that Fang Mo’s “infidelity” had been caught, God only knew what he would say to Xu Xiran. Fang Mo knew that with Zou Shun’s orientation, if something got exposed, things would not be good.

“Then you should make the first move to take the upper hand,” Zou Shun said calmly after hearing the story, “We didn’t do anything, so be upright and frank. If he wants to slander you, he can’t just rely on words without proof. Does he have any evidence? No. So you should immediately go to Xu Xiran, tell him that you have met this indecent xuedi again, and then get ahead of him and explain the situation in your favor. Go!”

Fang Mo thought to himself that it was a good thing he and Zou Shun were friends and not enemies.

~

Back in the dormitory building, Fang Mo rushed directly to Xu Xiran’s room.

It was Xu Xiran’s roommate who opened the door, and when he saw him, he immediately greeted him with a smile. These days, without meaning to, Fang Mo had been slowly getting to know Xu Xiran’s roommates., and although he didn’t remember his name, he recognized his face. Those roommates also remembered him and knew that he was the handsome guy who lived downstairs and was Xu Xiran’s anime friend.

Xu Xiran, who he had just seen not too long ago, was surprised to see him here, and greeted him with a smile to hurry over.

“I was just about to send you a message, big news!” He pulled Fang Mo to his side and let him look at the screen of his laptop, “The second season of Love Story is finally coming out!”

There was a large picture on the screen, with a row of beautiful girls lined up one after another, posing in various signature poses to the camera, dazzling the viewer. As one of the most popular characters, Xiaoyao, stood in the middle with two finger hearts and a warm smile. The bottom of the screen was all in Japanese, and Fang Mo couldn’t understand a word.

“Wow, that’s great,” he tried to hold a happy expression, “When will we see it?”

“It should be soon,” Xu Xiran was immersed in excitement, “I heard that preparations were underway a few months ago, I’m really looking forward to it!”

“Mn, mn, me too.” Fang Mo nodded repeatedly.

Xu Xiran turned around with a smile, just about to say something, when he then showed a slightly puzzled expression: “What’s wrong?”

“Ah?” Fang Mo asked blankly.

“Did something happen?” Xu Xiran looked at his face, “What did you want to find me for?”

This straight man really was amazing. He usually lacked tendons, and his thinking always went astray. But whenever Fang Mo had something on his mind, he could always see it from his eyes. This is probably what people call “being refined in a rough way1”.

While Fang Mo was struggling on how to begin, Xu Xiran’s phone made a sound. Fang Mo sat beside him and secretly glanced at the screen. It was a new message with two large characters in the sender’s name.

—Xiao Yang

Seeing that Xu Xiran was about to open it, Fang Mo quickly shouted, “It’s him!”

Not only Xu Xiran, but everyone else in the room looked in his direction.

“Ah?” Xu Xiran was surprised and a bit concerned, “What did he do now?”

With three other unrelated people around who were pricking up their ears, Fang Mo couldn’t open his mouth, and his face was tangled. Seeing this, Xu Xiran immediately stood up, dragged him out of the room to the corridor, and closed the door.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I met him just now, right at the place where we fed the cat,” Fang Mo said, “Zou Shun and I were sitting there chatting…”

“Wait, wait,” Xu Xiran interrupted him, “the two of you went to that kind of place to chat this late at night?”

Seeing that his expression was a little weird, Fang Mo was immediately alert. Zou Shun’s orientation was an open secret, and it sounded really suspicious to meet with a man who liked men in a quiet and dark garden in the middle of the night. He didn’t think that Xu Xiran, who has always been carefree, unexpectedly cared about such details.

“He… he was having some emotional troubles,” said Fang Mo. “I told you before, he likes a straight man, but it’s not going very well. I was enlightening him.”

Xu Xiran frowned and nodded after a few seconds of silence. “Then what?”

“Then…” Fang Mo pondered as he spoke, “Then your xuedi suddenly appeared, and he said I…”

Seeing that Fang Mo hesitated to speak, Xu Xiran asked cooperatively, “What did he say?”

“He said that I’m a cheater.” Fang Mo said.

Xu Xiran looked dumb and said: “Ah?”

“He thinks that we’re a couple, did you forget?” Fang Mo reminded him.

Xu Xiran suddenly became uncomfortable: “Ah, oh… right, that’s right…”

“He thinks that I’m cheating and dating other men at night,” Fang Mo said, sighing exaggeratedly, “These people, pushing themselves onto others without any integrity, I really can’t stand it.”

Xu Xiran was still immersed in an awkward state of mind, and did not doubt his exaggerated acting skills: “Then what?”

“…Then, he started acting weird,” Fang Mo licked his lips and began to talk nonsense, “He said I was acting all high and mighty by being so unwilling to be touched by him, while behind his back… Anyway, it didn’t sound good.”

After listening, Xu Xiran had a tangled expression:  “You see, I’m telling you, it’s not appropriate to pretend to be gay. This is all a mess.”

“Whether it’s appropriate or not, it’s all a misunderstanding that you made on his side. It’s too late to say anything now.” Fang Mo immediately cleared it up.

Xu Xiran admitted the mistake honestly: “Mn, my bad. What did you say after that?”

“What else could I do, I could only explain to him that it was a complete misunderstanding, but he didn’t listen, and said he wanted to tell you my true colors,” Fang Mo looked at him pitifully, “I really don’t know what to say.”

After hearing this, Xu Xiran sighed, and looked like he was out of strength: “Well, now I not only have to be entangled with a gay guy, but I also have to pretend to be a gay guy myself, and even be forced to fall into a four-cornered gay relationship.”

“Where did this four-cornered relationship come from?” Fang Mo felt embarrassed by what he said. “Zou Shun and I have nothing going on, neither is there anything with your xuedi. With you… Let’s pretend to have something with you first.”

Xu Xiran forced a smile, then took out his phone: “Let me see what he said to me.”

Fang Mo also quickly moved his head over.

The line of text on the screen seemed bitchy.

[“Xuezhang, there’s something that might make you upset. But I think I still need to let you know.”]

Xu Xiran raised his head, looked at Fang Mo, then lowered his head to input.

[“If you know that I’ll be upset, then don’t say it?”]

“Pfft—” Fang Mo burst out laughing on the spot.

“Don’t laugh, I’m really embarrassed!” Xu Xiran dragged him.

Less than half a minute after the message was sent, a reply came.

[“Has he already said something to you?”]

Xu Xiran and Fang Mo looked at each other again.

Fang Mo’s heart was racing, but he pretended to be calm on the surface: “What does this person want to do!”

As they hesitated, a new message appeared.

[“I won’t say it, xuezhang, you can see for yourself.”]

What followed after was a photo.

The picture was very dark, but the content was still discernible. On the bench beside the flower bed, two people were hugging each other, and half of the head of the person being hugged was being covered by the other. From the photographer’s point of view, it looked like they were passionately kissing.

Although he couldn’t see his face clearly, the coat on one of them was exactly the one Fang Mo was wearing now.

Xu Xiran was dumbfounded and raised his head to look at Fang Mo.

“What were you and Zou Shun doing?” he asked.

Idiom for being usually careless, but quite sharp at certain times