Chapter 41: Just One Bed

The moment Ji Xu entered the room, he collapsed onto the bed, sinking into the white sheets and fluffy quilt like a soft-bodied animal stripped of its skeleton.

The elasticity of the mattress bounced his body up slightly before catching him, and he let out a muffled sigh of satisfaction.

With his face buried in the pillow and his arms and legs spread out in all directions, he hadn’t even found the time to kick off his shoes.

His two feet dangled outside the edge of the bed, swayed briefly, and then went still.

Riding in vehicles was truly exhausting.

Going from the university to the airport, boarding the plane at the airport, sitting on the plane for over four hours, getting off the plane, and taking another car ride across half the city—an entire daytime spent in transit and waiting made his muscles and bones issue a collective protest of “finally, we can stop.”

Because Rong Du was a beta, a beta wouldn’t be affected by pheromones, nor would they experience any physiological or emotional fluctuations from smelling the scent of an alpha or omega.

Ji Xu knew this deeply, so in this room, he released his pheromones without any hesitation.

His gland no longer constricted that sweet, moist scent, and the honey fragrance spilled out from the position of his back neck, diffusing warmly into the air like someone had knocked over a jar of freshly brewed honey in this modest room, its sweet aroma saturating every corner bit by bit.

Being wrapped in his own pheromones indeed brought a sense of relaxation, that familiar scent acting like an invisible shell that kept the strangeness and fatigue of the outside world locked away.

Ji Xu took a deep breath, his nasal passages filled with his own sweet scent, and his shoulders—which had been tense for half the day—finally settled completely into the mattress.

Rong Du set the two bags down properly, leaning one in the corner of the wall and placing the other on the luggage rack.

He walked around the room a few steps to inspect the layout—the window faced east, its wooden frame painted in deep blue lacquer.

Outside the window, a cluster of flowers could be seen on the roof diagonally opposite, red and purple blossoms squeezed into clay pots and poking out past the railings.

Standing in the corner was an old-fashioned wooden cabinet, intricate patterns carved into its doors, with a simple writing desk and a rattan woven chair beside it.

Having observed all this, he walked back to the edge of the bed and sat down, the mattress dipping slightly under his weight.

Ji Xu felt the small area of depression nearby and the sensation of Rong Du’s body temperature transmitting through the layer of bedsheets, but he didn’t open his eyes, keeping his eyelids closed with his eyelashes resting quietly beneath them.

Rong Du’s voice carried over from very close by, bearing that indulgence of “you can arrange things however you like”: “Rest first, or go out to play first?”

“Rest for a bit first,” Ji Xu’s voice was muffled in the pillow, slurred and indistinct. “So tired, don’t want to move.”

The tips of his feet finally kicked to shed both shoes, which landed on the floor with two dull thuds, before pulling his feet back onto the bed and shrinking into the quilt.

Rong Du tilted his head to look at him.

Ji Xu was lying on his side, half his face buried in the pillow, his hair falling loosely beside his cheek, and shallow creases pressed by the pillow visible on the exposed half of his face.

His breathing was even and long, the honey scent drifting over from the back of his neck, sweet, warm, and soft, accumulating thicker and thicker in this modest room like a layer of cozy mist wrapping around both of them.

Rong Du reached out to touch Ji Xu’s face, his fingertip gently pressing against his cheekbone and sliding down to his earlobe, touching it with very light movement as if confirming something.

Ji Xu felt the sensation on his face and opened a slit of his eyelids to look at Rong Du.

Rong Du’s face was close up, his expression carrying a bit of serious, checking concern, his brows slightly knit.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine.” Ji Xu blinked his eyes in confusion, feeling he couldn’t be better, completely normal except for the fatigue from sitting in vehicles for so long.

Rong Du’s fingers moved from his cheekbone to the back of his neck, his fingertip landing on the gland—the slightly raised source continuously radiating the scent of honey.

His fingertip rested lightly against that warm layer of skin without pressing down hard, simply sitting there to feel the warmth and faint pulse beneath.

“Your pheromones…” The second half of his sentence wasn’t finished, but the meaning was already clear—from the moment they stepped into the room until now, Ji Xu’s honey scent had grown so rich that the entire room was soaked in it, allowing even him as a beta to clearly smell that sweet, room-filling fragrance.

He didn’t mind it, but was merely worried, assuming Ji Xu was releasing a large amount of pheromones due to physical discomfort or emotional fluctuations.

When his fingers touched the gland, Ji Xu shrank back, turning his body to shift his back neck away from under Rong Du’s fingertip, avoiding the contact.

When an alpha’s gland was touched, an instinctive vigilance would arise—this alertness had nothing to do with his logic, remaining purely a physiological reflex.

Turning around to face Rong Du, he only then noticed that between the side he was lying on and the side Rong Du was sitting on, there was nothing separating them—there was only one bed in the entire room, a large bed spread with white sheets and a soft quilt, with a small desk lamp and a clay pot sitting on the nightstand.

“It’s nothing,” Ji Xu answered his unfinished question from earlier, his voice returning to normal, not deliberately holding back his pheromones, though the slight guard generated from having his gland touched had already relaxed. “It’s just a habit to release a little pheromone to feel more relaxed. If you mind it, I’ll pull the pheromones back.”

As he spoke, he was about to sit up, reaching to grab the inhibitor patch from his pocket.

“It’s fine, I don’t mind.” Rong Du’s voice stopped his movements.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he tilted his head slightly to look at Ji Xu, a gentle curve resting at the corners of his mouth.

When his fingers withdrew from Ji Xu’s back neck, there was a tiny, barely perceptible slowness, like regret.

A beta could smell pheromones without being affected, so to him, that scent was merely the scent itself—sweet, warm, belonging to Ji Xu.

He liked the feeling of this scent filling the entire room, liking the wrapped sensation of this sweet aroma soaking into his breath and the surrounding air.

Withdrawing his hand, he lay down beside Ji Xu.

The two lay side by side with a distance of about half an arm between them, the white ceiling spreading out quietly overhead, while bird calls and human voices filtered in vaguely from outside the window, rendered blurred and distant across the glass.

They hadn’t lain together like this in a long time.

Ji Xu had been busy at school for several weekends in a row with anime club matters or speech preparations, and his last visit to Rong Du’s place was already several weeks ago.

Rong Du tilted his head to look at Ji Xu’s side profile, that face glowing with a soft warm hue in the light seeping through the window, the curve of his eyelashes quietly lowering and rising.

His gaze lingered on Ji Xu’s face for quite a while before he spoke in a smooth voice: “How come there’s only one bed? Did you book two rooms?”

“No, just one,” Rong Du turned to face Ji Xu’s direction, reaching out his hand to gently pull his wrist and bring him a bit closer to himself.

The force wasn’t heavy, merely shortening the distance between them from half an arm to a few fingers.

“It was cheaper.”

He spoke briefly and naturally, as if this were an answer that required no further explanation at all.

Then he raised his other hand to cup Ji Xu’s face, his thumb pressing lightly on his cheekbone, like kneading a piece of soft dough. “What, are you unwilling to sleep with me?”

Looking at his practiced movements and tone, Ji Xu reached out to grab the hand Rong Du held his face with, holding it in his palm.

His fingers clasped Rong Du’s wrist, as if stopping him from continuing to get hands-on.

“What if I say I’m unwilling to sleep with you?” His tone carried a deliberately argumentative pitch, his eyebrows slightly raised.

Having his wrist grabbed by him, Rong Du didn’t break free either, maintaining that posture to look at him while raising his other ungrabbed hand to cover his own chest, making an exaggerated, fake-sad expression: “Then I can only pity myself and sleep on the floor.”

The corners of his mouth turned down, his eye corners curving, that “I am very sad” expression put on so obviously and deliberately that even he couldn’t maintain it for more than two seconds before the corners of his mouth uncontrollably curled back up.

Ji Xu let go of his wrist, turned over to face away from him, pulled the quilt over to cover most of his body, and uttered a slurred “going to sleep” before going silent.

However, his breathing didn’t turn even right away.

On the shoulder facing away from Rong Du, the tip of his ear exposed in the light showed an indistinct layer of pink.

Looking at his back, Rong Du didn’t expose his fake sleep, lying flat himself to pull the quilt over his chest.

Glancing sideways at the back of Ji Xu’s head, he closed his eyes.

Both of them slept for a brief period.

When he woke up again, Ji Xu felt for his phone and pressed the screen on—8:07.

Propping himself up on the mattress, he sat up, rubbed his eyes, and let his gaze fall outside the window.

The sky outside the window was a color he hadn’t anticipated—blue-purple, bearing a layer of light orange embers.

It was far brighter than the 8:00 PM sky in Haicheng during this season, resembling how Haicheng looked at around 6:00 PM in the evening.

Lifting the quilt, he walked to the window and pushed open a wooden window frame.

Dry, cool wind surged in, bringing the scent of soil and plants, alongside the aroma of baked naan and cumin drifting from a courtyard far away.

Outside the window was a narrow alley, lined on both sides with rammed-earth colored residential walls.

Every house’s roof, window sill, and doorway were filled with flowers.

Petunias and geraniums in clay pots bloomed tightly together—red, purple, pink, white—hanging down from the tops of walls or poking their heads out on window frames, decorating the entire alley like an overly colorful painting.

Leaning on the window sill to look down, Ji Xu saw an elderly person wearing a dark robe sitting on a low stool at their doorway waving a cattail leaf fan, with a ginger cat crouching beside them.

Rong Du walked up behind him at an unknown moment, standing half a step away from him to follow his gaze out at the alley filled with flowers outside the window.

“The sun doesn’t set until ten at night in Northern Xinjiang,” his voice sounded not far from Ji Xu’s ear.

“The time zone here is about two hours later than Haicheng, which is why the sky at eight o’clock still looks like early evening.”

Ji Xu nodded, leaning on the window sill without turning back, his gaze lingering in that alley filled with flowers and twilight.

He felt every detail of this place was different from Haicheng—even the smell of the air, the color of the light, and the rhythm of time were completely distinct.

The red geranium hanging from the window sill swayed gently in the wind, the shadows of its flower branches dancing on the back of his hand.

Releasing his hand from the window sill, his fingertip touched one of the petals, feeling a soft and slightly cool sensation.

He gently stored this feeling in his heart before turning around to look at Rong Du: “Then shall we go out for a walk now?”

His eyes reflected the blue-purple sky and the colors of those flower clusters outside the window, bright and sparkling, as if that scenery had bloomed a patch of flowers in his pupils as well.

Looking at him, Rong Du nodded: “Let’s go, just in time to find something to eat. The night market here is said to be quite famous.”

He took his jacket from the chair and draped it over his arm.

Ji Xu had already taken a step ahead toward the door, stepping on the wooden floor and making light footsteps.

The dusk outside stretched both of their shadows long, falling slantly onto the room’s floor, overlapping and separating again.

Ji Xu paused at the doorway to wait for Rong Du to catch up, and then they went down the stairs together.

The stairs made soft creaks underfoot as that dry and warm wind surged in from the opened doorway, wrapping around flower scents and human warmth, welcoming them as they stepped into this unfamiliar ancient city filled with flowers and sunset glow.

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