Fouls Prohibited

Ye Ci wanted to talk to someone.

If he kept thinking like this all day, let alone not being able to study, he would go crazy.

Originally, he would have had a chat with Ye Hongjun. The mother and son depended on each other for survival, and could trust each other more than the usual parent-child relationship, but this was the only thing he couldn’t tell Ye Hongjun.

She didn’t even know about the marriage connecting the Chu and Huo families.

Since she fell ill, Ye Ci had always reported good news to her instead of the bad.

Being arranged by Chu Wenlin to marry an Alpha who was 12 years older than him and whom he didn’t know before, no matter how he presented this matter, he couldn’t erase the scummy smell of Chu Wenlin selling his son for glory.

He was lucky to have met Huo-shushu.

What if he had been unlucky?

If Ye Hongjun knew about it, she would probably go crazy. Given her current physical condition, it was hard to say whether she could bear it.

Moreover, it was difficult for him to explain the current situation without causing Ye Hongjun to worry. After all, she knew how he always tried to act brave. The more he hyped Huo-shushu up, the more afraid Ye Hongjun might be.

So when he visited her last week, he lied and said that he was still living with Chu Wenlin and everything was fine.

In addition to Ye Hongjun, he used to have some good friends when he lived on the old street. Later, Ye Hongjun fell ill and he was so busy with his part-time job that he became estranged from these people and his former classmates.

Besides, even if he hadn’t distanced himself, he wouldn’t be able to talk to them about this mess……

Ye Ci hurriedly finished his breakfast, went back to the room, and locked the door. After thinking about it, he took out his phone and browsed around for a while, and found an Omega support forum.

No one knew anyone online.

He wouldn’t be afraid of being embarrassed.

He registered a new account and opened a post. He didn’t know where to start, so he vaguely said that he had agreed to marry an Alpha who was much different in age, and picked out a few things about Huo Tinglan’s daily dealings with him, talking about them briefly.

L1: Dude, make a public display of affection.

L2: He asked for help in the title, isn’t that bad advice? 

. . . . . .

L10: . . . . My heart is as cold as my knife.[1]

Yc: That’s not it.

Yc: I often think bad things.

Yc: About him.

33L: What do you mean by bad things? Spousal murder? Domestic violence? Cheating? . . . .

Dozens of floors were built[1], and no one guessed correctly.

“. . . . . .”

Were netizens so obtuse?

Ye Ci hesitated for a moment, then quickly typed a few colorful words. After sending it, he threw the phone away as if it was on fire. With a blushing face, he felt for a cigarette, and after feeling around for a while, he found that his stock was depleted. He was too good at smoking these days.

He sat on the edge of the bed for a while, then suddenly grabbed his phone.

83L: Taking the liberty to ask OP’s age.

84L: Can’t laugh anymore, I’m dead.

85L: No way, no way, no one these days can’t realize when they’re in love with someone, right?

86L: Blindly guessing it’s an innocent male high school student, ha ha ha.

. . . . . .

Yc: 18 years old.

Yc: I’m a high school student. I stayed back a year. What’s the problem?

Immediately below, there was a wave of “cute and pure male high school student, hug gege/jiejie”. . . .

Ye Ci: “. . . . . .”

Ashamed, he reflexively felt for a cigarette again.

Yc: Is this a joke?

There was another round of hilarity and love below.

Ye Ci was completely taken aback, and accepted the bombardment with honest confusion.

After a few rounds of laughter and amusement, someone finally answered the question.

156L: Don’t you just like him? What’s wrong with thinking about someone you like?

157L: Don’t be ashamed, you’re both adults. Don’t worry about it, there’s not a problem, you’re normal.

. . . . . .

Yc: He just takes care of me as my senior, I have the wrong idea.

177L: Alas . . . . the old man is suffering. Let me try the next paragraph – I thought he took care of me because he liked me, but he actually treated me like a child.

178L: Also, he’s your father’s friend and there’s a big age difference, maybe the old man can’t express it out loud.

179L: What’s wrong with having feelings? Besides, who is it that you have a crush on?

180L: Don’t you live together? Seduce him with pheromones!

. . . . . .

Further down, the chaos descended and the more they said, the more outrageous they were, until they were almost sprinting to board the train.

Ye Ci blushed, and dared not look again. He nervously closed the web page, cleared his browsing history, and then fell back as if he had lost all his strength, falling heavily on the bed.

The sun was bright all of a sudden, and he covered his face with his arms. Under the sleeves of the lake-blue pajamas, a small area of hibiscus-pink jaw was tense, as if he were gritting his teeth and stubbornly resisting. After a while, the lines gradually loosened and softened.

So, he unconsciously . . . . liked Huo-shushu?

Since when?

He didn’t know, and still couldn’t figure it out up to now.

Like a pot of slowly heating water, he suddenly regained his senses and felt it was hot, but couldn’t tell at what moment the temperature exceeded the threshold.

Probably around . . . . hm.

Ye Ci turned over and hid his face in his arms.

Although he didn’t understand, he had learned that he liked someone.

He was done for.

. . . . . .

Some things didn’t make sense, and once they were figured out, the crisis would be impossible to control.

When a young man began to fall in love, it was as if a floodgate was knocked open in his mind. It opened suddenly, but he lacked the experience to control the flow. Waves rushed toward the sky, and everything was washed away by that young and reckless love.

Originally, Ye Ci only made mistakes in taking care of himself. He was always cautious and practical in his studies and work, but these two days, it seemed that he had become a fool. Things were not going well. Whenever others asked him questions, he answered without thinking, so absent-minded that he couldn’t even keep up with the exercises. Going to school, his body and mind headed out first, and Uncle He chased after him, calling him with his schoolbag.

In the past two days, he had also redoubled his efforts to hide from Huo Tinglan and resumed the style of staying aloof just like when he first came to the Huo residence. The hazy admiration and longing had his heart in his throat every second. He feared that his expression and the emotions in his eyes would be revealed, and Huo-shushu would see into the thoughts of love hidden within him. As a result, he felt doubly ashamed to show his face.

After school on Wednesday, he returned to the Huo residence, said hello to Uncle He, and slipped back to the bedroom to do his homework. He used to go to the study to do his homework so that he could release pheromones in the same room and help Huo Tinglan relieve the symptoms of the early stages of susceptibility. But he wouldn’t have to do that again for the next two or three months, and he was happy to avoid it.

He immersed himself in writing papers, and for the questions he didn’t know, he went as far as the steps could take him. In the past few days, he had accumulated a lot of questions, and he wanted to try his luck and wait for the teacher to cover them in class.

Half of the homework was written, and the long summer day turned into twilight. The white-hot summer air dissipated, and cool wind blew from the window, but Ye Ci was hot and uneasy.

The scent of vanilla, like velvet soaked in honey, spread and grew.

It was far from familiar, but the two previous experiences were enough to make Ye Ci realize that his pheromones were disordered again.

It was that kind of “mild, short-lived fever.”

Ye Ci tore off the barrier patch that had been in use for a long time and quickly replaced it with a new one.

As if his head had been injected with glue, his thinking gradually became muddled.

Ye Ci was lying on the study table, hiding his face in the darkness provided by his arms.

The scene of the temporary marking a few days ago emerged from the chaos, vivid and fragrant. Like an inexhaustible piece of sugar cane, juicy and plump, he ate it again and again. It was sweet and moist, and he chewed it with a kind of embarrassed shame.

On the one side, he was having unrealistic fantasies about his senior and caregiver. On the other side was the unfamiliar inverted yin and yang love – that urge belonged to an Omega, not an Alpha. His body could change very quickly, but his spirit had not turned this sharp corner. What the body desired was no longer to conquer, plunder, and occupy, but to add a “be” in front of every word, completely transforming into the yielding, submissive party . . . . he was afraid and embarrassed.

The tide of love was flowing, its offensive getting stronger, and his body slid down like mud. He couldn’t stay sitting, staggered to the side of the bed, and fell down.

He lay down and curled up, making his body appear small. This little one, trembling pitifully, endured the throbbing alone.

He suspected that the hospital’s judgment was inaccurate. What about this looked “slight?”

Hours had passed, and there was no sign of the tide ebbing.

Instead, the desire for Huo Tinglan’s pheromones intensified. The fluffy tips emerged like spring grass, a gust of warm wind blew, and they rubbed against each other, itching to the core . . . .

“Huff . . . . huff . . . .”

Ye Ci urgently pulled at his neckline. Due to a few threads of blood, his black and white eyes were not so clear.

Maybe . . . .

An absurd thought popped into his mind.

He couldn’t let Huo-shushu know.

If you didn’t know something, it was almost like it never happened.

He was silent.

Once he had this bad idea, he couldn’t get rid of it.

After another ten minutes, Ye Ci got down from the messy bed and grabbed the exercise booklet as an excuse of last resort.

Unless he didn’t have much business to take care of that day, Huo Tinglan would most likely be working in the study at this time.

Ye Ci tiptoed to Huo Tinglan’s bedroom.

The door was open, and he peeked in. No one was there.

There was no one on either side of the corridor.

Ye Ci swallowed hard, stepped inside, and whispered to himself: “Huo-shushu, are you, are you here?”

Of course, no one responded.

Ye Ci tightened his grip on the exercise book in his hand to gear himself up, and took a few steps inward: “I have, have some questions that I can’t do . . . .”

The chilly smell of tequila lingered in the bedroom. Ye Ci moved his small nose and smelled it so comfortably that his breath even shivered.

It was comfortable to be in the room like this, but he couldn’t stay there forever, in case Huo Tinglan went back to the room to get something or change his clothes. It would be too easy to get caught.

Wait, change clothes . . . .

As if he had grasped something very important, he walked toward the bathroom as if compelled by some kind of spirit.

Huo Tinglan paid attention to appearance and loved cleanliness. In summer, he changed clothes frequently, often wearing one set in the morning and another set in the afternoon, so he didn’t have time to clear away the clothes he changed at noon.

They were all in the laundry basket.

The problem was, on top of the basket of laundry was an item . . . .

Pure black.

Bullet type. [3]

Inexplicably . . . . unassuming, yet intriguing.

Ye Ci glanced around from side to side in a daze. He turned his face away suddenly, choked, and was so ashamed that he wanted to kill himself in the bathtub on the spot to show his innocence.

He didn’t sneak in to see this!

By heaven and hell, he didn’t think about it!

Huo-shushu was also strange. He thought that if you sweat, you should change your shirt, but why were underwear also changed twice a day?!

Ye Ci was so shocked that his palms began to sweat, and he didn’t dare to think about getting a shirt anymore. As if he were running a drug ring, he just wanted to get away from the area on the double. But as soon as he turned around, something even more devastating happened.

[1] “My heart is as cold as my knife” is an internet term to used express indifference, referring to a marketplace fish butcherer who has been killing fish so long, he is no longer affected by it. ⮐

[2] “Floors” = comment threads, indicated by L1, L2, etc. ⮐

[3] Bullet type: A type of underwear that look like briefs, but tighter.  ⮐