Thirsty Skin - Chapter 23

Chapter 23 – “Then Sing A Song For Me.”

In just half an hour, Zhu Chizhou’s mood went through great ups and downs on the way from the bar to the hotel.

His self-positioning was downgraded from Lin Wan’s crush to Lin Wan’s tool.

These days, Zhu Chizhou interpreted Lin Wan’s desire for him as dependence, and Lin Wan’s desire to be close to him as love, but it turned out that they were all complete misunderstandings.

In Lin Wan’s eyes, he was probably of the same nature as inorganic matter like ice.

So his concern and care for Lin Wan, as well as his efforts to satisfy Lin Wan’s wishes during this period, are all the self-cultivation of a tool man, right?

After returning to the hotel, going upstairs and walking to the door of the room, Lin Wan said good night to Zhu Chizhou.

Zhu Chizhou didn’t look at Lin Wan, but just said, “Go to bed early.” Then he closed the door.

How familiar this scene seems.

More than half a month ago, Zhu Chizhou also said goodbye to Lin Wan at the door of the room. Then he heard the noise next door and couldn’t help but run out to show concern. Then he hugged Lin Wan and slept for the whole night. He wanted to hug him. He wanted to touch him. He wanted to sleep with him.

Just because he was more useful than ice, he was like a fool and thought Lin Wan liked him very much.

The more Zhu Chizhou thought about it, the more he felt that he was really an idiot. He had never experienced the feeling of a broken heart, but this time he mistakenly thought that someone liked him, and he tasted the bitterness of a broken heart.

When Zhu Chizhou heard the sound of ice cubes being delivered again tonight, he did not open the door to go out. After all, Lin Wan was asking the waiter: “Keep your voice down and don’t disturb the guests next door.”

It was late at night. Zhu Chizhou lay down in bed and rested his head on the soft pillow, but he tossed and turned and couldn’t fall asleep.

The suite was silent, and the door was closed, blocking out any noise from the corridor.

But he always felt that he could hear noises outside.

Sometimes there was the creaking sound of a waiter pushing a cart, sometimes the clinking sound of ice cubes being poured into the bathtub, and sometimes the sound of Lin Wan’s rapid breathing.

He closed his eyes and tossed and turned in bed for a long time before falling into a drowsy sleep.

In the dim bathroom, the light was pale. A thin and smooth body was lying on its back in the bathtub. Most of the floating ice had melted.

The person soaking in the ice water had his eyes closed and his skin was bloodless, like a cold white marble statue.

Gradually, his body slid down, the icy water flooded over his chest, over his neck, over his handsome chin, and submerged his pale lips and delicate nose tip.

The person in the bathtub suddenly woke up as the ice water poured into his nasal cavity! He flapped his arms and splashed water everywhere!

Like a silent horror movie, the bathtub suddenly turned into a bottomless swimming pool. No matter how hard the drowning person struggled, he would eventually sink into the deep blue water.

Zhu Chizhou suddenly opened his eyes and found himself lying on the bed in the dark, with only a dim night light under the bedside table which was switched on.

The sweat on his back soaked the bed sheets. He sat up, reached for his cell phone to check the time. It was only half past one.

The surroundings were quiet except for the humming sound of the central air conditioner. He sat up with his upper body naked, and was stunned for a while. He touched the reading light on the bedside, and went to the living room to drink water.

He gulped down a glass of cold water, and his heartbeat gradually calmed down. He was awakened by a nightmare, and he had lost his sleepiness, but the night seemed so long.

Perhaps it was because of that nightmare. After the shock and difficulty in accepting the truth, another emotion emerged from his heart.

What is Lin Wan doing?

Had he finished his ice bath? Has he gone to bed yet?

That person always disguised himself very well, just like when he was drunk, there was no sign of anything wrong from his appearance. Zhu Chizhou had been with him for such a long time, but he didn’t even notice that he had this disease.

Even if his heart was saying “I feel so uncomfortable” or “I can’t stand it anymore”, his face would always look calm and composed.

He should take off his clothes and let Lin Wan wear them today. Even if he didn’t want to, he should force him to wear them. At least he would feel more comfortable.

As soon as this thought came to his mind, Zhu Chizhou suppressed it.

No matter how self-cultivated a tool is, he is still a tool and is only worthy of being compared with ice.

Thinking of ice cubes, he suddenly remembered the ice water pool in the swimming pool where he used to swim. There was a warning sign next to the pool saying “Ice baths after drinking are strictly prohibited.”

He didn’t drink much today, but he still drank a lot. Is Lin Wan… okay?

The scenes from the nightmare reappeared before his eyes.

Could he have fallen asleep in the water? Could he have drowned?

Will he get hypothermia unexpectedly? Will he faint?

Will it be… sudden death?

The more he thought about it, the more frightened he became. If he was angry with Lin Wan and failed to stop Lin Wan in time, which led to Lin Wan having an accident in the room, he would definitely regret it for the rest of his life!

Zhu Chizhou grabbed the bathrobe thrown on the sofa, threw it on himself, stood up and walked towards the door.

He hesitated for a moment when he held the door handle. Lin Wan was already an adult, this shouldn’t be the case, right?

But Zhu Chizhou remembered the incident of the man drowning in the swimming pool- it’s nothing! Anything could happen!

Lin Wan took melatonin and slept soundly, but was suddenly awakened by the doorbell.

His first reaction was that there was an earthquake. He suddenly opened his eyes and observed the chandelier on the ceiling in the dim light.

The lights didn’t flicker, the bed didn’t rock, but the doorbell continued to ring.

This was a five-star hotel. This floor was the executive suite floor with a 24-hour butler, so it was unlikely that any harassment would occur.

Could it be a fire?

Lin Wan threw back the quilt and got out of bed. Without turning on the light, he put on his slippers and trotted out to open the door.

Outside the door, the tall boy was standing there with an anxious look on his face. When he met him, he was slightly stunned.

Lin Wan was wearing the floral-blue silk pajamas that he had worn when he slept in his arms that night. The large V-neck lapel loosely revealed a part of his collarbone, which looked delicate and fair.

The corridor was very quiet. Lin Wan asked softly, “What happened?” At the same time, many possibilities popped up in his mind. Was he sick? Did something happen at home? Did he lose something? Did someone run into his room?

“I…” Zhu Chizhou breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Lin Wan, and then began to stammer as he tried to find reasons to explain why he knocked at his door in the middle of the night.

Lin Wan’s eyes lingered for a while in his slightly opened bathrobe, from the faintly visible chest muscles to the obvious abdominal muscles, and he muttered in his heart: [Am I dreaming? Can I drag him to my bed in my dream?]

Zhu Chizhou quickly pulled his bath robe together, crossed his arms across his chest, and said confidently, “I came to see if you slept well.”

Lin Wan raised his head and fixed his eyes on his flushed face: “Ah?”

“It seems like you slept well, so just continue sleeping!” Zhu Chizhou said and turned to leave, leaving Lin Wan alone at the door in a daze.

Lin Wan: “???”

Only after the door of the next room closed did Lin Wan come to his senses. What’s wrong?

When he returned to bed again, most of his sleepiness had disappeared.

The reason why he was not angry was because Lin Wan knew that Zhu Chizhou was not the kind of person who would joke with him or ask him to get up in the middle of the night to pee.

Lin Wan lay down in bed and thought about his childhood.

When he was a child, he was particularly afraid of the dark. His parents were still alive at that time. If he woke up in the middle of the night and found that the lights were not switched on in the room, he would run and knock on his parents’ door.

He was already in elementary school at that time, and he thought it was a bit embarrassing for a little man to say that he was afraid of the dark, so he always had to find an excuse, such as being hungry, having a nightmare, or it was too cold to sleep and needed another blanket.

But his mother would always know that he was afraid of the dark, so she would accompany him back to his room, talk to him, and wait until he fell asleep before leaving. In this way, he could sleep peacefully until dawn, because he knew that he could find his mother every time he was afraid of the dark, so he gradually stopped being afraid.

‘Zhu Chizhou…are you afraid of the dark?’

‘You’re such a grown-up, but you’re still afraid of the dark?’

‘He’s nearly 1.9 meters tall!’

Although he felt it was ridiculous, he still made the call.

The call was answered almost immediately, and it was obvious that he was still awake and playing with his phone.

“What were you doing just now?” Lin Wan pretended to be angry.

There was silence on the other end for a while: “Nothing.”

“Are you hungry?” Lin Wan asked.

Zhu Chizhou replied stiffly: “No.”

“Oh,” Lin Wan continued to tease him, “So it’s a nightmare?”

The other end stopped talking.

Lin Wan tried to hold back his laughter and was about to ask if it was too cold to sleep and he needed a blanket, but the person on the other end hummed softly.

He actually said “hmm” with a bit of an aggrieved feeling.

Lin Wan believed that he had a nightmare, but facing a man who was taller than him and in his twenties, he didn’t know how to comfort him. Whether it was “I’ll go over to accompany you” or “You come over to my side”, it was too ambiguous, so Lin Wan chose a compromise: “Then I won’t hang up the phone, you go to sleep, call out to me if you have anything.”

Zhu Chizhou: “…”

Lin Wan was getting impatient: “Do you want me to tell you a story?”

Zhu Chizhou was certainly not happy to be treated like a child, but since Lin Wan cared about him so much, Zhu Chizhou felt soft-hearted and could not help but ask for more: “Then sing a song for me.”

Lin Wan was in a dilemma. He couldn’t sing at all. Not to mention his tone-deafness, he could only count the number of songs he remembered the lyrics for on his ten fingers, including the nursery rhymes he learned as a child.

Asking him to sing into his phone in the middle of the night to get others to sleep is almost like asking for his life.

Zhu Chizhou seemed to be waiting for his response, and breathing sounds came from the receiver of the phone.

After spending these days together, Lin Wan had already regarded Zhu Chizhou as his own, a young man under his command, a reliable teammate, and… there was also a secret desire in his heart that could not be known by anyone else.

Singing a song to comfort the other person’s childish temper late at night didn’t seem to be too much.

He was mentally prepared to sing, but the other party suddenly said, “I’m kidding, I’m going to sleep.”

Lin Wan paused and coaxed softly, “Well, go to sleep. I’ll wait until you fall asleep before hanging up.”