Don’t Be a Kept Man

Chapter 168: There were 7 Stories in his Heart

Shen You didn’t like the harried state he was in. With cold sweat dripping down his neck, he felt as if he was drowning in water where each strand of his hair was covered and clumped together. Perhaps it was also his perception gone haywire, but he kept thinking that there were numerous eyes examining and investigating him.

He closed his eyes and buried his head in his knees, wanting to leave but unable to stand up from the sharp pain pulsing through his stomach.

Pain is the only thing that can slow down time. Just a few minutes and yet it could feel like an entire lifetime. Suffering as if the passing moment of death was elongated.

Shen You thought, he shouldn’t have come out today.

This summer was a very humid and hot season, but just like how Shen You would never be accustomed to the constant pain, humans would never be able to grow accustomed to this burning hot sun that comes to this city every year like clockwork. They were powerless to change it so they could only endure.

A long shadow flew across the crowds. The speed of the person that the shadow belonged to was very fast and in his hands not a drop of the hot water he held was dropped. At the end of their stop, the person paused their footsteps roughly and because his body tilted forward out of habit, the plastic bag full of medicine clanged together, creating the sound of plastic tubs lightly knocking against each other.

“Take some. Is it this kind?”

Gu Lai’s perfectly combed hair was all messed up, showing off how fast he had been running where at the moment it was all falling down on the sides. Still, his breathing was stable and his voice calm. When Shen You heard his voice, his tightly wound up body suddenly relaxed. Lifting up his head from his knees, he suddenly felt a feeling that was hard to explain sit heavily on him.

Gu Lai knelt down before him and twisted off the medicine cap. Quickly speed-reading the instructions he grabbed two pills out. Placing them into Shen You’s hands, he then passed the disposable cup of hot water over to him as well.

He was so meticulous, always knowing what other people needed.

Shen You gripped the pills in his hand tightly and then chugged it down with the cup of hot water. Seeing his Adam’s apple move slightly, Gu Lai asked with serious eyes, 

“Do you feel a bit better now?”

Fuck, how could medicine be that fast acting, they aren’t miracle pills.

With an emotionless face and his right hand still tightly grasping onto his stomach, he gave a nasally ‘hmm’ and made an irritated face.

Gu Lai suddenly felt relieved, visibly relaxing. He nodded his head as he said, 

“Then sit down for a while. I’ll go bring the car over.”

And then he rose up, heading to the crosswalk. It was just turning green, and behind him was an entire display of bright monitors in the city night lights. He was soon swallowed up by the nonstop cars driving past, following the ever changing billboards.

Shen You stared at his disappearing back. A faint layer of light shone down on the tip of his nose, highlighting his beautiful and handsome face clear, but it was still hard to hide away that sharpness and aggressiveness. After a while, he calmly turned his gaze away.

Gu Lai slowed the car to a stop by the roadside. He helped Shen You get into the passenger seat before getting into the car himself. Inside the dimly lit car, a gaze passed by Shen You’s body like a dragonfly dipping into water.

Shen You misconstrued the meaning of the gaze and roughly and angrily fastened up his seatbelt.

Gu Lai felt that Shen You seemed to be a bit angry, but he did not understand why he would be. So, he only kept his silence, trying his best to minimise his presence, leaving no words to be exchanged the entire ride back.

Shen You turned his head to lean against the window. Probably due to the medicine he took, his eyebrows were slowly loosening from their furrow, but it did not hide the fatigue his body was feeling. With the stable way the car was being driven, he fell into a light nap.

Currently 9:40 pm, when the movie was probably already half over. Gu Lai slowed the car to a stop right before the entrance to Shen You’s residential complex. He wanted to wake him up, but upon seeing Shen You sleeping so deeply, the hand that was reached out suddenly paused in midair. After a moment of hesitation, the hand was retracted.

It seemed to be a bit of a disaster today.

Gu Lai grabbed a clementine flavoured candy out of his pocket as he thought so.

The composition of humans and systems were not the same. The moment he became human, there was something added to his brain but after all, whatever was added was not pure, so in the end, it created something quite mismatched and out of place.

Gu Lai knew everything and yet he also didn’t understand anything. He didn’t know why Shen You became so angry, and he didn’t know how to appease his anger. The clementine soda flavor exploded on his tongue, and created a taste so souring that his eyebrows furrowed.

Shen You’s mind was in a very bad state. He had only slept for a few hours every day, and even though the night was quiet, where not a single noise was made, he would still wake up not long after falling asleep. After hazily opening his eyes, the first thing that greeted his sight was the bright lights from the streetlamps cast upon the car windows.

His brain was starting to slowly piece back together its senses, and after looking left and right, he realized then that this was the entrance to his house and that Gu Lai was sitting beside him. The other was so quiet and calm, with his handsome face covered in shadows, having sat here for however long.

Shen You subconsciously woke his phone and found that it was already 3 am. An expression of shock passed through his face, and his light movements attracted Gu Lai’s attention. Gu Lai looked over, a profound look casting over his face, 

“You’re awake?”

Shen You didn’t know what he should say; he was thinking, he wouldn’t have been sitting here for 5, 6 hours right?

“Sorry, I saw that you fell asleep so I did not wake you up.” 

Gu Lai’s long arm rummaged around the backseat to pass the medicine he bought over to Shen You and instructed him, 

“The pharmacist said that this was gastrointestinal medication. If you have gastrointestinal issues, you should eat your meals everyday, at a regular interval, and don’t drink alcohol.”

He really did sit there for five to six hours.

Shen You gave Gu Lai a profound look. His long, narrow eyes were still as sharp as ever, but now they held a hint of contemplation and evaluation. He didn’t accept the pills and after a brief moment, he reached out to open the car door, and his body quickly disappeared into the night.

This world was like a ring. So many years ago, people who have met at the beginning would then go their separate directions, heading on their own journey of life, but they would meet back at the beginning once more.

When Gu Lai came back home, Yu Xi had still not gone to sleep. Through the wall, he could still faintly hear electronic dance music exploding out from his neighbor’s unit. Her lifestyle seemed to have been flipped: sleeping in the morning, partying at night. Other neighbors had submitted many complaints against her, but the result was minimal; whatever method she went to party and play, she kept on doing so.

Gu Lai did not actually require any sleep. He slept every night at 9 pm because that was what other humans did. But since the sky was about to brighten once more, there wasn’t a point to sleeping. After a moment of hesitation, he knocked on Yu Xi’s door.

“Who is it—–“

Yu Xi turned off her music and peeked through a tiny sliver opening through her door while wearing a night dress. With her makeup taken down and a bunny ear hairband with its ears tugged down on her head, her face lost a bit of that glamourous look from the day. Seeing that it was Gu Lai, she twisted her hair in irritation and asked in disbelief, 

“Bro, it’s 3 am. What do you want at this time and day? A date with me?”

“No, I……” 

Gu Lai tried to formulate his sentences, and with a bit of difficulty said, 

“I wanted to ask for some advice on a few things. Are you free now?”

Yu Xi usually had nothing to do. Besides going on dates, it was just getting herself into random avenues of trouble. So when she heard this from Gu Lai, she opened the door and signalled for him to come in, 

“What kind of advice could you even ask me for? I’m just gonna put all the cards on the table and tell you that I’ve already forgotten everything from whatever we learned at university. So I can’t help you with anything relating to that.”

Her apartment was a mess: takeout boxes of leftovers were still on the table; the sink in the kitchen was filled with piles of unwashed dishes; and her vanity was covered in piles of makeup. There was a guest room that was turned into a walk-in closet, acting as storage for more than a dozen real leather handbags/purses and limited edition jewelry. If she were to sell them all, she would be able to buy an entire house.

Yu Xi did not like to sit on sofas, so she sat right down on the fuzzy carpet. Gu Lai followed along and, separated by the short white coffee table, the two of them met eyes.

Yu Xi jutted her chin up, asking with a lot of curiosity, 

“Speak up, what do you want to ask.”

“I seemed to have done something wrong today……”

When Gu Lai said this, he subconsciously rubbed his palms over his knees which created this air of innocence and confusion around him. He quietly explained everything that had happened at the movie theatre and then asked, 

“What should I do?”

When Yu Xi finished listening, the expression on her face turned a bit weird. She gave him a big thumbs up and said in amazement, 

“Dude, you’re good. These two boats are not easy to be stepped on at the same time.”

She didn’t recall much about Shen You, and she only thought that when Gu Lai was having a date with a new target, he was still able to maintain some sort of relationship with his ex, Yang Mian. And, in the end, the three of them came together like a car crash.

Gu Lai denied with a solemn seriousness, 

“I did not try to have two relationships at the same time.”

Yu Xi didn’t put too much into it and shrugged, 

“Even if you did, there’s not much to it. It’s just gonna be a wild ride when it gets found out, bud. You only tried once, so it was set in stone that you would be found out. But when you get some more on the road, you won’t have to worry about it as there will be no end in sight even if you get found out.”

What a perfect poster child of a scumbag Casanova.

Gu Lai didn’t speak. He lowered his head, not knowing how to express his feelings to Yu Xi. 

After a long while, he lightly hit his head with his hand, finally saying, 

“I am so bad at being a human…..”

“Humans must know how to choose and pick for themselves. You can’t satisfy every one, you know?” 

Yu Xi rose up, grabbing two cans of beer out from the refrigerator and passing one over to him. 

“Can I ask you why you still continue to be with Yang Mian in a weird and undefined relationship? You clearly don’t like him, so at the end of it all, you’re just gonna be frustrated with yourself.”

Gu Lai lifted his eyes at this and faintly felt as if he was about to understand something, but it was still very unclear. He said a bit idiotically, 

“He said he wanted to be friends with me, so……”

“So you couldn’t have the heart to reject him and agreed huh. No wonder why Shen You was so mad.” 

Yu Xi took a sip of her beer with a flourish, chugging it down in one big gulp and then exhaling a long breath. She pointed at him and delivered judgement, 

“Puh, puh puh, what a centralized air conditioning system you are being, wow.”

Gu Lai thought, so I was the one that made Shen You angry.

His long and lean fingers subconsciously curled up on his knees, 

“Then I….. what should I do to ease his anger?”

Yu Xi said, 

“You have to break it off cleanly with Yang Mian, duh. You need to learn how to reject, you know. Don’t ever hurt someone important for someone unimportant.”

Gu Lai lifted up his eyes in confusion, 

“But I am friends with Yang Mian.”

“Do you know what it means to be friends?” 

Yu Xi could finally see it: Gu Lai’s brain, right now, was not in the best shape or form, 

“Friends aren’t something that can be made with just exchanging a few words. You have to help each other out and care for each other. Yang Mian just said that he wanted to be friends with you, and you think you both are really friends now?”

Yu Xi said, 

“A perfect ten out of ten is only a phrase. It’s been said historically that fish and bear paws cannot be attained at the same time. With Yang Mian and Shen You, you can only choose one out of the two, because they are, in some sense, natural enemies. They can’t have a way to coexist, you know?”

Gu Lai didn’t speak a word, as if thinking about something.

Yu Xi’s hands tightened into fists and she put them right in front of him, 

“Say that my left hand represents Yang Mian, the right for Shen You. What do you think? Between these two people, which one of them is more important inside your heart?”

Gu Lai asked, 

“My heart?”

Yu Xi nodded her head, 

“Yes, your heart.”

Gu Lai lifted up his hand and lightly tapped her right fist.

“Then, isn’t that enough,” 

Yu Xi opened her hands, her palms empty, 

“In the past, when you had felt that Shen You was more important, you had already made your decision. So when you have picked, you need to let go.”

And then the problem returned to the original point.

Gu Lai didn’t contemplate why he could only pick one out of the two just for being friends with and continued to ask, 

“Then how should I make Shen You happy again?”

Yu Xi pursed her lips and rolled her eyes, 

“Bro, you can’t live as a human that can be so easily walked over, ok? If he’s angry, then he’s angry. It’s not as if you can’t exist without him. Don’t play by his rules. There’s only other people that can make me happy, not why do I have to make other people happy. You have to live as the center of your own life.

The center, but not the only one.”

Whatever Gu Lai was thinking then, his ice cold face underneath the lights of the living room suddenly looked so distant, so distant that it was as if traversing over numerous, uncountable galaxies, 

“Everyone who has come to this earth must learn how to accept and accommodate some things. There will be people who would be willing to give everything they have, there will be people who scheme their every step to get what they want, but there are rules for everything. How much you take is how much you will need to return. How much you give will be how much you receive……”

He had met seven human beings, and there were seven stories inside his heart.

The system’s lifespan was endless, stretching towards infinity. In a short amount of time, he had experienced the lifetimes of those seven humans, had finished watching through all their lives. Perhaps, they would only remain all but a brief moment of pause in his memory, so easily and quickly to be forgotten, but this moment of pause, this brief moment of stay, was still enough to be precious.

They had once been so selfish, so cold, wishing nothing more than to take shortcuts, but in the end they had learned how to give, and not just to take.

Yu Xi was unmoved, 

“Right, you give out your real heart and you will just receive pain.”

What a great spoonful of poisonous chicken noodle soup.

Gu Lai: “……”