Xia Xiqing discovered that the dining room in Zhou Ziheng's house was very large, but the dining table was very small in comparison. It could only seat six people at most. The rectangular wooden table was covered with a lake blue tablecloth, and all the tableware was the simplest white porcelain. In the middle of the table stood a dark brown vase that looked like a wide-mouthed bottle, with a bunch of white everlasting flowers in it.
No, Xia Xiqing pulled out one and found that it was not an ordinary everlasting flower, but a white rose made of specially treated pleated paper.
He put his nose close to the edge of the petals and smelled a scent of rose. Xia Xiqing felt that this flower looked familiar, and frowned for a long time.
It seemed like he could fold this thing when he was a kid.
When Zhou Ziheng brought up the last salad, he saw Xia Xiqing holding a paper rose in a daze. The scene looked quite pleasing to the eye.
"The comments online are right. You are indeed very beautiful." Zhou Ziheng put the salad on the table and sat down opposite Xia Xiqing. "Just don't talk."
"Get lost." The word "beautiful" is almost a taboo word for Xia Xiqing. Zhou Ziheng doesn't understand. In his eyes, Xia Xiqing's facial features can be described as beautiful, but beautiful is not a word used exclusively for girls.
"I'm sincerely praising you, but you don't want to hear it."
He rolled his eyes at Zhou Ziheng lazily and threw the paper flowers into the vase. "Wait until you're in bed before praising me for my beauty." He said with a wicked smile, "I'll love to hear whatever you say then."
Zhou Ziheng, who was serving him fish soup, chuckled and said, "I'll remember this."
"Your dining table is so small." Xia Xiqing spread out his arms, almost touching the edge. "But I like the decoration. The aesthetic is OK."
"We used to have a big long table, but I live alone and spend most of my time on the set, so eating is pretty casual." Zhou Ziheng handed Xia Xiqing a bowl of tomato fish soup with a paper towel on the bottom of the bowl. "I thought it was a waste for one person to use such a big table, so I changed it to a smaller one."
"But it's a waste for one person to live in such a big house." Xia Xiqing didn't understand his logic.
"Then you live with me?" Zhou Ziheng was just joking, but he regretted it the moment he said it, thinking he had gone too far. He was trying to measure his own limits every moment he spent with Xia Xiqing. He wanted to be nice to him, but he was afraid that these nice things would push him away.
Xia Xiqing was also stunned at first when he heard it. Before he could react, Zhou Ziheng smoothed it over, "I was just kidding. A house is different from a dining table. How should I put it? In my heart, the dining table is very special. When you eat alone, you feel the loneliest. If you sit alone and eat quietly on a large table with one or two dishes, it always makes you feel very pitiful."
Xia Xiqing suddenly didn't know what to say. Zhou Ziheng's description just now seemed to be about his life for so many years.
So he liked to go to Xu Qichen for free meals. In his previous chaotic love history, he always had a strange habit: he didn't like to sleep in the same bed with someone after sex, but he liked to eat with someone before sex.
This way it doesn't seem so lonely.
Thinking of this, Xia Xiqing lowered his head to look at the fish soup in the bowl. The soup was a beautiful tomato red, and the warm yellow light made the soup shimmer. The aroma was very heartwarming. He picked it up and took a sip. The rich tomato aroma mixed with the sweetness of the yellow croaker was smooth and fragrant in the mouth, and his stomach warmed up after one sip.
Zhou Ziheng seemed very nervous. "How is it? Is it delicious?"
Xia Xiqing didn't say anything. He drank the small bowl in one breath and handed the empty bowl over. "One more bowl, give me a piece of fish."
Watching Zhou Ziheng happily serving him soup, scooping out a large piece of fish from the ceramic soup pot and picking out the obvious bones with chopsticks, Xia Xiqing felt a little sour in the nose. He rubbed it and put a mouthful of sweet and sour pork ribs into his mouth.
"Don't drink it all at once, or you won't be able to eat later."
"I'm not a little girl." Xia Xiqing chewed the ribs, "This rib is delicious and crispy, different from the ones Xu Qichen made."
"Fried." Zhou Ziheng changed the bowl to serve him rice, but Xia Xiqing took the rice and soaked it in the fish soup.
"Eating like this is bad for your stomach."
"It's not good to eat like this every day. One meal is fine." Xia Xiqing scooped a spoonful of rice into his mouth, his eyes narrowed with satisfaction, "I haven't eaten like this for many years. The soup and rice are so delicious."
Zhou Ziheng asked tentatively, "Did you eat it often when you were a child? Your mother..."
"My mother doesn't cook. She only uses her hands to appreciate famous paintings." Xia Xiqing's tone became colder. "She is an oil painting collector. Of course, I mean before she had an attack." He smiled and pointed to his temple with his index finger.
Zhou Ziheng knew that this topic was a minefield, so he didn't continue asking even though he was curious. But the fact that he was willing to talk about it was already a great surprise to him.
Xia Xiqing turned the topic back to the topic herself. "When I was in primary school, the aunt who cooked at home was very good at making fish soup. Because my hometown is in Wuhan, by the Yangtze River, we ate fish every day. But I was a very picky eater when I was young, so she would use the fish soup to wash the rice for me to eat, and then sit next to me to pick out the bones from the fish and put them on the rice."
"Then what?"
"That's all." Xia Xiqing lowered his head and took a few bites of food. "She later gave birth to a child and quit her job."
Zhou Ziheng stretched out his hand and ruffled Xia Xiqing's hair. "Whenever you want to eat, I'll cook for you." Xia Xiqing didn't like being treated like a child. He grabbed Zhou Ziheng's wrist and warned him with an unhappy expression, "Don't act like you're taking care of a child."
"No, I think," Zhou Ziheng touched Xia Xiqing's face with the hand he held, "since I don't like eating alone, and you don't like it either, we can occasionally get together like this."
He said those words against his will because he didn't want to be too hasty and scare the kitten away.
Xia Xiqing let go of his wrist. He wanted to refuse directly. The imaginary feeling of living together made him feel boring and weird. But Zhou Ziheng's food was so delicious and suited his taste. If he refused directly, he might regret it in two days. It was better to keep silent and leave room for himself.
The meal was eaten slowly, and after it was finished, Xia Xiqing offered to wash the dishes. After all, he had been eating and drinking for free for so long, and although he had never done this kind of work before, compared to cooking, washing dishes was several orders of magnitude easier.
But Zhou Ziheng directly rejected his request, "We have a dishwasher. Besides," he stood up with the cleaned dishes and said lightly.
"A painter's hands cannot be used to wash dishes. This is a waste of God's gifts."
Xia Xiqing tried hard to suppress the curled corners of his mouth. He was really impressed. Zhou Ziheng was obviously a pure little virgin, how could he be so good at it? If it was a lower-level player, he would have been completely convinced and unable to control himself after being hit by him a few times.
Unfortunately he is not.
However, it is interesting when people of high levels meet each other, otherwise the story would end too simply and it would not be a fairy tale to appease children.
Isn't the emotional world of adults just a back-and-forth flirting
It was already late after dinner, so Xia Xiqing went back to the opposite house on the pretext of taking a shower. As soon as he came out of the shower, he found that his phone had received a series of messages.
[Moral Model: Have you finished your shower? Do you want to watch a movie?]
[Moral Model: I bought a projector a while ago, but it has been unused. I just installed it and found it works well.]
Xia Xiqing wiped his hair casually, threw the towel aside, sat on the sofa and prepared to reply him, but a phone call came in. It was from his uncle who hadn't contacted him for eight hundred years. After thinking about it, Xia Xiqing still answered the phone.
"Is there something wrong?" Xia Xiqing's uncle Xi Hui had never had much of a relationship with him, but no relationship meant no conflicts. Plus, he was a gentle and polite person, so Xia Xiqing was willing to talk to him.
"Xi Qing, long time no see. I know you don't like false politeness, so let's skip this process. I'm here to talk to you about two things, both of which are actually related to our family. Your grandfather hasn't been feeling well recently, and he wants to see you. I think you should go and see him if you have time. Of course, it all depends on what you think."
"Let's go straight to the second thing." Xia Xiqing suddenly wanted to smoke, and after searching for a long time, he realized that he was wearing pajamas.
"Well, you know, the Pulito Art Center that your mother used to run was renovated last month and is ready to reopen. I received an invitation to an art dinner two days ago, and I think you are the owner of this art center, so you are more suitable to go than me. This dinner will be attended by many big names in the art world, and of course businessmen, which will also help the art center to start over."
This was a flawless statement, and it was Xi Hui's usual style of doing things. However, Xia Xiqing knew better than anyone that these reasons were not the real reasons. The most important thing was that he was now well-known, so he didn't even need to do any publicity. Xia Xiqing hated being used, but he had complicated feelings about his mother's career, or his mother. He hated her, but he also pitied her.
"As you know, Pulito was built by your mother after you were born, just to commemorate your birth."
Yes, it seems to be true, even the name is the Italian word for “clear”. But in the end, the art center was destroyed by her, which feels like a kind of fate that cannot be defied.
"Xi Qing?"
"I understand. I will go, but I won't do anything else." Xia Xiqing said in a light tone, "People who study art are the most incompetent, don't count on me."
The person on the other side seemed relieved, "I'll give you the address in a minute. Take care of yourself out there." Xi Hui paused, and then warned, "The entertainment industry is quite chaotic, so be careful."
"Compared to the world I grew up in, the entertainment industry is really child's play."
After hanging up the phone, Xia Xiqing forgot to reply to Zhou Ziheng. He thought that if Pulito really reopened, he should just take his paintings there. But this was completely rogue. How could a boss put his own paintings in his own gallery? It sounded cheap.
People always have strange ideas, and they always think that art is valuable only when it is linked to poverty. Who would believe that the second generation of rich people can draw any good paintings
This is also why Xia Xiqing never talks about his profession when he plays with others, and never mentions his family background when he creates with others. Once these two are mixed together, a subtle sense of cheapness is created.
After searching for a long time, he finally found a box of Marlboro Peach Double Blast in the gap of the sofa cushion. He stared at the cigarette box for a long time before he remembered that he seemed to have taken it from Xia Zhixu last time. That guy was forced to quit smoking, and he couldn't smoke the ones he bought before.
Xia Xiqing never really liked popping bead cigarettes, thinking they were too boring, but he had a craving for cigarettes and had no choice. It was a good dessert after dinner. He held the long and thin pipe to his lips, lit it, and took a puff. Suddenly, his cell phone rang. He thought Xihui had something to say, but when he looked, he found it was Zhou Ziheng, and then he remembered that he had not finished what he had just said to him.
There are two explosion beads in the double explosion, one is a blue mint bead, and the one near the mouthpiece is a peach explosion bead. Xia Xiqing took a sip and crushed the blue bead. The cold mint aroma wrapped in the smooth tobacco flavor rushed straight to the top of his head. His hair was not dry yet, but his brain was stimulated, as if a nerve was tightened, and then quickly loosened, and all the pores on his body opened up.
"Hello?"
For some reason, Zhou Ziheng felt that Xia Xiqing's voice on the other end of the phone sounded lazy and floating. He coughed and said, "Have you finished your shower? What are you doing?"
“On drugs.”
"… "
"I was kidding." Xia Xiqing laughed lazily twice, and the coolness dissipated for the most part. He leaned comfortably on the armrest of the sofa. Only then did he remember Zhou Ziheng's invitation. He was not interested in movies, but he did want to see something else.
"I don't want to watch a movie. Do you have any of the TV shows you starred in when you were a kid? I want to watch them."
Zhou Ziheng coughed a few times because of his choking, "What's so good about that..."
"I just want to see it." Xia Xiqing blew out a light smoke ring, stretched out his slender hand and grabbed a handful, and the smoke escaped between his fingers.
The other end of the phone seemed to be silent for a century. He did not urge him and just smoked quietly. He finished almost a third of the cigarette before Zhou Ziheng ended the game and made a reluctant compromise.
Zhou Ziheng still had an ugly expression on his face until Xia Xiqing appeared at his door wearing Zhou Ziheng's slippers and holding a white cigarette. Xia Xiqing smiled happily, took the cigarette off and clamped it between his fingers, and rubbed Zhou Ziheng's ears with his hands.
"It depends on little Zhou Ziheng."
"Shut up."
However, Xia Xiqing did not expect that the projector Zhou Ziheng mentioned was actually installed in his bedroom. If it was someone else, he would definitely think that this invitation was for ulterior motives, but since it was Zhou Ziheng, he would definitely watch a movie seriously.
His bed was facing a large blank wall. Zhou Ziheng found a very old box from a room, which contained several hard drives.
"I haven't even seen it myself." Zhou Ziheng's tone still had a little bit of resentment. Xia Xiqing also squatted down and touched his head. "That's perfect, isn't it? Let's review your cute little period together."
When he raised his head, his eyes were a little scary. Xia Xiqing said no more and got on the bed with ease.
"Is it okay for me to turn off the lights?" The projector was on, but Zhou Ziheng was still a little worried.
Xia Xiqing's face was calm, "It's okay."
Darkness spread, and the changing light and shadow of the projector blocked the flow of darkness. Those rays of light, like flowing water in the sun, cast beautiful colors on Zhou Ziheng's approaching body, which made Xia Xiqing a little moved.
If this body could become a drawing paper, I would be able to create a sufficiently amazing work.
The soft bed collapsed and Zhou Ziheng sat down next to him.
"Why did you ask me to see a movie?" Xia Xiqing turned her head and saw that the light made Zhou Ziheng's eyelashes transparent. When they flickered, they looked like faded cicada wings, which was very beautiful.
"I'm about to join the crew. I don't think I'll have so much free time anymore. I originally wanted to find a foreign film. The protagonist is also an AIDS patient. I wanted to see how others acted, but it's a bit depressing to watch it myself." Zhou Ziheng leaned his head on the pillow. "I'll feel better if I pull you along."
All these words are actually nonsense. I just want to spend more time with him.
Xia Xiqing nodded. A little kid wearing shorts and speaking in a baby voice appeared on the screen of the projector. He laughed out loud, "How old were you when you were this?"
Zhou Ziheng narrowed his eyes and thought for a while, "Six years old, the year I debuted."
"So cute." Xia Xiqing stared at Zhou Ziheng, then looked at the child in the picture, trying to confirm the similarities between them. Zhou Ziheng felt too embarrassed, and turned Xia Xiqing's face away from him, "Watch your TV, not me."
"It's your TV." Xia Xiqing chuckled. Zhou Ziheng always felt that there was a fruity smell around him, which was not the smell of Xia Xiqing in the past. He asked in confusion, "Did you change the shower gel?"
"No," Xia Xiqing reacted quickly, "You're talking about cigarettes." Although he was talking, his eyes were still fixed on the handsome little boy on the screen. The six-year-old Zhou Ziheng played the youngest master in the family, with two older sisters and an older brother. At this moment, the scene was showing him walking up the stairs while calling for his brother. His voice was crisp and sweet, like a little peach.
It was better when we were kids, obedient and soft.
"Smoke? You said the fragrance is from the smoke?"
I know this good boy has never seen the world. Xia Xiqing took the cigarette from his mouth and handed it to him, "Would you like to try it?"
Zhou Ziheng refused, "Forget it, I don't smoke."
"Tsk." Xia Xiqing's attention finally shifted away from Xiao Zhou Ziheng. He turned his head and raised his eyebrows, "Five-good youth."
He has had this bad taste since he was young and likes to tease and lead well-behaved children astray.
"I don't like this kind of addictive stuff, and it's not good for the body." Zhou Ziheng explained in a serious manner. Who knew that Xia Xiqing would sit up with a cigarette in his mouth, spread his legs and hold his shoulders to sit astride him, and the pink popping beads on the corners of his mouth were crushed by him, and the rich and refreshing peach aroma filled his lungs at once.
Xia Xiqing took off the cigarette and blew a beautiful smoke ring, watching the smoke spread on Zhou Ziheng's frowning face and melt into the flowing light. The fingers holding the cigarette pinched Zhou Ziheng's chin and kissed him.
The cool, sweet smoke was passed over, completing a long, psychedelic handover.
Peaches, mints, cigarettes.
Intertwined light and shadow, the sweet and soft voices of childhood, and sticky and intimate kisses.
"Look into my eyes and say that again."
Soft lips rub against each other with desire.
“Like something addictive?”
The author has something to say: After studying neural network lstm for a whole day, I was so blind that I could actually write such greasy things when I opened Word. Self-study made me gifted and I want to pick up girls hhh
I will be refreshed after tomorrow's pre-production. I stayed up late yesterday and didn't have time to reply to comments. Today I was giving a presentation on stage and I have no time either. I usually reply. I love my little darlings in the comment section so much~ I have to stay up late today too. I hope tomorrow's pre-production goes well~