AM Chapter 26

26 Fever

About a month after Chen Daxiang passed away, Chen Mo suddenly developed a high fever one day.

His head started to feel hot in the middle of the night, and when the housekeeper came to wake him up in the morning, the blanket had been kicked off to some unknown corner of the bed.

After taking his temperature and realizing he had a fever, Chen Mo felt fortunate: because at least he had it at home, and not at school, or starting in a noisy and chaotic environment. Otherwise, he might have fainted in the stinky classroom, still filled with the mixed smells of various breakfasts, and those guys sitting around him would definitely make a fuss, maybe even scream in his ear on purpose.

It just so happened that Liang Jingren hadn’t gone to work yet. The housekeeper took the thermometer to him, and Liang Jingren immediately called the teacher to ask for a leave of absence for him.

Before leaving, Liang Jingren made a special trip to the third floor to ask him how he was feeling and if he had any appetite to eat something. He shook his head, his throat so dry that he didn’t want to speak.

Liang Jingren then asked him if he wanted to go to the hospital, saying that a shot and some medicine could help him get better sooner. Chen Mo still shook his head.

“Then lie down and get some rest. I’ll have Aunt Xie cook some porridge and keep it warm. Eat some when you have an appetite. I’m going to the company now.”

Chen Mo had been lying down the whole time. He nodded on the pillow.

Seeing him nod, Liang Jingren didn’t leave immediately, but bent down again and pressed his broad, rough palm against his forehead. “I’ll come back at noon to check on you. If you don’t get better, you’ll have to go to the hospital.”

Chen Mo nodded.

Having a fever wasn’t pleasant. His whole mind was muddled. Chen Mo woke up slightly for a while in the morning and ate something. Aunt Xie also brought him some medicine to take. After taking it, he began to feel dizzy and sleepy again. He had originally planned to read a novel out of boredom and stimulate his brain a little with words, but because he was reading in bed, he fell asleep while reading.

Chen Mo woke up again in the afternoon. At this time, the harshest sunlight from the window was obscured by a thin curtain, turning it into an orange-red color, like a strong sunset. Chen Mo thought he had slept for a long time, a whole day.

Just as he was about to rub his eyes and sit up, he found that his hand was being held tightly—

Liang Jingren didn’t know where he had moved a chair with a backrest from, nor did he know when he had started sitting by his bed and holding his hand.

Perhaps his movement of withdrawing his hand disturbed Liang Jingren’s leisurely reading on his phone, as the other person put the phone in his pocket and turned his head, asking in a gentle tone, “Awake?” And his other hand hadn’t moved from beginning to end, still holding his.

Chen Mo croaked out an “Mm” sound, then released his hand and slowly propped himself up on the bed to sit up.

Huh?

He raised his sweaty left hand to look at it, then turned his head to look at Liang Jingren, who was looking at him.

“You must have been dreaming, calling out for Dad and Mom, and stubbornly pulling me and not letting me leave, haha, now you’re feeling shy?” Liang Jingren said with a smile.

Chen Mo was indeed shy, his whole face flushed red. He thought to himself: So I wasn’t being held, I was the one who actively held on…

But Liang Jingren didn’t need to waste his time sitting here for an afternoon because of him, right? Chen Mo picked up the cooled boiled water from the bedside table and drank it. He didn’t tilt his head back too much, just enough to reveal his eyes from above the cup to observe carefully.

“Hungry?” Liang Jingren suddenly asked, “Do you want to eat lunch?”

Chen Mo blinked. “What time is it?”

“Just past 1:45.” Liang Jingren had just looked at his phone not long ago and remembered the time.

Chen Mo was surprised. “So early!”

Liang Jingren laughed heartily. “What? Think it’s too early? You still want to go to school this afternoon?”

Chen Mo shook his head repeatedly.

“Seeing you shake your head like a fan, you’ve got a lot of energy, you should be feeling a lot better, right? I’ll go tell Aunt Xie to heat up your food, you hurry up and get up.” As he spoke, Liang Jingren got up and moved the chair away to a position against the wall.

“Aunt Xie? Not Auntie Wang?”

Hearing this question, Liang Jingren suddenly turned his head to look at him. “Did your brain get fried by the fever or are you still sleepy?”

Chen Mo thought he had said something wrong, and the foot he was about to put down to get out of bed froze in mid-air.

Liang Jingren strode towards him and used that big hand that he had held to test the temperature on his forehead. Liang Jingren bent his knees and lowered himself, and Chen Mo was able to look him in the eye at such close range for the first time.

The other person’s eyes were full of sincerity, and also full of his image alone. Chen Mo waited and watched quietly, gradually feeling a little embarrassed. He moved his eyeballs to the side, averting his gaze.

Just as he was quietly clenching his fists and sweating, Liang Jingren finally straightened up and officially announced, “It’s much better than this morning, so let’s just rest at home this afternoon.”

Chen Mo didn’t know why, but he breathed a sigh of relief. He raised his head and smiled at Liang Jingren, “I thought there would be a cliché scene of a father carrying his sick son to see a doctor in the rain, then I’d have some real and meaningful material to write about, even though it would be very fake…”

“Funny,” Liang Jingren took a few steps back. “With this bright sun, where’s the rain coming from?” He “whooshed” and pulled open the curtains of his room—

Instantly, the intense sunlight crashed directly into his eyes like a missile launch, and in an instant, it blasted out a dazzling burst of sparkling fireworks.

While he was still staring blankly at the window, Liang Jingren had already left the room and gone downstairs.

When Chen Mo came back to his senses, he found that the palms of both his hands were covered in sweat. He wasn’t usually a person who sweated a lot, it was probably caused by the fever.

But at this moment, he was especially concerned about his left hand.

He held his left hand in front of him, spread his fingers open and then closed them, looking at it again and again.

He thought to himself: How could I have held that hand like that…

His lips pursed unconsciously, and Chen Mo pressed his left palm against his clothes and rubbed it hard.

So much sweat…

How disgusting…

That afternoon, Liang Jingren watched him finish eating his meal and taking his medicine, and then quickly returned to the company, leaving him alone with Aunt Xie in the Villa.

At four o’clock in the afternoon, Aunt Xie went out to buy groceries, but not long after, Chen Mo heard the doorbell ringing, and it rang several times. He quickly ran down from the third floor to open the door.

He thought it was Aunt Xie forgetting her wallet or keys, but when he opened the door, he saw that standing outside were all of Liang Jingren’s subordinates – one wearing sunglasses that he never took off, one with a scar on the corner of his mouth, one with a python tattooed on half of his arm, and Little Zhuang, who was dressed neatly and without any special features but was holding a huge fruit basket, and was not much older than him.

“Aunt Xie just went out? That’s just right, Brother Ren was worried you’d be bored, so he wanted us to come keep you company!” The big brother with the floral arm tattoo started off with “keep you company.”

Little Zhuang sheepishly smiled apologetically. “It was indeed Brother Ren who told us to come, but not to hang out, we heard you were sick, and we thought there wasn’t much we could help with at the company or the bar right now, so we wanted to come see you, bring you some fruit and supplements, Brother Ren agreed!”

Chen Mo was used to the words and behavior of this group of people. Although he couldn’t quite remember all their names, they could be considered acquaintances. They wouldn’t come to the Villa to find him for no reason. They would usually only come to find Liang Jingren, and if Liang Jingren wasn’t there, they would go back on their own. Now, coming to the door with a fruit basket must have been at Liang Jingren’s instruction.

Chen Mo opened the door wide and said in a flat tone to the several underworld big brothers who might have made a child cry, “Oh, then please come in.”

As a result, that afternoon, those few people really did play poker, pool, and Monopoly with Chen Mo until the sun went down.

When Liang Jingren returned at dinner time, they greeted their big brother very skillfully, then automatically took their seats to wait for the meal to be served – Aunt Xie had bought a lot of seafood and made a table full of dishes, as if she had prepared in advance.

At the dinner table, a group of people were laughing and joking and gorging themselves, as lively as a New Year’s Eve reunion in past years.

Liang Jingren sat next to him and served him seafood porridge, asking him, “If you think it’s too noisy, I’ll kick them out.”

Chen Mo shook his head and took the spoon he handed over.

“I’m very happy today,” Chen Mo said.

“Of course you’re happy.” Liang Jingren smiled and reached out to pat the back of his head, then messed up his hair by spinning around on it. “How can you not be happy when you don’t have to go to school? I’d be happy too!”

Chen Mo felt very strange:

Clearly, he wasn’t touching his forehead, but the back of his head, clearly Liang Jingren’s hand that was touching him now wasn’t the same hand that he had held tightly at noon, but why… did he still feel a palpitation and tightness in his chest? Was he still running a fever?

The dawn gradually strengthened, and a brand new, bright Monday arrived.

This morning, Chen Mo woke up dizzily before the weekday alarm he had set on his phone went off.

As soon as he sat up, he sneezed loudly, feeling that his throat was very dry and tight. He suspected that he might be catching a cold, or that he was going to have a fever.

–The reason was that he had set the air conditioner too low last night.

After turning off the air conditioner, Chen Mo sat on the bed in a daze for a while. Before long, his body temperature and throat gradually returned to normal.

When the alarm rang, he immediately grabbed his phone and swiped it away, while thinking in his heart: Should I skip work today? I’ll just say I’m sick and need to take a leave of absence.

But when he thought of the perfect attendance that Liang Jingren had tried so hard to help him secure, Chen Mo suddenly perked up and woke up completely.

After waking up, he shuddered again. He lifted the quilt and saw that he seemed to be missing Liang Jingren a bit too much.

That’s right, he hadn’t seen Liang Jingren for a whole week. He really missed him. If he hadn’t made a special phone call to bother him the day before yesterday, he probably wouldn’t have even heard Liang Jingren’s voice.

Chen Mo took the underwear he needed to wash immediately into the washroom, and while running water and adding detergent, he was thinking wildly in his head:

I haven’t hooked up with anyone since I started preparing for graduation half a year ago, is that a bit too restrained? But it’s even harder to hook up after returning to the country… Quiet bars are too quiet, and nightclubs are too chaotic, and, I don’t really want to be proactive…

It would be great if Liang Jingren seduced him.

Chen Mo thought: If he seduced me, I would be the most proactive I’ve ever been in my life–

Liang Jingren could just touch me with one hand, touch my face, my chin… anywhere would be fine, as long as he touched me, I would grab his hand, hold his fingers, and then put them one by one into my mouth…

The more Chen Mo thought about it, the more worked up he got, the more bubbles there were while he was washing his shorts, and the more cramped his newly changed suit pants became.

Finally– Di! Di! Di! Di!

The alarm clock, signifying the end of the “sleep five more minutes” deadline, rang. Chen Mo angrily slammed his head against the mirror on the washstand in front of him.

A light slam.

His heart was roaring: Aaaaah! Go to work, go to work! F it! I really don’t want to go to work aaaaaah!!!!