Chapter 78: Two Mad Men

Moon Song walked into Xia Fei’s room with unwarranted familiarity, turned on the TV, took off her shoes, and reclined on the couch. Her two legs dangled about restlessly.

“You two can continue; I don’t mind skinship between men,” said Moon Song very casually as she pulled out that half-eaten cucumber from her pocket and proceeded to watch TV while munching on that fruit.

Chen Dong was irked, moving his butt almost a full meter away from Moon Song, sitting on the other end of the couch.

Xia Fei closed the door. He pulled out a big ashtray from his spatial ring and placed it on the table in the living room, flicking his cigar’s ash into it.

This ashtray was made from a disused shell of a spitfire light missile, a fairly rugged-looking one that was rather heavy metal in taste.

Xia Fei might not be old, but he was a bonafide heavy smoker. Cigarettes were never far from his fingers since the age of fourteen.

When he smoked, he had the habit of wedging the stick between his interdigital folds, letting the slowly burning cigarette become one with his palm, so it looked like he was holding his chin in reverie to others. He looked completely at ease and relaxed while doing this with his eyes narrowed. The wrinkles on his forehead would pulse, adopting quite a pensive posture.

When he needed to flick the ash off his cigarette, he would use his thumb, brushing it lightly against the cigarette filter, and the grey ash would fall into the ashtray like snow.

Moon Song’s eyes suddenly glistened as they focused on Xia Fei. It was apparent that the unique ashtray and his smoking posture had deeply fascinated the girl.

“Dude, you really give off the vibe of a mature man; what are you smoking? Mind if I try one?” excitedly asked Moon Song, like a playful kitten that had discovered a ball of yarn.

Xia Fei sighed. He was only seventeen, so being described as mature could not be considered a compliment.

Standing up and walking over to the girl, he shook his cigarette pack lightly.

Four cigarettes poked out from the pack, and each one extended to a different length. The longest of which happened to expose its cigarette filter entirely.

This was a trick that he had learned from an old fortune-teller on the streets; it was called ‘all are brothers within the four seas’. It was rumored that this was how the comrades of the Green Gang offered their cigarettes.

Moon Song gingerly took a stick of Hongtaishan out from the pack and placed it in her palm for inspection as if she had been given something precious.

Chen Dong was doing his best to suppress his laughter and looked forward to what would happen next. He had already learned from Xia Fei just how that smoking gimmick of his tasted, so with a heart full of schadenfreude, he awaited the tragedy to unfold.

Xia Fei’s zippo lighter twirled around his hand several times like a butterfly before he lightly flicked his thumb to produce a crisp sound, and a small orange flame lit up in the next instant.

Moon Song almost jumped off from the couch in her excitement, her eyes widening. “Cool! Dude, how did you practice that thing you did with your hand? You gotta teach me that next time.”

Xia Fei smiled and nodded, not saying another word.

Moon Song placed that cigarette in her mouth as she drew close to the flame and took a few light puffs.

Xia Fei was actually very repulsed by women smoking, but because Miss Moon Song was not affiliated to him, he was not really inclined to stop her, so he was happy to oblige her mischief.

Finally, that scene which Chen Dong and Xia Fei had been waiting for happened just as they expected. Miss Moon Song covered her mouth and coughed several times, one louder than the other, as tears rolled down her cheeks.

“What sort of vile thing is this?!?! It almost choked yours truly!” Moon Song coughed as she furiously tossed that cigarette she had just lit into the ashtray.

Xia Fei flashed a slight smile. “It’s not even anything good. You can buy a whole mountain of them with one star coin. What did you think it was?”

Chen Dong was forcefully stopping himself from laughing, and that bronze face of his had turned red from all his effort.

Moon Song picked up that half-eaten cucumber she had placed on the table and took a vicious bite out of it while glaring at Xia Fei as if she were biting him instead of the fruit in her hand. Alas, due to the unique shape of that vegetable, Xia Fei could not help but conjure so many bad associations about it.

“Aren’t you guys doing gay stuff? Quick carry on. Yours truly is feeling very bored right now, so I wanna watch something interesting.” Moon Song was sitting cross-legged on the couch when she said this.

Xia Fei shook his head. “We’re not