Chapter 55: Homme Fatale

At first, when Chi Yan leaned towards him, Ye Yingzhi was actually feeling a little disbelief, but he soon accepted it silently while happiness bloomed inside his heart. He walked out with Chi Yan in his arms and promoted himself softly beside his ear, “Don't worry, Ah Yan, if you are with me, no one will be able to tell that I'm not human. You don't need to feel inferior. I promise I won't lift my disguise in front of anyone else other than you. But it doesn't matter if I am discovered, they can't beat me… If you don't believe that I won't hurt you, I will prove it to you. Be it one day, two days, three days, I will prove it to you even for a lifetime.”

Who would feel inferior because they were together with you who wasn't a human? Chi Yan felt himself getting weak from being held so tenderly by the other party, and hearing Ye Yingzhi's muttering corny and useless words made him feel a little hot in the face. “Oh, you'd better explain why you bullied me. Never mind that you bullied me, why didn't you show your appearance?”

If Ye Yingzhi wasn't invisible like in those days, he probably wouldn't be so scared to that extent.

“As I said before, I've been alone in that house. I don't know why, but I didn't feel upset or lonely at all. I just felt empty. But I suddenly saw you one day, and at the first moment, I felt that for all this time, it is probably you that I am waiting for. I had been waiting for you.

“So I followed my heart and went to you, but after hugging you that night, the loneliness that I could bear with before suddenly became unbearable. I can't help wanting to chase you right away, but I was afraid of scaring you, and I barely managed to endure it myself. I didn't mean to lie to you when I approached you in the game or become your roommate, I was afraid that you would cry and faint again like when I hugged you like that day.”

Although I am really a disgraceful person that “cry and faint”, are you sure that what you did to me back then was just “hugging”? However, the implied meaning in the other party's words was too sweet. Chi Yan only felt his heart floating a little bit, so he couldn't be bothered about these things.

As the saying went, "to tell lies after another" and "deluding the audience with lies", it turned out that Ye Yingzhi's words of love could really enchant his heart.

“Have you been living alone all this time?”

“En.”

“Was it lonely?” He already felt his heart aching. 

“No, I just said that before I met you, I didn't know what isolation is, what loneliness is.”

You're breaking the rules, now my heart is even more in pain. Although he was aware that he wasn't a human being, and might instinctively held a thought like "not my kind, the way of thinking is different”, and also fear towards those demons, images of Ye Yingzhi busy making hot pot at home couldn't help but emerge in his mind— in the long years ahead of his life where he did not appear, could he also be also making hot pots? Only for himself?

For a moment, Chi Yan couldn't say anything, he just listened to Ye Yingzhi. “So I can't let you go. If you go now, what am I supposed to do in those long years?”

“What if I die?” Chi Yan asked subconsciously. According to the legends, all evil beings had a long lifespan, while human beings could only reach at most one hundred years old, which wasn't even worth mentioning at all.

He raised his eyes only to see Ye Yingzhi's face pasted with unprecedented solemnity.

“Die with you. If you die, I will die with you. If you disappear, I will disappear with you. If you reincarnate, I will accompany you to reincarnate.”

After that, Chi Yan's life was back on track.

It's just that more and more people could see that his relations.h.i.+p with Ye Yingzhi was unusual.

Of course, towards Old Yan and other friends that held a solid friends.h.i.+p with Chi Yan, Chi Yan had informed them.

Old Yuan was surprised. “Ruler, even though I have lived with you for so long, I didn't realise that you have this orientation before. Why did you get together with that kid so suddenly?”

Chi Yan coughed. “En, it's just that if we live together for such a long time, we would've developed feelings for each other.”

Old Yuan looked at him strangely. “But you've only lived with him for a semester, and I have lived with you for four years.”

Chi Yan: “…In fact, when I saw him for the very first time, I already held good feelings towards him. I felt very close and familiar with him, seeing him makes me happy. Later, I met some difficulties and he selflessly helped me, which caused me to develop more and more feelings for him. Later on, I found that he had some shortcomings and had deceived me before, but I liked him very much at that time, so although I was so afraid that I couldn't think at all, just wanting to get rid of him as soon as possible, and I also rejected him for a while… but in the end, I wasn't able to disobey my will and dislike him. Fortunately, he also followed me all the time and didn't give me any s.p.a.ce to refuse him.”

Old Yuan was caught off guard by this mouthful of dog food. He wasn't interested in these girly entanglements Chi Yan had, but he grasped the two keywords in the sentences. “What?! Have shortcomings and also deceived you?”

If his friend could pinpoint those shortcomings and speak in such a tone, those short mustn't be any small problems at al. Old Yuan immediately became alert. “What shortcomings? Committed a crime? Or was it taking drugs?”

No, Ye Yingzhi wasn't that bad. He just wasn't a human.

“No, in fact, he has been interested in me since a long time ago. His house is close to my cousin's house, so when I graduated from high school and went to my cousin's house to stay for a period of time, he would cover his face, flip through the balcony every night and sneak into my bedroom to scare me. When we met later on, he pretended that nothing had happened. What an a.s.shole.”

Chi Yan had laid this mosaic very thickly. He could be considered to be benevolent and righteous toward Ye Yingzhi.

Old Yuan was dumbfounded and he touched his chin. “What? Your roommate who looks so graceful and decent as if he isn't a human could do such a thing?”

Whether it was entering into someone's bedroom through the balcony, or acting like a childish schoolboy trying to scare his sweetheart, it just didn't seem like a possible action coming from that person.

If that kind of person who looked like a cold and ascetic prince liked someone, he should be delivering seven to eight apartments to his sweetheart first and then reservedly said that he just had no other intentions other than befriending his sweetheart.

As his thoughts wandered, Old Yuan gossiped, “Ruler, that person in your family doesn't look so simple, has he sent you a few houses first?”

No, he was even renting his current house. Oh, it was because he scared the owner away. The owner had no other choice but to lend the house to him.

Chi Yan looked at Old Yuan with disdained from the corner of his eyes. “…Read lesser romance novels. I've told you a long time ago that you wouldn't find a girlfriend even if you understand girls' psychology by reading about them. By the time when you still haven't found a girlfriend but you already let your fantasy be suppressed by reality." Chi Yan felt that Old Yuan was already developing signs of this.

Old Yuan was so aggrieved that he stopped talking.

Chi Yan gradually found that there was a deep understanding between him and Ye Yingzhi like they had been together for a long time. Most words didn't need to be spoken out but Ye Yingzhi could already understand what he was trying to say.

As Ye Yingzhi had said, no one was able to see through his disguise. After graduation, they announced the news of their marriage. Others were surprised that they were both men, but no one was surprised that one of the bridegrooms was not a human. Chi Yan secretly lamented that human beings were so short-sighted that none could see the essence through the phenomenon, and this couldn't help ill.u.s.trating a feeling that everyone was drunk except for him who was sober.

He told Ye Yingzhi how he felt and Ye Yingzhi raised his eyebrows. “What's so proud of this? This is all because I'm with you.”

Chi Yan didn't answer, but inwardly, he felt more and more satisfied.

On the contrary, the longer time they spent together, the more he was afraid that Ye Yingzhi would be discovered and taken away. Because Chi Yan had become friends with Hu Xing and Xiao An, they would occasionally meet and get together with Chi Yan when they came to work in A City.

Five years later, Hu Xing came to a city to help see a case. After work, she asked Old Yuan and Chi Yan to come out for dinner together and specially told them to take Ye Yingzhi along.

When Chi Yan received the news, he was very hesitant. He glanced worriedly at his lover. “Why don't you not go instead?”

“No, I'm going. What if Hu Xing introduces you to other demon or ghosts? What if you were seduced by some other demons? Won't I be very sad?” Ye Yingzhi has quickly taken out the clothes and accessories for both of them to go out and change.

Chi Yan knew that Ye Yingzhi was spurting nonsense again. How could Hu Xing introduce himself to other demons and ghosts? He simply ignored him, and put forward his worry, “I heard that Hu Xing has improved tremendously these past two years, what if she sees through you?”

Ye Yingzhi hugged him from behind, smiling until his eyes curved into a slit. “My wife is worried about me?”

“I'm afraid I will be a widow.” Chi Yan replied casually with his eyes drooping. He vaguely remembered what Ye Yingzhi had said before.

But Ye Yingzhi was pleased by this sentence. He smiled and pecked his face. “I know you love me the most.”

In the end, Chi Yan went with Ye Yingzhi in fear. He thought that since Old Ye had never done anything bad, and Hu Xing was a person he knew. She might be astute and capable on the outside but she was actually soft on the inside. It's better for Ye Yingzhi to be discovered by her than to be inadvertently discovered by others one day. Maybe he could ask her to help him find a way to cover up for Ye Yingzhi.

When Hu Xing saw the two, she interacted with Ye Yingzhi as normal. Instead, she looked at Chi Yan carefully for a long time and frowned. “What's wrong with you? How come every time I see you, the evil energy surrounding you is denser than the last time? “

This was truly hard for Chi Yan to talk through this. There were generally only two reasons for this situation: one was that person lived in a place filled with strong evil energy every day, but if they live in such an environment all the year round, they probably would be suffering from diseases or would die soon; the other was that they were always in close contact with those evil matters, which was harmful to ordinary people. But she had been to Chi Yan's house. It wasn't any place of great evil. She had some impressions of his relatives and friends, and none of them was an evil ent.i.ty.

Chi Yan looked at Ye Yingzhi subconsciously and intuitively knew that he must have something to do with it but he chose to give a vague explanation. “Sister Hu, you're an expert. How would I know that? As long as there's no harm.”

These evil energies were very strange, they wouldn't hurt Chi Yan. Hu Xing couldn't think of any other reasons. However, there were no surprises in the world. She could only say that it was because of Chi Yan himself.

Ye Yingzhi quietly attached himself to Chi Yan's ear and said softly, “You have my smell. I left it on you.”

TN: Next chapter is the last chapter of Arc 2 and the start of Arc 3