Chapter 73: The Object

Didn’t he have hands of his own?

Ming Can didn’t yet understand that this was what people called romantic playfulness. She silently grumbled in her heart. But under the influence of the ambiguous atmosphere, she gradually found herself raising her hand, her fingertips trembling slightly as she reached up and removed Chi Xiao’s mask.

In an instant, the man’s handsome face was exposed under the dappled sunlight. Ming Can immediately felt the subtle of this action—

It was as if she had actively invited him to kiss her.

Without giving her a chance to regret it, Chi Xiao leaned in, his eyes half-lidded, and decisively covered her lips with his.

His right hand had somehow found its way to the back of her neck, gently but firmly tilting her head upward to meet his kiss.

With her lips sealed, a wave of heat rushed over her. Ming Can instinctively grabbed onto Chi Xiao’s clothes, her senses seemingly concentrated entirely on the point where their lips met. His kiss wasn’t forceful, just a tender, lingering press and pull. Each movement felt like a surge of electricity, tingling through their connected lips and spreading to every corner of her body. Her heart raced wildly, and her chest felt so numb it was almost as if she’d lost all sensation.

Ming Can was like a clumsy, bewildered little animal, momentarily forgetting to close her eyes.

From this extremely close distance, she could make out the delicate features of the boy kissing her. His facial contours were even more refined than she had imagined. His eyelids drooped slightly, and his eyelashes—pure black and distinct—framed his eyes. His double eyelids were narrow and deep, and his half-lowered gaze carried a pale, muted color that usually exuded a cold, distant air. But at this proximity, she could suddenly glimpse the true depth beyond the cool mist—a clarity and purity, like the sky washed clean after a storm, stirring an irresistible sense of yearning within her.

A sudden thought popped into Ming Can’s mind: She would never again come across a pair of eyes as heart-stirring as these.

Just then, Chi Xiao suddenly pulled away, his voice slightly hoarse in a way that made her heart itch. He sounded somewhat dissatisfied as he said, “Focus a little.”

He didn’t know what she was thinking, but her eyes were wide open, staring at him. Her lips were as soft as cotton, but they didn’t move at all, as if she had been entranced, completely unaware of where she was or what she was doing.

Ming Can, her face flushed red, replied in a voice that lacked any authority, “I… I don’t know how.”

“I don’t either,” Chi Xiao said, leaning down again. His thick, dark eyelashes fluttered, and his gaze held a mix of boldness and nervousness. “Isn’t that why we’re… learning?”

Then he kissed her again, his dry lips gradually becoming moist under the gentle, unskilled press of his kisses.

The surroundings were silent, with only the wind rustling through the leaves—yet even that gradually failed to mask the soft, lingering sound of their kisses.

The height difference forced Ming Can to tilt her head up, and she couldn’t help but feel her balance shifting backward. With her legs growing weak and unsteady, she gradually lost her footing. Just as her body swayed, Chi Xiao immediately pulled her back into his arms. Their young, inexperienced bodies pressed even closer together—her soft, delicately curved figure molding against his chest. In that instant, their heartbeats grew even more erratic.

Ming Can tightly closed her eyes, her arms moving from her chest to climb up Chi Xiao’s shoulders. She loosely wrapped them around his neck, her fingers brushing against his short, black hair, which felt like touching newly sprouted grass—a little prickly.

Since the frantic heartbeat couldn’t be calmed, she decided to simply enjoy it. Ming Can seemed to have finally found the trick, imitating Chi Xiao’s movements by gently pressing her lips to his, then shifting to another spot to suck lightly. There was no method to it—she would occasionally give him a soft peck, like a little bird eating, clumsy and inexperienced yet patient, slowly satisfying her hunger while inadvertently causing the back of her “food’s” neck to tighten, the coolness in his eyes completely replaced by a burning heat.

Chi Xiao pressed his fingertips slightly against the soft skin at the nape of her neck. Ming Can let out a small whimper, and the next moment, something hot and nimble slipped between her lips. A jolt of electricity shot through her heart, making it clench involuntarily. Her slightly parted teeth instinctively snapped shut—and she bit him, quite hard.

“Ouch,” Chi Xiao hissed, straightening up slightly and complaining in a cool tone, “You’re really fierce.”

“Who told you to pinch me?” Ming Can retorted, not backing down. “And you didn’t even warn me before… pushing in like that. Of course, I’d be startled.”

Chi Xiao wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. “Do I need to give you a heads-up before doing something like that?”

Ming Can: “Yes.”

“Alright,” Chi Xiao chuckled. “Then next time, before I do that, I’ll tell you—”

“Get ready, I’m coming in.”

Ming Can: “…”

Why did that sound so indecent…

Chi Xiao reached up and pinched her cheek, his thumb and forefinger pressing down without much care. “Why is your face even redder now?”

Ming Can swatted his hand away. “Because it’s hot. I’m burning up.”

She really was hot now, with sweat beading at her temples. Her underclothes were slightly damp, sticking uncomfortably to her skin, making her feel stifled.

Glancing at the time, she realized it was already past eight. They had been kissing here for several minutes. Only now did Ming Can belatedly notice that her lips felt a bit numb. She had applied a nude lip balm before leaving the house this morning, but now it was completely gone from all the kissing.

Although it wasn’t the idyllic scene she had imagined—holding hands with her boyfriend and strolling through the quiet morning campus—the feeling of kissing him wasn’t bad at all.

The frustrating part was that Ming Can was very good at self-learning, but when it came to kissing, she couldn’t improve on her own.

She was so inexperienced now, but she couldn’t secretly practice and suddenly amaze everyone. She could only rely on Chi Xiao, the two of them clumsily learning together, slowly improving.

Wait.

Even though Chi Xiao said he didn’t know how to kiss either, when he kissed her earlier, he was only a bit rough and awkward at first. After that, it got better and better, and by the end, Ming Can felt like her bones were melting…

What was this?

Natural talent?

Chi Xiao, who had been inexplicably glared at, looked a bit confused. He glanced at her and asked coolly, “What are you looking at? Do you want to kiss again?”

It had to be said, having a thick skin was also a kind of talent.

“I need to go to class,” Ming Can said, slowly calming her racing heart and letting the adrenaline subside. “If I don’t go soon, I won’t get a good seat.”

“Mm,” Chi Xiao replied, his gaze lingering on her lips with lingering desire. After a moment, he looked away and reached down to take her hand. “Let’s go.”

Ming Can: “Aren’t you going back to your own school?”

“I don’t have class until 10,” Chi Xiao said. “I’ll sit in on yours for a bit.”

After a pause, he met Ming Can’s stunned gaze, his tone carrying a hint of coolness. “What, am I not presentable enough as your partner?”

“No,” Ming Can chuckled awkwardly, telling the truth. “It’s just that you’re too presentable.”

…

With five minutes left before the bell, the classroom was already packed, seats nearly full. Xu Jiayun rushed in through the back door, scanning the room. Sure enough, she spotted an empty seat Ming Can had saved for her in the middle of the front row.

“Excuse me, sorry…”

Xu Jiayun took off her backpack and hugged it to her chest, squeezing her way to the seat next to Ming Can. As soon as she sat down, she started panting. “Whew… I had the worst luck. I rented a bike, but halfway here, the wheel got crooked, and I almost wiped out. I had to run the rest of the way. Thank goodness I’m not late. I heard this professor is super strict about attendance…”

As she spoke, she suddenly bent down, tugging on Ming Can’s arm and whispering, “Volcano, is the guy next to you from our major?”

Ming Can glanced at him. “No, I don’t think so.”

“He’s really tall,” Xu Jiayun said. “He looks kind of familiar, though.”

Ming Can: “Actually, I don’t think he’s even from our school.”

“Huh?” Xu Jiayun was shocked. “Then why is he here for class? Wait, how do you know he’s not from our school…”

The masked guy turned his head toward her, his cold, snow-like gaze landing on Xu Jiayun’s face. His tone, however, was unexpectedly gentle. “Because she’s the one who brought me in.”

…

Xu Jiayun’s jaw dropped like a free-falling object. “Oh my god, Senior Chi Xiao?!!”

“Keep your voice down!” Ming Can grabbed her arm tightly. “Everyone’s looking over here!”

Not long ago, when she had brought him into the classroom, it had already caused a small stir. At that time, there weren’t as many people in the room, but eyes had still locked onto them like radar, and the buzzing whispers had erupted like a stirred-up hornet’s nest. Some had even secretly raised their phones to take pictures.

Well, it couldn’t be helped. Ming Can was famous, after all.

Fortunately, Chi Xiao was wearing a mask and wasn’t a student at B University, so those who didn’t know him well probably wouldn’t recognize him right away.

“Y-you two are together?!” Xu Jiayun stammered, barely able to contain her excitement.

“Yeah,” Ming Can replied, unusually shy. She raised her textbook to cover her face and whispered to Xu Jiayun, “We just got together yesterday.”

“Damn, Volcano,” Xu Jiayun also raised her textbook, giving Ming Can a thumbs-up under the desk. “You got him so fast. As expected of you!”

Ming Can raised her eyebrow, feeling quite pleased but trying to stay modest. “It’s nothing special.”

The two of them whispered to each other, their voices low but still audible to those nearby.

Ming Can’s phone buzzed in her desk. She pulled it out and glanced at the lock screen notification, then turned to give Chi Xiao a puzzled look.

He was sitting right next to her. Why was he texting her?

Chi Xiao ignored her, lazily leaning back in his chair and staring at his phone.

Ming Can had no choice but to unlock her phone and open the chat.

cx: 【You?】

cx: 【Chased?】

cx: 【Me?】

Ming Can: “…”

Was he having another “Bking”^[1]“Bking” is an internet slang derived from Chinese online culture. It often refers to someone who acts pretentiously cool, overly composed, or dramatic—especially when they speak in a … Continue reading moment, where he had to spit out words one by one?

Sun Moon Volcano: 【I was the one who treated you to dinner yesterday, right?】

Sun Moon Volcano: 【I was the one who brought up being together, right?】

Sun Moon Volcano: 【I was the one who stamped the seal, right?】

Sun Moon Volcano: 【I took the initiative every time. How can you say I didn’t chase you?】

A soul-crushing four-part question.

Chi Xiao raised an eyebrow, his fingers loosely gripping his phone as he slowly typed a reply.

cx: 【So this is what you call chasing.】

cx: 【Are you sure it wasn’t just】

cx: 【You forcibly claiming me?】

…

Ming Can stared at the words “forcibly claiming” on the screen, feeling the temperature of her cheeks rise bit by bit. She wanted to refute something, but her fingertips hovered over the keyboard, only managing to type out a string of gibberish.

Recalling what she had said to Chi Xiao when they confirmed their relationship last night—

You’re mine.

Everything here is mine.

Okay, she really couldn’t argue with that.

Ming Can awkwardly put her phone down and changed the subject. “The professor’s here. I need to focus on the lecture.”

The man beside her nodded lazily, also putting his phone away. He pulled out his laptop from his bag and started looking through the course materials.

Just as the class bell rang, Chi Yao walked in through the back door, yawning and looking completely casual. He took a seat in the second-to-last row, near the edge.

“Brother Yao,” the guy sitting next to him said with a mournful expression, “I think the class rep has a boyfriend… I haven’t seen you go look for her these past few days since school started. You’ve probably moved on, right?”

“She has a boyfriend?” Chi Yao, who had been acting like a drunk person suddenly splashed with cold water, snapped to attention. His gaze followed his friend’s pointing finger.

In the center of the front row, a tall, handsome figure stood out conspicuously among the crowd. Since this class didn’t require laptops, almost everyone in the room had their textbooks open—except for him, who had a laptop spread out on his desk. From a distance, dense lines of code jumped across the black background of the development software.

Perhaps it was the sensation of being stared at for too long, or maybe it was the connection of blood ties, but about ten minutes into the class, Chi Xiao suddenly turned his head without warning, looking toward the back of the classroom.

The brothers’ eyes met in mid-air.

Both of them were momentarily stunned, but neither seemed particularly surprised.

Chi Xiao had known he might run into Chi Yao here.

Chi Yao had known too. Ever since that banquet at the end of last year, when he saw his brother leaving with Ming Can, he had guessed that they might end up together.

Maybe he had sensed it even earlier.

Even though he had held onto the faint hope that he might somehow win Ming Can over, deep down, a voice had always whispered that his older brother would inevitably succeed.

It wasn’t just because Chi Xiao was the genius their parents always praised. It was also because, no matter what he did, he always put in twelve times the effort.

Others only saw him as a genius.

But they didn’t know.

He worked hard every day—studying, working, and even loving someone.

Both of them looked away at the same time.

As if nothing had happened.

Chi Yao ruffled his hair, bent over, and sprawled on the desk, pretending to sleep.

The guy next to him asked, “Aren’t you upset?”

“What’s the point of being upset? Should I cry here or something?”

“…”

“Enough, I’m exhausted,” Chi Yao said, lowering his head and resting his face on his arm, facing the desk.

He really did look like he was about to cry.

–

A few days later.

Ming Can finished her evening class and took a taxi to a high-end residential complex within the Third Ring Road.

The city was enveloped in the night, with neon lights connecting into a dazzling sea of stars. Right next to the residential complex lay a well-known CBD^[2]CBD stands for Central Business District. It refers to the commercial and business center of a city, typically characterized by a high concentration of office buildings, financial institutions, … Continue reading, where several towering apartment buildings stood in quiet contrast to the bustling surroundings. Chi Xiao’s apartment was on the second-highest floor of the building with the best view. Since Ming Can’s place hadn’t been thoroughly cleaned yet, and he couldn’t go over to take care of the child when she had classes, he had no choice but to temporarily bring the child to his place.

Ming Can was here to pick up the child and take him home.

It was getting late. She entered the password and walked into the apartment, only to find Chi Xiao sitting on the sofa with his laptop, seemingly waiting for her. There was no sign of Miaomiao.

“What? Is Miaomiao already asleep?” Ming Can glanced at the time, a little exasperated. It was just past nine, which was around Miaomiao’s bedtime, but it wouldn’t have been hard to keep him awake a little longer. “Where’s he sleeping?”

“In my room.”

The entire spacious flat only had a bit of life in the master bedroom where Chi Xiao lived. Miaomiao had initially wanted to stay in the room he used to live in, but after spending five seconds inside, he ran out with a miserable expression.

“You didn’t tell me earlier,” Ming Can said, hands on her hips, glaring at him. “You made me come all this way for nothing?”

“Mm,” he admitted shamelessly. “If I’d told you, you wouldn’t have come.”

Ming Can: “…”

What a scheming man!

Ming Can took off her backpack and casually placed it on the sofa, then opened a bottle of water to soothe her throat.

“By the way,” she said to Chi Xiao, “Miaomiao was really sad when we had to send Xiao Zhu away. I don’t know when we’ll be able to bring it back. Tomorrow and the day after are the weekend. Let’s find some time to pick out a puppy for Miaomiao.”

Chi Xiao: “No problem.”

He was still sitting on the sofa, his brow slightly furrowed as he stared at the computer screen, seemingly dealing with something important.

Ming Can said casually, “The deep cleaning should be done by tomorrow.”

Chi Xiao looked up at her, leaning back slightly, his tone deliberately dramatic. “Finally, I can move back into the room I’ve been dreaming about day and night.”

Ming Can: “You’re ridiculous.”

She scolded him but didn’t stop him from moving back.

Chi Xiao’s lips curved into a faint smile. Seeing Ming Can looking around, bored, he finally stood up from the sofa and took her to the master bedroom to check on Miaomiao.

The master bedroom was spacious, with open areas and no partitions, making it feel even more empty and cold. Miaomiao lay alone on the large bed with its cool-toned bedding, the blanket forming a small lump. He looked pitiful.

Ming Can then went into the bathroom to check the children’s hygiene products Miaomiao had been using.

“Not bad,” she nodded. “The pajamas are from home, right?”

Chi Xiao: “Mm.”

They stood in the bathroom, the bright light shining down from above, their figures clearly reflected in the pristine mirror above the sink.

Ming Can suddenly felt the space was a bit cramped, the light making her heart race. She lowered her head, about to walk out.

Just then, Chi Xiao casually said, “If you think going back is too much trouble, you can stay here.”

“No,” Ming Can refused firmly. “Staying here would be more troublesome. I don’t have any of the things I need here.”

They brushed past each other, and under the light, the tips of Ming Can’s ears turned slightly red. She walked back to the living room, grabbed a bottle of water, and gulped it down.

Chi Xiao returned to the single sofa he had been sitting on earlier and picked up his laptop again.

Back when they were together, he had mostly been laid-back, going along with whatever she wanted, rarely as preoccupied as he was today, glued to his computer.

Out of curiosity, Ming Can wanted to know what he was busy with. Maybe she could learn something useful.

She walked over to Chi Xiao, still holding the water bottle, and asked, “What are you looking at?”

Chi Xiao: “A BERT model my lab senior trained.”

“What’s BERT?”

“It’s an open-source deep learning model for natural language processing. The question-answering system my senior trained with it has some issues. Our advisor is in a hurry, so we’re all debugging it.”

“Natural language processing—does that mean the code automatically understands context?”

“Pretty much,” Chi Xiao said, splitting the screen on his computer and pulling up a blank development window. He copied a simple piece of code, masked a few words, and then ran the model to show Ming Can. “The model can fully understand the meaning of the sentence and predict the hidden characters, just like how the human brain uses experience to guess what the missing characters are…”

Ming Can leaned over, standing beside him to look at the computer screen. As she bent lower, her ponytail slipped over her shoulder, the slight movement of air brushing past Chi Xiao’s cheek.

Chi Xiao suddenly stopped explaining and looked up at her. “Why aren’t you sitting?”

Ming Can was taken aback. “Where would I sit?”

Although Chi Xiao was sitting on a single sofa, it wasn’t so small that only one person could fit. There was enough space for two, though they’d have to sit close together.

There was also a wide armrest next to the sofa, so Ming Can could have sat there.

But she chose to stand.

Whether it was squeezing onto the small sofa with him or sitting on the armrest, both options felt a bit awkward.

Chi Xiao looked up at her for a moment, then suddenly smiled. He set his laptop on the table in front of him and said quite seriously, “Sit on my lap.”