Xingyu jerked awake. It took him a minute to get a bearing on his surroundings—he was still in the hallway outside Xiao-Xiao’s room, but he’d fallen asleep at some point and slumped onto the ground. Xiao-Xiao was standing behind him, fully dressed, fixing the pins on his cuffs. He’d chosen a blue pinstripe suit today. It made him look taller.

“I asked you what you’re doing.”

“I…fell asleep.”

“I can see that.” Xiao-Xiao stepped over him and started down the hallway, but Xingyu caught his pant leg before he could keep going. “Let go of me.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Why did I leave my room?” His tone indicated he knew this wasn’t what Xingyu was referring to. “Because I need to go to work. Let go of me.” He reached down, brushed Xingyu off him.

“You knew we were in your office.”

Xiao-Xiao stopped. Xingyu couldn’t see his face, but he saw that his shoulders had tensed.

“You knew that we’d—”

Xiao-Xiao suddenly whirled around. Before Xingyu could react, Xiao-Xiao had seized him by the arm and dragged him back into the bedroom, slamming him against a wall. “Are you out of your fucking mind?” His eyes, normally totally unreadable, were suddenly on fire, and Xingyu felt the effect of it so strongly that he instinctively tried to squirm away, but Xiao-Xiao’s grip—holding his shoulders now, tight enough to bruise—was too strong to break. And he kept his voice low, so low Xingyu almost couldn’t hear it.

“What do you—”

“If you forgot your phone, you could have just told me.” Now his voice was louder, clearer, absolutely steady. “You don’t have to be embarrassed about it.”

Embarrassed? What?

“Next time, just have your friend message me. I’ll give you both my number.”

Xingyu opened his mouth. Xiao-Xiao’s hand immediately slapped over it. Slowly, he put his other hand to his own mouth, just his index finger. Then he took his hand back from Xingyu’s mouth.

“Okay,” said Xingyu, doing his best to keep his voice from trembling, “let’s do that.” He wasn’t sure what was going on, but the look in Xiao-Xiao’s eyes with the way his voice sounded…he understood enough not to say anything more about what happened the night before.

“Go get dressed.” He stepped back and took three deep breaths and with each breath the fire in his eyes slowly went out. “I’ll meet you at breakfast.”

And he left him there.

ZHANG WEIRAN WAS washing his hands.

Again.

He had really two choices right now: he could keep thinking about whatever the hell was going on in Liu Xiaokai’s mind, which was an untouchable conundrum; or he could think about being under that desk, his legs pressed up against and tangled with Xingyu’s, feeling the heat radiating from his skin—