DBTHDCAR Chapter 71

Luckily, their fortune hadn’t completely run out. After walking forward for about five minutes, they reached a place that looked like the town center.

Just as Fan Xia had said, there were hotels and guesthouses, and quite a few shops were still open; it was fairly lively.

They walked along the concrete road. Through the gradually thinning curtain of rain, a flickering neon sign; once reading “Hair & Beauty,” now missing a few characters, cast its glow onto the wall behind them. From inside the glass doors came pink-tinted light and bursts of coquettish laughter.

“Little brother, come look this way.”

A woman, her features blurred under the spinning lights of the barber shop, waved at them. Ding Zheyang turned his head out of curiosity —and then his eyes went wide in horror. As for what exactly he saw… Ding Zheyang swore he’d never tell a soul.

“Let’s take this one.”

Fan Xia pointed to a guesthouse on the right called 【Pink Memories.】

Ning Xiaobei didn’t care whether the memories were pink or blue, he just wanted a hot shower and a proper sleep. So he followed Fan Xia inside without hesitation.

Once inside… it was actually an internet café.

Two or three dozen young people sat with headphones on, some watching movies, others gaming. The screens cast colorful light across their tired yet excited faces. Nobody noticed the soaking trio walking in.

The three drenched boys quickly backed out and slipped through a glass door to the side. It turned out the guesthouse and internet café shared the same main entrance.

“One triple room, please.”

Fan Xia spoke as if very experienced, using the Chongming dialect to the woman dozing in a green military-style coat at the small front desk. A heater at her feet glowed a warm orange-red.

The front desk was little more than a three-foot-square wooden counter. On top sat a red telephone, next to a crooked sign that read: [Telephone use, 2 yuan per minute. Not for lending.]

Behind the counter, the wall displayed room rates: standard room, double room, triple room, with the most expensive, 50 yuan per night.

Next to the rates was a police notice with bold characters: [ID required for check-in], signed with the local police station’s number and the officer’s name.

Beside that was a messy pile of miscellaneous items, plus cigarettes, alcohol, sodas, and unidentifiable snacks including instant noodles. Grey walls were crisscrossed with wires like a spiderweb. From the front desk alone, one could tell how rundown this guesthouse was.

“Fan Xia, let’s go somewhere else…”

Ding Zheyang looked around with disdain, tugging on Fan Xia’s jacket and whispering, “I brought money. Let’s find a better place to stay.”

“Eh, you don’t get it, this place is fine.”

“There’s no triple room left, only a standard room. Should we take it?”

The woman, disturbed from her nap, yawned big and frowned at the door.

“Tch, what a mess! You’ve soaked everything…”

The woman muttered angrily as she stepped out from behind the counter, grabbing a mop and a red plastic bucket. She wiped up the water that had dripped along the floor from Ning Xiaobei and the others, then plopped back down on her seat, tugged at her coat over her shoulders, and scowled even more impatiently.

“The room is fifty, deposit a hundred. There’s hot water in the bathroom. Are you staying or not?”

Even though the price list clearly said a standard room was thirty a night, the woman was clearly taking advantage of the situation.

“Staying!”

Fan Xia slapped two hundred yuan onto the counter without hesitation.

“Boss lady, make us three bowls of instant noodles, Kang Shifu brand. Fill the thermos with hot water and bring it up, and lend me a universal charger. Keep the change.”

Seeing Fan Xia be so generous, the woman’s frosty expression finally softened a little.

She opened a drawer, inside which a dozen or so keys were strung across a wooden board. She handed one to Fan Xia, told him to go east on the second floor, the second-to-last room, and then busied herself with preparing their noodles.

“Xiaobei, she didn’t ask for our IDs… I was worried she might,” Ding Zheyang said, carrying his dripping wet coat upstairs, relieved.

“Of course not. You didn’t think I’d pick a place at random, did you?”

Fan Xia jingled the keys, his eyes sparkling with pride.

“I noticed it earlier. Didn’t you see how many students were in that internet café? I knew for sure she wouldn’t ask for our IDs.”

Ding Zheyang was genuinely impressed this time. He had always thought Fan Xia was all body, no brain, and that any good grades he got were dragged out by Ning Xiaobei. But clearly, Fan Xia had his wits about him!

“So, Boss, impressive, huh?”

“Impressive? Should I praise you? All that brainpower spent on sneaky tricks?”

Ning Xiaobei looked up, a cold smile curling across his face.

“Ah, hurry up and take a hot shower! Boss, you go first, come out and eat the noodles afterward.”

Fan Xia shivered at his icy tone, smiling like a sycophant while opening the door to his room.

A musty stench hit them the moment they stepped in, mingled with the damp, salty smell unique to seaside houses, plus the lingering smoke that just wouldn’t go away, making all three sneeze at once.

“Seriously? No windows at all… no wonder it stinks so bad.”

Ding Zheyang pinched his nose, walking in with a grimace.

Who even knew when this room had last been renovated? Everything screamed decay and outdated style. The moldy smell came from the rotting wall panels, and the white wallpaper with tiny flowers had blistered from the damp, revealing the green plaster beneath.

Two single beds took up almost eighty percent of the room, with a wooden nightstand spanning between them. On top sat an ashtray, still holding the cigarette butts left behind by the previous guest; who knew if anyone had actually cleaned it.

Ning Xiaobei casually pulled back the covers and froze. A few strands of long women’s hair lay hidden inside. For someone with a mild obsession with cleanliness like him, his face immediately went pale.

Being able to stay in a place and being able to actually sleep there were two very different things.

“I—I’ll go clean the bathroom first. Boss, you wait here.”

Seeing Ning Xiaobei about to lose it, Fan Xia dashed ahead into the narrow bathroom. He turned on the taps, scrubbed the sink and the toilet, and only after making sure it was genuinely clean did he stand at the doorway like a little eunuch, inviting Prince Ning to take a proper bath.

Ning Xiaobei stood at the bathroom door, cast a short glance, snorted softly, and stepped in with deliberate grace.

Ding Zheyang gawked in disbelief from the side, he had no idea these two actually interacted like this in private.

After a steaming hot shower, all three of them felt a bit more alive. Since they didn’t have any spare clothes, they had to ask the landlady to lend her little fan heater to dry their damp clothes.

In the end, all three sat on the single beds, each wearing only a pair of shorts, draped in the few relatively clean blankets they had, staring at each other wide-eyed.

Fan Xia’s bandaged leg had already soaked through, and the guesthouse didn’t have any spare bandages, so he boldly left the wound exposed, claiming that air helps it heal faster.

While Fan Xia was showering, Ning Xiaobei and Ding Zheyang had witnessed a massive rat, about the size of two palms, drop from the ceiling with a thud. It locked eyes with the two of them for a moment before disappearing somewhere unknown.

So the two of them decided right then: they would tough it out all night without lying down to sleep.

Absolutely not!

“Why don’t we play cards? Just sitting here doing nothing is boring.”

Fan Xia didn’t have the spoiled-brat tendencies of the other two, but since they insisted on staying awake, he reluctantly joined them. After all, he was the one who had stirred up all this trouble in the first place.

Soon, the landlady brought over two brand-new decks of playing cards. This time, Ning Xiaobei paid without hesitation, not waiting for Fan Xia.

Seeing these two students, one dark-skinned and one pale, and their bold manners, the young landlady’s cheeks flushed slightly. She walked to the door, hesitated as if she wanted to say something, but ultimately said nothing and quietly closed the door.

The three of them played Landlord out of sheer boredom, but surprisingly, they enjoyed themselves.

After a while, Ding Zheyang’s face suddenly changed. Clutching his stomach, he rushed into the bathroom, probably sick from the cold, and struggled on the toilet for quite some time, not emerging.

With one player gone, they couldn’t continue the card game, so Ning Xiaobei pulled out a deck to practice 24-point math puzzles with Fan Xia.

They went through a few easy hands before hitting a tough one: even after trying all combinations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, they couldn’t reach 24. Fan Xia shrugged and suggested switching cards, but Ning Xiaobei refused to give up, even attempting square roots, resting his chin in his hand as he concentrated, looking like a meditating monk.

Fan Xia initially fiddled with his own cards in mild exasperation, but gradually his gaze drifted to Ning Xiaobei.

He watched Ning Xiaobei’s slight frown, long lashes fanning shadows across his cheeks. In this shabby guesthouse without a proper hair dryer, the ends of his damp hair still clung stubbornly, with tiny droplets on his temples and brows, trembling slightly.

And Fan Xia watched, mesmerized, as one droplet slowly slid down Ning Xiaobei’s temple and along his neck.

Ning Xiaobei’s neck was slender and long. Tilted at that angle, it unconsciously reminded Fan Xia of Tchaikovsky’s 《Swan Lake》, the white swan’s elegance tinged with fragile sorrow.

Then that pesky droplet slid straight into the hollow of his collarbone and stubbornly stayed there.

The guesthouse’s cheap yellow incandescent bulbs highlighted every bone. People from Jiangnan are usually small and delicate, sometimes so gentle they seem bland— like a powder puff: not unattractive, just not striking.

Fan Xia realized for the first time that Ning Xiaobei’s bone structure was actually sharp; his brow, nose, and chin had more depth than the average Jiangnan face, making him look particularly striking under the lamp.

Could his mother be from the north, or even northwest China?

Pulling his thoughts back to the present, a suspicious flush crept over Fan Xia’s face. He suddenly recognized the scene in front of him.

The shabby guesthouse, the messy little beds, the patchy green wall, and their near-exposed closeness— it mirrored exactly the opening scene of 《Happy Together》 he’d watched in the internet café that afternoon, the intimate moment between Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung.

He suddenly stood up, startling Ning Xiaobei.

“What are you doing?”

“I…I want to watch TV!”

Fan Xia shouted loudly, trying to cover his embarrassment.

He grabbed the remote and pressed the power button repeatedly, but nothing happened; the master switch of the TV was off.

He reached for the TV’s power button directly. At that exact moment, Ning Xiaobei sat with his back to the screen; their bare shoulders brushed and then separated almost instantly.

Ning Xiaobei’s body temperature was always slightly lower than Fan Xia’s. That touch felt like cold jade against him; he felt his heart melt into that creamy, firm white jade, and panicked, flopping back onto the bed, unsure where to put his hands and feet.

Ning Xiaobei glanced at him strangely, then lowered his head to continue calculating the cards.

Fan Xia sat with utmost respect, even straighter than he did in class. He flipped through the channels from the first to the last, but couldn’t find a single program worth watching; even the evening news had already ended.

Unlike more than twenty years later, when 11 p.m. is prime time for variety shows battling for ratings, at this point the TV was only limping along with bizarre late-night home shopping.

A 199-yuan internet notebook and a 99-yuan never-need-to-recharge super phone alternated endlessly. Between the ads, more ads popped up: ⟬ Love Elva Hsiao’s 《The Most Familiar Stranger》? Send a text XXX to XXX right now, and get it as your personalized ringtone! ⟭

“Forget it. Turn it off. Too noisy.”

Ning Xiaobei tossed the cards onto the bed, unwilling to keep calculating.

His eyelids were fighting a losing battle; he wanted nothing more than to crash into sleep immediately. But his obsession with cleanliness wouldn’t allow it. The two impulses tugged at him so fiercely that his mind felt like mush, and he gave up entirely.

Fan Xia, resigned, turned off the TV. The two sat bored, staring at each other, when suddenly a strange sound came from the next room—faint, intermittent, almost imperceptible.

“Wha—”

Ning Xiaobei quickly realized what it was.

No way — this kind of rundown countryside inn, the rooms were in such a state; could you really expect any soundproofing?

“Better leave the TV on, then.”

He lowered his head, his pale white face tinged slightly pink.

Fan Xia, who hadn’t fully understood earlier, now got everything in an instant. He hurriedly pressed the remote and turned the volume all the way up.

⟬ Trouble waking up at night? Your wife keeps complaining? That’s kidney trouble! Call now to buy a full course of X. We promise a full refund if it doesn’t work! Full refund if it doesn’t work! ⟭

The ridiculous electronics ads were over, replaced by an even more jaw-dropping segment on health supplements.

A female host in outrageously skimpy attire sat next to the so-called 38th-generation inheritor of the X formula, who proceeded to tell one preposterous, scandalous story after another. From Emperor Xuanzong of Tang to the last Qing emperor, every named emperor and consort was smeared without mercy.

After a grandiose self-praise session, it was time for live testimonials. Just when you thought the experts on stage had pushed the envelope, the special audience members outdid them. Old men with young wives, old couples, young men with older wives — they took turns describing cases so vivid, so wildly explicit, and with such nonchalant boldness that if this were posted on Jinjiang Literature twenty years later, it would almost certainly get the chapter locked and permanently blacklisted.

Ning Xiaobei was so mortified he almost wished he could claw a three-bedroom apartment with full furniture out of thin air using just his toes. He rolled his eyes twice and pretended he hadn’t heard a thing.

Fan Xia’s head sank lower and lower, while, in contrast, a certain other part of his body was rising higher and higher. The poor kid gripped his legs tight, thinking that if Xiaobei noticed, he might as well disappear from the human race.

The TV segment grew more absurd. Some viewers expressed disbelief, thinking the testimonials were all paid actors. The female host, enraged, waved two impressive mounds with a flourish, saying: ⟬ You can insult me, but you cannot insult Master XX’s ancestral formula!⟭ She generously added that if anyone didn’t believe it, they could perform an on-the-spot experiment.

The audience selected a dim-witted man to take the medicine live, to prove whether it worked or not. Without hesitation, the poor guy picked up the cup and swallowed the formula.

The plot became increasingly ridiculous, but it was gripping. Even Ning Xiaobei found himself sneakily peeking sideways, curious about what would happen next. Fan Xia, that hot-blooded youth, couldn’t contain himself at all; he seems to want to dive headfirst into the TV.

So engrossed were the two of them that they completely ignored the persistent knock knock knock coming from the door outside.

Just as the dim-witted man shouted, “I’m better!” the front door was kicked open with a crash. Four men in black police uniforms stormed in.

“Everyone squat down! Hands up!”

The man in charge barked, “Anti-prostitution raid!”

Ning Xiaobei and Fan Xia’s legs went completely weak. Squatting? Forget it…they immediately dropped to their knees, hands over their heads.

“Why are there two guys? Where are the women?”

The squad leader’s brow furrowed, his righteous expression tightening. Something wasn’t adding up.

“There’s someone in the bathroom!”

A junior officer shouted and kicked the bathroom door open.

Ding Zheyang, sitting on the toilet playing Snake on his phone, looked up in utter terror.

………………

Author’s Note:

I told you…it’s ten times more exciting than you imagined. Not kidding.

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