YPSSS Chapter 45 – Extra Chapter

01 Are There Words on the Back Too?

On March 24th of the following year, Xie Ji gave Xia Shiruan a box of chocolates.

Inside a beautiful square box lay twelve small, exquisitely crafted chocolate balls. On top, someone had carefully carved a line of letters that Xia Shiruan couldn’t understand.

Xia Shiruan guessed this was Xie Ji’s attempt at being romantic, but unfortunately, he really couldn’t make out what the letters meant.

Xie Ji’s expression looked quite expectant, so Xia Shiruan accepted the chocolates, only cautiously saying, “Thank you, I really like them.”

He planned to look it up secretly when he got back.

The next day, Xie Ji caught Xia Shiruan on the third floor of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ main library, in the ancient text section.

“…What are you doing here?” Xie Ji said unhappily. “I’ve been looking for you for ages. You didn’t reply to my messages, and you weren’t in the lab either.”

Xia Shiruan tried to hide the book behind his back, but Xie Ji spotted it immediately.

“What are you reading?” Xie Ji caught his hand and pulled out the book, lifting it to look at the characters on the cover. “A Guide to Ancient Western Languages? Xia Shiruan, the books you read are getting stranger and stranger.”

Since he’d been discovered, Xia Shiruan came clean. “I wanted to look up the letters on the chocolates.”

Xie Ji’s expression suddenly turned strange, as if he was both embarrassed and confused.

He looked at Xia Shiruan for a few seconds, then coughed. “Why would you need to look that up?”

Wasn’t the meaning obvious at first glance?

Xia Shiruan put the Guide to Ancient Western Languages, which had yielded no clues, back on the shelf and explained, “I can’t understand it.”

Xie Ji paused, then raised one eyebrow and moved closer to Xia Shiruan. With a hint of a smile on his face, he whispered in his ear, “You really can’t understand it?”

His voice was lowered but not too much, creating a slight crisp echo in the quiet library. “Then who is it that tells me every day that they want a kiss?”

It only took Xia Shiruan one second to realize what Xie Ji was talking about. His cheeks quickly turned red as he swiftly covered Xie Ji’s mouth with one hand and quickly glanced outside twice.

Fortunately, there was no one around at this time, but Xia Shiruan didn’t remove his hand from Xie Ji’s mouth. He only glared at him with his ineffective glare, “Not every day.”

“Right, not every day,” Xie Ji said, his moving lips sending warm breath that tickled Xia Shiruan’s palm. “Just yesterday, and the day before.”

“…”

Xia Shiruan regretted it now, thinking he shouldn’t have responded to that last comment. After all, when it came to flirting, he could never handle Xie Ji.

But Xia Shiruan quickly realized something else: why did their conversation suddenly turn in this direction?

Weren’t they asking about what those strange letters on the chocolates meant?

“I wasn’t talking about that,” Xia Shiruan said, trying to calm himself down as he changed the subject. “I just wanted to know what that line of text means, the one on the chocolate’s surface that starts with something that looks like the ancient Roman letter θ…”

Xia Shiruan’s voice grew increasingly quiet until it nearly vanished, because he noticed Xie Ji’s expression slowly changing from gentle teasing to stunned, then to silence.

Several seconds passed.

“…Xia Shiruan.” Xie Ji removed his hand and stared at him, speaking through gritted teeth. “What you’re talking about is the brand’s logo.”

“…” Xia Shiruan blanked out, his mind rarely experiencing such a freeze, and after a long while, he dumbly responded, “Huh?”

“What do you mean ‘huh’?” Xie Ji looked at his face, feeling both annoyed and amused, so he kept his expression stern and said in a deep voice, “So you didn’t see the words on the back?”

“There’s words on the back too?”

“…”

Xie Ji didn’t want to talk to him anymore and turned to leave.

Xia Shiruan’s brain, which usually turned slowly in these situations, suddenly became active, and he almost instinctively grabbed Xie Ji’s hand.

Actually, Xie Ji hadn’t gone far, just one step away. With Xia Shiruan’s gentle pull, he turned back around, but his lips were still tight.

“I didn’t open it,” Xia Shiruan said, his face warming as he spoke quickly. “Because it was too beautiful, so I didn’t eat it, I put it in the fridge.”

Xie Ji was still frustrated about their previous miscommunication, but seeing Xia Shiruan with his flushed cheeks and moving lips as he spoke, he still gave an “mm” and his expression softened slightly.

Xia Shiruan let out a sigh and promised, “I’ll look at it as soon as I get back.”

In fact, he already had a vague guess, and his heart warmed at the thought of seeing Xie Ji’s romantic message.

Xia Shiruan held Xie Ji’s wrist, squeezing it gently, then looked up at him, showing a quiet and gentle smile.

Xie Ji looked at him, finding this version of Xia Shiruan particularly adorable. His earlier mild frustration completely disappeared. He reached out and pinched Xia Shiruan’s cheeks, making his lips pucker like a duck’s bill.

“Xia Shiruan, are you stupid?”

Xia Shiruan shook his head with difficulty, refusing to admit it.

Xie Ji leaned closer in this position, watching as his eyes widened, then smiled and lowered his head to press a kiss on his puckered lips.

02 It’s Just Sweet

One weekend, Xie Ji went to Xia Shiruan’s house to find him and discovered the small bottle of synthetic perfume from Mount Xia on his desk.

Xie Ji picked it up, looked at it once, then put it back, asking Xia Shiruan, “Why do you still keep this?”

Xia Shiruan closed the room’s door, turned back, and said casually, “It smells nice, so I kept it.”

Xie Ji raised his eyebrows, gave the small bottle another look, and his lips twitched as his expression immediately changed to undisguised displeasure.

The small bottle had “Caramel Scent” written on it.

While Xie Ji’s pheromones were closer to some kind of coffee, with a hint of bitterness, but not entirely bitter… it was hard to describe, really.

Anyway, even he didn’t like the smell himself.

He had presented early, and elementary school courses back then didn’t cover much about biology, so he didn’t pay much attention to it. Whether it smelled good or not didn’t seem particularly important.

Later, Shu Jian and the others also presented, and as young teenagers often hung out together, for various reasons, they had smelled each other’s pheromones.

The result was mutual disgust.

Xie Ji didn’t mind being disliked by Shu Jian and the others, as long as his Omega liked it.

And Xia Shiruan really did like it.

Every time they kissed, he would sniff around Xie Ji’s neck like a puppy for a long time, as if completely intoxicated.

But this was the first time Xie Ji heard him say he liked another scent.

Although synthetic pheromones were just chemically synthesized compounds, fundamentally different from real human pheromones, no one could guarantee there wasn’t another Alpha in the world with exactly this scent.

In other words, if such an Alpha existed in the world, Xia Shiruan might end up liking that person because he liked their scent.

In this era, everyone knew how powerful pheromones were.

They were weapons on the battlefield, and also intimate secrets between lovers.

Xie Ji coldly stared at the bottle. Unable to control his rising hostility, he held back the urge to crush it as he asked, “Does it smell that good?”

“Mm.” Xia Shiruan said, clearly sensing his displeasure but still explaining sincerely, “It’s very similar to your pheromone scent.”

Xie Ji froze for a second, turned the bottle around to reconfirm the words written on it, and asked, “Similar to mine?”

No matter how you looked at it, sugar and coffee were quite different.

“Very similar, but yours is a bit sweeter…” Xia Shiruan thought carefully and made what he considered an easy-to-understand comparison. “Yours is like a light-sculpted triangle, but this is just a regular photon function.”

Xie Ji: “…”

Thanks to Xia Shiruan’s recent habit of explaining basic photon system science to him, Xie Ji understood and felt like laughing.

Like a balloon full of air, but Xia Shiruan only needed to give it a gentle poke to deflate it.

Xia Shiruan always had this ability.

After a while, Xie Ji reached out and pinched his nose.

“How did you smell it to think my pheromones are sweet?”

Although he asked this, Xie Ji’s mind involuntarily wandered to many different scenes.

For instance, how Xia Shiruan used to really dislike sweets before. He would even spit out watermelon if it was too sweet.

“Isn’t it sweet?” Xia Shiruan said with certainty. “It’s definitely sweet.”

“Okay,” Xie Ji smiled. “Then it’s sweet.”

Everyone else said it was bitter, only you think it’s sweet.

03 Good Student

The 20-year-old Alpha obviously had a wealth of experience in the art of flirting with his Omega anywhere and anytime.

For instance, if stealing a kiss, it was best to do it quickly, like a dragonfly touching water, just grazing his cheek. After he realized what happened, all he could do was glare for a while.

But during intimate moments, there were occasionally times when they wanted to be even closer.

This kind of desire was usually hard to easily dispel. Deep kisses weren’t enough, and even temporary marks increasingly felt like drinking poison to quench thirst.

Something had to be done about it.

On the day their department’s freshman final exams ended, a group of them rented out the entire third floor of Chen Rongxin’s family bar and partied until midnight.

Many people came, including Pei Hu and Shi Yi. The young Alphas were incredibly energetic, but Xia Shiruan couldn’t really keep up. By midnight, he was already exhausted.

Chen Rongxin tossed him a card and told Xia Shiruan to go sleep in the room upstairs.

It was the familiar room. Xia Shiruan took a shower, the warm mist making him a bit dizzy. When he pushed open the door, he saw Xie Ji standing outside, his outer clothes removed, revealing fair collarbones with deep lines.

For a moment, Xia Shiruan even forgot how to turn around. He felt the air become dry despite just having showered. His tongue tied as he asked, “Are… are you done already?”

“Mm,” Xie Ji started naturally undoing his belt, tossing the long strap onto the bed, his pants hanging loosely on his hips. “I’m a bit tired too, so I came back first.”

“Oh,” Xia Shiruan nodded, looking away and walking past him in fluffy slippers. “Then go shower, I’ll boil some water.”

As he passed by Xie Ji, his forearm was caught.

Xia Shiruan was originally very thin, his forearm so slender it could be encircled by one hand. When Xie Ji grabbed it like this, it was like holding a cat by its scruff.

“Why are you running?” Xie Ji glanced at his pink earlobes. “Help me with something.”

He pointed at a complicated-looking knot on the back of his shirt. “Untie this for me.”

So Xia Shiruan stood behind him to undo the knot, absentmindedly wondering how Xie Ji had even managed to tie it in the first place.

One knot took about two minutes of fumbling to undo, during which no one spoke, even their breathing was kept soft.

But Xia Shiruan could still smell Xie Ji’s scent.

He drank quite a lot tonight, but the alcohol on him wasn’t unpleasant. Mixed with his increasingly rich pheromones, it became an alluring fragrance.

After undoing the knot, his clothes started slipping. Xia Shiruan mumbled “I’m done” and tried to leave, but of course, he couldn’t get away.

Xie Ji gripped his arm and turned him around completely, a dazzling smile on his lips. “Why so shy? It’s not like you haven’t seen it before.”

Xia Shiruan blinked slowly.

Had he seen it before?

But surely never with so little fabric involved.

Xia Shiruan quickly searched through his memories for similar scenes, but could only recall that split-second glimpse of a back view at Mount Xia, and even that was from several meters away.

The impact of seeing it face-to-face was quite different.

Xie Ji didn’t take the chance to bring up a certain small video. He just chuckled, pinched Xia Shiruan’s soft earlobe, then slowly traced down to his neck.

His fingertips weren’t particularly warm, but Xia Shiruan felt like he was scalded.

Neither knew exactly when they started kissing, only that their movements gradually became different… inappropriate.

Xia Shiruan was no stranger to how an Alpha would be in these moments. After all, they had been that intimate before.

But this time somehow felt different from all the previous times, because neither called for a stop.

When Xia Shiruan was lifted up entirely, his eyes still held a touch of confusion, as if unsure what would happen next. But he had always been a quick learner with strong association skills. After thinking for just a moment, he reached out with a soft, warm hand to touch him, looked up at Xie Ji, and said, “Let me help you.”

He was obviously nervous, but he tried to appear calm as he seriously added, “I’ve studied this at the museum before.”

As if worried Xie Ji wouldn’t believe his capability.

Looking at his wide eyes, Xie Ji almost couldn’t hold back his laughter, but he managed to say, “Alright, you’re amazing.”

Seeing Xia Shiruan’s seemingly all-knowing yet completely innocent expression, Xie Ji couldn’t resist teasing him. “Since you’re so skilled… why don’t you teach me? I don’t know how.”

Xia Shiruan looked at him, nodded, then lifted the blanket and slid down along his legs.

He knelt under the blanket for half an hour.

Xie Ji wasn’t finished yet, but Xia Shiruan could no longer stay on his knees due to lack of oxygen.

The scent of pheromones filled the entire room.

Xia Shiruan was actually a very obedient person, always serious about everything he did.

And Xie Ji loved every side of him.

When he was pulled out from under the blanket, Xia Shiruan’s entire face was flushed red, but his lips were moist, and his eyes looked as if they’d been washed with water, as if ready to spill tears at the slightest touch.

Xie Ji suppressed his heavy breathing and leaned in to kiss him. After a long while, he praised in a hoarse voice, “Xiao Ruan is a good teacher. You taught me very well.”

Xia Shiruan was red from his ears to his neck. Just as he was about to speak, Xie Ji continued.

“But I still haven’t learned it properly.”

“…”

“I want more.”

“…” Xia Shiruan took a labored breath and said, “Then next time we can…”

“No,” Xie Ji said, “A good student doesn’t leave homework for the next day.”

[End]