Chapter 57.1

Later, Yang Lei said to Fang Yu, “Fang Yu, we are a family here. Me, Aunt Zhang, Uncle Wang, Uncle Liu, Uncle Wei… We have a large family here! This family is yours.”

Yang Lei wanted to give Fang Yu a family. He could give it better than anyone else. He wanted to give Fang Yu a place where he could stay a lifetime without having to leave. This place only had him and Fang Yu.

Not long after Er Hei’s wedding, Yang Lei went to visit Fang Yu. Fang Yu had brought Hua Mao, Lao Liang, and Er Hei, and was supporting the new arcade that a little brother under his leadership had newly opened. This arcade had imported many of the most profitable slot machines and gambling machines at that time. As soon as it opened, business was booming. At night, several tables of people were celebrating outside. Fang Yu was coaxed by his brothers to drink at another table. At this table, people were messing around and had pretty much scattered, only leaving Hua Mao and Yang Lei.

That day, Hua Mao was extremely normal. He was wearing a black deep V-neck T-shirt and jeans, his hair straightened and neatly tied up. He also hadn’t put anything gaudy on his face. Rather, he looked more clean-cut and pleasant to the eye than usual. Yang Lei had never seen Hua Mao this normal. When Hua Mao didn’t dress up in a feminine way, he looked quite handsome and dashing.

“Not bad! You look like a person!”

Yang Lei teased Hua Mao.

“You’re in a pretty good mood?” Hua Mao said.

“Why wouldn’t it be good?”

“But my mood isn’t good.”

“Got dumped again?”

“What else?”

“Who did you like?”

Yang Lei had long stopped treating Hua Mao as his enemy. Right now, the two of them were getting along quite well.

“You don’t know who I like?”

“Didn’t I long tell you that there’s no chance! Change someone, as soon as possible!”

Yang Lei was even proud.

“Yang Lei, you’re really good.”

Hua Mao suddenly spoke this sentence.

Hua Mao had long noticed. Especially when Fang Yu specifically rushed to Lu City and returned with Yang Lei, Hua Mao had a feeling. Hua Mao truly suffered quite a blow. He really hadn’t thought that Fang Yu really could accept a man, that he could accept Yang Lei.

But some people were just like this. To you, he may seem very not calm and immature, but in some matters, he could be calmer and more mature than anyone else.

After Hua Mao spoke that sentence, Yang Lei knew what he meant.

But Hua Mao didn’t say anything else. He didn’t stamp his feet, he didn’t scold, didn’t make a big fuss, and he didn’t fiercely mock Yang Lei like he did before.

From that point forward, Hua Mao never mentioned a word to outsiders.

That day when Hua Mao left, he only said one sentence to Yang Lei:

“If you let my Da Ge down, I definitely won’t let you go.”

Yan Ziyi’s company was becoming bigger and bigger, and Yang Lei was getting busier.

The company took on a university dormitory reconstruction project. Yang Lei took the lead responsibility. He often had to go to this university. This was the most famous university in Jianghai, Jianghai’s top institution. It was even ranked at the top nationally. Those who were there were all very successful.

If it weren’t for the contracted project, Yang Lei wouldn’t have walked into a university in his whole life.

Gangsters all had very complex feelings about universities. On one side, they wouldn’t be able to be the people in them for their whole lives. They were bound to be in different social classes from the people inside, like the difference between heaven and earth. On the other hand, they also rejected and longed for this place, with a sense of inferiority and incompatibility.

Fang Yu had also never gone in. Once when Yang Lei drove there, Fang Yu was also in the car. That campus had lushly shaded paths, the smell of books, buildings with ancient curved, flying eaves, and the vibrant college students inside. They all made Fang Yu feel very different.

“When I was in high school, my family members pressured me to go to university or military academy. I didn’t do it.”

After finishing work, the two of them rested on the campus grass, and Yang Lei spoke.

“Why didn’t you do it?”

Fang Yu rarely heard Yang Lei actively talk about his family’s matters.

“I just don’t like listening to their arrangements!”

Speaking from the bottom of his heart, Yang Lei still yearned for the college campus. But he just didn’t want to be led by the nose by his family in everything.

“I said that I just love messing around. I was slapped, so I messed around. I’ve messed around until now!”

Fang Yu glanced at him.

“It’s nice here,” Fang Yu said.

Fang Yu felt complicated. He wasn’t made for studying, and he didn’t have the resources. If he had the resources, he wouldn’t drop out before finishing high school.

Messing around outside at fourteen or fifteen years old, a young age, looked wonderful, but how good was the actual taste?

“If you want to go, I’ll get you a place.”

Yang Lei could tell that Fang Yu liked this campus.

“Fuck! What kind of person am I? Can I get in here?”

“Why? Who said that those in the gangdom can’t go to college? What kind of person are you? Are you worse than the people in here? Before knowledge, everyone is equal!”

Yang Lei had started rambling again.

“Enough. When one day, you get into college and become ‘equal,’ then come back and chat with me.”

Fang Yu joked.

This was a joke. At that time, they both knew that this was only a joke.

When they left, they saw Lin Shanshan.

After that time, Lin Shanshan had not come to see Fang Yu. Suddenly seeing Fang Yu and Yang Lei, Lin Shanshan was stunned. She hugged her books and stood there dazedly. Her classmates also looked over.

“Hello, Shanshan.”

Fang Yu said warmly and naturally. He knew that Lin Shanshan had already woken up from her dream.

When Fang Yu and Yang Lei sat in the car and drove away, Lin Shanshan watched them leave.

“Who are those two handsome guys?”

Lin Shanshan’s female classmates were excited. Fang Yu and Yang Lei were too eye-catching on this campus.

“…Someone I couldn’t get.”

Lin Shanshan replied with this sentence and left her surprised female companions behind. She turned around and walked forward.

There was disappointment and a calm, slight, and faint smile on her face.

Every woman’s girlhood would have an unrealistic dream. Lin Shanshan was very glad that the person who appeared in this dream was Fang Yu.

It rained heavily on Sunday. There was nowhere to go, and both of them didn’t go out. They stayed in the small building all day.

Aunt Zhang and the others also didn’t know what these two kids were doing upstairs, or why they closed the room door and didn’t come out. They were probably playing games or watching videos. Ever since they ate lunch, they didn’t come downstairs. Until dinnertime, when Aunt Zhang had nearly finished making dinner, she called the two of them to eat from downstairs. There was no response. Aunt Zhang went up the stairs and knocked on the door.

“Xiao Lei! Xiao Yu!”

“…”

Yang Lei heard her. Yang Lei couldn’t answer with any words.

“…Wu…!”

In the bathroom’s round bathtub, the water overflowed unceasingly with the violent movements of the two people in the bathtub, splashing on the wet tile floor and flowing into the drain.

Yang Lei’s back was pressed close to the bathtub’s edge. He was thrusted into again and again by Fang Yu, until he couldn’t speak.

“…Stop… stop for a while… um…!”

Yang Lei was heavily thrust into again. He nearly cried out loud, and tightly embraced Fang Yu’s smooth and strong back in the water.

“Xiao Lei!”

Aunt Zhang knocked on the door again.

“Time to eat!”

Not hearing a reply, Aunt Zhang listened with puzzlement. She only faintly heard the sound of splashing water and guessed that these two kids were taking a bath.

“…I know! …Godmother! …”

Fang Yu shouted roughly. He parted Yang Lei’s legs and thrusted in deeply.

“…!”

Yang Lei forcefully swallowed a gasp.

“…We… will be down… immediately! …”

Fang Yu pushed his waist forward as he spoke to the other side of the door.

“Wash quickly!”

Aunt Zhang’s footsteps went downstairs.

Only when the footsteps completely disappeared did Yang Lei suddenly let out a groan. Fang Yu covered his mouth, hugging him as he suddenly plunged into the water. In the intense water sound and under the rolling water surface, there were two entangled and moving naked bodies…

“…Next time, we should still go to my place.”

After it was over, Fang Yu said in a deep voice as he hugged a panting Yang Lei.

“…It’s fine… They can’t notice…” Yang Lei lightly kissed Fang Yu’s wet face. “It’s exciting like this…”

The corner of Yang Lei’s lips lifted as he smiled, smiling wickedly and contentedly.

“…Fuck!” Fang Yu also smiled helplessly. “…You’re just playing with fire! …”

“…Why would I play with fire? I’m playing with you!” Yang Lei hugged Fang Yu and kissed his eyes and lips…

When the two people finally went down to eat in neat clothes, the other people had already finished eating and left first.

“It’s cold now! If you take a bath, you shouldn’t bathe for so long. You’ll catch a cold!”

Aunt Zhang nagged.

Yang Lei and Fang Yu both obediently responded and held their bowls to eat. Under the table, Yang Lei used his leg to touch Fang Yu, and Fang Yu also touched him…

Not many days afterwards, Yan Ziyi wanted Yang Lei to go to Lu City again. It was still for those plots of land, and this time it was to survey the site. He had to go for two months. Yang Lei bore Yan Ziyi’s scolding and refused to go, no matter what he said.

“What’s the matter? Last time you suffered, so you’re not willing to go?” Yang Lei had never been careless about the things that Yan Ziyi tasked him with.

“No! Da Ge, ask someone else to go. I really can’t go!”

“Why can’t you go? You have to do something here?”

How could Yang Lei be willing to go, and go for two months? Right now, he and Fang Yu were just in their hottest time. They couldn’t even be separated for a day. Could they endure two months?

Yang Lei came to a decision.

“Da Ge, I’ll tell you the truth. I have a sweetheart!”

“I guessed that this was the matter!”

Yan Ziyi also wasn’t dumb. Seeing Yang Lei foolishly happy all day recently, disappearing the moment he got off work, it would be weird if he didn’t have a sweetheart!

“I just can’t be separated from them!”

Yang Lei told Yan Ziyi seriously.

“You’re serious this time? The sweetheart must be very beautiful, right?” Yan Ziyi had seen Yang Lei’s attitude when dumping girls. He was very straightforward, and he had thought that Yang Lei wouldn’t properly date.

“You’ve seen them!”

Yang Lei was quite forthright.

“I’ve met them?” Yan Ziyi was puzzled. “Who?”

Yang Lei thought, If I say who it is, wouldn’t you be scared to death?

While Yang Lei and Yan Ziyi were chatting, Fang Yu had already returned to the small building first.

That day, he left Grand Century Restaurant early. He returned to get something and prepared to go back again. Just when he got something and was walking down from the second-floor staircase, a man walked in from outside the small building.

The two people met face-to-face.

This was a middle-aged man in his forties, tall, handsome, with ice-cold dignity between his eyebrows, and serious.

The man raised his head and saw Fang Yu. He stopped for a moment, his gaze sharply scanning over him.

Ever since Fang Yu lived in the small building, he had never met this person. But the manner with which this man walked into the building like the master made Fang Yu realize that he was probably Yang Lei’s family member.

Fang Yu walked down the stairs more slowly. When he passed by the middle-aged man’s side, he nodded politely. Then Fang Yu left and walked out of the yard.

The man kept watching him go out.

“Who is that?”

Aunt Zhang came over from behind. The man asked her.

“He’s Xiao Lei… Young Master’s friend. He got hurt, and Young Master brought him back to recover.”

“Friend? He lives here?”

The man furrowed his brows.

“How long has he lived here?”

“…It’s been a while… He’s a pretty good kid…”

Aunt Zhang murmured.

That night, Yang Lei was called back to the military district house by his father.

“You fool around all day. How long are you going to mess around?”

Yang Lei’s father asked Yang Lei seriously.

“You’ve been asking this question for several years. Is it meaningful?”

Yang Lei didn’t come back to listen to a lesson.

“You’re preparing to keep messing around like this, for a lifetime?”

Yang Lei’s father usually didn’t manage Yang Lei. Ever since he slapped Yang Lei out of the house, whatever Yang Lei did outside, it was out of his sight and out of his mind. But could he really not see it? Could he really not be bothered?

“Just why did you call me back!”

Yang Lei was impatient.

Yang Lei’s father held back his anger. Facing this son, he only had a heavy heart.

“At the end of the year, go to ‘Lu Zhi.’ Your spot is already set.”

“I’m not going!”

“You have to go! Who do you think this spot is reserved for?!”

“Who let you decide for me? Have you asked for my opinion? I’ve long said that you couldn’t manage me before. In the future, don’t manage me either, okay?”

“Don’t manage? If I don’t manage you, then you’ll be stupid like now!!”

Yang Lei’s father suddenly exploded. He was incapable of accepting that someone with his status and position had this kind of son. It was a great embarrassment!

“You think that I don’t know what you’re doing outside? Fighting and being taken to the police station, being a fighter for the gangdom, and causing trouble everywhere. You’ve lost all of the Yang family’s faces!”

There was definitely no one else among the sons and daughters of senior cadre families like theirs, messing around in the gangdom like Yang Lei, who were able to stir up such a fuss.

“Hanging around with a group of slovenly people all day and even bringing the people into the small building. Hurry and get that little gangster away! Such indecent people. Stay farther away from these kinds of people!”

Yang Lei’s father extremely disliked Yang Lei being with these gangsters. When he saw Fang Yu’s appearance, he knew that he was a gangster. Fang Yu had been a gangster for many years. Even if he was now the owner of a restaurant, that feeling of a Jianghu person still couldn’t be hidden from Yang Lei’s father’s eyes that had read countless people.

“Who are you saying is indecent? That’s my friend! Be more respectful to my friend!!”

Yang Lei was suddenly angry.

“Friend? It’s this kind of ‘friend’ that harmed you!”

Yang Lei’s father also wasn’t calm. He had originally planned to talk with Yang Lei calmly, but once he saw Yang Lei’s attitude, he became angry.

“I’ll give you a few days’ time. Get rid of him. If you don’t want to say it, I’ll go talk to him.”

Yang Lei really hadn’t thought that his father would go to the small building and would interfere with this matter.

“Yang Dahai, don’t go too far. That is my house. I’ll let whoever I want live there! Who are you to manage me?”

“I am your father!”

Yang Lei’s father yelled.

Yang Lei was stunned for a moment.

“My father?”

Yang Lei smiled quite angrily.

“Now you say that you’re my father? Are you worthy of my mother? Are you worthy of me?”

Yang Lei yelled. He turned around and rushed out the door…

“…”

Yang Dahai could not respond.

He watched Yang Lei’s back as he slammed the door and left. He stood, tightly furrowing his brows…

That day, Fang Yu saw Yang Dahai. At night, Yang Lei returned to the house in the military district. Although Yang Lei didn’t mention anything to him, Fang Yu still guessed what had happened.

The gaze with which that middle-aged man looked at him was disgust. Fang Yu was adept in worldly matters, and he understood at a glance.

When Yang Lei came back, Fang Yu was packing up. Yang Lei was anxious.

“What are you doing?”

“Yang-zi and the others are treating my place as a gathering place. I’m always not there, and they find it quite boring. Running back and forth is also troublesome. I should move back.”

“You met Yang Dahai, right?”

Once Yang Lei heard this, he knew that Fang Yu was making excuses. He didn’t beat around the bush at all.

“What did my father say to you?”

Fang Yu stopped. He guessed correctly.

“He didn’t. We only saw each other,” Fang Yu said calmly.

“If I knew that it was your dad, I should have greeted him.”

“Who won’t let you live here? Why are you in a hurry to leave?”

Yang Lei snatched the box in Fang Yu’s hands and threw it aside.

“I should really go back!”

Fang Yu was helpless.

“Can I keep not going back to my own house? I’m still paying rent for that house!”

“I’ll pay it for you!”

“Ai… It’s not that!” Fang Yu was also helpless towards Yang Lei’s stubbornness. “Isn’t it the same wherever I live? Isn’t my place also quite good? It’s comfortable and no one manages it. Didn’t you used to love staying there the most? I’ll go back and you go to my place. Won’t we still be the same?”

“It’s not the same! If anyone wrongs you, it’s not okay!”

“How was I wronged?”

Once Yang Lei thought about Yang Dahai’s gaze and tone as he said that Fang Yu was “indecent,” he was indignant and his heart ached. How could he say this about Fang Yu? Did he understand him? What did he know? He didn’t even understand his own son!

“Stop being stubborn.”

Fang Yu rubbed Yang Lei’s hair, comforting him. Yang Lei was protecting him, and he was touched.

“We will be fine with anything. Don’t make it difficult for Godmother and the others.”

“…”

Yang Lei’s heart ached. Fang Yu was always thinking about others!

Fang Yu invited all of the people in the small building to the highest-class Grand Imperial Restaurant to eat. He gave each person a gift.

Fang Yu’s character was just this grateful and considerate.

Everyone didn’t know that he was leaving. They ate that meal very happily.

On the next day, Fang Yu left. Before Fang Yu left, he asked Aunt Zhang to convey his farewell to the elders.

“Xiao Yu, come often to see Godmother…”

Aunt Zhang was upset. When Yang Dahai left, he had given her instructions. Aunt Zhang didn’t know how to bring this up. Now, Fang Yu was taking the initiative to leave. Her heart ached for this child.

After Fang Yu left, Yang Lei also rarely returned to the small building.