The Bodyguard’s Discontent

Yuan Anqing had, in fact, been thoroughly startled by the brutal consumption he just witnessed. Yet, knowing he had absolutely no conceivable way of escaping Zhuo, a profound calm settled over him.

Confronted with an unalterable reality, Yuan Anqing simply surrendered, choosing to lie still and let fate carve him up as it pleased.

“Hiccup.” Zhuo was still hiccuping. “Are we just… hiccup… leaving now?”

“I merely came to conduct a test,” Yuan Anqing replied, extending the bottle of mineral water he held toward Zhuo.

They were on a public bus heading home. Zhuo’s sheer size was considerable. Sitting with Yuan Anqing in the very last row, he single-handedly claimed two seats. He was forced to occupy the precise center of the back row, as he was utterly unable to squeeze his massive frame into any spot behind a seat.

Instinctively, Zhuo took the water bottle, shaking it idly. “What’s this… hiccup… for?”

“Drinking some water might help,” Yuan Anqing explained. He then looked genuinely bewildered. “Why are you having physiological reactions anyway?”

Zhuo’s true form didn’t resemble any known biological creature, leaving Yuan Anqing puzzled as to why he would get the hiccups like a child who ate too fast.

Zhuo obediently twisted open the cap and drank. “I’m in my human form right now.” He admitted that reverting to his true monster form would eliminate fragile physiological phenomena, but whether he was two meters tall or five, his current state still functioned under human biology.

After finishing the water, Zhuo’s features contorted. His gaze landed on the man sitting beside Yuan Anqing. “There’s a heavy smell of smoke.”

“He isn’t smoking,” Yuan Anqing reminded him in a low voice. “Your sense of smell is simply too keen.”

The man Zhuo had pointed out glanced back, then lowered his head to sniff his own cuff, detecting no scent of tobacco. “Your younger brother certainly has a sharp nose,” the man remarked, surprised. “I only smoked one cigarette this morning. He can still smell it?”

Yuan Anqing’s brow twitched. “…His nose is indeed sharp, but he’s not my brother.”

“He isn’t?” The man looked a little confused.

He observed the two: one vibrant and energetic, the other mature and seasoned. Although Zhuo was significantly larger than Yuan Anqing, it wasn’t uncommon for a younger brother to outgrow the elder.

Zhuo reached out, slinging a massive arm around Yuan Anqing’s shoulders and leaning his head closer. “I’m his bodyguard, you see~”

The man blinked, his mind working furiously before comprehension dawned. “Oh! How old-fashioned of me. You two are partners!”

No one would believe Zhuo was actually Yuan Anqing’s bodyguard; a person wealthy enough for a bodyguard wouldn’t be crammed onto a public bus. Coupled with Zhuo’s ambiguous smile and saccharine tone, the man assumed ‘bodyguard’ was merely a playful term of endearment.

Yuan Anqing’s eyebrow twitched slightly. He reached up to push his glasses back into place. Just as he was about to shake his head and deny it, Zhuo readily leaned into the assumption.

“You guessed right. I love him very much,” Zhuo declared, pulling Yuan Anqing closer and forcing him into an embrace. “It was love at first sight.”

At this moment, Yuan Anqing—a man of 183 centimeters—finally understood what it meant to be ‘cuddled.’ He couldn’t even sit upright; his face was pressed tightly against Zhuo’s solid chest, his glasses knocked askew from the squeeze.

Yuan Anqing was certain, however, that Zhuo’s ‘love at first sight’ did not refer to romance. Zhuo simply liked him as a snack.

The stranger hadn’t anticipated Zhuo’s passionate exuberance. Most couples, when outed by a stranger, would simply nod in agreement or offer a shy smile. They generally did not engage in aggressive public displays of affection on a bumpy bus.

The man was stunned for a long moment, his mouth opening and closing before he finally managed to blurt out, “Ah, I see. Well, that’s really nice.”

Zhuo waited for Yuan Anqing to angrily refute the claim, to struggle, or to show embarrassment.

He waited in vain.

The man eventually turned his head away, though he still stole glances every now and then. At this point, if Yuan Anqing had simply said, ‘When did I become your partner?’, it would have allowed Zhuo to escalate his little game. Shouldn’t Yuan Anqing care about his reputation? Hadn’t he explicitly shown repulsion when Zhuo tried to touch his sensitive areas earlier?

But Yuan Anqing just sat there, glasses crooked, utterly unresponsive.

Eventually, the stranger reached his stop and practically fled the bus.

Yuan Anqing straightened his glasses. “You’ve stopped hiccuping.”

Eh? Zhuo reached for his throat.

Yuan Anqing hadn’t grasped the point Zhuo cared about. The reason he disliked Zhuo touching him earlier wasn’t a concern for his chastity; he simply found Zhuo clumsy and rough. Getting hurt in sensitive areas was excruciating, and Yuan Anqing couldn’t endure physical suffering. Rumors on a bus with a stranger, however, cost zero calories.

But even if Yuan Anqing didn’t care about Zhuo’s trivial games, he certainly picked up on Zhuo’s disappointment. From the moment they disembarked until they arrived home, Zhuo’s tail dragged along the ground like a depressed dog’s.

Yuan Anqing didn’t care about the source of Zhuo’s anger, but he was certain it wasn’t his fault. He had been perfectly cooperative.

“Stir-fried eggplant for dinner, perhaps?” Yuan Anqing inquired as they walked in.

“Oh,” Zhuo muttered, his enthusiasm dead.

Yuan Anqing inherently disliked tasks forced upon him, but if a task genuinely fell to him, he completed it responsibly. “Choose one side: steamed egg custard or tomato and egg soup.”

Zhuo paused. “Tomato and egg.”

“Understood.” Yuan Anqing pushed open the front door. “Wait in the living room.”

“What’s with him…” Zhuo grumbled under his breath.

He found this Savior utterly boring. His new life diverged entirely from his imagination. There were no fierce, life-and-death confrontations, no passionate speeches about justice. Yuan Anqing met all of Zhuo’s threats with cold indifference, making Zhuo feel like an unreasonable child throwing tantrums at a brick wall.

Yuan Anqing poked his head out of the kitchen. “Oh, right, could you help me wash the vegetables?”

“Huh? Oh.” Zhuo instinctively started to walk over, but quickly caught himself. “Wait! No! I won’t!”

Yuan Anqing showed no reaction to the refusal. After a brief silence, he simply returned to the kitchen.

This reaction made Zhuo feel like a spoiled brat refusing to help a tired parent cook dinner.

Zhuo silently clenched his fists. He detested this Savior.

This detestation ultimately reached its peak that night.

As the bodyguard, Zhuo had to sleep in the same room. They made a bed arrangement: Zhuo claimed three-fifths of the mattress, leaving Yuan Anqing with only two-fifths. Furthermore, Zhuo had used an extra blanket to create a strict boundary line between them.

Zhuo deliberately turned his back, facing away from Yuan Anqing, intending to enjoy a sound sleep and temporarily forget his wretched reality.

However, shortly after falling into a deep slumber, Zhuo felt a sharp, agonizing pain in his arm. The jolt snapped him awake.

“So painful!” Zhuo hissed, clutching his bicep.

He looked up and saw that Yuan Anqing was also awake. The Savior appeared to be in considerable discomfort, similarly clutching his own arm.

Yuan Anqing had been fast asleep when Zhuo had rolled over. Zhuo’s thick arm had lashed out like a whip, striking Yuan Anqing squarely in the shoulder. Because of the contract ring, the exact amount of pain inflicted on Yuan was instantly mirrored back into Zhuo’s nervous system.

Yuan Anqing’s first thought upon being jolted awake was that he was fortunate not to have been sleeping on his back; otherwise, that arm swing would have cracked his ribs.

“What did you do?!” Zhuo glared at Yuan Anqing, gritting his teeth through the pain.

Yuan Anqing glanced at his own struck arm, then at Zhuo. “You’re asking me?”

“You can’t even let a person sleep peacefully at night!” Zhuo yelled loudly.

“Indeed,” Yuan Anqing agreed mildly. Then, without waiting for Zhuo to complain further, he proactively offered, “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

Zhuo, who had been winding up for a tirade, choked on his words. “…”

“I hate you!” Zhuo bellowed at the top of his lungs.

“Don’t disturb the peace,” Yuan Anqing reminded him calmly. “Everyone’s asleep at this hour. If you’re too loud, our downstairs neighbors will call the police again.”

Zhuo could already envision his miserable future. Day after day, without hope, without excitement, without passion. How could this be his life? What was the point?

“Oh, by the way, you don’t sleepwalk, do you?” Yuan Anqing asked as he opened the wardrobe.

“No, I don’t sleepwalk.”

“Good. Then please be careful when getting up to use the restroom.” Yuan Anqing pulled out a spare futon.

“I don’t need to use the restroom!”

“Wow. That’s amazing,” Yuan Anqing deadpanned, his voice completely devoid of emotion or praise.

Zhuo slapped the bed in frustration, then stormed out of the room.

“You’re not a very qualified bodyguard acting like this,” Yuan Anqing called after him as he spread the bedding on the floor. “Also, while I know this might trigger you, strictly speaking, the arm injury was entirely your fault.”

“Who cares about you!” Zhuo’s voice echoed from down the hall.

By the sound of the sliding glass door, he had run out to the balcony.

Yuan Anqing pulled out another pillow for himself. “Close the screen door on the balcony! Don’t let mosquitoes in!”

Zhuo’s response was an unintelligible, monstrous roar of sheer irritation.

This chimera is probably unaccustomed to the reduction in living conditions, Yuan Anqing reasoned as he lay on the floor mat, and facing a complete stranger.

His arm throbbed, preventing him from falling asleep immediately. Recalling his past, whether in school groups or corporate settings, Yuan had always been the one to spoil the fun or kill the mood. He attributed it to his pitifully low empathy. People always left him eventually.

But Zhuo was different; he couldn’t leave. He was forcibly bound to him.

Is it pathetic? Yuan Anqing didn’t know. He only knew that his arm was finally numbing. Good, he could drift off to sleep now.

Outside on the balcony, Zhuo was furiously messaging Bai Tian, complaining and declaring that he absolutely had to leave. If they didn’t reassign him, he swore he would flay and dismember the bastards who put him in this position once he gained his freedom.

Bai Tian’s reply came quickly; they were surprised by Zhuo’s capriciousness: [You two were fine in the confinement room earlier. Did the Savior do something to you?]

[No, he did nothing! He did NOTHING!] Zhuo typed furiously, nearly cracking his screen.

Even when Zhuo spread rumors that they were a couple, Yuan Anqing didn’t bother to clarify. Not even a single ‘no’. After being hit in his sleep and then blamed for it, Yuan Anqing’s reaction was too calm. No anger, no incredulity, no sense of grievance. He had just woken up! How could he not even have morning grumpiness?!

This damned Savior was abnormal, and Zhuo despised a stagnant soul.

But Bai Tian didn’t understand. [So, has your personality started to change due to differentiation? It shouldn’t be; you should be very stable.] Bai Tian was puzzled. Isn’t “doing nothing” a good thing? What is there to complain about?

[You’re the one whose personality is changing! Anyway, I’m leaving him!]

[I understand your request,] Bai Tian stated diplomatically. [I will report it to my superiors. Please wait for further news.]

Wasn’t that just corporate-speak for a polite refusal?!

Zhuo took a deep, shaky breath. In his mind, he plotted a thousand different, gruesome ways for these bureaucrats to die. In reality, all he could do was sit on the dark balcony and silently coil his tail around his own legs.