Shen Yu’s brows furrowed tightly. In the end, he couldn’t bear to hear Lin Hao say anything more heartbreaking. “I’ll control myself. Maybe, after enough time, I’ll...”
Even he couldn’t finish that lie.
Lin Hao stared at him, dazed, repeating, “You like me?” His voice cracked at the end.
Shen Yu was getting frustrated by Lin Hao’s reaction. “I know you can’t forgive me. I can’t forgive myself, either.”
Because I love you.
This feeling that never should have existed had ruined the friendship they’d built since childhood, turning everything upside down.
He was the one at fault—he knew that. But...
If people could control their hearts, why would there be so much pain?
Lin Hao looked at him, unmoving, finally changing the question: “So, four years ago you did all that to me because... because you...”
He didn’t know why, but suddenly the words stuck in his throat, a heat rising that made his face burn bright red.
Shen Yu gave a bitter laugh. “What else could it be?”
In the dim light, Lin Hao’s face was as red as a boiled crawfish. He stammered, “I thought you were getting back at me...”
Shen Yu was stunned. “Getting back at you?”
“Y-yeah...” Lin Hao tried to sort out his own twisted logic. “I mistook you for a girl and tried to kiss you, and you got mad and then...”
Shen Yu actually laughed, exasperated. “If I was mad, wouldn’t I have just punched you?”
He really had lost control that night, but not out of anger—only out of crushing disappointment. Years of hidden affection had nowhere to go. The thought of Lin Hao belonging to someone else, of him drunkenly being intimate with someone else, drove Shen Yu out of his mind. He did something he could never take back.
Lin Hao mumbled, “How could you like me...”
He kept repeating it, as if he’d just heard the most unbelievable news, his mind spinning with shock and confusion.
But Shen Yu didn’t want to tangle with him any longer.
It had taken him four years just to barely get used to life as it was now—he couldn’t bear for it to be turned upside down again.
Shen Yu had no confidence he could survive another four years like that.
“So, just stay away from me.” Shen Yu sounded like he was warning himself. “I don’t want to disgust you anymore.”
As soon as he said it, Lin Hao suddenly looked up. “Don’t say that about yourself.”
Shen Yu was caught off guard.
In all their years together, whenever he put himself down, Lin Hao always reacted this way.
Like a mother hen protecting her chick, he wouldn’t let anyone insult Shen Yu—not even Shen Yu himself.
In the past, that would have warmed Shen Yu’s heart. Now, it just made him feel even more bitter.
This so-called brotherhood was what had pushed him into the abyss.
Shen Yu let out a long breath. “Go, Lin Hao. Please, just go.”
It took Lin Hao a long time to respond. “I didn’t know you liked me.”
Shen Yu didn’t want to guess what Lin Hao was thinking. “It doesn’t matter. It’s all in the past.”
Lin Hao’s brows drew together, his voice trembling. “So... you don’t like me anymore?”
That question made Shen Yu snap. He glared at Lin Hao. “How many times do I have to say it? Lin Hao, I love you. Not the way kids say they like each other—I want to have you all to myself. I want to be with you forever. That kind of love!”
Lin Hao was stunned again.
After saying it, Shen Yu felt completely drained. “Go. I’m begging you, don’t make me...”
But Lin Hao kept talking, almost to himself: “I thought you hated me.”
Shen Yu gave a bitter, mocking smile.
Lin Hao finally let out the words he’d been carrying for four years, words he’d never been able to joke away or let go: “I thought you hated me. Back then... you told me you hated me, that you never wanted to see me again. That’s why I left for overseas.”
That was the most painful moment of Lin Hao’s life.
He’d woken up from a drunken haze to a body wracked with pain, and the person he cared about most glaring at him with hatred, hurting him and saying he hated him.
—Shen Yu hated him.
—Shen Yu despised him.
For someone like Lin Hao, who’d always had everything go his way, it was like the sky had fallen.
Chapter 07
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