Chapter 1

[Urology patient number 16, please proceed to Consulting Room 3.]

[Urology patient number 16, please proceed to Consulting Room 3.]

The announcement had played twice now and still no one had moved. The nurse stood up from behind the desk, craning her neck, and called out: 'Number 16? Where's number 16?'

Su Xingchuan, still on a work call, suddenly snapped to attention. Number 16 — wasn't that him?

He rattled off his last few recommendations into the phone, hung up, and raised a hand toward the nurse.

He flashed an apologetic smile and headed down the clinic corridor.

'Second door on the left,' the nurse called after him.

Tall, broad-shouldered, the kind of person who moves like there's a breeze behind him.

The other patients waiting nearby all watched him go in — one of the husbands laughed and nudged his wife: 'You're always going on about handsome guys, handsome guys — look, even handsome guys end up at the andrology clinic.'

His wife made a dismissive sound. 'At least he's got one thing going for him.'

Su Xingchuan found Consulting Room 3.

He knocked. A young voice came from inside: 'Come in.'

Su Xingchuan paused.

A name flashed through his head.

— Li Xuan.

He'd stopped short when he saw it at registration, but between the time crunch and the work calls coming in nonstop, he hadn't had a chance to look the doctor up on the hospital's website.

No way. It can't be.

Even if that person did study medicine.

The memory flickered through him in the space of a second — then reality pulled him back. He pushed open the door.

The room was small, with a faint smell of disinfectant. The window was clean. On the right side sat a little examination alcove curtained off by a blue mobile screen; on the left, the doctor's desk.

From where Su Xingchuan stood, the monitor blocked the doctor's face entirely. He couldn't see anything — but some nameless bad feeling stirred in his chest.

He walked in and closed the door.

The doctor asked, 'Number sixteen? Name?'

That voice shot through Su Xingchuan's ear like a current, traveling straight down to his heart.

He went completely still.

The doctor asked again: 'Your name?'

A trace of impatience in the tone.

Su Xingchuan took a step forward — and saw it. A face that was familiar and strange at once, half-real, the kind that showed up in his dreams. Still the same clean, cool lines. Still devastatingly good-looking.

His eyes were sharp black and white, like winter sunlight with a cold edge to it — or an ink-wash landscape, barely any color, and yet somehow it got under your skin.

He hadn't changed much from seven years ago. Even the hair was the same, loose strands falling over his forehead. He looked twenty, maybe twenty-something at most.

Li Xuan looked up. Their eyes met.

Both of them went quiet for a few seconds.

Li Xuan had clearly recognized him too.

Su Xingchuan: '……'

He could never have imagined it — all those reunions he'd played out in his head, and it came to this. A consulting room in an andrology hospital. Him holding a stack of lab results. Li Xuan in a white coat.

The key word being: andrology hospital.

Their gazes caught, then slid away fast.

Su Xingchuan cleared his throat and spoke first. 'Long time no see.'

Li Xuan dropped his gaze to the screen and clicked his mouse.

He didn't respond to Su Xingchuan's greeting.

Still as petty as ever, Su Xingchuan thought.

Su Xingchuan forced himself to look calm and sat down, pushing the small talk forward: 'How'd you end up working here? Didn't you want to go to Shanghai?'

Li Xuan still said nothing. Just asked, 'What seems to be the problem?'

'…' Su Xingchuan had seen that coming.

Seven years and he was still a man of zero words.

Su Xingchuan obediently pulled out his lab results and ultrasound report, and explaining the actual issue was, inevitably, awkward: 'So, uh — I actually came in two days ago. A Dr. Zhou ordered three tests for me, and I just got the last of the results back today.'

He was dancing around it pretty hard.

Li Xuan seemed to understand. He gestured at the slogan on the wall.

Su Xingchuan looked over.

— 'What's said between men, stays between men.'

— 'Expert care for men. A'blessed' life ahead.'

'…'

Su Xingchuan's expression darkened. 'It's not that kind of problem,' he said flatly. 'It's just a kidney stone.'

Li Xuan took the reports.

Starting last month, Su Xingchuan had been noticing a dull ache down there. Work stress and too many late-night client diners had made it worse, and the past few days the pain had gotten bad enough that he finally had to do something about it.

He'd heard Huaye Andrology Hospital was the best, so he squeezed out some time to book an appointment on his phone — only to find the specialist slots all taken, the regular slots barely any better. He'd managed to cancel a work thing and grabbed the very last number right before the doctor clocked off.

And somehow still managed to run into his ex.

Li Xuan picked up the CT scan and studied it. 'How long has it been since the pain started?'

'A little over half a month.'

'Has this happened before?'

'No.'

'Two possibilities — seminal vesicle inflammation or vas deferens obstruction.' Li Xuan glanced over at Su Xingchuan. 'Are you sexually active? Frequently?'

Su Xingchuan froze. Then scrambled to answer. 'Not frequently. I mean — not really. Rarely —'

The truth was there'd been nothing at all. But he wasn't about to admit that.

Li Xuan had been the one to end things.

Su Xingchuan was still bitter about it.

The last thing he'd let Li Xuan know was that he'd spent the past several years completely alone — and absolutely not that those years had been managed by thinking about that soft, quiet little 'mute' he used to know.

When Su Xingchuan said 'rarely,' Li Xuan's hands paused over the keyboard. Just for a second. Then he kept typing.

'Have you been cycling a lot recently, or sitting for long stretches?'

'No cycling. Sitting, yeah, a bit.'

'Let me see your tongue.'

Su Xingchuan froze again.

Genuinely surreal. Seven years later, and the first thing his ex does is look at a CT scan of his groin. The second thing is ask to see his tongue.

Su Xingchuan stuck out his tongue. Li Xuan gave it a look.

His fingers flew across the keyboard. Su Xingchuan had no idea what he was writing.

Li Xuan stopped. His clear, calm eyes caught the light from the monitor — and in the dim of early evening, they looked particularly bright.

Then Li Xuan dropped his gaze.

He asked, 'You living with your partner?'

Su Xingchuan didn't catch it. 'Sorry?'

Li Xuan's brow creased — faint, impatient — and repeated it: 'You living with your partner?'

Su Xingchuan almost blurted out 'I don't have one,' but some stubborn scrap of male pride made him hedge: 'N — no. Not exactly.'

Li Xuan glanced at him again.

Su Xingchuan suddenly felt a chill at his back.

He couldn't help turning to look.

Li Xuan pulled a fresh pair of nitrile gloves from the dispenser, snapped them on, and said, 'Pants down to the middle. Get on the bed.'

'Huh?'

'Something wrong with your ears?' Li Xuan asked, frowning.

'...No.'

Even Su Xingchuan — a man with a hide like leather — had to admit it: was there anyone in the entire world whose ex-reunion could possibly top this?

Straight to THIS??

Li Xuan pulled the blue privacy screen around the examination bed.

Su Xingchuan undid his belt.

Li Xuan stood to the side and waited, expression blank.

Su Xingchuan undid the button. Pulled down the zip.

He was usually pretty confident about himself. But here, right now, standing beside a bed in Huaye Andrology Hospital — not so much.

He gave a small cough. Li Xuan, to his surprise, cooperated — turning to look the other way, giving him time to finish undressing.

Why did that feel... weirdly humiliating?

Once he was lying down, Li Xuan pressed a few spots with gloved hands. His fingertips were slightly cool, pressure steady — not too light, not too hard. Su Xingchuan's throat kept moving. His breathing went heavy.

Li Xuan leaned in a little. 'Does it hurt here?'

'No.' Su Xingchuan's mind had already wandered off.

He found himself thinking about seven years ago — the first time he'd taken Li Xuan to get a room, at a hotel far enough from campus to feel safe. He still remembered it: a twin room, five hundred something a night. For a student, that was real money. Half a month's living expenses. But Li Xuan was precious, high-maintenance like a little prince — the kind of person who'd break out in a rash from wearing polyester sportswear. Su Xingchuan wasn't about to cut corners with him.

He'd been holding Li Xuan's hand when they walked into the hotel. Li Xuan's face was unreadable, and Su Xingchuan had assumed he wasn't into it — slowed his steps — and then Li Xuan frowned and asked straight out: 'Why aren't you holding my hand? Are you worried someone will see us.'

'No!' Su Xingchuan immediately pulled Li Xuan into his arms.

Li Xuan wasn't big on smiling, but he'd lean against Su Xingchuan's chest and then tilt his head up, watching him with this soft, helpless look. The moment Su Xingchuan caught him doing it, he'd pull his gaze away without mercy.

Li Xuan was beautiful. And a little strange.

Cold all the way through — like those fingers of his. The kind of person you didn't dare touch carelessly.

The breakup, when it came, made no sense at all.

Li Xuan said he was done. That he hated him.

And that was it — Su Xingchuan's first love, cut off without a reason. That cloud had been hanging over him ever since.

'This spot doesn't hurt either?'

Li Xuan's voice drifted in, puzzled. Su Xingchuan snapped back. He felt Li Xuan's hand pressing somewhere else, and the pain registered a beat too late — he sucked in a sharp breath: 'Ow, ow, ow!'

Li Xuan moved to another spot and pressed into his abdomen.

Su Xingchuan couldn't stop staring at his face.

Li Xuan had really grown up a lot since seven years ago.

He'd always had that cool, reserved air, but back then his face still had a hint of baby fat. Now he'd grown into something almost otherworldly — and yet there was this adorable quality to him, like he was trying a little too hard to seem grown-up. It made Su Xingchuan's fingers itch.

The pain he'd braced for never came. What instead was Li Xuan's voice, flat and cold: 'Do you mind moving that thing?'

'Huh?' Su Xingchuan followed Li Xuan's gaze downward. His ears went hot. He coughed, awkward.

After the cough, a thought crept in: how were they both ex-lovers running into each other, yet he was the one losing his head and making a fool of himself while Li Xuan stood there perfectly unbothered?

Figures. The one who loved harder always gets the shorter end.

He pressed on, shameless: 'You're a doctor — don't you know that's not something I can control?'

'Can't control yourself at twenty-seven?'

'…'

Shut down again. Su Xingchuan scrambled to claw something back: 'I'm usually fine. It's just — I ran into someone I know today. Doctor, does it look familiar to you?'

Li Xuan's face was pure impatience.

Su Xingchuan wanted to get himself under control too, but his body wasn't cooperating. The more Li Xuan's hands moved across him, the worse it got — and the impatience in Li Xuan's eyes was slowly curdling into something sharper.

'You—!'

'Can't help it,' Su Xingchuan said, all innocence. 'Doctor, you're even hotter in the white coat than you were in the school uniform.'