HF Ch. 17

Translator: Dj22031

Editor: Dj22031

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It had gotten late, and Li Shu said that he wanted to sleep in Shen Yiyou’s room.

He looked very sleepy as he told Shen Yiyou that he would leave early the next morning, he also said that would not stay for a long time, while guaranteeing that he would not try to do anything.

Shen Yiyou agreed after thinking about it.

After a long period of silence, Shen Yiyou tentatively had a heart-to-heart talk with Li Shu.

Thus, now Shen Yiyou had a headache, so he got up and took a bottle of water to drink.

Li Shu sat beside the bed, quietly but stubbornly watching Shen Yiyou, unwilling to relax even for a moment.

Shen Yiyou drank the water, but did not go back to the bed, he instead leaned against the door to look at Li Shu, and asked the question that had been on his mind: “Did you really happen to be here?”

Li Shu answered “yes” without hesitation.

Shen Yiyou dispelled his doubts and nodded. Shen Yiyou’s eyes were a little sore, and he was looking at things from a layer of fog. He and Li Shu looked at each other, their emotions seemingly calm, but they were still confused.

Li Shu’s sitting posture was honest, polite and restrained, and nobody could tell that he was pressing Shen Yiyou down some moments before insisting that he didn’t want to wear a condom, but he also didn’t look like he planned to leave.

“Can I sleep here tonight?” He asked Shen Yiyou for the first time.

“I want to talk to you,” Shen Yiyou said to Li Shu without answering Li Shu’s question, “but I’m afraid you won’t understand what I’m saying.”

Li Shu stared at Shen Yiyou, his eyes and sitting posture changing slightly. For a few seconds, he showed a little aggressiveness that he usually had during negotiation, but he quickly put away most of it.

“Go ahead,” Li Shu replied, “I will try to understand.”

“You can’t interrupt me either.” Shen Yiyou added.

Li Shu nodded slightly slowly, without resisting: “Okay.”

Shen Yiyou thought for a while, not knowing where to start, he asked Li Shu, “Do you think we were happy together?”

Li Shu said yes without hesitation.

Shen Yiyou told him, “But sometimes I felt unhappy.”

“I want to live a life more like an ordinary person with you,” Shen Yiyou was at a loss for words, even though he drank water, his throat still felt dry.

The glass water bottle in his hand was somewhat icy, so he put the water bottle back on the cabinet, trying hard to think of an explanation that Li Shu could understand: “Because I’m different from you, I’m just a very, very ordinary person.”

Li Shu moved but did not speak.

The way he looked at Shen Yiyou made Shen Yiyou feel uncomfortable, so Shen Yiyou looked away, lowered his eyes, and continued: “You don’t want to see my friends, I don’t have any opinion. I know you don’t have a common language with them, and I don’t want to force you…but I hope you don’t always interfere with me.”

Li Shu moved again, looking like he wanted to express his stance very much, but he still held back honestly.

“There’s no need to say nothing.” Shen Yiyou looked at Li Shu’s constant movement because he couldn’t speak, and felt amused, but also a little sad.

He asked Li Shu, “Have you ever thought about what we will do in the future?”

“Can you define the future and what we have to do?” Li Shu thought for a while and asked cautiously.

Shen Yiyou had known that Li Shu would give him such an answer, so he didn’t feel unhappy, but of course he didn’t feel happy either. He felt that he might have smiled at Li Shu, but it wasn’t the kind of happy smile.

“I thought about it before,” Shen Yiyou didn’t answer Li Shu’s question directly, but admitted to Li Shu, “I thought about it a lot. But all I thought about were things that you would find ignorant and inefficient, and you won’t like them. After that I stopped even thinking about it.”

After a short silence, Li Shu said, “Like?”

Shen Yiyou thought about it and said, “For example, like your parents, form a real family.”

“I’ve always wanted a home of my own,” Shen Yiyou told Li Shu. “Because my parents’ relationship was not good, I wanted that kind of good home.”

Li Shu made a “hmm”, probably indicating that he was listening.

“But I don’t dare to ask you,” Shen Yiyou continued, “you always think my ideas are useless. But I am a useless person. I may never be a useful person, if I come to your company to work for three days, I will be fired.”

“I know I’m not good enough,” he said, “but you make me feel worse. I don’t want that.”

Shen Yiyou couldn’t specify what he wanted from Li Shu.

He just felt that being with Li Shu was more stressful than joyful, but he didn’t know what to do to make their relationship healthier.

That’s why he chose to back down and run away when he was emotionally broken, and until now, Shen Yiyou hadn’t thought too clearly about how he and Li Shu could continue if they didn’t break up.

After a while, Shen Yiyou said to Li Shu, “Let’s be separated for a while.”

“Can I object?” Li Shu asked.

There was almost no expression on his face, and his tone was steady.

Shen Yiyou thought that Li Shu was indeed much more rational than himself. He never could not help crying like Shen Yiyou, never lost his temper, and was always calm, like a more advanced human being.

“No,” Shen Yiyou answered Li Shu’s question and explained, “Because I want to think more clearly, but seeing you all the time makes me unable to think calmly.”

“Why?” Li Shu seemed to be puzzled, frowned slightly, and looked at Shen Yiyou, as if Shen Yiyou’s words were a super big problem at the end of a test paper, and he was wondering why someone would put such a question this ordinary on the exam paper.

“Just say you don’t understand at all.” Shen Yiyou said helplessly.

Li Shu raised his face and looked at Shen Yiyou, as if he was a little unhappy because Shen Yiyou said he didn’t understand and needed Shen Yiyou to coax him immediately.

“You explain directly.” He said sternly.

Shen Yiyou hesitated a little, but he obeyed his heart, approached Li Shu, leaned over and kissed Li Shu’s face, and said softly, “Because I like you very much.”

Li Shu agreed to Shen Yiyou’s conditions, that they won’t see each other again until Li Shu’s listing was done, but he asked Shen Yiyou not to avoid his messages or his calls. Shen Yiyou thought that Li Shu didn’t like not being able to communicate with him whenever he wanted very much, so he agreed.

Shen Yiyou also took a step back. At least today, Li Shu was allowed to sleep with him, because anyway, when Li Shu asked face-to-face, Shen Yiyou always softened in the end.

Li Shu seemed to be satisfied easily, he happily hugged Shen Yiyou from behind, buried his head in Shen Yiyou’s neck, hugged him tightly, as if he was very carefree, and slept soundly.

At 5:30 in the morning, Li Shu’s alarm clock rang, and he tiptoed while getting up. After washing and dressing, he found that Shen Yiyou was also sitting up on the bed and rubbing his eyes as he looked at him.

In the dim, unlit room, Li Shu and Shen Yiyou hugged.

Shen Yiyou was wearing silk pajamas, and Li Shu’s hand pressed against Shen Yiyou’s warm back through the soft silk and satin.

Then Li Shu went downstairs and walked out of the hotel door with his luggage bag in hand.

It was a cloudy day, with no sunshine at six o’clock or at twelve o’clock[1].

The hot wind was blowing from an unknown angle, and the vague headache that belonged to the dawn was rolling around Li Shu. His fatigue was unavoidably exposed, but he still felt no sleepiness. Li Shu’s thinking was far behind the speed of time, and he repeatedly stopped at the cheek kiss Shen Yiyou gave him last night.

The driver opened the door for him, and the person in the passenger seat, Irene Felton, lowered the window and said good morning to him. Li Shu got into the car, turned on the computer calmly, and began to familiarize himself with the next roadshow.

Li Shu did not open any of Shen Yiyou’s videos or photos to watch, he just focused on his work.

When approaching the airport, Irene gave him a small box.

Li Shu took it over and opened it and in it he saw the red embroidery purse that Shen Yiyou had not taken away, which he had made after a long time.

Li Shu’s handmade patterns were printed on the satin surface. After referring to some pictures on the Internet, he spent a lot of time in the modeling software to make this ridiculous embroidery. Li Shu adjusted the curvature of each embroidery thread many times.

Li Shu tugged at the purse string. He wanted to know if Shen Yiyou had ever touched it.

Did Shen Yiyou check it carefully, and thought about how well Li Shu was doing? Did he ever think about keeping the purse, after confirming that it was wrong, or did he not touch it again?

The appearance of the purse made Li Shu unable to work, so he gave up and called up the flight records of his three-year relationship from the computer, as well as every one that Shen Yiyou sent to him when he came to him, as he had recorded every flight number in a memo.

He looked at the evidence of his relationship with Shen Yiyou through these very safe and indelible data memories.

In the past three years, Li Shu had made more than 600 long-distance and short-distance flights, and spent about 60 nights in his apartment in S city.

Shen Yiyou came to him five times and stayed in San Francisco for a total of forty-three days.

Li Shu knew more about Shen Yiyou than Shen Yiyou thought. He knew Shen Yiyou’s graduate school and knew at least three of Shen Yiyou’s alumni.

He knew that Shen Yiyou’s parents lived about eight kilometers away from the hotel where they stayed last night; he knew that Shen Yiyou disliked the capital; he knew that Shen Yiyou hated being alone, and his ineffective socializing was a way of self-protection (Li Shu thought that he could replace those ineffective friends, unfortunately Shen Yiyou did not want him to do so).

He knew that Shen Yiyou often made very casual choices, regarding them as a kind of adventure, and he also knew that he should be grateful for it, because Li Shu himself was the most willful and reckless of Shen Yiyou’s adventures.

The car slowly passed the viaduct in the early morning just as the sky was getting brighter, but the driving lights were still dazzlingly white. Li Shu leaned back in his seat and looked around at the various vehicles that were passing by them.

The elevated second ring road of the capital was like the movement of a perpetual motion machine, and the traffic here rushed endlessly throughout the twenty-four hours.

Li Shu suddenly found that he couldn’t remember how he lived before meeting Shen Yiyou, he only remembered the world where Shen Yiyou existed.

Accompanied by the jazz music playing in the car, Li Shu began to recall how they first got along.

At that time, Shen Yiyou was happy and unabashed, smiling every day.

In the first week of their relationship, Shen Yiyou took Li Shu to a restaurant that was particularly unpalatable, and Li Shu saw the thinnest Fafna oyster he had ever seen in his life.

Shen Yiyou ate a few mouthfuls, then comforted himself that at least the wine was not mixed with water.

Li Shu didn’t drink, and even if he did, he probably wouldn’t be able to taste whether it was mixed with water or not, but he still echoed Shen Yiyou’s words. Shen Yiyou paid the bill, grabbed Li Shu’s arm tightly, and walked out of the restaurant.

Under the street lamps that cast a dim yellow halo from among the dense phoenix tree leaves, Shen Yiyou happily rested his face on Li Shu’s shoulder.

Li Shu lowered his head nervously, and saw Shen Yiyou release one hand, stretch it out, grab Li Shu’s hand, and intertwine their fingers.

And three years later, on the way to the airport, Li Shu heard his regular and violent heartbeat again.

He felt a long, endless wave of unease and happiness that ran through the entire date which was so intense because he felt flustered by Shen Yiyou’s presence.

That might have been the closest day to happiness for Li Shu, but the dream could not last long.

Ten minutes after leaving the hotel exhausted all Li Shu’s patience of the last three months. He wanted to send a text message to Shen Yiyou immediately or go back to the moment when he met Shen Yiyou by the elevator yesterday, and hug Shen Yiyou to sleep again for one night.

But the former was inappropriate, and the latter was impossible.

Li Shu didn’t do well, and he made Shen Yiyou lose his longing and happiness.

He wanted to learn the special skills of love, to have a human expression and mood translator, and to become an expert in interpretation of Shen Yiyou’s moods.

As he was getting off the car, the listing team called Irene to discuss the roadshow.

Li Shu walked in front, and temporarily thought that Shen Yiyou could be compared to a line of hexadecimal values squeezed into a dense binary code, and in this way, he created a love story that he thought was very poignant. The record was as follows:

In order to integrate into the binary code, the hexadecimal values made many efforts, and finally assimilated themselves, but they left after silently giving up for some reason, anyway, at the end of the story, hexadecimal numbers disappeared from the binary world.

The binary program unknowingly looped through countless lines of code, looking for his hexadecimal value, while running alone for a lifetime.


T/N: I can’t, I just can’t… LS’s thoughts are enough to make anyone cry… And the story at the end….

I just love them together so much… The way they both love each other….🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩


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[1] So cloudy that no sunlight could get through.

5 thoughts on “HF Ch. 17

  1. Li Shu, my dear, it doesn’t work like this… Human emotions can’t be compared to series of codes… Someone guide this helpless boy please! It hurts me so much to see him try so hard, yet he isn’t even close:(
    Thank you for the chapter.

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