Nian Le arrived a bit earlier today.
Huo Weiran did his best to suppress his tangled emotions and went to the dining hall wearing a hat. As expected, he discovered everything.
Huo Weiran had already prepared himself to be reproached and was determined to get an answer.
Even if he was laughed at, it didn’t matter. He didn’t want this question to keep troubling him. This level of distress was something he had never experienced before, so much so that even after falling asleep in the middle of the night, he would wake up and think about just who it was whose hair he had been carefully combing over and over again.
He took off his hat and waited for a long time. There was no ridicule, no blame. When he finally lifted his eyes, he saw the other person’s relieved expression.
“If you want to change your hairstyle, I can help you trim it a bit,” Nian Le said with a smile, picking up his chopsticks to eat.
Huo Weiran froze for a moment. He lowered his head without saying anything, his fingers gripping the cutlery tightly. The words he had been about to ask suddenly lost all strength to leave his mouth.
After quietly finishing lunch, Nian Le took Huo Weiran up to the beauty salon on the third floor. Seeing his younger brother standing at the door, unwilling to go in, Nian Le pulled him along and led him to a soft chair.
Although Nian Le had never learned how to cut hair, tidying up the botched haircut so it didn’t look so jarring shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
After a few snips, Nian Le compared the left and right sides and realized that naturally curly hair was harder to manage than ordinary hair. He pulled it straight by hand before cutting, but once the hair sprang back to its original state, it was clearly a bit uneven.
After a long silence, Nian Le took out his phone and searched for how to cut naturally curly hair. However, the example hairstyles he found were nothing like Huo Weiran’s.
Out of the corner of his eye, Nian Le glanced at the mirror opposite. His younger brother was sitting upright, his waist and back straight, gray eyes tinged with a deeper, somber shade.
Nian Le turned his face slightly, pretending not to notice the serious expression reflected in the mirror. His fingers quickly slid across the keyboard as he searched for tips on trimming curly dog fur.
But all of them involved shaving directly.
And before cutting, there was another step—washing.
Nian Le raised a hand and pinched the bridge of his nose.
Huo Weiran’s body was tense as he listened to the faint snip of the scissors and felt his hair being lightly tugged. He didn’t want to ask whether Huo Weiran had cut other people’s hair like this before.
Then the sounds stopped.
Staring at the mirror in front of him, Huo Weiran saw the person behind him take out a phone, seemingly searching for something. The occasional glances cast his way carried a hint of evasiveness.
A vague guess formed in Huo Weiran’s mind. Then he saw Nian Le take a few deep breaths, pinching the bridge of his nose in clear distress.
Huo Weiran immediately confirmed his suspicion, and his heart couldn’t help but lift.
He had probably messed it up.
He’d never cut anyone’s hair before and hadn’t known that trimming hair wasn’t as simple as it looked.
“How about I wash it for you first?”
A gentle, inquiring voice came from behind. Huo Weiran suppressed the inexplicable urge to smile and nodded calmly.
The beauty salon was fully equipped. In addition to various beauty devices, there were massage chairs, spa rooms, and even a nail area.
After removing the barber’s cape from his brother, Nian Le brushed away the loose hair at his neck and led him to the reclining shampoo chair, watching him lie down quietly, a bit awkward.
Nian Le studied the buttons on the rinse bed in front of him for a while. They were labeled as electric and intelligent, but after looking for a long time, he still couldn’t tell where the water would come out.
He took out his phone and searched again. Only after seeing a similar model did he realize that the golden semicircle in front of the basin was the water outlet.
Pushing the semicircle up, Nian Le pressed the water button. Immediately, a row of small holes along the golden arc began spraying water from different angles, straight toward his younger brother’s face.
Nian Le quickly moved it back. Only then did the water gather onto Huo Weiran’s hair. Before Huo Weiran could speak, Nian Le swiftly grabbed a disposable towel, covered his face, and wiped quickly a few times.
A few muffled groans came from beneath the towel. Nian Le lightened his touch, lowered his head, and looked at his younger brother’s face, now rubbed red. Silently, he folded the towel and shifted it upward, covering the eyes that, at this moment, could be extremely lethal.
“Sorry, I’m not very good at using it,” Nian Le apologized gently, trying to rub the hair that was already soaked with water.
Nian Le could vaguely guess why Huo Weiran had cut his hair.
He had always been resistant to other people’s touch. After several days of getting along, Nian Le had thought he could accept it, he had even taken the initiative to bring over a comb but in the end, he still felt uncomfortable. So he cut off that lock of hair that had been held by someone else.
Teenagers in their rebellious phase were always moody and unpredictable.
At the dining table, he had even been able to resist with a hard stare—he’d cut it, so what could anyone do about it?
Now, a hint of amusement slid through Nian Le’s eyes. He pressed out a few pumps of shampoo, placed his fingers on top of Huo Weiran’s head, gently massaged a few times, and worked the foam through his hair.
Now, the entire area had been touched by Nian Le.
Nian Le was quite looking forward to whether, tomorrow, he would try to take his own head off.
Water flowed steadily, washing the foam from his hair. Nian Le turned off the water and gently wiped it dry. Seeing that no water was dripping from the tips of his hair, he began to study the light-therapy steaming function on the shampoo bed.
Could this function dry his brother’s hair?
“The beauty room is directly above my bedroom.”
Huo Weiran suddenly spoke. Nian Le lowered his gaze and saw the face whose eyes were still covered.
A high, straight nose, lips of balanced fullness, a smooth and well-defined jawline, his bone structure could be called perfect. Perhaps because water had splashed on him earlier, the fabric near his collarbones was damp, clinging to his body.
“My mother doesn’t like the feeling of stagnant air. She often keeps the windows open when she does beauty treatments and manicures with her friends.”
Huo Weiran organized his thoughts. “They talk about many things. I lived in Huaguo a few times when I was young. Every time the window was open, I could always hear them chatting, so I offered her my opinion.”
Hearing this, Nian Le smiled. “And then?”
“Then she contacted the legal department and gave me a contract. If I were to tell anyone what they talked about, I would have to pay eighty million in compensation.”
Huo Weiran’s tone was calm. “Because I’ve been living here again recently, she increased the compensation to one hundred and twenty million.”
Nian Le fell silent for a long while, almost afraid to think about what they might have been talking about.
After turning on the steaming function, Nian Le faintly smelled a blend of traditional Chinese medicine and floral fragrance. After half an hour of steaming, he touched Huo Weiran’s hair again. It was basically dry, with only a trace of dampness at the tips.
After washing, the hair no longer looked as disastrous as before. After a moment of mental preparation, Nian Le removed the towel covering Huo Weiran’s eyes.
Because the towel was damp, the eyelashes that had been covered for so long stood out distinctly, glistening with moisture.
The gray eyes slowly opened, like a pair of understated yet luxurious gray diamonds. A color that should have been utterly dull now appeared retro and dazzling, enough to dazzle the eyes.
Before his younger brother could react, Nian Le pressed him back into the soft barber chair, combed his hair a few times, and found a hair tie on the vanity.
When Nian Le had tied Huo Weiran’s hair before, the position had been low. As a result, the area Huo Weiran later cut was also lower, while the hair on top still retained a certain length.
Finding a suitable spot, Nian Le did his best to gather the remaining hair he could reach and tied a wolf tail at the center of the back of his head.
That way, the messy parts he had cut earlier were no longer visible.
Huo Weiran was tugged painfully. He pressed his lips together and said nothing. Suddenly recalling the question that had troubled him all day, he raised his eyes to look at the young man in the mirror and spoke coldly.
“When you comb other people’s hair, do you use this much force too?”
There was a hint of resentment in his tone. Nian Le walked around to stand in front of Huo Weiran, used the tail of the comb to pick out some hair on both sides. A few naturally curled strands fell halfway over his forehead, reducing the aggressiveness of his looks.
“Not this much force,” Nian Le replied with a faint smile as he adjusted the hair.
“I was six or seven back then. I didn’t have that much strength.”
Six or seven.
Huo Weiran’s expression changed slightly, and he immediately felt relieved. After thinking for a moment, a trace of nervousness arose.
“That person,do they still need you to comb their hair now?”
Nian Le paused briefly, then used the comb to smooth the hair he had picked out.
“No. They don’t need it anymore—never again.”
Huo Weiran lowered his gaze. Those amber-colored eyes were close at hand, like layers of autumn leaves piled thickly, making it impossible to see the emotions within.
The feeling of being touched by him didn’t seem bad.
Even if it would hurt later, the sensation was still strangely pleasant.
No matter what he had experienced before, or whether he had some childhood sweetheart, right now, he was his fiancé.
As if the clouds before his eyes had been parted, Huo Weiran stared intently at the gentle young man in front of him. His left hand unconsciously tightened around the armrest of the soft chair.
Whatever he wanted whether from the Huo family or from his mother, they would certainly do everything they could to give it to him.
As long as he was willing to stay and remain by the side of someone as useless as himself.
“All done,” Nian Le said, looking at the hairstyle in front of him and gesturing for Huo Weiran to look in the mirror. “What do you think?”
Huo Weiran gazed at the reflection of the young man’s gentle brows and eyes. His fingers lightly rubbed the armrest beneath his hand, and a warm, ticklish feeling rippled through his heart.
“I’m very satisfied.”
Hearing his younger brother’s evaluation, Nian Le was a little surprised. He lowered his eyes to meet Huo Weiran’s gaze in the mirror, only to see him quickly avert his eyes, then cautiously shift them back a moment later.
The tips of his ears were slightly red. That answer had been shy, yet unusually firm.
“As long as you’re satisfied,” Nian Le said. He vaguely felt that something was off, but couldn’t quite put his finger on what was wrong.
Before leaving the beauty room, Nian Le quickly cleaned up the traces they’d left behind. Just as he finished rinsing the sink clean, he looked up and saw Huo Weiran wiping the floor with one arm. Though his movements weren’t very practiced, he was working extremely earnestly.
Nian Le brought over a trash bin and had Huo Weiran sweep the gathered hair into it. Huo Weiran didn’t move for a long while. In the end, he handed the cleaning tools to Nian Le and crouched down himself, holding the trash bin.
They hadn’t used much of the beauty room, so the cleaning was quick. Seeing that it was still early, Nian Le went to the living room to review today’s chess game. He saw Huo Weiran sitting on the sofa beside him, a Kindle propped on his casted arm, his head lowered as he seriously flipped through whatever he was reading.
Nian Le continued with his own tasks. He replayed today’s game of Go, recorded several key details in his game record notebook, and after practicing them repeatedly, put all the stones away. He then took out 1,000 Essential Tesuji Problems and, as usual, trained his tesuji.
In Go, tesuji refers to brilliant, skillful moves. There is no single sentence that can accurately describe tesuji; more often, it is something that can only be intuitively understood. Just as martial arts emphasize the strength of tendons and bones, calligraphy speaks of Yan’s sinews and Liu’s bones, Go has tesuji and fixed patterns—each stone linked to another, the flow of the game extending endlessly.
After finishing today’s practice, Nian Le tidied up the board and books and prepared to go upstairs to rest. Unexpectedly, Huo Weiran also quickly put down his e-reader and followed behind Nian Le, heading upstairs together.
The sensation of being followed felt a bit strange. Nian Le turned back to look at Huo Weiran and saw his younger brother meet his gaze, concealing the rawness in his eyes, his expression solemn.
“You’ll have to slowly get used to me sooner or later.”
