under the filth

In an apartment building in central London, Lu Sheng was lying on his back on the sofa, holding the book high in both hands, flipping through it at a glance. The sound of water from the bathroom didn't affect him at all.

After a while, not long after the sound of water in the bathroom stopped, Tang Cen came out of the bathroom wiping his hair.He looked around and saw Lu Sheng lying on the sofa through the gap between the hair and the towel.

He dragged on his slippers and staggered towards the sofa.Tang Cen stood still in front of the sofa, staring straight at Lu Sheng for a while, before Lu Sheng glanced up, and then continued to look at the book in his hand.

Dissatisfied with Lu Sheng's cold reaction, Tang Cen pursed his lower lip unhappily, then relaxed his body and fell forward.

Hearing a "bang--", Tang Cen fell hard on Lu Sheng's body. With a wet towel on his head, he buried his head in his lover's neck and arched back and forth.

Lu Sheng had expected that Tang Cen would fall on him like this, but the force of the impact still made him frown.Lu Sheng threw the book in his hand on the ground, rubbed Tang Cen's head through the towel, patted his back and comforted him, "What's wrong?"

"So tired." Tang Cen sighed, rubbing the tip of his nose back and forth against the delicate and smooth skin on Lu Sheng's neck, sniffing the faint smell of tobacco on his body.

Another three years later, after two and a half years of working in a financial company in London, Tang Cen and Lu Sheng applied for a master's degree in management at the London Business School relying on the recommendation letters of their respective supervisors and the achievements of previous "messy" projects. They ushered in the moment of graduation again.

It is too early for graduates like Tang Cen and Lu Sheng to apply for other master's degrees at London Business School, and the Master of Management program is just designed for fresh graduates. Usually, the applicants have worked in the business field for no more than one year. This is the most suitable choice for the two of them now.

I wanted to accumulate some more work experience, but under the pressure of Tang Songyuan, Tang Cen had no choice but to bite the bullet and submit the application. Fortunately, both of them entered the school smoothly in the end.

The college is in central London, next to the Royal Regent's Park, not far from the apartment the two rented while working.Due to some reasons that are inconvenient to explain clearly, Tang Cen and Lu Sheng did not apply for the dormitory of the school again, but continued to live in it after discussing with the landlord.

Although Tang Cen was often overwhelmed by the pressure of study and the trivial matters of life, in the small apartment, the space full of Lu Sheng's breath could always calm Tang Cen's restless nerves quickly.Although Tang Cen didn't want to admit it, Lu Sheng had slowly infiltrated into his life and became an inseparable part.

The mountains are high and the emperor is far away. Tang Cen never mentioned the existence of Lu Sheng to Tang Songyuan, and Tang Songyuan never cared about Tang Cen's daily life, and this deviant love affair was never exposed.Therefore, when no one interfered in the relationship and deliberately ignored Tang Songyuan, even if Lu Sheng and Tang Cen occasionally quarreled in a cold war, no one ever took the initiative to mention the breakup.

But in Tang Songyuan's plan for Tang Cen, his studies in England were only arranged for this year.This means that after Tang Cen graduated from London Business School, he would return to Tang Songyuan without any accidents. Like his sophomore year, he would work in his family's company.

In the past, Tang Cen would not even have any dissatisfaction in his heart if he lived in such a step-by-step manner.But now Lu Sheng has no plan for where he will go after graduation, and even if Tang Cen thinks he is using Lu Sheng in the past six years, he still can't break it off neatly.

For the first time in Tang Cen's life, he had the idea of ​​resisting Tang Songyuan.

"Have you figured out where to go after graduation?" Tang Cen lay on top of Lu Sheng, buried his head in his neck, his voice sounded muffled, and Lu Sheng's heart was also stuffy.

Lu Sheng paused for his smooth hand, and put it lightly on his back: "Not yet, maybe I will stay here." After a pause, Lu Sheng suddenly turned over and pressed Tang Cen on the ground. down.

Looking into Tang Cen's eyes, Lu Sheng's eyes moved slightly: "You... are you going back?"

They threw the towel onto the armrest of the sofa, and Tang Cen's dripping hair wet the sofa. There were deep and shallow water marks on the blue-gray fabric, but no one cared.

Tang Cen shrank his neck and looked away: "Well, my father called this morning and asked me to go back after the graduation ceremony."

"Then you... go back, I'll come back and look for you after I stay here for another two years." Lu Sheng pressed his head against his head, and said every word, his throat was so dry that it was almost choked.

To Lu Sheng, being able to occupy Tang Cen's time for six years was already an extremely extravagant thing. Their families were like this, so Lu Sheng couldn't ask for anything more.

Hearing that Lu Sheng's words didn't even have a symbolic way to persuade him to stay, Tang Cen put his hand around his neck, leaned into his ear and asked in a low voice, "Aren't you going to keep me?"

Lu Sheng wrapped his arms around his back, turned his head slightly, and planted thin kisses on Tang Cen's neck: "Can I keep you?"

No one knows what they will look like in two years. Perhaps when they meet again, they will both be married and have children with others, and those lingering memories of the past will gradually disappear in the torrent of time.

"No." Everything in the future is unknown, even if Lu Sheng dared to bet, Tang Cen would not dare to bet, he had no bets.

Tang Cen raised his head from his embrace, avoiding the kiss that fell on his body: "Didn't you ever think about going back with me?"

Lu Sheng was taken aback, he never expected Tang Cen to ask such a question.In fact, Lu Sheng really thought about going back with Tang Cen, but if his so-called paternal relatives caused any misunderstanding, it was hard to say what kind of actions they would take.

Lu Sheng didn't care that he was sent abroad again by them, but he was worried that Tang Cen would be implicated.He hesitated and said, "I thought about it, but I'm worried about my father..."

But Tang Cen directly interrupted him: "Then I'll go back by myself."

Tang Cen stared blankly at the chandelier on the ceiling, not even glancing at Lu Sheng from the corner of his eye.Since Lu Sheng had no intention of keeping him, nor did he plan to go with him, the so-called resistance was meaningless.

After pulling the towel, Tang Cen put it on the sofa before lying down again.He clasped Lu Sheng's head with both hands, and his slender fingers ran through the messy black hair before, pulling Lu Sheng down, and the tip of their noses rubbed against each other: "Will you come back to me?"

Lu Sheng suddenly leaned over and kissed Tang Cen, and blurted out a word during the kiss: "Yes."

At dusk, the afterglow of the setting sun fell on the bed through the branches.When Tang Cen opened his eyes again, the chandelier in front of him was not the chandelier with glass pendant in the living room, but the overhead light in their room with a thin paper lampshade.

He touched his hair, Lu Sheng had already dried it for him when he fell asleep, and there was no sticky feeling on his body.After tossing and turning in a small place like the sofa a few times, Tang Cen's waist and legs were so weak that he was shaking when he woke up.

There was a rustling sound outside, probably Lu Sheng was cleaning the sofa.Tang Cen turned over, covered his ears with the quilt to block out the noise from the outside world, and prepared to go back to sleep again.

However, with two "buzzing—" the phone on the bedside table vibrated.Tang Cen nestled under the quilt, reluctantly covered his ears and twisted a few times, waiting for the other party to hang up automatically, but the phone vibrated tirelessly.

It wasn't until the call was automatically hung up that Tang Cen heaved a sigh of relief and let go of his hand.But after a short period of silence, the phone rang again, as if Tang Cen would not let it go if he didn't answer it.

Tang Cen rubbed his sore waist before getting up on his side, reached out his hand to the edge of the bedside table enough, and then touched his mobile phone.Frowning, he turned over the phone and was about to hang up when he saw the name displayed on the screen. Those three words made Tang Cen sober in an instant.

The subconscious action of the body was faster than the reaction of the brain. Before Tang Cen understood why Tang Songyuan called suddenly, he had already pressed the answer button with his fingers.

Tang Cen raised his hand and put the phone to his ear: "Father?"

"Why did it take so long to answer the phone?" Tang Songyuan's voice was as indifferent as ever, without any emotion.

Tang Cen straightened up, stretching the sore muscles on his waist. He frowned, trying to make his voice sound as normal as possible: "I was in the bathroom just now, sorry..."

"In the bathroom?" Tang Songyuan asked back, Tang Cen's heart skipped two beats for no reason.The two were silent for a while before Tang Songyuan raised another topic: "I heard that you lived with a man in England?"

"That...that's a...student from the university..." Even Tang Cen could tell that his voice was trembling uncontrollably.Tang Songyuan could hear the obvious abnormality even through the mobile phone through the transmission of electric current.

"Really." Tang Songyuan naturally knew that Tang Cen had concealed the truth, but he still said flatly, "No matter what, I will cut off those messy relationships immediately, and I will come back immediately after graduation."

Tang Cen opened his mouth, but did not defend himself again.Ever since Tang Songyuan uttered the word "cohabitation", he felt as if the blood in his body had froze in an instant, his hands and feet suddenly lost their temperature, became cold and stiff, and sweat scrambled out from the surface of the skin, making it wet His flimsy shirt.

"I see..." He knew very well that with Tang Songyuan's knowledge, no matter how much he explained, it would be childish and ridiculous lies in the eyes of his father.

After receiving Tang Cen's guarantee, Tang Songyuan hung up the phone without hesitation, indifferent and decisive.

The second after Tang Songyuan hung up the phone, the phone fell to the ground with a "boom--", but Tang Cen had no time to take care of it.

Father he knows!He knows!After so many years of hiding it, he still knows!Tang Cen held his head, trying to calm down his chaotic brain, but that bit of rationality was useless at all, and he couldn't control his trembling body.

Tang Cen pulled the quilt with his cold hands, mechanically wrapped the quilt around himself, and lay down slowly.

"Heh...ha..." Tang Cen curled up under the quilt, and the oppressive and painful moans that he let out while breathing were blocked by the quilt in the airtight and dark space.The turbid air entered the lobes of the lungs, and the chest was painfully constricted, and Tang Cen's little consciousness was swallowed by the darkness.

Before falling into darkness, Tang Cen vaguely heard someone calling his name.