【Steel Refining Flame Steel】How to make the person I like also like me

Although he didn't know if he was bluffed, Ed finally went downstairs with his headphones on.At that time, Ed's heartbeat was close to 1 beats per minute, and his personal experience was almost the same as that after he participated in the community marathon.The beating sound is deafening, so that the playing of a certain serenade by Chopin - as Al said - is indistinct in the earphones, only the beating heartbeat rushes wildly in the closed space.

Another thing worth noting was Ed's attire.Although the person involved tried his best to act lightly in this regard, the real situation was that he experienced for the first time Wen Li's feeling of wiping fly legs on eyelashes for the sea lions of the rugby team—that was almost when Ed moved here. For the first time in my apartment, I looked in the mirror for reasons other than checking for ink or dust on my face, bird nests in my hair, or eyelashes in my eyes.The current white shirt with brown vest and black leather jacket looks plain and simple, but it actually hides a mystery. It is the result of discussions and compromises between Edward and the majority of netizens. From Ed, later called "an empty nester on the way to get a pension" by netizens, gray deep V with tight leather pants (from netizens, ruthlessly rejected by Ed as "a hair salon lost in the red light district") Brother") and other black history.In order to be sure, he also willfully rejected a series of suggestions such as small accessories, and later deleted the floor where the photos were displayed, so as to prevent being caught by malicious people.

Fortunately, the wisdom of the crowd is still credible, because when Ed walked up to Mustang in this outfit with awkwardness and self-disgust, the other party - Roy Mustang with beautiful but critical eyes — the response was almost flawless.No cynicism, no turning a blind eye, no embarrassing fuss, no smart, embarrassing rants about Ed's out-of-color (lemon yellow, with Pixo prints on them) headphones.Instead, he seemed to understand Ed's thoughts perfectly, and just blinked, and then showed a soft, almost sincere smile-reminding Ed to think of Gatsby when Nick first met at the party in the novel. .

At dusk, Roy leaned lazily with his hands in his pockets beside the light pole downstairs and looked at himself with his head tilted. He didn't wear a red shirt for pickup girls, but his dark purple knitted thick coat was unexpectedly suitable. .The rental notice on the light pole looked a bit funny, but he was as glamorous as ever, but he didn't have the pretentious gesture Ed saw on TV, and even the silence seemed so natural.I saw him take out his hand wrapped in black gloves from his pocket, put it on Ed's shoulder in front of him, and pinch it slightly intentionally or unintentionally.And that pinch seemed to have the magical power similar to oriental magic, which made the boy's mood, which he had tried hard to suppress and couldn't calm down, suddenly settle down satiated, like a sponge full of water, sinking contentedly.

Let's call this "Roy's magic".Ed thought.

"I thought," Ed and Roy said as they walked, "guys like you wouldn't want to take the subway." Baozi's face was pale and tender, and he looked very delicate.

"It's chilling to hear you say 'this kind of guy' after running so far to pick you up." Mustang smiled, "I haven't bought a car here yet, so you just settle for it .”

"Buy it, you are not short of money."

"Who said that?"

"Is it so cheap to rely on your appearance?" Ed said meanly.

The other party was very appreciative, "We stand on the street for five dollars a time, small business, welcome to care."

MD is a little moved.

"It's pretty shitty to dress up," Ed said, turning his head.

"It's professionalism."

Ed snorted, "Okay, so if one day Ruster finds out that you resemble her father for the first time and is willing to date you, you will go out on the subway with her?"

"Then I will book a special car." Mustang Gu said plausibly, "Dating etiquette, you can't neglect."

"Damn it, isn't your discriminatory treatment too great?"

"Why?" He smiled and narrowed his eyes, "You want to enjoy the date treatment?"

Hearing that Ed bit his lower lip, his voice was muffled, "Don't be too sentimental."

This is really a very strange thing, such hurt each other, there is a conversation without a sentence that runs through the whole long walk smoothly and naturally, and continues in the subway station - before this is only a friend who has known each other for many years and is connected by blood What my younger brother can do with Ed.Thinking of this, he couldn't help being a little complacent and uncontrollably happy, but when he thought that he was actually happy about such a stupid thing, he couldn't help but resented his own worthlessness.However, before he could be upset for long, his attention was quickly drawn by new emotions.

Thinking back to the second day after the Al incident, Ed, who knew how to overcome a fall and gain wisdom, honestly turned on FaceTime on his mobile phone in order to prevent the tragedy from happening again.Unexpectedly, it was not the younger brother who was thinking about it, but Mustangu who called again later, and he called when Ed was at work.

Edward remembered that day clearly—it was a historic day, and they had just received the latest news from the space agency that morning, confirming the existence of a new small satellite that they had long predicted through calculations.This important discovery not only brought strong proof to their previous speculations, but more importantly, it allowed Ed and Lin to win a full 30 yuan from the idiot next door who bet that their theory was nonsense, and Mustangu's phone call happened just when Lindou and Lindou were happily sharing the 15 yuan betting money.At that time, Ed, with his legs crossed, was impatiently unwrapping the stubbornly packaged booty—grapefruit soda flavor, 4 yuan and 5 cents each in the commissary downstairs—with hands and feet too busy.This series of foreshadowing made the sudden arrival of the video call all the more sudden and dramatic.

In fact, Ed almost spit out the popsicle he was putting in his mouth when Mustangu's name appeared on the phone screen.Ed claims to be the one who lives willfully and freely in the world, but unless there is an appointment first, isn’t it customary to send a text message before making a video call?It is certainly one thing for the parties to be confident that their good looks can be of a high level anytime, anywhere, and they can withstand the wind and rain; but on the other side, the desks that are as messy as a typhoon scene, with strawberry milkshake popsicles in their mouths, counting to 10 The 5 cents dick companion and the receptionist with messy hair and sticky popsicle juice on his face seem to be another matter.

So this is going to hang up!Do you want to hang up the first phone call from your first crush in your life?

Just when Ed's brain was using as much energy as it used to calculate asteroids to think quickly, Lin—hell it was him again—seeing this, he pulled out the popsicle stick and came over with a grumpy face.

"Oh, isn't this your male god." He took a bite, "So enthusiastic, you take it."

"but I……"

"Hurry up, when did you become such a dick?"

Damn, when did you become such a badass... It looks like you were beaten into a mother's womb!

Ed put on an expression of reluctance with reserved dignity on his face, but quickly wiped his hands on a paper towel, and smoothed his bangs against the reflection of the glass window, then squeezed the popsicle with one hand, opened the phone with the other, Walk out quickly.

"Pursuing male gods" and "preserving dignity" do not seem to be such contradictory things at first glance, but in practice it is far from as good as thought.At that time, Ed was full of breath in order to preemptive strikes. He planned to make a high-profile statement to explain his high-profile position, and embedded "Please don't interfere with my life" in real time. Wait for the argument full of lyrics.Unexpectedly, as soon as the video screen was displayed, all the lines that Ed had memorized a few seconds ago evaporated in place.

Rather, it was Ed's dignity and himself that evaporated first.

"Ah...! You!!" Ed felt the blood all over his body gather in his head in an instant, and quickly exploded a special effect of flame reaction of a 50-jin magnesium bar. A large amount of light and heat passed through. The face came out.He hastily put away the distance between the phone screen and his face, turned his head away and couldn't bear to look directly at it.

The other party on the other side of the screen is very calm, as if he is a mildly burning sodium salt.

"You still eat popsicles in winter." Mustang said plainly.

"You don't care!" Ed gritted his teeth and blushed, "Are you sick? How can you call someone while taking a bath?!"

"Huh? I suddenly remembered about making a reservation and called you."

This is true.The side of the screen is full of fog. Judging from the distance and angle of the screen, the other party’s mobile phone is obviously placed on the low shelf next to the bathtub, facing Mustangu lazily leaning on the black-edged bathtub while reading a newspaper while From time to time, he raised his eyes to look at the silhouette here.Compared with Ed's battle state where hundreds of millions of nerves are exploding in the air, the opponent looks leisurely. The hand on the side of the bathtub is idly turning a pen and scratching the newspaper from time to time. His bangs The exposed forehead and browbones are reminiscent of marble sculptures in art museums, and the edge of the lens makes Ed instantly envious of the white foam there.

Fuck it, calm down.Ed stuffed most of the popsicle into his mouth to try to cool himself down.

But something even more embarrassing followed.Edward, who always took half a steak, was so excited that he choked in front of Mustangu.Hearing the sound, the other party turned his face to the side, seeing Ed trying to suppress but still coughing, he suddenly showed a soft smile.

"Slow down."

Ed gritted his teeth, "I want you to talk more."

After a long while, Ed was finally able to pronounce normally and looked at Mustangu without showing an expression of being too idiotic or too shameful.In order to prevent the rumors about him chatting with naked men from being spread in the office where eight wives gather, and to prevent himself from being caught chattering (?) by Izmi and having his arms removed, he quickly found a secluded place. Sitting next to the steps at the entrance of the stairs, holding the mobile phone in both hands and popsicles in his mouth, he was on alert, ready to run away at any time.

"booking?"

"Don't say you forgot."

Ed pouted.

"Do you have to decide now?"

"Hmm," Mustangu propped his chin and stared at the newspaper in his hand, "I read it just now, and the show on Friday morning is already full, and the show in the afternoon is almost here. Any further delays will be gone."

"No, no." Ed angrily bit down a piece of cold ice cream.

"Don't make a fuss, next week I'm still pointing at you to show me a good performance." Mustangu's absent-minded attitude seemed to be coaxing a willful child, ""Fifty Shades of Red" is quite popular now, how about it?"

Speaking of which, Ed felt like he was going to explode again.Just after he left the forum the day before, he googled the magic drama rumored among netizens.Among them, the synopsis of the plot involves a lot of professional terms that Ed himself knows little about, but the sporadically captured words such as "SM", "R", and "same sex" are enough to make Ed understand that the crowd around him are not afraid The vicious intentions of the people who caused trouble, and quickly removed this from the selection list of "first date with Roy (pseudo)" - it was ranked in "a certain time when the moon and stars were scarce, flowers and plants half a year after the formal relationship with Roy" Tasty Night" follow-up list.

"No!" Ed screamed.

Mustangu didn't turn to look at Ed, but he smiled a little as he stared at the newspaper.It was a somewhat subtle expression, and it was hard to say whether it was purely out of humor or ridicule.He scratched a line on the newspaper with a pen, and then said, "I got off work quite late that day, and I guess the two of us won't be able to watch the earlier shows. If "Fifty Shades of Red" doesn't work, there aren't many choices."

Ed swallowed hard, "Is there anything that looks more suitable for me?"

Hearing this, the other party finally turned his head and looked at Edward for a while, as if he was really looking at it seriously and thinking about what kind of movie would suit the novelty-seeking taste of this little man with a shaggy hair and chewing a popsicle.And Ed's heartbeat, which had been tense for a long time at the moment and had just started to be calm, gradually accelerated under the gaze of the other party, and his black eyes seemed wet with a little mist.

After a while, he proposed again.

"Behind Glory and Misery - Einstein's Last Years?"

In the end, the two of them mobilized the crowd and walked for a long time to take the subway that is said to be half an hour's walk away from the Fengshui treasure (in fact, they walked for 35 minutes). In order to go to the Metropolitan Cinema in the city center to watch the movie together, they decided to be "Snow White and the Big Bad Wolf". "Love, Love, I'm Waiting for You - 3D Version".Although this film is the result of a short discussion between the two of them - during which Ed not only finished eating the popsicle and bit off the stick in front of his crush, but Roy temporarily left for a while and Returning to the conversation wrapped in a bathrobe—but when it becomes a reality, and a reality that the two of them will face directly in half an hour, it becomes absurd.In fact, they sat together in a corner on the subway, wondering together what kind of mentality they had come up with a few days ago that ruled out all other options, chose to watch this film, and began to discuss this film involuntarily. How did it even come out on schedule?Mustangu said that [-]% of them are used for money laundering.

"How to wash? Is this kind of film really profitable?" Ed looked disbelieving.

"It's not based on profits, and haven't we contributed to their box office?" Mustangu said.

Just when Ed was about to open his mouth to refute, a violent sudden stop broke the unspoken words.There was a wave of shaking in the dimly lit carriage, and the inertia caused a wave of standing and sitting passengers to fall to one side like dominoes. Suddenly there were exclamations, screams, the sound of handbags falling on the ground, and panic The sound of footsteps swelled from the originally dull space, endlessly.It was pitch black outside the subway window, and the headlights flashed in harmony with the atmosphere.Mustangu supported himself with one hand, and quickly grabbed Edward who almost flew out of the chair with the other.

"What's wrong?" Ed sat back in his seat in shock, only to see Mustang shaking his head, frowning slightly and looking around.I saw that the passengers were all busy tightening themselves and their belongings, who were swaying here and there, whispering and guessing about the unknown sudden situation of the subway.

It didn't take long for the subway radio to play, telling the passengers in a steady voice that there was a sudden situation on the track and a series of nonsense. In short, they asked everyone to wait for half an hour before talking.

"ACCIDENT?"

"It should just be a sudden malfunction of the train."

"Damn, the long-distance girlfriend I see once every six months is still waiting for me in the hourly room."

Ed and Roy didn't have any reason to be nervous comparable to this man in a long-distance relationship who was rushing to the hourly room. After all, the movie they were rushing to watch was not a blockbuster that couldn't miss the wonderful opening.But parking is parking. Ed was shaking his legs uneasily on the seat with his backpack in his arms, feeling that his anxiety was on the verge of attacking.Mustangu was very calm, he leaned back on the chair and raised his legs.

"I guess someone committed suicide by jumping off the rails." He said confidently.

"what?!"

"To bet or not," the other party continued, "my guess on this point is pretty accurate."

Human, you know nothing about the power of the God of Gamblers.He, Edward Eric, was the man who just bet on cosmic celestial bodies a few days ago and won a huge sum of $15.

"Okay," Ed gambled, half-jokingly, "then I'll bet on everything else."

"Okay," the idiot boy actually agreed afterwards, "The loser please eat the winner."

"XX string shop." Ed gritted his teeth.

"So petty."

At this moment, the voice of the radio pierced through the hustle and bustle of people and sounded again.Everyone listened silently, but what they said was exactly the same as before, and they were very disappointed. In the final analysis, it meant that everyone had to wait for another half an hour.And at this time, the 3D money laundering gigantic system should have already started.Knowing that there is nothing to see, but wasting movie tickets for this kind of reason made Ed's anxiety swell even more.

"Is there still time?" Ed frowned and turned to look back.

Mustangu shrugged, "I'm afraid we won't be able to figure out the situation and clean up the corpse for a while, right?"

"It's not necessarily suicide."

"I want to order the most expensive snowflake beef skewers." Mustangu narrowed his eyes with a smile.

"Ten sticks." Ed said angrily.

It turns out, however, that Mustangu actually seems to have guessed right—another big success for “Roy’s magic”—because another hour later, a flight attendant swarms over.The young man with premature aging looked accustomed and impatient, and hoarsely yelled at the masses to get off the train with him first, and walk along the track to the nearest platform together.Edward stared dumbfounded at the passengers complaining about packing up their belongings and queuing up to jump off the train. He thought that the most used means of transportation in his life was the subway, but it was the first time he encountered such a thing directly. It seems that it is inappropriate to go out today.

"...It really happened to me like this!?" Ed couldn't agree more, "Why would someone really jump off the rails?"

"You have to be thankful he didn't jump on Monday morning," Mustangu said.

Mustangu got out of the car first.The cold wind blows through the tunnel, and it is icy cold. In the endless darkness, there are dots of yellow dome lights intermittently illuminating the way forward.Mustang put his hands in his pockets and turned to look at Edward.His figure was inlaid in the warm-colored lights in this way, his face was immersed in the shadows and scattered with stars and spots, but his expression was unprecedentedly indifferent.

It was too sudden, Ed frowned thinking back.A few minutes ago, he was talking and laughing with himself, with a gentle and even sincere smile, but a few minutes later, it was no longer Ed's familiar face.

But he vaguely remembered that he had indeed seen this expression before.It was after he came out of the bar, Mustangu let Hubock struggle to pull Ed who was jumping up and down, and he leaned against the car and stared coldly at the wind and snow in the distance.

The memory is far from clear, and the sadness is hard to let go.

"It's okay to die," Ed deliberately imitated the other party's indifferent tone, but the words he said were steaming.He frowned and followed Mustangu to get out of the car, and jumped into the long darkness of the tunnel, "Why do you have to die in such a place? It's not that you look down on people who commit suicide - after all, it's a personal choice, and I don't believe it either." There are hells to fall into, heavens to ascend to - but suicide on public transport is just too much trouble."

At this time, Mustangu, who was still indifferent just now, suddenly showed a more complicated and incomprehensible expression than before.He frowned slightly, and looked at the end of the railroad tracks in the darkness with tired eyes.Ed opened his eyes wide in surprise, as if he saw a seemingly solid ice surface suddenly crack a gap, faintly revealing the thin ice layer and the rolling water beneath it.

He said softly, "There is nothing wrong with choosing death after careful consideration, but suicide in most cases is irrational. It is more like being locked in a dark room and running around in a hurry to find the door, and then you can only see it from the only place in front of you." escape through the exit."

These words were so abrupt that it was even a bit rude to say them under such circumstances.But when Mustangu turned and followed the line of passengers, the nape of his neck looked so fragile and pale that for a moment Edward couldn't think of anything, wished with all his heart, I can hug him—it is so dark in the tunnel that no one will see it, and it may be warmer in the tunnel so cold.

But he didn't do that in the end, maybe because of the consideration of the occasion, maybe because of a certain threshold that did exist, but a hug was far from being able to solve it.Ed just lowered his head and silently put back the Pixchu earphones, carefully stepped on the melody he couldn't appreciate, and walked along the dark track to the queue in front until Mustang stretched out his arms and hugged him speechlessly. Hold on to Ed's shoulders.

"Why...?" the boy said sullenly.

The other party said something in a low voice, and his voice was completely drowned in the overwhelming serenade.Ed pulled out his earphones.

"What do you say?"

Hearing this, the expression on the other party's face slowly faded.He shook his head, and put on Ed's familiar helplessness and banter, but the hand on Ed's shoulder tightened even more.

"I said," he blinked and suddenly laughed, "it's pitch black, I'm afraid you might get lost."

"Who the hell are you saying is too short to see!?"

Serenade one after another.

TBC