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

Why should I say thank you?Ed thought.

The continuous rain for many days did not stop, and the cold midday morning light fell on the cold winter room.With a toothbrush in his mouth, Roy dragged the heater out of the bedroom and placed it under the dining table. After a while, he came over with wet hair and opened the refrigerator.He took out a plate of pie, lowered his head and sniffed it curiously, and stuffed it into the microwave without thinking.Cute knew what it was, it was the pie brought by Zhang Mei.

Ed wrapped himself in the towel tightly and kicked his legs closer to the heater.The stuffing is dried plums sent by Mei’s hometown. It is said to be authentic Chinese style, and it is specially brought to the American people who are used to eating junk food.Ed was skeptical at first, unable to judge whether the brown-yellow vegetable powder in the pie was still within the usable range (after all, even moldy eggs and moldy tofu are delicious in Chinese), but after one bite, he immediately fell in love Under Zhang Mei's white coat covered with the strange juice left by biological experiments.

"What?" the little Dongfang girl looked disgusted, "I like tall and hearty brothers like you, and I'm not interested in small beans like you."

"Who the hell are you calling Xiaodouzi!!?"

"Ed, you like it so much, just take my piece too." Lin handed him the plate.

Ed looked alert, "Why?"

Lin was full of helplessness at the complete breakdown of the friendship they had pretended for many years, "My mother also sent me a box."

Then Ed took the piece to Roy.

Thinking about it this way, the things that Ed brought to Roy one after another can't be said to be specially prepared rare gadgets, most of them are leftovers that he used himself and thought they were good by chance.He smelled the aroma coming from the microwave oven, and the metal fork that turned unconsciously in his hand made a crisp knocking sound on the porcelain plate, and he looked at the lizard returning to the biological tank.He thought that this smell of food from a foreign country might be able to connect himself with Roy's time and space—he missed Roy while he was busy working in the laboratory, and he was lying alone in the cold bathtub with Roy A lonely night curled up in a ball.

These baseless speculations are like a fog that cannot be deduced. Edward can only look at the only clear scene, watching Roy change into a soft black thick sweater, and his freshly washed hair is wet in his ears. Finally, he turned his back to himself and waited intently for the heated pie, as if he could raise his black cat's tail at any time.Ed felt his tense heart soften, and couldn't help but wonder, did everything he did really mean anything to Roy?

"It smells good."

He raised his head in surprise, looked at Roy with his back on his side, and smiled halfway.

Troubled.

The heater blew out bursts of hot air and made a rumbling sound.Roy sat down next to Ed with a plate, and Ed couldn't help raising his neck to peek, his eyes went around, but finally fell on his finger bones holding the knife and fork.

I rely on, wishful thinking.

"Why are you apologizing?"

"Huh?" Ed looked up in surprise, only to see Mustangu's eyes were also staring at him.The other party repeated gently:

"Why did you apologize just now?"

Now that he understood what he was talking about, Ed's shoulders slumped in guilt.

He stared bitterly at his empty dinner plate, and it took him a long time to gather up the courage to go to see Roy again.But Roy didn't look at him, Roy was cutting the steaming pie with a knife.Ed got down on his stomach, resting his chin on the table.

"Because... I think you don't want others to know about it."

Hot air leaked from the golden gap in the pie crust, gurgling upwards, Ed blinked, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't see the expression on Roy's face at this time.All he knew was that the other party silently raised his hand, gently waving away the heat, and his face was already calm after the clear picture.

"It's not a rare thing or a big deal." Roy shook his head and poked it down with a fork. "It's not a big surprise to be known. I already knew it would be like this."

The boy was speechless for a moment.

He stared blankly at Roy as he stuffed the pie into his mouth.The warm air spread from the toes to the limbs, as if silently giving him courage.

Ed said, "Did you tell him?"

Roy froze.His black eyes flickered, but he hesitated to speak.

He hung his head, and it took a long time before he shrugged.He smiled feebly, "You know, there are people in the world who are very lively and restless, and there are also people who are very lazy and highly dependent. Once the latter enter a certain state and establish a certain relationship, they will Would rather die than lose or leave."

He didn't expect the other party to say that suddenly, but Ed suddenly understood what he was trying to express.Ed paused and pursed his lips unconsciously.

"However, how should I put it?" He spat out the words with difficulty, "an object moving at a uniform speed can maintain this kind of uniform motion in an ideal environment as long as no external force is applied, but the theory that elementary school students know like this is very good in reality. It is difficult to make it completely. After all, no matter how small the friction force is, it still exists in reality. As long as there is friction force, the uniform motion will stop one day. So the idea of ​​maintaining a certain state is from a practical point of view Is it too idealistic?"

Roy looked at Ed intently, and smiled softly.

"It's a metaphor full of professionalism."

"what!"

"But I'm the one with such idealistic wishes."

Ed felt as if he had been stabbed coldly by something, like a cold metal spike.

He looked at Roy reluctantly, the fork in the man's hand was boringly poking at the fragrant pie on the plate, covering up his unstoppable sigh.And the spike seemed to grow out of thin air from his sigh, poking at the undefended softness of Ed's body again and again.But he must hold back, and he must hold back now no matter what.

"But you still haven't answered my question," Ed said.

Roy rested his forehead on his wrist, closed his eyes and smiled.

"It's basically an answer."

"……What's the meaning?"

"I've been with him for too long." He said softly, "I don't have any relatives or decent friends, so no one has ever stayed with me as long as he did." Roy lowered his head, his voice was Like sinking to the bottom:

"That's why I thought I could go on like that forever, and we'll always be together anyway, so even if I don't tell you today, I can do it tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow... It's really boring, isn't it?"

When he came back to his senses, Ed realized that he had frowned slightly at some point.He stared at each other silently, as if looking at a puzzle without a clue.Roy's mean smile at this moment, he didn't know whether it came from a habitual gesture, or his self-deprecating expression - Ed felt as if he was sunk in the deep sea, cold and painful, but still wanted to hug he.He heard Roy say:

"For many years since I was sensible, I have spent in orphanages and moving homes. At that time, I hated my life, I couldn't find the motivation to stay, but I still couldn't give up myself-until I met him, I Only then did I feel that there was finally a reason in the world for me to stay."

His voice was as calm as the surface of a lake, and Eddie knew it was just a thin layer of ice.He grabbed his wrist.Roy's eyes widened in surprise, and Ed didn't realize how hard he was gripping.

"But as long as you don't give up, you'll still have a chance." The blond boy gritted his teeth, his fingers trembling, "That's still your life, it doesn't mean you have to stay because of someone!"

Roy paused, as if he didn't expect Ed to say that suddenly.He replied flatly: "I know."

"Then why..."

"My past time is divided into two parts." He looked into Ed's eyes, "'time with him' and 'time without him'. Now he belongs to someone else, but where do I stand next?" When is the time to continue?"

As he spoke, time seemed to stand still for a moment between them.

The sun is bright but not warm in winter, and the heater under your feet is roaring, reminding that the wheels of time are not waiting for a breath.And Roy's question seems to have become a real question. In the calm words, there is a voice that Ed can hear, asking and shouting helplessly. At this moment, Eddie weakly avoided his eyes.He didn't know how to answer.

At this moment, Ed suddenly felt the weight under his palm loosen.Roy turned his head away, and quietly pulled his wrist out of the boy's palm.He was suddenly shocked.

Ed stretched out his five fingers and squeezed Roy's hand tightly.

It seemed that this was all the answers Edward could give.

So warm and so powerful.

Ed had washed his own trousers, and stood in the bathroom with his bare butt and shivering legs, refusing to let another person in.After Roy talked for a long time, he barely persuaded him to let him tie a towel around Ed's waist with a bow.

"Is this all right?"

"What a fart," Ed snorted. "Like the flowery dress Wen Li wore when she went on vacation in Hawaii that year."

"Who is Wen Li? Are you a bitch?"

"Damn that woman didn't kill me, I'm thankful!"

"If you really don't like it, you can also choose to take it off." Roy said, "They are all men."

Ed threw the soap in Roy's face, but was quickly caught.Helpless, he had no choice but to continue to stand in front of the sink, cursing and scrubbing the seemingly irreparable pair of pants with soap.He didn't even know what kind of stubborn ingredients the nutrient solution that the damned lizard drank was made of, and the white traces couldn't be removed with a brush. The best way to save it was to get a pair of old gray trousers.Thinking of this, Ed cursed even harder.

"Don't scold my little flame." Roy solemnly hung up the washed underwear in front of the heater.

Ed was dumbfounded, "What is Little Flame!?"

"Don't call Little Flame 'that thing'." Roy solemnly pulled the towel off Ed's waist.

Ed shoved the soap into Roy's mouth.

The trousers had not been dried for a long time, so Ed justifiably did not leave.The afternoon sun lazily pours into the empty room, and the crystal clear dust is flying under the light spots, while he wraps himself in a blanket and leans against the heater, imagining himself as a ball of wool waiting to be dried .But he won't take undulating breaths in a quiet room, and he won't think about the other person in the room.

He poked his head out from under the blanket to glance at him, and Roy ignored him.He lay flat on the carpet and read the novel, the bright lemon-colored cover contrasted his plain face.Does Roy know that it is a novel that he stuffed into him?

Roy got tired of watching it for a while, and started working hard with Ed without saying a word.Later, when we got excited about the conversation, Mustangu, who is the host, even made Ed a cup of hot tea and a cup of hot cocoa (no milk, three spoons of sugar) one after another, and finally chatted aimlessly with Ed. land, from noon to dusk.Ed couldn't remember the organization and details of those words clearly afterward. He couldn't even remember how much he had told the other party about himself, and he couldn't remember how Roy talked to him intermittently about himself-he just knew It was just that the information had poured into his head not through the sound itself but through the afternoons they spent together.

Ed and Al have amazing eyesight and are blessed by nature. No matter how much they read in bed or read novels at night with a small yellow light on from childhood to adulthood, both eyes are hard to 5.0.Ed only hates that he can only sit in the first row of the classroom when he is studying, otherwise he can see all the notes and game consoles passed around in the class.And Roy is slightly myopic ("Presbyopia?" "Myopia!"), because when he was young, he thought his friend who wore glasses looked too stupid, and missed the prime time for myopia treatment.Now he wears a pair of black-rimmed glasses, but last week he accidentally sat down on his ass. ("Hahahaha stupid!" "Your pants are still in my hands, I advise you not to smile so happily.")

Ed devours his meals, but from an aesthetic point of view, he has no discernment in everything including food, music and art. He has never been able to tell the difference between a 30-dollar bread and a 3-dollar bread, so he is not picky.On the contrary, Roy has keen senses and super discernment. His indifference is really too lazy to care about such trivial matters.The only thing that betrayed him was his own cat tongue, and he had to blow on it childishly for a long time when he drank some hot soup or tea.Zeng couldn't sleep in the middle of the night to drink hot milk by himself, but it burned himself, so he had to wear pajamas and underwear in the middle of the night, sticking out his tongue, looking for water everywhere.In addition, Roy has never eaten spicy food.

"W-T?" Ed fussed, "Have you ever had a spicy taco?"

"My mother told me that eating this would make my anus hurt," Roy pouted, "so I don't eat this kind of thing."

Roy has been in orphanage schools since he was a child, and various urban community elementary schools. He has been outstanding all year round and has been crushed all the way.He was used to being smarter and better-looking than everyone else, and once felt that life was too boring, except for the weak is pain—until later.And Ed has been a genius boy since he was a child, and various IQ settings of Jack Su can be applied to him.Even so, Edward's childhood was not just a closed and dark library and towering piles of books: in his eyes, Idaho was the dark blue of the summer starry sky. Universe, while chatting about the books I read recently and the theories I was interested in, until my mother found out that they had fled, grabbed their collars and dragged the brothers back to the bed.Ed said that his mother died of an infectious disease, so he and Al wanted to study medicine at first, but in the end only Al persisted, and Ed's talent flashed in the place where his mother interrupted again and again .

"Al also said that when my mother dies, she becomes a star in the sky." Ed snorted, "I don't believe it, a person dies when he dies, he doesn't become anything, let alone a star in the sky— —I will not pursue those illusory things."

"But Ed," Roy said, "you study the stars, don't you?"

It's all small and trivial things, pieced together intermittently, without any meaning.Eddie had never felt so close to him, nor had he known him so well.For a moment, he almost mistakenly thought that he and Roy were old friends who had known each other for many years; but when he turned around, he found that he was still eager to understand him more.

What a fool.

Why do I like him so much?

By the time Ed remembers to leave, his pants are almost scorched.He made a fuss and hurriedly put it on, wrapping him steamingly, like an electric blanket on his upper body, Ed suspected that his butt was going to be scalded flat.Roy unexpectedly did not refute him, but looked at the gloomy sky outside the window.Before leaving, Roy helped him wrap the neckline of the down jacket tightly, Ed buried his face in the scarf, and for the first time felt that speaking in front of the host was more nervous than being a thief while he was away .

"Then bye." Ed lowered his head and stuffed his hands into his pockets, refusing to look up at him.

Even without looking, he knew that Roy was looking down at him at the moment. He was leaning against the door frame, still looking a little listless, with tiredness and dark circles on his face.But his eyebrows are smiling, it is a sincere smile without a trace of falsehood.

"Goodbye," he said.

Hearing this voice, Ed suddenly remembered something.The young man hastily raised his head, reaching out to grab the door frame for fear of missing the last chance.

"Before," Ed said quickly, throwing his head back, "why did you... say 'thank you'?"

Roy froze for a moment, his eyes turned away from the light were smoky gray.At that moment Ed looked up at him, as if he was going to grab something very far away, just like when he lay on the grain pile and stretched out his arms towards the night sky, trying to grab the stars in the sky.

Then, he slowly showed a gentle smile.

"Because you make me feel so warm," he said softly, "though I don't know why."

At that time, the winter night came from behind like a tide, but Eddie felt a heat surge up from a certain corner of his body.Maybe it's the deep part of his stomach, stirring like butterflies; maybe it's the inside of his chest, hot and throbbing; maybe it's his throat that was dumbfounded for a while, the heat surges upwards, rushing into his eye sockets and bursting into waves. A red hot sting.At that time, Ed felt that he had finally touched something, as if he had struggled in the dark and cold deep sea for a long time, and finally touched a piece of rock along the coast.He poked his head out, the sea water that choked into his throat was still salty and stinging, but at this moment, it was far inferior to the sweetness of the air he took.At that time, he felt that maybe it wasn't a bad thing that he liked him. He still had the courage to continue and the strength to fill the gap in his rupture.

At that time, there were two days before he heard the news that Roy was in a coma and hospitalized.

TBC