Don’t Be a Kept Man

not interested in someone whose face was ruined, especially this young man who made him feel as if he was not a kind man.
He was just going to turn around and leave but just as he did, he glanced over and spotted a mole by the young man’s eyes and his feet forcibly stopped.

At that particular moment, no one knew what flashed through Pei Ran’s heart.
The others could only see him bend down, lift that young man up into his arms, and bring him into the washroom, closing the door behind him.

Zhou Cang Ming pushed up his glasses at that, laughing mockingly.

The apocalypse had just begun half a month ago and so the water and electricity hadn’t completely stopped yet.
Using one hand to hold onto the young man, the other hand was used to untie his tie and wet it at the sink.
Then he began to wipe the blood stains off the other’s face.

A mole under the other’s eye appeared brightly before his eyes.

Pei Ran stomped down on the emotions burgeoning in his heart and asked him quietly, 

“What is your name?”

The young man didn’t speak.
Half of his face was still a mix of blood and flesh, and even after wiping it clean, fresh blood was still pouring out.

Seeing this, Pei Ran leaned against the sink and slowly unbuttoned his shirt cuffs, 

“Do you think, is it better to be raped by four or is it better to only have one?”

The teen finally had a reaction to that.
He lifted his head to look up at Pei Ran, his eyes so empty yet as one looked even closer, one could find something slowly shattering, breaking apart.

And then he slowly lowered his head, his spine so skinny that even the slightest curve showed a hunch to his back.  He knelt onto the ground, reaching out to loosen Pei Ran’s belt.

Pei Ran thought that this bloody face was truly so terrifying.
He backed up a step, avoiding the teen’s reaction and then washed his face in front of the mirror.
He then swiped his slightly wet hair up towards the back of his head and looked at the other young man with his peripheral vision.
He asked again, 

“What’s your name?”

“Qu Yan……”

The teen’s hand was paused in midair and his throat was so hoarse it could not produce a sound.
He moved his cracked, dry lips, robotically repeating his words, 

 

“Qu Yan.”

What feelings Pei Ran had could probably be described as, just when he thought it was the end of his world, he found the light at the end of the tunnel2, and the feeling of 300 kg of melodrama washed all over him.
He was wondering why he kept feeling that this apocalyptic setting was so familiar and it was because he had transmigrated into a book—-!!!

A book based on the apocalypse setting with the main character levelling up by fighting monsters and increasing the size of his harem, that kind of genre.
The plot was super bad and so cliche that Pei Ran had only given it a few pages before ditching it.
The only thing he remembered was probably the protagonist’s name.

Qu Yan……

A mole under his eye……

At the beginning of the apocalypse, he suffered all sorts of bullying and abuse because of how weak he was, and then he snapped, killed off his kindness and naivety and exploded with limitless potential, developing an ability that controlled all elements, becoming a nigh unbeatable existence for the rest of the novel.
Has a storage space outside of physical existence, has girls throwing themselves at him, and his spiritual element ability was so well practiced and honed to a point where he was even able to control zombies.

This could not even be covered by the trope of “Person Who Will Win Everything In Life” anymore.

 

Another expression successfully popped into Pei Ran’s brain.

Qu Yan = protagonist = absolutely perfect undeniable golden leg, character shield, plot immunity. 

Who doesn’t hug around him, who is sb.3

There weren’t any towels on hand, so Pei Ran could only use his tie to lift up Qu Yan’s chin and start patiently wiping the dirt off from the side of his face.
After doing this for a while, he opened the door and brought him out.

There were nine people here on the storage floor and now it seemed to have split into invisible fractions: a couple, a woman, two delinquents and Zhou Cang Ming, Pei Ran and Qu Yan plus his bodyguard.

 

Hearing the sound of a door opening, Zhou Cang Ming lifted his eyes up and the sight of Qu Yan walking normally greeted him, a sight that showed no struggle on his body.
He said in a provoking manner, 

“Pei Ran, if you can’t do it then give it to someone else.
Don’t just block the washroom and not poo.”4

Pei Ran let go, signalling for Qu Yan to sit back in his original spot and then casually set that half wet tie back on his neck.
With his black collar shirt giving the side of his face a cool handsomeness, he walked over to grab Qu Yan’s school backpack and said, 

“Do I have to let you watch me go take a dump hmm?”

Zhou Cang Ming coldly laughed in response, not speaking a word.

Corpses still lay on the employee beds where they have not been moved since death took them, large swabs of rotten flesh that  no one dared to sleep on. 

As Pei Ran sat between his bodyguard, Feng Tang, and Qu Yan, a sense of safety suddenly wafted over him.

Feng Tang was not a talkative man and he couldn’t be considered bad nor could he be considered good.
But at least for now, on the surface, he still kept up the most basic level of respect he should have towards Pei Ran.
Although, who knows what will happen in the future? In the apocalypse, this kind of contracted servant and master relationship was thinner than a piece of paper.

Feng Tang’s parents were still down south and he wouldn’t keep protecting Pei Ran forever.
Once the situation was a bit better, he would head out to go find his family, so Pei Ran’s heart never felt settled.
But now, as long as he’s got Qu Yan, this kind of golden commodity, he will never have to worry for the future.

# All of a sudden the confidence to live on has appeared again #

Pei Ran’s mind was focused on what he was thinking so he never noticed that beside him, Qu Yan did not seem to be doing very well.
It was only after the girl called Zhi Zhi who hesitantly pointed it out to him did he realize, 

“He…… looks like he has a fever.” 

Pei Ran looked over to Qu Yan at that, and unsurprisingly found him curled up in a corner and burning hot all over.
He did not panic and reached over to scoop the other up, letting the young man rest on his legs.
Then he pulled open the backpack beside him, grabbing medicine for reducing fevers.

There was almost no food left inside:  only half a bag of deflated cookies, a single piece of candy, and three bottles of water, which of course were only Pei Ran’s food.
The only other items were a handful of over-the-counter-medicine brought from home.
As for how much bodyguard Feng Tang had, he was not sure and he would also not ask.

Holding onto the back of Qu Yan’s head, he pried open his tightly gritted teeth and fed him the fever reducing pill before grabbing two medicinal packets for treating inflammation and sprinkled it all over the injuries on Qu Yan’s face.

Medicine was precious in the apocalypse, but this was like investing.
The higher the risk, the better the rewards would be.
In Pei Ran’s mind, Qu Yan was like a safety charm, one who cannot die and absolutely will not die.

Feng Tang slightly furrowed his eyebrows at the sight of Pei Ran giving Qu Yan medicine but he didn’t say anything.

The entire situation had shortly been pacified for now because of Qu Yan’s self harm and Pei Ran’s intervention.
The storage floor received no signal and the wifi was half dead.
After playing on his phone for the entire morning, Pei Ran had no more power and he had nothing else to do.
He stared at Qu Yan for a long while, thinking about what kind of person this main character that will kick ass in the future will be like.

The school uniform worn on his body was one that looked to be maintained very well but he could still faintly see pen marks, handwritten words of humiliation, and large patches of faint blue ink which did not look to be caused by accident and more likely from acts of maliciousness.

Pei Ran thought, so this was a little pitiful boy that was bullied in school.

He lit up a cigarette, blowing out a breath of smoke, and then opened up Qu Yan’s school bag to find a few books, test papers and some pens and pencils inside.
The inside pocket had a chain of keys that looked to be corroded and a glass water bottle with a cockroach that was probably purposely thrown in by someone.

Pei Ran was not interested in math so he passed by test papers containing full marks and flipped over the Chinese literature books, where some words were written very beautifully.

High School Year Three Class (6)

Qu Yan

There were some weird marks written in crooked columns, words that were swearing and cursing at Qu Yan.
Pei Ran kept flipping and the notebook looked to have been written on and torn up, successfully killing off the idea of curing his boredom by reading.

Of course, the unbeatable main character of a novel must have a tragic past.

If Pei Ran had not intervened today, Qu Yan would have been dragged into the washroom by Zhou Cang Ming and his lackeys; those three people xx and then xx.
Looking at how hard he just used a rock to ruthlessly mutilate his own face, it was not hard to see how he would have snapped and changed so drastically.

As for Pei Ran who could not stand to suffer a single bit of pain nor endure any suffering, he probably had the life of a normal, average person.

Time was slowly passing by and Qu Yan’s breathing was getting heavier and heavier as he burned like a fire basin.
His body was locking up and it did not look like he had a regular fever. 

Pei Ran, who had just found a notebook in the school bag and was just getting into it, freed up his hand and pressed his palm against Qu Yan’s forehead after noticing his condition.

Pei Ran had a naturally cold body, a body where even his hands were cold.
So after pressing his hand on the other’s forehead, Qu Yan strangely calmed down.

A remnant of the scent of Pei Ran’s London rain cologne, where the first scent was of mint, then jasmine and then a faint maté tea, still remained, and the fragrance was gentle as like the sprinkling of light rain, refreshing and cold.

TL Tidbits:

As some of you might have seen… we had a little bit of a mishap by posting instead of saving (” ▔□▔) but here it is now! We tried to rush to get the chapter ready because of this, so there may be a few issues like formatting here and there.
We’ll try and fix any that we see, but please let us know if you spot any (ฅ´ω`ฅ)

In any case, I hope you are intrigued by Volume 7 (the rest of the details will be uploaded once I am back to my original setup as I’m currently limited to my phone which is a bit of a pain to do anything like this), and I hope to see you soon for the next chapter!

Thank you for all your kind words and support (if I haven’t replied to your comment yet, I will soon I promise!) since last chapter release and I’m glad you are all here on this journey with me (。’▽’。)♡ Your support (whether comments or likes or just reading) has been really helpful for me to get back on my feet haha (Plum also thanks you all for your kind words to them too!).

Before this gets away from me and make this even longer, I wish you all Galactic Judges a very happy, safe, and healthy rest of the week (and also for months and years (๑•̀ω•́ ๑) to come) and see you soon for next chapter : )

 

 

Notes:

 

*1 Like I mentioned after as an explanation, this saying (came from “Dream of the Red Chamber”) basically means we draw our own boundaries where you keep to your side, I to mine; you do your thing, I do mine (or in other words mind your own business).

 

*2 The actual line from the poem is from “Roaming in Mountain West Villages”, by Lu You, and it came about because he was saying that he was lost, walking in the mountains for a long time, and he spotted no villages or anything.
So he thought he was going to die but then a few huts were revealed (basically what the poem line is in a quick summary).
You can think of it like he stumbled across an oasis in the desert after wandering for many days and was almost unable to keep going, that kind of feeling (or as I used in the chapter, light at the end of the tunnel).

*3 The “golden leg” is basically slang(?) for a character who is essential to the plot and/or hits it big later on in the plot and hugging onto this “golden leg” would mean to cling onto/stick around that character and suck up to them to get into their good graces so you can get a part of the rewards/live (especially in relation to transmigration into novels where if you got the role of a side character or a character just used to advance the plot).

 

sb: Please refer back to Volume 3, https://wintereetranslations.wordpress.com/2021/01/20/dont-be-a-kept-man-chapter-69/#note4

*4 Adage that sounds like what it means: don’t hog something and not “use” it.