It probably wasn't perfume, but more like the smell of laundry detergent.
"Oh." He swallowed involuntarily, his Adam's apple bobbing in an attractive arc.
Ye Qingli watched, pursed her lips, and quietly withdrew her hand. For some reason, she felt something was off, but she couldn't put her finger on it.
They waited a bit longer as the last few people trickled in. By the time everyone was on board, Huang Xu glanced at his watch; there were still five minutes until departure.
"Everyone is pretty punctual."
Huang Xu smiled and closed the list in his hand. The driver threw away his cigarette, shut the door, and soon the bus drove out of the campus.
The weather was getting colder, and halfway there, the heater was on full blast. Ye Qingli wrinkled her nose. The smell of the heater always made her feel queasy. Although Xu Qingsong had also turned on the heater during that trip to the mountain, she had eaten breakfast that day.
She leaned against the curtain and glanced at her phone, wondering how she was going to get through the next half hour.
Ye Qingli couldn't hide her feelings; everything she thought showed on her face. Xiao Yu was playing a game when he heard her sigh. During a moment when the opposing team was wiped out, he glanced at her.
"Don't tell me you're carsick."
"..." He guessed too accurately.
Ye Qingli adjusted her position and pressed her face against the icy window through the curtain. That made her feel a bit better. She coughed and insisted, "No, I just don't like riding in cars."
"Oh."
The opponents revived, so Xiao Yu didn't argue with her. He turned his attention back to his phone, cleared his own jungle, and went straight for the dragon. Then he signaled his teammates to end the game.
His phone didn't have a privacy screen, and from Ye Qingli's angle, she could see his game screen. Xiao Yu's fingers flew across the screen. The gold difference was too large; the enemy couldn't withstand his attacks. One by one, he tower-dove and killed them, getting a quadra kill—the other kill was stolen by a teammate.
He didn't mind, since he often got pentas. One more or less didn't matter. But thinking about his gameplay, he couldn't help feeling proud. Xiao Yu nudged Ye Qingli with his elbow and laughed. "Hey, did you see my—"
"Blergh..."
"..."
Everyone on the bus turned around at the sound. Xiao Yu shot up. Ye Qingli hadn't eaten breakfast, so what she vomited on him wasn't rice, just stomach acid.
After a long moment, Ye Qingli finally realized what she had done. She widened her eyes, suddenly remembering that Xiao Yu had a thing about cleanliness. She hurriedly turned to her backpack to find tissues.
As expected, she found nothing—today was the first time she hadn't brought her backpack.
"..."
Oh no.
Xiao Yu looked down at the vomit on his clothes and gritted his molars.
"Um... sorry, sorry..."
Ye Qingli sucked in a breath and kept bowing her head in apology. She couldn't hear anything else anymore because her own heartbeat had drowned out everything around her.
Huang Xu came over from the front. He saw the "battlefield" on Xiao Yu's clothes, pursed his lips to suppress the laughter that was about to burst out, and hypocritically pulled a wet wipe from his pocket.
Xiao Yu looked at him but didn't take it. He lowered his head and took off his jacket, revealing a stylish single-layer white sweatshirt underneath.
If he didn't want it, fine; Huang Xu was just putting on a show in front of everyone anyway. He changed direction and handed the wet wipe to Ye Qingli. "Are you okay? Why did you throw up?"
"I can't stand the smell of the heater."
Ye Qingli unwrapped the wet wipe he handed her and pulled out one to wipe her mouth. "Thanks."
"You could have asked to turn it off, you know. Why didn't you say anything?" Huang Xu said. He went to the front to talk to the driver, turned down the heater a bit, then came back and closed the vent above Ye Qingli.
Ye Qingli rarely took buses. She had indeed seen the vent but thought she could tough it out—she couldn't always put herself first. So she thanked Huang Xu again.
"No problem."
Huang Xu looked at Xiao Yu. The latter had somehow found tissues and had been wiping his clothes with his head down. Huang Xu said, "The heater's off here. Why don't you sit up front? We can switch—"
"No need."
His voice was frigid.
Throughout the whole ordeal, Ye Qingli hadn't dared to look at Xiao Yu's expression. At his words, she bent down even further and quickly grabbed more wet wipes to wipe the seat. In fact, there were hardly any drops on the seat; most were on Xiao Yu's clothes.
The more she wiped, the lower her head sank. Eventually, she buried her face in her arms, her soft hair falling over her pale neck. She looked utterly hopeless.
What was she going to do?
Not only had she thrown up, but she had thrown up on someone with a cleanliness obsession.
They were almost there by now. Xiao Yu wiped his clothes clean, rolled them up, and tossed them onto an empty seat on the other side. He bent down to pull Ye Qingli up, then sat back down in the next moment.
Not only Ye Qingli, but everyone on the bus was stunned.
Wasn't this guy a germophobe? He wasn't even angry?
Huang Xu furrowed his brows. So he had changed just to keep him from succeeding? He could even tolerate being vomited on.
Huang Xu decided not to push his luck. He smiled to ease the embarrassment of being rejected, then turned and walked away.
The atmosphere was tense. Ye Qingli felt like she was going to die.
Her heart was racing, as if it was about to burst out of her chest. After a moment, she clenched her fists and tentatively asked, "Um... would you like me to buy you a new one?"
She couldn't just let him keep wearing the dirty one.
Xiao Yu's head ached with anger. He tilted his head to one side, crossed his arms, and stopped playing his game. "No need."
"I really didn't mean to. I thought I could hold it in..."
Ye Qingli pinched the bridge of her nose, full of regret. "Or, if you don't mind, I could take it back, wash it, and return it to you."
She really couldn't think of another solution.
If it weren't for the fact that he was chasing her, she felt she would probably be on her way to the afterlife by now.
Hearing that her voice was trembling a little at the end, she sounded so humble. In the end, Xiao Yu couldn't bear to stay mad at a young girl. He cast a sidelong glance at her, lowered his arms, and said expressionlessly, "Mm."
"Then wash it and give it back."