FORBIDDEN

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 7

If Monday was soft and quiet, Tuesday had teeth.

The sky was a pale grey when Zhan woke up, and the apartment smelled faintly of over-toasted bread. He shuffled out to the kitchen to find Yibo frowning at the toaster as if it had personally betrayed him. Smoke curled gently from the top.

"That poor slice never had a chance," Zhan said, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

Yibo looked up, lips twitching. "Good morning to you too, breakfast critic."

"You should stick to what you’re good at. Looking pretty and brooding."

"And you should try sleeping in your actual bed instead of on the couch."

Zhan yawned. "I like variety."

Despite the banter, something felt different. Not worse—just… unsteady. Like the rhythm they’d established over the weekend had shifted a half-beat to the left. They still moved around each other easily—brushing shoulders, sharing toothpaste, trading insults—but Zhan could feel something coiled beneath it. Something waiting.

Maybe it was what Yibo said yesterday.

Rule three: Don’t fall in love with me.

Maybe it was how Zhan hadn’t really been joking.

---

They parted ways after breakfast—Yibo had an early lab session, and Zhan needed to finish a book critique before his literature class. He sat in the campus cafe, headphones in but no music playing, sipping mediocre coffee and tapping his pen against his notebook.

His brain refused to cooperate.

Every time he tried to focus, a thought slipped in: Yibo in that white shirt. Yibo looking up from his phone just to say, "Didn’t feel like going home alone."

It was unfair, really. Yibo wasn’t doing anything new. He was being exactly who he had always been—cool, dry, a little sarcastic, occasionally soft when he thought no one was looking.

But Zhan was looking. And now he couldn’t stop.

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Lunch came with a surprise.

The literature building was closed for maintenance, so half the student body had relocated to the garden areas and the lawn by the old chapel.

Zhan had texted Yibo—"Our tree’s taken over by yoga girls. Abort mission."

—and Yibo had replied with a pin drop and the words: "Plan B."

Plan B was a rooftop.

Zhan arrived to find him sprawled out under the shade of a rooftop water tank, two boxed lunches between them and a bottle of shared iced tea.

"Is this even legal?" Zhan asked as he climbed over the final step.

Yibo handed him a lunch box. "Only if we don’t get caught."

The rooftop was oddly peaceful. Windy, but clear. From there, the school grounds looked like a map—tiny students darting around like pieces on a board, laughter and conversation rising in distant waves.

They ate in comfortable silence for a while.

Then Yibo asked, "Do you ever think about what people say about you?"

Zhan blinked. "Depends. Is it mean?"

"No, like... the assumptions. The rumors. The way they think they know you just because they see you every day."