Capturing My Demon King Costar

MY COSTAR SHOWS ME HIS SCAR

Yao Shen is confused by Xin Hulei's words.

"But wasn't the last guy Yan Shuyi himself?" he asks, supporting his cheek on his open palm.

Xin Hulei eats a mouthful of rice with scallions, chews carefully, and then hums -- giving Yao Shen absolutely nothing.

"Do you think I'll stop finding you hot if you're no longer a mystery?" Yao Shen asks, stirring his noodles viciously in an obvious fit of pique.

Xin Hulei hums again. "Perhaps."

Yao Shen thinks he's going to leave it at that, but he adds, "Perhaps, I'm protecting myself."

"From what?" Yao Shen asks, frowning.

"From what happened the last time I trusted the wrong person."

"And what happened?" Yao Shen asks, unable to disguise his curiosity.

Xin Hulei takes a thin slice of beef from his side of the table and deposits it on Yao Shen's bowl. "Eat."

For about two minutes, Yao Shen contemplates letting the issue go, but there's something nagging at the back of his mind. Perhaps it's related to the dream, memory, whatever it was, but he just knows that however good things might have been at one point between him and Xin Hulei in the past, they didn't end that way.

"Does this have something to do with why you were so determined to prove I wasn't a human?" Yao Shen asks, keeping his tone casual.

Xin Hulei puts down his chopsticks and lights another cigarette, which raises Yao Shen's hope that he's going to humor him.

"I'm still not 100% convinced," he says, his eyes impassive as they stare at Yao Shen from across the table. "I'm just giving you the benefit of the doubt."

"Who do you think I am?" Yao Shen asks, swallowing painfully around the food already in his throat.

"You remind me of someone," Xin Hulei says. "A half-remembered nightmare."

Ah, that doesn't sound great. From where Yao Shen is standing they're more like half-remembered dreams. They're pleasant right?

Of course there's the ghost kings' cryptic words nagging at the back of his mind, reminding him that a fun romp in the sheets wasn't all there was to it.

"That's uh, great for me," Yao Shen says self-consciously, after an uncomfortable prolonged silence.

Xin Hulei lets out an amused huff and shakes his head. "I want to trust you, if that helps."

Only marginally, but Xin Hulei is still smoking his cigarette, and Yao Shen feels like he'll probably continue to indulge him while it lasts.

"The 'last guy' is he the one you half-remember?"

Xin Hulei takes a deep drag and nods, Yao Shen's eyes drift towards the cigarette between his fingers, the cherry is almost at the filter, he needs to be fast.

"Why have you forgotten?"

"I still remember parts of it. I remember his face, I remember parts of conversations, enough to string together a chain of events." His smile around the cigarette is self-deprecating. "I remember my own devastation when I realized I had been betrayed."

"What happened?" Yao Shen asks, not noticing he's holding his breath.

"Do you want to see?" Xin Hulei asks, his voice dropping several octaves, rumbling through his chest like the engine on a great machine.

Yao Shen licks his lips. "Yes."

Xin Hulei leans forward across the table, both his elbows on the tabletop. At first, Yao Shen doesn't know what he's supposed to be looking at, but then he notices it.