The Roommate's Secret

Shen Jue was eighteen, with fists like iron and a temper just as hard. The word he used most often was “disgusting.” He ended up rooming with the transfer student, Jian Nian’an, and on the very first day, he smashed a cup. Jian Nian’an was a boy whose gentleness ran bone–deep, quiet as a pool of still water — and he never hid his orientation. Shen Jue cursed him, yelled at him, humiliated him in front of his buddies. Jian Nian’an took it all, and still slipped warm water into his cup without a word. What Shen Jue didn’t know was that every time he was boiling over with rage, the tips of his ears would flush red. What he knew even less was that the very thing he was trying so desperately to crush — that “disgusting” thing — was already pushing upward, inch by inch, from the bottom of his own heart.