Dyed in Your Color

When the Universe REALLY Has It In for You (1)

Instead of answering through chat, Will immediately gave Xian a call.

Surprised, Xian answered it on the second ring.

“What?” he was saying, but Will talked over him.

“Why do you ask?”

Will sounded oddly serious, which was very much unlike him. This intrigued Xian even more, and it made him think that there might be something to his fleeting suspicion that Lance had “done something.” Despite this, he felt a strong resistance to the possibility.

Instead of answering, he also asked a question. “Is something wrong?”

Will was silent, as if weighing what to say, but he eventually replied, “Nothing, just curious.”

Xian huffed. “Well, I’m curious too, and that’s why I’m asking. I met the guy today and hung out with him for a bit.”

“Oh, you did?” Will now sounded intrigued and more like his usual self. “What’s he like?”

“Quiet,” Xian replied. “But pretty cool, I guess.”

'And cute,' he couldn’t help but add privately.

Will gave a hum of appreciation. “He does give off that vibe, doesn’t he?”

“Yes,” Xian bit off, feeling a little impatient. “Which is why I’ve been wondering why no one seems to be making a fuss about him. If we hadn’t met by accident today, I probably wouldn’t have realized he existed at all.”

“Ah, well…” said Will, who then assumed the tone he uses when relaying gossip. “This is just a rumor, mind. It’s pretty impossible to confirm it given his background. You do know which family he comes from, right?”

“The Hill family from the White Mountains.”

“Exactly, so all the details are pretty hush-hush, but the gist of what allegedly happened still got spread around, and you know which family I come from, right?”

Xian said past gritted teeth, “Get to your point.”

“Right. This happened way back during our freshman year. It was just before the semester started, so students were still trickling in from wherever they came from. While there were still few people around and the security was pretty lax, two students got into a fistfight that led to one of them almost getting beaten to death. That student never returned here and pretty much disappeared off the face of the earth, and the one who supposedly beat him up to within an inch of his life got off light by just being suspended for that semester.

“Obviously, this got talked about for a week or so afterward. I suppose you never heard of it because you guys live off-campus, and honestly, it died down pretty quickly because everyone just assumed the one who got suspended wouldn’t dream of showing his face here again. Lo and behold, the very next semester, Lance turned up.”

Will paused just as something flashed in Xian’s mind. As if voicing this as-yet nebulous thought of Xian’s, Will asked, “Are you sure you don’t remember that? It caused a bit of a stir back then.”

“Y… yeah,” said Xian, still uncertain. He did recall how, years ago, there was a commotion about a supposed “transferee” or something, and Xian might have seen a glimpse of that person once or twice. If he was remembering correctly, that person had really caught the girls’ fancy, and that was because that person was such a…

What was it again?

The next moment, Xian finally summoned a brief and hazy memory of how that person had looked like.

“Wait, Lance was that ‘pretty boy’?”

“So you do remember,” said Will.

“Only a bit…” Xian couldn’t help but feel dazed at what he’d pieced together. “But he’s changed so much.”

Will snorted. “Ain’t that the truth. Only a crazy f*cker would think he could prey on him now.”

“…Prey?” Several beats passed before the full meaning of what Will had said sank in to Xian. His eyes widened. “You don’t mean…?”

“Yeah…” Will answered slowly. “Or that’s the lesser-known rumor, at least.”

Xian swallowed.

“Prey on”…

If that rumor was to be believed, Lance got “preyed on” in the sense that he was targeted in a s****l way… and by another man.

Given the way Lance had looked when he was younger—which was NOT to say that the attempted crime was justifiable—Xian couldn’t help but think that the attraction that had spurred it was understandable.

Hadn’t he himself experienced weakness when faced with Lance’s masculine beauty? How much more “beautiful” had he been a few years ago when his face still had traces of femininity?

Still… to be a target of s****l predation because of that…

It must have been traumatizing.

How fortunate that Lance wasn’t “feminine” physically as he had been appearance-wise.

'That attacker simply got what was coming to him,' Xian thought angrily. 'He must have assumed Lance was a weakling—hah!'

“Do you want me to continue?” asked Will when too much time passed with Xian being quiet.

And even though he was now getting the sense that he was being intrusive for wanting to find out more, Xian answered, “What happened next?”

Will replied, “Well, I’m not sure if you also remember this. Lance might simply be ‘cool’ now, but back when he’d just returned, he was a total ice block. The girls got no headway with him. He was mostly just unresponsive, but when his patience would snap, he’d get up and walk away, even in the middle of class.

“At first, the girls found his behavior dreamy and drool-worthy—you know how some of them are—but even they could only take so much of that before they either lost interest or became angry. It was around that time that a rumor leaked: Lance wasn’t a ‘transferee’ at all; he was the guy who got suspended for nearly killing another student. You can guess from there how things went.”

Indeed, Xian could. Unless they were psychopathic themselves or there was something else wrong with their heads, no girl would want to associate with someone who had violent and possibly murderous tendencies, no matter how good-looking that someone may be.

And so they steered clear of him, and since then, they must have been diligently protecting their sisterhood by warning off every newcomer who gets drawn in by Lance’s eye-catching appearance.

As for Lance, he must have remained icily quiet and walled-off from not only the women but also from other men, not wanting to draw any more attention to himself than what he could help.

There was also the possibility that he WAS traumatized by the attempted attack… that he saw men as threats where women were merely annoyances.

But then… how would any of that explain how he’d interacted with Xian?

“Hey, you still there?”

Once again, Xian had to be jolted out of his thoughts. “Sorry, yeah.”

“I gotta go now, but tell me tomorrow about how you met Lance, aite?”

“Yeah. I owe you one, thanks.”

After ending the call with Will, Xian slumped back on the sofa with an emphatic huff and stared blankly at the ceiling.

He still felt that he shouldn’t have allowed his curiosity to get the better of him. While those who’d heard the rumor around campus knew only that the seemingly cold-blooded Lance had beaten up a fellow student nearly to death, it was only people like Will, who had connections through his own influential family, who knew about the attempted s****l attack.

Whether true or not, that kind of information had no business being shared by an outsider to another outsider. If it was not true, then that was plain rumor-mongering. If it was true, then… that was an invasion of privacy.

“Should I tell him about it?” Xian muttered absently.