After the breakup, I was taken in by a group of trendy young women.

He is a man.

Twenty-three years old, in good health, with normal hormone levels.

He watches porn, the kind that uses a VPN, not those low-budget, borderline Chinese videos, but the real thing, the kind that can take up dozens of gigabytes on your computer.

His aesthetic sense has been honed by those high-definition resources to a very discerning level. He knows what good skin, good proportions, and good lines are. He knows what kind of natural beauty, the kind that can't be recreated through post-production editing, is—the kind that only the Creator could produce because of his favoritism.

Flower legs.

Is she pretty?

good looking.

Her features were not as refined as Shen Qing's, but she was pleasing to the eye. Her nose was neither too high nor too low, her eyes were neither too big nor too small, and her lips were neither too thick nor too thin. Each feature alone was not particularly stunning, but together they created a sense of harmony that was hard to describe.

It's as if someone used the most ordinary strokes to write the most pleasing character.

But what truly kept Lin Ye awake at night wasn't her face.

It's her body.

The first time he saw her brushing her teeth in the bathroom wearing only her underwear, he had only one thought in his mind—Holy crap.

She is thin.

Her waist was so slender that he could wrap his arms around it, and her wrists were so thin that he could hold them with his thumb and middle finger. Her shoulder blades protruded from her back like two wings that hadn't yet unfolded.

His collarbones peeked out from his collar, like two shallow dams. Every time I saw him, I felt that those two dams should be holding something back.

But she was such a thin girl.

The meat was plentiful in every part that should be there.

That ratio is against physics.

People with waists that thin usually don't have a very noticeable upper body.

But not the floral leg style.

She's the kind of girl who, at first glance, looks like a pretty girl next door; at second glance, her waist looks like it could break in the wind; and at third glance, when you see her profile, you think the Creator must have been drunk when sculpting her, because in the process of mixing the ingredients, His hand trembled and he piled all the material that should have been allocated to her waist into other parts.

Lin Ye used to think he wasn't a superficial person.

But he later discovered that whether something is superficial or not depends on the person.

When you encounter something like a flowery leg design, it's hard not to be superficial.

The thought lingered in my mind for a fraction of a second.

The woman with the flower-like legs was still lying on the bed looking at him. The light from the streetlamp fell on her face, and the neckline of her black suspender dress was slightly open because of her side-lying position. The light from the streetlamp followed the V-shaped opening down, past her collarbone, and into the shadow hidden by the edge of the lace.

"elder brother."

She suddenly spoke, her voice even softer than before.

"What are you looking at?"

Her voice wasn't loud, but in this quiet room where you could hear two people breathing, every word was like the tip of a feather brushing against your ear.

"What are you looking at?"

She asked again, a slight smile playing on her lips, but the light in her eyes wasn't a smile; it was something more complex—tension, anticipation, fear, courage—all these contradictory emotions swirling together in her deep brown pupils.

"It's up to you."

Lin Ye said two words.

The eyelashes of the woman with the flower-like legs trembled.

Then she did something Lin Ye didn't expect: she lifted up the leg that was dangling off the edge of the bed.

It wasn't about lifting it up and putting it back on the bed; it was about lifting it up, toes pointing upwards, the whole leg drawing a slow arc in the air before falling down.

It landed on Lin Ye's shoulder.

Her legs were long, from ankle to knee, and from knee to thigh, the lines so smooth they looked as if they had been drawn in one stroke with the finest pen.

When her leg was draped over his shoulder, he could feel the tension in her calf muscles; she was nervous, but she was trying hard not to look nervous.

The streetlight shone on that leg.

From toes to knees, from knees to thighs, all the way up until it was covered by the black halter-neck skirt.

There was a very shallow scar on her calf, probably left by something scraping it. It had faded so much that it was almost invisible, but in the light of the streetlamp, the scar turned into a thin, silvery-white line, like a very small snake coiled around the outside of her calf.

The hem of her skirt slipped up as she lifted her leg.

Lin Ye's gaze followed that leg upwards, reaching the edge of the skirt.

The black spaghetti strap skirt wasn't long to begin with, and after lifting her leg, the skirt slid down to the upper middle part of her thigh, revealing a small patch of skin on the inner thigh that had been covered by the skirt all night.

That patch of skin was even whiter than her calves, so white that it was almost transparent under the streetlights, revealing the faint blue veins beneath.

Then he saw the rose.

The rose tattoo on the leg extends from above the ankle down to below the knee.

But now that leg is draped over his shoulder, and as the skirt slides up, half of the rose petals are hidden by the edge of the skirt, leaving only a few petals and a small section of green stem visible.

The few petals took on a deep, dark red hue in the streetlight's glow, like congealed blood.

Hua Tui turned her face away, towards the wall. The streetlight shone on her earlobe, making its outline appear almost transparent. There was a small piercing on her earlobe, without an earring, and in the light, the hole looked like a tiny, unfilled hickey.

"elder brother."

Her voice was muffled, coming from a great distance, as if it were coming from the wall.

Were you thinking about that sentence just now?

"What did you say?"

"It's... the one Bai Xiaojing mentioned... until tomorrow..."

She couldn't pronounce the word completely.

The sound stopped at the second word, as if someone had gently pinched the throat.

Lin Ye's hand was still on the knee of the flowery leg, and the knee of the leg that was resting on his shoulder.

His fingers paused on her kneecap.

Then he took the picture.

The force wasn't great; when his palm landed, it was just the right amount of pressure—not enough to hurt her, but enough for her thin skin to feel the warmth and strength of his palm.

Snapped.

The sound wasn't loud, but in a room so quiet you could hear two people breathing, the slap was like a pebble thrown into a deep pool, ripples spreading outwards from the knee.

The woman with the flower-like legs trembled slightly.

It wasn't the kind of tremor you get from being startled; it was a different kind of tremor, like an electric current, that started from the point where you were slapped, traveled up your thigh, past the most sensitive skin on the inside of your thigh, past your waist, past your lower abdomen, and finally turned into a short, soft groan squeezed out from the deepest part of your throat.

The leg that was draped over his shoulder moved in that instant.

It wasn't something she did on her own; it was an instinctive muscle reaction that occurred before her brain even had a chance to issue a command.

Her inner thighs tensed, her knees bent slightly, and her whole leg arched upwards in a clumsy, awkward way, as if she were learning how to control her body for the first time.

Not much.

It might only be a few centimeters.

But those few centimeters are enough.

Enough to make her knees leave Lin Ye's shoulders and fall back; enough to make her skirt slide to a position she can never return to in that instant; enough to make Lin Ye's hand move away from her knees and walk up along that green, clumsy, instinctively thrusting thigh.