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

Lin Ye strode forward and supported the trembling, yellow-haired man.

She had just returned from the training ground, where she had practiced fifty hairpin bends in a row. When she got out of the car, her knees buckled and she almost knelt down at the garage door.

The man with the tattooed arm helped her up and led her to the door of the lounge before letting go, saying, "I'm inside, you can go in by yourself."

When the blond-haired man pushed open the door, he was swaying. His pigtails were soaked with sweat, and a few stray hairs clung to his forehead and the side of his neck. There were several black tire tracks on the hem of his Lolita dress, and a small poplar leaf that had drifted over from the side of the racetrack clung to the shallow marks left by his fishnet stockings on his knees.

She saw Lin Ye sitting on the sofa.

Lin Ye stood up from the sofa and strode over to her.

He bent down, placed his hands on her waist, his fingers interlocked, and his thumbs pressed against the curve of her ribs.

Her waist was very thin, and through the sweat-soaked fabric of her Lolita dress, you could clearly feel the taut muscle lines on both sides of her spine.

He lifted him upwards. The blond-haired man was launched into the air.

She instinctively spread her legs and wrapped them around Lin Ye's waist, her arms around his neck, her soaking wet pigtails swung in the air in an arc, water droplets flying from the ends and landing on the sofa armrest.

The hem of her Lolita dress billowed into a ball the moment she was airborne, then collapsed onto his wrists the instant she wrapped her arms around his waist.

Huang Mao rode up to Lin Ye's waist.

Her gaze was half a head higher than his; her deep brown pupils widened slightly in surprise, and her lips moved slightly.

"Bro, I'm covered in sweat. I just came off the track and I haven't even changed my clothes yet. They're filthy."

Her voice was hoarse and soft, with a trembling tone at the end.

He said it was dirty, but he squeezed his legs together even tighter.

The back of his knees was wedged against his waist, and his ankles crossed and fastened on his lower back. The soles of his canvas shoes brushed against the fabric of his T-shirt, leaving two very faint dust marks.

Lin Ye looked up at her without saying anything, but tightened his grip on her arm a little more.

Her weight was nothing to him; the doubled effect of the titanium alloy kidney on his lower back and core muscles made carrying her feel no different from carrying a pillow.

"So what if it's dirty? You've never been clean anyway."

Huang Mao pursed his lips, wanting to refute, but realized that he had never been clean in front of him since the first day he met him.

When she was smoking on the curb, her skirt got covered in ash from the convenience store entrance. When she woke up on the sofa in her shared apartment, she drooled all over his shoulder. When she got drunk at the karaoke bar, she vomited on his shoe. When she crashed her car on a motorcycle and got covered in dust, the first thing she did after getting up was to check the brake pads.

She was never refined in front of him, nor did she need to be.

Lin Ye lowered his head slightly, and Huang Mao lowered his head slightly as well. Their lips met.

Her lips were dry, having been exposed to the wind all day, and the lines on them were deeper than usual, but the touch of her lips against his was soft, warm, and slightly salty with a hint of sweat.

The blond-haired woman closed her eyes, running her fingers through the short hair at the back of his head, her nails lightly scraping his scalp. She squeezed her legs together even tighter, clinging to him like a koala.

After a moment, she released her lips, her forehead pressed against his, her breathing rapid and disordered.

"Brother, move a little."

Her voice was hoarse and sweet, with the last syllable drawn out, sounding like she was both being coquettish and giving a command.

Lin Ye carried her around the house.

He walked from the sofa in the lounge to the window and reached out to pull the curtains closed.

Walking from the window to the bookshelf, Huang Mao reached out and closed a training manual whose pages had been blown over by the wind.

Walking from the bookshelf to the bedside table, Huang Mao reached for the remote control and lowered the air conditioner temperature by two degrees.

"You're quite busy. You have to draw the curtains, close the books, and adjust the temperature."

"It's just a matter of convenience. You carry me, and I'll help you tidy up the house. We have a clear division of labor."

When Lin Ye walked to the bedside table, Huang Mao reached out and picked up the cigarette pack he had placed on the table. He took out a cigarette, put it in his mouth, and then lit it with a lighter.

She took a deep breath, exhaling smoke through her nose, then took the cigarette out of her mouth and held it to his lips.

"Take a puff. You sat by the track watching me lap fifty times this afternoon without smoking a single cigarette, I counted."

Lin Ye lowered his head, put a cigarette in his mouth, took a puff, and the smoke dispersed into a light blue mist between the two of them.

The blond-haired man took the cigarette back and put it in his mouth, tilting his head to look at him, his dark brown pupils shining brightly behind the smoke.

The blond-haired man laughed so hard he couldn't stand up straight.

She straddled his waist, laughing so hard she almost fell over, her pigtails swaying back and forth with her laughter, the ends brushing against his arms.

"I kiss you, and you talk to me about cornering techniques. Can you be a little more romantic, like praising me, saying things like 'You drove very well today,' 'You are my pride,' or 'You are the pillar of the Mars team.'"

"You drove very well today. You are my pride and the backbone of the Mars team. But you still need to ease off the throttle earlier at the third corner."

Yellow Hair put the cigarette back in his mouth, took a deep drag, and then blew the smoke next to his ear.

Her lips brushed against his earlobe, her warm breath mixed with the scent of tobacco filling his ear.

"Okay. I'll ease off the gas earlier tomorrow. But today, you've already carried me around the house several times. Aren't you tired?"

"You're lighter than that will-o'-the-wisp's hub motor."

The blond-haired man buried his face in his shoulder and chuckled softly.

Her fingers traced light circles on the back of his neck, her nails scraping against the skin at the roots of his hair.

"Bro, you sat by the track for two hours this afternoon watching us practice. Flower Leg said you took several pages of notes on your phone, all about cornering data. You clearly can't race, what's the point of taking all that notes?"

"I can't race cars, but I need to know what you guys are doing. Otherwise, when you report your training progress to me, I won't understand, so how can I be your older brother?"

The blond-haired man fell silent.

She lifted her face from his shoulder and looked up at him.

Lin Ye walked to the sofa, bent down and placed her on the sofa cushion.

The blond-haired man loosened his legs from around his waist and sank into the sofa. His wrinkled Lolita dress bunched up at the top of his thighs, and the shallow marks left by the fishnet stockings on his knees gleamed faintly red under the light.

She looked up at him, her lips slightly parted.

"Brother, you just said I was the first one you picked up. I've been thinking about that ever since I came out of the bathroom. It's not just my luck that you picked me up, it's also your luck. If you hadn't been squatting on the curb smoking that night, I wouldn't have picked you up, and you wouldn't have picked me up either."

She reached out and grabbed the hem of his T-shirt, gently pulling it down a little.

"bend over."

Lin Ye bent down.

The blond-haired man took the cigarette out of his mouth and placed it on the edge of the ashtray on the coffee table, then leaned in and kissed his lips again.

This time, there was no smell of dust from the racetrack, only the lingering bitterness of tobacco from the cigarette she had just smoked, mixed with the sweetness of strawberry lip balm.

The faint roar of an engine could be heard from the direction of the training ground outside the window; it was Xiao Zhi still working overtime modifying cars.