A week passed in the blink of an eye.
Instead of staying at the medical school over the weekend,
Xie Qingcheng headed back to the old house in downtown Huzhou to take a look.
It had fallen into disuse shortly after the Xie siblings started attending university. After all, men and women required a degree of separation for decorum's sake, and that tiny space of roughly a hundred square meters made life for both Xie Qingcheng and Xie Xue rather awkward.
But they had formed close bonds with all their neighbors, including Auntie Li, who cherished them as if they were her own children. The Xie siblings returned for a few days at a time every now and then to have dinner with her.
Xie Qingcheng had been very busy recently, so it had been ages since he'd gone home. It just so happened that he was free that week, so he gave Xie Xue a call.
"We're visiting Auntie Li this weekend. I'll come pick you up in my car."
To his surprise, Xie Xue replied, "I passed through there a few days ago. I've already been to visit her."
"…Why didn't you tell me?"
"I—" Xie Xue changed the subject clumsily. "I was just wandering around."
"You need to take three different subway lines to get from Huzhou University to Moyu Alley, and there aren't any major shopping malls nearby. You wandered all the way there by accident?"
"Th-that's right."
"Xie Xue, don't lie to me." Xie Qingcheng's voice turned abruptly chilly. "Have you been keeping something from me lately?"
Xie Xue hemmed and hawed but couldn't come up with any excuse. In the end, she simply exclaimed, "Ge, my phone's battery is dying."
"Xie Xue!"
"It's really dying—I'm hanging up, okay? Ge, I'm busy this weekend, so you can go by yourself. Remember to say hi to Auntie Li for me! Bye-bye!"
Xie Qingcheng was about to protest, but all he got in response was a string of no-connection beeps. He hung up and tossed his phone onto his desk with an icy expression. Then, he walked to his dorm's balcony and smoked an entire cigarette in frustration.
Even if Xie Xue didn't come along, he still had to go back to visit Auntie Li and tidy up the house. Even though they rarely stayed there, it was still his and Xie Xue's real home.
So, on Friday evening after class, Xie Qingcheng packed a few personal belongings and took the subway back to Moyu Alley.
It was one of the few dilapidated longtangs in the city that still hadn't been demolished. Built back in the era of foreign concessions, the edifice had dark red bricks and powdery white edging. The government allocated funds to spruce up the exteriors every year, but it couldn't change the fate of the building, like a beauty that had passed its prime. With overlapping clotheslines like wrinkles that makeup couldn't conceal and peeling paint that resembled faded lipstick, the sight of these short, squat buildings interspersed between the city's stylish, spacious modern high-rises brought to mind a group photo of old grandmothers alongside young people—very characteristic of their time.
As Xie Qingcheng walked into the alley, the aunts and uncles who were busy taking in the laundry greeted him.
"Professor Xie, you're back?"
"Have you eaten yet, Doctor Xie? I have some extra corn that I can't finish; I'll bring it over later."
After acknowledging them, Xie Qingcheng turned toward the doorway of the building with worn-out bicycles scattered in front and stepped through the gate of his own residence.
The neighbors used to call him "Xiao-Xie" until Xie Xue grew up and started spending more time around them than he did. She also spoke much more sweetly, which was why the neighbors gave the affectionate nickname to her but addressed him politely as "Professor Xie" or "Doctor Xie."
Auntie Li was the only elder who didn't use these honorifics.
Her unit was in the same apartment block as Xie Qingcheng's house, so after he got home and put away his change of clothes, he went to knock on her little red door. No one answered, even after he had knocked for a while.
"Who's making a racket? Do you wanna die? It's the middle of the night—" cursed the old uncle who lived in the attic upstairs. He had opened his window and just barely managed to stick out his balding head. When he saw Xie Qingcheng, he stopped sputtering and cursing. "Oh, Doctor Xie's back."
"Uncle, where's Auntie Li?"
"Ah, she saw Xiao-Xie a couple of days ago and thought that you wouldn't come back so soon, so she went to her friend's place this morning."
"To her friend's place?" Xie Qingcheng frowned.
"That's right. Aiyo, you know what she's like. She gets so hyper around others. Apparently, she's doing some crazy qipao fashion show with her little friends, despite her age. She loves doing those sorts of things, so I'm guessing she won't be back for a few days."
Xie Qingcheng didn't know how to respond.
"Doctor Xie, have you eaten yet?" Done with his idle chattering, the uncle said, "If you haven't, come on up and eat with me."
Xie Qingcheng had never bothered with niceties with his neighbors. "What are you having?"
"Mangoes." The uncle reached his old and wrinkled hand, which looked like tree bark, out of the window and offered Xie Qingcheng a large, peeled mango.
Xie Qingcheng stared.
With his sparse strands of hair blowing wildly in the wind, the old rascal cackled when he saw Xie Qingcheng's expression. "Look at you, look at you. So serious, frowning like that," he said, laughing hysterically. "So funny!"
"…Forget it. You can eat on your own. I'm going home." With that, Xie Qingcheng entered his house, slamming the door behind him.
The apartment was divided into two halves by a simple blue curtain. Xie Xue's space was next to the window that overlooked the scenery outside. Although it was narrow and small, there were several pots of cute succulents and roses in full bloom. The princess bed, which Xie Qingcheng had gotten for her when she was in junior high, was covered in colorful dolls and cushions. Faded celebrity posters were taped to the wall next to it.
Xie Qingcheng tossed his coat onto his own bed and slid his slender fingers into the knot of his tie, pulling it loose with a sigh of relief.
His bed was on the side near the door and separated from the rest of the room by a sheer curtain. He wasn't very picky about this kind of thing, so his bed was an old-fashioned wooden one passed down from his parents. Old furniture was built to last, and it was still very reliable and durable even after more than thirty years dutifully by their side.
After a busy work week, Xie Qingcheng was exhausted. He poured a glass of water and took some medicine, then took a nap on his bed. By the time he woke up, the sky was already completely dark.
Since Auntie Li wasn't around, he was too lazy to have a proper meal, so he dug out his phone and randomly ordered some food for delivery.
A WeChat notification popped up before he could close the app. It was a message from He Yu.
"Where are you?"
Xie Qingcheng couldn't be bothered to reply.
A second message popped up.
"I came to the medical school to look for you, but I didn't see you."
Xie Qingcheng was so tired he didn't feel like typing, so he replied using a minimal number of keystrokes. "Home."
In contrast, He Yu wasn't stingy with his words at all. "You're home? You went home? Is Xie Xue there too?"
When someone who was constantly tense returned to the place where they felt at ease and could let themselves relax completely, it was very hard to wind them back up again.
That was exactly how Xie Qingcheng felt right now. Lying flat on his old-fashioned bed with his tie loosened and the top two buttons of his shirt undone, his entire body had sunk into lethargy, and he could barely stand to move even the tips of his fingers. He tapped the voice message button and said in a voice hoarse with exhaustion, "Why are you so annoying? She's not with me. It's the weekend. Why are you looking for me? I don't have any milk for you. Don't you know how to order takeout by yourself?"
Xie Qingcheng didn't usually speak to He Yu so harshly. But he found it rather humiliating that He Yu had caught him cheating on their bet. He had yet to figure out how to recover his dignity, so he hadn't gone looking for the little devil all week.
Now that He Yu had found him of his own accord, however, Xie Qingcheng was starting to get angry—he wanted to rest, not worry over this nutcase.
Sure enough, the nutcase fell silent.
A good long while passed before another text message arrived.
"I'm bored."
Xie Qingcheng shot back another stony voice message. "Go play with your classmates."
"I want to come find you."
"Do you not understand what I'm saying, He Yu? It's the weekend. I want to rest and I'm at home. You only came a few times when you were little anyway, so it's not like you'd remember how to get here." Xie Qingcheng shut him down impatiently, but perhaps because he was tired and lying down in bed, there was inevitably a soft nasal tone to his voice.
He Yu replied, "Don't worry, I remember very well."
Xie Qingcheng was rendered speechless.
Of course He Yu remembered—how else could he be a xueba?
"Don't come. I don't have the energy to entertain you. Unless you're sick. Are you sick?"
"I'm not sick."
"Then don't come."
But He Yu was undeterred. "You lost to me last time, but I haven't made my demands yet, have I?"
Xie Qingcheng stared listlessly at the ceiling. In the bluish glow of the cell phone screen, his face seemed even more overcast.
"…He Yu, just what exactly is it you want?"
This time, He Yu's reply didn't come right away, as if he was pondering what to say.
Just as Xie Qingcheng was about to run out of patience and toss his phone aside so that he could go back to sleep, He Yu sent another message. Surprisingly, it was a voice message this time. The young man's voice was in excellent condition, and he sounded reserved, like a deep pool of warmth.
But the words that he uttered were completely shameless.
"My illness isn't flaring up, but my mood isn't very good. I have to fake it in front of other people, and it's very tiring. But I don't have to do that when I'm with you, so I want to come find you to distract myself and relax."
"…Am I some kind of playground for you to come and distract yourself when you have nothing better to do?" Xie Qingcheng raged at that pleasant voice. "He Yu, what kind of mental problem is this? You used to run away from me faster than a dog from a beating, but now that you've gotten a taste of power, you keep coming back to me on your own? Are you addicted?"
He Yu had no idea what was going on with himself either.
Maybe it was because he'd constantly chased after Xie Xue in the past, so he always had something to look forward to. Now, there was nothing left for him to hang his hopes on, and he didn't want Xie Xue to notice that he had his attention fixed on her, so he could only choose to shift his gaze elsewhere.
Amidst this helpless confusion, he finally realized that Xie Qingcheng was the most suitable distraction. Xie Qingcheng understood him very well, and also…if nothing else, his eyes resembled Xie Xue's.
He Yu knew that they weren't the real deal, but at least they could bring him a bit of comfort. Not to mention, the feeling of having Xie Qingcheng lose to him was very interesting—it was something he had never expected nor imagined before.
Perhaps Xie Qingcheng was right—He Yu was a bit addicted.
He'd waited and waited for Xie Qingcheng to order him around again—only for the order to never come. After an entire week of waiting, he felt a bit irritable, so he'd finally stooped to texting Xie Qingcheng himself tonight. Now, with Xie Qingcheng shutting him down repeatedly, he couldn't help but switch from text messages to voice messages with a cold expression on his face, hoping that the other man would be able to hear the displeasure in his voice.
"I'm coming over right now."
Xie Qingcheng was so annoyed that he threw his phone at the wall. He Yu's voice, which was just asking to be spanked, continued uninterrupted in the cramped old room. "You haven't come to find me for an entire week, Professor. You're not scared, are you?"
Xie Qingcheng sighed. "Like hell I'd be fucking scared of you."
He Yu was a man of action; if he said he was coming, he'd definitely show up. Xie Qingcheng hoped that He Yu would take a wrong turn and end up at someone else's house, but when a series of steady knocks sounded on the shabby old security door, Xie Qingcheng knew that hoping for He Yu's IQ to drop was less realistic than hoping he would fall through a manhole cover on his way through a construction site.
The relentless knocking continued.
Lying on the bed, Xie Qingcheng twitched his fingers slightly. He was so tired, it was like the power supply to his body had been cut off. He had no desire to get up at all.
He Yu embodied the fine ethos of a modern university student by displaying the civilized and respectful attitude of someone who honored the old and cherished the young. He didn't hurry Xie Qingcheng, but he didn't leave either. He simply continued to rap on the door with his knuckles from time to time, his strikes measured, even as Xie Qingcheng lay on his bed.
He Yu wasn't impatient at all.
But however patient He Yu might have been, the energetic and sharp eared old uncle upstairs was getting tetchy. He pushed open the attic window and yelled, "Knocking on and on—shouldn't you ask if anyone's home before you keep knocking for so long?! Huh? I don't know you, young man. Who are you looking for? Are you here for community service, to show goodwill to lonely senior citizens?"
How fucking embarrassing.
Xie Qingcheng, the lonely senior citizen playing dead on the bed, was forced to get up and yank open the security door. "It's fine, Uncle," he yelled upstairs. "It's someone I know."
Xie Qingcheng grabbed the young man standing outside his half open door by the collar and pulled him into the house.
"Get in here." The dingy door closed behind them with a bang, and the excessive force caused the "good fortune" sign on the door to tremble and slip into a crooked position.
Xie Qingcheng shoved He Yu against the wall with a dark expression on his face.
"What the hell are you doing?"
He Yu leaned back against the wall, giving off the mild fragrance of laundry detergent alongside the vigorously youthful scent of a young man who had spent too much time basking in the sun. That scent wafted into Xie Qingcheng's room, mingling with the cold and dreary smell of tobacco that hung in the air.
He Yu raised an eyebrow and pointed upward. "Didn't that uncle say so already? I'm here to show goodwill to lonely senior citizens." He maneuvered around Xie Qingcheng as he spoke and turned on the room's main light with a click. He moved extremely smoothly, with absolutely none of the reservation a real volunteer would have; he was practically acting like he lived here.
The most irritating thing of all was that, after wandering through the house, this volunteer turned back to politely make demands on the "lonely senior citizen" he was here to console.
"Xie-ge, I'm a little hungry. Can you give me something to eat?"
Xie Qingcheng was so peeved he was about to lose it. Raking his fingers through his hair to push back his bangs, he said, "Why don't you go and drink some milk."
"You have milk for me?"
Speechless, Xie Qingcheng irately rummaged through a cardboard box and threw a carton of Shuhua milk at He Yu.
He Yu glanced at it. "This milk isn't pure enough. I never drink this brand."
Glaring daggers, with his lips set in a thin, frosty line, Xie Qingcheng said, "Then, Young Master, what would you like to drink? Would you like me to find someone to produce milk for you on the spot?"