Chapter 23 Part 1

His eyes seemed to sync with his ears in a sensory resonance. The moment he heard Qi Yang’s voice, Mu Yicong quickly adjusted to the dim light.

He stared at Qi Yang for a moment, said nothing, then lifted his foot and climbed the stairs.

Only when he reached the step right in front of Qi Yang did he finally speak. “What are you doing here?”

Qi Yang hadn’t actually been sitting there just now. He had been standing on the small balcony on the third floor, watching from a distance as Mu Yicong talked to Ren Wei outside the neighborhood.

When he saw Mu Yicong finally head into the complex, he thought it over and chose to sit down on the stairwell. That way, he figured he’d look cooler.

“I have something to ask you,” Qi Yang said.

“What.” Mu Yicong watched him in the dark.

Qi Yang lifted his head and blurted out bluntly, “Are you gay or not?”

The dark environment was already eerily quiet, and as soon as Qi Yang’s question left his mouth, the narrow stairwell fell into an almost unnatural silence.

In that strangely oppressive stillness, Qi Yang looked at Mu Yicong, and the first thought that crossed his mind was: This guy’s pupils are really black.

Mu Yicong’s pupils were blacker than normal.

Qi Yang had noticed that trait long ago—a deep, sunken black that seemed to swallow any speck of light.

Black space layered over black pupils. It should have looked like a blind man’s eyes, yet somehow Qi Yang could read Mu Yicong’s expression clearly.

He watched the entire shift in Mu Yicong’s gaze—from a flash of surprise, to wariness, to a flicker of confusion, and finally settling into calm indifference.

“Does it have anything to do with you?” Mu Yicong didn’t answer directly.

Not denying it meant yes.

“Nothing,” Qi Yang said, slapping the dust off his pants as he stood up.

They were only one step apart, and after he stood, they ended up way too close—so close that their noses were barely a hair’s breadth away. A slight move in either direction would let them feel each other’s breath.

But Mu Yicong didn’t move, and Qi Yang didn’t speak either.

Why Mu Yicong didn’t move, Qi Yang had no idea.

As for himself, he stayed silent simply because his mind was a mess.

—Skipping the last evening self-study class, showing up at someone’s doorstep like a ghost driven by an impulse, blurting out a question, and now the two of them standing there stupidly face to face.

Qi Yang didn’t even know what he was doing.

He just wanted to talk to this guy.

While they stood there staring at each other like idiots, a door upstairs clicked shut and footsteps came down, finally triggering the sound-activated light in the stairwell.

A middle-aged woman carrying a bag of trash came down. When she passed them, she gave them a few long looks, then squeezed sideways past them.

Once the woman had left the stairwell, Qi Yang finally looked away. He brushed the dust off his butt, bent down, and picked up his backpack from the floor.

“I’m hungry,” he said. “Treat me to dinner.”

With that, Qi Yang, as usual, didn’t wait for Mu Yicong’s reply. He brushed past his shoulder and went straight downstairs.

A few seconds later, Mu Yicong followed unhurriedly from behind.

Qi Yang remembered that meal very clearly. It was at the Pig Trotter Rice shop outside Mu Yicong’s neighborhood.

Neither of them chose the restaurant. Qi Yang’s mind was too jumbled to think about anything; as soon as he walked out the gate and saw a shop next to him, he just walked straight in.

For the first time in the years they’d known each other, they sat down to eat together—no arguments, no fights, as peaceful as a perfectly ordinary pair of high school classmates.

Qi Yang ate quietly. Mu Yicong hadn’t ordered anything; he wiped the table clean, pulled out an exam paper, and started working on it right there in the shop like a show-off.

“Even if you don’t eat, you’re still paying,” Qi Yang said from across the table, biting his drink straw as a reminder.

“Eating doesn’t shut you up, does it?” Mu Yicong answered without looking up, writing furiously.

Qi Yang noticed that Mu Yicong had only one cowlick on his head, perfectly centered.

When they walked out of the Pig Trotter Rice shop, it was already 10:30 p.m. Zou Meizhu called to ask why Qi Yang wasn’t home yet. He briefly answered “On my way,” hung up, and looked back at Mu Yicong.

“I never said there was anything wrong with you,” Qi Yang said casually, chewing on the breath mint the shop gave him. “Why are you avoiding me?”

He said it without any lead-in, but both of them knew exactly what he was referring to.

Mu Yicong didn’t answer. He turned and walked straight into the neighborhood.

“Are you deaf?” Qi Yang shouted after him.

“I’m not avoiding you,” Mu Yicong said. “I just find you annoying.”

Qi Yang laughed.

What a character.

People are strange like that sometimes.

Like Liu Dameng and Cui Wu—they became friends just because they both disliked Ren Wei for no reason. And Qi Yang’s aversion to Mu Yicong, for some inexplicable reason, had been largely canceled out by that one meal of pig trotter rice.

But it wasn’t just the pig trotter rice.

On the way home, Qi Yang figured it was because he and Mu Yicong now shared a secret—Mu Yicong’s sexual orientation.

In the following days, they still ignored each other whenever they met at school. But every time their eyes briefly met, something was slowly changing.

Once you start, it’s easy to continue. After one pig trotter rice, there was a second barbecue, a third hotpot, fourth, fifth, sixth.

The first two meals Qi Yang made Mu Yicong treat. After that, Qi Yang habitually started paying.

By the time they’d roughly eaten their way through all the restaurants outside Mu Yicong’s neighborhood, Qi Yang realized something.

“You do know how to smile, don’t you?” he said, finishing the last crawfish and annoyingly tossing the shell into Mu Yicong’s plate.

Mu Yicong picked it up with his chopsticks and dropped it back into Qi Yang’s pineapple beer.

“You think keeping that cold face all day makes you look super cool?” Qi Yang continued teasing him. “Really think you’re some aloof campus idol?”

“Are you full?” Mu Yicong lifted his eyelids to look at him. “If you’re full, get lost.”

Qi Yang wasn’t angry. He called the boss over to settle the bill.

Mu Yicong didn’t bother with him. He grabbed his school uniform, stood up, and started heading back to the neighborhood.

Unlike the previous times, Qi Yang didn’t go his separate way after eating. He followed behind and kicked Mu Yicong’s heel. “Hey.”

Mu Yicong turned around.

“I’m going to hang out at your place for a bit.” Qi Yang walked past him and headed into the stairwell first. “My place has been too noisy lately. Going home early is too chaotic.”

That reason wasn’t a lie.

His home had indeed been noisy recently. Zou Meizhu had been acting a bit neurotic, constantly forcing Qi Xing to learn things and talk.

Yesterday, Qi Xing had quietly wet her pants again. Zou Meizhu held her and repeatedly taught her: “When you need to pee, tell Mommy. Why can’t you ever call out? Come on, Xingxing, say it with Mommy: Mommy! I need to pee! I need to poop!”

She kept repeating that phrase over and over.

When Qi Xing didn’t respond, she got anxious. The more anxious she got, the faster she spoke, and the sharper her voice became.

After teaching her a dozen times, Qi Xing suddenly started screaming.

She flailed her little arms and pounded her head. Zou Meizhu was even more broken than her, shaking Qi Xing’s tiny body and yelling, “Why can’t you just talk properly? Huh? Tell me why!”

Qi Yang was getting annoyed in his room. He came out, took Qi Xing from her arms, and frowned at Zou Meizhu. “She hasn’t peed now. Why do you keep forcing her?”

Zou Meizhu didn’t yell or complain as usual. She just sat on the floor, staring blankly at Qi Xing.

If it were just the noise from Qi Xing’s situation, Qi Yang wouldn’t mind that much. Taking care of a kid was inherently troublesome.

The real reason Zou Meizhu’s emotions were unstable lately was Qi Dahai.

Qi Dahai came home less and less frequently. Sometimes he’d be gone for half a month without a trace. When he did come home, he’d just ransack closets and drawers searching for something.

Last week, Qi Yang woke up in the middle of the night to his parents quarreling. He heard Zou Meizhu hissing in a suppressed scream, asking Qi Dahai if he was seeing someone else.

Qi Dahai, uncharacteristically, didn’t try to soothe her. He didn’t even care that Qi Xing was sleeping. He roared in a gruff voice, “Mind your own business when it comes to men’s affairs!”

Zou Meizhu started crying.

She’d been crying a lot lately.

Qi Yang was about to go check on them when he heard Qi Dahai let out a heavy sigh, his voice softening. “Alright, honey, I shouldn’t have yelled at you. It’s about business. I promise I only love you.”

“What is it?” Zou Meizhu asked tearfully.

“Nothing, nothing…”

Their voices dropped after that. Qi Yang turned over and went back to sleep, not bothering to listen further.

After that argument, Qi Dahai hadn’t been home for a long time.

Qi Yang counted the days and felt like he’d come back today. Just thinking about the atmosphere at home made him irritable. He’d rather stay at Mu Yicong’s place—it was more comfortable.

The idea had popped into his head while they were eating crawfish, and he’d straightforwardly informed Mu Yicong of his decision.

But honestly, even with all the noise and chaos at home, it wasn’t enough to make Qi Yang not want to go back.

He just found Mu Yicong increasingly interesting. No other reason—he simply wanted to figure this guy out. Time always passed quickly when he was with Mu Yicong.

Besides, Mu Yicong never refused him.

“You actually enjoy it when I come looking for you, don’t you?”

While waiting for Mu Yicong to open the door, Qi Yang leaned against the wall, studying Mu Yicong’s profile.

“You act all aloof at school. No one pays you any attention except Ren Wei. You must be bored too.”

Mu Yicong paused in turning the key, glanced sideways at Qi Yang, and gave him that familiar look—a mix of contempt and amusement.

“What do your parents do exactly?” Qi Yang completely ignored that look. As soon as the door opened, he pushed past Mu Yicong and walked in, looking for slippers like it was the most natural thing in the world. “I’ve never seen anyone come to your place.”

“None of your business,” Mu Yicong said, placing his keys and backpack on the shoe cabinet in the entrance hall. He closed the door and went to the bathroom.

When he came back after peeing, Qi Yang was still crouched in front of the shoe cabinet.

“What kind of shoes are these?” Qi Yang held up a pair of shoes that could only be described as ugly. “Never seen you wear them.”