Chapter 23 Part 3

“Can you stop looming over me?” Qi Yang was tired of having to crane his neck to talk to Mu Yicong. This height difference pissed him off. “Kneel down.”

The word “kneel” slipped out, following his habit of teasing Mu Yicong like he was a cat or dog.

But Mu Yicong bent his knees and actually slowly crouched down in front of him.

Throughout the motion, Mu Yicong’s eyes never left him. At such close range, eye-level contact only increased the pressure. Qi Yang sat cross-legged on the sofa, meeting his gaze, and suddenly felt strange.

In that weirdness, there was also a faint, indescribable thrill.

“You kneel just because I tell you to?” Qi Yang turned up the teasing. “What if I told you to do something else?”

“What do you want to ask?” Mu Yicong just stared at him.

Actually, saying it out loud felt strange too.

Qi Yang thought for a moment. But he couldn’t resist his unusual curiosity tonight, so he just went ahead and asked directly, “I come to you because I’m bored. You never refuse. Why?”

Mu Yicong went quiet.

“You’re gay,” Qi Yang said, sizing him up half-jokingly, half-seriously. “Don’t tell me you’ve fallen for me because I’m too handsome?”

He couldn’t explain why his heart started beating a little faster the moment those words left his mouth.

Back then, Qi Yang didn’t understand anything. He categorized all his curiosity about Mu Yicong as provocation and mockery, as the pleasure and pride he felt from making fun of this person.

He even vaguely hoped Mu Yicong would answer, so he could keep mocking him.

But Mu Yicong didn’t respond to either question.

The look in his eyes shifted subtly, then settled into the familiar contempt and disdain.

“Go home. I’m going to sleep.” Mu Yicong stood up, drying his hair, and walked straight to the bedroom.

“Who’re you acting all high and mighty for?” Qi Yang got up from the sofa, annoyed by that condescending tone, and kicked Mu Yicong. “I’m sleeping here tonight.”

Mu Yicong turned back and looked at him for a while. He didn’t say anything.

Nothing happened that night sharing the bed. Qi Yang’s only feelings were suffocating heat and an endless stretch of time.

He slept on Mu Yicong’s bed, under Mu Yicong’s quilt, on a pillow that smelled of Mu Yicong’s shampoo. He deliberately kept a distance where they wouldn’t touch, but he could hear Mu Yicong’s steady breathing.

In the dark, Qi Yang kept his eyes open. He wanted to say something to Mu Yicong, but he felt they weren’t the type of people who could talk, so he said nothing.

He felt his inexplicable heartbeat, not knowing what vague hope he was holding on to. In the end, with only the frustration of unfulfilled expectations, he turned his back to Mu Yicong and rolled over heavily.

All memories of Mu Yicong reached their peak that night.

Qi Yang could vividly recall every detail—each breath he took, every glance Mu Yicong gave.

After that night, the memories became quick and hazy.

Qi Yang’s first semester of senior year was agonizingly long. Spring Festival came late that year, and school didn’t let out until January.

In the last two months of the semester, he spent almost all his spare time with Mu Yicong. They ate together, studied together, and in Mu Yicong’s lifeless rented apartment, more and more of Qi Yang’s belongings started appearing.

Every time they were alone together, the atmosphere grew more harmonious than the last, and more delicate.

Until the end of the semester—the day of the final exam.

Before entering the exam room for the last subject, Liu Dameng was still discussing cheating strategies with Cui Wu, trying to get Qi Yang to join them for an all-nighter at the internet cafe after the exam.

Qi Yang didn’t agree. He twirled his phone and sent a text to Mu Yicong: Let’s go watch a movie tonight.

He was about to go into the exam room and figured Mu Yicong probably wouldn’t reply. But within a couple of minutes, a text came back: What movie.

Qi Yang: Don’t worry about it. I happen to have tickets. In or out?

Mu Yicong: Who’s going?

Qi Yang: Me. Who else?

Right as the exam bell rang, Mu Yicong replied with a single word: Okay.

The weather that day was amazing. A clear sky after a snowfall, a stupidly blue patch beyond the classroom windows.

Qi Yang spent half an hour guessing his way through the questions he could answer, then turned in his paper and left the exam room in style. Liu Dameng flipped him off through the window.

He waited a few minutes under the building where Mu Yicong was taking his exam, then figured he should go home and change clothes. Going to the cinema in his school uniform would be way too lame.

As he biked home, he even hummed a tune. The crisp, clean air after the snow was refreshing. When he almost got sideswiped by a taxi at a zebra crossing, he didn’t even curse—he was in that good a mood.

Until he pushed open the front door and saw the mess everywhere, Qi Xing screaming in a corner, and Zou Meizhu sitting on the sofa in silence.

“What happened?” Qi Yang froze, stepped over a fallen chair, and picked up Qi Xing.

Zou Meizhu looked like she’d aged ten years overnight. She was still in her heels and outdoor clothes. Dazedly turning her face, she saw Qi Yang, and tears streamed down her face like broken strings.

“Don’t cry, Mom.” Qi Yang frowned. “Tell me what happened first. Did we get robbed?”

“Yangyang…” Zou Meizhu’s lips trembled, and she covered her face, sobbing loudly.

Qi Yang noticed the medical record booklet beside her. Fighting through the screams and cries, repressing his anxiety and unease, he carried Qi Xing over, picked up the booklet, and flipped it open with one hand.

Among a jumble of scrawled handwriting, he only saw Qi Xing’s name and three glaring characters: Autism.

“What’s autism?” Qi Yang stared at Zou Meizhu.

Zou Meizhu just kept crying.

“Stop crying.” Irritated, Qi Yang pulled out his phone. “I’m calling Dad.”

Zou Meizhu, who had been silent, suddenly lunged forward and collapsed on the floor. She writhed and wailed, thrashing her limbs, scaring Qi Yang half to death.

It took him a long time to calm her down enough to hear her shrieks: “Your good-for-nothing father has disappeared! All the money in the house is gone!”

The revolving door of Nanyang Star pushed open, letting in a blast of the winter night’s biting wind. Qi Yang shivered, snapped out of his reverie.

In those few seconds, scenes from the past flashed through his mind like a long, heavy dream.

There wasn’t much to recall about what happened next.

The home that suddenly turned upside down. Zou Meizhu’s endless wailing. Qi Xing, who was like a simpleton. Qi Dahai, who couldn’t be reached. The three hundred twenty-seven yuan and sixty cents left in the house. The relatives who suddenly changed faces. The creditors who came banging on the door demanding money. The police who came over and over to ask questions. The tuition he couldn’t pay. The scandal that shook the entire town when he trashed the principal’s office after being forced to drop out…

Young Qi Yang had no energy left to deal with anything else.

The last memory of Mu Yicong was him walking out of the principal’s office under the shocked stares of the whole school, shaking off Liu Dameng and Cui Wu who came to find him, and briefly stopping in the hallway face-to-face with that person.

“What happened?” Mu Yicong looked at him and asked.

“Get lost.” Qi Yang only said that one word.

He brushed past Mu Yicong’s shoulder and walked away. Mu Yicong grabbed his arm. “I need to talk to you.”

Mu Yicong’s voice was steady and calm. He was always like that—from the first look they exchanged at their meeting, to this moment surrounded by the stares and gossip of the entire school—he was like an emotionless robot, as if nothing could ever disrupt him.

All of Qi Yang’s suppressed emotions exploded in that instant.

“Are you fucking sick? Go see a doctor, okay? What does anything about me have to do with you?”

He flung Mu Yicong’s hand away like a jagged, tangled thorn bush, spewing venom at him in front of everyone.

“You want to talk to me that badly? Fine. Crawl down the hallway once, and I’ll chat with you for ten minutes.”

Mu Yicong said nothing, just looked at him.

“He told you to get lost. Are you deaf?” Liu Dameng and Cui Wu rushed up and shoved Mu Yicong’s shoulders from both sides.

Ren Wei, hiding in the crowd, watched for a moment, then slipped out to find the Dean of Academic Affairs and contact the security room.

The moment the school guards dragged him off campus and took him to the police station, Qi Yang’s student days came to an abrupt end.

That dark, suffocating winter had haunted his dreams countless times over these ten years.

He had to take care of Qi Xing, who couldn’t manage daily life. He had to watch Zou Meizhu twenty-four hours a day, who tried to kill herself several times. He had to go door to door begging for money, find work, figure out how to put food on the table for three people. That was when he met Sister Li, the boss of Che Li.

Ten years was enough to turn him from helpless and desperate into numb. Enough that he no longer woke up screaming from nightmares of creditors smashing his door. Now, a single cigarette was enough to suppress all the resentment.

Time waits for no one. The changes that happened were irreversible. Everything was in the past.

The reality of life was enough to erase everything, including the memories of Mu Yicong. In the heart of the present-day Qi Yang, all that remained were the simple words “a ridiculous mess.”

“What bullshit are you talking?”

So when he heard Mu Yicong’s rebuke, Qi Yang just turned his head and stared at him.

“What do I care whether you’re okay or not?”

Mu Yicong seemed to have expected that reaction. He gave a faint smile, making it impossible for Qi Yang to tell if he was serious or joking.

But Mu Yicong’s next words silenced him again.

“That day, I waited for you at the cinema for three hours. I called, but you didn’t pick up.” Mu Yicong said. “There was a lot of snow.”

Qi Yang pressed his lips together. He stared at Mu Yicong for a moment longer, then turned and walked out.

Mu Yicong didn’t move, just watched his back.

After a couple of steps, Qi Yang stopped again.

“Something happened at home that day. I didn’t make it to the movie. Sorry about that.”

He turned around to face Mu Yicong, and in an offhand tone, apologized for the date he’d stood up a decade ago.

“It’s been so long. No point bringing it up anymore.”

Youth had ended too fast—so fast that the boy hadn’t had time to understand his own feelings before it was all over.

“We were never on the same path anyway.” Qi Yang gave Mu Yicong a dismissive smile.