Chapter 12: High School Days. How Long Has It Even Been?

“How long has it even been? Five years. You’re only twenty-three—what’s with the premature senility? You can’t remember high school anymore?” Lin Xiuzhu skinned the wild rabbit with practiced hands, sneering with pure snark.

Su Ze sat to the side, chin propped in both hands, waiting for dinner. His tone was utterly placid. “If you mean the three years of high school when Xing Lyu and I became friends, then I remember.”

Lin Xiuzhu shot him a look. “Meaning you won’t admit you ever dated Old Xing? Nor that you dumped him right before the college entrance exams?”

Su Ze gave an “mm,” entirely without guilt.

Lin Xiuzhu’s temper ignited on the spot. If not for his own empty stomach, he would have flung the half-skinned rabbit straight into Su Ze’s face. “Don’t you fucking tell me you’ve also forgotten Old Xing confessing to you on Qixi, summer break of sophomore year!”

He had personally planned that confession!

Su Ze shook his head. “I haven’t forgotten.”

Lin Xiuzhu let out a couple of dry chuckles. “Then why are you playing innocent now?”

Su Ze moved his gaze from the rabbit to Lin Xiuzhu’s face and said evenly, “You all believe Xing Lyu was confessing to me that day. As I saw it, that day was simply a good friend inviting me to dinner and then to watch fireworks.”

Lin Xiuzhu nearly coughed up blood. “If that’s not a confession, what is! Who the hell drags themselves out to a river embankment at night, in the middle of summer, to set off fireworks for a man! That’s not love, that’s a psychiatric condition!”

The moment the words left his mouth he wanted to slap himself. Wasn’t it a psychiatric condition, though? Both the person who dreamed up the idea and the one who carried it out were fucking sick!

Seeing Lin Xiuzhu so worked up—and operating on the principle that a calm chef cooks better—Su Ze spoke up. “The meaning of a confession is one person expressing romantic love to another, correct?”

“What else would it be? An expression of hatred?” Lin Xiuzhu sneered.

Su Ze paid the hostility no mind, his tone still calm. “But that day, Xing Lyu never expressed romantic love to me.”

“Impossible!”

“His exact words were: ‘Su Ze, I hope I can always be with you from now on.'”

“Right, and that’s a confession!”

“But he never said he liked me. So as I understood it, that sentence expressed friendship.”

“…He never said he liked you?”

“No.”

“Never, the whole time?”

“Never.”

“…Fuck.”

Having summed things up with remarkable precision in a single word, Lin Xiuzhu speared the two prepared rabbits on sticks beside the fire and added a few more pieces of firewood before asking, hesitantly, “…Then what was all that about him saying you dumped him before the entrance exams?”

Su Ze thought back. “He came to me, said once more that he wanted to be with me always, and asked whether I would give up my guaranteed-admission spot to sit the exams for Longchang University. I refused.”

“…Fuck.” Lin Xiuzhu wanted to howl his disbelief at the heavens.

Su Ze was an orphan—the whole school knew it. Back then he had swept the championships across every subject in the academic Olympiads, and several top universities had nearly come to blows over him. He chose Zhongdu University precisely because the school promised him a full scholarship, with all tuition and fees waived.

And Xing Lyu wanted him to give all that up and go to Longchang with him? Sure, with Su Ze’s ability he could win a full scholarship at any school in the country—but who was going to cover his tuition and fees?

Even if Xing Lyu offered to pay, Su Ze could never accept! Never mind that the two of them were operating on entirely different understandings!

One side: a “good friend” inexplicably making an outrageous, unreasonable demand. The other: a “boyfriend” whose love wasn’t deep enough, breaking it off for the sake of his own future… Good god, what melodramatic third-rate romance novel is this?

Confronted with a truth that diverged so wildly from everything he had always believed, Lin Xiuzhu suddenly had no idea how to face Su Ze. He could only retreat into silence and focus on roasting the rabbits.

Seeing him quiet down, Su Ze nodded inwardly in satisfaction and turned to survey his surroundings.

They were currently inside a cave. Judging by the faint lingering scent in the air, it had once housed bears or some other large animal. The overall space wasn’t large, but it was enough for two people to sleep and eat.

Lin Xiuzhu had clearly done some cleaning; the place could be called neat and tidy. At the very back stood a simple single bed, while near the entrance sat an assortment of camping gear—rustic, yet with a certain charm of the wild.

Sitting in a camping chair, watching Lin Xiuzhu slather on seasoning with practiced hands, Su Ze couldn’t help asking, “You remembered to pack all this while fleeing for your life?”

“…It was already in my car.” Lin Xiuzhu paused, then added an explanation. “I used to see camping short videos online and thought it looked fun, so I bought a whole set of gear. Went out once, found it way too much hassle, and just left it in the car. Only remembered it existed on the drive into the mountains.”

“…” How could someone fleeing in blind panic happen to bring a full set of camping equipment, while his own carefully planned trip into the mountains came with nothing? At that moment, Su Ze felt the malice of the universe.

Several dozen minutes later, Lin Xiuzhu handed a finished roast rabbit to Su Ze. “Here.”

Su Ze, who had been waiting this whole time, accepted it gladly—and nearly wept at the first bite. The long-lost taste of high-quality animal protein! Sure, skinning, draining, and roasting had cost it some nutrients, but seasoned and cooked, it beat raw by a mile!

Su Ze devoured most of a rabbit in one sustained assault before his eating pace finally slowed. Curious and impressed, he asked Lin Xiuzhu, “Where did you learn to roast meat?”

In his memory, Lin Xiuzhu had been a textbook rich playboy—the kind who looked at people down his nostrils and probably needed a chauffeured luxury car even to reach the toilet. Owning this kind of skill seemed unlikely.

Lin Xiuzhu gave a cold snort. “Let me guess. You think a rich kid like me couldn’t possibly know how to cook?”

Su Ze: “Correct.”

Lin Xiuzhu: “…”

If he really had been a rich kid from birth, then no, he wouldn’t know how to cook. But before his third year of junior high, he had been nothing but a left-behind child abandoned by his mother, scraping by on odd jobs during school holidays.

If his deadbeat father’s legitimate son hadn’t fallen ill and needed him for a bone marrow transplant, he would never have been taken back—never gone from sparrow to phoenix overnight.

The classmates who once treated him like a worn-out shoe started calling him bro. The friends he’d thought were true brothers turned snide and needling. Only Xing Lyu, the PE class rep, stayed exactly the same—impervious to all persuasion, a firm believer in settling things through physical education. One disagreement, and he’d drag you around the running track until you admitted fault on your own.

That beast… Recalling several nearly-vomiting laps of the past, Lin Xiuzhu pressed down the corner of his mouth and looked at Su Ze. “Never mind me. Aren’t you a completely different person too? Back in high school we used to place daily bets on how many words you’d say. If I didn’t know Old Xing so well, I’d suspect he was dating you in his dreams…”

…Fuck. Weren’t they dating in his dreams, though?

Lin Xiuzhu’s brain briefly blue-screened. Then he quickly frowned and pressed on. “Speaking of which—you seriously never knew Xing Lyu liked you? All his pocket money went to feeding you. Every winter and summer break, he volunteered at your orphanage every few days. When you didn’t feel like queueing at the cafeteria, he brought your meals to you every single day. More than half of everything he hauled back to school on Sunday nights was for you. He even took over washing your clothes and socks. And you’re telling me you didn’t know he liked you? Short of saying the actual three words, which one of the things he did didn’t say it?”

Su Ze swallowed the rabbit in his mouth and countered, “If he never said it, how was I supposed to know what his behavior meant?”

Lin Xiuzhu laughed in sheer exasperation. “Anyone with a normal EQ could figure that out! The entire class knew—only you didn’t. Aren’t you overplaying the act?”

Su Ze raised his eyes to Lin Xiuzhu, violet irises holding not a trace of emotion. “I’m not a human with a normal EQ. Before high school, I was in a car accident. I have no memories from before it.”

Lin Xiuzhu scoffed. “You’re shitting me!”

“I have no reason to lie to you. What do you think made me an orphan?”

“…”

“Nine years ago, when I first arrived at the orphanage, I couldn’t even speak.”

It wasn’t just the speaking. According to Su Qiuyu, back then he had been like an oversized infant—stumbling when he walked, unable to use utensils, unable to understand what people said to him, barely able to care for himself at all.

Because of the accident’s aftereffects, Su Ze’s memories of that period were hazy at best. The only thing that left a deep impression was how shockingly fast his health had drained—one moment of inattention and the red portion shrank by a visible notch. Even thinking about it now made his spine crawl.

At the thought, Su Ze couldn’t help glancing upward again. The Health Bar that popped into view looked about the same as before—still hovering around ten percent, red light flickering without pause. It had not grown just because he’d eaten his fill.

Was the Health Bar unrelated to his physical condition after all? And yet it really did shrink and grow…

Su Ze’s brow creased, almost invisibly. Fortunately, Lin Xiuzhu was still digesting the news he’d just heard and noticed nothing off about him.

Lin Xiuzhu gnawed on his roast meat, and the more he thought, the worse he felt. Emotionally, he didn’t want to believe Su Ze. But logic told him it really might be true.

In his memory, Su Ze had been a person of pitifully few words, too delicate for his own good, hopelessly oblivious to social cues, and blunt to the point of being insufferable. He lacked common sense but was far too clever, riding his pretty-boy looks to the favor of girls, teachers, and even Xing Lyu—a complete fraud, a smug poser, top to bottom.

But if his obliviousness, his frailty, his bluntness, and his lack of common sense all stemmed from a car accident that took his parents and his memories—then everything fit.

A person without a past had no complete personality. Everything about him had been rebuilt after the accident—including his understanding of the world, and his perception of emotion and feeling.

Fuck. For a moment, he didn’t know whether to pity Old Xing or be relieved he’d once resisted the urge to have a few guys throw a sack over Su Ze’s head…

Remembering the old days, Lin Xiuzhu suddenly found the roast meat in his mouth hard to swallow.

Then again—the cave was his find, the camping gear was all his, and he’d roasted two rabbits this size. He made his peace with himself soon enough.

After taking a few savage bites of rabbit, Lin Xiuzhu dropped the earlier subject and said to Su Ze with exaggerated nonchalance, “You caught dinner, so you get the bed tonight.”

Su Ze glanced at the single bed in the cave and declined. “No thanks. It looks dirty.”

“…”

I’m covered in blood and he didn’t mind ME, and he minds my BED?! Sympathy and guilt can go straight to hell! Old Xing, between me and your dream lover, you can only pick one—fucking pick!!!

“Achoo!”

Xing Lyu sneezed for no discernible reason. The Detachment Leader frowned. “Xing Lyu, coming down with a cold?”

“No.” Xing Lyu rubbed his nose and looked back down at the file in his hands.

It was the latest research report on the apocalypse, transmitted from the Zhongdu Base Research Institute.