Qi Yang stared at those three messages for a moment, then pulled back the curtain and glanced outside.
It was 9:30 PM in late summer, early autumn. The street was still lively. People were taking walks, walking their dogs, students were out of school. People were coming and going outside the complex. Besides the vendors selling various snacks, Qi Yang couldn’t spot a single familiar ghost.
But Mu Yicong wouldn’t mess with him about this.
This much Qi Yang was clear about. Mu Yicong wasn’t that boring. He just wondered what he was suddenly here for.
After a moment’s thought, Qi Yang pocketed his phone, opened the door, and went downstairs.
When he got to the gate of the complex, he saw Mu Yicong under a big sycamore tree by the roadside.
Mu Yicong was still in his school uniform, probably just out from evening self-study, having come straight from school. He stood tall and straight under the tree, on his phone, listening to music. The white earphone cord snaked down from his shoulder and collar, loosely looped around his finger.
This guy’s tall, lean figure was indeed easy on the eyes.
Qi Yang admitted it, a bit resentfully. He was qualified to be a campus heartthrob, tied with himself.
If only his personality weren’t so annoying.
As if sensing something, Mu Yicong turned his head this way and saw Qi Yang standing outside the gate.
He straightened up slightly, facing Qi Yang’s direction.
Qi Yang was wearing a simple hoodie. He stared at Mu Yicong expressionlessly from a distance of about ten meters, then unhurriedly walked over.
“Something up?” he asked Mu Yicong directly.
Mu Yicong seemed a bit awkward too. He looked at Qi Yang for a few seconds before letting his gaze drop to his arm.
“How’s your arm?” Mu Yicong asked.
“Seven stitches,” Qi Yang said.
Mu Yicong fell silent.
Qi Yang stared at him for a moment, then asked back, “Is that why you came?”
After another few seconds, Mu Yicong looked at him and spoke. “Thanks for today.”
Qi Yang could imagine Mu Yicong coming to take advantage of his weakness to beat him up, or to demand a fight. He never would have guessed Mu Yicong would say thank you.
He even made sure he hadn’t misheard by checking Mu Yicong’s expression, looking for any sign of sarcasm, if he was deliberately making fun of him.
But Mu Yicong turned and was about to leave after saying that. So he really did just come to say thanks.
“You have a problem?”
Qi Yang’s words stopped Mu Yicong in his tracks. He turned back to look at him.
“You don’t think I got stitches to block that chair for you, do you?”
Qi Yang’s face showed a faint trace of mockery towards Mu Yicong and a nonchalance about his own injury, but inside, he felt a wave of annoyance.
He couldn’t put his finger on why he was annoyed.
But seeing Mu Yicong come to apologize so openly pissed him off—as long as it was Mu Yicong, he was pissed off.
But much later, when he thought back to that day’s annoyance, it was actually more like discomfort.
Uncomfortable that Mu Yicong was being so sanctimoniously magnanimous.
Clearly knowing that the things he had suffered at school couldn’t be separated from Qi Yang, yet he still came to say thanks for something as trivial as blocking a chair.
That guy had to be the one to take all the moral high ground.
Mu Yicong looked at Qi Yang’s ungrateful attitude, didn’t get angry, and didn’t even react.
That familiar look just appeared in his eyes again, a look full of mockery, as if he couldn’t be bothered to argue with an idiot.
Just then, an empty taxi came by. Mu Yicong raised his arm, got in, and left.
The car hadn’t even reached the entrance of the complex when his phone vibrated with an incoming text message.
Qi Yang: I guess from now on you’re bringing my breakfast.
Mu Yicong gripped his phone and looked at it for a moment. For the first time, he replied to Qi Yang in a conversational way: Aren’t you suspended?
Qi Yang: Am I suspended for life?
Mu Yicong didn’t reply. Qi Yang spun his phone for a while, waiting, then bought a roasted pork knuckle from a stall outside the complex.
The morning Qi Yang returned to class, he had just gotten to his seat and was wiping the dust off his desk with a few tissues when Mu Yicong walked by outside their classroom window and tossed a bag of breakfast onto his desk.
He really tossed it. The tea egg hit the desk with a loud smack. Qi Yang thought someone had thrown a grenade at his desk.
He glanced outside. Mu Yicong was already far away, carrying another identical bag of breakfast. Ren Wei followed behind, asking in a somewhat surprised whisper, “Did you buy that for Qi Yang?”
Qi Yang picked up the bag and looked inside. Two steamed buns with two eggs.
No drink.
Cui Wu, calculating the day Qi Yang would be back to class, came to find him and saw this scene.
“What’s going on, Yangzi?” He leaned on the windowsill, dumbfounded. “Mu Yicong is buying you breakfast?”
Qi Yang didn’t answer. He gave one of the tea eggs to Cui Wu. Cui Wu cracked it, peeled it, and ate it.
Liu Dameng heard from Cui Wu that Mu Yicong had brought breakfast. He called during the big break.
“What’s the deal, Yangzi?” He was just as confused as Cui Wu. “Mu Yicong brought you breakfast?”
“When are you coming back?” Qi Yang asked him instead.
“Still got half a month,” Liu Dameng sighed, dragging out his voice. “I’m so sick of school. But it’s boring being stuck at home. I’ll skip evening self-study and come find you guys, yeah?”
Qi Yang hummed in agreement and was about to hang up when Liu Dameng’s voice burst into a loud “Ah!” of sudden realization.
Liu Dameng: “Ah!”
Qi Yang’s ear was blasted. He cursed, “Are you sick?”
“I get it!” Liu Dameng laughed. “You’re starting to use our old middle school strategy!”
Qi Yang couldn’t for the life of him remember any intelligent strategy they had come up with back then.
“I told you, hating someone doesn’t always mean fighting and killing. You befriend them first, then find a chance to get back at them.” Liu Dameng was smug and very confident. “Isn’t that right, Yangzi?”
“Still reading that How to Be a Gangster book?” Qi Yang asked.
“I’ve already memorized it.” Liu Dameng snapped his fingers twice on the other end of the line. “I told you, this strategy is good. It’s interesting. I can’t wait to get back to school and become Mu Yicong’s ‘friend.'”
Qi Yang certainly wasn’t following whatever Liu Dameng’s self-righteous theory was, but he didn’t deny it.
His feelings for Mu Yicong now were strange.
To say he hated or loathed him, it wasn’t really to that extent. He and Mu Yicong hadn’t had much interaction at all, and almost every time they ended up fighting.
But he had this unexplained fixation with Mu Yicong.
The more he disliked this person, the more he cared, the more he wanted to pick a fight with him.
And there was another, subtle feeling that Qi Yang himself didn’t want to admit.
—He wanted to get back at him for that “crotch humiliation.”
With each harboring their own different thoughts, Qi Yang and Mu Yicong began a period of harmony so inexplicable it was almost odd.
Mu Yicong really did start bringing breakfast for Qi Yang. Even after Qi Yang’s stitches were removed, they both continued this unspoken routine, one buying it like a zombie, the other eating it as if it were his due.
Breakfast items were just those few things. Whatever Mu Yicong ate, he bought the same for Qi Yang.
Sometimes, after eating the same thing for days, Qi Yang would text Mu Yicong to tell him to buy something different tomorrow.
Mu Yicong would reply with a few words or ignore him completely.
Qi Yang would eat it all anyway.
After Liu Dameng returned to school, he took the “pretend to be friends with Mu Yicong” strategy to the next level.
When he saw Mu Yicong at school, he even proactively greeted him.
From Cui Wu to Ren Wei, including Mu Yicong himself, they all looked at him with some confusion.
“Going to the cafeteria?” Liu Dameng asked Mu Yicong, ignoring everyone’s stares, acting all proper. He even raised his hand to put on Qi Yang’s shoulder. “We’re going too. Want to come together?”
Ren Wei looked at Mu Yicong, dumbfounded.
Qi Yang pushed Liu Dameng’s arm away and walked ahead.
“No, thanks,” Mu Yicong said in a cool, clear tone of refusal, and walked off as well.
It was Liu Dameng who had invited them to eat. Now that they’d been rejected, he muttered quietly behind their backs, “What a fake.”
“What scheme are you guys cooking up now?” Cui Wu asked, completely lost.
After Liu Dameng explained his grand strategy to Cui Wu, Cui Wu got even more excited than him.
“Then I’ll be in charge of the later stage, the part where we mess with him,” he volunteered.
“The problem is, he doesn’t even want to deal with us now.” Liu Dameng sat in the second-floor cafeteria, slurping his beef noodles, deep in thought. “But why is he willing to bring breakfast for Qi Yang?”
They both looked at Qi Yang. Qi Yang raised his arm.
“He saw Yangzi fight that day. He’s afraid of his strength.” Cui Wu slapped the table with certainty.
“But they’ve fought before. That kid’s no coward either.” Liu Dameng couldn’t figure it out. He felt this reason was sufficient but not necessary.
But he had a lot of ideas. He racked his brains and got back to the main mission. “Anyway, the plan now is to get Mu Yicong to hang out with us, get closer to him, right?”
“How do we get closer?” Cui Wu asked.
“How about we ask him to tutor us?” Liu Dameng looked at Qi Yang with great interest. “Isn’t he good at his studies?”
Qi Yang swallowed the food in his mouth before lifting his eyelids to look at Liu Dameng.
He couldn’t be bothered to argue. The mockery in his eyes was self-evident.
“We’re not exactly the studying type…” Liu Dameng understood the meaning of that look.
“Stop messing around,” Cui Wu laughed. “Alright, just keep greeting him. I don’t believe we can’t warm up a cold shoulder.”
Qi Yang vetoed Liu Dameng’s tutoring tactic with a look, but then he himself went to borrow homework from Mu Yicong.
That day was the last day of the Christmas-New Year holiday in the first semester of the second year. Qi Yang was at home listening to Zou Meizhu teach Qi Xing how to talk. After a whole morning of it, the little girl had only responded three or four times, completely uncooperative.
“Why doesn’t Xingxing like to talk? She’s almost two.” Zou Meizhu sat on the sofa holding a bunch of toys, staring at Qi Xing, muttering. “This kid isn’t a mute, is she?”
“What do you mean, mute? You’re just saying things.” Qi Dahai was lounging on the side looking at his phone, frowning. “Didn’t she just call ‘Mom’ a moment ago?”
“True.” Zou Meizhu picked up Qi Xing, holding her and teaching her slowly. “Xingxing, look at Mommy. Say it again, Mom—Mom—”
Qi Xing’s eyes darted around for a bit. Zou Meizhu twisted her body to face her. After staring for a long time, she finally opened her mouth. “Mommy.”
“There’s my good girl.” Zou Meizhu hugged Qi Xing and patted her, relieved.
But after this relief, she started to worry again. “But this kid is way too slow to talk. Yangyang was already talking at eight months.”
“He was talking at eight months, but you don’t see him being any more talkative now that he’s grown up.” Qi Dahai said. “I didn’t start talking until I was two. This kid takes after me.”
“Really?” Zou Meizhu put Qi Xing down to play on the sofa and went to cuddle with Qi Dahai again.
Qi Xing wandered around the room by herself. She picked up a handbell and went to knock on Qi Yang’s door with a ding-a-ling.
Qi Yang let her in. Qi Xing ignored him, touching the walls and the bed in the room like a little ghost.
After a few minutes of enduring the bell sound, his patience ran out.
He sighed a bit wearily, sat down in front of the computer, stared at his backpack that he hadn’t opened since the break started. After a moment’s thought, he sent Mu Yicong a text: Home?
Mu Yicong replied ten minutes later: Mm.
Qi Yang: Done with your homework?
Mu Yicong: What’s up?
Qi Yang: Coming over to copy it.
