Qi Yang said all that with such effortless poise, practically radiating a “let’s never see each other again” vibe. But his immediate task was still to take Mu Yicong home.
He was almost at the entrance of Nanyang Star Hotel when he had to turn back and call out, “You coming or not?”
Mu Yicong had his hands shoved into the pockets of his overcoat, still wearing that unhurried expression as he slowly caught up.
The snow was heavy this year, and it had been falling endlessly since the start of winter.
The memories from ten years ago were still swirling in his head. As Qi Yang walked through the snow toward his car, he glanced up at the streetlamp and suddenly thought: if he had actually showed up that day to watch that movie with Mu Yicong, they would have come out of the theater around this time too, and seen the same kind of scene.
And Mu Yicong would have followed behind him just as silently, the way he always did.
He had bought that beat-up secondhand SUV from Sister Li a few years ago for cheap, and he’d never taken particularly good care of it. There were scratches on the body, making it stand out among the row of shiny, pristine cars.
Qi Yang brushed the snow off the windshield, pulled open the door, and got in.
Mu Yicong stood outside for a second, glanced at the license plate, kept his expression neutral, and followed him into the passenger seat.
In the private room, surrounded by a crowd, and even in the elevator, it hadn’t felt like anything special. But now, trapped together in this cramped, intimate cabin—and it was Qi Yang’s own personal space—the air suddenly went stagnant with awkwardness.
Qi Yang busied himself with starting the engine and fastening his seatbelt, deliberately creating noise to fill the silence. He could faintly catch the scent of men’s cologne wafting from Mu Yicong.
Show-off.
He cursed quietly in his head and turned to look at him.
“Where do you live?” Qi Yang asked directly.
Mu Yicong named a high-end residential complex.
Qi Yang did a quick mental calculation of the distance. It was practically diagonal across the map from his own place. He stepped on the gas and pulled out.
Before deciding to come to this class reunion, Qi Yang had imagined several possible ways he and Mu Yicong might interact. But this situation was the last thing he’d expected.
Mu Yicong had never been much of a talker, same as before. Once he was in the car, he fell silent and didn’t try to make small talk.
“So is it really not working, or what?”
While waiting at a red light, Qi Yang couldn’t help asking again.
Mu Yicong turned his face toward him. Qi Yang kept his eyes fixed straight ahead on the light, refusing to meet his gaze.
“It’s pretty real,” Mu Yicong said.
Qi Yang’s brow twitched along with the blinking red light. As he pressed the gas, he remembered Mu Yicong’s whisper from earlier—”Whose doing was it?”—and couldn’t help turning his head to look at him again.
“Watch the road,” Mu Yicong said softly.
“What exactly caused it?” Qi Yang turned the steering wheel. “What did you mean by that? It can’t be that those fights we had back in school actually messed you up?”
Words like “fight” and “brawl” didn’t usually carry any weird connotations. Everyone understood what “fight” meant. But in the context of this conversation, with the other person being Mu Yicong, Qi Yang himself felt a strange discomfort after the words left his mouth.
Mu Yicong probably sensed the subtleties too. Even out of the corner of his eye, Qi Yang could tell that his expression had shifted into that half-smiling look.
“So is it related to me or not?” Qi Yang got annoyed and frowned directly at him.
“I told you.” Mu Yicong admitted it with utter frankness. “Your handiwork.”
Qi Yang couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth. He got flustered, his mind racing, and started searching his memories again for every fight he’d ever had with Mu Yicong, trying to figure out when he’d inflicted such a serious injury on him.
“Just not with anyone else.”
But when Mu Yicong said that so casually, Qi Yang slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the curb.
“What do you mean by that?” He stared at Mu Yicong.
Mu Yicong’s eyebrow lifted slightly. “Why do you care so much?” he countered.
Back in school, one of the reasons Qi Yang found Mu Yicong so irritating was that he could never get the upper hand in a verbal sparring match with this guy.
He was like a snake without a vital spot. No matter how much Qi Yang provoked him or deliberately taunted him, Mu Yicong could always turn the topic around in one sentence, making it his own territory and countering Qi Yang with his own logic.
That familiar feeling of punching cotton had resurfaced.
Qi Yang was about to retort when his phone suddenly vibrated and rang.
Both he and Mu Yicong’s eyes shifted to the screen. The caller was Chen Han—his ex-girlfriend, who had deleted him from her contacts just a few days ago.
If he had been alone in the car, Qi Yang wouldn’t have answered. A relationship that was already over didn’t need to stay in touch. Dragging things out was pointless. That was always his habit.
But with Mu Yicong’s question hanging in the air, annoying him, Qi Yang grabbed the phone and hit answer, partly to distract himself.
“What’s up?” Qi Yang restarted the engine and drove forward as he spoke.
“Qi—Yang—” Chen Han sounded drunk. The background noise was chaotic, and her voice was louder than usual, drawn out and syrupy. “I miss you so much.”
“Talk properly.” Qi Yang felt a little awkward and switched the phone to his other hand.
Mu Yicong lifted his eyelids, his gaze shifting from the phone to Qi Yang’s profile.
Chen Han was definitely drunk. She was rambling, calling his name over and over, and soon her voice was thick with tears.
“Why did you do this? I was late for our date, but I was still waiting for you. Why did you just break up with me without saying anything?” Chen Han sobbed. “Even if I said harsh things first… get away, don’t touch me!”
Qi Yang had been patiently listening to her grievances and complaints. Sending a single text to end things was indeed pretty half-assed, and he’d planned to wait until she finished venting before reiterating the breakup properly.
But the moment he heard “don’t touch me,” his brow furrowed. A lot of bad scenarios immediately flashed through his mind.
“Where are you?” he asked Chen Han.
“A bar.” Chen Han gave the name of a place.
“With who?” Qi Yang pressed.
“With… I don’t know. I came with my friends…” Chen Han let out another panicked scream. “Fuck off, don’t touch me!”
Qi Yang cursed under his breath. He told Chen Han to go wait outside the bar where there were more people, then turned the car around and headed toward Bar Street.
“I’ve got something to do. Can you get out and grab a cab?” he said to Mu Yicong after hanging up.
“No need.” Mu Yicong’s tone was flat, much cooler than before, but he didn’t make any move to get out.
Qi Yang didn’t bother with him anymore and accelerated.
The bar street was packed before New Year’s. Just past nine was the peak time, and the sidewalks were crowded with people. Qi Yang drove around searching until he spotted Chen Han leaning against a streetlamp outside a shop, with three or four people surrounding her.
He parked, threw open the door, and walked straight over.
Mu Yicong didn’t follow. He stayed in the passenger seat, his eyes dark and deep, fixed on Qi Yang’s retreating figure.
Qi Yang had assumed Chen Han was being harassed by strangers at the bar. Even though they didn’t have strong feelings and had already split, hearing her scream like that on the phone meant he couldn’t just ignore it.
But when he walked over and pulled Chen Han away from the streetlamp, the group around her started yelling and blocking him. Only then did he realize these were Chen Han’s friends.
When Chen Han had yelled “don’t touch me” on the phone, it was her friends trying to stop her from drinking more.
After confirming she was fine, Qi Yang’s face darkened, and he didn’t want to get involved anymore.
“You’re the one who let her get this drunk?” A trendy-dressed girl stepped in front of Chen Han, glaring at Qi Yang with an accusatory tone.
“Qi Yang…” Chen Han sniffled pitifully and reached up to loop her arms around his neck.
Qi Yang stepped back. Her friends grabbed her and pulled her back too, scolding her with a mix of frustration and pity. “Can’t you have some self-respect?”
“Take her home and let her rest.”
Qi Yang left it at that, ignoring the insults from the people behind him. He got back in the car, lit a cigarette, and drove away from Bar Street.
Only after the car had returned to the main road, far from the noisy bar district, did Mu Yicong ask in a detached tone, “Girlfriend?”
“Ex-girlfriend,” Qi Yang said.
“Why’d you break up?” Mu Yicong asked.
“Does it have anything to do with you?” Qi Yang was already irritated from one thing after another tonight, and he snapped back, staring at Mu Yicong.
Mu Yicong didn’t get angry. He looked at Qi Yang’s reaction and even curled the corner of his mouth slightly.
Conversations about feelings were the worst. When the other person actually shut up, Qi Yang’s curiosity flared up again.
“Are you…” He wanted to ask Mu Yicong whether he still liked men, but it felt too weird to bring up. He couldn’t get the words out.
“Yes,” Mu Yicong said, as if he could guess what Qi Yang wanted to ask, and answered proactively.
“Yes what?” Qi Yang asked.
“Homosexual,” Mu Yicong said, looking at Qi Yang. “I like men.”
Psycho.
Qi Yang kept his face stone-cold and drove in silence, a strange feeling washing over him again. He didn’t turn his head to meet Mu Yicong’s gaze.
Neither of them spoke for the rest of the trip. Qi Yang drove to the entrance of Mu Yicong’s residential complex, turned off the engine, but couldn’t help asking, “So, have you got a boyfriend?”
“Not currently,” Mu Yicong answered readily.
Qi Yang let out an “ah,” hesitated, then asked, “But you’ve had one?”
Mu Yicong didn’t give a direct answer to that.
He looked at Qi Yang for a while before responding with a subtle tone. “What’s the matter? You care?”
“You’re out of your mind.” Qi Yang couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t keep up that calm, “already moved on” vibe in front of his old classmate. “Watch yourself. You’re already not working down there; don’t go catching some nasty disease on top of that.”
Mu Yicong didn’t reply, nor did he get out of the car. He had a faint, elusive smile tugging at his lips as he kept studying Qi Yang.
Qi Yang felt he should kick him out. Nothing had happened tonight. The class reunion had ended peacefully, and he’d just driven a little extra. But he was exhausted all over.
Listening to the snow falling outside the car and smelling that faint, steady scent of Mu Yicong inside it, his mind couldn’t stop conjuring images of their middle school days. In the end, he didn’t ask him to leave.
It was a really strange feeling. When he was with Liu Dameng or Cui Wu, Qi Yang had never once looked back on or reminisced about his shitty high school years.
He rolled down the window a crack, pulled out his cigarette pack from the glove compartment, and was about to light a second one when Mu Yicong spoke again.
“When did you pick that up?” he asked Qi Yang.
“Huh?” Qi Yang looked at him.
Mu Yicong gave a slight nod toward the cigarette in his mouth.
“After I started working,” Qi Yang said, flicking the lighter and taking a drag, his eyes narrowing in the rising smoke.
The car was quiet for a moment. Then Mu Yicong said, “About what happened with your family—I heard a bit from Ren Wei.”
“Yeah.” Qi Yang reached out and tapped his ash.
Qi Dahai’s incident had made the papers. There wasn’t a person left in town who didn’t know about it.
Back then, some thugs who had it out for Qi Yang would come looking for him to pick fights and taunt him, sneering, “Your family’s broke now, huh? Still think you’re tough?”
As a kid, he’d cared a lot about face. It had felt humiliating. His stubborn personality made him fight back with all his might, until both sides were bloodied.
Tonight, before the class reunion, Qi Yang had still thought, ‘I don’t care about looking bad in front of anyone—except Mu Yicong.’
But now he didn’t even have the energy for that anymore.
Dignity didn’t mean shit in the face of a vast wealth gap.
“Back in school,” Mu Yicong said suddenly, “I had a crush on you.”
Qi Yang was still lost in memories from the past. When Mu Yicong’s words reached his ears, it took him a moment to process. He stared blankly at Mu Yicong. It wasn’t until the cigarette burned down to his fingers that he snapped back to reality, stubbed it out, and rubbed his thumb over his fingertips.
The memories from in front of the elevator came rushing back in a whirlwind—the wordless gazes in the dim stairwell, that one night they’d spent together, their eyes meeting and those subtle, tentative gestures…
Young Mu Yicong’s dark pupils merged with the tall, mature Mu Yicong sitting before him, condensing into ten long years.
“Later on, when I think about it,” Mu Yicong said, his eyelids drooping for a moment before lifting again. The look he gave Qi Yang turned distant, unreadable. “It wasn’t really anything special.”
