Chapter 32: Tong Xilin: Looking at the photo is fine…

The rain showed no sign of letting up. Overcast sky, gray clouds. It slanted onto the utility balcony. Even the sheltered corner wasn’t completely sheltered from the wind. Now and then, wisps of rain were blown onto the screen, streaking across it in long, thin trails of water.

The ringtone for the incoming video call seemed amplified in the empty balcony space. The “ding-ding-dong-dong” melody entwined with the sound of the rain, rising and swirling.

Tong Xilin stared at Kong Ji’s profile picture on the phone. His index finger twitched, wiping away a raindrop on the screen.

Then the pad of his finger slid downward and pressed the red reject button.

The abruptly silenced ringtone returned the balcony to stillness—a stillness that mirrored his heart, settling safely and emptily back into his chest cavity.

Over a thousand kilometers away in Shanghai, Kong Ji had just showered and his hair was still slightly damp. He leaned back into the wide sofa of his hotel suite, raising an eyebrow faintly at the phone showing the rejected call.

On the chat screen, “Tong Xilin is typing…” appeared, and then, unhurriedly, a sentence came through.

Tong Xilin: Looking at the photo is fine.

It went without saying which photo he meant.

Kong Ji looked at this sentence for a while. He reached over to the cigarette case on the coffee table and bit a cigarette.

When he picked his phone up again, the chat box still held just that one line. Tong Xilin hadn’t sent him a single word more.

He tilted his head back against the sofa, the hand holding the cigarette propping up his head. He used his thumb to scratch at the center of his brow.

His other hand rested on his bent knee. The phone slowly rotated twice between his distinctively knuckled fingers. The bracelet on his wrist swayed with the movement.

He glanced again at the rejected video call. Shaking his head, he laughed, exhaling a stream of smoke.

Never seen such a stubborn kid.

The stubborn kid, after sending that sentence, didn’t keep crouching on the utility balcony. He picked up the bag and, lightening his steps, went back to the dorm.

The dorm door hinge wasn’t great. Opening and closing the door made a creaking sound.

Normally, coming and going, you wouldn’t notice it. But right now it was too quiet. The entire floor of the dormitory building was asleep. The slightest push on the door seam, and the sound was amplified accordingly.

He’d already caused a ruckus changing clothes and going out earlier. Tong Xilin really didn’t want to disturb the others in the room. Just as he was deliberating whether to just push the door open in one go, Qin Ji came out of the dorm.

He was dressed very neatly—not the clothes he’d worn to sleep after his shower earlier. Even his shoes were changed. He looked like he was heading out.

“Did I wake you?” Tong Xilin quickly stepped back, apologizing in a low voice. “Sorry, I was a little loud just now.”

Qin Ji glanced at the bag he was carrying, smiled briefly, and closed the door behind him to talk in the hallway.

“No.” Qin Ji also kept his voice soft. “I was just on my way out.”

“Where to?” Tong Xilin asked casually.

“I applied for a part-time job a few days ago. They want me to come interview.” Qin Ji said.

His phone vibrated in his palm—another WeChat message.

Tong Xilin didn’t look at it. His attention had been pulled away by Qin Ji’s words.

Curiously, he asked: “What kind of part-time job?”

Qin Ji didn’t hide it: “A tutoring center. They’re hiring subject-specific tutors.”

Finding part-time work was something Tong Xilin had been thinking about since his second year of high school.

He’d wanted to ask for more details, but figured these part-time positions had limited spots, so he just nodded and didn’t ask further.

“Are you interested?” Before he could say anything, Qin Ji actually took the initiative to ask.

“Is it convenient?” Tong Xilin’s eyes lit up. “I’ve been wanting to find one too.”

Qin Ji checked the time and replied: “Nothing inconvenient about it. They’re hiring for quite a few subjects.”

“Want to come check it out together?” He invited Tong Xilin.

“Let me put this away.” Tong Xilin smiled. “Two minutes.”

“Bring your student ID.” Qin Ji reminded him.

Since it was an interview, appearance had to be presentable.

His pant legs had gotten completely soaked during that run outside earlier. Tong Xilin changed his pants and shoes, then tousled his hair a bit in the mirror.

His worry about noise had been completely unnecessary. By the time he finished rustling around and getting ready to leave, Pang Xiaoda was still snoring away. Qi Yuan hadn’t even turned over once.

The government advocated reducing academic pressure. Large-scale tutoring centers for primary and secondary schools were all under regulation. But something that exists to meet demand can’t be eradicated—they just operated more discreetly.

The tutoring center Qin Ji was heading to interview at was indeed very low-key. You couldn’t tell what it was from the name. The address was also in a residential compound in a different district.

The route was a little far. When Tong Xilin heard the address, he habitually started to call a car. Then he noticed Qin Ji had already planned a subway route there, so he withdrew the hand that was about to open his ride-hailing app.

An unread message from Kong Ji still sat in WeChat.

He hadn’t responded to Tong Xilin’s “Looking at the photo is fine.” He’d sent: Use the hand warmers.

Tong Xilin didn’t reply. He shoved the phone into his pocket and followed Qin Ji into the subway station.

Given the time and the rain, the subway wasn’t too crowded. There were empty seats. The two of them sat down side by side. Tong Xilin rubbed his calf along the bone.

His leg really did ache a little. But it wasn’t entirely because of the rain—it got bad in cold weather. Whenever the weather turned the slightest bit, the place where his calf had been broken ached from deep within the bone. September was still technically summer; it shouldn’t be that uncomfortable.

But the chilly wind in the subway station, combined with the air conditioning in the train car, amplified this discomfort.

“Your leg hurts?” Qin Ji noticed.

Tong Xilin raised his eyes to look at him, withdrew his hand, and after a moment’s thought, said with a smile: “You’re pretty sharp-eyed.”

Both about the drinks and now.

“My mother’s legs always ache when it rains.” Qin Ji took off his glasses and wiped them. They’d fogged up a bit after entering the subway. “She’s in poor health. An old problem from before.”

When he said this, his expression was very faint, his voice very light. But Tong Xilin caught a hint of something different.

No one likes to talk about a family member’s hidden ailments—especially someone like Qin Ji, with his strong sense of self-esteem. They’d known each other a month now. His manner with people and things had always been understated. Polite, but distant.

He was someone who habitually maintained a sense of distance.

For such a person to voluntarily open a topic like this, in Tong Xilin’s understanding, meant he was lowering more of his guard around him. It could bring them closer.

“What caused it for your mother?” He picked up Qin Ji’s thread and took the initiative to explain himself. “I was in a minor car accident. Fracture. It gets uncomfortable when the weather changes.”

“She had a break too.” Qin Ji said. “She got into a fight with my dad and was pushed. Fell down the stairs.”

Tong Xilin froze.

“She’d just given birth to my little sister at the time. Still in postpartum confinement.” Qin Ji added. “It healed later, but she always walks with a slight limp.”

This kind of topic was heavy. Tong Xilin didn’t know how to respond, nor could he.

He’d never had the experience of living with parents. But for some reason, he thought of that sloped road in the small town that got slippery every winter, and the way Tong Yuzhi would quietly watch him every time he fell.

Probably seeing that Tong Xilin wasn’t going to speak, Qin Ji turned his head and gave him a small smile: “It’s fine now. She divorced my dad a long time ago.”

“My sister’s a picky eater. Maybe because I helped take care of her growing up, I pick up on small things more easily.”

A disabled mother, what sounded like a very irresponsible father, a son and daughter raised solely by the mother. Tong Xilin threaded this information together. He could understand Qin Ji’s personality even more now.

“Things will get better.” He said something that sounded perfunctory but was very sincere.

“Yeah.” Qin Ji looked up at the station sign. “They will get better.”

The interview process went quite smoothly. The head of the tutoring center was a retired gold-standard teacher—likely quite renowned. The students in the program all came from key high schools, and the teachers they recruited were all from prestigious universities.

“You’ve just started your first year of college. You can’t be official teachers. In name, you can only be called teaching assistants. But that’s also your strength. You’ve just been through the gaokao—you’re still very familiar with high schoolers’ study patterns.”

The head gave them a tour of the facility. A four-bedroom, two-living-room apartment converted into different small classrooms. The students hadn’t been let out of school yet, so the center was empty.

“If you’re willing to give it a try, do a trial class first.” The head observed them back and forth. “This evening, there happen to be small classes for math and geography. Not many students—only about four or five per class. Would that work?”

Nothing inconvenient about it. After military training, they had no classes all the way until the end of National Day break. Both readily agreed.

The trial teaching time was from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Tong Xilin had initially worried he wouldn’t explain things well or wouldn’t get along with the students. But those who came for tutoring were all key students with strong foundations. No one was paying top dollar to butt heads with the teacher. They had their own study habits and routines.

Tong Xilin received the tutoring center’s internal curriculum materials. He first organized the content they’d learned, then answered the students’ questions, sharing his problem-solving approach. No rush, no fuss. He didn’t deliberately try to close the distance, nor did he put on a stern face and airs.

At the end of the trial class, one girl asked a question unrelated to the coursework: “Teacher, how old are you?”

“About the same as you.” Tong Xilin said.

“No wonder listening to you feels easier to understand than our school teachers.” The girl wrinkled her nose. “Our geography teacher is a cranky old man. All he does is pedantic book-citing.”

Tong Xilin lifted the corner of his mouth very faintly. He didn’t engage in casual chat with her. He wrote his WeChat ID on the whiteboard, telling them they could ask him questions in their free time too.

During the two hours of the trial class, the head came in from time to time to observe, evaluating.

She didn’t express whether she was satisfied or not on the spot. She collected both Qin Ji’s and Tong Xilin’s contact information and told them to wait for notification.

By the time they left the tutoring center, the rain had stopped.

“It’s almost nine.” Qin Ji took the initiative to say. “We haven’t eaten dinner yet. Let me treat you.”

“Sure.” Tong Xilin didn’t decline. He knew Qin Ji wanted to repay the barbecue from last time, and also knew what kind of interaction Qin Ji needed.

He took the initiative, pointing to a roadside noodle restaurant outside the residential compound: “I happen to want noodles.”

Beef noodles, twelve yuan a bowl. Two thin slices of beef in the noodle soup. Sticky little tables, grimy gray walls. The condiment bottles were covered in a thick film of grease. A ceiling fan rattled overhead.

The shop hadn’t turned on the air conditioning, but it wasn’t stuffy after the rain. Besides the two of them, the noodle shop had no other customers. The Boss was behind the counter, shooing flies with a palm-leaf fan.

After sitting down, Qin Ji first tore off a section of napkin and wiped the table in front of them both. Looking at Tong Xilin quietly mixing his noodles, he asked in a low voice, as if self-deprecating: “You’ve never been to a place like this, right?”

Tong Xilin had been to far too many.

In those two years after Tong Yuzhi passed, when he couldn’t eat at the school cafeteria, he ate at fly-infested dives far shabbier than this.

Back then, to save money, he wouldn’t even add meat to his noodles. He just ordered plain vegetable noodles.

“I actually…” He deliberated inwardly, not knowing how to answer Qin Ji’s question.

Before he could organize his words, the phone in his pocket vibrated again.

Kong Ji seemed somewhat displeased with Tong Xilin’s current habit of reading and not replying. This time he didn’t send a video request. He called directly.

“I need to take this call.” He signaled to Qin Ji, then answered, saying “Uncle.”

“Won’t answer video calls, won’t reply to messages, but you do still remember you have an uncle.” A month without seeing each other, and Kong Ji’s voice was still that same leisurely drawl, carrying a low hint of laughter. “What are you doing?”

“Eating noodles.”

The noodles were too hot. Qin Ji set down his chopsticks and got up to buy mineral water from the cooler.

Kong Ji had just finished a banquet with business partners. He asked casually: “Crab roe noodles?”

“Commoner noodles.” Tong Xilin said.