Chapter 7

“What the fuck!” Jiang Chu was completely unprepared. Who would expect to get ambushed in their own home after just getting off work?

His right leg was bent back by Qin Zui, his knee pushed up against the wall.

Jiang Chu had some skill with his hands, but he’d never systematically trained his legs. Forced into this one-legged crane stance, he almost tumbled sideways against the wall. He quickly grabbed the door frame with one hand behind him, and with the other, having nothing else to grab, he latched onto Qin Zui’s shoulder.

“You’re crazy! Let go!” Jiang Chu swayed a couple of times, sucking in a sharp breath. “Fuck, my hamstring is going to snap!”

Qin Zui probably didn’t really want to snap Jiang Chu’s hamstring. He was holding back his strength.

Seeing Jiang Chu wobbling and unable to keep his balance, he felt a surge of vengeful satisfaction. He deliberately leaned in close and stared at Jiang Chu, asking, “Had enough?”

“I surrender to your third uncle! Let go if you don’t want to get your ass kicked!” The pressure from Qin Zui was intense. Jiang Chu couldn’t help but press himself further back against the wall, resisting the urge to slap the idiot upside the head.

What kind of position was this?

This oblivious little shit!

Qin Zui looked at him, his eyebrow twitching slightly. He pushed Jiang Chu’s ankle up a bit more.

“I surrender, okay! You’re the big brother!” Jiang Chu immediately caved. Forget the hamstring—if he twisted any further, his pants were going to rip with a loud s-s-s-s-rip first, and then he’d be the one too embarrassed to show his face for the next week.

“Let me go, be good. Seriously, I’m gonna split my crotch.” He patted Qin Zui’s neck placatingly.

Qin Zui lowered his eyelids, revealing a small, victorious smile. He let go and sauntered off with a hint of smugness.

Jiang Chu winced, rubbing his thigh for a moment before immediately dropping the act.

“Getting clever, are you!” he yelled, lunging forward to grab Qin Zui in a headlock.

Qin Zui knew he was going to try that. He turned and blocked. They almost fell onto the sofa together.

They wrestled for a few moments, and the watermelon rolled off somewhere unknown.

When you hang out with young people, you start to feel younger yourself.

Jiang Chu was starting to see some truth in that saying.

Ever since this little brother had moved in, whether he was doing it willingly or not, at least he had a lot more motivation to move around after work.

He’d been losing the desire to go out these past couple of years. He’d just go straight home after work. Any socializing started and ended at the office. He’d get home feeling exhausted, take a shower, pass out on the sofa, and not want to move. His only form of exercise was hauling himself from the sofa to his bed after ten.

Now, at least he would scuffle with Qin Zui.

He also started to think about taking him out to eat other things, wondering what kids his age liked to do.

“Isn’t school coming up for you?” he asked Qin Zui as they drove around aimlessly, trying to decide where to eat.

“Next week,” Qin Zui replied more succinctly.

“Oh, next week.” Jiang Chu nodded. Then, realizing it was already Saturday, he added in surprise, “So that’s the day after tomorrow?”

Qin Zui didn’t answer.

Jiang Chu suddenly felt he’d been a pretty lousy brother. He and Qin Zui were living together like roommates. School was starting in two days, and he hadn’t even taken him out for a proper look around.

“Hungry?” He quickly planned out the evening. “Let’s go buy some clothes, then grab something to eat. Or maybe take a look around your school?”

Qin Zui grunted.

“Forget trying to find a specific place to eat,” Jiang Chu thought for a moment, tapping his index finger lightly on the steering wheel. “I’ll take you to the snack street behind the school.”

“Twenty-seventh High School?” Qin Zui glanced at him.

“Yeah.” Jiang Chu smiled. “It was my alma mater, too. Kind of brings back memories.”

Buying clothes for Qin Zui was quick. Even faster than buying underwear that day.

He didn’t know if it was the makeover effect—stripping off that day-one construction-worker getup and getting his hair cut had completely transformed his vibe—or if it was just that Qin Zui was naturally good-looking. Whatever style of clothes Jiang Chu handed him to try on, he looked decent in it.

He was definitely the type of guy you’d toss into a school, and the girls would be turning their heads for a second look.

Just simple, casual sweatpants, a t-shirt, and a chest bag. Qin Zui stood there, hands in his pockets, with no expression, and he just had this indescribable aura.

Not flashy, but wild enough.

Jiang Chu casually pulled the backpack off a mannequin nearby, slung it over Qin Zui’s shoulder for a school bag, and let out a satisfied whistle.

He let him try on the first two outfits. After that, Jiang Chu skipped that step entirely. He grabbed four or five sets of casual, sporty tops and bottoms in one go, and bought three pairs of shoes.

Then he remembered that autumn had already started. School started in September, and the weather would get cold soon, so he bought Qin Zui three jackets too.

“Too many,” Qin Zui said softly as he came out of the store carrying the bags.

“It’s not my money.” Jiang Chu didn’t plan on playing the part of the self-sacrificing, good big brother. He said it casually.

Walking out of the store, he spotted a baseball cap on a mannequin’s head that he liked. He took it off, tried it on himself, then placed it on Qin Zui’s head to take a look. He suddenly asked, “Did you get taller?”

“Don’t know,” Qin Zui said, looking at him from under the cap. Their eye level did seem a bit more even than it had been the day he’d arrived.

Teenagers shot up like weeds. Jiang Chu had been the same way in high school.

Men grew until they were twenty-three. Looking at Qin Zui’s long legs and tall frame, he’d probably hit at least one eighty-five.

Jiang Chu clicked his tongue in a bit of dissatisfaction. He went back and bought two hats in the same style, but different colors.

“Want to wear the new clothes while we go out?” He spun the hat in his hand and asked Qin Zui.

Qin Zui was still wearing Jiang Chu’s baggy shorts and t-shirt. He shot him a look that was either speechless or amused. He just reached out, took the hat, and put it on, then tossed all the shopping bags into the back seat.

The drive from Jiang Chu’s place to the 27th High School was really not far. It was only two intersections away. He’d barely gotten the pedal to the metal before they arrived.

Jiang Chu started reminiscing, telling Qin Zui which bus to take to get directly to school, that the subway stop was one intersection away, and that biking was the most convenient once you got to the front gate of the school.

The more he talked, the clearer it became: Qin Shuman and Jiang Liantian hadn’t enrolled Qin Zui in the 27th High School just because it was a key school. They’d done it specifically for him.

The two of them were thick as thieves.

“Has your mom called you these past few days?” They were just approaching the school. Jiang Chu found a parking spot across the street and asked casually.

He only then suddenly, abruptly realized an issue that modern society had automatically made him overlook.

“Do you have a cellphone?” he asked, staring at Qin Zui.

He thought about it carefully. Since he’d first met Qin Zui, he’d never seen him with a phone.

“She hasn’t called. I do have one.” Qin Zui answered Jiang Chu’s two questions with three words. He exchanged a glance with Jiang Chu, then pushed open the car door and got out, adding, “I don’t have it on me.”

“It’s at home? Let’s add each other on WeChat when we get back. Here’s the 27th High School.” Jiang Chu also locked the car and got out, gesturing with his hand. “By the way, are you almost seventeen or almost eighteen now? The birthday on your ID card doesn’t seem to match what your mom said.”

“Do you always talk like this?” Qin Zui asked him a question on his own initiative, which was rare.

“Like what?” Jiang Chu shot the question back.

“In jumps,” Qin Zui said after a brief pause, having thought up the description.

“Then you haven’t seen Da Ben. At least I’m jumping on the same spot. He can make a topic disappear out of thin air just by jumping once,” Jiang Chu said with a smile. He reached out and placed his hand on Qin Zui’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”

Qin Zui’s neck tightened as he recalled that humiliating thirty-second wrestling match. There was nothing he could do about it. He just lowered his eyelids and pressed his lips together, following Jiang Chu as they crossed the street.

The 27th High School, being a key high school situated right in the city center, was a perfect example of how small its entrance could be.

Jiang Chu hadn’t thought about it when he’d been a student here, but coming back now, if you took the school’s nameplate off the gate, it didn’t even seem as grand as the kindergarten behind the residential community.

Normally, Jiang Chu wouldn’t be mistaken for a student, and Qin Zui wasn’t dressed like one either. They’d definitely be stopped by the security guard if they tried to walk in through the main gate.

But now was the dinner break before evening self-study. People were coming and going through the campus. They just slipped in through the side, blending in with the students.

The entire school was only that big. There wasn’t much to see. You just passed a few classroom buildings, walked down one road, and you were at the back gate.

But being back on his high school campus after so many years felt kind of strange to Jiang Chu.

Surrounded by that uniquely rambunctious atmosphere of a high school, watching all sorts of students passing by doing all sorts of things, including those big boys insistently playing basketball on the ridiculously small playground, it brought back a lot of memories from his own school days.

Ah, the good old days.

“Which homeroom will you be in? Have they assigned it yet?” he asked Qin Zui.

“I think it’s 9,” Qin Zui said after a moment’s thought.

Compared to Jiang Chu’s nostalgia, he was completely expressionless.

Jiang Chu made a mental note: whether he was at the train station, in a restaurant, or at the school he was supposed to be at for his age, Qin Zui was consistently, one hundred percent, expressionless.

And there was a faint trace of impatience hidden in that expressionless face.

It was like he had big words tattooed on his forehead: Don’t Mess With Me.

Compared to that, when the two of them were play-fighting at home, that was actually when he seemed the most emotionally engaged.

Jiang Chu was going to ask Qin Zui what his grades were like, but seeing how he was, he figured they must’ve been terrible. Not much point in asking.

Since he wasn’t interested, they didn’t stick around long. They just poked their heads into the campus for a quick look before heading directly out the back gate and onto the snack street.

“What should we eat? BBQ?” Jiang Chu sniffed the air, smelling all sorts of mixed scents. He suddenly had a craving for crawfish.

“Can you eat shrimp if you’re allergic to seafood?” He turned his head and asked Qin Zui.

“Shrimp is freshwater, right?” The last time Qin Zui had eaten shrimp was on a childhood birthday many years ago, when his dad had made it at home. It felt like a lifetime ago. He had no memory of whether he’d had an allergic reaction then.

“They both crawl in water. Go back eight generations, and they all came from the same pond.” Jiang Chu pulled out his phone to look it up, then shook his head regretfully. “You have the kebabs. I’ll get two pounds of crawfish for myself.”

He followed the smell and picked out a shop. Just as he was about to go in, Qin Zui’s foot stopped him. “Let’s go home to eat.”

“What’s wrong? Noodles at home?” Jiang Chu was already sick of the thought of noodles. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you: when you say you can cook, does that just mean you can cook noodles?”

“Don’t you want a drink with your BBQ?” Qin Zui completely ignored his second question and raised an eyebrow at Jiang Chu. “Thinking about driving drunk?”

“And you say I talk in jumps,” Jiang Chu said with a laugh. “A drink’s no problem. I’ll just call a designated driver. You want to have a drink?”

“Are you saying you can’t?” Qin Zui shot the question right back.

“What, want to make another bet? Try to get your revenge from last time?” Jiang Chu raised a hand to signal the owner, asking for the crawfish first, then grabbed a menu and threw it to Qin Zui to order whatever he wanted.

Qin Zui looked at him, smiled faintly, and didn’t say anything.

He picked a table and sat down. Without ordering any food, he circled two bottles of Niulanshan first.