Chen Xingze expresses anger in a straightforward manner: with his fists.
Normally so gentle, his sudden assault startles You Xiaolin.
“Are you guys bullying him?!” Chen Xingze had never been so angry before; he was just in the bathroom calling You Xiaolin a white-eyed wolf, but now he regrets it. He curses himself for acting so rashly and leaving You Xiaolin in the classroom by himself. If he’d been here, this wouldn’t have happened.
When he thinks of the fact that You Xiaolin might have been bullied like this all the time, his punches get even more forceful.
But fighting one against three is pushing it—everyone gets mad and they all start struggling back and forth, grappling with each other in chaos. As one of the boys pushes Chen Xingze down onto the table, You Xiaolin snaps back to his senses and comes to pull on him.
“Stop fighting!”
And just like that, he’s tugged into the brawl. A boy kicks him, which enrages Chen Xingze; he yanks You Xiaolin behind him, picks up a dictionary conveniently left on the floor, and sends it flying into his opponent’s face.
“Fuck you!”
__
Five minutes later, all five of them are sent to the headmaster’s office.
Naturally, Chen Xingze won’t allow for the headmaster to reprimand You Xiaolin. He steps up voluntarily and declares, “It was me.”
The headmaster shoots him a look. “You be quiet!” He turns to You Xiaolin, “What happened?”
You Xiaolin is so nervous, his face is white as a sheet. Chen Xingze knows that the other boy is incapable of speaking in such situations; he thinks high and low for a way to get him out of this, but what he doesn’t expect is that You Xiaolin speaks.
“They kept sweeping rubbish at me and I got mad, so we got into a fight. Chen Xingze was just passing by, he had nothing to do with it.”
The headmaster snorts and turns towards Chen Xingze’s noticeably bruised face. “That happened to him as he was ‘just passing by’?”
You Xiaolin drops his head. “He had nothing to do with it,” he repeats quietly.
Hearing You Xiaolin trying to get him out of trouble makes Chen Xingze’s heart melt.
The fight was very much worth it.
He makes a promise to himself in the span of a few seconds: No matter how much You Xiaolin ignores him to study from now on, he won’t get mad no matter what.
“We didn’t sweep rubbish on him, we swept rubbish in that area and then he wouldn’t get up and move,” one of the boys protests.
Chen Xingze combusts in an instant: “You have the audacity to say that?!”
“Enough! Cut it out!” the headmaster hollers. He inspects each of their wounds, then hands down a firm warning, “You all watch it. Don’t let this happen again.”
__
When school lets out for the day, Chen Xingze bumps into You Xiaolin outside the building and runs over to him. You Xiaolin doesn’t say anything, but they walk silently out the gates, shoulder to shoulder.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Chen Xingze’s heart beats like a drum in his chest and all he wants is for the walk home to drag on longer.
“Ktjcx sbe obg tfiqlcu wf, yea vbc’a oluta jcswbgf lc atf oeaegf.”
Jtfc Wlcuhf uijcmfr bnfg ja Tbe Wljbilc, ktb kjixr klat tlr fsfr olzfv abkjgvr atf ugbecv.
“Pa’r atflg ojeia obg yflcu yeiilfr.”
“Ktfs kfgf pera pbxlcu jgbecv.”
“Qtja xlcv bo pbxf lr atja?!” Jtfc Wlcuhf’r nblmf lcmgfjrfr vgjwjalmjiis lc nbiewf.
You Xiaolin footsteps stall. “If I bear with it, it’ll pass.”
“No freaking way! Why should you? Don’t be scared of them.” And then, as if trying to prove something, Chen Xingze grabs You Xiaolin’s shoulders. “I absolutely will not let them bully you!”
You Xiaolin stares at him silently, black eyes and stillness, like a glowing marble statue. Chen Xingze feels his face getting hot. He squeezes You Xiaolin’s shoulders, words caught in his mouth. There are so many things he wants to say, and yet there don’t seem to be words to describe his feelings.
In a tree next to the road, small birds chirp.
“I can’t mind those things, otherwise I have no time to study.”
“Why do you like studying so much?”
“My family has no money, I have to study.”
Chen Xingze blinked. “So that’s how it is.” And then he immediately recants his words, “Oh-That’s… That’s not what I meant, I meant your family, your family…” The more he tries to explain, the worse it gets.
“It’s okay.” You Xiaolin walks ahead, backpack riding on his shoulders. “You should study more too, don’t play all the time.”
“Okay!” Chen Xingze hurries to catch up with him. He stops deliberately a few steps behind him, so he can sneak glimpses at You Xiaolin’s slender, white neck. It’s almost time for them to part; this makes his throat tighten. “Can I study with you from now on? That way I can ask you things I don’t know.”
You Xiaolin sends him a doubtful look. “Are you capable of sitting still?”
Chen Xingze glares back. “I’ve been class leader before, okay? Don’t look down on me!”
You Xiaolin lowers his head, but a bubble of laughter escapes his lips. “I’m kidding, of course you can.”
That laughter, for some reason, the sight of it makes Chen Xingze want to cry.
You Xiaolin rides the bus home; Chen Xingze stands at the intersection, a number of inexplicable things passing through his mind. One second he frowns, the next he smiles, like a fool.
__
In the evening, a howl of pain comes out of one particular house.
“Aiyou, it hurts! Be gentle! Are you even my mother?!”
Chen Xingze is perched on top of the bed, grinding his teeth in pain. His mother, Wu Xingzhi, has a cotton swab soaked in iodine in her hands. She smiles dryly at him. “Oh, it hurts, does it? How come you didn’t think of that when you were fighting?”
“Tch!” Chen Xingze rolls his eyes.
Despite her words, Wu Xingzhi’s movements become gentler. She cleans the bruises on his face, then pats some ointment on them. “Your homeroom teacher called me, you were even complimented. Impressive, aren’t you? Normally there’s not a peep out of you, and now all of a sudden you’re getting into fights in Class 4.”
“It was their fault for bullying You Xiaolin.”
“You treat him so well.”
“Of course.”
“You spend all your time with You Xiaolin, so how come your grades haven’t improved?”
“…..”
Chen Xingze hops off the bed like a carp jumping out of water. “I don’t wanna talk with you anymore, I’m gonna go practise piano. Don’t come in!” And then he runs off, leaving Wu Xingzhi chuckling as she tidies up.
“Couldn’t even force him to practise before, when did he get so responsible…”
__
Chen Xingze doesn’t know why he suddenly feels like practising piano.
Maybe it’s because there are too many things in this world that can’t be put into words, that human beings invented music and art and dance. To express emotions without speaking.
“Wow, he’s practising piano?” The remark comes from his father, Chen Heyi, as he steeps himself tea.
“Yup.”
Wu Xingzhi is seated on the couch, listening to the sounds of scales coming from the piano room. “He’s a strange kid.” She listens for a while; the warmup scales stop and become random notes littered here and there. The notes gradually combine to form something vaguely resembling a melody.
“I’m going to go check on him.”
She sneaks into the piano room and finds her precious son seated on the piano bench, staring off into space.
“What are you thinking about?”
Chen Xingze jumps up with a start and swivels around, annoyed. “Didn’t I say you couldn’t come in?”
Wu Xingzhi walks over to the piano. “What were you just playing?”
“Nothing.”
“Composing a song yourself?”
Chen Xingze’s face flushes. “No, I’m done, I want to eat now.”
Wu Xingzhi presses him back down on the bench and sits next to him. Her foot rests lightly against the pedal, and after a moment, a beautiful song flows from her fingertips. It’s Chen Xingze’s melody, but his was only a bare righthand melody. His mother’s added lefthand accompaniment immediately evolves the melody into something different.
“Sound good?” she asks.
Chen Xingze nods dazedly.
“What were you thinking when you were composing this melody?”
Her question makes his cheeks turn red. What was he thinking of? He was thinking of that snowy day, the first time he set eyes on You Xiaolin, of the latter’s coal black eyes and hair, of his snow white skin and perpetually focused stare…
“When people have feelings to express, art comes into being.” Wu Xingzhi wraps the daydreaming Chen Xingze in her arms, “This melody is very nice, who knew you were talented in this respect? Come on, let’s go eat. Your father’s waiting.”
__
Later that night, he lies awake in bed, unable to sleep. He keep repeating his mother’s words in his head.
When people have feelings to express, art comes into being.
What are the feelings he wants to express?
For You Xiaolin, how far would he go?
He supposes he would probably do anything for him. He recalls a time he came down with a heavy cold but still insisted on going to school, just to be able to walk a few steps with him after school. Except after mulling over it for the entire day, he still left school early because he was afraid he’d pass his cold onto You Xiaolin.
You Xiaolin didn’t even know that he’d gone to school that day.
All the internal struggles Chen Xingze experiences are known only to himself, and he’s the only one who is moved by his own actions, but that doesn’t matter. He is the writer and the director, the actor and the sole viewer of this emotional drama, but that doesn’t matter either. He’s willing.
He flips over in bed, burying his face deep inside his pillow, and giggles.
At this age, none of the complicated elements of life; dignity, ego, reality, have begun budding in him yet. The only thing that has awoken in him is pure, innocent love.
__
Time flies like an arrow. In the blink of an eye, they are graduating.
During their graduation ceremony, Chen Xingze represents his year and performs a song on the piano. It had taken him a long time to choose the piece; he’d been thinking about it since the start of their last semester, when the teachers first informed him that he would possibly be performing at graduation.
He’d considered Mariage d'amour, La vraie musique de l'amour, and Midsummer Night's Dream, but in the end he doesn’t use any of these.
They’re too straightforward and not what he feels towards You Xiaolin.
In the end, he chooses Pachelbel’s Variations on Canon.
A “canon” is a contrapuntal compositional technique in music where variations of a lead melody called imitative melodies are played in succession, over and over again, a new imitation picking up where another ends. Like a cascade of mountain peaks, like ocean waves rising and falling in continuation, or like Chen Xingze’s love for You Xiaolin. In the last bar of Canon, all the melodies fuse into one, like love that gets a happily ever after.
During the graduation ceremony, Chen Xingze brings himself to tears with his performance. Fortunately, the stage doesn’t face the audience, so no one sees his tears.
He dedicates this song to You Xiaolin, even though he knows that no one listening to his performance will ever know his intentions, and that they will never realise the depth of the emotions he’s put into the song.
But it’s alright, he dedicates this song to You Xiaolin regardless. He has so many feelings for him. Like beer bubbles, so often rising to the surface and bursting.
Thanks for the chapter :3
he is adorable. pure innocent love indeed
thanks for the chapter <3
Oh. They’re sweet.
Thanks for the chapter!