Chen Xingze and You Xiaolin are assigned, by school district, to different middle schools.
He’d made an effort in this respect, begging and pleading with his father to use his professional connections to send him to You Xiaolin’s school.
“Yutian Middle School is so far from home and it’s not even ranked that well, why would you go there?”
But the whole matter had nothing to do with how good the school is. Chen Xingze doesn’t care about the school, but unfortunately his parents do, and no matter how much they let him have his way, on this matter they refuse to budge an inch.
And so, he is separated from You Xiaolin against his will.
Each day passes like a year.
This rather maladroit experience of love makes him grow up a little faster than his peers. He feels the entrapment of emotions and learns even before girls his age what autumnal sorrow and much ado about nothing mean.
His parents had bought him a mobile phone at the start of middle school, much to the envy of all his classmates. Except unlike most other kids, Chen Xingze has no interest in such things; he knows that You Xiaolin definitely doesn’t have a phone, and that even if he did, he would never waste his time on phone calls.
After he met You Xiaolin, he developed the habit of keeping a diary. When the missing gets to be too much, he takes it out and flips through it, reminiscing over every drop of the past like an outsider bearing witness to his own story.
Even though they go to different schools, Chen Xingze’s feelings for You Xiaolin don’t change. The day they graduated primary, he makes You Xiaolin promise that they’ll contact each other once a week.
Just like that, every Saturday’s phone call becomes his emotional substenance. Each week, he waits extra early at the phone, repeating the familiar phone number in his head until it’s almost time, and then he picks up the phone.
His heart is always drumming in his chest, but he always has to keep his tone conversational. He’s used to all of that.
Their topics are always regular, mostly related to school and study, neither of which are of particular interest to him, but he wants to hear You Xiaolin’s voice, and these topics are the easiest to make that happen.
You Xiaolin’s mother usually comes urging them to finish when they’ve conversed for about a quarter of an hour. Chen Xingze always hangs on to the phone, unwilling to hang up, and then immediately afterwards he’s already anticipating the next Saturday.
How nice would it be if life had a fast forward button?
__
Sometimes, Chen Xingze sneaks over to Yutian Middle School without telling You Xiaolin. He only stands in a corner, gazing out at the school yard. For whatever reason, he always feels like Youtian Middle School is a warm place, maybe because it’s where the person he likes is. Even the flowers and greenery that line the streets around the school look pretty.
One day, he arrives at Youtian Middle School and after a while of quiet gazing, a boy comes running out from the yard.
“Hey!”
“Zhang Yao,” Chen Xingze greets, and the two of them head outside. It’s noon, and he’s come to take Zhao Yao out to eat. The excuse he uses is that he’s sick and didn’t go to school, and happened to pass by on his way home from the doctor.
The truth is he misses You Xiaolin.
Zhao Yao was a boy he’d picked out carefully. When Chen Xingze first entered middle school, he’d used his excellent interpersonal relationship skills to make a few friends from Youtian Middle School. From those friends, he picked out Zhang Yao, because he’s You Xiaolin’s classmate, and because he has a nice, doltish personality.
“It’s my treat, what should we eat?”
“Seriously?! Then I want a hamburger!”
Chen Xingze plays host to him at the KFC across the street. He asks a lot of questions about You Xiaolin, which Zhang Yao answers to the best of his ability.
“You really spend a lot of time on him. Although honestly, he’s always number one so even the teacher always pays attention to him. I didn’t know his reputation even reached other schools.”
Chen Xingze especially likes people like this who are missing a bit of brains.
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.
“Qts jgfc’a sbe fjalcu? Rb jqqfalaf yfmjerf sbe’gf rlmx?”
Swbalbcji cbeglrtwfca lr fcbeut obg tlw.
Coafg iecmt, Itjcu Tjb ubfr yjmx ab rmtbbi, cba obgufaalcu ab atjcx Jtfc Wlcuhf, ktb wjlcajlcr j oglfcvis, rwlilcu ojmf ja tlw jr tf kjnfr ubbvysf.
“Ct, ws ojmf lr raloo ogbw rwlilcu rb wemt…”
He stretches leisurely, then goes back the way he came. It’s a lazy afternoon; no wind, no birds chirping, no bugs crying.
But life won’t always be this easy. Soon enough, the turbulence that puts an end to the serenity arrives.
__
In the first semester of seventh grade, Chen Xingze is dragged to attend a piano competition by his mother and somehow ends up getting first place. His father, elated, buys him a DVD player as a celebratory present. He even includes a stack of Discovery Channel documentaries, with a few international pianist performance video discs from his mother. But for a while, Chen Xingze leaves the DVD player in a dusted corner, not particular interested in watching anything.
One day, school lets out early for cleaning. After Chen Xingze finishes his cleaning duty tasks, he goes to a nearby mall to eat and afterwards, he wanders around aimlessly and comes upon a tiny stall selling pirate DVDs. He suddenly remembers the DVD player he barely used and decides to buy a few DVDs to try out.
He randomly grabs a pile of discs from the recommendations shelf.
When he arrives home, no one else is there. He goes to the fridge, grabs a can of juice, and digs his DVD player out from his room.
The sound of the machine stirring awake makes him sleepy. He yawns, casually flipping the DVD cover back as the machine tries to read the disc. The words printed clearly across the back——
Film One: Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain.
Perhaps every critical junction in life is a maneuver by the gods.
He doesn’t know when he sinks into the film; by the time he comes back to reality, it’s already dusk and he’s exhausted all his tears.
He’s incapable of articulating his feelings. He had never been able to word his love for You Xiaolin, but now it’s different. This film is the answer to his endless search for peace. It opens to him a new world, a different world.
He lies with his head buried in his pillow and sobs for a whole two hours. The DVD player automatically moves to the next film; when the second film ends, he still hasn’t recovered. He sobs until tremors run through his entire body. When he stands, his feet are unsteady.
He leaves the house before his parents come home and sneaks into a nearby Internet cafe.
Because it’s his first time coming to such a place, at first he has no idea how to navigate the Internet. But right now, his yearning dominates everything else. He asks the person sitting next to him for help, and very quickly, gets the hang of things.
Like a madman, he searches up every single thing he can find about the film.
And then, as a matter of course, he lands on the word “homosexuality”———
He stares for a very long time.
It’s his first time hearing of it, and even though it’s supposed to sound unfamiliar to him, instead it feels profoundly familiar and pleasant.
He decides to buy Brokeback Mountain. Not the pirated kind found in stalls at the side of the road, but the real version, the highest quality DVD. It’s the only thing that does such a perfect film justice, that does proper service to the impact it had on him.
He’s going to buy it, and gift it to You Xiaolin.
Chen Xingze searches and discovers that the film has never played in domestic cinemas before, although it should be found in some DVD stores. And so, in the following days, he runs to almost every single DVD store in the entire city. In the end, he finally finds the film in a store run by a foreigner who specialises in selling American DVDs.
He buys it with lunch money he saved for a week, and on the way home, he smiles and hugs the disc to his chest like a bouquet of flowers.
He sends the DVD to You Xiaolin by mail.
By his calculations, You Xiaolin should receive the parcel on Friday, so it won’t disturb his studying during the week. He can watch the movie at night and then Saturday is their weekly call.
He had it all planned out.
Except on Saturday, no call comes. When he calls, it’s You Xiaolin’s mother who picks up, and she says that You Xiaolin went to school early that morning for self-revision. He’s disappointed, but chalks it up to bad timing.
Every day of the following week passes excruciatingly slow, but when Saturday comes around again, there’s still no call.
You Xiaolin went to school again.
Chen Xingze can’t wait any longer; it’s been half a month since he heard his voice. He goes to Yutian Middle School but is blocked at the gates by the security guard because he isn’t a Yutian student. So he waits outside.
It’s a foggy, chilly day. Chen Xingze, afraid of missing You Xiaolin, doesn’t dare move from his spot. He waits outside the gates for four hours, and finally, You Xiaolin appears. The second Chen Xingze catches his silhouette, flowers bloom in his heart.
“You Xiaolin!”
You Xiaolin was walking with his eyes staring at the ground, but he jumps at the sound of someone calling his name. He looks up, sees Chen Xingze, and immediately he frowns, walking around him.
Chen Xingze stops him. “What, we don’t talk for a few days and you don’t recognise me?”
You Xiaolin shakes his head.
Chen Xingze sees that something is wrong. “What is it?”
He keeps shaking his head.
All of a sudden, Chen Xingze remembers to ask him, “Did you get the thing I sent you? Why didn’t you tell me? And not being home two weeks in a row, what’s going on?”
Then, You Xiaolin looks Chen Xingze in the eye. His stare pierces through Chen Xingze’s heart, sending a chill through him, enlightening him of something.
“You’re asking me what’s going on? I should be asking you, why would you send me something so disgusting?”
Chen Xingze is frozen.
Life can’t always be peaceful.
Our years of ignorance inevitably end, whether it’s in the way we wish it to or not.
It’s Chen Xingze’s first time fighting with You Xiaolin, his first time raising his voice at him, his first time grabbing You Xiaolin’s wrists with an iron-clad grip that’s a far contrast from how gentle he usually is.
It’s also his first time crying in front of You Xiaolin.
“Say that again.” He’s so angry that his voice is shaking. “Who are you calling disgusting? Say that again!”
You Xiaolin doesn’t back down, looking like he does when he’s correcting Chen Xingze’s homework mistakes. “Why would you watch something like that? It was so disgusting I couldn’t even eat for days. What are you even spending your time on instead of studying properly? What will you do if your parents or teachers see it?” He’s enraged as well, words coming out of him in quick succession. “Don’t worry, I already destroyed the disc and threw it out. Stop messing around from now on!”
Chen Xingze is shocked into numbness.
With no more tears left to shed, he turns his head to the side. Cars pass up and down the street, and all of a sudden, he remembers a scene from the movie. If he died of an accident like Jack, would You Xiaolin regret it? Would he regret having said something so hurtful? ¹
“Don’t watch those kinds of things anymore, otherwise—”
“Apologise.”
“What?”
Chen Xingze watches the stream of cars that pass. “I said apologise,” he says quietly.
“Chen Xingze?” You Xiaolin, perplexed and concerned, adds, “Don’t be like this anymore. I worry about you, always walking down wayward paths.”
He can’t stay here any longer; otherwise he’ll pass out on the spot.
He stops a taxi and goes home.
A kaleidoscope of neon lights flash outside the car window. You Xiaolin chases after the car, yelling something. Chen Xingze closes his eyes.
__
He falls ill, the sickness in his heart manifesting on his body in the form of a fever that won’t go away. Wu Xingzhi, worried sick, takes him to doctor after doctor, but he doesn’t get better. Eventually the fever turns into pneumonia, and he ends up hospitalised. He’s allergic to erythrocin and every injection makes him vomit without stop. After days of not being able to eat anything, he loses a lot of weight.
At some point, his mother informs him that someone calls the house repetitively, asking after him.
“Who?”
“You Xiaolin, obviously. Your best friend.”
When Chen Xingze contacts Zhang Yao asking for news, he learns that You Xiaolin hasn’t been doing so well and did so poorly on a mock exam that the teacher lectured him multiple times.
He lies in his hospital bed. Outside, white clouds drift in a clear, blue sky and birds sing among the flowers.
On a similarly beautiful day, he goes looking for You Xiaolin again.
“I’m sorry about before, I shouldn’t have sent you something like that.”
He once wondered how far he would go for You Xiaolin.
“I just thought it was interesting so I wanted to show you.”
He could probably die for him.
“But now I’ve realised, thank goodness you threw it away so no one finds out.”
If he could even die for him, this is nothing, isn’t it?
Knives stab his heart, but he has to keep his voice conversational, calm. He’s not used to it now, but he imagines that one day, he will be.
“You scared me, I thought you really got possessed by the devil. I haven’t even been able to study properly,” You Xiaolin laughed, “but thank goodness you’re alright. Don’t be like this in the future.”
“Haha, yeah.”
__
Chen Xingze comes to an understanding that day. He realises that different people react to the same thing in different ways, and sometimes in opposite ways. It isn’t as simple as determining who’s right or wrong. If he died, You Xiaolin would likely regret it, but that’s not the kind of regret he wants. He could be Jack, but You Xiaolin would never be Ennis. ²
In hindsight, as he’s on his way back home, Chen Xingze realises belatedly that when he found out that this movie had been banned from playing in Chinese cinemas, when he ran to every DVD store in the entire city and couldn’t find a single copy of this movie, he should have understood some things.
Ah no :(( poor Chen Xingze
Thanks for the chapter <3
Wow if this is true story I hope they are alright
I cried a ton… 😭
Thanks for the chapter!