As of late, Lu Hao has been acting strange. He’s almost even more dense than he was before.
One day when they’re in the schoolyard, his mind appears to be elsewhere, and he trips down the stairs, falling flat on his butt. Chen Xingze stands beside him and comments, “You remind me of an Afghan hound.”
Lu Hao crawls up from the ground, mumbling, “What’s that?”
“In other words, the dumbest breed of dog that exists,” says Chen Xingze.
Lu Hao doesn’t reply.
“Do you know how stupid it is?”
“No.”
“I heard that in an experiment, it was held on a leash and walked in a straight line. At some point, the dog walker sneaked off, but the dog kept walking forward until it hit something.”
“…”
Despite being compared to such a stupid creature, Lu Hao doesn’t retaliate. He dusts himself off and keeps on walking, seemingly deep in thought the entire time.
Chen Xingze doesn’t know what kind of stroke Lu Hao is having; he asks twice what’s going on, but the latter doesn’t give him much of an answer, so he doesn’t keep asking. He just offers an occasional remark whenever the atmosphere gets awkward.
A week passes in this muddled way, until one dark, windy evening, Lu Hao calls Chen Xingze to meet him at the basketball courts.
“Are we having a meeting or something? What’s with the formality?” Chen Xingze laughs and walks with his hands in his pockets, but suddenly, he gets yanked over by Lu Hao so that they’re facing each other. The movement startles him and sends his nostrils flaring. “Are you gonna murder me or something?”
“Chen Xingze.” Lu Hao utters his name somberly and stares at him in a way that makes goosebumps rise along his arms.
“…Seriously, what is it?”
“I didn’t really want to tell you at first,” Lu Hao said seriously, “but I’m not really good at keeping secrets and just keeping quiet this past week already has me bursting at the seams, so I’ve decided to just tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“I heard your conversation with Na Lili the other day.”
“What?”
“That day, the day you wanted to talk with Na Lili in private, I followed you… but I didn’t follow you because I meant to eavesdrop.”
Comprehension finally dawns on him and he lets out a quiet ah.
“I didn’t go on purpose, really! I just, I wasn’t that hungry, so I just…” Lu Hao fumbles around, trying to explain, his face flushing crimson.
Except Chen Xingze’s mind is on a completely different brainwave. “So the reason you’ve been acting so strange this past week is because you figured out I’m gay?”
“Huh?”
Chen Xingze studies him. “It’s a bit awkward, huh?” He forces a casual smile on his face.
This time, Lu Hao is the one who finally comprehends and quickly yells, “No! That’s not what I mean! What are you even thinking?!” His hollers are so frenzied that spittle practically comes flying out. “I was just, it’s because I felt bad for secretly eavesdropping and hearing your secret!”
Chen Xingze stares at the desperate Lu Hao before him, struggling to prove his innocence. He wipes a hand across his face. “…You got spit on me.”
“Sorry, but that’s really not why I was acting weird,” Lu Hao says quietly.
“That’s that, then.”
Lu Hao looks down miserably. “I felt like maybe you didn’t intend for too many people to know… but my mum says if you wanna be friends with someone, you’ve gotta be straightforward and express all your feelings, so after I thought about it for a week…”
“You thought about such a minor thing for an entire week? Your brain cells are really something.”
“It was a real struggle, alright? I wanted to tell you except I was afraid you’d be mad.”
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 pats Lu Hao on the shoulder comfortingly. “Relax, I wouldn’t get mad over such a thing. Come on, let’s go back to class.”
Lu Hao catches up to him and adds, “There’s one more thing…”
“What?”
“You-You Xiaolin… is he the one you like?”
Chen Xingze turns around to look at him.
“It’s just a wild guess!” Lu Hao says hurriedly.
“You guessed right, I suppose.”
“Really? You really like him?” Lu Hao asks as he stares back.
“He’s the reason I came to this school.” After confessing this, Chen Xingze feels strangely unburdened.
Lu Hao lets out an oh.
As Chen Xingze continues walking on, Lu Hao chatters from the back, “So you like those delicate types.”
“No shit, did you think I would like bulky, large types like you?” Chen Xingze retorts. The actual intention behind his words, though, are to set Lu Hao at ease. He doesn’t want Lu Hao feeling like it’s risky for them to hang out together.
“I’m not that large, geez! Besides, what’s wrong with being large? It’s manly!”
Chen Xingze coughs dryly. “Sorry, I’m a one.”
“What does that mean?”
Well…
Chen Xingze doesn’t explain. One, because it’s a private matter, and two, because it’s not a safe topic. Even though Lu Hao’s reaction to homosexuality wasn’t as pronounced as You Xiaolin’s, it’s likely that only the “love” part about it has crossed his mind, and not the “sex” part.
Therefore, this is the right place to halt the conversation, Chen Xingze thinks. No matter what, a man sleeping with another man is a strange thing to most people. Chen Xingze genuinely likes Lu Hao; he doesn’t want to become a strange person in his eyes.
“Let’s go already.” He pushes Lu Hao along, putting an end to the conversation.
__
The whole matter concludes quite nicely.
But it’s this proper conclusion that makes Chen Xingze regret how he went about things back then with You Xiaolin. It’s so easy to act impulsively when you’re young; if he had been more levelheaded back then, if, rather than directly sending a gay film, he’d gone about it the way he spoke with Lu Hao—taken slow, easy steps—then maybe their relationship right now wouldn’t be so awkward.
Maybe with the passing of time, You Xiaolin would even have felt moved.
…
Rfnfg wlcv.
Pa’r yfaafg cba ab vjsvgfjw.
What a headache.
“Oi, oi!”
A voice pulls Chen Xingze out from his trance. Lu Hao is standing next to his desk in dissatisfaction.
“Why are you ignoring me?”
Hand massaging his neck, Chen Xingze replies, “Is something up?”
“Class is over, let’s go out for a walk.”
“Why do you want to go for a walk after every single period?”
Lu Hao drags a reluctant Chen Xingze out of the classroom to walk down the halls aimlessly. As he’s yawning, Lu Hao elbows him and then points him towards something in the distance. “You see that boy?” he asks in a hushed voice. “That one, that one, the one that just walked out of the office… do you find him attractive? Is he your type?”
Chen Xingze glances over and recognises Class 3’s class representative, scholarly and studious-looking in his glasses.
Ever since the night at the basketball courts, it’s as if a whole new world has been introduced to Lu Hao, who turns into a curious child, spontaneously bursting into a barrage of questions.
In the beginning Chen Xingze is bamboozled by it, but as time passes, he starts to see the benefit. After all, humans need socialisation. It’s nice to have someone to talk to rather than hiding all these secrets until the point of exhaustion.
“Nope,” he answers swiftly. Instead, he looks out the window and points out another person. “You see that one from Class 7? That’s more my type.”
Lu Hao follows his finger. “Isn’t he too skinny?”
I told you, I’m a one.
Lu Hao turns to Chen Xingze and asks quietly, “Have you been into anyone before? Besides You Xiaolin.”
“Nope.”
“So you have no experience then? Are you able to tell if others are like you?”
Chen Xingze pauses for a few beats. “I… Probably…” But he’s not sure. He had perceived so-called ‘gayness’ in certain boys, but his attention before had always been too centered on You Xiaolin and there had never been any space for anyone else.
When he comes back to his senses, Lu Hao is studying him intensely.
“…What?”
“P offi ilxf atja’r cba gfjiis gfiljyif.”
“Let?”
“Gb sbe tjnf oglfcvr ogbw atja mlgmif?”
“…No.”
Lu Hao presses his lips together.
The bell rings and they return to class. But Chen Xingze stops paying attention for the latter half of the period. Lu Hao’s words ring through his mind. He comes to the realisation that he knows very little about that world; all he’s ever had are You Xiaolin and the movie. He can’t help wondering how others like him live. Where do they study? What jobs do they hold? Did they, like him, ever fall for a straight person before? Had they also experienced suffering because of their feelings before?
Once the seed is planted, it grows.
Human beings are social creatures; seeking out kin is instinctual and natural. After Chen Xingze ponders the matter for a few days, he takes action. Over the weekend, he goes to the Internet cafe. For the sake of convenience, he gets himself a private room and locks the door before opening a webpage.
He’s never searched this stuff on the Internet before and clicks around in inexperience before randomly stumbling into a chatroom. As soon as he enters, a photo pops up off two muscular men engaging in intimate exercise. The photo jerks in stop-motion animation, scaring him.
Loud words pop out from the image—
Xbivfc ilylvb!
Obnf klatbea jyjcvbc!
Oeyf!
Long-lasting boner!
“What the heck…” Chen Xingze closes the advert, feeling perturbed, and enters the chatroom.
The content in the chatroom ends up being astoundingly similar to what’s on the advert, an endless stream of wantonness. As he scrolls through the chat, his body warms up and his hand moves unconsciously down.
At the end of the day, all men are creatures without full control over their sexual organ. Chen Xingze has more self-control than most; he swiftly looks through the chatroom until he finds a thread without too many comments on it, takes down the number left there, and leaves.
Outside the Internet cafe, he’s red and burning and his heart thuds wildly. The cafe isn’t too far from school. In the distance, the peach blossom trees are just barely visible. Chen Xingze stares at the intertwining branches, slowly willing himself to regain his composure.
__
In the middle of the night, within a luxurious suite of a five-star hotel, Mi Sheng is showering.
Water falls in rivulets down his body, following paths ordained by his muscles and tendons. His long, elegant body just barely visible in the foggy steam.
After the shower, he puts on a robe and walks before the mirror. A pale white face looks back at him; he stares at it for a while, then walks out.
The scent of liquor weighs heavily in the air of the hotel room. Clothes lay scattered all over the place. On the bed is a man, still and silent. From the back, the man’s hair looks thin and balding—he’s probably middle-aged.
Mi Sheng walks over and lifts one long, straight leg, giving the man a rough kick.
“You dead yet?”
The man fidgets in clear discomfort.
Mi Sheng lets out a chuckle, swipes a box of cigarettes from the table, yanks out a cigarette, lights it.
His hair isn’t dry yet, all of it combed back, revealing his exquisite features.
As he smokes, he stares out at the night sky. The air had been hazy with smog all morning; even now, it’s a turbid night. Mi Sheng turns back around, finding nothing in particularly scenic to look at. With the cigarette squashed between his teeth, he squints and starts digging through the man’s clothing on the floor.
“Where’s his wallet?”
He turns the clothing inside out but finds nothing. With a bitter smile, he says, “Gao Xiwen you bastard, are you fucking playing me?” He walks over and kicks the man. “Never mind the money, if you dare not pay me for the job I did, I’ll fucking make sure all your shitty secrets get out!”
After letting out a barrage of insults, Mi Sheng snuffs out the cigarette, unties his robe, and changes into proper clothing. Halfway through dressing, there’s a dinging sound. He grabs Gao Xiwen’s phone from the nightstand at the front of the bed—there’s a new message notification.
Mi Sheng pulls up his pants while looking down at the phone.
—Hello, my name is Chen Xingze. I found your phone number from a socialising website. Am I disrupting you?
Eyebrows raised, Mi Sheng shoots a look at Gao Xiwen. The man has two phone numbers: One for formal business, and another for personal frolicking. “Christ, Gao Xiwen, leaving your number on a socialising site when you’re a director.” With a devious grin, his elegantly long fingers start tapping on the screen.
—Send a photo.
In another city some 700 kilometres away, Chen Xingze reads this message from beneath his covers.
“A photo… that’s so forward,” he mumbles to himself. “Shouldn’t the first thing be ‘hello’ instead of asking for a photo…?”
But despite thinking this, it’s his first time ever messaging someone like him. So he flips through his photo album until he finds a photo that he thinks looks okay, and sends it off with full sincerity.
Mi Sheng is fumbling with the buttons on his shirt when the text comes in. After he clicks open the photo, his hands still.
“Oh-ho.”
The boy in the photo looks young, but his handsome features are already set. It’s a picture taken in front of a bunch of blossoms. The boy wears a dark-coloured coat, a few petals hanging on his shoulders. There’s a silhouette of some other high schooler behind him.
Mi Sheng studies the photo for a while, then cuts straight to the chase.
—Are you a 1 or a 0, or both are cool?
—1.
Mi Sheng grins.
—I’m giving this number to someone else. Use another number to contact me in the future.
He sends over his own number, and two seconds later there’s a message on his own phone.
—Is this the one?
“How obedient,” Mi Sheng comments as he deletes Chen Xingze’s messages from Gao Xiwen’s phone. Then he puts on his coat and waves Gao Xiwen’s phone at the man lying on the bed. “I’ll take this as payment for the wallet I can’t find.”
And then he leaves.
Long coat billowing in the night wind.
oh! Who is Mi Sheng?!
thanks for the chapter! <3
I’m worried about CX, but I really hope he can somehow get over YX
That’s dangerous, Chen Xingze!!
How can he talk to some stranger?! He’s really desperate, huh.
Thanks for the chapter!
When they told me not to talk to strangers on the internet I took it for granted and protected myself accordingly. Never thought there’d actually be people this careless!!! QAQ
Is this new character good or bad or is he going to act as a means for MC to grow up?