Chapter 14
THE BUS ROUTE back home from the cemetery was long, winding halfway around the city. Gu Fei leaned against the window, swaying along with the bus. He barely sat through two stops before he fell asleep.
When he opened his eyes, he was still one stop from home, but it was already past eight. He pulled out his phone to check: no messages from Jiang Cheng, so he probably hadn’t arrived yet.
There was also a message from Gu Miao, consisting of only two words:
– I ate.
Their downstairs neighbor had a small catering business. Sometimes, when he returned too late to make dinner, Gu Miao would go to their neighbor’s house to eat, and Gu Fei would pay the neighbor off at the end of the month.
Sometimes, when she felt like it, their mother would also cook up a meal or two.
Their mother’s cooking was delicious—he and Gu Miao both liked it—but they rarely had the chance to enjoy it.
– Did you eat downstairs?
– yeah Gu Fei put his phone back in his pocket and walked to the door, ready to disembark. The kiddo was getting colder and colder these days. She even skimped on words when she was typing.
In the old city during winter, eight-something was already quite late; for these streets in particular, which were older than old, it was as good as midnight.
Stores were mostly closed by now, and nobody went outside except to play cards or mahjong.
As Gu Fei ambled toward his own store, still a long way off, he saw someone standing at the door. In the dim light, he could see the guy jumping back and forth on the sidewalk, like he was dancing.
Jiang Cheng?
He hastened his steps. Now he could make out that the person with his neck tucked into his jacket, his hands in his pockets, and his feet leaping up and down the steps outside the store was indeed Jiang Cheng.
Before he could announce himself, Jiang Cheng turned and saw him.
“Holy shit!” Jiang Cheng exclaimed. Gu Fei couldn’t tell if it was from the cold or if Jiang Cheng was trying to sound threatening, but his voice was a low growl. “Get here tomorrow, why don’t you?!”
Gu Fei realized it must be from the cold. Jiang Cheng’s voice was shaking, and he could even hear the chatter of his teeth knocking together.
“Sorry,” Gu Fei said as he dug out the keys. “I was on the bus. It was slow.”
“Okay, but,” Jiang Cheng pointed at the locked door to the store, “you run a pretty casual business here, huh?”
“Huh?” Gu Fei glanced back at him.
“Before he left just now, the doctor next door said you’ve been closed all afternoon.”
“Really.” Gu Fei opened the door and the warm air inside rushed out.
“Today was my mom’s turn to watch the store. She…must’ve had something else to do in the afternoon.”
“Move-move-move-move—” Jiang Cheng followed him, then pushed him aside and ran into the store. He hopped in place for a while before slamming his butt down on a chair. “Shit, I was freezing to death.”
“When did you get here?” Gu Fei brought a space heater over to him and turned it on.
Jiang Cheng tossed the bag of clothes onto the cash register. “Seven-fifty.”
Gu Fei was taken aback. “That’s early.”
“I,” Jiang Cheng said, pointing to himself, “was raised to be punctual.”
Gu Fei stared at him. “Why didn’t you tell me you were here?” he asked at last.
“Would you have been able to get here if I did?” Jiang Cheng said.
“Besides, my phone was so cold it wouldn’t turn on.”
“Then why didn’t you go home first?” Gu Fei brought a glass over and put a slice of lemon in it, then filled it with hot water before handing it to Jiang Cheng. “I could’ve gone over to pick it up.”
“What’s with all the useless questions?” Jiang Cheng took the glass and sipped, glaring at the heater.
Gu Fei didn’t push the issue. “I’ll give your clothes to you tomorrow morning. I brought them home to wash.”
“Huh?” Jiang Cheng looked up at him. “They’re not easy to wash, though, what with the blood and all.”
“It was fine. I’ve washed it off now anyway.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Gu Fei sat down behind the cash register, resting his legs on the counter. He added, “It was mostly because they were too gross not to wash. And it’s not like you took them with you.”
“…Fuck,” Jiang Cheng said. “I forgot to.”
After that, neither of them spoke.
Gu Fei half-reclined very comfortably behind the counter as he played with his phone. Jiang Cheng had no phone to play with, so he just sat in his chair, zoning out. He knew that all the businesses around here were closing around this time, aside from the gambling dens. Gu Fei was probably waiting for him to leave so he could lock up, but Jiang Cheng didn’t want to go.
Li Baoguo’s house was a circus today. For whatever reason, he’d suddenly gone crazy and invited a whole bunch of people over to play mahjong. Li Baoguo had adroitly fixed the windowpanes he broke this afternoon, and Jiang Cheng was quite impressed. He had to hand it to the older generation when it came to being handy around the house. But before he had time to collect himself —before he’d even had ten of the dumplings Li Baoguo claimed to have made for him—half a dozen men and women filled the apartment and descended upon him. They surrounded him completely, examining him, asking him all kinds of questions and discussing them in front of him.
What a neat deal, getting someone else to raise your son to this age!
Look at that, kids raised in the big city just aren’t the same, are they?
Your adoptive parents must be pretty rich!
They have to be. Look at the way he dresses, the way he carries himself…
Tsk, tsk, tsk… At last, a middle-aged woman with mannerisms so exaggerated she could have been a meme said, One look will tell anyone he’s your son, just look, look! See how much he looks like Li Baoguo! Exactly the same!
Jiang Cheng had been clenching his jaw the entire time, suppressing so much anger that he was turning into a red bell pepper. When he heard this, he lost it.
Looks like him? Looks like my foot! Exactly the same, my ass!
He pushed the crowd aside and stormed back to his room, slamming the door behind him. Only then did they give up. Li Baoguo’s guests then proceeded to eat all the remaining dumplings in the pot, even the three left in Jiang Cheng’s bowl that he didn’t have time to finish.
Every day, Jiang Cheng found himself living through all sorts of bizarre situations—wherever he looked, something ridiculous was happening. He could barely catch his breath.
When he walked up to the entrance of Li Baoguo’s building after school, he could tell they were still in there just from the noise. It didn’t seem like they were going to leave anytime tonight, either. He didn’t bother going in; he simply turned around and left.
Jiang Cheng went to the dumpling place he’d planned to go to the day before for dinner. After texting Gu Fei, he finished his homework there in the restaurant. He didn’t get up and leave until he was the only customer left in the whole place.
He felt a loneliness he couldn’t put into words.
He couldn’t go back to his old life, nor could he fit into his current one.
He was drifting on the outskirts of everything unfamiliar, without family, without friends, and without a place he could stay and feel secure. It was as if his entire being was suspended in mid-air.
Jiang Cheng spent nearly half an hour spacing out in Gu Fei’s store. He turned to look at Gu Fei, who was still in the same position, his head buried in his phone screen.
“Are you waiting to lock up?” he asked.
Gu Fei stared at the screen, ignoring him.
“If you’re in a hurry to lock up, I’ll leave,” Jiang Cheng said. “Otherwise, I’ll stay a bit longer.”
Gu Fei still didn’t speak or move. What was he playing that had him so engrossed? Jiang Cheng hesitated, then stood up and leaned over the counter to glance at his phone.
It was that stupid mobile matching game, Aixiaochu!
“Damn,” he muttered. How could anyone be so absorbed in this game that he didn’t hear someone talking to him?
Jiang Cheng looked at the screen. It was a difficult level—there were only three moves left, but you could win as long as you made every move count. Gu Fei was probably trying to figure it out.
Bending over the counter, Jiang Cheng counted the steps and quickly figured out the next move. However, out of basic manners—the way you wouldn’t butt into a chess game you were spectating—he waited in silence.
Gu Fei remained still.
Jiang Cheng watched for almost five minutes, and he was still motionless. Including the time before he came over, Gu Fei had been mulling over these three moves for half an hour now…
Jiang Cheng thought back to what Lao-Xu said that morning: Gu Fei, well, he’s quite intelligent… So this was intelligence?
At long last, he couldn’t help himself. He reached a finger out to show Gu Fei the way. “Haven’t you worked it out?”
The moment his fingertip passed the corner of Gu Fei’s eye, before it even reached the screen, Gu Fei suddenly lifted his head and seized his finger, bending it backward.
“Ow!” Jiang Cheng yelled. Gu Fei hadn’t used a lot of force, but it gave him a shock. Thirty-foot-high flames of rage shot up inside him. He sent his fist into Gu Fei’s chest. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?!”
Gu Fei let go.
“What’s wrong with you?!” Jiang Cheng shook his hand out. Good thing he’d used his left; his wound would have reopened if it’d been his right hand.
Gu Fei stood up. Jiang Cheng watched his movements sharply, wondering if some bizarre temper had come over Gu Fei and he wanted to pick a fight.
“I…” Gu Fei tossed his phone aside and grabbed a cup, filling it halfway with water and taking a drink. “I dozed off.”
Jiang Cheng was dumbstruck. “What?”
“Sorry.” Gu Fei looked at his hand. “Are you hurt?”
“You sleep with your eyes open?” Jiang Cheng asked.
“I must have been daydreaming, then. I didn’t hear you speak.” Gu Fei sat again and fetched his phone for a look. “Were you telling me which move to make?”
“Yeah.” Jiang Cheng looked at him.
“So which move?” Gu Fei asked.
“Meditate on that yourself,” Jiang Cheng said.
Gu Fei looked down at his phone for a while, then swiped at his screen.
This was followed by a frowning, “Ah.”
Jiang Cheng glanced at him. “Dead?”
“Yup,” Gu Fei replied.
“Are you—” Jiang Cheng bit back the rest of his sentence.
“Stupid?” Gu Fei finished helpfully. “I’m playing a stupid game, aren’t I?”
“Come on, you didn’t see the vertical row of bombs you could trigger at the top right corner?” Jiang Cheng said. “Once you got the bombs, there would have been a color match, too. Then you’d only need one more move to get that one below—” Before Jiang Cheng could finish speaking, Gu Fei nodded and said, “Okay.”
Then he swiped twice on the screen. Jiang Cheng glared at him.
“I won.” Gu Fei sighed in relief and turned to look at him. “Thanks.”
Jiang Cheng was appalled. “Fuck off.”
Gu Fei threw his phone onto the countertop and stretched. “Any homework today?”
“Yeah, no shit,” Jiang Cheng said. “Are there days you don’t get homework?”
“Have you done it?”
Jiang Cheng looked at him in silence.
“Let me copy it,” Gu Fei said.
Jiang Cheng continued to stare at him. Gu Fei was asking his deskmate of two days—whom he barely knew and hadn’t seen at all for one and a half of those days—to let him copy his homework, and there wasn’t even a shred of supplication in his tone.
“Please, lend me your homework.” Gu Fei sighed. “So I can copy it.
Thank you.”
Jiang Cheng sighed too, but he also felt like laughing.
“There’s quite a lot of homework today, so you might be copying for a while.” He pulled out a few workbooks and a worksheet from his bag, dumping them on the counter. “Give them back to me tomorrow morning.”
“Never mind the worksheet, I don’t have a copy.” Gu Fei took a book and flipped through it. “This looks nothing like a top student’s handwriting.”
“Take it or leave it,” Jiang Cheng said. He wasn’t offended by that statement. His handwriting was ugly, each row wobbling across the page like a drunken boxer. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
Gu Fei stood and walked two rounds around the store before he managed to find his school bag in some corner. Just as he put his books on the table, his cell phone pinged. He tapped on the screen. It was a voice message, playing on speaker mode—sitting nearby, Jiang Cheng heard it loud and clear.
“Dage! Ge—oh, fuck! I’m sorry! Dage, I’m sorry… I’ll keep my dis— tance—agh! Stop hitting me! Stop hitting me, fuck! Stop, I’m gonna die!”
The message was full of pained cries and pleading. Jiang Cheng was stunned.
“That’s enough,” Gu Fei said into the phone.
Jiang Cheng stared at him for a good while. “Was that the guy you plastered onto the tree yesterday?”
“Mm-hm.” Gu Fei dug through his bag almost twenty times before he managed to find a pen; when he tried scribbling with it, he discovered it was out of ink. He looked at Jiang Cheng. “Got a pen?”
Jiang Cheng pulled out a pen and handed it to him.
There were different tiers of underachieving students. Pan Zhi was an underachiever, but compared to Gu Fei, he was practically a goody two-shoes.
At least Pan Zhi had pens, and more than one of them.
Gu Fei lowered his head and began copying the homework. He looked so focused right now that a passerby could have been forgiven for thinking he was a hardworking student.
Jiang Cheng sat for a while until he finally felt he couldn’t stay any longer. He could hardly sit here and wait for Gu Fei to finish copying his homework. Getting up, Jiang Cheng said, “I’m leaving.”
“I thought you had nowhere to go,” Gu Fei said as he copied.
Ding, ding, ding! Congratulations! Your answer is correct!
Jiang Cheng said nothing, filled with a humiliating, helpless bitterness.
“If you have nowhere to go, just stay here,” said Gu Fei. “Li Yan and Liu Fan and the rest of them come here and laze around when they have nothing to do, too.”
“I’m going.”
The thought that he was now equal to the Fresh Out of Jail squad in the eyes of others was a harrowing one. It almost made him lash out. He roughly pushed the curtain aside, only to slam into someone charging into the store.
“Son of a bitch!” It was a woman, and she began swearing before they even broke apart. “Son of a bitch!”
Jiang Cheng was too stunned to be angry. He stared at her, wide-eyed.
“Out of my way!” She shoved him forcefully. “Gu Fei, you asshole!”
Jiang Cheng staggered several steps back. When he made out the woman’s features, he froze. There was no need for introductions or guesswork; he could tell this was Gu Fei’s mother. They had the exact same eyes and nose.
“What are you screaming about?” Gu Fei threw down the pen and stood up, his brow furrowed.
The woman pounced on Gu Fei, aiming a slap at his face. “What did you do?!”
Gu Fei grabbed her hand and glanced at Jiang Cheng.
“Uh…” Jiang Cheng was so uncomfortable that he didn’t know where to look. “I’m off. Bye, Auntie.”
“Off where?!” The woman turned around and grasped his arm. “You’re one of this asshole’s friends, aren’t you?! Don’t you dare leave!”
Jiang Cheng was completely baffled. “Wh–what?”
“What did you all do?!” The woman slapped his arm.
Jiang Cheng didn’t dare to grab her hand the way Gu Fei did—she was Gu Fei’s mother, after all. He could only stand there and let her hit him. To be honest, she was beautiful. He just didn’t understand why she was acting like a lunatic.
“You don’t mind making a fool of yourself, huh?” Gu Fei seized her arm and threw her onto a nearby chair. He pointed at her face. “Go ahead then, try that again!”
At last, the woman stopped. Instead of lunging at them again, she suddenly burst into tears. “Am I your mother or not? What’s so wrong with me dating someone?! Did you really have to beat him up so badly he won’t see me anymore…? Do you want me to stay a widow forever?!”
The look on Gu Fei’s face was terrible. Even his hands were shaking.
Jiang Cheng had the feeling that if he hadn’t been here, Gu Fei might have slapped his mother. But even if leaving meant this woman would get slapped, Jiang Cheng had to leave. He thought he could understand how Gu Fei felt—he felt the same way about people observing his relationship with Li Baoguo.
He retreated to the doorway, and when Gu Fei glanced over, he pointed at the door. Gu Fei nodded wearily and Jiang Cheng swiftly lifted the curtain and bolted outside.
The abrasive winter wind finally scoured away the discomfort and secondhand embarrassment coursing through him. Fucking hell, what kind of wretched mother was that?!
Jiang Cheng scowled. Was there a single normal person in this goddamn city?
He heard the rattle of wheels on the ground from behind him. It was a familiar sound. He swiveled round, and sure enough, Gu Miao was zooming toward him on her skateboard.
She must have heard the noise inside as she passed the entrance of the store—she paused but didn’t stop. Instead, she kicked the ground and flew over to him like the wind. She even waved as she reached him. Jiang Cheng was just about to warn her to be careful, but she’d already pushed off on her skateboard and soared through the air, streaking past him before landing solidly ahead. With a graceful turn, she stopped.
“Why aren’t you at home?” Jiang Cheng looked at her, though he knew she wouldn’t answer.
As expected, Gu Miao didn’t speak. She stepped off her skateboard and kicked it gently, and it rolled over to Jiang Cheng’s foot.
“You want me to skateboard?” Jiang Cheng asked.
Gu Miao nodded. She tugged at the hat on her head.
“I do know how.” Jiang Cheng rubbed his hands. “But I haven’t done it in a long time.”
Gu Miao simply stared at him in silence.
Jiang Cheng could detect a smidge of defiance in her gaze. He couldn’t hold back his laugh. “Are you challenging me?”
Gu Miao leaned against a lamppost nearby, watching him with folded arms.
“Oho.” Jiang Cheng threw his school bag onto the heap of snow next to them and put one foot on the skateboard. “The little girl’s got attitude.”
Gu Miao lifted her chin at him, silently telling him to hurry up.
Jiang Cheng had enjoyed things like skating and skateboarding since elementary school. But in order to prepare for the high school entrance exam in the last year of middle school, his mother had wiped anything “irrelevant to studying” from his life.
He took a deep breath. With a kick of his foot, he rolled out.
Jiang Cheng didn’t go very fast; he didn’t know the terrain too well.
Luckily for him, Gu Miao’s skateboard was a double kick—the kind he was most familiar with. Once he got used to it, it was pretty easy.
After skateboarding for a short distance, he heard footsteps behind him.
He turned to see Gu Miao running after him. When she saw him turn his head, she immediately began to clap, but he didn’t know whether she was applauding him or urging him to speed up. At any rate, a little girl catching up to him on foot while he was on a skateboard…it was pretty funny.
Gu Miao hopped as she ran, mimicking an ollie. Jiang Cheng couldn’t embarrass himself in front of her. He steadied himself, then pushed off against the board and leaped over a little mound of snow in front of him, pointing at Gu Miao as he did.
Gu Miao’s eyes brightened. She jumped excitedly and snapped her fingers as she waved. The finger snap was so crisp and loud that Jiang Cheng was almost jealous he couldn’t replicate it.
Once he landed, he kept on gliding ahead to the corner of the street. This time, he was faster; Gu Miao didn’t follow. She stood in place and watched him.
As he turned around and rolled his way back, he risked a humiliating faceplant and jumped onto the step with the board, then back down again. Luck was on his side: He swayed slightly, but didn’t fall.
Skateboards were great stress-relievers. When you stepped onto a skateboard and rushed past the people around you like a breeze, you could leave all your boredom and frustrations behind. Doing it against the wind on a brisk winter’s day was kind of bracing, but it was also satisfying.
The road back was at a slight downward angle. Jiang Cheng accelerated, gradually getting into the groove of it. He glanced at Gu Miao. She was gazing at him with a face full of anticipation. He kept his eyes on the ground, planning to jump over that big pile of snow when he passed her.
He was at just the right speed now, the wind coursing as he went. Jiang Cheng charged ahead; the pile of snow was approaching fast. In the split second he prepared for the jump, he noticed a small piece of brick on the ground in front of him.
Fuck!
The brick was in his way, and with his rusty skills, dodging it seemed impossible. All he could do was jump early, though it meant he might land on the snow heap itself. It would all come down to the height of the jump.
He pushed off on the board and propelled himself into the air.
This time, he wasn’t so lucky.
Maybe it was too cold; maybe he was too nervous. Either way, all he knew was that there wasn’t enough power in his jump, and that he hadn’t pulled his legs in enough… He could already tell where he was going to land.
The head of the skateboard would lodge itself into the peak of the pile, he figured. As for Jiang Cheng himself, he’d probably crash onto the sidewalk up ahead.
Come on then, kid! Fly!
After a brief moment airborne, the skateboard got stuck in the snow heap, as he’d predicted. But as he began to fall, he suddenly spotted someone in front of him.
Oh, no.