Chapter 2:
I Was Still a Student Back Then
✦ ✦ ✦
“YESTERDAY WAS HIS seventh day!!”
The tapping of the keyboard stopped. He Yu stood up from the desk in the faculty dorm room. The apartment wasn’t even sixty square meters. Next door, in the living room, a tedious variety show about poetry was playing on an old-fashioned TV. The program was accompanied by the static humming of the faulty signal.
The sofa was still that sofa in the story. The snacks for the tea, the tin of biscuits—they were all still there. But the time on the clock read 8:09, and the streetlights were on outside. It was the middle of summer, and the air was very humid. Moths circled beneath the lights, mosquitoes buzzed low to the ground, and rain had yet to fall.
He Yu left the little study in the faculty dorm. When he opened the door, light spilled in at an angle through the filthy windowpanes, making the entire space seem rather surreal, more so than the story he had just finished writing.
A young woman lay on the sofa. The air conditioning was set to a very low temperature, and she was sleeping under a coral fleece blanket. Before her were several crumpled tissues that had been used to wipe away tears and snot.
“Wake up,” said He Yu.
“Ngh…”
“Get up.”
“Not so loud… I barely even fell asleep…” The young woman groaned wearily, smacking her lips. “Gonna nap for a bit longer…”
He Yu was about to say something else, but the variety show on the TV started introducing an old movie.
“There’s a Brokeback Mountain in every person’s heart…”
He gave up trying to wake her up and took the remote to change the channel.
He Yu really disliked homosexuality.
“Welcome, everybody, to our medical wellness program today…”
He changed the channel again. He Yu also disliked doctors and hospitals.
“Once, Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly fluttering about…”5
This time, he left the program on. Given his tastes, he could accept this as background noise.
He Yu put down the remote and glanced over at the snoring woman still lying on her back. He turned and walked into the kitchen. He opened the greasy refrigerator, and the light from the appliance illuminated his face.
After he surveyed the refrigerator’s contents several times, he took out two eggs and a chunk of ham, as well as a bowl of yesterday’s leftovers. Then, he raised his voice to ask the woman sleeping in the living room, “Xie Xue, do you have green onions here? I can’t find any.”
The woman didn’t move.
“I’ll make you Yangzhou fried rice.”
There was no response from the living room. He Yu glanced back again to see that the young woman had gotten off the sofa and was leaning against the kitchen doorway.
“…Then you’ll need two eggs, plus a big piece of luncheon meat,” the woman said, then hesitated. “Do you know how?”
He Yu rolled up his sleeves and looked back at her with a suave smile. “Sit outside and wait. It’ll be ready soon.”
The woman named Xie Xue tottered away to wander around the other rooms. Seeing that the computer in the study was switched on, she sat down to skim over the opened Word document. “He Yu! Did you use me as your muse?”
The range hood was too loud. “What?” He Yu asked.
“I said! Did you! Use me! As your muse?!” Xie Xue brought his laptop out. “For the Xie-laoshi in this ghost story!”
“Oh.” He fell silent for a while before cracking an egg with a smile. “Yep. You’re exactly the person I imagined. Art imitates reality, Xie-laoshi.”
“But you wrote that you were secretly in love with me?”
“…Art is not the same as reality, Xie-laoshi.”
But that last part was a lie.
He really was secretly in love with her.
He Yu and Xie Xue had known each other for more than ten years. Xie Xue was five years older than him. This was her first year as a lecturer teaching screenwriting and directing in the School of Fine Arts at Huzhou University. He Yu was one of the students in her class.
When Xie Xue first saw the roster for the incoming screenwriting and directing majors, she had sent a shocked message to He Yu. “Fuck, what a coincidence! One of the boys in the two classes I’m teaching has the same exact name as you!”
At the time, He Yu had been on a plane. He was sitting in a window seat and looking out at the flickering lamplight of the airport tarmac with his cheek propped up on one hand. His phone dinged, and a familiar profile picture popped up. He looked at the message from the girl he had been in love with for ten years and was just about to reply when the request for all passengers to switch their devices to airplane mode sounded over the intercom.
He Yu tilted his head and thought for a minute. He didn’t reply to her message before turning off his phone.
How could there be so many coincidences in this world?
Idiot.
He had fought for this opportunity himself, of course. It was completely unlike the story He Yu had written.
As for He Yu himself, not only was he not penniless, he wasn’t ugly either. He was blessed with a very handsome face, and as the son of a pharmaceutical tycoon, he had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth and attended high school overseas. But less than thirty minutes after finding out that Xie Xue had become a lecturer at Huzhou University upon graduating, He Yu applied for the institution’s School of Fine Arts.
Several months later, the semester began.
However, the newly appointed Xie-laoshi was too young; she didn’t understand how treacherous workplaces could get.