“Fuck.” Dragging a large suitcase and carrying a large backpack, Pan Zhi exclaimed at the first sight of Jiang Cheng. “Ahh—this place is kind of unbearable!”
“You should head back, then.” Jiang Cheng pointed at the ticket booth. “Hurry up, go get your ticket.”
“What happened to our brotherly bond?!” Pan Zhi lamented. “I came all this way, dragging all this luggage just to see you! Shouldn’t you be touched?!”
“Wow. I’m so touched,” Jiang Cheng said.
Pan Zhi glared at him for a long time, then finally opened his arms. “I really was starting to miss you.”
Jiang Cheng went over and gave him a hug. “I haven’t had a chance to.”
“Do you know why I’m your only friend?” Pan Zhi said as he let go.
“Yes.” Jiang Cheng nodded. “Because you’re a dork.”
He’d had quite a few friends back in his old city, but they were the non-essential kind. They would hang out and idly trudge around town with him, swarming like bees around small conflicts, but would disperse like startled birds if they ran into real trouble.
Pan Zhi was different. They met for the first time in ninth grade and were put in the same class when they started high school the year after. It hadn’t even been three years, but their friendship was as solid as steel. Ever since he’d come to this shitty little city, the only person Jiang Cheng missed was Pan Zhi.
“Hey boss, you know where this address is, right?” Pan Zhi asked the driver when they got into the cab.
“How could I not?” The driver chuckled in response. “It’s the best hotel we got here.”
Jiang Cheng threw Pan Zhi a glance. “You sure know how to pick them.”
“What’s there to pick? They have the most expensive rooms.” Pan Zhi rummaged in his pocket for a while, then finally produced a lighter and placed it in Jiang Cheng’s hand. “Here, do you like it?”
Jiang Cheng looked at the lighter. It was the kind of style he liked: minimalist and sleek. Two letters were engraved at the very bottom. He leaned in close and squinted. “What’s this you carved here? ‘J.C.’… Like Jesus?”
“J.C., your initials,” Pan Zhi said. “Neat, huh?”
“…Real neat.” Jiang Cheng tucked the lighter away in his pocket. “How long are you staying for?”
“Two days,” Pan Zhi said with a sigh. “School’s starting soon.”
“What’s the big sigh for?”
“It’s just annoying—classes, tests, homework, worksheets.” Pan Zhi frowned. “If I was like you and absorbed everything without even trying, and I ranked in the top ten without even going to class, I wouldn’t be sighing either.”
“Who said I don’t try?” Jiang Cheng gave him a side-eye. “It’s not like you don’t remember any of the times I stayed up all night studying.”
“But the point is, it doesn’t make a difference even if I stay up ten nights in a row,” Pan Zhi whined. He sighed again. “Oh, fuck, I know why I missed you so much. Now that you’re gone, I have no one to show me the answers during tests!”
“Time to drop out,” Jiang Cheng said.
Pan Zhi glared at him. “Where’s your humanity?”
Jiang Cheng grinned and didn’t answer.
Pan Zhi might not have been happy with this little city, but he was satisfied with the hotel. When they arrived at his room, he carefully inspected the bed, the shower, and the toilet before announcing his verdict: “Not bad.”
“Let’s go get something to eat.” Jiang Cheng checked the time. “Barbecue?”
“Mhm.” Pan Zhi opened his suitcase. “I have another present for you.”
“Hm?” Jiang Cheng sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Why don’t you take a guess?” Pan Zhi reached inside his luggage and rummaged around.
Jiang Cheng swept his gaze over the suitcase. It was stuffed to the brim with small and large packages of various snacks and food; it didn’t look like there was room for anything else. “A tin whistle,” he said.
“Shit.” Pan Zhi laughed as he pulled out a long black leather pouch from the very bottom. “Was that too easy, or are we just too in sync?”
“It was way too easy.” Jiang Cheng accepted the pouch and pulled out a black tin whistle, turning it over in his hands. “It’s nice.”
“A Susato, in D,” Pan Zhi said. “I bought the right one, right? Isn’t it exactly the same as your old one?”
“Yes.” Jiang Cheng gave it a try. “Thanks.”
“Don’t smash it again—this one’s a gift from me.”
“Yeah.” Jiang Cheng put the tin whistle back in its pouch.
He wasn’t in the habit of smashing things out of anger. After all, he had been trained in the virtue of restraint for nearly two decades. He might get into fights and beat people up, but it was only rarely that he’d take his temper out on inanimate objects. The only reason he’d broken his tin whistle was because there was no other outlet for his rage; it wasn’t like he could go have it out with his old man.
Since he wasn’t going home tonight, he hesitated for a moment over whether to text Li Baoguo or give him a call. He eventually settled on calling, and Li Baoguo took a long time to pick up.
“HELLO!”
He could tell from the noise in the background that Li Baoguo was playing mahjong again. Jiang Cheng didn’t know what to think. He wondered if his mom knew about this particular habit. But then again, considering the family dynamic had been ruined by his very existence, perhaps it wasn’t a big deal to her at all.
“My friend is here to visit me, so I’m not going back tonight,” he said. “I’ll be staying at the hotel.”
“Ah, a friend visiting?” Li Baoguo coughed a few times. “Go play with your friend, then. What are you calling me for? I thought something happened to you.”
“…Bye then.”
Li Baoguo simply hung up without another word.
“This dad of yours…” Pan Zhi looked at him. “What kind of person is he?”
“Dunno. He smokes, coughs, snores, and gambles.”
“But you smoke too—and coughing? Everyone coughs sometimes…” Pan Zhi attempted to analyze the man. “Snor—”
“Are you done?” Jiang Cheng cut him off.
Pan Zhi waved his hand. “Barbecue!”
The barbecue wasn’t anything special, but Pan Zhi enjoyed it immensely. Jiang Cheng didn’t eat as much as he had the day before—after all, he was a delicate flower freshly recovered from illness—but even so, coming out of the restaurant, he still felt bloated from eating too much.
“You really are in a bad mood,” Pan Zhi said. “That pork belly was pretty good, but you only ate a little…”
“Good eye.” Jiang Cheng nodded. His mood wasn’t so low that he had no appetite, but he didn’t want Pan Zhi to know he threw up the day before on top of running a fever.
“Let’s walk for a bit.” Pan Zhi patted his stomach. “Is there anything fun to do around here?”
“No,” Jiang Cheng said. After a pause, he added, “I don’t know.”
“Hey, where’s your new school at?” Pan Zhi said suddenly. “Shall we go check it out?”
“Now?” Jiang Cheng tugged at his collar. “Nope.”
“Tomorrow, then. It’s winter break anyway, it’s not like there’s gonna be anyone there. Let’s go see what the campus looks like.” Pan Zhi slung an arm around his shoulder. “Didn’t you go take a look when you filed the paperwork or anything?”
“It’s not like you don’t know whether I’ve been or not.” Jiang Cheng was growing a little irritated.
Pan Zhi chuckled. “Oh, right, you just got here.”
His new life and environment exasperated and unsettled Jiang Cheng, but the presence of Pan Zhi brought him a little solace. In this strange and unknown territory, there was finally a familiar person by his side.
Jiang Cheng stayed up most of the night talking with Pan Zhi, though he could hardly remember what either of them said. It was just like the days they spent chatting on the edge of the school field, talking about nothing and everything. It didn’t really matter what they talked about—the important thing was having someone he could confide in.
They finally dozed off for a while just before dawn, only to be rudely awoken a little past eight by the blaring horn of a semi-truck passing outside.
“What the… Aren’t we in the city?” Pan Zhi held on tightly to the duvet. “Since when can trucks drive straight up to the entrance of a hotel?”
“Dunno.” Jiang Cheng kept his eyes shut.
“They have breakfast. Should I get them to send it up now?” Pan Zhi asked him.
“Sure,” Jiang Cheng said. “Did you sleep?”
“I might have,” Pan Zhi said, laughing. “What’s the plan for today?”
“Let’s go check out the school together,” Jiang Cheng said. “Then we can see if there’s anything fun to do around here, but I doubt we’ll find anything in the dead of winter.”
“It’s all right. I’m the kind of guy who’s very focused on mental fulfillment,” Pan Zhi said. “I came here to see you, so I’m good.”
“How about I take a nap later, and you can pull up a stool and keep watching me?” Jiang Cheng said.
“Hey.” Pan Zhi leaned in and stared at him for a while. “Have you not been talking very much the last couple of days?”
“Why?” Jiang Cheng yawned.
“You’re talking more than you used to. Have you been bottling stuff up?” Pan Zhi asked.
Jiang Cheng considered it. “…Maybe.”
Maybe Pan Zhi was right. Before he got here, Jiang Cheng had had nothing to say, and no one to say it to.
They located the new school on the map; it wasn’t very far from Li Baoguo’s place. As for what kind of school it was, Jiang Cheng hadn’t looked it up, and wasn’t particularly eager to find out.
There was a lot of bureaucratic nonsense involved in the process of transferring high schools. From the minute his parents began the administrative process without a hint of reluctance, he had lost interest in practically everything in his life. He couldn’t even get his spirits up for a fight. It was as though something had been wrenched out of his body. He was a pile of mud looking for an appropriate hole in the ground to fill.