When Jiang Cheng walked out of the bathroom, Gu Fei was lying belly-down on the pillow, messing around on his phone. He walked over and grabbed Gu Fei’s butt. “How come you’re face down again? Does it…hurt?”
“Nope.” Gu Fei turned his head. “Can you please use your superior skills of perception for a second? This is how I normally play on my phone.”
“Ah, really?” Jiang Cheng thought for a second, then flopped down next to him and said quietly, “You don’t need to spare my feelings if it doesn’t feel good. I’ll never improve if I don’t know what I’m lacking.”
Gu Fei didn’t answer. He tossed his phone aside and dissolved into laughter on the pillow.
“Ouch.” Jiang Cheng got out of bed and sat down at his desk. “My poor fucking ego.”
“Cheng-ge.” Gu Fei scootched to the edge of the bed and stroked Jiang Cheng’s leg. “I have to tell you the truth.”
“Go ahead.” Jiang Cheng opened a textbook.
“It felt good, really,” Gu Fei said. “Cheng-ge is nine foot two today.”
Jiang Cheng shot a sidelong look at him. “Let me tell you, if it were anyone else with that attitude, I’d have smacked them to death already. You’re the only one I tolerate.”
“Well, I’m the same,” Gu Fei said. “I can never get mad at you. I’m just afraid of you getting mad.”
“Why? Sure, I get mad sometimes, but once I let it out, I’m done. I have a hot temper, anyway; it’d be a miracle if I never got mad.” Jiang Cheng spun the pen in his hand, then put his head down to start on the worksheet. “And it’s not like I’m actually mad, I’m just…scared.”
“I know.” Gu Fei sat up and rubbed Jiang Cheng’s back. “I know.”
“You know, Gu Fei,” Jiang Cheng said as he continued writing, his voice a little low, “I don’t have a home anymore. It’s just me on my own, here, in this rented apartment. There’s nothing under my feet.”
Gu Fei looked at him and waited quietly.
“If I lean back, and you’re behind me, I feel grounded.” Jiang Cheng kept his head down as his pen scrawled nonstop across the page. “It’s not that I’m trying to avoid facing reality. It’s just that whenever I think of you not being by my side anymore, I realize I really will be just stepping into thin air.”
Gu Fei got up wordlessly and strode over, squeezing into the chair behind Jiang Cheng. He wrapped his arms around Jiang Cheng’s waist.
The room became very quiet. Gu Fei leaned his forehead against Jiang Cheng’s back. He could hear the scratching of the pen against paper, the steady sound of Jiang Cheng’s breathing—if he pressed in closer, he could even hear Jiang Cheng’s heartbeat.
✦ ✦ ✦
It felt nice.
“I’m here,” Gu Fei said quietly.
“Hm?” Jiang Cheng replied, his pen still moving.
Gu Fei often felt very impressed with this ability. More than once, while Jiang Cheng was working on an English essay, Gu Fei had seen him write a huge block of text while keeping up a conversation with him—and it didn’t seem like he made any mistakes, either.
“I’m right here. Right behind you. I’m not going anywhere,” Gu Fei said again. “So don’t be scared.”
“Mm.” Jiang Cheng smiled.
Gu Fei closed his eyes. He decided to leave it at that. He would follow Jiang Cheng’s lead and stop dwelling on certain things for now. If Jiang Cheng didn’t want to think about it, then he wouldn’t bring it up. If Jiang Cheng didn’t think it was important, he’d stop thinking about it…
What a beautiful memory; what a precious experience. It might be the only time he’d gotten to run wild in his whole life.
I’ll be here whenever you want to look back. I’ll be here whenever you’re missing home. Whenever you need me, I’ll be right here.
And I’ll stand here for as long as I can.
✦ ✦ ✦
Fourth High’s summer break finally came to an end. The returning students cursed and grumbled their dissatisfaction as they trudged back to school, but even so, everyone showed up. They all seemed to be in pretty good spirits.
Even as they complained about how short the break was, they’d found it lonely not seeing their friends at school every day. And once the extra classes started, it was time to make merriness out of pain.
No, there was definitely more merriness there.
Jiang Cheng looked around at the other students, not a single one of whom was listening to the lecture. All day long, the teachers stood up at the podium talking to themselves as the students chatted excitedly about what they’d been up to over the summer, not even bothering to control their volume.
“Go ahead! Yell a little louder! I can’t hear it clearly enough from where I’m standing!” Mr. Lu waved his pointer stick around. “Yes, I’m talking about you! You, right there! Don’t look around—you’re the most beautiful one here! Pick up a mirror and check out that saggy laziness on your own face, and you think you’re beautiful?! Oh, you’re so beautiful! A one, and a two, and sing!”
“You heard him.” Jiang Cheng was folded over his desk taking notes. He glanced at Gu Fei, who had been looking at him the whole time. “He told you to pick up a mirror and sing, ‘You’re so beautiful…’”
Grinning, Gu Fei started singing quietly. “You’re the flower bud in the chill of winter; you’re the beauty that rippled the water of spring. You’re the blessing of an angel; you’re my favorite Imperial Con—”3
“GU FEI!” Lao-Lu shouted, slamming his hand on the lectern. Gu Fei turned to look at him. “Come on up, I have a mirror right here.” Lao-Lu beckoned to him. “Come look into it and sing a few lines for me!”
Gu Fei leaned back in his chair and sighed. “…It wasn’t me.”
Jiang Cheng was certain that there was no way Lao-Lu had heard Gu Fei’s singing. Gu Fei was so quiet that probably even Zhou Jing couldn’t hear him. But Lao-Lu’s bellow still had his heart jumping into his throat, and it kept on quivering there for a good while.
“It wasn’t you?” Lao-Lu banged the lectern again. “If you weren’t singing, then get out of here!”
“So should I have been singing or not?” Gu Fei stood up in resignation and shuffled out of the classroom. Outside in the corridor, he leaned over the railing and looked down at the field below.
Lao-Lu’s tirade went on for two more minutes before he resumed class.
Jiang Cheng listened to the lecture as he tested just how wide his peripheral vision was and how clearly he could see out of the corner of his eye. He concluded that if he counted the power-up from “liking that handsome guy outside way too much,” his peripheral vision was shockingly powerful.
Not only could he listen and take notes, he could very clearly see Gu Fei at the same time. He was wearing a black T-shirt and gray athletic shorts—the most ordinary of high school boy outfits. In his peripheral vision, Jiang Cheng could make out his tall and slender figure, his toned waist, his long and straight legs…
“JIANG CHENG!” Lao-Lu roared. “Get up here and translate this sentence!”
Jiang Cheng could sense that out in the corridor, Gu Fei had turned to look this way. He reined back his wayward thoughts, stood up, and walked to the front of the room. After looking over the question, he picked up a piece of chalk and snapped it on the podium out of habit before getting ready to write on the board.
“WHAT KIND OF STUPID HABIT IS THAT?!” roared Lao-Lu. “SO WASTEFUL!”
Jiang Cheng sighed, put the chalk back in the box, and picked out a fresh one. This time, he began to write on the blackboard without snapping it.
“And this isn’t wasteful?” Lao-Lu demanded.
Jiang Cheng looked at him. “Mr. Lu, do you want me to answer this or not?”
“Go ahead,” Lao-Lu said, waving his hand. “I’m just taking this chance to educate you a little.”
“…Ah.” Jiang Cheng continued writing.
After he finished translating the sentence and went back to his seat, Jiang Cheng saw that Gu Fei had already turned around to face him, leaning back against the railing. When their eyes met, the corner of Gu Fei’s lips lifted. Jiang Cheng narrowed his eyes ever so slightly. Everyone was still looking at him right now, and he didn’t dare show any overt communication with Gu Fei.
All it took was the slightest upward curve of Gu Fei’s lips for Jiang Cheng’s brain to stream at least two gigabytes of obscene material.
For some reason, even though they’d recently gone through a disagreement and nothing of substance came out of it, he still felt much lighter.