Pretty much all the buildings here had already been knocked down. Many of them were reduced to exposed rebar, surrounded by piles of broken brick and rubble and scrap pieces of steel covered in overgrown weeds.
It must’ve been a flourishing place once upon a time. It was a large campus, and everyone who used to live around here had been employed by the factory. There were still signs of the plant’s prosperous past scattered all around the neighborhood beyond this place. Steelworks Kindergarten. Steelworks Elementary. Steelworks Snack Bar. Steelworks Playground…
“It’s right up ahead,” Gu Fei said, pointing.
At the clearing ahead, beyond the leftover piles of bricks and rubble, was…another structurally unsound building. It was only one story high, but it was very tall, like an auditorium or something. It was even larger than the one at Fourth High.
It certainly looked unsound enough, considering it was already half demolished. But as they got closer, Jiang Cheng realized it wasn’t half demolished, but half collapsed.
Stepping over pieces of broken brick, Gu Fei led him in through the “door.”
With half the roof sunken in, the lighting was great, revealing the structure of an old assembly hall inside. The rows of theater seating were still there, though most of it was buried under the collapsed roof. Above the front half of the hall, where the stage was, part of the roof was still intact, but the windows on either side were gone. Sunlight spilled through the large gaps in the wall, casting a radiant glow over the entire stage.
“Sit over there,” Gu Fei said, pointing at a seat in the front row. “In the middle.”
“Ah.” Jiang Cheng walked up to the seat. A thick layer of dust covered the chair. He wiped it with a finger, but beneath the top layer of loose dust was yet another layer of dust that had melded perfectly with the chair itself after years of rain-soaked, sun-dried setting.
He thought about looking for something to wipe it with, but after a couple of seconds of hesitation, he decided to sit down anyway. He even leaned back in the seat.
Gu Fei stood at the center of the stage.
“Are you going to make the introduction yourself?” Jiang Cheng asked, certain now that Gu Fei was going to play the guitar for him.
Just for him.
“In a minute.” Gu Fei smiled, crouching down to set the guitar on the ground. “I still have some preparation to do. I kind of did this in a rush…”
He wasn’t kidding—this had to have been a last-minute decision, because it turned out the preparation he was talking about involved actually stringing the guitar. Jiang Cheng watched quietly as Gu Fei tightened the strings, and then as he pulled out his phone and began to slowly tune the guitar with the help of a tuning app.
On the strength of visuals alone, however, the first strum of Gu Fei’s fingers across the strings blew the silver-dragon-clad Wang Xu to smithereens. Totally and completely obliterated.
Gu Fei had long fingers, and from his right hand plucking out the notes to his left hand pressing on the strings, he was a feast for the eyes. Jiang Cheng didn’t even need to listen to the sound to feel soothed; he felt like he was lying on a comfortable beanbag.
“All right.” Gu Fei finished tuning and stood up. He picked up a long stick that must have been the handle of either a broom or a mop in its past life, and jabbed it into a crack on the floor of the stage. Jiang Cheng straightened up and started clapping.
Gu Fei walked up to the “microphone” and cleared his throat. Jiang Cheng immediately pulled out his phone, aimed the camera at Gu Fei, and hit record.
“It’s been a long time since I touched a guitar, and a long time since I sang something,” Gu Fei said. “I didn’t think I’d find myself standing here today.”
Jiang Cheng smiled.
“There are always all kinds of things you don’t expect in life,” Gu Fei went on as he adjusted the length of his guitar strap. “Sometimes, we expect the unexpected, and sometimes, it surprises us.”
For a second, Jiang Cheng didn’t understand what Gu Fei meant, but it didn’t matter—he was going to watch the video back at least a thousand times anyway.
“Jiang Cheng,” Gu Fei said, looking straight at him, “you are the surprise I never expected.”
“So are you,” Jiang Cheng said, looking at Gu Fei on his screen. He lifted his eyes to look at the stage.
“This song is for you. I wrote it in my head on the way here. Have a listen now, and I’ll fix it later.” Gu Fei put his head down and swept his fingers gently over the strings. “‘Run Wild.’”
Jiang Cheng took a deep breath, his hand trembling. He had to use his other hand to steady the phone.
Gu Fei’s hand slapped the body of the guitar to count himself in, then launched into the intro—and Jiang Cheng’s breathing halted for a moment. It felt like even the faintest breeze blowing past his ears carried a tune.
The original melody had left a deep impression on him. He assumed that it was Gu Fei’s style: a song filled with confusion, panic, and emptiness. This intro, however, gave off an entirely different feeling.
Gu Fei opened his mouth to sing. His voice was a little husky, yet gentle and steady. “I want one look to last a lifetime…”
With one line, Jiang Cheng could feel Gu Fei all around him, blanketing him.
“I want to look up and see the warm sun on spring grass,
To see me in your arms.
I want to shatter the unknown and walk through time;
You’ll hear it if you open your eyes.