After Gu Miao was finished gnawing on the last piece of short rib, the two of them cleared the table.
Washing dishes was the most annoying chore, but today, for the first time, Jiang Cheng was all too happy to do it. Gu Fei played music for him from his phone, which he’d set on the side, and Jiang Cheng gladly finished washing the dishes to the beat of the music.
Around this hour, all the families were inside eating together, so the sound of firecrackers outside had diminished somewhat. Jiang Cheng walked out of the kitchen and stood in the courtyard, listening to the distant booms.
He’d never felt particularly sentimental during New Year’s before. The loud explosions usually annoyed him—the racket was an insult to his eardrums and his heart. But for once, he found he could listen to the sounds with calm composure. He could even feel signs of life bursting out from beneath the dilapidated exterior of this place with the coming of the New Year.
“It’s snowing! Good thing we’re already here!” Liu Fan’s voice carried from inside the store.
Jiang Cheng looked up. A fine dusting of snowflakes was falling from the sky, circling around in the wind. When they landed on his face, he felt tiny dots of cold that quickly disappeared.
He turned to go back into the store. Liu Fan, Li Yan, and Luo Yu were taking off their jackets, having just come through the door.
“Happy New Year, Jiang Cheng!” Luo Yu greeted him.
Jiang Cheng smiled. “Happy New Year.”
“I thought you’d be studying today too,” said Li Yan. “Da-Fei said you’ve been studying every waking moment of every day.”
“I’m going home later to study,” Jiang Cheng admitted.
“…Why not hang out for a while first?” Li Yan suggested. “We brought a fuckload of food. Wanna try some?”
“I really can’t bear to try anything right now,” Jiang Cheng replied, rubbing his belly. “I’m stuffed.”
“Jiang Cheng, Gege has something to give you.” Liu Fan grabbed a large plastic bag from a pile they’d brought and walked up to him. “We had Chen Jie put this together. He has a friend interning at First High who got the study materials from their senior class.”
“Holy shit.” Gu Fei laughed. “You guys didn’t have to.”
“As a bunch of people who’ve never gone to college, we respect and envy the top of the grade.” Li Yan smiled and sat down, then pulled out a bulging red envelope and stuck it inside Gu Miao’s pocket. “This is lucky money from all your big brothers. Keep it for yourself—don’t give it to your brother.”
Jiang Cheng felt a little overwhelmed as he accepted the heavy bag into his hands. It took him a while to get it together to reply. “Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome,” said Liu Fan.
They all laughed at the polite exchange, and Luo Yu lamented, “Don’t be so formal. What are we even supposed to say to that?”
The group of them threw themselves into chairs and chatted away while Jiang Cheng pulled out some of the study materials and flipped through them. These were the mock tests First High had handed out to their seniors in the past few weeks, as well as other materials distributed by the teachers there. Some of them overlapped with the ones from Fourth High, but most of them he’d never seen before.
Jiang Cheng never would have expected Li Yan and the guys to seek out study materials for him. He found it a little bewildering that him preparing for his exams had somehow alerted these regular hooligans and set them into motion. He suddenly felt an immense pressure…
Glancing at Gu Fei, who was sat across from him listening to the others ramble on, he wondered what expectations Gu Fei had for him.
When Li Yan suggested that they play cards, Jiang Cheng decided to head home to study.
“I’ll call you over to eat when the dumplings are ready,” Gu Fei said, walking out the door with him. “Do you need me to drop you off? And pick you up later this evening?”
Jiang Cheng chuckled. “I bet even Gu Miao doesn’t need you to chauffeur her back and forth.”
“It’s just an excuse, anyway.” Gu Fei stretched. “I wanted to look at you a little longer.”
That made him want to take Gu Fei in his arms right there in the middle of the street and shower him with kisses.
Wanted to look at you a little longer.
Jiang Cheng felt the same. When he studied, his peripheral vision always, always lingered on Gu Fei. Even when he entered a state where he disappeared from this dimension, one word from Gu Fei was all it took to pull him back.
I want to look at you. Want to hear your voice.
But the most unbearable thing was that these days of spending every day and night together were steadily running out with the countdown to the exam. The feeling of panic that arose whenever he thought about it overpowered even his anxiety over the exam itself.
Jiang Cheng strolled back to his apartment on his own; he didn’t let Gu Fei walk him back. With how they were clinging to each other like this, if he didn’t cut it off in time, they might end up walking each other back and forth between his apartment and the store half a dozen times.
The ground outside his building was littered with leftover bits of red paper from firecrackers, and the corridor inside looked like it was covered in a red carpet. Jiang Cheng walked up the stairs, taking in the fading scent of used firecrackers the entire way.
The building might have been old, but the heating was miraculously abundant. Jiang Cheng felt a wave of warmth as soon as he walked through the door. He changed into comfortable clothes, then sat down at his desk and began to study.
First he worked on the mock tests from Fourth High, followed by the various things that Pan Zhi had sent him. Then he went over the materials from First High.
In the eyes of others, he probably seemed like a machine that was incapable of feeling tired. After all, he was an overachiever. He had robust self-discipline, and he was a strong learner with an excellent memory. He tackled studying with methodical planning. But he wasn’t exempt from feeling tired. His pencil would halt every so often as he wrote, and his brain would stop working from time to time while he was memorizing passages.
Ever since he was little, he would always grit his teeth and soldier on. He had to succeed, and he had to do it well. It had once been a simple quest for acknowledgment. But now he had more complicated reasons for working himself to the bone like this.
He was out of options.
And so was Gu Fei.