When Zhi Li finally reappeared before the group, everyone immediately began complaining. Without the slightest change in expression, Su You Yan hurled her notebook at his face. Zhi Li caught it neatly with one hand.
Su You Yan adjusted her glasses. “Don’t worry. I’ve already put a mark against you.”
Ke Bu cupped his hands in a respectful salute. “A truly wise and impartial decision.”
He deeply admired Su You Yan’s ability to keep personal feelings separate from official business. Everyone else had accumulated points in that notebook, so Zhi Li could not be made an exception. She only managed to record about one mark against him a year. Each one was precious.
Zhi Li tossed the bag in his hand onto the table. Gong Zhu was practically moved to tears. “I can’t believe Lord Zhi Li still remembered to bring us presents while he was abroad.”
“Now that’s a real man! My Cosmo is burning with excitement!” Ying Xiu Jie declared.
Zhi Li took a glasses case from his pocket and tossed it to Su You Yan. She opened it coolly, removed the glasses inside, and swapped them for the pair she was wearing. Then she took out her notebook.
Ke Bu watched, perfectly clearly, as she crossed out the mark she had added less than two minutes earlier.
“You people are ridiculously easy to bribe!! If old China had been full of people like you, we’d all have ended up living under foreign rule! Traitors!”
Unfortunately, everyone was too busy admiring their presents to spare him any attention.
Ke Bu stared suspiciously at Zhi Li, rapidly calculating the likelihood that Zhi Li had genuinely been thoughtful enough to buy everyone gifts overseas. He soon snatched the item from Zhou Xin He’s hands. Whichever way he looked at it, it resembled the cheap trinkets sold outside the little convenience store near the school.
“Unless my eyes have stopped working, doesn’t that say ‘Made in China’?”
Zhi Li tilted his head, wearing an expression of pure, innocent confusion. Ke Bu hated that expression.
“Are you saying foreign countries aren’t allowed to sell Chinese products?”
“Exactly. No matter where we go, we only buy Chinese goods. That’s true patriotism.”
“Ke Bu, I never knew you were the sort of person who worshipped everything foreign.”
“Traitor.”
“He’s probably just jealous because Zhi Li didn’t buy him anything. Petty little man.”
“You think I’d act like you idiots? You get one cheap market-stall trinket and immediately start squealing, ‘Ahahaha~~ I’m so happy! Ohoho~~ Lord Zhi Li brought this all the way from overseas! Whee~~ Let’s hold hands and spin in circles!’ Dream on, you morons.”
Ke Bu rolled his eyes so far back that almost nothing but the whites remained.
“Still better than a certain someone who wailed as though the world were ending while Zhi Li was gone. You should’ve heard how many times he cursed Zhi Li at first. Oh, the language! Absolutely unfit for decent ears!”
It was time for everyone to betray one another again.
What a beautiful friendship.
Zhi Li narrowed his eyes at Ke Bu. “Is there anything else that happened while I was away that I ought to know?”
“He wore all your clothes and didn’t wash any of them. He scribbled all over your sketchbooks, used your toothbrush, and sometimes slept in your bed without even showering,” Zhang Luo reported.
“You still haven’t removed the camera from Zhi Li’s dorm?!!”
Ke Bu had been so consumed by grief that he had forgotten the most important thing. He lunged at Zhang Luo, ready to commit murder and destroy the evidence, but Zhi Li caught him by the back of his collar.
“Ke Bu, are you trying to change the subject?”
A chill crept down Ke Bu’s spine. He did not dare turn around and look at Zhi Li’s expression, so he quickly arranged his face into one of profound suffering.
“What am I supposed to do? I don’t know how things are going with my parents. I’m so worried. What if they really refuse to accept us? Then we’ll… I feel awful, Zhi Li. I feel so awful.”
“You should. Go wash everything that needs washing and buy a new toothbrush.”
Zhi Li remained entirely unmoved by Ke Bu’s misery.
Ke Bu glared murderously at the others before leaving with extreme reluctance.
After spending the entire afternoon cleaning, Ke Bu returned to the school building exhausted. Only Su You Yan and Zhi Li remained. Su You Yan was saying something while Zhi Li listened beside her. Whenever those two held a private discussion, Ke Bu instinctively sensed that trouble was coming. He remembered Su You Yan reading Qiong Yao romance novels aloud to Zhi Li so he could write their exchange diary. She had also been the one to recommend the painfully clichéd family melodrama Zhi Li studied when trying to win Zhi Zuo Si’s approval.
Elio’s Notes: Qiong Yao was a celebrated Taiwanese romance novelist whose stories are famous for intense melodrama, passionate love, emotional misunderstandings, and tearful family conflicts. Many were adapted into hugely popular television dramas, so “Qiong Yao novel” can also jokingly describe an overly dramatic romance.
Ke Bu tried to hide nearby and eavesdrop, but the two were speaking so quietly that they might as well have been communicating through lip-reading. Eventually, even he became bored and stepped out.
“Where did everyone else go?”
“They said they were going to your house to convince your parents to accept you and Zhi Li.”
“Oh, I see,” Ke Bu replied calmly.
Then a vein began throbbing in his forehead.
“May I ask why neither of you stopped them?”
“You don’t need to worry about them.”
“They’re not the ones I’m worried about!!”
The moment the words left his mouth, Ke Bu rushed home, his eyelid twitching violently.
Sure enough, before he even reached the front door, he heard voices howling loudly enough to shake heaven and earth.
Honestly, he should have brought a gun.
Gong Zhu stood outside with a strip of cloth tied around his forehead. Four bold characters were written across it:
SUPPORT SAME-SEX LOVE
Behind him stood an entire crowd of like-minded supporters he had somehow recruited from parts unknown. Men and women alike wore matching headbands, and together they held up a huge banner while shouting at the top of their lungs toward Ke Bu’s house.
“Same-sex love is not a crime!! Down with discrimination!!”
Ke Bu’s head began to pound. Covering his face with one hand, he walked up to Gong Zhu and hissed through clenched teeth, “Don’t make me kill you. I don’t want to end up in tomorrow’s weird-news column, and I don’t want you ending up in the crime section.”
“Listen to yourself. Even Lord Zhi Li doesn’t mind. As your friends, naturally we have to lend our support.”
After answering Ke Bu, Gong Zhu raised his megaphone and thrust one fist into the air.
“Hunger strike! Same-sex love is not a crime! Down with discrimination!”
“Of course he doesn’t mind! You’re not protesting outside his house!! Now hurry up and leave!”
“There’s no need to be shy.”
“I’m not shy! This is simply too humiliating!! Couldn’t you have thought of a less deranged way to help?”
There was no reasoning with Gong Zhu, so Ke Bu gave up and opened the front door. He prayed Ke Qin would not be home. Instead, the moment he entered, he found Ke Qin and Wu Qian sitting at the living-room table, both wearing painfully stiff expressions.
He was surprised to see his mother there.
“Mom, why are you here?”
“Same-sex love is not a crime! Down with discrimination!”
The chanting outside drifted into the house with perfect clarity.
“Something happened last night, so I came over,” Wu Qian replied.
After Lan Yin and Zhi Zuo Si’s unexpected visit, she and Ke Qin had spent the entire night sitting in the living room. They had neither spoken nor exchanged a single glance.
Ke Bu thought the two of them looked strange. Feeling slightly guilty, he said, “Sorry. My friends are messing around. Don’t take it seriously. I’ll make them leave.”
Just then, Ke Bu heard movement in the kitchen. Before he could react, Zhou Xin He appeared in a cute apron, her petite figure entering his line of sight. She carried two plates and spoke in her sweet voice.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.”
She walked past the petrified Ke Bu and approached Ke Qin and Wu Qian. Ke Bu glanced at the plates—and promptly petrified all over again.
Each serving of omelet rice had been decorated in ketchup with his name and Zhi Li’s, a large heart drawn between them.
Had she been anyone other than Zhou Xin He, Ke Bu would already have planted the plates on top of her head.
His parents looked even more uncomfortable. Ke Bu himself wanted the ground to swallow him. He darted forward, seized the plates, and dragged Zhou Xin He toward the door.
“Xin He, I’ve always believed you were the most normal person here apart from me. Promise me you won’t let these lunatics corrupt you, all right?”
Zhou Xin He twisted the hem of her apron nervously. “B-But I want to help too.”
“Thank you. Goodbye.”
Ke Bu opened the door and pushed her outside.
“Same-sex love is not a crime! Down with discrimination!”
Within minutes, Ke Bu could clearly hear Zhou Xin He’s shy little voice mixed in with the chanting.
After a great deal of effort, he finally persuaded Zhou Xin He and Gong Zhu to leave. He then escorted his silent mother home. Throughout the journey, Wu Qian kept watching him from behind, but she never said anything.
Ke Bu no longer had the energy to think about anything else. So far, only Zhou Xin He and Gong Zhu had appeared—and compared with the others, those two were relatively harmless. Ying Xiu Jie, Chu Hao Yu, and Zhang Luo were still nowhere to be seen.
Ke Bu silently resolved to remain inside the house all night.
It was a dark and windy night. Ke Bu lay awake in bed, his ears pricked for any suspicious sound. A baseball bat and Swiss Army knife rested within reach.
Then came the crash of breaking glass.
Ke Bu grabbed his flashlight and baseball bat, cautiously opened the bedroom door, and crept toward the living room. He switched on the flashlight—and illuminated precisely the sight he had least wanted to see.
Two figures dressed entirely in black had just struggled through the broken window.
They were even dressed as ninjas!!
Although only their eyes were visible, they remained absurdly easy to recognize.
Ying Xiu Jie and Zhang Luo!!
Ke Bu’s headache grew steadily worse.
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