Joy at its height turns to sorrow.
No four words could have described Su Haiqing’s current situation better.
“Hey, there’s no need to act like the sky is falling, is there? Maybe it’ll be fine once they repair it.” Xiao K narrowed his eyes and glanced at Haiqing’s hand. Wow, he was gripping it way too tightly.
“It’s not just the photos.” His contact information was in there too.
The clerk watched the two of them interact with an expression that seemed to say, I get it. People who use phones like this are sentimental. Of course replacing one would be hard.
There were no other customers in the phone shop on a weekday afternoon, and even the street outside was nearly empty. The clerk was delighted to devote his full attention to checking the phone that supposedly refused to turn on.
“What did you do to it?” The clerk plugged in a charging cable. Not even the indicator light came on, which meant the phone’s internal components were no longer responding.
“It fell into a swimming pool.” Haiqing kept it simple, saying nothing about how he had mouthed off at the swimming coach, only for the man to send people to gang up on him until he fell into the pool and soaked his phone. A humiliating truth like that was better kept secret.
“Look here.” The clerk pointed at the indicator light. “See? Nothing. That means the internal parts can’t even receive a charging signal anymore. After it got soaked yesterday, did you go home and plug it in right away? It was full of water. The moment you ran electricity through it, it was done for! You’re lucky it didn’t explode. You should just pick out a new phone.”
“…” Haiqing said nothing. Xiao K immediately realized he was upset because he was disappointed and hurriedly slung an arm around his shoulders.
“Boss! You’re not just telling us it can’t be fixed because you want us to buy a new one, are you?”
“This phone got soaked, and then he went home and plugged it in. Of course it’s beyond saving!” The owner hurried to defend himself. Why were students these days more suspicious than the last? Seriously!
“Why don’t you look at some new ones? We’ve got a few models on clearance right now.” The other idle clerk eagerly joined his coworker and launched into an extravagant sales pitch. With no other customers around, the empty shop suddenly became Haiqing’s greatest disadvantage. There was nowhere to hide. He could only subtly pull Xiao K in front of him and let him deal with the two impossibly enthusiastic salesmen.
“So there’s no way to recover what’s inside? The photos? The phone numbers?” That was all Haiqing cared about.
“Let me check…” The clerk worked the computer with practiced ease while explaining that some information was stored on the SIM card. As long as it had not been completely destroyed, some of that could usually still be recovered. Everything else was another matter.
Haiqing was too preoccupied with those few photos of the man and his phone number to hear a word from the clerk who had suddenly appeared beside him to recommend the best-reviewed models.
“All right, quit worrying for a second. Let’s pick a phone. You said this one’s the flagship?” After comforting his friend, Xiao K immediately threw himself into studying the display case packed with different models. His eyes sparkled like those of a girl who loved shopping.
“Yeah, and this one’s really popular too. We’ve only got one left…”
Xiao K was naturally gifted at small talk. It did not matter where he was or whom he was talking to; he could chat with anyone. Within a few minutes, he had already gotten both clerks’ LINE IDs. The phones spread across the counter gradually dwindled as the conversation went on until only two finalists remained. Without hesitation, Xiao K picked up one of them, the bitten-apple logo on its back reflected in the mirrored opening of the display case.
“How much would this be if I renew on my current plan?”
“With your current plan, it’ll be a little more expensive…”
The clerk quoted a price. Xiao K immediately and cheerfully pulled out his credit card, making it obvious that this amount was nothing to him. “Then could you take the card out of that phone first and put it into this one?” He took out his own phone. It was a fairly new model too, just not as new as the one released this year.
The moment Xiao K took out his credit card, Haiqing snapped out of his thoughts and hurriedly grabbed his wrist to stop him.
“I never said I was buying a new phone.” Haiqing spoke weakly. Preparing for art-school entrance exams and buying all the consumable supplies and equipment he needed was already enough to burn through every cent of his savings. Where was he supposed to find extra money for a new phone? A free handset might have been manageable, but the one Xiao K had picked looked expensive from every angle.
“Who said you were the one replacing yours?” Xiao K rolled his eyes.
Haiqing could only watch helplessly as Xiao K’s card went through the machine. The clerk pulled a brand-new phone from beneath the counter, displayed it, opened the box, inserted the SIM card, and set everything up. Xiao K’s old phone, meanwhile, was fiddled with in the clerk’s hands for a few moments before being handed to Haiqing looking practically new.
“Turn it on and check it first. If everything works normally, you’re good to go!”
Xiao K was delighted. He had wanted a new phone for ages. He could have renewed his contract or bought a new one anytime, but neither option was as compelling as getting to help a friend in the process. “Haiqing, thanks!”
Haiqing could not get a single word out. He could only stare blankly at his friend’s face.
“What are you spacing out for? Hurry up and see if any of your stuff is still there!” Xiao K urged him to turn the phone on.
The two walked out of the shop one after the other and moved slowly beneath the afternoon sun. Warmth spread from Haiqing’s chest through his entire body. Once he finished setting up the phone, he opened the photo album. The instant he saw that those familiar pictures were still there, he could not help shouting, “They’re here! They’re here! Thank God, the photos are still here!” He even pressed the phone against his chest in relief, practically giving thanks to heaven.
“Whose pictures are they?” Xiao K asked, rubbing his face against Haiqing’s arm. He remembered how Haiqing had looked as though the world had ended when they met that morning and he announced that his phone had died, which only made Xiao K more curious.
“Look!” Haiqing held the pictures out for him to see, looking like a child who had just gotten his favorite treasure and could not wait to show it off.
The man in the photos looked dazzling moving through the water, and the angle of the shots made him look even better. Xiao K took one glance and immediately praised him for being handsome enough to rival his own idol. “Is he on the swim team? Or is he a coach?”
Haiqing laughed mysteriously. “He can’t swim! I took these while he was learning…” Seeing the disdain all over Xiao K’s face, Haiqing could not resist pinching the tip of his nose. Only after Xiao K made muffled whining noises did he release him in satisfaction. “Can you stop making that face? Once he learns, he’ll definitely be even hotter.”
Well, well. Somebody had fallen in love… Xiao K had been there himself. One glance was enough to tell that Haiqing felt differently about the man in those photos.
“All right, as long as you’re happy.” Xiao K waved his own new phone too. “I’ve wanted this model forever, so this worked out perfectly! Hey, if you find anything on that old phone that I forgot to delete, send me a copy, okay?”
“Got it. Thanks for the phone.”
Xiao K patted him to say there was no need for thanks, then immediately steered the conversation back to the photos. But no matter what he asked, name, job, where the man lived, what school he had graduated from, Haiqing knew nothing. All he knew was that the man seemed to be a working adult.
“An oppa? Since when did you change tastes and start liking older guys? Hurry up and ask him out so he can treat us to dinner!”
“The number was saved in the phone. It’s gone…” Haiqing’s face fell all over again.
The photos had survived, but the phone number had not, which meant he had completely lost his way of contacting the man. Seeing how crushed Haiqing looked, Xiao K could only pat his shoulder again in consolation.
“It’s okay. Why don’t you go swimming again tomorrow? Maybe you’ll find a new oppa, one even hotter than this guy… The second you see someone newer and hotter, I guarantee you’ll forget him immediately!”
Haiqing merely smiled and shook his head at his friend’s suggestion, then carefully tucked the phone back into his pocket.
“He’s different,” he said, and, unsurprisingly, the scorching kiss in the showers surfaced in his mind again, along with the navy-blue shirt that had filled his vision as the man walked away.
Yan Fei was a light sleeper. The slightest noise could wake him, and what woke him that morning was the sound of running water splashing somewhere nearby.
He sat up in bed, and the thin blanket covering him slid down to his waist. Sunlight poured through the window, making him squint. His mind lagged behind his body. Even after sitting up, he remained groggy, and as his consciousness slowly caught up, he began to register a number of sounds.
Voices. Two people talking.
Running water. Coming from two separate places.
Footsteps. Starting from different directions.
Only two people lived in this apartment, and Yan Fei was one of them. So who did the extra set of footsteps belong to? He pressed his thumb to his temple and rubbed slow circles. Everything that had happened after he came home last night resembled an independent film shot by an exceptionally careless cameraman: broken fragments, almost no clues. Simply trying to remember made him groan repeatedly from the pain.
Time seemed to move especially slowly at moments like this. For some reason, Yan Fei thought of how it had felt underwater yesterday. The stretched-out passage of time, the memories flashing through his mind, and the intense physical discomfort overlapped almost perfectly. The only difference was that today there would be no young man desperately reaching out to seize his hand.
Once the pain eased, Yan Fei threw off the blanket and got out of bed. The moment he opened the bedroom door, he saw Jacky coming out of the bathroom as well, and their eyes met. Yan Fei stared at the single piece of fabric wrapped around Jacky’s hips. It took Jacky another two seconds to realize that he was otherwise completely naked, and he gave an embarrassed little laugh.
“Morning, Boss.”
“Mm.” Before Yan Fei could ask, Why are you here? another burst of footsteps came rushing over. Both men looked in the same direction at once and met another pair of bright eyes.
“Baby, you’re awake.” Jimmy took off an apron spotted with a little grease, came over, and hugged him. Looking back, he saw Jacky still standing blankly at the bathroom door with a foolish grin and could not help laughing. “Aren’t you going to put some clothes on? Showing off your body?”
Laughing, Jacky called back, “How could I compete with Boss’s body?” and quickly fled into the room. Droplets of water left dark spots across the floor. Yan Fei was mildly displeased by them, his brow furrowing as his gaze followed the trail until there was nowhere left for it to go.
Yan Fei lowered his eyes. Everything inside was familiar: pale blush-pink wallpaper, understated classical wall art, a chandelier as beautiful as crystal ornaments without being showy, a coordinated set of dark sofas, and spotless kitchen fixtures so new they looked unused. The apartment resembled a model home that could be opened for viewing at any moment: luxurious, refined, tasteful, fully displaying the designer’s aesthetic sense and exacting standards. And precisely because of that, the trail of water stood out all the more. Or rather, it was glaring.
“Is your headache any better?” Jimmy covered Yan Fei’s forehead with his palm. When he felt no unusual heat, his expression relaxed. “No fever. Thank goodness. You were talking nonsense when I got into bed last night. You scared me.”
“Talking nonsense?”
“Yeah.” Jimmy bit his lower lip and looked at him with a coquettish, wounded expression. “You forgot?”
Yan Fei wrapped an arm around Jimmy’s waist, and his muddled thoughts finally found their way back to the moment he had arrived home yesterday. First, he had exchanged a brief greeting with the building attendant in the brightly lit lobby and entered the elevator. Before reaching his floor, he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He had pulled it out eagerly, only to find an advertisement message. He even remembered clicking his tongue, deleting it, and shoving the phone back into his pocket more roughly than necessary.
“I remember.” Yan Fei soothed Jimmy.
Last night, after he unlocked the front door, the first thing he heard was a symphony formed by two different voices, the pleasure in them unmistakable.
Yan Fei followed the sound and found Jimmy and Jacky squeezed together in a tiny armchair, sharing an equally tiny phone screen. Jimmy burst out laughing from time to time and had not noticed in the slightest that the apartment’s other owner had come home.
Yan Fei cleared his throat softly, and only then did the two of them snap back to attention. Jacky was conscious of his dual status as both guest and subordinate and instinctively started to stand, only for Jimmy to grab him and pull him back. From Yan Fei’s distance and angle, he could not make out the details, but he could still sense the strange atmosphere hanging in the air.
“Baby, come look! Jacky was such a little country bumpkin when he was a kid. That bowl cut is killing me!” Jimmy laughed without even looking up.
Yan Fei did not respond to Jimmy’s call right away. He walked to the dining table and set down his keys, coat, and briefcase. As he tugged at his tie, Jacky eventually approached him uneasily. Yan Fei noticed that the fourth button down on that conspicuous flax-colored shirt had also been left undone. Jacky had a good physique, so it did not look bad, but the way nearly his entire chest showed through still made Yan Fei frown slightly.
“Boss, I came over to confirm who’s going tomorrow and the exact time. I sent it to the group chat, but you didn’t reply, so I was a little worried. I figured it would be better to come tell you in person.”
“I know. I saw it in the car. We’ll do it that way,” Yan Fei said coolly.
Jacky looked as though he wanted to say something else, but then Jimmy came over. He handed the glass of red wine in his hand to Jacky, who obediently returned to the sofa and sat down to wait.
Jimmy smiled in satisfaction and turned his gaze toward Yan Fei.
“Baby, are you hungry? Want something to eat?” he asked attentively.
As one of the industry’s leading interior designers, Jimmy could keenly sense what kind of design a client liked, which color palettes appealed to them, the overall concept they wanted, and even their small personal preferences. Yet he could not apply that same instinct to Yan Fei, and it frustrated him deeply.
Yan Fei lowered his gaze to Jimmy, who wore only a tank top. His chest and arms were exposed, evenly tanned and fit. Yet another face rose in Yan Fei’s mind without warning: paler skin, somewhat more melancholy features, and a face he simply could not forget.
“No. My head hurts a little. I’m going to rest.”
With that, Yan Fei left the two of them in the living room and went back to the bedroom. The instant the door shut, the familiar sound of teasing laughter reached his ears again. Yan Fei felt little about it. He closed the door numbly, stripped off his clothes, and went to shower.
His thoughts returned to the present. Jimmy was still staring at him with an aggrieved expression.
“I wasn’t acting,” Jimmy complained softly.
A flicker of So that’s what this is about crossed Yan Fei’s eyes, but he controlled it well enough that Jimmy noticed nothing.
“I was half asleep.” Yan Fei cupped Jimmy’s face in both hands to reassure him. His words were gentle and his gaze sincere, and Jimmy’s hurt and dissatisfaction vanished almost immediately.
“You were exhausted. Of course you wouldn’t sleep well without me holding you.” Jimmy patted Yan Fei’s forehead with his palm, acting like a girlfriend coaxing her boyfriend. “What nightmare did you have that made you ask me, ‘Are you acting now too?’”
“I dreamed I took Jacky to apologize, and they accused us of putting on an act. I thought they were talking about Jacky, so that’s why I said it.”
“You’re still hung up on that?” Jimmy repeated what he had said when he got into bed last night. “You’re just going there to apologize. It won’t disgrace you as a director. Just treat it like you really are acting!”
“Mm.” Yan Fei appeared to be looking attentively at Jimmy, but his eyes were not focused at all. Jimmy, however, was talking too enthusiastically to examine him closely, which let Yan Fei relax somewhat.
Yan Fei was lying.
He had not been half asleep, and he had not been having a nightmare. Yan Fei had been awake the entire time last night.
He remembered every detail: Jimmy entering the room, sneaking into bed, comforting him, even taking the initiative to kiss him.
What Yan Fei did not say was that during that fiery kiss, passionate enough to make his body respond, the face in his mind belonged to Haiqing: the young man who had grabbed him underwater, whom Yan Fei had kissed in the changing room, with a hint of shyness and expectation on his face and Yan Fei’s own reflection clearly visible in his pupils.
Just before his memory went blank, Yan Fei knew he had returned the kiss. But the person he was kissing was not Jimmy in front of him. It was someone else.
Yan Fei had been kissing Haiqing.
Haiqing had no idea that the man had been waiting all this time for him to call.
The phone’s contacts were completely dead. No matter how many shops he took it to, including those that claimed they could fully recover lost data, he always got the same answer: “It can’t be recovered.” With no other choice, he had to give up on retrieving that phone number and name. Xiao K could see how disappointed he was and encouraged him to go to the swimming pool more often.
“You met him at the pool, right? If you go a few more times, maybe you’ll run into him again!”
Haiqing agreed. Ever since taking Xiao K’s old phone, he had gone to the pool almost every day. Whether he was by the pool, in the changing room, or resting after each lap, Haiqing was always searching for one particular figure.
But the man never appeared at the pool again.
Haiqing came back day after day without finding anything and inevitably began to look discouraged. At first he thought that if he kept coming, he might eventually have another chance to see the man. But after striking out several times, the voice inside him began to turn on him. Why was he clinging to such a pointless hope?
Maybe meeting that man had been an accident from the very beginning… And that was true. It was only because of an accident that the two of them had ended up sharing such an intense kiss.
Should he give up? Haiqing lifted his head out of the water, and the instant his body stopped moving, it gave him a powerful negative response. He had been exhausted these past few days. Not only had he come here every day looking for someone, he had also stayed up until midnight painting in his room. He was not sleeping enough, and what sleep he did get was poor. After only a few laps, his body already felt drained.
There were not many people at the pool early on a holiday morning. Spread out, there were so few that each person could have taken an entire lane without getting in anyone else’s way. Haiqing simply floated quietly in the water and looked around. The sound of moving water and the various signs and advertisements posted high above had an almost hypnotic effect. Haiqing closed and opened his eyes several times, the soreness forcing a little moisture into the corners of them.
Hm? Isn’t that… Haiqing narrowed his eyes at someone stretching in the corner. The lettering on that swim cap was still just as ugly.
Since that man had been his student, the coach should have some kind of contact information, right? Or Haiqing could at least ask when the man’s next lesson would be. That was better than coming again and again only to find no one… Haiqing took a little time to suppress his dislike and anger toward the coach. It was not difficult. The cool water helped enormously.
Five minutes later, Haiqing climbed out of the pool, grabbed his phone, and walked up to the coach. “Excuse me…”
“Already got yourself another new phone?” The coach had noticed Haiqing the moment he started coming over.
As if you don’t know why! Haiqing forced down the urge to yell at him again, found the man’s photo in his album, and held it out. “I wanted to ask if you know this person.”
The coach raised an eyebrow. He barely glanced at the screen before saying, “Who’s that? Don’t know him!” He did not even bother hiding the malice and contempt in his voice.
Seeing how quickly the coach denied it and how dismissive he was, Haiqing raised his voice and asked again.
“That guy! The one you were supposed to be teaching to swim, but you weren’t paying attention and he nearly drowned!”
“You remember it pretty clearly. I don’t. Is that a problem?” The coach snorted.
Haiqing let out two shallow breaths. He knew the coach was still holding a grudge. To put it less politely, the man was simply being unreasonable. Haiqing swallowed the urge to curse him out, opened the next photo so the coach could get a clearer look, and even deliberately reined in his sharpness, lowering himself to ask politely.
“Please, just look. I urgently need to find him. I want to know his name.”
To the coach, Haiqing’s sudden step forward looked no different from a threat. The coach had already been on edge since his supervisor warned him on the day of the incident to take his teaching more seriously. When Haiqing pressed closer, his instinctive response was to shove him.
“What the fuck do you want, you fag? I already told you I don’t know him and you keep asking. Want me to get some people to teach you another lesson?” The coach immediately started shouting abuse. “Get the hell away from me, you fucking sissy!”
Haiqing stared at him in disbelief, unable to understand whether this man had any idea what he was doing.
Haiqing glared at the coach with the hatred and fury of someone staring at the murderer of his entire family. Reason told him there was no longer any chance of getting a clue from this man in the stupid swim cap.
“Thank you.”
That was what Haiqing had originally intended to say, but expecting him to remain gracious after being insulted like that was asking far too much. Instead, he simply turned and walked away. His gaze brushed against several people who had started looking at him after hearing the coach’s shouting, and a slow ache of humiliation seeped out from his chest.
Suddenly, Haiqing felt like an idiot.
He had come swimming every day just to find that man, moving through every part of the facility with the thought that maybe today he would get lucky and see him. He had even lied to the front desk that he had lost something so he could ask to see the security footage, only to be warned that “photography isn’t allowed at the pool”… All of it suddenly seemed so absurd and ridiculous. Haiqing drew in a deep breath. His eyes felt sore and raw, and one blink was all it would take for hot tears to roll down his cheeks.
He went into the showers and let hot water pour over his body. His lower lip, which he had been biting hard, was finally released, leaving unusually red teeth marks behind. The steam enclosing him gave him the comforting sense that he had found somewhere safe from danger. Haiqing crouched down beneath the shower, wrapped both arms around his knees, and silently decided that today would be the last day.
Forget it, Haiqing thought. I’ll treat him as nothing more than someone passing through my life. Once I get back to my normal routine and focus on painting, I’ll forget him after a while. Maybe that’s better… Coming here every day had cut into the time he spent practicing his art. Even when he lay in bed before sleep, he no longer had the leisure to lose himself in the moonlight streaming through his window. The side effects of hoping for something while constantly fearing he would lose it were too strong. They were almost driving Haiqing insane.
On holiday mornings, Yan Fei did not deliberately sleep late. He was not the kind of person who ran himself completely flat on workdays and then used the weekend to recharge. Jimmy, meanwhile, kept fixed sleeping hours and did not stay in bed even after a late night.
After breakfast, the two sat in the living room, their phones making all kinds of sounds. Jimmy admired an endless stream of muscular men on Instagram while sharing advice his fitness trainer had given him. Yan Fei scrolled through work emails and opened LINE at the same time to assign the tasks that needed to be handled first when everyone returned to work the following week. Their conversation quickly became a one-way street.
After talking for quite a while, Jimmy realized that Yan Fei had barely paid attention to either him or what he was saying. Irritated, he huffed twice, grabbed the remote, and turned on the television. The news was reporting the recent swings in temperature and a new typhoon developing over the sea.
The sound of the television caught Yan Fei’s attention. He turned his face slightly and only then noticed that Jimmy had switched it on, though he did not shift his attention to the news itself. The television noise functioned more like something deliberately creating the sense that there was another person here, a kind of vitamin-like placebo.
“I’m playing ball at five tomorrow,” Yan Fei said with a soft exhale.
“Oh!”
“With the company president and a Japanese client.”
“Oh!”
“Afterward they want to go out for free-range chicken. It’ll probably take until evening.”
“Oh!”
“Are you even listening to me?” The overly uniform, mechanical replies made Yan Fei frown. Their usual relationship was only a little warmer than this to begin with, but even so, this kind of perfunctory response still irritated him.
“I am! What?” Jimmy kept his eyes on the male bodies on his phone. By now he was used to Yan Fei speaking to him with less sweetness and more of the tone of someone giving a work briefing. Sometimes Jimmy wondered whether this was simply the problem every couple encountered after being together for a certain number of years.
But the thought never went any further than that. Jimmy had never told anyone about this particular worry.
“Nothing.” Yan Fei seemed to want to say more. The sound caught in his throat was slightly hoarse, reminiscent of the disheveled state he had been in a few days earlier after getting blind drunk, passing out, and waking in his own bed the next morning. “I just think you’ve been acting strange lately.”
Jimmy stopped scrolling. Where Yan Fei could not see, a cold smile touched his lips.
“I think you’re the one acting strange lately. Did you fall in love with someone? Or is your mom trying to set you up on another blind date?”
At the words “fall in love with someone,” Yan Fei instinctively lowered his gaze. The guilt on his face was unmistakable. On countless nights, whether he slept alone or with Jimmy in his arms, Haiqing’s face would surface in his mind. Even the few times he had sex with Jimmy, Yan Fei had looked through Jimmy’s desire-filled expression and wondered whether Haiqing would look just as soft and alluring… Yan Fei knew that was not very far removed from cheating.
“And when are you finally going to come out to your mom? I have to pretend I’m your coworker every single time. I’m exhausted…”
Jimmy stood as he spoke, and the image on his screen swayed with the motion. Yan Fei caught sight of a man in a flax-colored shirt displaying his chest and abs to the camera, with the familiar background of a LINE chat behind him.
“Even I get dragged into blind dates.” That was what made Jimmy angriest.
It had happened not long ago. Yan Fei’s mother came to visit her son and brought along a stack of matchmaking photos, hoping Yan Fei might find a girl he liked. Yan Fei had shown no enthusiasm at all and only wanted to brush the whole thing aside as if it had never happened. Jimmy lived there and spent every day around Yan Fei’s mother. In the older woman’s eyes, he was simply “a refined young man with good qualifications.” Since Yan Fei had no interest in matchmaking, Jimmy became the sacrificial lamb.
Because she was his boyfriend’s mother, Jimmy could only smile and accept it while listening to her explain that one girl played piano, another had a respectable banking job and attended cooking school at night and would surely make an excellent wife. He did not escape until Yan Fei finally came home.
You shouldn’t let your mother treat me like this!
After saying that, Jimmy grabbed his wallet and left. Only after Yan Fei’s mother had gone did he return, coaxed back by Yan Fei’s patient reassurance.
“If you don’t like it, you don’t have to go.” Of course Yan Fei remembered the incident, but what else could he do? “But she’s my mom. In the end, whether I like it or not, I still have to go.”
Watching Yan Fei defend himself with that same aggrieved posture only fed Jimmy’s anger. In this relationship, all of Jimmy’s patience and consideration seemed to have been turned into garbage by Yan Fei, discarded where no one cared about them.
“Then go!” Jimmy shouted. “Do you know what it feels like for me to eat New Year’s Eve dinner by myself in Taipei every year? The whole city is so empty there isn’t even a ghost around, and I sit at home eating instant noodles by myself!” It was not only Lunar New Year. On every day meant for families to reunite, Jimmy was always the one shut out. Yan Fei’s mother would be there, which meant Jimmy had to remain the lover who could never be brought into the light.
During the first few years they were together, Jimmy had been considerate and understanding. Whenever he could not accompany Yan Fei home, he would prepare supplements and gifts for Yan Fei to take back while claiming they were from a coworker or friend, giving Yan Fei’s mother a favorable impression of this “coworker.” But this was never the relationship Jimmy wanted. One or two years had been manageable. Three or four, tolerable. Add more years beyond that and he could no longer keep pretending. They loved each other. They had been together for so long. Why did they still have to hide? What shameful thing had Jimmy done that he should willingly live in the dark? And so, every Lunar New Year and holiday, Jimmy began arranging all kinds of flashy plans and deliberately making sure Yan Fei knew about them. Even the male bodies he usually followed and the seemingly intimate teasing he exchanged with other men were only attempts to provoke some sign that Yan Fei cared.
Am I not your boyfriend?
Whether or not it counted as revenge was hard to say, but Jimmy knew it was one of the ways he expressed his hurt.
Yan Fei also understood how difficult those days alone at home were for Jimmy. Everywhere he went, he would see lively scenes of families reunited. Television was filled with the same stale holiday specials every year. Forget everything else. Even a news anchor saying “Happy New Year” only made Jimmy’s loneliness more obvious.
“You can come home with me.”
Yan Fei’s tone softened considerably, but to Jimmy it sounded like nothing more than indecision.
“And spend another five days acting?” Jimmy gave a cold laugh. “I’m telling you now. If you don’t explain clearly to your mom that we’re getting married, I’m not going back to your family’s house again.”
“You know perfectly well she can’t handle it. She’s an old woman. Why do you have to push her like this?” Yan Fei could not understand why Jimmy always forced him into this version of the question, If your mother and your lover were both drowning, who would you save first? His mother was already getting older. No one knew how many more years she had. Couldn’t everyone simply live their own lives in peace? What was wrong with the way things were now?
“I’ll be an old man soon enough too.” Clearly, Jimmy’s thinking and Yan Fei’s did not intersect at all. Jimmy shoved his phone into his pocket and grabbed the coat hanging over the back of a chair. “How are we supposed to adopt a child?” He looked at Yan Fei sadly. The sorrow stamped into his eyes was so powerful that Yan Fei felt guilty simply being looked at.
Jimmy laughed again, but this time it was not cold. It was tired.
“Where are you going?”
“The gym.”
Perhaps this was the greatest problem between them. Yan Fei would never understand how badly Jimmy wanted a home and a concrete promise, while Jimmy could not understand the difficulty Yan Fei felt being trapped between his mother and him. Two people who could not meet each other in the same place seemed destined for one cycle after another of disappointment, defeat, and tears.
Yan Fei watched Jimmy about to leave and instinctively blurted, “Let’s break up.” Jimmy, however, reacted as though he had always known Yan Fei would say it. He only shouted, “I don’t want to!” and slammed the door behind him.
Yan Fei stayed silent for a very long time. His drooping shoulders and furrowed brow guaranteed that this day off would be miserable and uncomfortable. He lifted his phone. The clean home screen showed no message notifications. Haiqing still had not contacted him, and Yan Fei could not help wondering whether all his hope and waiting had been one-sided from the start.
Once he let go of his obsession, Haiqing felt much calmer.
He stopped going to the pool every day to wait and search, used the money Grandpa had given him to pay for classes at an art studio, and began attending regular sketching practice several days a week. As he used his pencil to trace the lines of one object after another assigned by the instructor, he no longer swung so sharply between hope and disappointment. Even the number of times he pulled out his phone to check for missed calls dropped considerably.
This is better, Haiqing thought. I was acting too strangely before. This is much closer to normal.
His eyes rested on the figure model surrounded by students. Under the indoor lights, the man’s skin was extremely pleasing to look at. At the start of class, quite a few female students had already whispered meaningfully about his body. Haiqing had not attended this studio in some time and did not recognize the model, so he guessed the man must be new.
Pencil lead rubbed over the rough paper, filling the room with a soft scritch, scritch, scritch that blended surprisingly well with the sound of classical guitar, creating a safe, drowsy atmosphere. From time to time, Haiqing pinched his kneaded eraser and removed a few unnecessary marks. Time slipped quietly away in the process.
The instructor moved among the students, occasionally resting a fingertip on a sheet to point something out. Only a handful of students who were naturally focused and already skilled received no corrections. Instead, they earned the instructor’s praise, and Haiqing was one of them.
Haiqing carefully studied the model’s muscular lines. His arms and chest were well developed, but his build did not feel threatening. Haiqing liked physiques shaped by regular exercise, so he drew with particular concentration. He wanted to preserve on paper everything beautiful he saw, just as he had repeatedly sketched a certain someone during those restless days not long ago.
Perhaps the air-conditioning was too cold. The model sniffed, and the tiny movement set off a chain reaction, inevitably shifting his pose slightly.
The instructor walked over with a wry smile and helped him return as closely as possible to his previous position.
The hand a little farther forward, the leg kept at ninety degrees… The students temporarily stopped working or made small adjustments along with the correction.
The model smiled apologetically. Perhaps because of the atmosphere in the studio, he mouthed an apology without making a sound.
The room seemed to possess its own kind of magic. Everyone inside instinctively softened their movements and slowed their pace, as if trying to preserve the space in its most sacred and beautiful form while everyone worked.
Haiqing stopped and waited as well. Once the instructor finished adjusting the model’s pose and quietly moved away, Haiqing’s gaze met the model’s exactly, and they held eye contact for about a second.
A strange sense of familiarity raced across the invisible bridge formed by their gazes. Haiqing could not help lowering his eyes, deliberately severing the connection.
“Um…”
Haiqing heard the voice behind him and paused in the middle of packing his supplies. When he turned around, some instinct he could not fully explain made him avoid meeting the speaker’s eyes directly.
“Hi. My name is Chen Pinjun. Could I see the sketch you just made?” the model from earlier asked shyly.
Haiqing silently opened the drawing pad and let his body language answer for him. Pinjun took the page and studied it carefully. The lines of the sketch were reflected in his eyes, every gradation of light and shadow rendered in such detail that Haiqing could not resist wanting to move a little closer and investigate. Fully aware of what he was doing, he quietly stepped forward a few times.
Pinjun had thrown on a shirt casually, leaving the buttons undone and the front wide open. Instead of looking sloppy, it suited his sunny appearance perfectly. The undershirt clung tightly enough to his body that every muscular contour remained visible, creating an intensely vivid visual impression. Haiqing found himself imagining those muscles beaded with water, the droplets gradually soaked up by the undershirt, and even felt the urge to draw it.
Pinjun was a little taller than Haiqing, though not enough that Haiqing had to deliberately tilt his head back to look at him. His body was also broader and more solid than Haiqing had estimated while sketching from his seat. Haiqing remembered that the particularly popular members of his school’s basketball team had been built this way. Back then, Xiao K had said they were nothing but a bunch of muscle-brained idiots and could never compare with his own oppa.
“Wow…”
Pinjun’s exclamation jolted Haiqing back to himself. He realized he had been studying the other man far too obviously. Fortunately, Pinjun did not look offended.
“You draw so well. I’m seriously freaking out!” Afraid of damaging the work, Pinjun hurriedly handed the sketch back. Haiqing noticed that even his palms were sweaty. “No one’s ever drawn me before!” Perhaps Haiqing’s stare contained too much information, because Pinjun flushed as he explained himself.
The words “never before” caught Haiqing’s attention.
“You’re not a professional figure model?”
Pinjun shook his head. A friend of his was sick, so he had come to fill in. Whether it was coincidence or simply good luck, Haiqing’s first class after signing up had happened to coincide with a complete beginner coming to try modeling for fun.
“You don’t seem like a beginner at all. You’re really steady, but not like a plaster statue.”
“I’m a person, not a still-life object. How could I be like a plaster statue? I breathe, okay?” Pinjun burst out laughing, defending his right to be considered alive at the same time. Before Haiqing could react, Pinjun grabbed his hand and brought it close to his nose. “Here, feel it. I’m breathing, and I’m warm!” With that, he tried to pull Haiqing’s hand toward his cheek.
“You don’t have to prove it to me. Of course I know you’re alive.” Haiqing could not help laughing too.
He never actually touched Pinjun’s cheek. The moment Haiqing laughed aloud, Pinjun seemed infected by it and doubled over laughing as well. When their laughter gradually subsided and the classical guitar music came to an end, Pinjun finally looked at him again with a smile.
“I just wanted to make you smile.” He shrugged. “When I was watching you draw me, you looked really focused, but also kind of sad.”
“Did I?” Haiqing had no awareness of that at all. As far as he knew, he always looked the same while drawing: absorbed, focused, without much expression. He had never thought about what that might look like to other people. He instinctively raised his brows and looked at Pinjun in puzzlement.
Pinjun answered with a vigorous, decisive nod.
“Isn’t it better when you smile like this?” As he spoke, Pinjun pinched his own cheeks and pulled them outward, forcing an artificial smile onto his face. Haiqing laughed again.
It had been a long time since Haiqing had smiled so sincerely. To Pinjun, that smile landed like a heavy blow directly on the softest part of his heart. He could feel his breathing quicken, and the room suddenly seemed a little warmer.
“You’re leaving?” Pinjun asked, turning his face aside slightly in embarrassment.
“Mm.”
At once, Pinjun looked like a golden retriever that had just been told it could eat as much as it wanted without restraint, his smile bright and open.
“Then let’s go together.” Pinjun started toward the door. When he turned and saw that Haiqing had not moved, he called again, “Come on! I’ll buy you ice cream. I got paid cash today!” He even pulled a kraft-paper envelope from his pocket and waved it a few times. It held his pay for the modeling job.
Haiqing looked at the wrist Pinjun was tugging as he led him outside, then at that brilliant, sunny smile. Something in his chest that had finally gone quiet seemed to wake again. Heat flooded through him, and he instinctively pressed a hand there, suddenly uneasy.