Haiqing was fast asleep with his head down on the desk in the last row. Pinjun glanced at the professor at the podium and noticed that the reproachful looks being cast toward their seats were coming more and more often, so he had no choice but to pat Haiqing lightly on the shoulder and try to wake him.
Feeling the touch, Haiqing first furrowed his brows and brushed Pinjun’s hand away, then gave a soft “mm” and turned in the other direction, his breathing settling back into an even rhythm as he went right on sleeping. It took less than five seconds. From that alone, Pinjun could tell that Haiqing probably had not slept well last night, or even for several nights before that. The dark circles under his eyes had startled Pinjun that morning.
Even in that state, Haiqing had insisted on “keeping Pinjun company in class,” and a pang of heartache slowly fermented in Pinjun’s chest. He figured Haiqing must be sleeping badly because the exam was approaching and making him nervous. Pinjun had been through exam pressure himself and knew how miserable it could be, so he stopped disturbing Haiqing and focused instead on the professor’s lecture and his notes.
Even the bell at the end of class failed to wake Haiqing.
“Haiqing, class is over.”
Only after Pinjun called him several times did Haiqing finally wake from his sleep, letting out a few drowsy little murmurs.
“Let’s sit outside.” Pinjun could not help smiling at his kitten-like state. It was adorable and made him ache for Haiqing at the same time, but another class would be using the room next, and Pinjun did not feel comfortable simply leaving him here to sleep. He therefore took Haiqing out to the public lounge area and found a table and chairs for him.
“Wait here a second.” After telling him that, Pinjun bought two bottles of coffee from a nearby vending machine. The chill against his skin felt wonderful; in this hot, windless weather, there was nothing more refreshing than pressing something cold directly against your body.
Haiqing thanked him quietly as he took the coffee, twisted the cap open in silence, and drank it in small sips.
Pinjun pulled out a chair and sat down as well, casually dropping his bag on the table. It did not contain textbooks, but the clothes and jacket he would need for work later. His actual school supplies amounted to a single thin notebook and a set of photocopied handouts.
The university campus was full of youth and lively energy. Boys and girls talked about their next classes, what they would do after school, their part-time jobs, and how their club activities were going. Even if you did not join in, simply watching from the side was enough to catch some of that vitality. Whenever he did not have to work, Pinjun loved hanging around campus.
Still smiling, Pinjun turned his head. Haiqing was drinking his coffee with his gaze lowered, his teeth occasionally tapping against the mouth of the bottle with little click, click sounds.
“Didn’t sleep well again last night?” Pinjun reached out and brushed the hair off Haiqing’s forehead, tucking it behind his ear.
“Mm…” Haiqing answered with tired, half-lidded eyes. He looked one step away from pulling both feet up and curling his entire body into the chair.
“Your exam’s coming up. It’d be better to keep a more regular schedule.” Pinjun’s voice was gentle. He knew how much pride Haiqing had. If he failed to perform properly on an important day simply because he was exhausted, Haiqing would be devastated.
“I want to! What am I supposed to do if I just can’t sleep?” Haiqing sounded both helpless and aggrieved. He had grown used to relying on Pinjun, so his tone inevitably came out sharper than he meant it to.
Being reminded by Pinjun made Haiqing instinctively place him in a higher position, and that only deepened the dull frustration of feeling as though he was not being understood.
Pinjun was about to say something soothing when he heard someone calling his name from nearby. It was the three classmates from his last class. He hurried over, worried that he had missed some assignment or reminder from the professor. Once they got talking, arms naturally ended up slung around shoulders, and their voices gradually grew louder.
From anyone else’s point of view, Pinjun and the other three looked no different from ordinary college students fooling around together.
None of that mattered to Haiqing. Exhausted as he was, all he felt was how far away Pinjun’s life seemed from his own. The happier their conversation became, the more out of place Haiqing felt in his fatigue.
Without finishing his coffee, Haiqing grabbed his bag, slung it over his shoulder, and headed for the campus gate. Plenty of students had no afternoon classes. Some were calling out, “I’m starving,” while discussing what to eat for lunch. To Haiqing, who was in the middle of preparing for an exam, such topics sounded almost extravagant.
“Haiqing, where are you going?” Pinjun happened to come back just then. Spotting Haiqing’s back as he headed toward the gate, he ran after him without thinking. “I’ve still got two classes this afternoon. When I’m done, I’ll take you home.” What Pinjun did not say was that he was afraid Haiqing, in this state, might trip while walking and end up hurt, which would only make things worse.
“I want to go home and sleep.”
“If you sleep now, won’t it be even harder to sleep tonight?”
“I’m not staying up because I’m playing around!” Haiqing suddenly shouted, leaving Pinjun stunned.
For an instant, Haiqing felt as though Pinjun was blaming him just like his father did: not going to bed on time, not maintaining a proper routine, not following the unspoken rules society expected of him… The pressure erupted all at once, and Haiqing was too tired to rein himself in.
All the pressure and self-doubt that had been building for so long had swollen endlessly through those sleepless nights before the exam. He had stubbornly insisted on pursuing art, but what if he did not get in? Haiqing suddenly no longer knew whether his insomnia came from nerves, or from the fears that wound themselves around him the moment he closed his eyes and kept him awake through the night.
“My work is due the day after tomorrow, and I still haven’t finished it.” Haiqing bit his lower lip as he spoke, looking like a startled kitten.
“Don’t worry. You’ll finish it. You draw really well. There’s absolutely no way you’ll have a problem.” Pinjun could understand his nerves; he had gone through something similar when he was applying to university. He believed in Haiqing, and it had nothing to do with his feelings for him. He simply, genuinely believed Haiqing would be fine.
But that reassurance never reached Haiqing’s heart.
Haiqing raised his face to look at him. His clear, shining eyes glittered beneath the sunlight, so dazzling that Pinjun involuntarily held his breath.
Thousands of emotions flowed through those eyes like a rainbow-colored river, enough to make anyone’s heart tremble at the sight.
Haiqing’s lips parted slightly, then immediately pressed shut again, as though he wanted to say something but ultimately forced himself to hold it back. Pinjun kept looking at him and never once turned away, no matter how miserable Haiqing looked. Suddenly, Haiqing felt that everything was so shallow and ridiculous, not Pinjun, but himself.
“When you want to draw something and can’t get it out, it’s like wanting to sleep and not being able to.” He swallowed, his voice slowly taking on a tearful edge. “I feel like I’m completely useless. There’s no way I’m going to get in…”
Haiqing suddenly regretted following Pinjun to the university for class.
The more he stood inside a campus and soaked in its free, unrestrained youthfulness, the more the pressure of possibly failing and the loneliness he would feel after leaving seemed to grow in equal measure. Every night, shut inside that tiny studio and staring at a blank canvas, the more desperately he wanted to paint something, the less he dared to move his hand. Fear grew especially enormous when he was alone. By the time Haiqing realized it, even something as ordinary as “painting one good picture” had become impossibly distant.
Once he fell asleep, his father’s objections to his choice, his words telling Haiqing to stop dreaming, became the worst nightmares of all. Haiqing wanted to prove that his persistence had value. The pressure accumulated and fermented with time until it became the dark clouds circling beneath his eyes.
“You don’t understand. You don’t understand anything at all…” Haiqing did not want to do this, to dump his own pressure onto Pinjun like garbage. It was unfair and cowardly, but once his emotions cracked open, he could no longer close them back up. The flood that had been dammed inside forced that crack wider and wider until, in the end, no one could escape being drowned.
Haiqing took a deep breath. The moisture at the corners of his eyes ultimately did not fall, but it added another layer of sorrow to a gaze already exhausted beyond endurance.
“I’m in so much pain. Do you know that?”
Haiqing turned and walked away.
Pinjun pressed his lips together tightly. He did not call Haiqing back, simply watching helplessly as he walked farther and farther away.
Countless footsteps from students running and walking, cheerful voices calling, “What should we eat?” and “Where’s the next class?” and the rustle of leaves stirred by a light breeze… all of it seemed to tug at the distance between them.
At last, the tears at the corners of Haiqing’s eyes could no longer remain circling inside them.
Haiqing wiped away the tears that had reached his chin, but he could not stop more from spilling out. Tear tracks gradually covered the backs of both hands and his cheeks. No voice came from behind calling him back, nor did he hear hurried footsteps running after him. Haiqing did not understand what he had been expecting, and he did not want to understand. To him, it was as irrelevant as the gazes being cast his way.
Haiqing was in pain, but he had no idea how to ease this loneliness.
No matter the joys and sorrows of human life, its rises and falls, victory and defeat, moonlight would shine on everyone with the same impartiality.
Haiqing lay on his bed, staring at the moon outside the window. Being bathed in its light felt no different from before.
So frustrating.
What a mess.
Ever since he got home, Haiqing had been restless. The tears had stopped, but his emotions had not settled. Shouting at Pinjun, running away crying on campus, then coming home without a word and locking himself in his room, all those wildly out-of-character actions left Haiqing feeling powerless.
It felt as though everything had gone out of control today.
Like a train that had jumped the tracks, there was no saving it. His life was slowly slipping beyond his control, and every attempt to wrest it back only made things worse… Haiqing loathed the way he had behaved. If anything, it was more surprising that such an enormous mass of negative emotion had not made him throw up.
So tired.
He closed his eyes. In the quiet, gentle moonlight, he slowly calmed. The exhaustion of his body finally forced his panic down, and in the embrace of that halo, his consciousness briefly slipped away.
Haiqing slowly sat up, the confusion in his eyes clearing.
He moved the easel from the studio into his bedroom, positioned it in the moonlight, and shut the door. During the brief time his consciousness had disappeared, a deep blue that was both beautiful and sorrowful had darted into his dreams. The emotion swelling in his chest made him want to capture it while the feeling was still vivid.
He added no more pencil lines. Instead, Haiqing applied paint directly to the paper. No longer relying on the restraint of an outline, he painted to the clamor inside his chest. The deep blue and ink-black reflected in the depths of his pupils appeared in turns, crossing, twisting around one another, and finally blending completely together.
Pinjun felt his pocket vibrate. He glanced toward the dining area and, seeing that there were no customers, reached for his phone.
My exam is tomorrow. Want to come cheer me on? I’m waiting at the shaved-ice shop.
Those few words finally lifted the weight from Pinjun’s heart. Checking the time, he saw that his shift ended in five minutes. He looked at the manager, glanced toward the floor again, and finally could not resist going over to explain that something urgent had come up and ask if he could leave five minutes early, promising to make up the time tomorrow.
The manager had always treated Pinjun like a younger brother, so of course he readily agreed over a mere five minutes.
“Thanks, Manager!” Pinjun called as he dashed toward the break room. In less than a minute, he had stripped off his uniform, grabbed his bag and jacket, and raced outside so quickly that the manager could only stare after him in amazement.
“What could possibly be that urgent?” the manager teased with a wry smile.
Pinjun rode his scooter toward the shaved-ice shop. Compared with that other day, the afternoon sunlight was much weaker and interfered far less with his vision. Thanks to that, it took him only half the time to reach the shop.
After parking, he took off his helmet and drew several deep breaths before walking inside at an unhurried pace. The moment he saw Haiqing suddenly spring to his feet, Pinjun had to use every ounce of strength to suppress how much he had missed him during the time apart.
“One bowl of mixed shaved ice, please.”
The owner moved quickly, shaving a bowl of ice, drizzling it with brown sugar syrup and condensed milk, adding an assortment of toppings, and handing it to Pinjun.
“Mind if I share your table?” Pinjun asked, carrying the bowl over to Haiqing.
“Every table in here is empty.” Haiqing answered hoarsely, his tone carrying a trace of sulky, spoiled affection.
“Fine! Then I’ll sit at another table.”
When Haiqing saw that he actually turned to leave for another table, he could not help calling, “Hey!” The drawn-out ending and the upward sweep of his eyes made Pinjun smile. He should have known by now that Haiqing was this kind of person: stubborn, unwilling to give in, yet someone who needed more careful tenderness than most.
“Then you won’t get any of my pudding.” Pinjun chuckled, deliberately lowering the bowl and rocking it from side to side so the pudding on top wobbled with it.
“You’re so annoying. Sit down already.” Haiqing pulled out the chair beside him. Pinjun sat with a giggle, but he did not start a conversation. The two of them ate their shaved ice in silence.
Several times Haiqing wanted to speak, but he had no idea how to begin. He had grown used to Pinjun’s gentleness and the way Pinjun doted on him, but he was not used to apologizing first. All he could do was keep signaling through little movements that he wanted Pinjun to pay attention to him, like a sulking child.
Although Pinjun kept his head down as he ate, he did not miss a single one of Haiqing’s movements, including the moment Haiqing used his spoon to steal Pinjun’s pudding. After a low chuckle, Pinjun was the first to soften.
“You’ve almost eaten all my pudding,” he said with a smile.
“That was supposed to be ordered to pay me back! That’s my pudding!” Haiqing continued, having forgotten that Pinjun had already bought him pudding before they went to the movie. To Pinjun, this small lapse of memory only made Haiqing’s awkward little tantrum more obvious.
The scene from that day flashed through Pinjun’s mind. They had only just met, yet they had interacted as naturally as though they had known each other for years. Pinjun found it impossible to stay angry and suddenly felt that sulking over the past few days had been childish of him.
“Twelve.” Laughing, he scooped up the last piece of pudding and gave it to Haiqing.
“I’m already fourteen.” Haiqing gave two little huffs and unceremoniously popped the pudding straight into his mouth. Sitting shoulder to shoulder, they looked at one another and smiled, both carrying the tentative shyness that came after ending a cold war.
“Finished the painting?” Pinjun still remembered how much pressure Haiqing had been under today.
“Mm! I turned it in!” Haiqing answered loudly like a child, as adorable as an elementary-school student shouting “Yes!” when the teacher asked whether he had been good.
“Did you check out the exam venue? The restrooms, the evacuation routes, did you make sure you knew where everything was?”
“Why would I look at the evacuation routes?” Haiqing had not even seriously memorized the inside of the classroom. He had only walked around the campus enough to get a rough sense of the place and barely remembered which floor or which side the restrooms were on.
Pinjun raised an eyebrow. “If there’s an earthquake and that many people are around, you need to know which way to run.”
His grave expression made Haiqing laugh out loud.
“With that many people, you really think anyone would be able to get out?” Haiqing said with a frown. The ice in his mouth kept attacking his teeth and sensitive gums, sending sharp, freezing air up into his nose. “Stop making me laugh. My nose hurts.” He covered his nose as he complained.
“When you eat ice, open your mouth and breathe out.” Pinjun smiled and pinched the tip of his nose.
Haiqing frowned, his expression openly puzzled.
Seeing that blank look, Pinjun simply opened his mouth and demonstrated. “Like this. Haaah. See? Breathe out. Then your nose won’t hurt.”
Haiqing followed his instructions dubiously and discovered that the chill from the ice really did stop rushing straight into his nose. His face immediately lit with delighted surprise as he praised Pinjun. Pinjun looked unbearably pleased with himself, giving a couple of smug hums and saying, of course.
“Who do you think I am?”
“Did you forget who you are?” Haiqing was every bit as capable of talking nonsense, picking up the thread with perfect seriousness. “You’re my grandpa’s other grandson!”
The moment he said it, Pinjun burst out laughing, and Haiqing was infected by his laughter and joined in. Their two voices together made it feel as though they had returned to that first day they ate shaved ice, when there had been no unhappiness at all, only bright, carefree laughter.
Haiqing’s laughter gradually faded, and his expression slowly grew serious. The sound of his teeth grinding stopped abruptly when it reached a certain peak.
A coaxing, almost spoiled “Pinjun” slipped from his lips first. “I’m sorry. I was too harsh that day.” He quietly reached out and lightly held Pinjun’s wrist. “I was just under too much pressure. I’m sorry.”
Haiqing stared straight at Pinjun as he apologized. He had expected Pinjun to tell him, “It’s okay,” or tease him with, “That’s what you call too much pressure?” Haiqing had spent a long time preparing himself, so he would have accepted being scolded too. But three seconds passed, then five, and Pinjun still said nothing.
Puzzled, Haiqing frowned, only to discover that Pinjun’s eyes had suddenly reddened as he looked at him.
“What’s wrong? I already said I’m sorry. Don’t be mad anymore.” The turn of events caught Haiqing completely off guard. Why was the person receiving the apology the one crying first? Shouldn’t Haiqing be the one crying? He was the one who had done something wrong! “Don’t cry…”
Pinjun pressed his lips together, and even the tip of his nose began to turn red.
“No one has ever talked to me like that before.” Pinjun frowned as he complained. “Who does that? You’re under pressure, so you take it out on someone else? You made me cry through both my classes that afternoon. I even had to borrow tissues from the person next to me. It was so embarrassing. Do you know how embarrassing that was?” He snatched up a tissue from the table and pressed it over his eyes, his gestures exaggerated and aggrieved.
At first, Haiqing really was nervous. He was the one who had done something wrong, and he had been anxious that Pinjun might refuse to accept his apology, so the instant he saw Pinjun’s eyes turn red, his heart seemed to skip half a beat. But as Pinjun’s voice climbed higher and the crying in it became less and less convincing, Haiqing’s emotions slowly settled. At the same time, something else began expanding in his chest.
There was no question that Pinjun was gentle. Haiqing knew he was deliberately exaggerating like this to keep the moment from becoming too tense and serious. If Haiqing allowed himself one slightly selfish thought, perhaps Pinjun had stopped being angry a long time ago and simply had no better way to accept the apology, so he could only tease Haiqing into laughing.
With one laugh, the argument was over.
Thinking about it, Haiqing felt his own eyes begin to sting. As he swallowed, he took a deep breath and forced the tears back.
“I didn’t dare call you again either. I was afraid you’d still be upset…”
The more Pinjun talked, the more committed he became to the performance, even more so than before. Haiqing, meanwhile, treasured the emotion with the same care he used to preserve his paintings. As the warmth in his chest spread through his limbs and into that long-unmet longing to be cherished and loved, he picked up his spoon, scooped some ice and toppings, and shoved it directly into Pinjun’s mouth.
“You… hey, what are you doing…?” Caught off guard by the sudden attack, Pinjun could only clamp his teeth around the spoon by reflex, turning whatever he had meant to say into muffled, garbled noises. The melancholy that had once covered Haiqing’s eyes had vanished. The warm, gentle feeling from when they first met had returned to occupy that window to his soul.
Haiqing was back. Pinjun’s eyes curved with his smile as well.
“Eat your ice. Stop talking.” Haiqing ordered him with feigned bossiness. “I already apologized. Hurry up and eat, and stop nagging. Tomorrow morning at seven, you’re coming with me to the exam. If you don’t show up, I won’t take it, and I’ll call you just to yell at you. Got it?” When he finished, he gave Pinjun’s arm a light slap, the intimacy between them conveyed perfectly through that brief touch. The real hurdle would not come until tomorrow, but Haiqing felt that the pressure and nightmares that had tormented him for days no longer seemed quite so frightening.
Pinjun swallowed the ice, keeping the spoon tucked into one side of his mouth.
“Yes, Master!”
“Twelve!” Haiqing shot back mercilessly.
“I’m a sophomore!”