Fu Hui had gone to PE class. The moment he returned to the classroom, he heard a classmate call out, “Why is there a doll lying on your desk?”
At once, Fu Hui rushed through the door, caught Lan Xi by the back of his collar, and cupped his face with his other hand.
His fingers came away bloody at the first touch, and wet with tears at the second.
Fu Hui’s heart was like a bubble that had been pierced with a sudden pop.
“Who hit you?” Fu Hui’s voice was still unmistakably childish, but he managed to force a cold, harsh edge into it.
Lan Xi had finally waited long enough for Fu Hui to arrive. He opened his mouth.
The tooth he had painstakingly kept in his mouth for so long fell into Fu Hui’s palm with a plop.
Lan Xi wiped his mouth and finally felt much better.
The classmate who had followed Fu Hui in exclaimed, “Whoa! So it’s a real person! I thought his hair didn’t look real. I figured someone had given you a doll.”
Lan Xi wanted to interrupt and ask who had given him one.
But then he remembered that his front tooth was gone. He pressed his lips tightly together again, his eyes still brimming with tears, looking utterly pitiful.
Seeing him like this, Fu Hui immediately told his classmate, “I’m going home.”
“Huh?”
Fu Hui did not even bother packing his schoolbag. He pulled out a wet wipe and carefully cleaned Lan Xi’s little face, then straightened his collar. “Let’s go.”
The classmate finally recovered from his stupor. “Wait, hold on. That’s your little brother, right? Your brother loses a tooth and you’re just skipping class?”
“Mm.”
Lan Xi vaguely sensed that this was not a very good thing to do. Pretending to be terribly considerate, he covered his mouth with one hand and said, “Fu Hui, go to class.”
Fu Hui asked, “What about Lan Xi?”
Lan Xi had his own solution. “I’ll go to class with Fu Hui.” Whatever happened, he was not going back to his own classroom.
“How will you do that?”
Lan Xi pointed underneath the desk.
Fu Hui suddenly remembered when he had first picked Lan Xi up. Back then, a teacher had come to their home every day to give lessons. Lan Xi had hidden under the desk at first, but later he had brazenly sat on the chair and climbed onto the desk.
It somehow felt as though all that had happened a very long time ago.
Fu Hui rather missed the Lan Xi who had liked clinging to his leg.
But… “The school desk is too small.”
Lan Xi squeezed himself underneath and made a little demonstration, proving that he had at least tried.
“Go home!”
He hadn’t deliberately caused trouble for Fu Hui, see?
Once they were in the car, Fu Hui could no longer hold back his questions. “Does it hurt badly? How did your tooth suddenly fall out? Did you knock it loose? Did someone bully you? …”
Lan Xi shook his head again and again.
“Then why were you crying?”
Lan Xi’s eyes and brows drooped. “Ugly.”
Lan Xi had originally been delighted to start first grade.
It meant he was so much closer to Fu Hui. He could scamper up or down two floors and find him in no time.
Being able to bother Fu Hui whenever he liked pleased Lan Xi enormously.
And now they finished school at the same time!
They could leave class and go home together!
But now his tooth had fallen out.
The succubus was no longer pretty.
The world’s most enthusiastic little lover of school no longer wanted to attend.
The year Fu Hui first brought him home, Lan Xi had been quite happy playing by himself. Later, when his horns had grown and he could not go to school, that had been fine too.
But that was different. Back then, whenever he looked in the mirror, he saw his beautiful little horns.
Now Lan Xi did not even like looking in the mirror anymore.
He was unhappy, and he did not even want Fu Hui to go to school.
He wanted Fu Hui to stay with him.
But the little succubus had just started first grade and received a teacher’s instruction. He knew that children were not allowed to simply stop going to school.
It was called something-or-other compulsory education.
Lan Xi worried. Lan Xi suffered.
He did not even want to open his mouth to eat anymore.
When Song Xu heard about it, she came to visit with presents. All Lan Xi let her see was his bottom.
When Old Master Fu heard that Lan Xi was refusing to eat, he came over too. He did not even get to see Lan Xi’s bottom.
Old Master Fu could only take out his harmonica and try to tempt him with a tune. “Lan Xi hasn’t learned next year’s piece yet.”
Such a small person, with such enormous troubles.
When those troubles came crashing down, they seemed to fill his entire world.
Hidden beneath his blanket, Lan Xi said fiercely, “Don’t want it. Sounds awful.”
“…”
Old Master Fu was somewhat wounded. The period when he and the little one had been kindred spirits in questionable taste had disappeared just like that, all because Lan Xi was losing his baby teeth.
It was not as though nobody offered other ideas.
One of Fu Hui’s uncles thought, “He’s being spoiled rotten! The more you coax a child, the worse they get. Just let him go hungry for a few days.”
“And you can’t just give in when he’s being unreasonable. Doesn’t want to go to school? Give him a beating and that’ll fix it!”
When Fu Hui heard that, he turned to his aunt and said, “Uncle has a point. Next time Uncle quarrels with you, just give him a beating and that’ll fix it.”
Fu Hui’s younger uncle: “…”
He could not help protesting, “How is that the same? Lan Xi is a child, and I’m an adult.”
Fu Hui replied, “Exactly. Uncle is a grown man and still doesn’t know how to behave, so we certainly can’t keep indulging him.”
“…”
“Lan Xi doesn’t understand because he’s so, so young. He’s still just a little baby.”
“……”
Fu Hui politely declined everyone else’s help and returned to Lan Xi. Sitting on the carpet, he began unwrapping things.
The cellophane crinkled and rustled in his hands.
Lan Xi’s ears twitched beneath the blanket, again and again. Eventually, he could not resist asking from inside it, “What is Fu Hui doing?”
“Opening the presents Secretary Li brought. He brought so many for Lan Xi.” Fu Hui paused before deliberately adding, “I’m almost finished opening them.”
Lan Xi loved opening presents, and he also liked collecting pretty wrapping paper.
Sure enough, that was more than he could bear. He sat up abruptly under the blanket, making it billow into a little mountain.
The little mountain slid off the bed, bounced two steps, and moved toward Fu Hui.
But it soon stopped again.
Fu Hui waited quietly for quite a while, but the mountain did not move any farther.
Even that hadn’t tempted him out?
After all, Fu Hui was still young himself. He simply could not stand it anymore, so he went over and lifted one corner of the blanket.
Lan Xi hurriedly cried, “I’m not coming out! I’m not coming out!”
Fu Hui said, “I’ll come in.”
The little blanket promptly bulged into a great big mountain.
Fu Hui asked with utmost seriousness, “What will it take for Lan Xi to be happy again?”
He paused, then borrowed something Lan Xi had once said to him. “Is Lan Xi never going to let me see him again, for the rest of his life?”
Lan Xi: “No, no.”
“Then what does Lan Xi want?” Fu Hui wrapped his arms around him.
It was stiflingly hot beneath the blanket. Before long, both of them were sweating.
Lan Xi whispered, “Don’t want to go to school.”
“Mm. Then you don’t have to go for now.”
“Fu Hui has to stay with Lan Xi.” Though barely more than six years old, Lan Xi already had a time in his life he longed for. “Like when my horns were growing.”
“Okay.”
But Lan Xi cried out in sorrow, “Not okay, not okay! Lan Xi has lots of teeth. They’ll fall out one after another, and it’ll take a very, very long time to replace them all. But Fu Hui can’t stay home with Lan Xi for that long!”
This was the real source of Lan Xi’s sadness over the past few days.
For the first time, the little succubus understood that some things followed their own course, no matter how desperately he wished otherwise.
Fu Hui, meanwhile, suddenly realized that he had set a terrible example for Lan Xi.
He had been so concerned with saving face that when he lost teeth, he refused to let Lan Xi look at his mouth. Naturally, Lan Xi had remembered that losing teeth was ugly, something that looked bad.
Now that the precedent had been set, it was hard to turn back time.
There were demons in the world, but were there time machines? Fu Hui did not know.
Fu Hui began seriously considering the possibility of staying home until the teeth stopped falling out…
“If only I could fit inside Fu Hui’s pocket,” Lan Xi said suddenly.
Fu Hui’s eyes lit up. “That’s right. Maybe Lan Xi can shrink himself?”
Just as they had once tried to make Lan Xi’s horns disappear, the two of them began trying every shrinking spell they could remember from movies.
But unfortunately, no matter how many they tried, nothing worked.
Lan Xi’s stomach started growling.
Fu Hui went to bring some food, then stayed under the blanket with him while they ate.
It really did feel as though they were back at Christmas, and that made Lan Xi just a little bit happier.
The next day, after Lan Xi had fallen asleep, Fu Hui secretly went to take a look at the first-grade classrooms.
He saw plenty of children with gaps in their teeth, all grinning and laughing without a care in the world.
Surely if Lan Xi saw this, he would have no reason to feel so upset anymore.
Then two children got into a fight over an eraser.
The older one mocked the younger. “Look at you trying to talk when air whistles through your teeth! Shame, shame!”
Fu Hui called Secretary Li yet again.
He wanted to change schools.
After a week, Lan Xi’s sadness had begun to ease.
Secretary Li really had arranged for the two of them to transfer to another school.
At the new school, the children wore matching uniforms and carried expensive schoolbags. Every one of them acted like a miniature adult, unwilling to reveal a gap where a front tooth was missing. They were all more concerned with saving face than the next.
They marveled at Lan Xi’s looks but did not approach him to chat, displaying a level of formal courtesy that hardly suited their age.
This was exactly the sort of school the children of wealthy, high-society families were eager to attend.
But Lan Xi soon started feeling bored again.
He was bursting to talk. He wanted to speak loudly.
One evening, he hid beneath the blanket, rubbing his sweat onto Fu Hui while Fu Hui held him close and watched How to Train Your Dragon with him.
“Does Lan Xi like Toothless?” Fu Hui suddenly asked.
“Like him.”
Fu Hui touched Lan Xi’s mouth. “Lan Xi can pretend he’s just put his teeth away too.” He paused. “Mm, so you won’t accidentally bite me.”
Lan Xi’s eyes sparkled. He popped out from under the blanket. “That’s right!”
At last, Lan Xi was no longer afraid of looking ugly.
When he next entered the old residence, everyone seemed to let out a collective sigh of relief.
And finally, Song Xu no longer had to make do with seeing only his bottom.
But the growing pains of a little succubus were always more numerous than those of a human child.
One day, after the trouble over his front tooth, Fu Hui found a black feather in the bedding.
A faint sheen shimmered over its surface.
Did it fall from Lan Xi?
When had he taken out his wings again?
Fu Hui quietly put the feather away for safekeeping.
The next day, he found two more.
On the third day, there were four.
On the fifth day, eight.
Fu Hui no longer dared let Lan Xi leave the house. He even began to suspect that he might have accidentally gnawed on Lan Xi’s wings in his sleep.
“Lan Xi, can you bring out your wings?”
“Mm-hm.” Lan Xi spread them openly for him to see.
Then he was devastated to discover that one of his wing tips had gone bald!
This was even scarier than losing a tooth!!!
Lan Xi hurriedly folded his wings away and covered them as Fu Hui asked gravely, “Did I chew on them?”
A moment later, Lan Xi remembered. “No. I’m changing feathers.”
The little succubus was molting.
But how was he supposed to molt, and how should he care for his wings? Whenever Fu Hui asked, Lan Xi looked completely blank. “Don’t know. Nobody taught me.”
Fu Hui could only reach for his trusty phone again, hoping to look something up.
Well, they were wings, after all.
Fu Hui began searching: What should I do when a baby bird molts?