Five days later, Shao Wu met Zhu Jingjing at a newly opened café beside Yongchuan No. 2 High School.
Unlike how he remembered her, Zhu Jingjing was wearing neither sportswear nor a dress. She had on a crisp white satin blouse, a black pleated skirt that fell below the knee, and khaki leather flats. The moment she sat down, she complained to Shao Wu, “I snuck out, you know. Ugh, I’m so sick of working overtime every day.”
Shao Wu asked in confusion, “Aren’t you teaching PE?”
“What, looking down on PE teachers?” Zhu Jingjing pouted. “Next semester the education bureau is rolling out some kind of physical-fitness curriculum, and No. 2 High is one of the pilot schools. We have to write lesson plans.”
“Oh… Even so, you can’t just skip dinner.” Shao Wu pushed the menu toward her. “You order first.”
Zhu Jingjing opened the menu and said as she read it, “Can’t be helped. I’m just a student teacher, so of course they make me do more work.”
That summer, Zhu Jingjing had returned to Yongchuan No. 2 High School for her teaching practicum. The first-years were on vacation, but the second- and third-years were still taking extra classes. After returning to Chongqing from Chengdu, Shao Wu had stayed at school for another four days. After all, he had told his parents he was attending Sichuan University’s summer camp. He could hardly go home too early.
The café was lit by a soft, warm yellow glow that fell across Shao Wu’s arm and gleamed faintly on his skin. He stared blankly at that small patch of light.
“Shao Wu.”
“Hm?” Shao Wu looked up.
“…I said I’m done ordering.” Zhu Jingjing pushed the menu over. “Your turn.”
“Oh, right.” Shao Wu gave her an apologetic smile. “Sorry, I spaced out.”
Their dinner arrived soon after. Zhu Jingjing had ordered Italian-style mushroom-and-beef risotto, while Shao Wu had ordered only a plate of fries.
Zhu Jingjing asked in surprise, “That’s all you’re eating?”
“Mm. I’m not very hungry yet.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Zhu Jingjing suddenly leaned forward, moving closer to Shao Wu. “Did something happen?”
Shao Wu looked at her. A few seconds later, he said quietly, “Jingjing, I don’t want to go to grad school anymore.”
“Why?”
“I failed a class.” Shao Wu smiled at her, then realized how forced it must look and let the smile fade. “So I lost my postgraduate-recommendation slot.”
“You… How could you fail a class?”
“Because…” Shao Wu lowered his eyes. He knew he could easily lie. He could say the professor had deliberately targeted him, or that he had gotten sick and missed the exam. He could come up with any excuse, tell any lie, but all of a sudden he wanted to tell the truth. “On the day of the exam, something happened in a friend’s family. I rushed over to help, so I didn’t take the exam.” In the end, he still couldn’t keep it bottled up. Even half-hidden behind careful wording, he had finally said it.
Zhu Jingjing was silent for a few seconds before asking, “Was it him?”
Shao Wu said, “You mean…”
“Him,” Zhu Jingjing said pointedly. “Who else could it be?”
Shao Wu jerked his head up, the hand resting on his knee tightening into a fist.
“I heard his grandpa passed away. Was it because of that?”
“…Yes.”
“You really didn’t have to go that far, Shao Wu.”
“…”
Shao Wu’s heart beat faster and faster. At that moment, Zhu Jingjing’s gaze seemed almost tangible, surging toward him and overwhelming him. Could it be, could she too…
“Why are you so foolish?” Zhu Jingjing said. “He’s never going to like you that way.”
So she knew too.
A bone-deep mortification swept through Shao Wu. When Yang Shuyi rejected him that evening, all he had felt was pain. Now the pain was still there, but another layer of mortification had settled over it. She knew too. Since when? Sophomore year? Freshman year? Or even earlier, back in high school?
Zhu Jingjing and Yang Shuyi had both known, and they had watched him come up with one ridiculous excuse after another just to get close to Yang Shuyi.
“I-I know. He has a girlfriend.” Shao Wu lowered his head, his voice trembling slightly. “Jingjing, how… how did you know?”
“I couldn’t tell you exactly when. Sometime after we started college, I guess. I just gradually got the feeling.”
“…”
Oh. After they started college.
Shao Wu suddenly felt a bleak sort of relief. At least it hadn’t been back in high school. If Zhu Jingjing had been able to tell then, the other students in their class probably could have too. Once they went off to college, Zhu Jingjing was the only person left who knew both him and Yang Shuyi.
“I wanted to tell you to give up a long time ago, but seeing the way you were, I couldn’t bring myself to say it, really, Shao Wu,” Zhu Jingjing said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hide it from you.”
“Hey, don’t be like that. What do you have to apologize for?” Shao Wu hurriedly shook his head, then asked cautiously, “But you… you don’t think I’m… that people like us…”
“No, no. Not at all!”
“Oh… Thank you.”
Shao Wu thought, If only Yang Shuyi could be like Zhu Jingjing. No, that wasn’t quite right either. Maybe Yang Shuyi truly didn’t discriminate against gay people. He could have nothing against gay people, but that didn’t mean he would become gay himself. That was all.
“You said you’re not going to grad school.” Zhu Jingjing gripped the small steel spoon on the table, though she still hadn’t touched her risotto. “Will your parents agree to that?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t told them yet…” Shao Wu thought, They definitely won’t agree.
“Even if you can’t get recommended admission, you can still take the entrance exam. You’re smart. Not like me. You’d definitely get in.”
“I can’t.” Shao Wu gave a bitter smile. “My head is full of him… He rejected me.”
Shao Wu knew how pathetic that sounded. He had been rejected so decisively, yet his head was still full of Yang Shuyi? He was at least an adult who was about to graduate from college. How could he let this kind of love, something that could never see the light of day, keep him from taking care of the things that actually mattered?
Chen Yimang had once said to Shao Wu, You know, maybe that guy really isn’t as great as you think. He isn’t worth changing your college application choice for. He isn’t worth all those trips to Southwest University. He isn’t worth thinking about every single day. You know that song? What you can’t have is forever stirring. Shao Wu, you just can’t have him. The less you can have him, the better you think he is. Really, it’s all something you imagined for yourself.
But was Yang Shuyi really “not that great”? Shao Wu didn’t think so. Or rather, it wasn’t because Yang Shuyi was especially wonderful that Shao Wu liked him. Yang Shuyi was smart, yes, but not some extraordinary genius. Otherwise, after studying so hard through his senior year, he should have made it into Tsinghua or Peking University. As for his looks, he was good-looking, with a clean-cut, masculine air, but not so handsome he could be a celebrity. Truthfully, he was just one of the slightly better-looking people in a crowd. And personality-wise, Yang Shuyi wasn’t especially gentle or enthusiastic either. If anything, he could be rather aloof.
But if Shao Wu had to list what there was to like about him, one, two, three, four, five, the way he would answer a long-form question on a humanities comprehensive exam, he could write far too much. Maybe it was the bag of Copico Yang Shuyi pulled from his backpack after evening self-study that day. Maybe it was the way he massaged Grandma’s legs and feet when she was in the hospital. Maybe it was how, the night Yang Long caused a scene at school, he used his school uniform to wipe the tears from Shao Wu’s face. Maybe it was the graffiti on a wall that had since collapsed. Maybe it was the sight of him returning thirty-seven days after the Wenchuan earthquake with both hands wrapped in gauze. Maybe it was all the countless tiny moments, as numerous as grains of sand in the Ganges: when he stared into space, when he slept, when he frowned, when he smiled and waved. Washed over and over by time, those grains of sand still reflected a brilliant light.
During his sophomore year, Shao Wu had taken a general elective called something like A Brief History of the Humanistic Spirit, or maybe A Brief History of Humanist Thought. He could no longer remember the exact name. He only remembered the teacher introducing one term: disenchantment. The usually stern-faced woman tapped the blackboard and said, “Disenchantment, everyone. Max Weber first used this concept, drawing on Schiller’s theory, to describe the bureaucratized, modernized, secular society of the West… Put simply, disenchantment means stripping away the false layer attached to the surface of things. What does that mean? Let me give you an example. You see me standing up here speaking at length. I’ve read more books than you and know more than you, but none of that is enough reason for you to worship me. Stay clear-headed, everyone. Avoid fanaticism. We spend our entire lives undergoing disenchantment.”
There was another saying too: life is simply “nothing more than that.”
Shao Wu thought, No. That wasn’t right. Yang Shuyi was not an “enchantment,” nor was he “nothing more than that.” He had never been perfect, so there was no “disenchantment” to be had, no “disappointment.” And yet it was precisely all those imperfections that made him a concrete, living presence. He was no castle in the air, no mirage. He had appeared in Shao Wu’s life with such undeniable reality, like a rainstorm that would never end, an inexplicable anomaly fallen from the heavens, some fated devotion from which there could be no turning back.
Shao Wu knew he had been rejected, but he could not stop loving him.
“Actually, I thought of something that might help you fool your parents,” Zhu Jingjing said with a sigh. “But you’d have to stay in Yongchuan.”