“What are you doing?!” Realizing what had just happened, Fang Peizhi went red with outrage.
He tried to struggle upright, but his severe cold had drained him. The convulsions had only recently stopped, and he was exhausted in body and mind. He had the will but none of the strength to rise. He was like a fish on a chopping board, entirely at someone else’s mercy.
The man who’d been lying innocently in bed had changed from pale-skinned to a red-skinned lizard. Zhao Buxi thought he’d somehow wandered into the desert.
Capital University had produced its very own Lord Guan, the red-faced warrior.
“Oh, come on. I didn’t kiss you. My lips were pressed together.” Seeing Fang look like an outraged, bashful maiden, as though Zhao had done it on purpose, he couldn’t understand it. Why would he randomly kiss another man? Zhao rubbed a hand over Fang’s forehead as if wiping it clean. “There. Happy?”
Who went around kissing men for no reason? Zhao wondered. Is he crazy, or am I?
Anyone who didn’t know better would think he’d been acting like some filthy pervert. His hand couldn’t properly feel the temperature at the moment, so he’d simply pressed his pursed lips to Fang’s forehead to test whether he had a fever. Go around a children’s hospital sometime and you’d see plenty of parents holding children in both arms, unable to use their hands to test a forehead, so they used their lips instead.
What was there to kiss about a hard-bodied man? There ought to be limits to a person’s vanity. His girlfriend must have spoiled him rotten.
Fang closed his eyes, clearly unwilling to speak to him.
What an ungrateful man. Zhao Buxi almost wanted to smack his forehead. “I shouldn’t have bothered looking after you.”
Fang opened his eyes. “Did I ask you to?”
“What’s wrong with me being a good person?” Zhao Buxi enunciated grandly. “Society needs people like me these days!”
People nowadays were too cold-hearted, and there were too many shameless crooks concocting underhanded ways to extort money. No wonder fewer and fewer people were willing to help others.
You might help someone out of kindness today, only for them to turn around and sue you tomorrow rather than thank you.
People’s motives were impossible to read, and nobody dared gamble on them. That was why someone like Zhao Buxi really was rare nowadays.
Zhao muttered, “All I did was check your temperature, and you have to get so angry. I’m not a thermometer. How else was I supposed to check? Stick my whole body under your armpit?”
Fang Peizhi drew a deep breath. He had no idea what other shocking remarks could emerge from this country bumpkin’s mouth.
His mind was a blur. All he could think about was whether Zhao Buxi had seen anything when he’d been standing at the door, whether he’d witnessed the humiliating spectacle of his attack.
The rainy season had arrived, and rain fell almost every night. Water plunged from the clouds and hammered the ground. Tonight another downpour raged, and those still away from home were like lonely little boats at sea, tossed by the swelling waves.
Fang’s entire body was weak. He remained trapped in the nightmare he’d just experienced, unable to pull himself free. His convulsive attacks hadn’t occurred for a long time, which only made this one more draining. Right now he wanted nothing but to be left alone quietly for a while.
Zhao fell silent. Fang assumed that after doing something so absurd, the man had finally left him to rest alone.
Instead, in the next instant, Fang Peizhi found himself falling into a warm embrace.
His body turned rigid as a board.
Fang was heavy. Zhao Buxi had to expend considerable effort to pull him into his arms, and no sooner had he embraced him than the man went stiff.
Zhao looked down in alarm.
That sudden? Was he about to depart this world for a better one?
Seeing that Fang was still breathing, he sighed in relief. Zhao sat leaning against the headboard, one arm wrapped around Fang with a hand resting on his shoulder. Then he began to rock him gently. “There. Go to sleep.”
The rocking was very slow, an occasional sway here and there.
Fang’s throat was hoarse from the fever. “What are you doing?”
Zhao’s body temperature was normal, unlike Fang, who was burning with fever but felt freezing cold. With another warm human being right beside him, Fang felt much of that cold recede at once.
“Holding you so you can sleep,” Zhao Buxi explained naturally. “Didn’t your mom hold you like this and rock you to sleep when you were little?”
Almost every child had been held in their mother’s arms to sleep when young. Being embraced like that made a child feel especially safe.
Zhao’s mother had often held him that way, gently rocking him and rhythmically patting his back.
As he grew older, around five or six, she gradually stopped holding him to sleep. By then he could run and jump, and staying indoors for a whole day without playing outside was torture.
Each day he’d roam outside until he was exhausted. There was no need to coax him to sleep anymore. After washing his feet, he’d flop onto the heated brick bed with his backside in the air and fall asleep.
Fang clearly wasn’t accustomed to this position, much less being held in another man’s arms. His brows knitted like a fuzzy caterpillar. “No.”
His mother had never held him like that.
He’d barely seen his parents after he was born. Seeing them once a year was already good fortune. During his childhood, the nanny was his mother, the butler was his father, and his actual parents were more like employers.
No, even employers wasn’t quite right.
You could see your employer seven or eight times in a year. He saw his parents less often than that.
Before he turned ten, his parents were little more than indistinct shapes. If he wanted to arrange a meeting with them, he had to make an appointment; without one, he couldn’t see them at all.
In truth, even making an appointment didn’t guarantee anything. Whether he saw them depended entirely on when the couple had time, never on when he did.
Zhao Buxi thought he’d misheard. In disbelief, he asked again, “Your mom never held you?”
“Mm.”
“That’s so pitiful.” Zhao Buxi had always been direct with his words.
There were actually children in the world whose mothers had never held them to sleep.
“Were your parents divorced, or is your mom gone?” Zhao asked without intending any cruelty.
He simply wanted to understand why Fang hadn’t had his mother beside him growing up. He had assumed every child was rocked to sleep by their mother, especially children from wealthy households.
Fang didn’t answer. He obviously didn’t want to talk about it.
If Fang didn’t want to talk, Zhao wouldn’t press him.
The room grew quiet. Zhao had no intention of bothering him again; he just continued rocking him gently.
Sleep helped the body recover. Fang had no strength left to argue anyway, so he closed his eyes and prepared to drift off.
The next moment, Zhao Buxi bent down to his ear and whispered, “I’m your mom.”
Fang Peizhi: …
So much for sleeping.
Fang’s eyes widened like bronze bells, sharp as flashes of lightning, the whites bloodshot from the strain.
He shifted his neck a little. “How long are you planning to hold me?”
“Until you fall asleep,” Zhao replied.
One man rocking another man to sleep in his arms was strange beyond description. But more than how long, Fang really wanted to ask why Zhao was willing to hold him at all.
Ever since Zhao had come into the room, Fang hadn’t treated him kindly. Their previous interactions couldn’t exactly be called pleasant either.
Yet Zhao hadn’t held any of it against him. He’d cared for Fang despite their unpleasant history, without even showing him an ugly expression.
Zhao Buxi seemed to have noticed something. Normally Fang looked shrewd, like a man with a remarkable intellect, but when he was sick, everything he felt showed on his face.
“Are you wondering why I’m still willing to look after you?” Zhao asked with a grin.
Fang watched him without speaking, but the eyes were the wellspring of human emotion.
His eyes said, Yes. I’m curious.
“I already told you. Society needs people like me,” Zhao Buxi said. “And besides…”
He hesitated and scratched his cheek. “When someone’s sick, it’s understandable if their temper gets a little worse.”
He’d been like that as a child. Whenever he fell ill, he would cry and fuss all day. Feeling miserable himself wasn’t enough; his parents had to suffer along with him. He was determined to make everyone as uncomfortable as he was. He’d been an absolute terror.
His meals had to be fed directly into his mouth. Even cold water had to be poured from one cup into another three times before he’d drink it. Under normal circumstances his parents would have smacked him long before. But when he was sick, it was as if he’d acquired the right to rule the world. Nobody told him “no.” He could even make his father spin around on the floor and bark like a puppy.
Strange. So strange. And they didn’t even get angry.
Little Zhao Buxi had found that utterly incredible.
So being sick meant you got to be the emperor.
When he recovered, he asked his mother why she hadn’t punished him when he acted up while ill.
Usually she’d have chased him all through the village with a poker from the stove.
His mother stroked his hair. Her palm was broad and rough, and the pressure of her touch was firm and comforting. “You feel awful when you’re sick, don’t you? It’s only natural to be a little short-tempered.”
People in pain had emotions. That was why Zhao felt it was perfectly normal for Fang Peizhi to have snapped at him just now. A person couldn’t always control their feelings when sick.
It wasn’t Fang’s fault.
At least, Zhao Buxi didn’t blame him.
Just as he’d never genuinely wanted his father to bark like a puppy when he was little. He’d only wanted to vent his temper.
Once he’d let the frustration out, he could get better.
Honestly, when Zhao first heard Fang babbling in his room, he’d had no desire to help. After all, Fang had made fun of him for not knowing how to read.
But the sight of him muttering all alone in the darkness had been pitiful. One solitary person lying there with no one by his side.
Zhao Buxi wasn’t the type to hold grudges. Even if he hated someone, he’d help if they were in trouble and he had the means, though he might still give them a hard time with his mouth.
His mother had taught him that when someone was having difficulties, you should lend a hand if you could.
You help me today, and I may help you tomorrow. Don’t be so petty that you store every little grievance in your belly.
If you remembered nothing but people’s faults, eventually you’d see only the bad side of everyone you met. What a miserable way to live.
If you wanted your days to be happy, you had to notice the happiness in them.
Fang Peizhi might have been irritating, constantly probing about his wages and hinting for gifts, but Zhao had been living in his apartment this whole time. Fang didn’t like him, yet hadn’t tried to kick him out.
He had even invited Zhao to share his shower after they got soaked in the rain, although the experience hadn’t ended particularly pleasantly.
Fang wasn’t exactly fond of him, but he hadn’t hurt him. He had even helped him stay in the apartment because housing in Beijing was so expensive. That was kindness too.
Besides, Fang staying sick forever wouldn’t do anyone any good. It might delay Little Tiger’s classes.
The sooner Fang got better, the better.
Maybe, after Zhao cared for him this time, Fang would remember the kindness and treat Little Tiger well for a few days.
Little Tiger was his whole world.
Fang lowered his eyes. “I’m sorry about earlier.”
Zhao hadn’t expected an apology. “It’s fine. I don’t hold things against sick people.”
Seeing that Fang still had his eyes open, Zhao Buxi pulled out his phone. “Want me to tell you a story?”
If his mother had never held him, she probably hadn’t told him bedtime stories either. With a story, he’d be asleep in no time.
He had Doubao find one for him.
“Doubao, Doubao. Find me a bedtime story.”
“Certainly,” Doubao replied.
A long passage of text appeared on his phone. Zhao cleared his throat and began reading from the screen. “The Three Little Gents.”
Fang lifted his head. The three little whats?
“Once upon a thyme, there were three little gents. They were called Mister Dirt the Eldest, Mister Dirt the Second, and Mister Little Brother.”
Fang Peizhi looked lost. Who are these people supposed to be?
“The three little gents heard there was a great hungry wolf by the playground. If they didn’t want to get blown away, they had to build a king-house together, a tall house that the hungry wolf couldn’t well into.”
Zhao Buxi narrated with feeling. “But the house-building wasn’t going swimmingly. They fought all the time. One day, they started arguing again about a pig mistake that happened while they were building the house.”
Mister Dirt the Eldest pointed at Mister Dirt the Second. “It’s your pig!”
Mister Dirt the Second pointed at Mister Little Brother. “I don’t have a pig. It’s his pig!”
Mister Little Brother pointed both hands like pistols at his two older brothers. “Obviously the pig belongs to you two!”
The three little gents argued endlessly.
“It’s your pig.”
“Just tell me whether you’ve got a pig!”
“I haven’t got a pig! It’s your pig!”
“Your pig!”
“Your pig!”
Zhao Buxi was getting hopelessly confused by what he was reading. Why had a pig suddenly entered the story? “Whose pig is it, anyway?”
Fang Peizhi spoke. “Mine.”
His voice was weak yet resolute in the darkness. “Every pig is mine.”
Why on earth am I listening to an illiterate man tell me a bedtime story?
He had known Zhao Buxi struggled to read, but he hadn’t realized it was this severe.
He could barely recognize the tale of The Three Little Pigs anymore.
Elio’s Notes: Zhao Buxi is misreading the Chinese text of The Three Little Pigs. In particular, he repeatedly reads “fault/mistake” (错) as “pig” (猪), turning accusations of whose fault it is into an argument over whose pig it is. His other strange readings are intentional.
“You still awake?” Zhao Buxi was really getting into the story. Seeing Fang hadn’t fallen asleep, he decided to find another. “I’ll tell you one more.”
“…” For the first time, Fang Peizhi wished he had a function that would put him instantly to sleep.
But as Zhao continued reading increasingly nonsensical stories, guessing his way through practically every word, Fang really did grow sleepy. He slowly closed his eyes. By the time he awoke, it was the following morning.
There was no one else in the room.
He picked up the phone beside his bed. It was already half past seven. Fang Peizhi got up and stepped out of his room. A noise like a water pump slurping thundered through the apartment. He didn’t even have to think about who was making it: Zhao Buxi was eating noodles.
Zhao Sheng had already eaten and left for the day, keeping up his good habit of rising early to study at the library.
Zhao Buxi was listening to something on his phone as he ate. The moment he heard footsteps behind him, he switched off the screen.
“Good Baby’s Learn-to-Read Classroom…”
He hastily stuffed his phone into his trouser pocket, uncertain whether Fang had heard. Holding his bowl of noodles, he turned around. “You’re awake?”
Zhao Buxi had his mouth full of noodles, one cheek bulging as he chewed and spoke.
Fang’s voice was still rather hoarse. “Mm.”
Seeing that Fang’s complexion looked much better than yesterday, Zhao figured his fever must have gone down. “I brought breakfast for you too. Come eat.”
Across from Zhao’s place stood a bowl of noodles with meat sauce beneath a small food cover.
People said sick patients should eat bland food, but Zhao Buxi thought that was ridiculous. If they ate nothing but bland food while sick, how could they ever find the strength to recover?
If you ate nothing but watery broth, you’d barely have enough energy to walk. You needed something salty, meaty, and filling, something that would restore your strength.
Fang Peizhi looked at the noodles in one of his own white porcelain bowls. Remembering how Zhao had cared for him yesterday, he said, “Thank you.”
Then bow your head to me a couple of times.
Zhao kept that remark to himself and merely answered, “You’re welcome.”
Fang didn’t sit down to eat immediately. Instead, he went to the counter to make coffee with the machine as usual, preparing a cup for Zhao Buxi while he was at it.
A plain-colored mug descended into Zhao’s field of view like an elevator.
Zhao’s eyes followed it downward. “For me?”
Fang sat opposite him and sipped his coffee. “Mm.”
Whatever was in the cup was pitch-black. It smelled nice, though. Zhao took a sip and almost spat it out. “Cough, cough…”
What is this? Why’s it so bitter?! It was like having a whole mouthful of bitter medicinal herbs shoved down his throat. His tongue went numb.
Seeing Fang drink the stuff without changing expression, Zhao asked with a miserable face, “Are you and your girlfriend getting married and planning to have a baby?”
This time Fang was the one who coughed. “Pfft…” A little fountain erupted into the air. “Cough… cough… what?”
Zhao repeated himself. “I said, are you and your girlfriend getting married and having a baby?”
“Who told you that?” Fang asked.
“Then why are you drinking traditional medicine first thing in the morning?”
Big cities really were different. Even their herbal medicine smelled fragrant.
“This is coffee,” Fang explained.
Zhao Buxi understood.
So that’s coffee. Doesn’t taste good at all.
Every day he went to the company, he saw office workers with cups in their hands. He’d assumed it must be delicious since so many people liked drinking it. Instead… it tasted absolutely awful.
Why did so many people drink it every day, and why did they dance with delight when they managed to snag a 9.9-yuan discount voucher?
Bzzzz. The tabletop with the bowls and chopsticks experienced a magnitude-one earthquake. The culprit was Fang Peizhi’s phone vibrating on the table with an incoming call.
When he saw the caller, a flicker of distaste crossed Fang’s face. He picked it up and answered.
“Peizhi, dear, how have you been lately? Everything all right?” A woman’s warm, kindly voice came from the other end.
“I have work soon. What do you want?” Fang had no interest in chatting about family life. He moved the phone a full ten centimeters away from his ear.
His body language made his rejection and aversion to the call perfectly clear.
“We haven’t been in touch for a while. Mom thought she’d call to see how you’ve been doing, whether you’re well.”
The line went silent. After getting no answer from Fang for a long while, the woman sounded awkward. “Have you been well? Met any suitable girls lately? An old classmate of mine has a daughter who’s recently come back to China. Such a talented, beautiful girl…”
“What does that have to do with me?” Fang’s voice interrupted.
The woman faltered, embarrassed. She took a deep breath, adjusted her expression, and continued smiling. “She’s a wonderful girl, and I thought I’d introduce you two. Tell me when you’re free and you can meet her.”
“No.” He refused immediately.
“Don’t reject her so quickly. Have you even seen her? Spent any time with her?”
“She’s an outstanding debater at Oxford University. Last year…”
Zhao Buxi ate his noodles while pricking up his ears. From what he heard, Fang’s family was trying to arrange a blind date for him.
He already had a girlfriend, and they still wanted him to go on a date with someone else. His family probably wasn’t satisfied with his girlfriend.
“I don’t like that sort of woman.” Fang gave the reason decisively, hoping the other person would finally give up.
She’d barely begun speaking, and already he said he didn’t like her.
“Then what sort do you like? Mom will find you someone who fits.” None of the previous blind dates had worked. This time she’d let Fang name the criteria and choose accordingly. Surely he couldn’t refuse to meet someone who matched his own requirements.
Fang Peizhi said, “People can only get along if they complement each other.”
The woman asked, “What do you mean?”
A voice on the other end replied, “I don’t like women with advanced degrees, and I don’t want one from a prominent family either.”
“How could that possibly work?!”
But Fang hadn’t finished listing his requirements. “My education and level of knowledge are already very high. I don’t need to live with another person exactly like me. There are plenty of those around me, and interacting with them is always the same. You’d better find someone with less education. No university graduates. High school or less. Middle school or even primary school is fine. Ideally, someone who can’t even read the words in a book properly.”
Zhao Buxi, listening nearby, couldn’t help interjecting, “Isn’t that just someone who can’t read?”