Chapter 28 — I’m Never Talking To You Again
Yu Fan wanted to pull his hand back, but if he did Chen Jingshen would probably face-plant. So he braced the guy’s face with one hand and pinched a plastic cup of water with the other.
The cup crackled under his grip. The honeyed water inside sloshed around helplessly. Only when new customers walked into the convenience store and stared at them, puzzled and curious, did Yu Fan realize what an idiot he looked like.
He kept his palm against Chen Jingshen’s cheek and sat down beside him. He hauled the backpack onto the table.
“Up.” He jostled the boy and pointed at the bag. “Sleep on this.”
Chen Jingshen’s lids lifted halfway. “Okay.”
Before he settled, Yu Fan tugged his collar. His voice was surly. “This. Drink it first.”
Chen Jingshen took the cup. Like that salt-sugar water before, the honey water was so sweet it cloyed. Past or present, Yu Fan always liked to give until things were full.
He forced it down, then folded an arm over the backpack and lay quietly on his side. His eyes drooped, slightly hazy with drink, fixed on the small mole at Yu Fan’s cheek.
Yu Fan opened a mobile game to kill time. A few seconds later he said, cool as ice, “Turn your head and sleep.”
“I’m afraid you will leave,” Chen Jingshen said.
Yu Fan did not bother arguing with a drunk. He tapped into Snake. “If I were going to leave, I would have left already.”
Chen Jingshen went silent for two beats, like he was thinking it over. Finding the logic acceptable, he closed his eyes and fell asleep in the same position.
When the round ended, Yu Fan stared at the score screen. He relaxed and clenched his right hand, pressing hard on that spot in his palm where lips had touched earlier, leaving a faint crescent mark.
He glanced sideways. The redness had faded from Chen Jingshen’s face. His damp bangs were a mess. Fingers curled on the edge of the backpack. His shoulders hunched and rose, breath even.
He was long-limbed. Curled in a convenience store chair, he looked out of place. Every morning after second period, the whole class napped on their desks. Only Chen Jingshen sat steady, sometimes twirling a pen. The most relaxed he ever got was propping his temple on his knuckles.
And now, this person was curled up in a convenience store, asleep on a backpack.
Yu Fan’s phone buzzed him back.
[Wang Lu’an: How’s the top student? S***, I just noticed a few of his glasses were the imported kind. Too dark in there earlier to see it.]
[-: He’s fine.]
[-: I think.]
[Wang Lu’an: … Don’t scare me.]
[Wang Lu’an: Why aren’t you back yet? Did you not drop him off? Zuo Kuan and those a**es teamed up with their class and are drowning me in shots. Return to save your king!]
Beside him, the sleeper twitched, shifted an arm like the table was uncomfortable. Yu Fan paused over the keyboard for two seconds, then typed.
[-: Not coming back.]
[-: Good luck.]
Chen Jingshen woke after ten minutes. First he looked around, checking if Yu Fan was still there. Then he slowly sat up, smoothed his collar, and reached into his backpack.
Without looking up, Yu Fan said, “Still feel sick?”
“A little,” Chen Jingshen replied, and coughed softly.
Yu Fan stared. Since when did sleeping make you more delicate? “Then keep sleeping.”
“No. If I sleep again I will be late.”
How would that make him late? There was still half an hour. Yu Fan glanced at the clock, confused, then turned and caught Chen Jingshen sliding out a math worksheet.
“What are you doing?”
“Today’s homework.”
Outside the window, foot traffic streamed past in bright clubwear. Every passerby who glanced in did a double take at the worksheet.
Yu Fan decided he never wanted to set foot in that KTV again. He was about to move seats when Chen Jingshen stopped writing and rubbed his eyes. The lighting in the corner was dim. Slouched like that, his scratch work was messier than usual. If he had not come here tonight, he would have finished this easy homework ages ago, probably sitting under a desk lamp working through those headache-inducing competition problems.
So why come?
“Chen Jingshen,” Yu Fan said lazily.
“Mm.”
“I’m different from first year of middle school now, right?”
Chen Jingshen paused and looked over.
Their eyes met. Yu Fan’s face was calm. He went on. “I don’t know what weird kink you have that made you like… pay attention to someone who could not even jump long jump properly. But now, whether it is my temper or my looks or whatever else, I am a lot different from back then.”
Chen Jingshen studied him in silence, as if turning the words over.
“I am pretty lousy right now, and I will only get worse. Remember at the milk tea shop on the first day? To be honest, you looked at me once and I wanted to hit you.”
“I am not the person you liked back then. You get that?”
Still nothing. Yu Fan figured it had landed. Any normal person would be rattled. If he were Chen Jingshen, he would have grabbed his bag already, called the teacher to change seats, maybe even transfer classes.
Yu Fan curled his fingers. For no reason he suddenly wanted a smoke. He started to stand.
“At the school gate, all those people watching you,” Chen Jingshen said quietly. “Why did you only want to hit me?”
What kind of focus was that?
“Maybe because your face is the most punchable,” Yu Fan said without blinking.
Chen Jingshen turned away and rolled his pen. For a split second, Yu Fan could have sworn the corner of his mouth ticked up.
Huh?
Before he could be sure, Chen Jingshen looked back. “Have you been to the fifth floor?”
Yu Fan blinked. “What…”
“If you look down from the railing outside Class One, you can see the third floor bathroom door,” Chen Jingshen said. “You smoke there a lot.”
“…”
“I do not like public speaking. But first high school assembly, you stood up there with a blank sheet, made up a self-criticism on the spot, and smiled three times while you were making it up.”
“…”
With writing like yours, you do not deserve to like speeches.
“After that, whenever the teacher asked me, I agreed.”
“…”
“Second semester of freshman year, you played basketball against kids from another class. I watched the whole thing from the hallway. After you won, someone played dirty and hurt Wang Lu’an’s ankle. You dragged them to the bathroom and fought a second round.”
“...??”
“You are not lousy,” Chen Jingshen said evenly. “I still like—”
His mouth got clamped shut.
Color climbed Yu Fan’s skin fast enough to see, surging from the ears down his cheeks. He scowled. “You f***ing… stop talking.”
More people were peeking in from the sidewalk. Yu Fan’s heart pounded harder than when he fought, shoulders rising and falling. He loosened his hand. Chen Jingshen just parted his lips and Yu Fan slapped his palm over them again.
Too fast this time. Palm brushed mouth.
The image of that quiet kiss on his hand flashed. Yu Fan jerked away like he had been shocked.
“If you dare keep going,” he blurted, breath shaky, “I’m never talking to you again in this life.”
He froze a beat. What the hell was he even saying? That was grade-school stuff.
He stared straight ahead, face cold and red, grinding out a fix. “I mean I will beat you till you cannot talk.”
Chen Jingshen said nothing.
“Nod,” Yu Fan ordered.
Chen Jingshen twirled his pen and nodded.
Yu Fan watched him, and when he was sure there would be no more talking, he thunked a finger on the worksheet. “Shut up. Write.”
For the next half hour, Yu Fan shrank into his shell like a snail and never raised his head. He had never played Snake this badly in his life. His little snake kept swerving left and right and slamming into bigger ones. Dead in under two minutes, every time.
He finally made it to the end of Chen Jingshen’s supposed tutoring session and shut the game with bad grace. “Pack up,” he said. “We are going.”
Chen Jingshen looked at him, then wrote a line and slid the scratch paper over.
Can I talk now?
Childish. Both of them.
Yu Fan jammed both hands in his pockets. “No.”
He shoved the person and the backpack into a taxi. Before closing the door, he hesitated, then leaned in and told the driver coolly, “He is drunk. Please drive slow.”
Streetlights reeled by like a spinning lantern. The taxi carried them to the city’s priciest gated villas.
At the gate the driver could not help glancing in. Each lot here was its own walled house. Real estate at knife-point.
“Kid, we are here,” he called back.
His passenger was sitting straight, eyes clear, not a hint of drunk. Chen Jingshen flicked a look at the meter, paid under the driver’s stunned stare, and got out. “Thank you.”
At ten at night the luxury villa sat in darkness, swallowed by dense greenery, like no one lived there at all. The black iron gate yawned open.
The moment it shut, the doghouse in the garden burst to life.
“Woof woof woof!”
“Quiet,” Chen Jingshen said, palming the dog’s head. “Sit.”
“Woof!”
He kept one hand on the Doberman’s skull and with the other pulled out his phone. He turned it on. The screen exploded with more than thirty messages.
[Mom: Why are you not home yet?]
[Mom: Where are you?]
[Mom: Auntie left dinner for you in the fridge.]
[Mom: Are you home? I did not see you on the cameras.]
[Mom: I reviewed the cameras. You have been getting home later than before these days.]
Chen Jingshen’s fingers moved, cool and methodical, swiping every alert away. He did not turn on any lights. The garden was pitch black. He sat there without a word. No matter how the Doberman nudged him, he did not answer.
After a long time he pulled out the phone again, opened the app he had only recently downloaded, and messaged his pinned chat.
[s: I am home.]
The name “-” blinked out and turned into “typing…”
Two minutes later it was still “typing…”
Chen Jingshen rubbed the dog’s coat in distracted pats. The dog grumbled.
Five minutes later, “typing…” vanished. A single cold character appeared from the other side.
[-: F*** off.]
Chen Jingshen stared at it for a few seconds, then dropped his head. The corner of his mouth lifted, barely there.
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