057: Love Can Stop Pain (x)
Thinking about it, Sang Zhao felt a little sorry for Border Collie Teacher.
After all, everyone said housing was really expensive. Buying a place meant spending an enormous amount of money, and after he’d spent that enormous sum, his “new house” was already getting renovated into something that looked like a ten-year-old dump. Just thinking about it was enough to know how he must feel.
Good thing he was a border collie, so he was pretty calm.
If it had been a Samoyed’s house, that dog would’ve been howling non-stop, barking all the way up the chain of command from the Yaoguai Administration Bureau to the central office.
“Eh, that reminds me,” Sang Zhao suddenly said, looking down and rummaging through his phone.
“When we went out to play before, we met a beaver. She said she does renovation work too.”
Border Collie Teacher wasn’t convinced.
“I’m renovating a new home, not building a dam in my living room.”
Sang Zhao waved his hand.
“What’s the difference? Your partition wall is basically a dam standing on end.”
“At least beavers build straight. Your wall curves in and out so much it’s practically a full grooming tool for brushing a dog.”
Border Collie Teacher: “…What a lovely choice of words.”
Sang Zhao sent him the beaver’s WeChat and told him to ask her team to take over the job. He was just bridging the two sides, really. He felt like a beaver would never build a wall like that, so she had to be more reliable than the current crew.
The beaver was delighted. More jobs meant more business, meant a bigger company, meant more money.
And since it was a referral from Sang Zhao, she happily said she’d give Border Collie Teacher a twenty-five percent discount.
Her voice messages were full of excitement.
“Oh my, Professor, you’re so young and already so accomplished in your field. You must be a literary star descended from the heavens!”
Sang Zhao had no idea how she’d seen that from a couple of photos…
And also, he wasn’t sure if a chemical engineering professor counted as a literary star.
“If our kid ends up with even half your achievements someday, we’ll be burning incense in thanks!”
Right, yes.
Her kid was a sea otter, and her husband was a capybara. Whether the sea otter’s future would resemble Border Collie Teacher’s… hard to say.
Once he’d found a new renovation crew, one big worry finally lifted from his mind, and even his expression looked more relaxed.
That was when Ye Ye’s expression started to twist up again.
Because, now that the party was over…
“So, you two are free right now, right?” Ye Ye cleared his throat and rubbed his two dog paws together. “Ye Ye’s about to start school again.”
Meaning, the new term was about to begin.
Sang Zhao didn’t get what he meant yet and was still sitting in the dog bed asking kindly,
“What, do you have a parents’ meeting too when school starts?”
Once you do something once, it’s easier the second time. He was pretty enthusiastic now.
“I can go.”
“No…” Ye Ye hesitated, hemming and hawing. “It’s that, before school starts, when we report in, they’re going to check our summer homework.”
He looked at him with those abandoned little dog eyes.
“Ye Ye didn’t finish.”
A bad feeling rose in Sang Zhao’s chest.
“How much total? How much did you do?” he asked quickly.
“Chinese, math, and English, three whole summer workbooks. Chinese has eight essays. Math has a full mental math card book. English has a poster project.
“Oh, and there’s a hands-on assignment, observing sunlight, writing an observation report, and making a handmade sundial…”
Under Sang Zhao’s shocked gaze, Ye Ye let out a tragic little dog whine.
“I… only did… a tiny bit,” he said miserably.
Border Collie Teacher said mildly, “One lonely lamp, one long night, one pen, one miracle.”
“Knew kids were like this these days, just didn’t expect dogs to be the same.”
The dog bed suddenly felt impossible to sit in.
Sang Zhao jumped to his feet and headed straight for his own place, but Ye Ye lunged and hugged his thigh.
“Good cat! Best cat in the whole wide world!”
He laid the praise on thick, completely sincere.
“Border Collie Teacher can’t help me much, but Cat’s different. Cat can actually help Ye Ye!”
Being praised like that made Sang Zhao a little happy despite himself. He turned back to look at Ye Ye.
“Really?”
“Of course! Border Collie Teacher’s handwriting is too pretty. Cat’s not like that, Cat’s handwriting is just like Ye Ye’s.
“If you write, nobody can tell who wrote what!” Ye Ye said joyfully.
“...Let me go home,” Sang Zhao said. “I want to go home.”
Naturally, he didn’t make it out.
He wasn’t some cold-hearted little cat, after all.
The little dog really had it rough.
Sure, he didn’t have to go to work and he got summer vacation, which sounded great on the surface. But once school started, with this mountain of assignments… just looking at it made Sang Zhao’s head hurt.
Forget tests. Just comparing the two, he suddenly felt like going to work was actually pretty nice.
Border Collie Teacher used his left hand to fill in Ye Ye’s mental math book, while Sang Zhao handled the Chinese homework.
He finished one page and flipped it, and his hand suddenly jerked and he hissed in pain.
“Ah.”
Looking down, he saw that when his index finger had slid along the edge of the summer workbook just now, the brand-new, razor-sharp paper had sliced his skin open.
It was just a small cut, but it really hurt. New paper cuts hurt the most.
Border Collie Teacher offered to go upstairs and get a band-aid, but Sang Zhao refused.
Instead, he aimed his camera at the cut, snapped a photo, and focused in on the red line of blood.
Then he complained about Ye Ye.
“You really didn’t flip this at all. If you’d even turned a couple of pages, the edges wouldn’t still be this new,” he said.
Ye Ye drooped and apologized to the cat.
But Sang Zhao wasn’t interested in the dog’s apology. He sent the photo of his injury straight to Tang Yu.
In Tang Yu’s world, he was a silly, helpless boyfriend in desperate need of care.
If Corn Bean wasn’t looking, then of course he’d “get hurt.”
“I got hurt, gege,” he said in a sticky, drawling voice message. “I’m bleeding.”
“Gege, what do you think, should I go to the hospital? You said you’d take me to the hospital last time.”
Border Collie Teacher had written twenty-six pages of mental math in three minutes. He paused just long enough to watch the show.
“Go, go to the hospital,” he said. “If you don’t go now, the wound will heal.”
Tang Yu didn’t see it that way at all.
What about a small cut? A small cut on Sang Zhao’s hand was still on Sang Zhao’s hand. That slim, porcelain-white hand now had a mark on it. Of course Tang Yu’s heart hurt.
His WeChat call came in immediately.
“How did that happen?” he asked anxiously.
“Paper cut,” Sang Zhao answered honestly.
He chatted with Tang Yu, but the cat still followed through on his promises.
He’d said he’d help Ye Ye catch up on his homework, which meant he was filling in workbooks with one hand while holding his phone and talking to his boyfriend with the other.
Two hours of writing and chatting later, right before they hung up, he said in surprise,
“Wow, gege, I chatted with you for two hours and my wound healed.”
“You really are magical. Just talking to you makes me heal faster.”
By then, Border Collie Teacher had gone home.
So only one little white dog heard Ye Ye’s quiet muttering.
Covering his own head, he grumbled,
“A teeny little cut like that not healing in two hours would be what’s weird…”
What did that have to do with magic?!
–
Of course, Sang Zhao was still doing his side jobs.
Ever since the time Xiao Hengmiao had invited him over to bathe his cat, he’d become a repeat customer.
This time he’d booked him to trim his cat’s claws, because the cat had been scratching him.
Once Sang Zhao finished up, he didn’t take the subway home.
Tang Yu came to pick him up.
Vice President Xiao’s mom was home too, and she’d given Sang Zhao strawberries.
When she saw Tang Yu arrive to pick him up, she called out to her son, “Miaomiao, go see Little Sang out.”
Until that moment, Sang Zhao had no idea the vice president even had a personal name.
Hearing it for the first time, he was instantly intrigued.
“So you’re called Miao Miao,” he said, amazed.
See? It wasn’t just yaoguai who had weird names. Human names weren’t that great either.
So why was everyone always suspicious of yaoguai names? It was clearly a case of six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Someone called Miao Miao couldn’t possibly be a bad person!
His eyes lit up, but Xiao Hengmiao’s heart clenched.
He glanced at Tang Yu’s expression and blurted, “I’m going back in!”
Then slammed the door shut.
Sang Zhao looked back in confusion. He thought that guy was acting a little strange.
Tang Yu’s face, on the other hand, did not look great.
There was a petty sourness there.
He held it back for a while, but in the end he still secretly hooked a finger around Sang Zhao’s and held on as he asked,
“So he’s not that bad of a person anymore?”
Hadn’t Sang Zhao said before that Xiao Hengmiao was a very bad guy?
So now he wasn’t bad?
Sang Zhao curled his fingers against Tang Yu’s hand.
“He is a bad guy,” he said on purpose, to coax his Corn Bean. “You’re the only good person in the whole world.”
“Right, gege? Isn’t that what you wanted to hear?”
Tang Yu’s smile was impossible to hide.
“…Oh, come on,” he said.
Once they got in the car, Sang Zhao sat in the passenger seat and couldn’t help yawning.
“I’m so sleepy,” he said.
“Didn’t sleep well?” Tang Yu asked.
And since he’d asked, of course Sang Zhao had to complain.
“That little Ye of yours. Summer vacation is basically over and he’s done almost no homework, so I have to help him make it up.”
“Make it up…” Tang Yu tasted the phrase, then sighed.
“Which means you’re writing it for him, right?”
Of course.
Border Collie Teacher was an associate professor, supervising grad students, with his own projects and company. Normally he was way too busy.
That day he’d had a bit of free time and helped them do two mental math books, then got a phone call and hurried off.
He’d never come back after that, saying he was supporting them in spirit and cheering them on from afar.
“Aren’t his mom and dad supervising him?” Tang Yu asked.
He’d always thought third grade was a turning point where parents would be more hands-on.
“Well, his mom and dad are pretty busy,” Sang Zhao said. “And me, I…”
Tang Yu sighed.
“That’s not good. If it goes on like this, he won’t learn anything or get any consequences. Then he’ll always procrastinate and grow up into someone who leaves everything till the last minute.”
He really was fond of Xia Moye as a kid, so he said,
“Is he at your place now?”
Sang Zhao nodded.
“Then I’ll teach him,” Tang Yu said. He was very confident.
“Time’s tight, but if we plan it well, he can still finish it himself.”
But once he actually saw Xia Moye in person at Sang Zhao’s place, that confidence lasted only thirty minutes.
After half an hour of tutoring, his chest already hurt with suppressed rage.
Banana written as “blabla,” some idiom about “filling in for others” turned into “purgatory blood sausage,” “Handan xXx” in an idiom exercise filled in as “Handan blood sausage”…
Tang Yu took a deep breath, smiled, and said,
“How about this, Xia Moye: how about I help you write it?”
The Samoyed blurted a doggy answer straight from the heart.
“Ye Ye…”
Sitting off to the side enjoying the show, Sang Zhao quickly grabbed his pant leg.
The little dog’s tone swerved mid-word.
“Ye… yeah, yeah, that’s fine.”
“What do you mean that’s fine?” Tang Yu said, speechless.
Why was this kid climbing the pole the second he had the chance? Was he a little monkey?
Scratching his head, Xia Moye grinned foolishly.
“It’s fine, it’s super fine. Big fine, special fine, the kind of fine where you even write ‘bank’ as the wrong xing, but it’s still really xing!”
Author’s Note:
One in the morning is the perfect time to eat sausage claypot rice! (flees)
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