Chapter 70

A strange, brief silence between them.

Fei Bolin's first reaction was relief, but once that instant passed, he couldn't explain the flicker of loss in his chest.

He gave a soft 'oh' and turned back to the bathroom to wash up.

Wen Fu sat on the stool, tilted his head at his retreating back. This time he really couldn't read him.

The fog on the bathroom mirror had cleared, and the spotless glass—wiped clean every day—reflected Fei Bolin's sharper, more mature features.

He splashed water on his face, wiped the toothpaste foam from the corner of his mouth. Crystal-clear droplets slid along his jaw to his chin, stopping at that centimeter-long mark.

Fei Bolin reached up and touched it, almost without thinking.

Something about the feel of it was familiar.

Before he could think too hard, he caught sight of his own lips.

Like Wen Fu's—slightly swollen at the corners.

Just a tiny change. Fei Bolin frowned at his reflection for a long while, unable to tell if he was imagining it.

That afternoon, when the weekend started, Fei Bolin went to the market by himself.

At dinner, Wen Fu stared at a table full of bitter melon soup, bitter melon scrambled eggs, and bitter melon stuffed with meat, and fell silent.

Fei Bolin glanced at him coolly. 'Yeah.'

Wen Fu: ?

Fei Bolin: 'If you stretch your face any longer, we'll have four bitter melons on the table.'

Wen Fu: '...'

Fei Bolin dropped a piece of bitter melon and some egg into his bowl. 'You've been running hot lately. Eat something light.'

Wen Fu, baffled: 'I'm not running hot.'

Fei Bolin explained, 'Both our mouths are swollen. Still not running hot?'

Wen Fu fell silent for the second time.

Lucky for him, Wen Fu wasn't picky—if there was something good, he'd eat it; if there wasn't, he'd eat anything. Bitter melon was bitter, sure, but there was meat and egg in it, so he casually piled up two heaping bowls of rice. Then, while Fei Bolin was washing dishes, he ran downstairs to grab a box of Jule Milk from Lin's Convenience Store to wash the taste out.

Just as he ran into the short path leading to Lin's Convenience Store, Wen Fu stopped at the stone steps in front of the door. He stared at those two silent steps with a complicated look, had a one-sided standoff with them for a moment, then snorted, gave one step a light kick, and stomped up heavily to unlock the door.

Inside, Wen Fu grabbed a pink box of Jule Milk from the shelf with practiced ease, tossed it in the freezer, then sprawled lazily across the counter watching anime on his phone.

Back home, Fei Bolin finished the dishes, came out of the kitchen carrying a plate of sliced apple, looked around the living room and didn't see anyone, then called toward the balcony, 'Meimei?'

No answer.

He pulled out his phone, unsurprised. The line barely rang once before Wen Fu picked up. 'Bo-ge?'

Fei Bolin: 'Grab your drink and come back. Don't leave it in the freezer too long. You haven't finished the language mock paper.'

Wen Fu, distracted: 'Oh.'

Fei Bolin: 'Don't stall.'

Three minutes later, Wen Fu's footsteps echoed up the stairwell.

The front door was always left open for air and coolness. Fei Bolin heard Wen Fu reach the sixth floor, carried the fruit plate to the bedroom desk, and said without looking back, 'Come in and finish the last classical Chinese reading. Tonight I'm quizzing you on poetry recitations again.'

This was the last weekend before the college entrance exam. Fei Bolin still wanted to shore up Wen Fu's language scores.

Before this, Wen Fu had been drilled by him for over a year. By the city's three mock exams, Wen Fu's language score had basically stabilized above 110—any higher and he just couldn't get there. His grammar multiple choice and composition never budged. Every composition score bounced around 40, sometimes dropping to the thirties. Those numbers didn't match the rest of his language performance at all.

On other subjects, the two of them were neck and neck—sometimes Wen Fu edged ahead by a few points, sometimes Fei Bolin pulled ahead by a few. But on language alone, Fei Bolin sometimes beat Wen Fu by over twenty points. Right now Fei Bolin was averaging between 690 and just over 700, while Wen Fu sat steady around 670.

Despite the gap, applying to the same school wouldn't be a problem. But Fei Bolin wanted Wen Fu to score a bit higher—maybe they could even end up in the same major.

Honestly, different majors wouldn't matter either. He just wanted more hours of every day at university to have Wen Fu in sight.

Wen Fu didn't like language class, but he could vaguely sense why Fei Bolin was so focused on this one subject. So whenever Fei Bolin assigned him tasks, he never pushed back. Whatever was given, he did. Obedient and quiet.

But slow.

—When it came to things he didn't like, Wen Fu loved to dawdle.

Fei Bolin's expectations on one side, his own nature on the other. Wen Fu satisfied Fei Bolin's expectations while holding firm to who he was.

He dawdled home, dawdled picking up his pen, dawdled through the problems, and dawdled his way through an entire language paper.

Two characters written, a slice of apple eaten. One line of the question read, a sip of Jule Milk. Just as Wen Fu was about to slip off to the bathroom after slowly finishing his apple and milk, Fei Bolin dragged him back and pressed him into the desk. 'Finish first.'

Wen Fu said, 'Bo-ge, I really gotta pee.'

Fei Bolin didn't budge, didn't even lift his eyes. 'I know exactly how badly you have to pee.'

Wen Fu: '...'

Fine.

He really didn't have to go.

He just wanted to wander around for a bit.

Wen Fu settled in and finished the rest of the language mock paper in the room. Fei Bolin let him go to the bathroom and sat there estimating Wen Fu's score from the paper.

Tonight, even though Wen Fu had dragged his feet, he actually did pretty well. This mock paper was made by the school strictly to local exam difficulty standards. Given Wen Fu's usual 40-point composition baseline, his total could hit 120.

Only the yellow desk lamp was on in the room. While Wen Fu worked, Fei Bolin had been leaning against the headboard listening to English listening exercises. Now Wen Fu came back and found Fei Bolin still sitting there, grading his paper by the weak halo of the desk lamp.

He moved the lamp closer, right next to Fei Bolin. The slight furrow between Fei Bolin's brows eased.

Wen Fu folded his arms on the desk and lay his head down, watching Fei Bolin sideways.

A year and a half had passed. Fei Bolin was taller and thinner than when they'd first met. His facial structure had grown sharper, more defined—high nose bridge, deep-set brows and eyes. From a good-looking older brother to a good-looking grown man.

Wen Fu wanted to grow up into Fei Bolin's shape fast. He stared at Fei Bolin's face in a daze, acutely aware that even though he was only a year younger, something—an invisible wall—stood between him and Fei Bolin's maturity. Just getting older wouldn't get him over it. What that wall was, he didn't know.

'Good work.' Fei Bolin, head down, spoke suddenly, completely unaware of the thoughts in Wen Fu's eyes. 'Tomorrow I'll give you a reward.'

Wen Fu tossed all those thoughts aside in an instant and sat up straight. 'What?'

Fei Bolin wouldn't tell him. 'You'll find out tomorrow.'

Rongyi High School had an unwritten tradition: in the last two weeks before the college entrance exam, third-year students could set up shop anywhere on campus and sell whatever they wanted. Under the trees, in the hallways, even outside the cafeteria—a spread of odds and ends became a stall. Cardboard boxes sat beside them, and students didn't even pack them up during class. Self-service shopping, honest dealing. Novels, manga, magazines, weekly periodicals, phone games, handheld consoles—anything normally banned from school and classroom was allowed, in that final two-week third-year 'stall' period, to be put out and sold.

In his first and second year, Fei Bolin used to love browsing the third-year stalls for reference books or the error notebooks that senior Hanyang Class students had compiled themselves. Those things were cheap but the most worth buying—and they were the first to go.

This year it was his turn to be a third-year. His error notebooks and notes had been pre-ordered by underclassmen who were close to Xie Yining and Su Haoran. There was nothing left to sell.

On Saturday, when Fei Bolin passed a stall after lunch, he spotted the guitar that Wen Fu had narrowly missed winning at last year's club singing competition.

And the person selling it happened to be the student who'd taken first place with Song of Seven Miles.

The price was good—just six hundred, over a thousand cheaper than what Fei Bolin had seen at the music store.

As far as he knew, the guitar the club had given out as a prize was bought from that same music store. That's why, when he'd thought about buying Wen Fu a guitar before, he'd gone straight there.

Fei Bolin had originally planned to grit his teeth and buy Wen Fu a brand-new guitar after graduation. But money was tight at home. Aunt Wu's debt had only been paid off last year, and the two of them going to university was another huge expense—tuition, living costs, rent. Fei Bolin would have to pull it all from the savings he'd put away this year.

He figured this guitar would be Wen Fu's first ever, and he'd prepared for Wen Fu to use it for many years. A thousand-something-yuan guitar, even if used for five years, worked out to just over two hundred a year. He couldn't go any cheaper.

Just as he was wrestling with it, this 'victory champion' guitar appeared.

Fei Bolin was crouching at the stall looking it over when the seller happened to be there too. The seller said the guitar had barely been used since winning the competition last year—he was just graduating and had too much luggage to bother hauling it home, so he figured he'd sell it on campus. If Fei Bolin didn't believe him, he could try the intonation himself. Even the strings were brand new.

Fei Bolin did try it, confirmed the seller wasn't lying, and reserved the guitar on the spot. He arranged to go home for the money over the weekend and pick it up the following week.

The 'reward' for Wen Fu's test was just a reason he'd made up on the spot. No matter how Wen Fu did on the language mock that night, Fei Bolin was going to buy the guitar and bring it home.

They'd agreed to pick up the guitar on Sunday after evening self-study. Fei Bolin brought Wen Fu to the shade of the trees outside the cafeteria, where someone was waiting with the guitar.

Even though he'd won first place last year singing Song of Seven Miles, this person still recognized his defeated rival Wen Fu at a glance, and was faintly excited. 'It's you? You're the one who sang the original?!'

He hadn't expected the buyer to be his once-equal rival for second place. That made selling this guitar feel more meaningful.

But to Wen Fu, that line was completely out of nowhere. Wen Fu never remembered the faces of his rivals, so his attention stayed fixed on the guitar.

'Me,' he said, clearly interested in Wen Fu as a fellow music lover, 'I'm the one who sang Seven Miles!'

At that, Wen Fu finally remembered.

Wen Fu looked at the guy's face under the night sky and the cafeteria lights, and said, 'The song you sang was really good.'

A rival's affirmation.

The guy got even more fired up. 'I know I sing well! How else would I have beaten you?'

Wen Fu shook his head. 'You don't sing better than me. The song you sang was good.'

Denied his skill, but affirmed his taste in songs.

'...' His smile froze on his face.

Fei Bolin coughed and reached out his hand. 'Give me the guitar.'

The money was already paid. They were just here to pick it up.

The deal was done quickly. Wen Fu stared at the guitar in Fei Bolin's hands the whole way without a word. Only after they passed through the School Gate did he ask, 'Bo-ge, is this my reward?'

Fei Bolin held the guitar case, crossed the road, and walked into an alley. The alley was dark and long, but the moon hung right above them, and the ground beneath their feet was washed in pale, satin-like moonlight.

He rubbed Wen Fu's head and handed the guitar over. 'I don't have the money right now, so I'm getting you a used one first. Once I'm making money, I'll get you a better one.'

Wen Fu didn't know what first-hand or second-hand meant. To him, a guitar was a guitar—how many hands it had passed through didn't matter. Things in this world came in only two kinds: things Fei Bolin gave him, and things he didn't.

He turned the guitar case around in his hands, holding it up to the moonlight overhead, studying it carefully, as if he could see the guitar through the case.

This used guitar was the first one Fei Bolin had ever bought Wen Fu. Wen Fu felt nothing in the world could compare.

'I want this one.' Wen Fu looked up at Fei Bolin. 'When I play this guitar in the future, will you be there?'

'I will.'

Fei Bolin met his eyes. For a moment, he couldn't think of a single thing in this world that could separate them.

Let alone playing guitar.

Fei Bolin said, 'Short of birth, sickness, old age, and death, we're together.'

Wen Fu would remember forever that moonlit alley on May 31, 2015—Fei Bolin's eyes full of quiet triumph, even the wind echoing their promise.

Later he carried that guitar for eight years, took it through four hundred and twelve performances. Every time he played, Fei Bolin broke that promise.