CH 24

Chapter 24: Surprise Gift

Their monthly break was only one day, and Yue Zhisi spent the entire day cooped up in his room. Song Jin was home from his business trip and spent the day baking with Lin Rong, the entire house full of the smell of pastry and sweets. Song Yu came downstairs to make himself some coffee, and ended up being questioned by Father Song about his most recent grades and TOEFL results.

“Do you think you did well?”

Song Yu replied with a simple, it should be okay, and prepared to go back upstairs. Lin Rong called to him, “Xiao Yu, didn’t you say yesterday you wanted a rug? I chose a woollen one for you from your auntie’s store. It’ll be delivered shortly, and we’ll come up later to spread it out for you.”

“Okay.” Song Yu coughed, as if his throat was a bit uncomfortable. “Whenever is fine.”

Lin Rong passed over a tray of wheat-free molten chocolate biscuits that had just come out of the oven. “Bring these up for your brother. Wait a second, let me pour him a glass of hot milk.”

Song Jin suggested, “Maybe some yoghurt instead, it’s good for the stomach.”

After his parents organised things nicely, Song Yu went upstairs carrying the tray. He passed Yue Zhishi’s room and called out his name as he stood outside the door. He heard Yue Zhishi reply from within, asking him what was the matter.

Song Yu frowned, feeling Yue Zhishi was being strange. “Mom told me to bring up some biscuits for you.”

“Oh! Then… then can you leave them outside the door for me? I’ll grab them in a bit.”

After Yue Zhishi finishing yelling at the door, he heard Song Yu make a noise in response after a few seconds. He waited for a few moments before he went over to crack open the door, peeking out of a small gap to see if Song Yu was still standing at the door. Once he was sure Song Yu was no longer there, he relaxed and easily swung open the door, lifting up the tray left on the floor. 

“What are you doing in there?”

Being caught in the act, Yue Zhishi stretched his head out to peer around him. Song Yu stood a few steps away in the corridor looking at him, and scenes from Tom and Jerry filled Yue Zhishi’s mind. Right now, he was the Jerry sneaking out of his mouse hole preparing to steal some cheese.

Song Yu didn’t say anything else and directly walked towards Yue Zhishi’s room. But Yue Zhishi was faster — he dodged back inside and slammed the door closed with a bang.

Song Yu, being refused at the door, experienced a complex state of mind he’d never once felt before in the past eleven years of his life.

He actually stood at the door, frozen, for a while.

Early Monday morning, the two cleaned up brothers came downstairs and saw Lin Rong changing her shoes at the house entrance. She spoke in a hurry.

“One of mom’s friends suddenly got acute appendicitis, so I’m going to the hospital now to take care of her. I didn’t have time to make breakfast today, but there’s some money on the table for you two to use.”

Yue Zhishi noticed her scarf was still on the shelf. He rubbed his eyes and went over to wrap the scarf around her. “Be careful when you drive.”

“Be careful when you eat outside. Don’t be too greedy.” Lin Rong hugged him, said good bye to Song Yu and opened the door to leave.

The cold air outside went straight to Yue Zhishi’s ankles, causing him to slightly shudder. He stomped his feet in place before he ran back upstairs to put on a pair of long socks, taking care to hurry so he could leave together with Song Yu.  

Thinking of Song Yu’s injured wrist, Yue Zhishi wanted to take Song Yu to school on his bike. His suggestion was obviously immediately rejected, and in the midst of a deadlock and the blowing of the cold winter air, the two of them chose to ride a taxi to school.

The taxi was very fast. It was still early by the time they arrived at school, and Yue Zhishi was pretty much stuck onto Song Yu’s body as they walked inside. He previously couldn’t go to school together with his gege, so Yue Zhishi was in a fantastic mood now that he could openly walk next to him.

But once they reached the breakfast restaurants, he could no longer move.

“I’m so hungry.” Yue Zhishi stood there and didn’t move a muscle.

Song Yu didn’t say a single word. He chose the cleanest, most spacious looking restaurant and went inside, ordering some soup buns, three delicacies beancurd skin and a bowl of beef noodles.

“Do you want thin or thick noodles?” the owner asked.

Yue Zhishi looked behind the owner. “Do you have macaroni?”

“Of course.” The owner swiftly poured some macaroni into a colander. “I’ll give you extra.”

“Thank you, boss!” Yue Zhishi sat across from Song Yu and looked around the inner walls of the restaurant, menus plastered all over. After a little while, he opened his mouth. “Song Yu gege, I want some red bean soup.”

Song Yu raised his head to glance at him and looked as if he thought Yue Zhishi was very troublesome. But he continued to not say anything and rose to ask the owner if he had any, only for the owner to say he didn’t. “I only have black bean soy milk. I think next door has red bean soup if you guys want some.”

Song Yu headed next door immediately after his words.

Everything seemed to be happening according to Yue Zhishi’s wishes. He stretched out his neck to look outside, and after making sure Song Yu truly disappeared, he quickly reached into his schoolbag and pulled out a pouch. He ran across, swiftly opened Song Yu’s bag and stuffed the pouch inside. 

After disposing of his evidence, he went back to his seat and pretended nothing happened, obediently splitting apart two pairs of disposable chopsticks. Not long afterwards, Song Yu came back with some red bean soup.

The bean paste was still very hot. Yue Zhishi took one of the straws Song Yu grabbed on the way back and poked it into the cup, swallowing a big mouthful of the sweet and soft soup.

The owner’s wife gave them their soup buns and two little plates full of vinegar and pieces of ginger. Yue Zhishi stood up and placed Song Yu’s chopsticks onto his little saucer. 

The soup buns were stuffed with a mixture of chopped shrimp and minced beef. They were given eight pieces, little leaves separating the buns from the bamboo steamer. The shape of the shrimp and meat ball showed vaguely through the particularly thin and translucent skin. Yue Zhishi grabbed a bun, only for it to slip through his chopsticks like a water balloon and land in his vinegar saucer.

The two of them didn’t discuss it at all — Yue Zhishi directly opened the other straw on the table and jabbed it into the skin of the soup bun, taking a sip of the soup inside at the same time. “Yum!”

“Aren’t you afraid of being burnt,” Song Yu said. He may have commented, but he looked like he was quite used to Yue Zhishi’s actions.

“This soup’s so sweet.” Yue Zhishi tore open the skin after he finished the soup and dipped the ball of meat into his plate of vinegar before devouring it, leaving behind only the big piece of dough.

“Your noodles and the beancurd skin.” The owner’s wife carried the two bowls over. When she saw Yue Zhishi grab the soup bun’s skin and place it into Song Yu’s bowl, she questioned, “What’s wrong, is the skin no good?” 

“No, not at all.” Yue Zishi dragged the bowl of noodles to him. “I just can’t eat it.”

She nodded as if she understood what he meant and left after bidding them to add their own coriander if they wanted it.

Song Yu very naturally ate the soup bun skin Yue Zhishi gave him and ate a piece of the beancurd skin while it was still warm. Three delicacies beancurd skin could probably be considered as the most filling breakfast dish.

Pieces of pork, dried bamboo shoots and mushrooms were mixed with some glutinous rice before being marinated. The beancurd skin was made by grinding mung beans and rice together before frying the mixture together with some eggs. Once the bottom was cooked and turned into a skin, the piece was flipped and then wrapped around the marinated glutinous rice. It was then shaped into squares as it continued frying. The glutinous rice filling would be fragrant, soft and tasty, while the skin was crispy and golden.

Most importantly, there was nothing in the entire dish that was an allergen to Yue Zhishi. It was also something Yue Zhishi very much liked to eat. 

They shared all of their breakfast items. Yue Zhishi ate a piece of the beancurd skin and then started attacking the noodle soup. He gave a piece of beef to Song Yu. “I wanted to eat macaroni for a while now. I wanted to eat it like this.” Yue Zhishi pierced one of his chopsticks through the centre of a piece and delivered it to his mouth. “Doesn’t it seem like Chinese-style spaghetti?” 

Song Yu just felt he was like one of those early birds in the morning, chittering and chattering away. He normally wasn’t like this — he was unusually excited today, as if he’d successfully completed something important.

“Talk less and eat faster.”

Yue Zhishi then focused, quickly eating four soup buns without skin, half a bowl of noodles and another piece of the beancurd skin. Everything else was finished by Song Yu. Lin Rong taught them from a young age to respect food, so whenever the two of them ate out, they would leave nothing to waste.

There were more people walking in and out of the school entrance by the time they finished breakfast. Song Yu walked out with his bag, and Yue Zhishi jogged after him.

The owner’s wife stared in thought at their bamboo soup bun steamer. Her husband patted her once. “Are you still sleepy?” 

“No.” She frowned, looking very confused. “Those two boys earlier were very strange. One only ate the meat filling, and the other one only ate the skin.

The owner thought she was worried about something else. “Aiyah, children these days all have their own quirks.” 

The two of them separated on the third floor, Song Yu continuing upwards. He saw some of his classmates, and they made fun of him as he walked past.

“I saw you guys eating breakfast from far away. Your relationship with your brother’s really good.”

Song Yu didn’t say anything to refute their words.

Not long after, the morning self-study session started, and the English teacher walked into the classroom with a book. Song Yu opened his schoolbag to grab his English notes and abruptly noticed there was an extra box in his bag. He found it strange and immediately pulled it out.

His desk mate was a slightly gossipy boy with glasses and not much courage. He glanced at the box and was worried Song Yu would see him, so he pretended to loudly recite his vocabulary. 

It was a white box and looked like it was handmade. It was covered by a drawing of two people — one with curly brown hair and the other with black hair. The one with black hair had an injured wrist, yet it was the one with brown hair that had tears falling from his eyes. There was a large red arrow near their foreheads, and it pointed at the opening of the box.

The desk mate looked at him through the corner of his eyes and saw an extremely disdainful expression on Song Yu’s face. He thought Song Yu would throw it away, since that was what he always did with the frequent amount of presents he was given. No matter how prettily they were wrapped, he would never look at them for more than a glance.

But he never expected Song Yu to suddenly open it. It was such a shabbily handmade box, and yet he opened it to have a look?

The desk mate silently cried out in alarm. It looked like Song Yu preferred these types of presents.

He started to get curious about what the box held.

Song Yu unpacked it and pulled from inside a wad of…

Plaster patches? His glasses slipped down his nose in his surprise, and he immediately pushed them back up again, reciting his memorisation work as he continued to steal looks. Song Yu flipped each piece one by one, each patch carrying a drawing. Each drawing was different and covered each plaster entirely, and the wad of patches looked like they were a storyboard of scenes, just like a comic strip — the main characters were the two boys, one with curly hair and one with black hair.

In the self-study classroom ringing with voices loud enough to be deafening, the desk mate accidentally heard Song Yu laugh. He sounded like he was amused, and yet he also sounded helpless. The noise was extremely unlike him, and yet it was also very miraculous. 

Song Yu didn’t look at them for too long before he neatly packed those skin-coloured plaster patches away back into the box. He placed it into his desk drawer.

This morning self-study’s unsolved mystery stayed in the desk mate’s heart for a long, long time.

Both of the morning mathematic classes discussed their examination papers. Song Yu didn’t have many wrong answers, so he spent the time doing new questions, his wrist still hurting. He paused his pen and stared at his wrist in consideration for a long while, until he finally pulled out the box in his drawer.

He thought about what he’d just casually said that day — that he didn’t want to put one on because it was too ugly.

Ever since childhood, every surprise from Yue Zhishi came from him sneaking and skulking around.

Song Yu chose the plaster patch with the two people leaning the closest together. He carefully examined it and realised this was a very familiar scene: it looked like that time in fourth year of elementary school when he’d won first place in a high jump competition, and Yue Zhishi had been so happy he jumped straight into his arms. But Yue Zhishi had used too much force when jumping and directly sent Song Yu tumbling onto the floor of the sport ground. 

When it came time for the awards, the top three winners stood on the little award platform, Song Yu on the highest level. The Yue Zhishi who had just entered elementary school ran in and appeared from the middle of nowhere, slipping straight behind Song Yu and hugging his legs. He’d disrupted the entire award ceremony.

Of course, Yue Zhishi had ended up being carried away by his elementary class adviser. 

Song Yu peeled away the plastic film attached to the back of the plaster as he walked out of his memories. He carefully attached the plaster onto his wrist, smoothing it out, and self-consciously tugged the sleeves of his sweater and outer coat to see if they could cover it up. He then pretended as if nothing happened and immersed himself back in his questions.

After a busy class, the entire student population gathered downstairs to do some exercises. Qin Yan moved lazily, his eyes peeking around in all four directions, and coincidentally caught a glimpse of Song Yu’s right hand wrist.

What was that on his wrist, a tattoo??

After they were released, he immediately ran to Song Yu and didn’t say anything before grabbing his sleeve. “What did you do to your wrist? SYU, you really are a man of culture, you even dared to go behind my back and…” The moment he held up Song Yu’s wrist, Qin Yan suddenly turned into the old man looking at his phone on the subway meme. “…put on a plaster patch?”

Song Yu’s face changed and pushed him away, jerking his sleeve back down. “What nonsense are you talking about.”

“Wait, what is this?” Qin Yan laughed like he discovered something new and exciting. “Where’d you get such a cute patch? Did some girl give it to you! That’s exactly the kind of patches a beefcake man should use! Hurry hurry hurry, I injured my shoulder two days ago while playing ball, give me one too.”

Song Yu: “……”

“Don’t be so stingy, I can give you money for it.” Qin Yan started to unzip his uniform. “Oh shit, it’s cold. Hurry up! Just one!”

“In your dreams.”