CH 28

Chapter 28: A Change in Plans

Yue Zhishi motioned for Song Yu to hush and lightly tugged on one of his pyjama sleeves. His pair of eyes looked pitifully at him, begging Song Yu to not expose him.

Song Yu cleared his throat and recovered his usual demeanour. He wasn’t planning on revealing Yue Zhishi to his parents anyway, so he prepared to walk away.

But Yue Zhishi held onto his sleeve and shook his head at him. Yue Zhishi was wearing a pair of dusty blue pyjamas, hair slightly mussed, and in Song Yu’s eyes, this all made him look particularly small and fragile.

Song Yu stopped moving and met Yue Zhishi’s eyes for a few seconds. His face shifted, taking on a look of slight helplessness, and he took one step forward closer to Yue Zhishi.

Yue Zhishi pointed at his stomach before showing Song Yu the cinnamon roll in his hand. Song Yu pretty much understood what happened and calmly took a sip of water.

Lin Rong decided to call out, “Xiao Yu, there are some cinnamon rolls in the oven. Give them a try, they’re really nice.”

Song Yu responded to her without any real inflection in his voice, his eyes staring at Yue Zhishi and the icing smeared across one of his cheeks.

“It does look quite yummy.”

Yue Zhishi quickly stuffed the remaining half of his roll into his mouth and wiped his face and hands clean.

Hearing her taciturn older son suddenly give her a word of praise, Lin Rong was immensely pleased. “Then you guys should give some to your classmates tomorrow. I bet Xiao Yan will love them.”

“Mm.” Song Yu held onto his bottle. After thinking about it, he decided to help Yue Zhishi escape from this precarious situation, so he said to his parents, “Aren’t you guys going to clean up for bed?”

Lin Rong was lying on her husband. “I’m not in any rush.”

Song Yu then said, “It’s really late.” He walked out of the kitchen and pointed at the clock. “You’ll distract your true born son from sleeping if you keep walking up and down the stairs.” These words were a bit amusing coming out of his calm, emotionless voice.

Song Jin laughed and got up to go upstairs, thinking his words were reasonable. Lin Rong was also amused and ran to Song Yu after getting off the sofa. “Hey, are you being jealous of Le Le?” 

Thinking she was planning on heading over to where he was, Yue Zhishi frantically squeezed himself behind the fridge, practically sitting onto the countertop directly.

Song Yu, with absolutely no change in his face or voice, grabbed his mother’s shoulders and pushed her outside. “Upstairs. Shower.”

He only walked back into the open plan kitchen after he finished rushing his parents upstairs and made sure they closed the door of their master bedroom. He saw Yue Zhishi sitting on the countertop and thought it was a bit funny.

But he didn’t laugh — because if he thought about it again, he would find Yue Zhishi very pitiful.

He never wanted Yue Zhishi to be trapped in this kind of situation again.

“Thank you, gege.” Yue Zhishi jumped off the countertop. He begged Song Yu to go upstairs together with him as a human shield, just in case Lin Rong decided to come out of her room. 

Song Yu knew there was no way he would be able to actually hide Yue Zhishi behind his body, but he agreed anyway, walking with him all the way until they safely reached the entrance of Yue Zhishi’s room. Before he shut the door, Yue Zhishi very softly told him goodnight. Song Yu nodded, and then he heard Yue Zhishi speak again.

“Song Yu gege, don’t be angry. It’s not good for your body.”

He said those words very earnestly. 

Song Yu suddenly didn’t know what he should say.

His peaceful, quiet heart always seemed to sprout very complicated emotions because of the person in front of him. Earlier in the day, he’d gone to look for Yue Zhishi because he’d thought he wouldn’t be able to find his way around the hospital to wash his apple and had accidentally overheard those pile of words. He’d clearly known these relatives had inferior moral character, and he’d clearly known he shouldn’t be saying those words as the younger generation — but Song Yu had said them anyway. He didn’t even feel satisfied after he finished.

He started to believe everything in the world was fair. Once someone believed they treated everyone normally with icy aloofness, all their missing empathy and compassion will gather and surround one certain person.

He detested feeling empathy. It was a persistent, uncontrollable feeling of suffering on behalf of someone else, and he would always feel it after seeing Yue Zhishi’s face.

Just like this very moment, his heart once again stirring in pain.

Yue Zhishi thought everything necessary had been said and prepared to close his door. Song Yu stood just beyond, and he watched as Song Yu’s silhouette was sliced by the closing door until it turned into a small and thin line, narrower and narrower. He watched until just a thread remained. Suddenly, a hand shoved its way in and held onto the doorframe.

“I’m not angry.”

He was very surprised and urgently swung open the door.

He’d almost hit Song Yu’s hand.

But emotions changed too quickly — before Yue Zhishi could ask after Song Yu’s hand, his heart was already busy with something else. 

Song Yu stood just outside Yue Zhishi’s door, caged by the darkness of the corridor. Yue Zhishi was standing inside his room, highlighted by the warm light, and Song Yu reached out and wrapped his hands around him. He gave him an unexpected embrace on the edges of their worlds.

“Don’t be sad.”

For the rest of the night, Yue Zhishi was unable to calm down. He didn’t understand why either, but maybe it was because too many things happened today. He woke up once in the middle of the night, got out of bed and sat at his desk after turning on the desk lamp. He pulled out a piece of paper. It was an action plan for studying overseas, and he’d spent over one week working on it. He seriously read through it again, one more time.

Loopholes everywhere, and impossible to succeed. Yue Zhishi evaluated it so and decided — since it was impossible anyway, he’ll give up his plan of studying overseas.

Honestly speaking, he felt more upset hearing Lin Rong’s words than the cold and mocking words that aunt of theirs had said. Because they were so good to him, Yue Zhishi had no way to continue being an ignorant child, easily and comfortably accepting all the good things they gave him. If he relied on just himself, there was no way he would be able to save all the money he needed to study overseas in the remaining time he had before Song Yu left.

And if both Yue Zhishi and Song Yu left home, then Aunt Rong will definitely find it hard to be away from him.

He crumbled his action plan into a ball and climbed back into bed to continue sleeping. This time he slept much more easily. He dreamed only once.

He dreamed he was at the airport sending Song Yu off. He couldn’t stop crying, and Song Yu eventually had no choice but to hug him.

Song Yu said, don’t be sad.

Yue Zhishi woke the next morning in a daze and told himself it was only a dream.

Because he wouldn’t have let himself cry.

–

After giving up his plan for studying overseas, Yue Zhishi was much more relaxed the next few weeks. But he knew, if Song Yu wanted to go, it meant they wouldn’t see each other very much over the course of a year. Yue Zhishi could already predict it would be difficult for him to get used to the separation; after all, he’d never been apart from Song Yu for such a long time before.

Thinking about it, it felt like someone was lightly twisting Yue Zhishi’s heart. So he decided to get used to it early, and the way he decided to get used to it was to try his best to not look for Song Yu. 

It was quite difficult when he initially started, since Yue Zhishi’s world had pretty much always revolved around Song Yu. Especially after everyone learned about their relationship, he had given up all pretences and followed around Song Yu as much as he wanted. But Yue Zhishi was an earnest and serious person: once he decided on something, no one would be able to change his mind. He believed Song Yu wouldn’t look for him by himself, since he was even busier than Yue Zhishi, but they had other ways of communicating — like the sticky notes on the fridge or the times they would talk to each other over midnight snacks.

Yue Zhishi didn’t intentionally dodge away. He just wanted to learn how to grow up.

His studies were actually a fantastic distraction. Yue Zhishi threw himself entirely into his studies, staying in school during the afternoon break and reviewing until very late every night. His grades reflected his efforts, and his school ranking after midterms shot up by twenty-three spots. Yue Zhishi had always been content to stay in the upper middle rankings, but he entered his year’s top-ranking students with just one jump. Class adviser Wang Qian was so overjoyed by his progress that he spent over a minute praising him during their night self-study session.

After exams, it was Yue Zhishi’s turn to put on the armbands of a student on duty. He and the other student on duty grabbed a notebook after the night self-study session and went around their assigned areas, noting down areas that still needed to be cleaned.

Yue Zhishi found it very strange. “Why does Peiya get students to go around checking for cleanliness at night? It’s so dark.” 

His male classmate laughed. “Maybe we’re not just checking for cleanliness.” 

Yue Zhishi looked at him, and his classmate joked again, “Isn’t our nickname the ‘anti-sex brigade’?”

Yue Zhishi wondered, would there really be couples meeting up in such dark places?

These places were clearly more suited for the opening scenes of horror films. How could anyone’s heart be moved?

The road outside the school’s poplar tree grove was very close to the cafeteria and was often a disaster zone for cleanliness. His classmate noted down the area while Yue Zhishi looked around the place, and he accidentally saw a very familiar figure. That figure seemed to have his phone torch on, a beam of bright light in the dark.

He could immediately tell it was Song Yu, even though he saw only his back.

Song Yu walked through the trees until he reached the old school buildings at the back. That area was surrounded by an iron fence with constant rumours of it soon being torn down. Yue Zhishi was a bit curious and unconsciously started walking towards it.

Once he was a bit closer, he saw Song Yu kneel down in front of the fence and pull out a pouch from his schoolbag. His two hands couldn’t hold onto it, so the light from his phone torch skewed to the side and shone onto the grass behind the fence, shining onto the animals heading towards Song Yu.

They were the school’s stray cats.

There were many of them, and they came one after another. They looked like they were all in the habit of gathering at this place at this time, and they waited for Song Yu to pour cat food into the small container left at the corner of the fence before they went to enjoy their dinner.

Yue Zhishi finally learned why Song Yu had cat food in his schoolbag to bring to school.

He didn’t know why, but his heart started to beat faster, going a bit tingly as if it had been licked by a kitten.

“What’re you looking at?” His classmate followed him over. “There’s not really someone hiding here on a date, right?”

Yue Zhishi guiltily turned around and shook his head. “No. I just got distracted.”

He didn’t walk over to where Song Yu was, and he also didn’t want his classmate to discover Song Yu’s location.

More often than not, Yue Zhishi was the only person who could understand Song Yu. He knew, no matter who it was, if someone actually appeared in front of Song Yu right now and witnessed his actions, Song Yu wouldn’t be too happy.

He was a very strange person — he was never able to openly show his innate kindness to others.

So even his tenderness was always concealed away.

“What’s wrong?” His classmate was a bit curious, seeing Yue Zhishi in a trance.

Yue Zhishi only shook his head. “I was just thinking I shouldn’t assume things so easily.”

“What?” The other guy didn’t understand what he was saying, but Yue Zhishi simply glossed over his words and changed the conversation.

He’d assumed people’s hearts wouldn’t be moved in these places.

But that was before he saw Song Yu in the darkness.

When he got back home that night, he couldn’t quite focus on his homework and drew a picture.

A cold and indifferent high school student dressed in his uniform surrounded by a pack of lonely stray cats with no one to rely on.

After he finished drawing, Yue Zhishi stayed in a daze for a very long time until he heard the sound of the room next door opening. He heard Song Yu go downstairs, and he abruptly startled awake, flipping over his pieces of paper, and took a few deep breaths before he started working on his homework again.

The happiest person at Yue Zhishi’s large grades improvement was Lin Rong. She prepared a large table’s worth of dishes the night of their monthly break, the splendour and variety possibly surpassing their usual Lunar New Year family dinner. Yue Zhishi had been too tired and under too much pressure during this time frame, so he actually had a slight flu the day of his monthly break. He’d napped the entire afternoon after taking some medicine. He blearily stumbled his way down the stairs and just happened to bump into the Song Yu who had just been released from school.

Maybe because he was still a bit confused from his nap, but he suddenly felt a bit strange — it felt like it’d been a long time since he saw Song Yu.

Even though he clearly had peeped at him not too long ago.

The flu medicine left a bitter taste in his mouth, and this was the first time Yue Zhishi felt little interest towards a celebratory dinner. He needed to chew a piece of beef tenderloin twenty times before he could swallow it. Song Jin and Lin Rong kept praising him over the table, and while Yue Zhishi was very happy about it, he was also slightly unhappy.

But he couldn’t explain why he was unhappy. He could only look at Song Yu’s face every time he felt a pang of unhappiness.

Song Yu slowly, meticulously ate his food. He was very quiet and wasn’t too different from how he normally was; his usual habit was to finish off his meal with a bit of soup, so Yue Zhishi guessed he had finished eating and was preparing to leave when Song Yu swallowed his last mouthfuls of soup. His unhappiness grew even more obvious.

But things didn’t happen the way he thought they would.

Song Yu placed down his bowl. He said, directing his words to the parents who were planning a holiday trip after their two children finished their high school and college entrance exams, “I’ve decided which university I want to apply for.”

Song Jin put down his chopsticks. “Really? Which one?” He understood Song Yu’s personality and knew he had strong opinions ever since he was young, which is why he then said, “The colleges I mentioned last time were for you to reference and consider only, but I did think they were pretty good. It’ll really depend on what you want to study as your major. There should still be enough time to get everything ready since the semester doesn’t start until spring.”

Song Yu waited for his father to finish speaking before he opened his mouth. “Dad, I don’t plan on going overseas.”