With a soft “click”, the incandescent light on the bedroom wall went out, leaving only a small lamp on the nightstand, its light dim and yellowish.
Xin Hexue was laid down on the bed, his form sinking into the bedding. He didn’t know if it was because last time he was in Zhou Liao’s room, he had complained that the bed was too hard, but now several layers of padding had been added under the bed sheet.
He felt like laughing.
Did Zhou Liao think he was the Princess and the Pea?
The clumsy and simple-minded man withdrew his arm from behind his waist and straightened up.
Xin Hexue tugged at the corner of his clothes. “Don’t turn on the light.”
That incandescent bulb was too bright. It would illuminate the bedroom brightly, exaggeratedly like daytime. Too bright, too open. He didn’t like that kind of atmosphere and environment; it gave a disordered sense of “engaging in licentiousness in broad daylight.”
It should be hidden in a private, unseen, dim space, as if the room is a large cardboard box.
Zhou Liao pointed to the small lamp nearby.
[It’s too dark. I’m afraid I won’t see clearly and might hurt you.]
He was dragging his feet and dithering
“Can’t you just aim properly?”
His patience exhausted, Xin Hexue asked angrily. He bit his lip and turned over, his hand flipping up half the pillow and covering his ear and part of his face.
“…Hurry up.”
The man’s shadow fell on the wall, like a high mountain range. His prominent Adam’s apple moved, distinct and slow, rolling up and down with great thirst.
Zhou Liao unfastened the decorative chains fastened at his waist. The waist chains, adorned with intricate silver pieces, layered together like fish scales in waves.
He climbed onto the bed naked, supporting himself over Xin Hexue. The muscles in his arms bulged, his skin a wild, sun-tanned dark brown, showing a great color difference with his wife’s fair skin.
“Kiss me,” Xin Hexue looked into those pitch-black eyes. “If you can’t see, then kiss me.”
Since he couldn’t see clearly, then he’d use kissing and feeling.
Zhou Liao exchanged a passionate kiss with him, and the two were as parched as fish out of water.
Xin Hexue’s lips reddened easily, perhaps because their original color was light. So with just a little grinding, kissing and sucking, a bloody red would emerge.
Zhou Liao carefully licked his wife’s lips.
In this fondness for licking, this stepfather shared a surprising similarity with the child.
The sweet, cloying scent in the air grew denser and thicker.
[What…what should I do?]
Zhou Liao’s whole body was tense. He looked down, achieving a personal best of 0.05 seconds in the “don’t look there” challenge.
“How should I know?!”
Xin Hexue turned his face to the side and nestled against the pillow, his long eyelashes fluttering.
He bit his lip. “…It won’t flow out. You figure out a way.”
Zhou Liao’s nasal passages felt hot. He turned his face away and took a deep breath of air.
He turned back to look, then touched carefully.
The sensation was like touching a kitten’s warm nose tip, or like touching the dew-kissed heart of a white peony.
But the young man reacted violently and directly slapped Zhou Liao’s face away. “It hurts!”
Xin Hexue bit his lip hard. know how to describe that feeling, nor could he tell Zhou Liao that it was more of a swollen, sore numbness than pain.
Zhou Liao’s heart ached, and he apologized to him, but only urgent air rushed past his vocal cords, “Heh… heh…”
He kissed his wife’s jaw and lovingly stroked his sweat-dampened forehead.
He could roughly deduce the reason for his wife’s physical discomfort: engorgement causing the milk to accumulate, but unable to flow out.
[Sorry, this is the only way I can think of.]
Zhou Liao lowered his head.
His large hand cupped the youthful, rising curves of the chest, like small mounds of snow. The skin was warm and delicate, making Zhou Liao feel deeply how fragile his wife was. His heart was hidden within a thin chest cavity, like a bird in a small cage, separated by this layer of skin.
Zhou Liao was so nervous his palms were damp and sweaty.
The overly gentle, slow massage, meant to be extremely soft, instead became a form of erotic torture.
Xin Hexue covered himself with the pillow. “Faster! It seems, it seems like it’s about to come out…!”
He felt hot and very dizzy.
This was probably Zhou Liao’s fault!
His unfocused pupils stared at the ceiling, only feeling the sky spin and the earth turn.
Xin Hexue never knew he could make such unspeakable sounds, even his toes curled up from shame.
He grabbed the head buried at his chest with so much strength it could pull out Zhou Liao’s hair. Still feeling it wasn’t enough to vent his frustration, Xin Hexue kicked him twice in succession.
When Zhou Liao slowly released his mouth, Xin Hexue lay back on the bed,his fair skin radiating a faint pink from inside out.
His chest rose and fell with his breath, the two swollen points, now bright in color, also rising and falling with it.
Zhou Liao propped himself up and opened his mouth towards Xin Hexue, his motion so clear it didn’t require sign language or lip-reading, because the remnants of a milky white color were still on his tongue…
[Yours.]
………
“…Pa!”
Xing Ming, who was passing by the corridor with a thermos, was startled by the crisp slapping sound that came from inside.
“What’s going on? A lover’s quarrel in bed?”
He pondered, “Could it be they have been dating online and this is their first offline meeting? But during Truth or Dare, didn’t he say he had never been in a relationship?”
Puzzled, Xing Ming picked up the towel draped over his shoulder and wiped his damp, curly hair, muttering, “So this is what you meant by preferring someone who is not noisy when they talk? Might as well find a mute?”
He continued walking down the corridor, and as he lifted his gaze, he got another fright.
Senior Matsukawa, wearing glasses and holding a book, was leaning against the doorframe beside the corridor. It was unknown how long he had been standing there.
“Senior Matsukawa, you’re still awake this late?” Xing Ming greeted.
Matsukawa Masato smiled gently. “Mm, you too?”
Xing Ming lifted his thermos. “I ran out of water in my room.”
Just as he was pretending nothing was wrong and was walking past, Xing Ming suddenly noticed the situation inside Matsukawa Masato’s room.
Two small stools served as desks. One black and one white paper doll were in front of the ‘desks’. The draft paper in front of the white doll was filled with writing, while the black doll’s eyes looked vacant, black smoke like a soul puffing from its mouth as it cried, “Mo… Mother…”
Xing Ming was startled. “Isn’t this Xin Hexue’s paper doll? Xiao Hei? Why is it here with you?”
Matsukawa Masato: “Oh, I’m giving them extra tutoring. Children are naturally fond of learning.”
He turned and asked, “Where were we just now? Xiao Hei?”
The soul-like smoke coming from Xiao Hei’s mouth trembled. It obediently picked up a pencil longer than its own arm.
Matsukawa Masato looked back at Xing Ming, smiling slightly. “As you can see, they are currently studying the Implicit Function Theorem. We’ve just started discussing the determination of local solvability using the Jacobian matrix in multidimensional cases.”
Xing Ming shivered in the sweltering heat of summer.
The power of learning is terrifying, really terrifying!
………
The old fan whirred as it rotated, blowing away the damp sweat on their bodies. Outside, the mango tree gently swayed its branches and leaves in the world tinged with the fish-belly white of dawn.
Zhou Liao lay on his side, his hand brushing through the strands of hair on Xin Hexue’s forehead, carrying a slight moisture.
The summers by the coast were still a bit too hot.
Xin Hexue was still asleep, the soft collar of his shirt hanging open, revealing snow-white skin dotted with red marks.
Zhou Liao broke into a smile brimming with happiness. It was absolutely the kind of smile a husband from a blissful family would have, enviable to the point of being detestable.
They had almost gone all the way to the final step last night.
But his wife stopped him and told him a piece of sky-shatteringly good news.
His wife was pregnant with his child.
They were having a baby!
Zhou Liao wasn’t actually that fond of children, but just the thought that it was Xin Hexue’s child made him feel immensely, tremendously, weightily happy.
It was like being busy for a whole year, harvesting fruits covering the mountains and fields in autumn and winter, or weathering storms at sea and returning with a full load on a summer night.
Xin Hexue’s eyelashes fluttered, clearly about to wake up.
Zhou Liao couldn’t help himself and kissed his wife’s cheek with a loud smack.
He was pushed away by a hand, yet he still stood there grinning foolishly.
Suddenly, remembering something, Zhou Liao’s expression turned serious again.
When his face was stern, it was actually quite intimidating, with deep-set eye sockets, hawk-like eyes, and sword-like eyebrows lowering over them.
Xin Hexue who was standing by the bed straightening his clothes glanced back.
Zhou Liao asked hesitantly.
[I ate it all… what about the baby?]
Xin Hexue swatted his head.
It was solid. Turns out it wasn’t filled with water after all.
………
Xin Hexue didn’t know that Xiao Hei had suffered a night of mathematical torture in the specially set up nursery.
He just felt like Xiao Hei was especially clingy today. Although it was usually clingy too, it never refused to walk on its own for even a step like this, now it just clung to him like a dogskin plaster.
Two wide streams of tears flowed from its beady eyes as it sang haltingly: “Mother good… Mother good…”
Xin Hexue thought it was separation anxiety from being locked outside the room for the night, and felt heartache, coaxing it tenderly for a long while.
Zhou Liao had soaked some pickled plums. He used half for iced tea and half as snack fruit, and brought them out for everyone to eat.
Unfortunately, apart from the relatively better-off “children”, the others didn’t have much appetite.
There were nine people neatly lined up when they set out, but in less than two days, the team had lost a member, casting a shadow over a corner of the teacher and students’ hearts. On one hand, they felt the grief of seeing a fellow creature suffer, on the other, they worried about when misfortune might also befall them.
Finally, the village chief appeared at the door with two strong young men.
Teacher Zhang hurried forward.
The village chief introduced: “Old Chen’s son and Old Zhao’s son aren’t going out to sea today. They’ll take the fishing boat to check the waters around where your classmate fell into the sea.”
“But it’s been so long, who knows if we can even find the body anymore.”
“Don’t get your hopes up too high.”
The village chief shook his head.
………
Teacher Zhang and Luo Liangming boarded the fishing boat together. Luo Liangming had personally seen Kong Yuan jump from the cliff. He still had an impression of that area. Only by taking the villagers there could they deduce where the body might have drifted with the ocean currents.
Xin Hexue and the others split into small groups of two or three and searched along the coastline. Even if the possibility was small, maybe the waves had washed him back ashore.
Zhou Liao had to stay behind at the old house to prepare lunch for so many people, so he couldn’t go out with them.
Xin Hexue was paired with Xing Ming. Originally, they were supposed to be with Matsukawa Masato, but Xiao Hei threw a fit, crying and making a scene as if it had seen a ghost, forcing Xin Hexue to choose another Uncle that Xiao Hei was friendly with.
After leaving the old house for the beach, they headed north along the coastline, while the rest went south.
The tide seemed to have come in during the night, and receded again by daytime.
It was Xin Hexue’s turn to carry the camera today.
He was wearing shorts that reached his knees, with a white open-front cardigan over a short-sleeved shirt inside. Speaking of which, his suitcase wasn’t entirely filled with skirts and dresses; Xin Hexue had dug out a pair of trousers from the bottom of the case.
Now he looked like a handsome and youthful university student.
In a setting with just the two of them, Xing Ming was far from as obnoxious as he had seemed in the car earlier. Instead, after sneaking a few glances at Xin Hexue, he apologized awkwardly.
“Um… I wasn’t deliberately targeting you before.” Xing Ming poked at the sand with his flip-flop. “I’m just a bit homophobic. Because my uncle abandoned his wife and child and ran off with some guy outside, my grandfather has been cursing about it to me since I was little, so I felt a bit averse to you at first…”
“Ah, anyway, just think of me as an old fossil and a psychopath!”
“I now know that not all gay people are like that, so, I’m sorry! Just treat what I said before targeting you as a dog barking. If you really can’t get past it, you can curse me back too.”
Xing Ming spoke in a low voice.
After finishing, he realized Xin Hexue didn’t seem to be listening seriously to his apology at all, instead staring intently at some symbol drawn in the sand, probably by some child.
It was a large “V”, left behind when the tide receded.
There were also several arrows not far apart.
Xin Hexue lowered his head in thought, then subconsciously followed the path forward.
At the end of the arrows, they saw a new graffiti letter, “F”.
Next to it was a small dug-out sand pit, covered with palm leaves.
In international distress signals, V represents needing assistance, arrows indicate the direction to proceed, and F means needing food and water.
After thinking for a moment, Xin Hexue unzipped his backpack and tossed two bags of bread and a bottle of water into the small sand pit in front of him, then covered it again with the palm leaves.
After doing this, he turned around and discovered Xing Ming hadn’t followed.
Two pairs of shoes were left on the distant sand: one was Xing Ming’s flip-flops, the other looked like a pair of sneakers washed up by the waves, from a famous brand from outside.
Kong Yuan’s shoes.
Xin Hexue instinctively thought of this.
Recently, only their group had come from outside the village. Judging by the wear and brand of the shoes, they must have been dropped by someone in their group.
The sound of crashing waves filled the air.
Further out in the sea, Xing Ming popped his head up from the water, like a white streak in the waves, gasping for breath before diving forward with a powerful surge.
Xin Hexue then saw someone struggling in the sea a bit further away, looking as if the next wave could swallow them whole.
His vision suddenly darkened. He frowned and looked up at the sky.
Just minutes ago it was a bright and clear day, but now large masses of dark clouds were pressing in from the edge of the sea.
Suddenly thinking of something, Xin Hexue raised the camera. Through the high optical zoom lens, he could see more details of the person drowning.
Frantically pressing the shutter, he suddenly shouted: “Xing Ming! Come back quickly!”
In the image captured on the film, there was the vast ocean, and the drowning person reaching out a hand for help. However, there were mucus layers connecting their fingers, and the back of their hand were covered with hard, bony fish scales, glinting with a shimmering reflection.
