Lightning flashed and thunder roared, and the rain outside suddenly intensified. The sky seemed to have a gaping hole, pouring water directly onto the ground.
Lin Oufei’s dark eyes didn’t blink, his pupils clearly reflecting Xin Hexue’s face. He just stood silently in place, as if he wouldn’t move and wouldn’t easily let the topic go without a reasonable explanation. He clearly meant to hold out against Xin Hexue.
In contrast to the thunderous environment outside, the dorm was unusually quiet at that moment.
But the person in his eyes smiled gently, his expression relaxed and natural as he returned to his bed to put down his backpack. “What’s wrong? Did you call me and I didn’t answer?”
Xin Hexue fished out his phone and innocently waved the darkened screen at Lin Oufei. “It wasn’t convenient to charge outside. It ran out of power.”
Lin Oufei followed step by step, lowering his gaze. “Where is ‘outside’? Why were you out for so long?”
His gaze was like cold, sticky threads of rain, falling on every inch of Xin Hexue’s face and body, leaving an inexplicable feeling of coldness.
“I’m not a child anymore, what’s the matter? Are you worried I got lost?” Xin Hexue teased. Only when the expression on the other party’s face could almost be described as gloomy, with an anxiety that was hard to hide, did he let out a sudden laugh and explain, “I went for a trial tutoring session with a student. I wasn’t very confident, and was afraid simulating the lesson in the dorm would disturb you all, so I went out and rented a room last night.”
He could have given the explanation as soon as he entered, but he deliberately decided to keep people’s hearts unsettled, pulling and tugging at their emotions.
Lin Oufei’s expression improved a bit. He took out the lunch boxes of cafeteria food he had packed. The two meat dishes, one vegetable dish, and rice were still warm, obviously he had just come back from the cafeteria.
Xin Hexue broke apart the disposable chopsticks and took a bite of the braised eggplant.
Lin Oufei stared at him, then asked abruptly, “Does tutoring take that long?”
Xin Hexue chewed. “Of course not. Didn’t Grandma send some local specialties? I went to deliver them to my big brother and then walked around the city a bit.”
Upon hearing Zhuang Tongguang’s name from Xin Hexue’s mouth, Lin Oufei’s tense nerves finally relaxed. “Eat slowly.”
Xin Hexue smiled and said, “Why are you worrying randomly like my brother?”
He told this lie extremely naturally, not afraid that Lin Oufei might call Zhuang Tongguang to verify.
The local specialties for Zhuang Tongguang were indeed delivered…he asked Lu Yang to deliver them to Zhuang Tongguang’s school on his way back. As for walking around the city, he did walk around, but who he walked with was another matter.
It was till meal time when Xin Hexue finished dinner, and the public showers on each floor weren’t crowded. Seizing this opportunity, he grabbed his clothes and went to take a shower first.
Only when Xin Hexue’s figure was blocked from view by the dorm door did Lin Oufei slowly withdraw his gaze, shifting it to the backpack on the bed.
The zipper wasn’t closed, half revealing a paper bag containing a change of clothes, probably the ones changed out of yesterday.
As he took it out, the paper bag inevitably made faint noises. The sound felt piercing to Lin Oufei.
Dark circles like duck eggshells hung under his eyes. Lin Oufei kept an eye on the empty hallway outside the door from the corner of his eye, and his Adam’s apple rolled. With an extremely slow, cautious movement, he brought the soft shirt to his face, the sides of his nose flaring slightly.
There was only the warmth of having been sun-dried during the day, and a very faint layer of minty shower gel fragrance.
He narrowed his eyes, picking up a strand of hair stuck to the collar.
Holding it up against the light bulb in the dorm, the hair was so thin it seemed about to disappear, yet it shimmered with a dark pearl-like luster.
The length was just right. It was indeed a strand of Xin Hexue’s hair.
He tilted his head back, his throat constricted, and swallowed the hair strand.
It felt as if the hair grew and spread all the way down in his stomach, metamorphosing into a hundred thousand butterflies making that honest organ tremble.
Lin Oufei pressed his lips together, threw the clothes into the laundry basket, waiting to go wash them in the laundry room downstairs later.
…………
The two weeks of military training felt torturous, but looking back, they passed quickly.
The formal teaching week commenced.
They were freshmen who had just arrived, and their class schedule for this semester was still arranged by the academic affairs office. According to senior students, they would have to select their own courses starting next semester, and only then would they understand the hardship of the lottery and scrambling for classes.
There was a local in Xin Hexue’s dorm who patted his chest claiming he had connections. Not long after the semester started, he brought back a university-wide course evaluation handbook that had been probably through many hands. It contained annotations by several seniors on attendance-checking frequency and grading standards.
Although Xin Hexue and Lin Oufei were in different majors, their ideological and political education public course was scheduled together, right in the first period on Monday afternoon.
The first period in the afternoon started at two. Xin Hexue’s last class in the morning ended at twelve-thirty. After eating, he returned to the dorm for a nap and woke up a bit late. Lin Oufei said he would go ahead to save seats, and Xin Hexue could come slowly.
But as soon as Xin Hexue arrived at the classroom and found Lin Oufei in the back row, the other party’s expression didn’t look good.
Putting down his backpack, Xin Hexue tilted his head and asked, “What’s wrong?”
Before Lin Oufei could speak, the boy sleeping with his head down on the desk in the row in front of them moved.
Like a dog smelling a meaty bone, Lu Yang immediately woke up, turned around from the front, and leaned right onto Xin Hexue’s desk. “I saw Lin Oufei when I just got here. He said he only saved two seats, so I had to sit in the row in front.”
The two universities weren’t exactly close, so Xin Hexue asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Didn’t I ask for your class schedule? I saw you had class this afternoon, and I didn’t.” Lu Yang said with a smile. “So I took the bus over.”
‘Taking the bus would take half an hour too, so he probably didn’t take a nap. No wonder he was so sleepy just now and was sleeping on the desk.’
Xin Hexue thought, letting Lu Yang play with his hand on the desk.
Several circles were drawn on his palm, making it very itchy, and his fingertips subconsciously curled up slightly.
Both of them seemed to remember the heat of that night when their fingers were interlocked, enough to make every inch of their palms sweat profusely. Lu Yang’s ears reddened slightly, and he stopped his action. Just then, the preparatory bell rang. “You don’t have class later, so why don’t you show me around and then we’ll have dinner together tonight?”
Xin Hexue agreed.
Lin Oufei, who was holding his phone, interjected expressionlessly, saying to Xin Hexue, “Yu Zao is asking which cafeteria we’d like to have dinner at.”
“Then let’s eat together,” Xin Hexue pretended not to notice the undercurrents, simply arranging it. “Kaiyu said the chicken leg rice at the fifth cafeteria is good.”
Liu Kaiyu was that local from their dorm who had scavenged the course evaluation handbook.
Anyway, Lin Oufei had achieved his goal of not letting the two eat alone, so it didn’t matter to him who else joined.
Lu Yang gave up, consciously turning back to face the podium. It was this movement that made Lin Oufei notice something. His expression changed, and he almost impulsively stood up right then.
He forced himself to sit still, his face pale, his eyes blazing as he stared intently at Lu Yang’s back.
At the edge of the collar of the blue short-sleeved shirt, and extending from the back of the neck, were a few glaring red marks.
They looked like scratches from a cat’s claws, marks scraped by fingernails. Though small, once noticed, those few red lines were deeply imprinted on Lin Oufei’s retina.
Lu Yang’s words from earlier echoed in his ears….
“Didn’t I ask for your class schedule?”
Under the same roof, Lin Oufei even knew exactly how many seconds Xin Hexue spent on phone calls with family on the balcony.
When did Lu Yang ask Xin Hexue for his class schedule?
Lin Oufei couldn’t help but look at Xin Hexue’s fingers playing with a paper and pen. They were slender and white, with nails that looked like transparent shells, with light pink flesh underneath.
He stared for too long, drawing Xin Hexue’s concerned inquiry. Lin Oufei shook his head and closed his eyes, but the image of those spiderweb-like red marks reappeared before him, completely entangling him.
[Why him?]
[Why him?]
[Why him?]
[Why him?]
[Why him!]
The trend of hair he had secretly swallowed spread wantonly and constricted his stomach. His muscles spasmed excessively, bringing out a stinging cold sweat on his forehead and blurring his vision.
[Lin Oufei Heartbreak Value +15]
[Lin Oufei Heartbreak Value 85]
When class ended, a boy from the front row walked over, blocking Lu Yang’s way to Xin Hexue. He was quite tall, wore glasses, and had a decent appearance. He asked for Xin Hexue’s contact information.
Seeing the strange looks from the people beside Xin Hexue, the boy smiled and said, “You’re all freshmen, right? I’m a sophomore. My name is Meng Wenzhuo. It’s like this, these few nights are Club Nights. I wanted to ask if you’re interested in joining our club.”
As he spoke, he actually took out flyers for club recruitment and handed them out.
Meng Wenzhuo winked. “There’s a good male-to-female ratio, plenty of benefits and funding, and there are frequent social events with other schools.”
Lu Yang took the flyer and raised an eyebrow. “Can students from other schools join?”
Meng Wenzhuo understood. “If you know any freshmen at our school who happen to not have a club yet, please spread the word.”
Lu Yang ignored him, forcefully squeezing past to put an arm around Xin Hexue and lead him away. “Let’s go, let’s go, show me around Peking University. I haven’t had a good look yet.”
Xin Hexue let himself be pushed along. “Aren’t you sleepy since you didn’t nap at noon?”
Lu Yang said, “I’m not sleepy, I’m as vigorous as a dragon and fierce as a tiger!”
Meng Wenzhuo watched Xin Hexue’s retreating figure for a while, then saw Lin Oufei pick up his bag and leave. Their shoulders bumped in the narrow aisle, and before he could hand out the flyer, he heard the cold words, “No need. Not interested.”
…………
After returning to the dorm in the evening, while washing up on the balcony, Lin Oufei glanced downstairs.
Xin Hexue and Lu Yang were saying goodbye. Probably because there weren’t many people around, their hands briefly held each other under the tree shadows before letting go.
From Lin Oufei’s perspective, Xin Hexue, with his back to him, raised a hand, likely saying “goodbye” to Lu Yang. The person opposite smiled so brightly it was nauseating, a completely despicable face belonging to a victor.
He suddenly realized he had stood in this position countless times, from this same angle. He just arrived a few years late, and all he seemed able to do was watch them.
He had never changed.
He was still trapped in the rain that year.
The dismissal bell rang at Lingzhou Power Plant Elementary School. The rain was so heavy. Xin Hexue lent him an umbrella. He cautiously asked if they should walk together, but Xin Hexue had already ducked under Lu Yang’s large blue-checkered umbrella like a nimble elf, and the two went home talking and laughing.
Lin Oufei lowered his gaze. The moss covered washbasin before him seemed to transform back into the dark, deep puddle of water outside the classroom.
…………
While Xin Hexue was tidying his things, Lin Oufei looked over and saw a gift box on the desk. “What’s that?”
“This?” Xin Hexue took off the wired earphones of his mp3 player, frowned, and looked a bit troubled. “The parent of the student I was to tutor was very enthusiastic and stuffed this into my backpack as a gift. It’s too valuable. I’ll have to find a chance to return it next time.”
“Oh.” Hearing this answer, Lin Oufei lost interest. “I’m going outside to make a call.”
Walking to the empty end of the corridor, the deep blue night sky was quiet, and the moon hung high, casting a layer of moonlight over Lin Oufei.
He found a name in his phonebook. The ringtone played halfway before the other end answered.
“Brother Tongguang,” Lin Oufei greeted.
