Between Us : Chapter 24: I Have to Get It

Early Saturday morning, sunlight filtered through the old district, casting a soft golden hue over every corner of the streets and alleys.

On the first day after his breakup, Chen Qian had thought he would be trapped in gloom, building an airtight wall from five years of scattered memories, planning to hide inside for ten days or half a month.

But the truth was, he felt as if a heavy burden had been lifted. Though he occasionally felt lonely, with no one left to share his joys and sorrows, he no longer had to worry daily whether he was good enough standing beside Jiang Linsheng, or fear whether Jiang Linsheng, accustomed to walking on golden brick roads, would grow weary of stepping into the dim and narrow Sixth Alley.

After getting out of the car, there was still a short distance to Yu Huo’s place. Chen Qian walked unhurriedly, stopping to look at everything along the way. A stray cat scratching at a tire thought he had come to feed it, approaching and pawing at his pant leg. A flower shop girl was spraying water on bundled flowers outside her door, the pure white and pale purple arrangement looking quite beautiful, so he took a photo to show the florist downstairs for reference. Turning the corner, the sweet aroma wafting from a bakery caught his attention, and he went in to buy half a dozen egg tarts, along with two ham sandwiches and two soy milks.

Carrying the breakfast, Chen Qian pushed open the glass door of Little Fish Studio. Yu Huo had just woken up not long ago, thinking a customer had arrived early, and looked up to see him, startled.

Chen Qian didn’t come often, but he moved about as familiarly as if it were his own home. He laid out the breakfast on the table one by one, took two glasses from the disinfection cabinet, tore open the bagged soy milk and poured it in, then gestured for Yu Huo to sit down. “Come eat.”

Yu Huo sat down across from him with his tablet in hand. Skilled at reading body language, he studied Chen Qian’s face in the sunlight, but couldn’t tell what was on his mind. “Weren’t you supposed to fly to Paris at this hour?”

“Not going anymore.” Chen Qian bit off half an egg tart in one go, his mood and appetite both satisfied. Seeing Yu Huo unmoving, he pushed a cup of soy milk toward him. “Why do you look so terrible, didn’t sleep well?”

Balancing studies and work, staying up until midnight was common, but the dark circles under Yu Huo’s eyes were due to something else. “Senior, at one thirty last night, Mr. Jiang called me.”

Biting too eagerly, Chen Qian accidentally bit his own tongue. Ignoring the pain, he cursed, “Is he crazy? Does he think everyone stays up all night like him?”

One phone call wouldn’t have been enough to ruin his sleep. In fact, at dawn, Jiang Linsheng had also come knocking, asking the same questions over and over. Was Chen Qian there? Could he get in touch with him? He was missing.

Yu Huo had been friends with Chen Qian for years, and though he feared confrontation, he forced himself to stay calm, leaving finger marks on the glass door frame as he gripped it. “He’s really not here. His phone is off. Are you done asking? If so, I’m closing the door and going back to sleep. And don’t park your car there too long, it’s charged by the second.”

“I’ve never seen him so out of control,” Yu Huo said. “Like he lost a hundred thousand… though a hundred thousand probably doesn’t mean much to him. Then like his company went bankrupt.”

Chen Qian didn’t think he could compare to the company Jiang Linsheng had poured years of effort into, and feeling partly responsible for Yu Huo’s poor sleep, he ate only two of the six egg tarts himself, leaving the rest for Yu Huo. “If it were really bankruptcy, he wouldn’t be disturbing people in the middle of the night. He’s just bored. Blacklist his number. I’ll apologize to you on his behalf.”

“Then you two…”

“Broke up. What’s the point of keeping a man with no moral integrity? He’s not even as obedient as a massage wand.” Chen Qian walked over to the storage cabinet with his cup in hand, his gaze fixed on the mirrorless camera he had asked about last time.

At this point, Yu Huo basically understood, but seeing Chen Qian’s cold expression with no trace of reluctance, he asked, “Senior, aren’t you upset?”

“I am upset, so I’m asking you for something precious to comfort myself.” Chen Qian tapped on the glass cabinet door. “You promised to lend me this one.”

“Take it,” Yu Huo readily handed over the cabinet key. “If you can’t photograph Paris, photograph something else. There’s a new French-style town opening in the neighboring city this Thursday. Go while it’s a weekday and there aren’t many people.”

“You’re not going?”

“I’m fully booked with classes that day, and when I get back I have to prepare for next Tuesday’s location scout,” Yu Huo licked the soy milk from his lips. “Senior, have you thought about that matter?”

The topic had come around to the point, and Chen Qian knew he was asking about going together to scout Ruan Yu’s villa. He hadn’t refused immediately at the time, wanting to use the Paris trip as an excuse to think it over. Now that he didn’t need to go to Paris, he had lost his reason to hesitate. Holding the brand new mirrorless camera, he thought to himself, I’ve accepted his gift, wouldn’t it be disloyal not to agree?

Yu Huo saw through his thoughts at a glance. “Senior, you can be so decisive in matters of the heart. Why not apply even twenty percent of that to work?”

Chen Qian immediately retorted, “This isn’t work.”

“You can treat it as work,” Yu Huo’s gaze was persistent and firm, not at all like someone who feared communication. “You clearly love this circle, and you have the ability to set foot in it.”

Chen Qian’s voice betrayed no emotion. “Little Fish, this is a job you landed through your own hard work. Maybe one day you’ll encounter an opportunity that shakes up the photography world. If I interfere even once, in others’ eyes, it won’t count as your independent work anymore.”

“What does that matter!” Yu Huo suddenly stood up, the chair legs scraping against the wooden floor with a harsh sound, the glass cups on the table shaking and spilling soy milk onto the back of his hand. “Senior, if you hadn’t saved me back then, I would have died long ago. Why would I care about any of that!”

The trailing note trembled and fell silent, and the air returned to stillness.

Both remained quiet for a long while. Chen Qian sighed, walked over and handed Yu Huo a tissue. “Why are you crying? I wasn’t bullying you.”

After breakfast, Chen Qian nestled on the sofa fiddling with the camera for half the day. Once he got the hang of it, he turned it off and picked up the tablet beside him to open a search engine.

He stayed at Yu Huo’s place until after lunch before leaving. There was no other reason, Yu Huo was a good cook, while Chen Qian had lived alone for years and his cooking was only acceptable to himself, with just a few dishes he could make well.

The afternoon temperature was pleasant. Chen Qian walked back, and on the way arranged for a locksmith to come change his locks.

The new lock came with three keys. Chen Qian put one on his key ring that he carried with him, threw one in a drawer as a spare, and the remaining one…

From outside came a commotion drawing near, several heavy footsteps falling at uneven intervals, mixed with voices of strangers. “These stairs are steep and narrow, really hard to walk.”

“Just carry your stuff, stop complaining.”

“You walk faster if you’re in front.”

“Can’t do that. If something gets bumped or broken, I’d be paying out of pocket. The young man said the things inside are valuable, right young man?”

Someone new moving into the empty place next door?

Before Chen Qian could guess, someone gave a short hum of agreement, followed immediately by the sound of his newly changed lock turning.

Chen Qian recognized Xu Jue’s voice from that brief response. Surprised, he opened the door. Before he saw a face, he saw two large cardboard boxes stacked high. Xu Jue carried them in, bent down to set them on the floor, then straightened up and shook his numb arms.

The same scene played out behind him. Two sturdy men in work clothes came in and set down several more boxes. Xu Jue took out his phone to scan and pay them. Once the two left, Xu Jue plopped down on a box beside him and let out a long breath of relief.

The room wasn’t large to begin with, and with seven or eight cardboard boxes haphazardly placed, it became nearly impossible to move. Chen Qian asked, “What valuable things are these? Aren’t you afraid of sitting on them and crushing them?”

“Nothing much. Didn’t you tell me last time to take back what belongs to me? So I went home while I had time.” Xu Jue patted the boxes. “I moved everything here. No need to worry about my brother messing them up.”

Chen Qian nudged a box to try to gather them in one place, but it was quite heavy. “Weren’t you in class today? How did you have time to run home?”

“I only found out when I got to the studio this morning that the teacher had gone out for an exchange program. There was a notice in the group chat around seven, but I didn’t check.” Xu Jue had rested enough and started moving the boxes one by one toward the study. “Luckily my parents have their family day every Saturday, so they were probably out picnicking in the suburbs. The house was completely empty, saving me from having to argue with my mom while moving things.”

When he spoke of “them,” Chen Qian noticed how calm his expression was, as if the concept of family meant very little to him.

Halfway through moving, Xu Jue felt hot indoors, took off his jacket, and ran to hang it on the coat rack by the door, as if it had already become habit.

The coat rack that had originally been prepared for Jiang Linsheng was now, in just half a month, covered with another person’s belongings. Xu Jue’s school uniform, casual jackets, baseball caps, piled one on top of another. Even the watch he took off as soon as he entered, a small toy charm bought from a street stall, and the key ring he never left behind when going out, all filled the little hooks.

The coat rack was being used to its maximum potential, no longer the forlorn sight of a single tie wrapped around it for forced decoration.

Chen Qian lowered his gaze again to the boxes crowding the study doorway. “So much stuff, is there enough room in the study? Will you be adding more later?”

The underlying meaning was, he wanted to ask how long Xu Jue planned to stay, how long he would live there, and when he might leave and the place become empty again.

Right now the room was crowded, with toothbrushes, slippers, and cups all in pairs. The sticky note on the slightly warped refrigerator door, the dumbbells Xu Jue used to work out in the corner, the unfinished bags of snacks on the table, just looking at them let one taste the sweetness of life. Chen Qian couldn’t imagine the scene of all this suddenly vanishing.

But Xu Jue treated his question like an English reading comprehension problem he wasn’t good at. “It should be enough. The boxes won’t take up much space once they’re unpacked.”

Chen Qian was curious. That night when rain beat against the window, Xu Jue had told him so much under his comfort. He asked, “Are these the models you didn’t want your brother touching?”

“And trophies.” Xu Jue cut the packing tape with scissors.

When you have someone you like, you can’t help but eagerly show them all your good sides, wanting to see admiration and praise in their eyes, to light a lamp in the alley of your secret love.

Xu Jue brought out the trophies, gold and silver, one after another, then medals with lace edges and hollow designs.

“This is the second prize I won in a chemistry competition in middle school. Why second place? Because my pen ran out of ink on the last problem, tough luck.”

As if saving the best for last, Xu Jue then picked up a gold one. “This is the first prize I got in a physics competition last year. The teacher had high hopes, but mainly it was because Ding Xuezhou got scolded at school a couple days before, so I was happy.”

The next one: “This is from winning a domestic design competition. Though it’s only bronze, experience counts for something. I’ll aim for gold and silver and make it to the international stage next.”

The two of them sat in a corner, and Chen Qian listened attentively as Xu Jue introduced each one, as if infected by the light in the other person’s eyes.

“And this,” Xu Jue finally picked up one last item. “Hand.”

Chen Qian asked, “What hand?”

Without a word, Xu Jue grabbed his hand and placed the medal in his palm. “This is from winning a district math olympiad in elementary school. It doesn’t weigh much, but it was the first award I ever won through my own efforts.”

“From that moment on, I made up my mind that anything I want, I have to get my hands on. I don’t feel safe if it falls into someone else’s hands.” Xu Jue looked at Chen Qian. “So… I’m giving it to you, to thank you for letting me stay and putting up with me all this time.”

When they first met, Chen Qian had given him a cup of coffee with an advertising slogan on it that he hadn’t understood at the time. Now he did.

Tolerance and understanding are indeed the gentlest letters.

Chen Qian unconsciously closed his hand, gripping the medal tighter.

And something like fine sand slipped through his fingers. He didn’t seem to care anymore.

He smiled and said, “Hand.”

This time it was Xu Jue’s turn to be stunned. “What?”

Chen Qian stretched out his other hand to pull him close, gently traced a line across his palm with the warmed new key, then placed it inside. “A return gift.”