Between Us : Chapter 9: Are You Asleep?

Ever since winter began, the art studio closed an hour earlier than usual. When Xu Jue finished packing up his drawing paper and came out, the sky had just turned dark.

The weather had been gloomy from morning till night today, and as evening approached the wind picked up. The branches of the street trees swayed wildly, and Song He stood by the roadside using her hoodie to try and catch her flying long hair.

“Waiting for a ride?” Xu Jue asked.

Song He covered her mouth with her mask and said: “There’s a family dinner tonight, my family is coming to pick me up.”

This kind of windy weather wasn’t suitable for biking. Xu Jue crossed the street to take the bus, and when he sat down by the window he habitually looked outside. He happened to see Song He ducking into a light gold car, but traffic blocked his view and in the blink of an eye that car had disappeared around the corner.

Xu Jue withdrew his gaze, unlocked his phone and searched for a restaurant to his taste. Monday through Friday he could still solve three meals at school, but on weekends he could only agonize over which restaurant had good ratings without draining too much of his living expenses.

After getting off the bus, Xu Jue went straight into a small restaurant on the street, sat down and waved for someone to bring him a rice plate with two toppings. Getting hungry faster in winter was one thing, but mainly he had other plans after eating. The weather forecast showed rain around nine o’clock, and he hadn’t brought an umbrella, so he had to get back to the motel before the rain started.

The cramped little shop was crowded with voices. At the table closest to Xu Jue sat two men who weren’t even touching their food, huddled together shouting at a phone screen.

“Why would someone be so foolish, falling from such a high place, they must have died on the spot.”

“Damn, why didn’t the person who posted the video blur out that pool of blood, I can’t eat anymore.”

“Seems like it’s not far from here, want to go check it out after eating?”

“Are you crazy? Not afraid of being possessed at night?”

People are always like this, not stingy about expressing fear verbally yet unable to hide their extreme curiosity about gory things. The two at the next table were still discussing loudly, their faces almost pressed to the screen to see the victim’s condition clearly. Xu Jue had no heart to listen anymore, polished off the food on his plate and left after paying.

This whole area was within the commercial district, normally especially lively at night, but tonight it was somewhat deserted. Probably everyone was worried about the coming rain blocking their way home.

There was a pharmacy a few dozen meters ahead. Xu Jue walked in and asked the clerk: “Excuse me, do you have that anti inflammatory ointment with the blue packaging? It’s…”

He had indeed forgotten the spelling of that string of English. He was about to pull out his phone when the clerk slapped a tube of ointment on the counter: “Only have the red one.”

Xu Jue only wanted the blue one, so he moved on to the next pharmacy. This time the clerk gave him a green one.

“Is there any with English packaging on the outside?” After walking through about six or seven pharmacies, Xu Jue showed his memo to someone. Originally asking Song He one sentence in the morning could have saved him a lot of trouble, but that girl was a gossip, asking her one question could fabricate a girlfriend out of thin air for him.

The clerk told him imported medicine had to be bought at a pharmacy over at Yi’an Plaza, which wasn’t close, requiring eight bus stops to get there.

After boarding the bus and sitting down, the soles of Xu Jue’s feet were burning hot.

Not just the soles of his feet were burning, even his brain was burning. It was that feeling of making a snap decision on impulse to do something, doing it with full enthusiasm halfway through, then suddenly having a moment of mental free time and feeling at a loss about why he was doing this thing.

Just like right now, the bus was already on its way to Yi’an Plaza, yet Xu Jue couldn’t find a reason to explain why he was running to so many places just to buy a tube of anti inflammatory ointment for Chen Qian.

This question still troubled him after the bus arrived at the stop, but that pharmacy was right in front of him, and he had no time to think too much.

At this pharmacy that also sold imported medicine, Xu Jue indeed found the same ointment Song He used. As if by some sixth sense, the moment he finished buying it and came out, Chen Qian sent him a message: “You left your vocabulary notebook at my place.”

The wind was blowing even harder than when he came. Xu Jue gripped the ointment in his pocket and replied that he would come get it tomorrow.

On the way back, the sky began to drizzle. The wet road surface reflected the city’s colorful lights, and pedestrians on both sides of the street walked hurriedly.

Xu Jue had never liked rainy days. His little brother was born on a rainy day. Ever since then he had been forced to give way, forced to tolerate, and forced to understand behaviors he could never understand.

The vibrating phone forced Xu Jue to look away from the window. The incoming call was from an unfamiliar number. Xu Jue treated it as a spam call and hung up directly, but within half a minute the other party called again.

The road ahead was somewhat congested. The next stop was the motel, but the bus stopped and wouldn’t go forward anymore.

The phone vibrated so much his palm went numb. Xu Jue answered the call, and before he could speak, clamor came from the other end, with a young woman’s voice mixed in: “Is this Mr. Xu?”

The road ahead was temporarily impassable. The driver opened the door indicating they could get off here directly. Xu Jue shouldered his backpack, deciding to walk a few extra steps back to the motel, while responding to the person on the phone: “Yes.”

“I’m the front desk at Honglian Motel,” the other party spoke very fast, “can you return to the motel right now?”

The rain wasn’t getting heavier, but the slanting raindrops were bone chillingly cold. There was nowhere to shelter from the rain by the roadside, so Xu Jue walked quickly with his head down, paying attention to the slippery road surface. He only felt the noise up ahead getting louder and louder, making it hard to hear the voice on the phone clearly: “Almost there, what’s going on?”

“Please use the side entrance, the front entrance is blocked off, it’s not convenient to explain over the phone…”

Xu Jue had a bad premonition. He looked up and immediately saw the striking red and blue lights of police cars in the night not far away.

It was as if all the noise in Yunnan City was concentrated at the front entrance of Honglian Motel. Traffic was tangled up and down the road section, caution tape was strung all around, and groups of old and young sat collapsed on the ground sobbing uncontrollably. Several police officers were dividing up the work of handling the scene, while a pool of blood on the ground that hadn’t completely dried was even more shockingly red after being soaked by rain.

The death case discussed by the next table while eating turned out to be someone who had climbed to the roof of Honglian Motel and jumped off.

At the side entrance, guests checking out kept leaving with their luggage. Xu Jue went against the flow of the crowd pouring out, returning to his room to pack his things. He didn’t have much, a few pieces of underwear stuffed into his bag and he was done.

When leaving, passing by the wardrobe, Xu Jue paused for a moment. He convinced himself that the backpack already stuffed with clothes and textbooks had no space for extra items, yet his hand involuntarily opened the cabinet door, took down the lonely black thong hanging inside, crumpled it up in distress and stuffed it into his pants pocket.

He didn’t know when the rain had gotten heavier. Xu Jue pulled up his hoodie and took a shortcut, during which he also took a call from his mom: “Did you go to class today?”

“Yes.” Xu Jue pushed aside his rain soaked bangs, wondering whether to crash at Qiu Yuanfei’s place for the night or splurge on a budget hotel.

“You haven’t called home in so many days, even your little brother sensibly asked where big brother went,” Fu Han was full of reproach, “why is it so noisy on your end? Are you outside?”

Xu Jue couldn’t even be bothered to make up an excuse: “Yeah.”

“I told you your dad is unreliable!” Fu Han said, “All day long cooped up in his room drawing his lousy sketches, not even stopping his son from running around outside! And you, it’s raining out there what are you wandering around for, hurry home!”

“What he draws aren’t lousy sketches.” Xu Jue passed by a log furniture factory, where workers were working together to move large furniture pieces from outside inside, making heavy dull sounds as they dragged them, “Alright, it’s thundering here, not chatting anymore.”

Without waiting for Fu Han to respond, Xu Jue pressed hang up.

Yunnan City rarely rained in winter, to the point that when Xu Jue passed by a supermarket wanting to buy an umbrella, he found they had already been snapped up by travelers in urgent need. He could only continue walking aimlessly with his hoodie soaked through on one side.

Multiple frustrating things colliding all at once, the various honking of motor vehicles on the road assaulting his eardrums, his mom’s loud scolding echoing in his brain. Xu Jue belatedly realized, the bar he went to yesterday wasn’t noisy at all, at least everyone there was letting loose and venting.

What was noisy was his current state, a bellyful of frustration with nowhere to say it, looking around blankly with no solution, all piled up inside making him miserable.

He let his feelings guide his footsteps forward. Turning the corner was a budget hotel, he didn’t stop. Going the opposite direction to Qiu Yuanfei’s house was only a ten minute walk, he still didn’t look back.

The phone pressed against his palm vibrated once. The sound was very small, yet it tore a thin gap in Xu Jue’s tangled thoughts.

It wasn’t that no one understood him, sided with him.

When his hands were frozen stiff, Chen Qian bought him a hot coffee with milk.

The leftover wife cakes were no longer soft, but Chen Qian specially heated them up for him to take back to school.

Yesterday in front of the homeroom teacher, Chen Qian retorted that “there’s nothing wrong with Xu Jue’s character.”

When he was in a bad mood, Chen Qian was willing to listen to his side of right and wrong.

The rain showed no sign of stopping. Xu Jue took off his soggy hood, stopped under an eave to rest his feet, and pulled out his phone to check the message.

It was another message from Chen Qian: “Forgot to tell you, I have to go out tomorrow afternoon, you can come in the morning. If no one answers when you knock, just knock a few more times.”

The aimless walking seemed to have a determined destination. There was an inexplicable emotion tugging at his heart. Just like he didn’t know why he had been hotheadedly running to various pharmacies tonight just to buy a tube of ointment, Xu Jue also didn’t know why right now he only wanted to see Chen Qian.

But he just really wanted to see him, even if he got rained on a while longer.

The screen was about to dim. Xu Jue lit it up again and replied: “Are you asleep?”

Afraid Chen Qian would say he was going to sleep, Xu Jue added another line: “I’m coming over to get it now.”

After the message was sent, Xu Jue turned and dashed back into the rain.

Changnian Road was quiet as always, as if it were the first block in this enormous city to sink into sleep. Xu Jue caught his breath, took off his school uniform from over his hoodie, and carried his backpack up the steps.

The broken lightbulb on the third floor still hadn’t been fixed, remaining dark like this, forcing people to slow their pace, and so exhaustion followed immediately after all movements suddenly slowed down.

Xu Jue stopped outside door 504, water streaming down his face, not a single dry spot on his entire body. Normally if he showed up at his doorstep in this sorry state, he would definitely get scolded. If Ding Xuezhou’s dad was present, Fu Han would definitely also mutter under her breath “embarrassing.”

Right now he himself wasn’t clear whether this was embarrassing or not, but he was clear that his wildly pounding heart definitely wasn’t from fear of making a fool of himself, even though he had never tasted the flavor of making a fool of himself.

Xu Jue raised his hand and knocked on the door. It wasn’t morning now, so footsteps quickly sounded from inside. Xu Jue thought, do all people with thin ankles walk this lightly.

The door opened, and warm light from inside spilled out into the dim hallway. Chen Qian stood at the boundary between light and dark, still in that soft, thin silk robe. He stared blankly at the person outside, the hand holding the vocabulary notebook lifting and then lowering.

Up close, Xu Jue smelled the shower gel on Chen Qian. It wasn’t the oak mixed with morning dew that he had first etched into his olfactory memory, but a very pure and very ordinary light fragrance. He had smelled it at the supermarket when he was little, that kind of not expensive and large bottle shower gel that came with a free umbrella had this exact scent.

“Give it here.” Xu Jue leaned forward to pull away the vocabulary notebook in Chen Qian’s hand, but unexpectedly the other person suddenly shifted his body, hiding that hand behind his back.

Xu Jue was completely unprepared. Following inertia his leg naturally stepped forward, just crossing the threshold. The closeness of distance made him brush against Chen Qian, and he had never felt this fragrance could be so overwhelming.

Xu Jue still wasn’t clear whether his current state counted as making a fool of himself, whether his racing heartbeat was from shame at his own behavior.

Chen Qian had his retreat blocked by Xu Jue, his back pressed against the doorframe, looking up at the person half a head taller than him: “You’re so cold.”

Xu Jue didn’t speak, but the foot that had stepped inside showed no intention of retreating.

Chen Qian extended a finger and lifted aside the wet bangs blocking Xu Jue’s eyes, asking: “Want to come in?”

The sound of rain stretched on outside the building. The rain seemed to have soaked some part of his heart, and something there was quietly sprouting out. Xu Jue only felt a tingling numbness.

“Yes.” He answered.