Chapter Text
The rain is crazy on the first day of school. The campus is filled with all types of umbrellas and it’s hard to distinguish between people talking and the sound of rain.
Xiao Zhan doesn’t know who stabbed his face with an umbrella. He shoves it aside in annoyance and climbs up more than 20 flights of stairs with his suitcase.
His dorm room is at the very top. Going back to sleep is like climbing a mountain.
The weather has been hot for months, but it just has to rain on the first day of school. The vulgar words scrawled onto the rooming list on the public announcement board with markers are all washed away by the rain too.
Xiao Zhan’s back is wet; he’s never been able to take the heat. The dorm room before him is still closed. As soon as he pushes it open, the mugginess pours out. He’s lived here for two years and thought that he could finally be free this year, but god just loves to make his life miserable.
Before he can enter with his suitcase, someone taps his back.
“Your umbrella.”
He turns. The person pushes his black umbrella before him. Water drips down along the handle. The hand holding the umbrella is offensively pale, but the fingertips are pink.
Xiao Zhan accepts the umbrella. Before he can say thanks, the person who gave him the umbrella goes around him and enters the room. He just watches the boy grab a towel to dry his hair, kick off his shoes, and climb up to his bed.
That’s the top of Xiao Zhan’s bunk bed, as well as his upper bunk for the previous two years. It’s the only place in the entire dorm room that can catch some sunlight.
Xiao Zhan spills his stuff on the bed and looks up. The person on the upper bunk has his back to him. It’s hard to tell if he’s sleeping. Him organizing his stuff is the only noise in the room. Even the boy’s breathing is covered.
A while later, someone else comes into the room, carrying pink blankets just bought from the school shop. When he sees Xiao Zhan, he laughs dumbly and tosses the blankets onto the upper bunk beside him, next to the sleeping boy.
Like him, there are thousands of others with the same name—Wang Shuangxi. With an accent, he tells Xiao Zhan to call him Xizi.
Xizi climbs to the top and softly calls to the sleeping person. Xiao Zhan is making his bed with his head lowered, but he hears Xizi call him Wang Yibo.
“Let’s go. They’re done unpacking,” Xizi is saying.
Wang Yibo sits up in bed without responding to Xizi. He has an unfriendly expression, furrowing his brow and staring blankly. Xiao Zhan raises his head and they face each other. Neither says anything; they just stare like that. The strange staring contest doesn’t end until Xizi jumps off his bed and calls for Wang Yibo to hurry up.
Xiao Zhan is the only one left in the room again. He stands at the window, looking at the rain outside. There’s a road behind the old dorm building. The dark red patch on the lock of the metal gates is either rust or bloodstains—it’s been around for so long, but it just won’t wash away.
This school is famous in the city for being good and also for being messy. The advanced class has a 100% graduation rate while it’s normal for only four or five students in the regular classes to go on to a 2nd-tier university. There’s a technical college across from them. The gangsters there and the gangsters here squat and drink together one day, and beat each other up the next. Despite all this, countless parents do everything they can and dig out tens of thousands of bribe money to have their kids attend this school. If they try a bit harder and get their kid into the advanced class, then everything is set for them in life.
There are a lot of parents yelling outside the principal’s office today. Instead of yelling to get their kid in, they’re protesting to get people out.
The old campus in the county was merged with their school. That old school has been around for decades and was next to a chicken farm in the county. A little more than ten years ago, they built a new campus in the city and transferred most of the teachers over. The new campus gradually improved while the old campus gradually got worse. A few years ago, they were licensed to construct some new buildings, so this year, the students at the old campus were brought over—only 2-300 students. They’re tossed into the old three-floored teaching building, right next to the elite class that Xiao Zhan just tested into.
Many parents aren’t happy about them coming. Put bluntly, they’re just biased against those from the county, scared that they’ll be a bad influence for their kids.
Leaning against the railing, Xiao Zhan looks down on the group of jostling parents, wondering if he should go and make a scene too.
The school took the students from both campus and reassigned dorms. One portion would go to the new dorm—six-person-rooms with a balcony and bathroom. The rest would be in the shitty building he’s lived in for two years. The wall covering keeps falling; it was redone during construction over the summer, but the patches make it look like a haunted house.
Since he tested into the elite class, which only the top 30 students of the entire school are qualified for, he thought he’d obviously get assigned to the good dorm. But the school’s rare fairness just had to be used on his dorm arrangements.
Dashu saunters over with a group of people, calling him to go eat together. The teacher standing at the classroom door glares at him and Xiao Zhan, knowing what’s good for him, leaves quickly.
This group has hung out together from elementary to high school. In elementary school, they tugged on girls’ ponytails; in middle school, they pulled on girls’ hands. When high schooler Xiao Zhan saw his girlfriend get harassed, he brought this group of guys to press that asshole against the gate behind their dorm building and smashed his head in. Then his gentle and cute girlfriend actually found him too violent and dumped him.
Xiao Zhan was frustrated for a few days, reflecting on himself whether he really is too violent. Maybe a little. He feels like he’s not willing to fix things that can be resolved with fists. It’s useless.
“Would you believe me if I say this year’ll be messier?” Dashu asks him.
Xiao Zhan hums a response. From afar, he sees Xizi and Wang Yibo standing in the square before the building, and the few people around them. They look like they smell of river water and dirt.
Xiao Zhan sniffs. It’s like he can already smell the fishy odor.
It’s the first day of school and they stay for evening study hall. It’s not raining anymore when they get out of class. Xiao Zhan and Dashu head towards the new dorm building together. Sitting on Dashu’s bed, Xiao Zhan thinks of his bed where he’s already to the wall if he turns around and creaks if he just sits onto it, and he’s so annoyed.
When the homeroom teacher comes to check attendance at night, he tells Xiao Zhan to bear it for now. He’ll be transferred over as soon as someone moves out of the dorm. It happens every year. He won’t have to wait for long.
Xiao Zhan thanks the teacher.
He stays there until lights out. When he leaves and passes by the girls’ dorm building, he sees Wang Yibo and Xizi. There’s also a girl who’s not quite tall. She has a ponytail and, like Wang Yibo, her hair is so black that it’s obvious it’s freshly dyed. She sticks close to Wang Yibo and stands across from Xizi. She’s probably Wang Yibo’s girlfriend.
Pretty bad taste.
When he passes by, the girl suddenly looks up at her. Her eyes are slanted up like triangles. Xiao Zhan looks away, shuddering.
Xizi and Wang Yibo finally come back long after lights out. Someone in the room has already started snoring. Xiao Zhan can’t fall asleep, but the school doesn’t let them have phones, so he can only stare at the flaky wooden boards of his upper bunk.
Wang Yibo creeps in and bends down to get his basin from under the bed. Xiao Zhan sees Wang Yibo’s blurry silhouette in the darkness. Uncomfortable from lying there, he flips around. He hears the basin hit the edge of the bed and suddenly-rapid breathing. A short while later, it fades with the footsteps.
Xiao Zhan laughs inwardly. That guy seems like a scaredy-cat.
Xizi and Wang Yibo are the only two roommates from the county. They’re rarely here when the lights are still on. Sometimes, Xiao Zhan can only hear the sounds of them washing up when the room has quieted down.
Wang Yibo’s movements are always soft, but Xizi is insensitive and always wakes up the people sleeping. Only the fatty in the dorm has a bad temper. Once, he raised his head and started yelling at Xizi; Xizi threw his basin onto the ground to fight back. Wang Yibo bent over, picked up the basin and shoved it into Xizi’s arms, telling him to shut up.
Xiao Zhan just lay in bed and watched. Xizi muttered something while following Wang Yibo out, but he couldn’t understand what was said. They didn’t come back until the fatty was snoring thunderously.
In his sleep, he smells smoke. When he opens his eyes, he sees the silhouette that’s already familiar now. The shadow lifts his legs up high and climbs up the stairs without stepping onto Xiao Zhan’s bed. The rustles quiet down quickly.
That entire week, Xiao Zhan rarely sees Wang Yibo’s face, save for that shadow.
Since they’re in their last year of high school, they have class six days per week. School only lets out after the second afternoon class on Saturdays. Xiao Zhan and his group stand outside the school gates, talking about whatever. There are both girls and guys; it’s just like a necessary activity after the school week ends.
“Someone’s looking at you again,” a girl tells him.
There are a lot of people who like to look at Xiao Zhan. He’s attractive.
Turning around, he sees Wang Yibo immediately, leaning against the thick trunk of the camphor tree by the school gates. He’s laughing with Xizi and the others. The one looking at Xiao Zhan is the girl pressed against Wang Yibo again.
Xiao Zhan is annoyed. That girl’s stare makes him uncomfortable. It seems that he has to have a chat with Wang Yibo next week and have him control his girlfriend’s eyes.
When they finally decide what to do tonight, a white car comes before the tree. It’s like the type of van that transports pork to the supermarket. The group gets into the car, filling it up, probably going past its capacity.
Wang Yibo sits in shotgun. The driver, covered in a hat and mask, pulls Wang Yibo’s ear and messes up his hair. When the car drives past Xiao Zhan, he sees that girl’s face in the open window again. He can’t help but make a face and turn around.
He doesn’t go home until after dinner, but his parents are used to this. Xiao Zhan has given them enough trouble before.
“Your school has a lot of students this year,” his dad says while sitting on the sofa and changing the TV channel. “Stay calm about everything and just study well in the classroom. Don’t run around.”
Xiao Zhan nods. He slings his backpack and heads toward his room, but behind him, his dad reminds him to ask a teacher to reassign his dorm.
“I asked already. You don’t have to worry.”
Xiao Zhan closes his bedroom door and pulls his phone out of the drawer to charge it.
His dad brought this phone back from abroad. It’s really expensive, but he doesn’t have that high of a standard for phones. He just uses it to listen to music, chat, and take some pictures. He likes the pictures taken by this phone.
Logging into QQ, he sees a lot of new friend requests—those from his class, his dorm, and a bunch that he doesn’t know. Swiping around, he joins the dorm’s group chat. Almost everyone in the group has added him, including Xizi. But not Wang Yibo.
Wang Yibo’s profile picture is gray and they spam hundreds of messages in the group, but he hasn’t said a single thing. Xizi says he’s gaming right now and is slamming his mouse because he lost.
A while later, Xiao Zhan’s phone buzzes again. It’s a new friend request. He expects it to be Wang Yibo, but when he opens to see an extremely cringey profile picture. It’s a girl with blonde hair in pigtails, making a duck face. The smokey eyeshadow makes her eyes look even smaller.
He presses “reject” immediately.
Xiao Zhan lay on the bed and closes his eyes. It started raining outside again and the pitter-patter keeps him awake. That girl’s stare appears in his mind again. The room is damp and he can smell it as if moss is crawling over his walls.
This is how old houses are and they’re next to the river too. The wind blows in the fishy odor. He sits up to dry heave.
He has no clue why his parents aren’t willing to move into the new house, insisting on guarding this old building instead. His mom says that it’s closer to his school, but he lives at school, so what’s the point? But his mom always talks emotionally about how she and his father moved from a bad neighborhood to this school neighborhood, how their two broke asses paid off the housing loan and bought a nice little house. Xiao Zhan is so sick of hearing that. Staying close to school for him is just an excuse. They just can’t bear to leave this place.
A place that’s worth recalling with nostalgia… He still doesn’t know where that is.
Xiao Zhan turns on his phone and finds Wang Yibo’s QQ in the group chat. He sends a friend request because they have to talk about Wang Yibo’s girlfriend.
The friend request doesn’t get accepted, so Xiao Zhan tosses the phone aside and falls asleep. When he wakes up, it’s past 10 and Wang Yibo accepted his request. But there’s only an automated message: I am [a string of symbols that he can’t understand]. Xiao Zhan doesn’t say anything. The nauseous feeling is gone after a good night’s sleep, so he can just leave it for later.