Chapter 49 49. Where does the path end up?

"What do you mean?" Zhuang Yongyuan asked Du Jiahao, holding up his dizzy head, "What are you jealous of?"

Du Jiahao didn't answer him directly, but asked, "Is there really nothing going on between you and Li Xiuyu? It's not like he doesn't like your style."

Xie Kang's eyes widened and his ears pricked up. Zhuang Yongyuan glanced at Xie Kang out of the corner of his eye and waved his hand in denial, "Really not. He said he would only look for someone he could afford to play with, and I'm the type of person who can't afford to play with me."

Du Jiahao laughed: "Can I afford to play with it?"

He wiped his nose and drank. "When there were other people around, he pretended not to know me. Then he came to tease me again when he remembered. Damn, Lin Bei is his dog?"

Zhuang Yongyuan blinked his heavy eyelids and tried hard to recall the relationship between Du Jiahao and Li Xiuyu. After careful investigation, he found that they were not like ordinary couples. When he was behaving intimately with Du Jiahao, he encountered Li Xiuyu dating other people many times.

If this happened when he was in middle school, he would be a little surprised, but after living in another place for so long and hanging out in the band circle, he was no longer surprised by this kind of informal and non-one-on-one relationship.

However, he thought that this was a matter of mutual consent between Du Jiahao and Li Xiuyu, but hearing Du Jiahao's unwilling and annoyed tone, it was not the case.

At midnight, when the store was closing, a waiter came in to ask Du Jiahao something. Du Jiahao, with a flushed face, whispered a few words and waved his hand to let the waiter go out.

There was a commotion outside at first, with figures coming and going outside the glass partition, clearing tables, mopping floors, and talking. Soon it became quiet again, completely quiet, and even the rumbling sound of trucks passing by on the road outside could be heard clearly.

Du Jiahao folded the bamboo sticks on the table one by one, his voice rising and falling. "He must feel ashamed to be with me. Damn, he doesn't even have a legitimate date. It's all after dark, where we don't meet anyone he knows."

"Lin Bei, am I still no match for those in school uniforms?"

He slapped his face and asked Xu Zhen indignantly, "Does my appearance embarrass him?"

Xu Zhen was smoking to refresh himself. He carefully examined Du Jiahao's face, looking back and forth, and concluded, "Not shameful, quite impressive."

Zhuang Yongyuan and Xie Kang looked at each other. They both remembered clearly the scene when they first met Du Jiahao.

Zhuang Yongyuan said: "It's not embarrassing, just a little scary."

He haphazardly calculated the dates of Du Jiahao and Li Xiuyu's relationship, figuring out that even after Li Xiuyu started dating Du Jiahao, she'd repeatedly brought boys to Huisheng Music Shop. Zhuang Yongyuan briefly thought Li Xiuyu had nearly met all the gay men in Pingnan.

He took a sip of wine and looked around, wondering if Li Xiuyu's ghost was eavesdropping. He lowered his voice and said to Du Jiahao, "Although it's not nice to speak ill of the dead, I think Li Xiuyu's ideas in this regard are... well, too advanced. Sometimes he doesn't respect people."

Du Jiahao didn't say anything, staring at his own reflection in the glass.

Zhuang Yongyuan recalled tactfully asking Li Xiuyu why she kept dating new people. Before breaking up with Xie Kang, Zhuang Yongyuan believed that a relationship should be a long-term, lasting relationship with one person.

When you fall in love with someone, how can you want to separate from them?

Li Xiuyu, uncharacteristically, didn't laugh at Zhuang Yongyuan's immaturity; instead, his expression was unusually complex. Sitting in the shadows, he said slowly, "Don't you find it scary to be alone?"

Zhuang Yongyuan shook his head. He could do a lot of things on his own: practice piano, hide in his closet listening to music, or just sit there and do nothing. He had his own little world, and the thought of someone intruding was terrifying.

"I don't like that." Li Xiuyu looked at Zhuang Yongyuan steadily, and the expression on his face made Zhuang Yongyuan a little scared.

"And I want to hurry," he continued.

Zhuang Yongyuan laughed at him: "You talk like we're very old. We're only in high school."

"I..." Zhuang Yongyuan saw this much confusion on Li Xiuyu's face for the first time. "How do I know if I can survive this day?"

Zhuang Yongyuan pushed him and said, "You're exaggerating. This is a peaceful time. Unless you're being unreasonable or running a red light, it's not that dangerous."

Li Xiuyu also laughed and said, "I was just joking, did you take it seriously?"

"That's scary!" Zhuang Yongyuan picked up the capo on the table and threw it at him. Xu Zhen had just returned from tutoring and glared at Zhuang Yongyuan: "What are you doing? You're being so aggressive! Can you afford to pay for what you broke?"

Li Xiuyu said, "At worst, I can ask my uncle for a red envelope. Your father has so much money he doesn't know what to do with it, so I'm here to help. I heard from my father that my uncle is busy building a commercial city recently. What's it called, Xinding City?"

"I am me, and my father is my father." Xu Zhen said seriously.

They exchanged some nonsense and then started playing with the new pedals Xu Zhen had bought. No one brought up the topic that Zhuang Yongyuan and Li Xiuyu had originally discussed.

Du Jiahao, who had been quiet for a long time and seemed to have fallen asleep, suddenly slammed his wine glass on the table and said, "It's all my fault."

"What do you blame me for?" Xie Kang asked puzzledly.

Du Jiahao muttered, "It's my fault that I couldn't afford to play. I killed him."

"What do you mean? Explain it clearly." Xu Zhen sat up.

Du Jiahao stared at her and said, "Don't you know why Li Xiuyu was sent to a martial arts school by his parents?"

"Isn't it because he didn't do well in the college entrance examination?" Xu Zhen frowned.

During the summer after the Gaokao, just before the start of school, Li Xiuyu was forcibly sent by his parents to a martial arts school in the neighboring suburbs that catered to troubled youths. The previous night, Li Xiuyu had been rehearsing with everyone at the piano store, but the next day, he was nowhere to be found by noon. Worried about him, Xu Zhen called his parents to ask if Li Xiuyu was ill.

Li Xiuyu's father simply said lightly that Li Xiuyu was fine, but was just becoming more and more rebellious as he grew up, so he sent him to a martial arts school run by a comrade-in-arms to ask the instructors to control his temper.

A month before Li Xiuyu was born, his parents planned out his first thirty years, anticipating a happy family photo with him thirty years later, a promising young man with two children, a graduate of a top university, and an immigrant. The temperature of Li Xiuyu's formula was always checked with a thermometer; the temperature difference could not exceed 0.3 degrees Celsius.

After more than ten years of careful cultivation, Li Xiuyu's father even prepared a draft of his parenting theory for publication. He had previously published "Harvard Girl Liu Yiting", and he also wanted to publish "Cambridge Boy Li Xiuyu". As a result, Li Xiuyu could only barely go to a second-rate university in his eyes, which he could not accept. This was within Xu Zhen's expectations, but she could not imagine that Li Xiuyu's father would actually force him to send him to the notorious martial arts school.

Judging from Li Xiuyu's condition the night before, he definitely didn't know about this before.

Just as Xu Zhen was about to persuade her, Li Xiuyu's father hinted to her in a sarcastic tone that if he had not allowed Li Xiuyu to go to Xu Zhen's music store, Li Xiuyu would never be like this now and learn bad things from others.

Du Jiahao interrupted her recollection and repeated: "It was me who killed Li Xiuyu."

Zhuang Yongyuan leaned closer to him, half sober, and said, "Speak clearly."

"I can't play anymore. I told him not to come to me."

"When did it happen?"

"Before he went to Beijing to study for the competition." Du Jiahao glanced out the dark window, "I didn't expect that he couldn't afford it even more than me."

"I don't understand him. I used to be nice to him, pestering him, and agreeing to all his outrageous requests. But he just ignored me. When he was in the mood, he'd look for me, but when he was annoyed, he wouldn't see me much except for band rehearsals..." Du Jiahao paused, "When I stopped seeing him, he became affectionate again, sending me a hundred text messages a day. I blocked him and changed his number, but he kept texting."

When he said this, a smile appeared on his face: "I couldn't stand him pestering me anymore, so I made a bet with him."

Xie Kang asked, "What's the bet?"

"I bet he could do what I asked for. If he lost, he was forbidden from pestering me anymore. Damn, we were like crazy back then."

Xie Kang suddenly realized: "Li Xiuyu sneaked back from Beijing that time, was it because of you?"

"I didn't expect him to become like that. He could do whatever I asked of him. He said he didn't want to lose and he had never lost in his life..." Du Jiahao lowered his eyes and thought of the phone call from Li Xiuyu when he called back from Beijing. His voice sounded a little tired, but he still forced himself to say that no matter what unreasonable request Du Jiahao made, he could do it and he would not lose.

Du Jiahao asked him back: "I didn't say how long I would gamble."

"Then let's gamble for the rest of our lives." Li Xiuyu replied immediately.

Du Jiahao laughed at him: "How many people have you told this to in your life? You are so skilled."

"First time." He breathed heavily. "I bought a midnight flight ticket. I'll go to Xiamen first. It'll take two hours to get back to Pingnan by taxi. We'll meet at the piano store then."

"Are you sick? You're competing instead of studying, and you want to go back to Pingnan?"

Li Xiuyu said, "Didn't you want to bet with me? You said I couldn't give up the competition for you."

Du Jiahao hesitated for a moment, about to say, "I'm talking nonsense! You should refund the ticket immediately," when he heard Li Xiuyu say, "Good night, I'm going to pack my things," and then hung up. Cell phones were prohibited at the competition base. Li Xiuyu called from a public phone, and Du Jiahao called back, only to find a stranger answered.

Du Jiahao suddenly realized that he remembered every bet he made with Li Xiuyu, the specific sentences, Li Xiuyu's voice, his smug expression after winning the bet, and the way he pretended to be pitiful and asked for a reward from him.

But the sounds and images are becoming increasingly unclear. He hasn't read much, and unlike Zhuang Yongyuan and Xie Kang, they can't write lyrics in a literary style. Wouldn't it be better if he could sing them?

He just felt that his head was like his grandfather's TV with poor signal when he was a child, and the TV screen was always covered with a layer of crackling snowflakes.

He was gradually forgetting Li Xiuyu, but Li Xiuyu was dead. He could only live in his own head, and the space left for Li Xiuyu in his head was getting smaller and smaller. He couldn't write or sing, so he could only let Li Xiuyu disappear.

Du Jiahao took a deep breath and confessed to everyone, "The last bet I made with him was whether he dared to admit to his parents that he was gay and was involved with a hoodlum who hadn't even finished junior high school."

"Li Xiuyu sent me a message in the middle of the night the day before he was sent to the martial arts school. The message contained only three words: 'I won.'

After Du Jiahao finished saying these last words, he seemed to have no strength left in him. He slumped down in his chair and said, "You can scold me if you want."