Chapter 38
The bus stopped at the bus stop at the entrance of the residential area. Xie Qingyan got off the bus carrying a porridge box. The cool night breeze cleared his feverish head a little, but his heart was still pounding.
He walked to the shade of the trees where the streetlights couldn't reach, took out his phone, his fingertips slightly cold with tension. Sending this message might bring even worse consequences, but he had no other choice.
I brought you a bowl of porridge. Would you mind coming out for a moment?
send.
He stared intently at the screen, holding his breath, as if he could hear the sound of his own blood rushing to his head. Every second stretched on endlessly. He even began to regret what would have happened if Jiang Ci had ignored him, or worse, if his father had discovered him climbing through the window…
Buzz—
My phone vibrated.
Jiang Ci's reply popped up almost instantly, containing only three words, yet conveying an overwhelming urgency: 【Where are you?!】
Xie Qingyan's heart skipped a beat, and she quickly replied with the exact location of the bus stop.
Before long, a familiar figure appeared out of nowhere. The streetlight illuminated his slightly disheveled hair. He glanced down at his slippers, seemingly only then realizing that his ears, hidden in the shadows beyond the streetlight's reach, had quietly turned red.
Jiang Ci stopped in front of the bus stop, slightly out of breath. The moment his gaze fell on Xie Qingyan, he was drawn to him like a magnet, unable to look away. He looked even paler than during the day, but the emptiness in his eyes had disappeared, replaced by a complex light brimming with emotions.
The two looked at each other from a few steps apart, neither speaking first. A gentle evening breeze blew by, carrying the faint aroma of porridge wafting from the porridge box.
In the end, Xie Qingyan made the first move. He stepped forward and handed over the still-warm porridge box, his voice low and hoarse with apology: "The porridge... might be a little cold. Take it back and heat it up before you eat it."
This ordinary sentence, like a key, gently turned a switch.
The invisible ice wall that had separated the two collapsed with a crash.
Jiang Ci took the porridge box, but his eyes were fixed on Xie Qingyan, not wanting to miss any subtle expression on Xie Qingyan's face—that sincere apology, that lingering worry, and something soft beneath that made his heart tremble.
"You've come all this way," Jiang Ci said, his voice a little hoarse, "just to deliver porridge? Don't you have anything else to say?"
Xie Qingyan looked up at him, the streetlight light reflecting off his clear eyes. He finally spoke the words he had been holding back all day:
"sorry."
Jiang Ci's fingers tightened.
“I don’t think we should have ended up like this,” Xie Qingyan continued, her tone earnest as she carefully chose her words. “We agreed to work hard together. I’ll take care of your breakfast and dinner, and you’ll tutor me. Today… I had so many physics questions I wanted to ask you, but I didn’t dare to.”
He paused, looked into Jiang Ci's eyes, and finally uttered the words that had been swirling in his heart for so long:
"Jiang Ci, don't be angry, okay?"
boom--
Jiang Ci felt as if her heart had been soaked in warm water by those words, becoming utterly weak and aching. All her grievances, anger, and self-pity crumbled before that clumsy, ingratiating "Don't be angry anymore, okay?"
How could he possibly be angry with Xie Qingyan?
How could he bear to be angry with Xie Qingyan?
What angered him was always himself—the one who couldn't understand the other person's heart and had no right to stand firmly by their side.
“Idiot,” Jiang Ci turned her face away, quickly blinking away the heat rising in her eyes, but her voice softened involuntarily, “I’m not angry with you.”
The tense atmosphere finally eased. The two looked at each other and simultaneously smiled slightly.
Jiang Ci sat down on a bench by the platform, opened the porridge box, and began to eat it in small sips. The porridge was indeed cold, but the taste was just right, and a gentle warmth spread from his throat to his stomach and then to his limbs.
Xie Qingyan sat down next to him and waited quietly for him to finish eating before asking softly, "Did your father find out about what happened at school today?"
Jiang Ci paused almost imperceptibly while drinking the porridge, then hummed in a deliberately relaxed tone: "It's alright, don't worry."
How could Xie Qingyan not be worried? But he knew that pressing for answers would be pointless and would only embarrass Jiang Ci further. He changed the subject, as if sharing something ordinary: "By the way, Wen Heng came to the bookstore tonight. He invited me to see a star he recently discovered."
Jiang Ci raised his head.
"He said the observation conditions would be excellent tonight." Xie Qingyan gazed at the hazy night sky in the distance, a hint of longing in her voice. "Actually... I really want to go."
Jiang Ci's heart skipped a beat.
“However,” Xie Qingyan turned back to look at him, her gaze frank, “I refused because I thought you hadn’t had dinner yet.”
It's a very simple sentence, without any embellishment, yet it's more powerful than any explanation. Between "the starry sky I yearn for" and "you who need my care," I chose the latter.
Jiang Ci felt his chest swell with a surge of emotion, almost overflowing. He knew Xie Qingyan's special affection for the starry sky; it connected him to his past life's memories and a kind of spiritual anchor. He could refuse Wen Heng's invitation, yet he brought porridge to find him…
"Go if you want to see it." Jiang Ci closed the porridge box, stood up, and said decisively, "I'll go with you."
"Now?" Xie Qingyan asked in surprise.
“Now.” Jiang Ci had already taken out his phone, quickly found Wen Heng’s number and dialed it. He said succinctly, “Hey, Wen Heng, Xie Qingyan has changed his mind. We’re coming over now. Send me the address.”
Just as Jiang Ci hung up the phone, an empty taxi pulled up. He flagged it down and pulled the still somewhat dazed Xie Qingyan inside.
---
Eastern suburbs, Hemingshan observation point.
Far from the city lights, the night sky resembled a deep blue velvet sheet, studded with stars like scattered diamonds. Wen Heng's small telescope was set up on the flat open ground, next to an electronic eyepiece connected to a computer.
Seeing Jiang Ci and Xie Qingyan appear together, a hint of surprise flashed in Wen Heng's eyes behind his glasses, which quickly turned into gentle understanding. He didn't ask any questions, but simply smiled and greeted them, "You've come at the perfect time; the view is clearest now."
"This equipment was donated to the Astronomy Club by Tang Li's family. He used to say that stars are cleaner than people."
Jiang Ci's breathing suddenly stopped.
Xie Qingyan noticed something was wrong and looked at him. Jiang Ci, however, had already turned and walked into the depths of the night, his back stiff as a stone.
Wen Heng quickly said, "Qingyan, come and take a look. It's in that direction, near Beta Cygnus, that very faint point of light."
Xie Qingyan took a deep breath and, with an almost reverent feeling, leaned closer to the eyepiece.
For a moment, he forgot to breathe.
In his past life, he stood on the observatory of the Imperial Observatory, gazing up at the Milky Way through a rudimentary sighting tube and recording star trails. Stars are distant, mysterious celestial phenomena that govern human fortune and misfortune; they are hazy halos, symbols that require careful calculation.
And at this moment—
Clear.
It was incredibly clear.
The faint point of light, focused by the telescope, revealed a tangible, softly textured presence. It was no longer a dot in a celestial book, but a real, burning celestial body suspended in endless darkness. The familiar constellations around it were magnified, each star shining astonishingly bright, seemingly within reach.
An unprecedented shock gripped him.
"How far away is it... how far away is it from us?" Xie Qingyan heard his own dry voice.
“According to preliminary calculations, the comet itself is about…” Wen Heng stated an astronomical figure, “The starlight it reflects would need to travel more than X-ray years to reach Earth and be seen by us at this moment.”
More than X-ray years.
Xie Qingyan straightened up and looked up at the real, no longer blurry, starry sky. A tremendous sense of space and time overwhelmed him like a tide. These quiet, shimmering lights had actually traversed such a long and despairing distance of space and time to reach his eyes.
It's like...
A thought suddenly crashed into my mind, carrying a fatalistic tremor:
It was as if he had spent a very long time, traversing immeasurable distances of time and space, before finally reaching Jiang Ci's side and seeing the true light in his eyes.
"It's breathtaking, isn't it?" Wen Heng's voice pulled him back to reality. The boy leaned against the telescope, gazing up at the starry sky, his eyes sparkling with a pure thirst for knowledge. "Every time I look directly at them through the telescope, I feel that all of humanity's troubles, conflicts, loves, and hates are as insignificant as dust in the face of the scale and time of the universe."
Xie Qingyan was silent for a moment, then slowly spoke, his voice exceptionally clear in the still mountain breeze: "The ancients observed the stars to establish calendars, determine directions, and predict good and bad fortune, all for the sake of the land beneath their feet and their survival in this world. The starry sky they saw was order, destiny, and an unreachable divine realm." He paused, gazing at the deep night sky, "Modern people observe the stars to seek truth, question origins, and explore boundaries, all to transcend their current limitations and touch eternity. Different purposes, vastly different tools..."
He turned his head, his gaze inadvertently sweeping over Jiang Ci, who was quietly watching him beside him. A slight stirring ran through his heart, and he continued:
"But I think that when mankind first looked up at this starry sky thousands of years ago, the throbbing, awe and longing from the depths of their souls was perhaps the same throughout the ages."
Wen Heng nodded thoughtfully: "Well said. That impulse to understand oneself and connect with a wider existence is indeed the inextinguishable flame of human civilization."
Jiang Ci, who had been silent all along, suddenly spoke. He wasn't looking at the starry sky, but at Xie Qingyan's profile, which was faintly illuminated by the starlight. His voice was soft, yet clear enough to reach both of their ears:
“I used to think the starry sky was so far away, so far away, that it had nothing to do with my life.” He paused, as if carefully choosing his words, “Now I think that sometimes, what matters isn’t the starry sky itself, but rather…”
He didn't finish speaking, but his gaze briefly met Xie Qingyan's under the starlight. The unspoken meaning, like a warm breath in the night breeze, lingered between them, clearer than any explicit words.
—It's not about who you're looking at this starry sky with.
Wen Heng glanced at Jiang Ci, then at Xie Qingyan, and gave a genuinely pleasant and understanding smile. He didn't point it out, but simply turned his gaze back to the telescope: "Come on, this is a rare opportunity. Let me show you Jupiter's stripes and its moons..."
---
On the taxi ride home, the two of them were somewhat silent.
But this silence was no longer cold and awkward; instead, it was imbued with a sense of peace and weariness that came from sharing a precious experience. Xie Qingyan leaned against the car window, the flowing city lights outside intertwining with the pure darkness of the starry sky just moments before in her mind.
He suddenly recalled the words of a great Confucian scholar from his past life: "The friendship between gentlemen is as light as water." But the relationship between him and Jiang Ci was clearly not like water. This went beyond all the definitions of "friendship" he had ever learned.
My phone vibrated.
It was a message from Jiang Ci:
The porridge was delicious. Thank you.
A few seconds later, another message appeared:
Feel free to ask me anytime about tomorrow's physics problems.
Xie Qingyan looked at the screen, a slight smile playing on his lips. He replied:
Okay. What would you like to eat for breakfast?
Anything you bring is fine.
It's a deal then.
His smiling face was vaguely reflected in the car window, along with the boy next to him who was also looking down at his phone, his profile appearing unusually soft in the light and shadow.
The stars continue to silently orbit billions of light-years away.
And something has quietly changed and taken root among them.
The taxi drove into the heart of the city, where lights were dim, taking them back to the real world, a world full of challenges. But the vastness they witnessed together tonight, and the unspoken yet tacit agreement, were like quietly accumulating starlight, enough to illuminate many days to come as they walked side by side.
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