Chapter 33 33. Your flight is not delayed
According to the location sent by Zhuang Yongyuan, Xie Kang picked him up next to the bus stop.
As Zhuang Yongyuan got in the car, Xie Kang glanced at him and asked, "Are you really going to deliver food?"
Zhuang Yongyuan unbuckled his seatbelt, opened the car window, and said, "The clothes I wore for delivery are still in the washing machine." He tugged at the sleeve of Xie Kang's plaid jacket and said, "You took the clothes I wanted to wear today."
Xie Kang smiled and said, "We have such a good understanding?"
"I bought it from a Japanese vintage shop. It's a one-of-a-kind piece. You can't afford to pay for it if it breaks."
"Next time, take me shopping too. Before, when I went to Japan, I only went to MUJI."
Xie Kang was speaking from the heart. Zhuang Yongyuan had good taste in clothes. Even if people they knew in Shanghai were not familiar with each other, they would still like to drag Zhuang Yongyuan out shopping. Most of the clothes Xie Kang wore in college were matched for him by Zhuang Yongyuan. After they broke up, he could only wear brands that were neither good nor bad and could never go wrong.
"Are you going on a family trip to Japan?" Zhuang Yongyuan asked, and Xie Kang nodded.
"No wonder, I have to take care of both the adults and the children, so I don't have time to play by myself."
"Shall we go together sometime?"
"Okay, Hokkaido or Okinawa?"
"Go to Okinawa in the summer and Hokkaido in the winter. You can stay longer, don't have to rush around checking in everywhere, sleep in naturally, and stay in the hotel if you don't want to go out. Book a hotel with a good view so you can see the snow or the sea without leaving the house."
Zhuang Yongyuan laughed and said, "You talk as if we are really going to go."
Xie Kang took another look at Zhuang Yongyuan while looking in the rearview mirror, then changed lanes and said, "Then I'll start looking up information and making plans now."
When they arrived at school, Xie Kang took Zhuang Yongyuan to the office first. No one was working overtime today, so they were the only two people in the entire chemistry department office. Their words seemed to echo.
Xie Kang stood next to the printer, holding his computer and operating it. Zhuang Yongyuan looked around curiously and said, "This office has been renovated."
He recalled wistfully, "In the past, the three of us would skip classes and be late for group practice, and we'd come here every few days to submit self-criticisms."
When Zhuang Yongyuan said "the three of us", Xie Kang's chest tightened and he looked towards the corridor as if he could hear Li Xiuyu's footsteps passing by.
The printer hummed softly, spewing out a stack of paper with the smell of burnt ink. Zhuang Yongyuan leaned over and asked Xie Kang, "What are you printing?"
Xie Kang's eyes flickered as he said, "Music score."
"What music?"
“It’s the music sheet.”
Xie Kang hid the music score behind him. Zhuang Yongyuan tried to grab it, but Xie Kang held on tightly and backed away. Zhuang Yongyuan forced him against the wall, leaving him with nowhere to retreat.
Zhuang Yongyuan leaned in close, a sinister look in his eyes. He stopped trying to snatch Xie Kang's sheet music. Instead, he placed his index finger on Xie Kang's temple, slowly tracing it down his cheek. Finally, he stopped at Xie Kang's chin, raised it, and lifted his face.
He licked the corner of his mouth and said, "If there were surveillance cameras in the office, would Teacher Xie be ruined?"
Xie Kang no longer had the panic he had just felt about hiding the sheet music. He said calmly, "The surveillance camera is right behind you. It was upgraded to ultra-high definition last month."
As he spoke, he rubbed the thin calluses on Zhuang Yongyuan's fingertips a few times. The doors and windows of the office were wide open. He pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, opened his mouth and bit Zhuang Yongyuan's lower lip, mumbling, "Do you think I'm scared?"
Xie Kang was so familiar with Zhuang Yongyuan that he intuitively sensed that Zhuang Yongyuan was a little flustered. Then he noticed that his breathing and heartbeat were faster than usual, and his eyes no longer had the calmness they had just had.
Xie Kang was even more pleased with his superiority. He placed one hand on Zhuang Yongyuan's back and unceremoniously reached into his clothes with the other. Zhuang Yongyuan shuddered, but didn't flinch. His tongue nimbly teased Xie Kang's mouth.
Xie Kang's desire to win was aroused, and his hands moved more wantonly, frequently touching the sensitive areas of Zhuang Yongyuan that he was familiar with. Zhuang Yongyuan couldn't stand it anymore, his legs softened, and he knelt on the ground. Xie Kang followed suit and knelt down, grabbing the raised tattoo on Zhuang Yongyuan's shoulder and neck in his palm, and stopped teasing him, kissing him seriously.
At this moment, Zhuang Yongyuan really wanted a heavy rainstorm to break out outside, with lightning, thunder, and strong winds. However, the weather did not go as he wished. The warm winter sun made every strand of Xie Kang's hair clearly visible.
He was kissed by Xie Kang unwillingly, forgetting many things he was thinking about all the time, forgetting what his mother said to him at noon, as if he was back on the plane leaving Pingnan with Xie Kang. At that time, Xie Kang was still like his savior.
The fatigue he usually ignored surged again, and Zhuang Yongyuan longed to give himself completely to Xie Kang, just as he had in the past. His nerves relaxed one by one, and just as he was about to collapse, he suddenly saw the plane.
Xie Kang said he was going back to Pingnan and couldn't attend to the band anymore. He didn't say he couldn't attend to Zhuang Yongyuan, but there was no need to. Zhuang Yongyuan logged into Xie Kang's booking app, found his flight number, and took a taxi to the airport to ask Xie Kang to stay. But then a car accident occurred on the overpass, with five cars collided in a row, leaving his taxi stranded.
Zhuang Yongyuan opened the car door and ran down the overpass. The airport was clearly before him, but no matter how fast he ran, he could never reach it. A plane took off from a low altitude very close to him, soaring into the sky and drifting farther and farther away, leaving behind two milky white contrails that slowly dispersed.
Zhuang Yongyuan stopped and saw that Xie Kang's flight took off on time without being delayed for even a minute.
He pushed Xie Kang away, stood up with the help of his desk, wiped his mouth with a piece of paper, and said, "That's enough."
Xie Kang, who was kissing passionately, looked surprised. He wiped his lips and wanted to ask Zhuang Yongyuan what was wrong, but he didn't ask.
He handed the stack of papers he had just hidden to Zhuang Yongyuan and said, "I copied the score of 'Ten Thousand Typhoons'. If you want to see it, go ahead."
Zhuang Yongyuan took a glass of water from the dispenser and drank it in big gulps. After washing away all the traces of Xie Kang left on his body, he took the sheet music and flipped through it. As he flipped through it, he said, "Do we still need others to give us the sheet music for rehearsal?"
"Didn't you also write music for me when we first started?"
"You are my student. You have been paid. The customer is God."
Zhuang Yongyuan's expression was serious as he read the music, as if the passion and lust of just a few minutes ago had never existed. He took a pencil from the nearby table and made a few corrections on the sheet music before returning it to Xie Kang and urging him to leave.
There was no proper band rehearsal room in No. 1 Middle School. The monitor walked around the school several times and finally decided on the equipment room next to the music classroom. After a simple tidy up, most of the room was empty, which was spacious enough for the band to rehearse. Although there was no soundproofing equipment, it was on the top floor and there was usually no one in the laboratory downstairs, so there was no need to worry too much.
When Zhuang Yongyuan and Xie Kang arrived, the four-member band that the class monitor had finally put together had already gathered in the music classroom for a long time. Everyone looked confused. The boy standing in front of the keyboard was trying various function keys in a daze. It was obvious that he was like Li Xiuyu, who was forced to be the keyboard player because he could play the piano.
When the monitor saw Xie Kang coming, he was as if he had been pardoned: "Teacher Xie, did you bring the music score?"
Xie Kang nodded, handed the sheet music of different instruments to the corresponding musicians, and casually asked, "Does your band have a name?"
The squad leader timidly touched his face and whispered, "Guava seeds."
Zhuang Yongyuan, who had just said he was going to the restroom to smoke, suddenly appeared from nowhere and stood behind the class monitor and said quietly, "Are you speaking so quietly because you're afraid the audience will know the name of your band?"
The monitor turned around and saw Zhuang Yongyuan. He was surprised and said excitedly, "Teacher Zhuang, why are you here?"
"I'm waiting for Teacher Xie's ride home." Zhuang Yongyuan shrugged and asked the class monitor, "Are you the lead singer? What's your name?"
"Teacher Zhuang, my name is Shen Xifu." Her voice dropped again, and she said, "Yes, I'm the lead singer. I know this song is difficult, I'll try my best to sing it well..."
Zhuang Yongyuan didn't answer her. Instead, he glared at Xie Kang and scolded him, "The lead singer is a girl. Don't you know the music has to be pitched up? How dare you give guidance without even thinking of that?"
Xie Kang was stunned. When he wrote songs before, he only considered himself and Zhuang Yongyuan and indeed overlooked this point.
Zhuang Yongyuan looked at him with dismay, took Shen Xifu's guitar, moved the capo a few times, plucked a few strings each time, found a tune he thought was suitable, tried to play an accompaniment, and ordered: "Sing the beginning."
Shen Xifu looked obviously a little nervous, and kept clearing her throat, and was reluctant to start singing. Xie Kang comforted her, "Just relax and sing a few sentences."
It was just that Xie Kang’s words didn’t seem to matter, Shen Xifu’s expression didn’t improve much, she glanced at Zhuang Yongyuan’s expressionless face, and began to sing the beginning, her voice tense.
Zhuang Yongyuan frowned, and Shen Xifu looked nervous, but fortunately he just muttered to himself: “Your singing voice is much lower than your speaking voice.”
After he finished speaking, he clipped the capo up again and asked Shen Xifu to sing. Xie Kang, who was watching from the side, felt that his ears were more poisonous than before, and he found the right tune for Shen Xifu in one go.
Zhuang Yongyuan changed the tune, and the score had to be changed again. He reached out to Xie Kang and said, "Pen."
Xie Kang handed him a pen and was not idle either, he went to modify the keyboard and bass scores. Zhuang Yongyuan saw him making the changes but didn't say anything. After he finished making the changes, he took it and checked it again. He didn't find any problems. Then he went to adjust the parameters of the keyboard. After all these operations, the whole afternoon was almost over, and the sky outside the glass window was almost dusk.
Zhuang Yongyuan exhaled and said, "It's almost done. You should familiarize yourself with the music."
Xie Kang followed him out, leaning on the armrest shoulder to shoulder. Zhuang Yongyuan didn't want to smoke in front of the students, so he reached into his pocket and then came out empty-handed. From his expression, you could tell he was having a hard time holding back.
Xie Kang asked, "Can you still tune musical instruments?"
Several people were chasing a ball on the basketball court. Zhuang Yongyuan watched them in a trance. After a while, he said, "Initially, we didn't have the money to hire a sound engineer, and the one at the venue wasn't very thorough."
"That's great. Even if you don't play in a band in the future, you can still be a tuner."
"I have so many skills that I can use to make a living."
Xie Kang touched his wrist and said, "Thank you for your hard work."
"Is it sensational?" Zhuang Yongyuan curled his lips.
"Your mother's side..."
Zhuang Yongyuan interrupted him: "Don't mention her to me."
They were silent for a moment. The sparse sounds of piano and drums drifted from the classroom behind them. The effect was predictably unsatisfactory. Zhuang Yongyuan listened for a moment, his expression unsettled.
"Except for the guitar, all the other instruments and speakers are rented from who knows how many times. They don't have the money to rent a mixer or effects pedals. You can't look at them with a professional eye."
"It wasn't like this when we practiced in the piano store before."
Talking about high school, Xie Kang couldn't help laughing and said, "Apart from a rich second-generation like Xu Zhen who has too much spare money to spend, who else would be willing to buy so much good equipment for a student band like us?"
"That's true. Sometimes we perform in lesser venues, and the equipment isn't as good as the one Xu Zhen brought." Zhuang Yongyuan also smiled, and as if remembering something, he asked Xie Kang, "Did you see Xu Zhen again in Pingnan?"
Xie Kang shook his head. "I've never met her, but I've heard about her marriage. Her husband is a good match, the descendant of some entrepreneur. The wedding was a grand affair, and the story spread all over Pingnan."
"When did it happen?"
“The year we graduated from college.”
"Oh, that was also the year you returned to Pingnan."
Zhuang Yongyuan turned around, leaned against the railing, and stopped talking.
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