Chapter 38 38. Read carefully
They were lost for a moment, and inexplicably separated in the rain. Zhuang Yongyuan followed his usual route to the classroom, listening to the patter of rain as he slowly climbed the stairs.
When he reached the first floor, he saw Xie Kang already standing at the door of his classroom, his back leaning against the railing, leaning against the entire school in the night.
Xie Kang snapped his fingers excitedly and said to Zhuang Yongyuan, "I knew you would come here!"
Zhuang Yongyuan smiled and walked towards Xie Kang. He saw Li Xiuyu's figure floating like a ghost in the corridor of the teaching building opposite.
Xie Kang also turned around and saw Li Xiuyu, and said proudly: "They don't have the tacit understanding that we do."
Zhuang Yongyuan remained silent, watching for a moment longer. He saw Du Jiahao, looking around, pass by the spot where Li Xiuyu had just passed. He couldn't help but wonder, "Are they going to make another bet?"
"Who cares?"
Xie Kang said this and tried to push the classroom window. The student on duty actually forgot to lock the window, so Xie Kang and Zhuang Yongyuan climbed into the classroom through the window.
Xie Kang found Zhuang Yongyuan's seat and sat down. Zhuang Yongyuan walked up to the podium with his hands behind his back, picked up the pointer and tapped it hard, saying in a pretentious tone, "I've noticed that some students in our class are in premature love lately."
Xie Kang folded his hands neatly on the table and said in panic, "How could this happen, Teacher?"
Zhuang Yongyuan snorted and said, "What's even more perverted is that two boys are in premature love. Some of the students must have been brainwashed by foreign movies and foreign music."
Xie Kang pulled out Zhuang Yongyuan's exercise book and flipped through it. He said, "Teacher, compared to this, I think it's more serious that some students don't do their homework."
Zhuang Yongyuan glared at him first, then changed his role and said tremblingly, "Xie Kang, what if we are discovered?"
After he finished speaking, he suddenly disappeared behind the podium as if timidly.
Xie Kang put down his exercise book, stepped heavily on purpose, and said quietly, "You can't avoid it."
He picked up his pointer and poked a few times at the space under the podium. Hearing Zhuang Yongyuan's uncontrollable laughter, he squatted down and gently hit Zhuang Yongyuan's face with his pointer a few times, saying in a deep voice, "So the bad student is hiding here."
As soon as he finished speaking, Zhuang Yongyuan pulled him under the podium. The steaming rain, carrying the scent of both of them, blended together. In the darkness, only the other's eyes shone.
This is my lead singer, Xie Kang thought.
This is my guitarist, Zhuang Yongyuan thought.
A moist, sticky kiss of seventeen, a kiss that will never return, where the soul of the seventeen-year-old is sucked out and melted into the surrounding heat.
They were like a song on the radio, floating over the school at midnight.
Ten years later, will there still be someone who hears this song and looks up to search for it in the void?
When the bright light hit his face, Zhuang Yongyuan felt a pang of pain in his eyes, and he subconsciously buried his head in his knees. Only when he heard Li Xiuyu and Du Jiahao's wicked laughter did he raise his head again in humiliation and anger.
Du Jiahao took a flashlight and shone it on them, saying, "Some of the students are doing bad things."
Xie Kang walked out and smelled the strong scent of lust on them. He sneered and said, "How good are you?"
He patted his head and said, "Are you all thirsty? Come on, I'll take you to get some drinks."
Led by Xie Kang, the four of them ran through the pouring rain. Xie Kang deftly found the door to the teachers' office and opened it.
At the entrance was a refrigerator that was making a buzzing sound. Xie Kang opened the refrigerator door, and the four of them gathered in front of the refrigerator, immersed in the bright light of the refrigerator, and looked inside curiously.
Du Jiahao took out a bag of ribs that were still dripping with blood with disdain and said, "How can there be such a thing?"
Xie Kang poked at a yellowed leaf that had leaked out of the plastic bag and said, "Please be kind and help the teacher put it in the freezer."
Xie Kang often went in and out of the classroom and office, and knew that the school had started distributing summer benefits, such as boxes of drinks.
There were indeed a lot of drinks on the side of the refrigerator, including Coke, Sprite, Wanglaoji, chrysanthemum tea, and grass jelly honey.
"Just get whatever you want to drink." He said generously. He took out a bottle of Coke, unscrewed it while sitting on the desk, tilted his head back and took a big sip. Then he remembered to take out some tissue to wipe the foam that had flowed onto his hands.
Zhuang Yongyuan also drank Coke, Li Xiuyu took mineral water, Du Jiahao pouted and said it felt unhygienic, so he didn't take anything and closed the refrigerator.
Du Jiahao stretched and said, "There's nothing fun to do in your school."
Everyone drank their drinks quietly, no one paid any attention to him. Li Xiuyu handed the half-drunk bottle of mineral water to Du Jiahao and said, "I've disinfected it for you."
Before Du Jiahao could react, Xie Kang's eyes widened, and he looked at Li Xiuyu in disbelief, saying, "Fuck, why are you so cheesy now?"
"How good do you think you are?" Li Xiuyu said angrily, not even sparing Zhuang Yongyuan: "And you, stop laughing. I don't even want to talk about your disappointing behavior before."
Du Jiahao took Li Xiuyu's water and drank it while saying, "If our band becomes famous in the future, I'm going to go online and expose how Xiaozhuang was crazy about love in high school."
After they finished drinking the water, Li Xiuyu took out cigarettes from his pocket and distributed them to everyone one by one. When it came to Zhuang Yongyuan, Zhuang Yongyuan waved his hand to refuse. Li Xiuyu did not insist and put the cigarette box back in his pocket.
"I hate the smell of cigarettes," he said. Cigarettes and alcohol were synonymous with Zhuang Fu.
But he really liked watching people smoking in front of him. The humid smoke smelled a bit pungent. The smoke floated between several people, and his whole body floated up with it.
As the music drifted by, Zhuang Yongyuan heard Li Xiuyu say, "I remember there were guitars in school, too."
"Where?" Xie Kang exhaled a puff of smoke awkwardly and almost choked.
"I'll take you there."
The rain outside had stopped, leaving only the wind, which carried the fishy smell of rain. They went to the top floor of the science building, the utility room next to the music classroom, and filed in.
Under the illumination of the flashlight, Zhuang Yongyuan first saw a dusty piano in the corner of the utility room, and then saw the guitar casually placed on the ground.
Li Xiuyu opened the piano lid and deftly pressed a series of notes across the keys. The piano hadn't been tuned in a long time, so the notes were either out of tune or completely silent, but Zhuang Yongyuan could still barely make out that he was playing the prelude to "City."
He exchanged a glance with Li Xiuyu and said, "Again?"
Li Xiuyu nodded: "Let's do it again."
Xie Kang had already picked up his dirty guitar and was counting down: "Three, two, one."
At the same time, Du Jiahao also placed water bottles on the ground, as well as gongs and drums left over from some folk music performance, and took out the drumsticks that he had carried with him for some reason.
As soon as Xie Kang's countdown ended, they pieced together the prelude to "City" on an old piano, a guitar with a broken string and a mineral water bottle.
But halfway through the song, lead singer Zhuang Yongyuan became unhappy.
With a rare hint of uninhibitedness in his eyes, he looked towards the playground and said, "What's the point of performing for myself here?"
Du Jiahao stopped playing the drums and asked Zhuang Yongyuan, "Where do you want to go?"
Zhuang Yongyuan said excitedly, "Let's go to the broadcasting room."
When Xie Kang heard this, he sat up straight and said nervously, "Isn't it bad?"
Du Jiahao taunted, "Are you scared?"
Li Xiuyu also had a teasing smile on his face. Xie Kang felt uncomfortable seeing this and said with a raised face, "Who is afraid of school? Zhuang Yongyuan, let's go."
After he finished speaking, he grabbed the guitar neck and walked out. Zhuang Yongyuan followed. Du Jiahao found a bag to put the scattered water bottles, gongs and drums on the ground into and took them away. Only Li Xiuyu stood in front of the piano, saying dejectedly, "I can't take this with me."
Du Jiahao shrugged and said, "There's nothing I can do.
Li Xiuyu pressed a few piano keys reluctantly. The out-of-tune and out-of-tune notes sounded a little creepy in the darkness, as if they did not belong to this world.
"I..." He looked at Du Jiahao, hesitant to speak.
Du Jiahao's face was hidden in the darkness. He couldn't see Du Jiahao's expression. He only heard Du Jiahao say, "You're not scared too, are you?"
But Du Jiahao's voice sounded like the old piano in front of him, trembling unnaturally.
"I'm not afraid." Li Xiuyu shook his head and said, "Whatever you want to play, I'll accompany you to the end."
When they arrived, Xie Kang and Zhuang Yongyuan had already sat in the broadcasting room and started studying the equipment.
Li Xiuyu turned on the light and said, "I worked in the radio studio when I was a freshman in high school. Let me do it."
He clicked a few switches and patted the sponge-covered microphone, and a few muffled sounds immediately echoed throughout the campus.
He looked at Zhuang Yongyuan and asked, "Are you sure? The security guards and boarders can also hear the broadcast."
Zhuang Yongyuan nodded without hesitation. He just wanted others to hear their voices. Nothing else mattered.
After everyone was ready, Li Xiuyu spoke into the microphone, speaking clearly and articulately: "Next, please enjoy the Lily Heart Band's performance, 'City.'"
Xie Kang lowered his voice and asked Li Xiuyu, "When did you name the band?"
"Just now." He said and walked out. Du Jiahao asked him, "Where are you going?"
Li Xiuyu waved his hand casually and said, "I'll go outside and keep watch for you guys."
He stood in the corridor with his hands in his pockets, staring at the security office. The campus radio was of poor quality, no match for the speakers used for performances. Amidst the whirring of electricity, the first performance of the Lily Heart Band since it was named began in a muddled manner.
As Li Xiuyu listened, he couldn't help but reach out to the air in front of him. He didn't know what he wanted to grasp, he didn't know why he shed the first tear in his memory, he didn't know what he was afraid of, which city he was chasing, and who was like a city.
The lights in the security room came on. Li Xiuyu mentally measured the security guards' speed. Just as the finale began, he rushed into the broadcasting room and shouted to everyone, "Run!"
They ran past the old teaching building covered with tiles, past the former residences of celebrities whose names they could never remember, past the poinciana and bougainvillea that were wrapped around the railings and kept dripping water, humming a song in their hearts that they didn't have time to finish, and ran in a city that belonged only to the four of them.
It was the last class on Friday afternoon. After class, the students couldn't wait to rush out of the music classroom, and soon the classroom was completely empty.
Zhuang Yongyuan found a seat and sat down, then sent a WeChat message to Xie Kang: "I'm fine. Shall we go now?"
Xie Kang immediately replied, "I'll need another twenty minutes. I have a document that I haven't finished yet."
Zhuang Yongyuan didn't reply, but switched back to the main WeChat interface, staring blankly at the pile of messages that needed to be replied to.
Although Lily Heart has taken a break, trivial matters still continue to arise. Various previous performances and advertising contracts need to be adjusted. Zhuang Yongyuan thought about finding an agent to take care of it, but he didn't want to hand over the band's affairs to others, so he forced himself to handle it.
When he first dreamed of forming a band, he never imagined that these trivial matters would take up the bulk of his working time compared to performing and creating.
He replied to some messages, locked his phone irritably, threw it into the drawer, and lay on the table in a daze. Still unable to sit still, he ran to the utility room next door.
Perhaps due to the lack of human nourishment, the temperature in the utility room was lower than outside. Zhuang Yongyuan zipped up his coat, walked past the sparsely placed musical instruments and speakers in front of him, and came to a dusty burgundy velvet in the corner.
He grabbed a corner of the velvet, hesitated for a moment, and did not lift it up.
Zhuang Yongyuan knew exactly what lay beneath the velvet. After all these years, the sound from the piano had only grown fainter and more eerie, just as even if he desperately tried to grasp it, his memories of Li Xiuyu would slowly slip through his fingers like quicksand.
"Zhuang Yongyuan." When Xie Kang called his name, Zhuang Yongyuan was startled and loosened his grip on the velvet cloth.
Perhaps it was because of his pull that the velvet completely slipped off the piano, and the faded old piano appeared in front of Zhuang Yongyuan, who was completely unprepared, like a sudden ghost.
"I sent you a message, but you didn't reply, so I came up to find you. I saw the door was open and walked in." Xie Kang explained as he walked to Zhuang Yongyuan's side, only then he noticed that Zhuang Yongyuan was not in a good state.
His lips were pale and his eyes were empty, as if he was possessed by the piano.
Xie Kang certainly knew what was going on. It was about their common age of seventeen, and none of the four of them had been able to reach the future they had imagined at the time.
I can’t let go, I can’t let go, and I can’t reach the age of seventeen.
He hugged Zhuang Yongyuan, but Zhuang Yongyuan did not push him away and once again opened his shell a little to Xie Kang.
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