Chapter 5757. Me and My Island
It was almost late at night, and there were still winter solstice dinner parties on Kaiping Street. From time to time, one could hear drunk people shouting.
Zhuang Yongyuan lay in bed, resting his head on one arm, staring blankly at the dimly lit room. The ceiling lamp was still the same old one, and the outlines of a few dead moths could be vaguely seen in the lampshade.
He remembered that he had promised everyone that day to upload the photos left by Li Xiuyu to the group. He dragged his heavy body out of bed, but after taking two steps, he felt dizzy and couldn't even stand. His eyes went black, and he quickly grabbed the furniture next to him to avoid falling.
After a few minutes of rest, Zhuang Yongyuan opened his eyes again and found himself holding on to the wardrobe.
Since I was born, I have lived in a wardrobe at home that always smells of mothballs mixed with mildew. After dozens of rainy seasons, the paint on the surface has cracked into tiny and dense cracks, and the mirror embedded in the cabinet door has grown a lot of white and green rust, and can only reflect a blurry human figure.
Zhuang Yongyuan couldn't help but take a deep breath, breathing in the scent of the wardrobe. The smell gave him a brief sense of security.
In the past, he often hid in the small, stuffy closet. The thin door blocked out the seemingly endless quarrels, banging on the door, crying, and the voice of the woman who came back with Zhuang Fu.
Zhuang Yongyuan opened the wardrobe door. Half of the right door had fallen off, and the corner of the wardrobe was sticking out crookedly on the ground. Zhuang Fu had kicked the door in. The wardrobe couldn't protect him, but Zhuang Yongyuan still regarded it as his closest companion before Xie Kang showed up.
He tried to hide in the wardrobe again, but the wardrobe could no longer accommodate his adult body. No matter how he changed his posture, one of his legs could not fit in and fell outside.
The closet was empty. Zhuang Yongyuan bought a clothes hanger to hang the clothes he brought back. Only a gray coat was hanging in the corner.
From high school until now, Zhuang Yongyuan has never returned this coat to Xie Kang. It seems pointless to return it now, as Xie Kang will definitely not be able to wear it.
He half-sat in the closet in a daze for a while before he remembered the purpose of getting up. He walked outside, turned on the light, and sent photos with the remaining half bottle of wine.
After the photos were transferred, Zhuang Yongyuan carried his computer to the room where he kept his suitcase. Suddenly, he felt something was wrong. After looking carefully for a while, he found that the recording equipment he had dropped on the floor during the day had been sorted out by Xie Kang and placed neatly on the bed frame.
There was a noisy electric sound in Zhuang Yongyuan's head. When he reacted, the keyboard and microphone were all broken by him. The casing and parts were scattered all over the floor, and the upper right corner of the computer screen was also broken.
Zhuang Yongyuan's heart ached a few times, and he bent down to pick up the fragments, identifying what they originally belonged to one by one, and sorting them out. Soon, several piles of fragments of different sizes rose in front of him.
Halfway through sorting, he began to shiver, screaming and kicking the pile of debris in front of him. He bit his lip to force himself to stop screaming, rushed to the closet, took out Xie Kang's old coat, and began to cry tremblingly, but the smell of Xie Kang on the coat was not as strong as on the sheets.
It would be nice if he could find a specific reason, maybe he was stimulated by the photos left by Li Xiuyu or by the reunion with old friends, but just like countless similar nights before, Zhuang Yongyuan couldn't find the reason. He was just very sad and wanted to find a way out, but found that there was no way out at all.
He split into another self and watched everything coldly. After the situation calmed down a little, he smashed a wine bottle, stared at the sharp edge of the half bottle in his hand for a long time, sat on the ground, took out his mobile phone and started to make a call.
He first pressed Xie Kang's phone number, thought about it, deleted it word by word, and entered another number.
His mother had changed her phone number several times and was now back to her original number. Zhuang Fu had forced Zhuang Yongyuan to dial this number so many times when he was a child that he could remember it by muscle memory.
He called four or five times in a row, but the caller always got a busy tone. He vaguely thought that Aying must have blocked him. Of course, she would be angry because she couldn't get anything out of him.
The edge of the wine bottle sparkled in the midnight, reflecting a moist luster, gentle and beautiful.
Blood oozed from the wound and trickled down his chest, leaving a searing burn mark.
Zhuang Yongyuan was still shaking. He was very scared, but he had to do this.
When he heard footsteps on the stairs, he immediately threw the bottle in his hand out. The bottle was completely smashed into pieces on the wall in front of him, and a layer of white ash was also knocked off.
Half of Xie Kang's body emerged from the dim stairwell, and his familiar facial features slowly emerged in the dim light.
He first looked at Zhuang Yongyuan, then glanced around and asked Zhuang Yongyuan, "Did you step on a bottle and fall?"
Zhuang Yongyuan touched the wound on his throat. The wound was very shallow, just broken skin and the bleeding had stopped.
He also looked at Xie Kang for a while and said, "Well, I didn't see a wine bottle on the ground."
Xie Kang rubbed his eyes and said, "I might not have seen it clearly when I was cleaning the room this afternoon."
After he said that, he found a broom and swept up the broken glass on the ground.
Zhuang Yongyuan asked him, "What are you doing here in the middle of the night?"
Xie Kang dumped the broken pieces into the trash can, tied up the bag, wrote "Beware of Broken Glass" on a sticky note, stuck it on the bag, and said, "Did you forget that it's the Winter Solstice today? I'll celebrate with you."
"You didn't say you were coming, and it's already past twelve."
"It doesn't count before daybreak."
Zhuang Yongyuan laughed: "Then how are we going to get through this?"
He walked up to Xie Kang, knelt on the ground, and untied Xie Kang's belt. As he did so, he looked up at Xie Kang and asked, "Have you ever been like this?"
Xie Kang ruffled his hair and said, "There's no rush. We have to eat mutton stew on the winter solstice. Have you forgotten?"
He re-tied his belt and pulled Zhuang Yongyuan up by his arm.
Zhuang Yongyuan said, "We don't have mutton at home either."
Xie Kang ran downstairs, brought up an insulated bag, unzipped it, and showed Xie Kang a bag of mutton under the ice pack as if to show off.
Zhuang Yongyuan peeled away the ice pack and saw the bloody raw mutton. He frowned and asked, "How can you eat it raw?"
"Don't you have a kitchen at home?"
“You can’t cook in there.”
Before Zhuang Yongyuan could finish, Xie Kang had already walked downstairs to the kitchen. Even the lights in the kitchen were broken, so he used the flashlight on his phone. The small space of a few square meters was completely empty, without even a set of dishes or chopsticks.
Not to mention that Zhuang Yongyuan lives alone now, even in the past, Zhuang Fu rarely cooked. After Aying left, their kitchen was basically idle.
Zhuang Yongyuan followed in and said, "I told you, we can't cook here. Take it back."
Xie Kang, however, acted like a real drunkard, insisting incoherently, "No, we must eat mutton on the Winter Solstice."
Zhuang Yongyuan reminded him, not knowing whether to laugh or cry: "We didn't have this custom when we were in Shanghai before."
Xie Kang ignored him and sat on a chair by the door, lowering his head and thinking hard.
From this angle, he was facing Zhuang Fu's portrait. Zhuang Yongyuan felt very uncomfortable seeing the two of them facing each other, so he walked over and turned Zhuang Fu's portrait upside down.
Xie Kang saw this and drunkenly rearranged the portrait. He also took out two incense sticks, lit them, and inserted them into the incense burner. He bowed and glared at Zhuang Yongyuan: "Why are you so unfilial?"
Zhuang Yongyuan frowned and said, "Don't act crazy in front of me."
Xie Kang hugged Zhuang Yongyuan from behind and rubbed his face. His hair scratched the wound on Zhuang Yongyuan's neck caused by the wine bottle several times, which stung him a lot. Zhuang Yongyuan originally wanted to push him away, but Xie Kang's body was very hot. In the winter night with a temperature of ten degrees, being rubbed by his warm body was not annoying. He let him hug and kiss him until Xie Kang began to recite famous sayings in a rhythmic manner.
“A sheep kneels to thank its mother for feeding it, and a crow repays its parents by feeding them.”
Xie Kang kissed Zhuang Yongyuan's earlobe.
"When your parents call you, you should respond without delay. When your parents order you to act, you should act without laziness."
He kissed Zhuang Yongyuan all over his cheeks again.
“While parents are still alive, one should not travel far away, and if one does travel, one must have a plan.”
He put his hand into Zhuang Yongyuan's clothes.
"Only by obeying your parents can you relieve their worries."
Zhuang Yongyuan was provoked by him and said angrily, "How could you carry so many indecent things?"
Xie Kang smiled foolishly and said, "I memorized Mencius and the Three Character Classic when I was a kid..."
"What are you carrying these for?"
"I'm a child prodigy, and child prodigies have to memorize these things." Xie Kang said, pushing away Zhuang Yongyuan's hand that was about to take off his clothes.
Zhuang Yongyuan had been tricked twice today, his face flushed with anger. He angrily pushed Xie Kang away and cursed, "If you want to do it, do it. If not, forget it. Go home and be your child prodigy!"
Xie Kang exhaled and turned to question Zhuang Yongyuan, "Why do you keep thinking about this kind of thing? It's perverted."
When Zhuang Yongyuan heard the word "pervert", his heart skipped a beat. He rushed to the door and wanted to throw Xie Kang out.
The door was only a crack open when a cold wind rushed in, making him shiver. He closed the door again, grabbed Xie Kang's collar and said to him, "If you don't want it, go upstairs and sleep. Don't bother me here."
Xie Kang was still mumbling as he recited his filial piety poem as Zhuang Yongyuan pulled him halfway up the stairs.
Drunk people always feel heavy. Zhuang Yongyuan was tired of pulling and cursed under his breath, "I'm so annoyed."
When Xie Kang heard this, he suddenly broke free from Zhuang Yongyuan's hand and ran out nimbly, leaving only the sound of the door closing.
Zhuang Yongyuan stood there in a daze. After thinking for a while, he realized that Xie Kang had really been driven away by him, leaving only a faint smell of alcohol in the air.
His brain shut down. He couldn't figure out what was going on and was too lazy to think about Xie Kang's inexplicable behavior. He went back upstairs and lay down again, counting the number of dead moths in the lampshade. His right hand mechanically released the desire aroused by Xie Kang.
He was entertaining himself but couldn't concentrate. He felt that the street outside was getting noisier. His hands were moving more impatiently and his face looked like he was completing a tedious task. He even began to dislike this body that Xie Kang had completely mastered.
After finally reaching the end, Zhuang Yongyuan frowned, sighed, threw the toilet paper aside, curled up under the quilt, and then thought of the bag of bloody mutton brought by Xie Kang outside the door. He became even more upset and planned to take it out and throw it away.
Zhuang Yongyuan walked to the door carrying the mutton, but before he opened the door, the door opened by itself.
Outside the door was Xie Kang, who was rubbing his hands and stamping his feet because of the cold. There were several pots and pans piled at his feet, including a gas stove, a casserole pot, and a wok.
Seeing Zhuang Yongyuan right in front of him, Xie Kang's eyes lit up and he said, "What a coincidence! Come and help me carry the pot in."
Zhuang Yongyuan glanced at the pile of pots and pans and asked, "Where did you get these?"
Xie Kang smiled and said, "The neighbors on your street are very hospitable. I was going to borrow some from Du Jiahao, but now I don't need it. That's fine, I don't want to share it with him."
After he finished speaking, he bent down, grabbed the handles on both sides of the casserole, and walked towards the kitchen with the pot. Zhuang Yongyuan looked at his back as he strode forward, his mind becoming even more confused. He stood there for a long while before following him into the kitchen carrying the mutton.
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The BGM for this chapter is "Wee To My Island" by Caroline Polachek!
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