Notes on the Great Heat
The Great Heat season is the most scorching of the year. The sun ceases to be a ray of light and becomes a weighty, white-hot entity, relentlessly scorching every inch of the city. The air is stagnant, scalding even the breath. Even the wind feels like it's been blown from an oven, bringing no coolness but instead stirring up waves of heat rising from the ground, adding to the stifling heat.
Ye Shu's apartment had become a tiny steamer. Even with the curtains drawn and the air conditioner on low, the pervasive heat still seeped in through the walls and floor, engaging in a silent tug-of-war with the cold. The humming of the machines was more labored than ever, carrying a sense of overwhelming fatigue.
Ye Shujing sat quietly in the corner farthest from the air conditioner, where the temperature was more evenly distributed. He wore the thinnest linen shirt and remained upright, but a closer look revealed that his breathing rate was slightly slower than usual, and a thin layer of sweat, almost invisible, formed on his forehead. This sweat quickly absorbed into his skin, leaving only a faint sheen. The tea in the cup before him cooled much faster than usual.
The door was pushed open feebly, and Chen Xu practically dragged himself inside. He looked like he'd just been pulled out of the water, his hair dripping wet and plastered to his forehead. His light-colored T-shirt was completely soaked, wrapped tightly around him, outlining his disheveled appearance. In the plastic bag he was holding, several bottles of iced drinks were covered in alluring water droplets.
"I can't take it anymore... I'm cooked... I'm really cooked..." He groaned, and rolled and crawled to the bottom of the air-conditioning vent, gasping for air like a stranded fish, greedily absorbing the limited cold air, "Help... me..."
Ye Shu's eyes swept across his soaked back and he said calmly, "Sweat exposed to the wind can easily cause evil to invade."
Chen Xu didn't have the energy to argue. He simply waved his hands feebly, saying, "Let me get back to life first." He lay paralyzed on the ground for a long time before recovering. He got up, pulled a bottle of ice water from a plastic bag, unscrewed the lid, and gulped down half the bottle. The sensation of the cold liquid running down his throat made him shiver, and then he let out a sigh of satisfaction.
"Alive..." He wiped his mouth and handed another bottle of iced tea to Ye Shu, "This is for you, iced, drink it quickly!"
Ye Shu looked at the drink, the water dripping down the sides of the bottle, and didn't take it. "It's too cold. It's bad for your spleen and stomach."
"Brother! It's the hottest day of summer! Forty degrees! What's the point of worrying about your spleen and stomach?" Chen Xu practically knelt before him and forced the iced tea into his hand. "Here! Even if you don't drink it, holding it will cool you down!"
The cool touch instantly passed through the bottle to his palm, bringing a brief, refreshing chill. Ye Shu looked down at the bottle, as drops of water slid through his fingers and dripped onto the floor, leaving a small, dark dot. He didn't push it away, but he didn't open it to drink either.
Chen Xu ignored him, gulped down a few more sips of water, and began to peel off his soaked T-shirt. Bare-chested, he still felt the heat unbearable. He paced the room like an agitated animal, complaining non-stop, "What kind of awful weather is this! Is this the end of life?! The street outside is melting! I feel like my brain is about to be steamed!"
His anxiety and restlessness were like invisible rays, stirring up even more restlessness in the already sultry air.
Ye Shu's brows furrowed slightly. He put down the bottle of iced tea, stood up, and walked to the kitchen. He took out the boiled water he had boiled that morning and then cooled from the refrigerator, poured a glass, and handed it to Chen Xu.
"Drink this." The tone left no room for doubt.
Chen Xu was dizzy from the heat. He looked at the glass of boiled water without any trace of ice and said with disdain: "What's the use of this..."
"Drink slowly. It will quench your thirst." Ye Shu held the cup without moving.
Chen Xu couldn't persuade him, so he took it and drank a large gulp in a fit of anger. The water was indeed only slightly cool, and as it slid down his esophagus, it didn't have the stimulating, refreshing feeling of ice water. But the amazing thing was that after a few sips, the burning thirst seemed to be slightly alleviated. Unlike ice water, which was refreshing for a moment but then left him feeling even hotter and hotter.
He took a breath, stopped complaining, and drank the glass of boiled water in small sips. His restless mood slowly calmed down as the water temperature increased.
For a moment, the only sounds in the room were the dull roar of the air conditioner and the gentle sounds of two people drinking water.
After drinking the water, Chen Xu felt better, but the heat was still unbearable. He looked around bored, his eyes landing on the bottle of iced tea that Ye Shu had placed on the ground. The water droplets on the bottle had gathered more and kept sliding down, forming a small circle of water stains around it.
He suddenly remembered something and his eyes lit up: "Ye Shu! Let's do something summer should do!"
Ye Shu cast an inquiring look.
"It's going to be hot outside anyway, so why not stay here..." Chen Xu said, picking up the bottle of iced tea again, unscrewing the lid, but not drinking it. Instead, he walked to the window - where the sunlight was blocked by the curtains, but the heat was the strongest - and placed the cold bottle directly on the hot glass.
"laugh--"
With an extremely slight sound, the place where the bottle touched the glass was instantly covered with a thicker layer of white mist, and the water droplets condensed and slid down even faster.
"Look! Physical cooling! Cooling down the windows at the same time!" Chen Xu was proud of his little invention, and did the same with several other bottles of drinks, sticking them on different window panes.
For a moment, several bottles of cold drinks were like small ice shields, sticking to the hot glass windows, silently fighting against the scorching heat outside, with water constantly dripping from the bottles, as if they were silently crying.
Ye Shu quietly watched his childish behavior without stopping him, watching the white mist condense from the cold bottles the moment they touched the glass, watching the trajectory of the water droplets sliding down.
After finishing his work, Chen Xu took two steps back to admire his "masterpiece". Although he knew that it was more of a psychological comfort than a practical effect, his mood inexplicably improved, as if he had completed a small ritual to fight the heat.
He sat back down beside Ye Shu, picked up his fan, and began fanning himself vigorously. "When your heart is calm, you will naturally feel cooler... When your heart is calm, you will naturally feel cooler..." He muttered to himself, not knowing if he was speaking to Ye Shu or to himself.
Ye Shu's gaze shifted from the "ice shields" to the cup of tea in his hand, which was no longer cold. He picked it up and took a sip. The room-temperature tea had a bland taste, yet it strangely brought a sense of peace.
The cicadas outside the window were chirping to the extreme, shouting with all their might, as if they knew that this was the most intense and shortest time in their lives.
The heat persisted. The air conditioner struggled to operate. Time flowed slowly and viscously through the stifling heat.
But for some reason, in this small space, forced to be isolated from the outside heat, in this silent and insignificant heat-resistant ritual, the suffocating feeling of heat seemed to be quietly absorbed and dissolved by something.
Maybe it wasn't the coolness.
It is a kind of shared silence in the extreme heat, and a strange tranquility that grows in the silence, against the noisy world.
Chen Xu fanned himself and gradually calmed down, and the sweat stopped flowing so heavily.
Ye Shu closed his eyes, as if in a trance.
On the day of Great Heat, the weather is extremely hot.
And they just wait quietly in this limited coolness for the heat to subside.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
