Chapter Forty-Four
They were arguing just the day before.
They walked down the stairs side by side and turned into the empty playground. The wind at the end of June carried the burnt smell of the plastic track, mixed with the lingering fragrance of gardenias.
Xu Li suddenly stopped and took out the tattered copy of "Memorial to the Throne" that had been repaired with tape from her pocket: "I originally planned to give it to you four years later, but I can't wait any longer."
Tan Yuze didn't take it, but simply raised his hand and tucked the stray hairs from her forehead behind her ear. When his fingertips touched her earlobe, they both trembled—as if they had touched some kind of charged conductor.
"Xu Li." This time he called her by her full name, his voice so low it was almost inaudible. "Turn around."
She froze for half a second, turning her back to him. The next second, his hand covered the back of her neck, his grip trembling slightly with the sweat of a June night, and he turned her back.
When the kiss landed, Xu Li smelled the lingering scent of laundry detergent on his school uniform collar, mixed with the smell of tobacco and a hint of blood—he had just had his wisdom teeth extracted that afternoon. The teeth gently tapped together, like some kind of clumsy confirmation.
Three seconds, or thirty seconds—time stretched out like a roll of film without markings. When they parted, neither of them spoke; only their breathing rose and fell in the darkness, like the receding tide on a beach.
Xu Li wiped her mouth. "I bought an apartment near the Third Ring Road. It's not big, only 160 square meters, but the living room is big enough to fit a ping-pong table."
Tan Yuze laughed out loud: "You live alone, what do you need a ping-pong table for?"
“Who said I’m alone?” She kicked a pebble at her feet. “I’ve calculated it. My parents will have the master bedroom, I’ll have the second bedroom, Xu Sheng will have one of the remaining three rooms, and the other two… are for our high school senior comrades who will come to stay in the future.”
She paused, then her voice suddenly became so soft it was almost a whisper: "Anyway, the combination lock is your birthday."
The light in the security booth in the distance flickered twice, as if urging them on. Xu Li took a step back, the wheels of her suitcase rumbling over the rubber track.
"Tan Yuze," she said finally, "four years is too long. I'll leave the house empty for now, waiting for you to fill the void."
June in Shanghai is like a piece of sheet metal repeatedly baked by the sun, sticky and hot. Cicadas chirp desperately in the branches of camphor trees, as if calling out a name that has nowhere to go for someone.
The day Xu Li left, not even the wind came to see her off. She stuffed the transfer papers into the innermost layer of her schoolbag, and the zipper hissed open, like a knife slicing through three years of time.
A leaf fell from the old locust tree at the school gate and stuck to her white canvas shoe. She looked down at it for a long time, but ultimately didn't pick it up.
Tan Yuze sat in the back of the classroom, staring at his watch. The second hand ticked away, each tick like a dull knife cutting into flesh. He thought Xu Li would at least turn around, but her back remained straight as she disappeared down the corridor. At that moment, he heard something inside him crack.
Later, he dreamed of that scene countless times: Xu Li's school uniform shirt billowed in the wind, like a sail that refused to be lowered.
He called her name in his dream, but only the whistling of wind passing through the broken window escaped his throat. When he woke up, a small patch of his pillow was wet; he couldn't tell if it was sweat or tears.
As the plane pulled away from the station, Xu Li pressed her forehead against the car window. In the reflection of the glass, she saw a slight redness and swelling on the corner of her mouth—like a hidden stamp, left at the end of her senior year of high school.
The lights are on in the houses in Beijing.
She pulled her suitcase inside, tossed the keys onto the ping-pong table in the entryway, and the echo circled the empty living room three times.
They should still go to school as usual.
The homeroom teacher, Ms. Cao, came to the classroom and said, "Let me tell you something. Xu Li is no longer in Shanghai. We'll move her to the front of the class. As for when she'll be back, she's already contacted me. She'll come back to be with you all after the college entrance exam, so don't worry. Okay, let's study."
But as a teacher, I'm most reluctant to see this promising student leave. She's basically the top student in the class, and she's also a good student, always ranking in the top three in almost every exam. If Xu Li leaves, her position will be hard to secure.
The first week after Xu Li left, Tan Yuze's English notebook was still in her desk drawer. It had a light blue cover, and the word "XL" was written in black pen in the lower right corner, the handwriting as neat as her own.
He dared not open it, afraid that if he touched it, the pencil-written annotations would crumble into dust. Lu Yi somehow got hold of a bag of popping candy and, during chemistry class, threw it at the back of Tan Yuze's head.
Sugar granules bounced and crackled in his hair. The whole class burst into laughter. The chemistry teacher threw a piece of chalk at him, and the chalk dust exploded in front of Tan Yuze like a miniature avalanche.
Lu Yi winked and said, "Xu Li is gone, and you've lost your mind too? Why don't you come with me to the internet cafe, the newly opened 'Night Ferry'? I heard the owner looks like Liu Yifei."
Tan Yuze crumpled the candy wrapper into a ball, his palm marked with red welts. He stood up, and the chair crashed to the ground. Lu Yi's smile froze on his face—Tan Yuze's eyes were too dark, like two dry wells, reflecting no one's image.
"Shut your mouth. Can't you even speak properly? Get lost, stop yelling nonsense." His voice was soft, but it instantly silenced the classroom.
"Oh, no..."
"It's normal for Tan Yuze to be unhappy that Xu Li left. They've been dating for months, don't you think about that?" Zhu Yu pointed to his head and said, "garbage."
"No, buddy, make yourself clear, what do you mean?" he said, putting his hand on his shoulder.
"Useless thing."
He turned and left.
"Hey, you son of a bitch, go home, you low-quality people."
"Alright, stop provoking him. Xu Li is already unhappy about leaving, and you're bringing it up in front of him. It's just reopening old wounds." Bai Chuan didn't say anything more and left.
Seeing this situation, the students in the class didn't say much and just went about their own business.
The cafeteria was always noisy during lunchtime. Lu Yi squeezed his way to the opposite side of Tan Yuze with his tray, the chicken legs piled up like a small mountain, oil dripping down the stainless steel tray.
"Hey, seriously," Lu Yi poked Tan Yuze's plate with his chopsticks, "was Xu Li transferred schools because of that time Lao Cao scolded her?"
"Shut the fuck up, are you trying to die? Why are you spouting so much nonsense?" Lu Yi was stunned, then laughed: "Is it really that big of a deal? It's just—"
Before he could finish speaking, Tan Yuze's fist slammed into his cheekbone. The plate overturned, scrambled eggs with tomatoes splattering all over Lu Yi, making him look like he'd been splashed with cheap paint. Screams erupted around them; some whistled, others pulled out their phones to record.
Bai Chuan and Zhu Yu rushed over, each grabbing one of Tan Yuze's arms. Zhu Yu's nails dug into his flesh: "Are you crazy? For a single sentence?"
Tan Yuze was panting as if he had just run 3,000 meters, and Lu Yi's face in front of him was distorted into a blurry patch of color. He could hear his own heartbeat, one beat after another, like someone tolling a death knell.
After evening self-study, the three dragged Lu Yi to the playground. The moonlight was thin, spreading across the rubber track like a layer of frost. Bai Chuan offered Lu Yi a cigarette, but Lu Yi turned his head away, the bruise on his lips gleaming purple under the streetlights.
Zhu Yu squatted on the ground and drew circles with a twig: "Old Lu, you've been talking trash for a long time, but Yu Ze... he's been acting strange lately."
Lu Yi spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva: "I was just joking, why would he make such a fuss? Xu Li used to be his girlfriend, but she's not anymore."
Bai Chuan sighed: "You don't understand."
In the distance, under the basketball hoop, Tan Yuze was slamming the ball against the backboard. The ball bounced back, and he slammed it again, over and over. Thump, thump, thump. The sound carried far in the night, like a stubborn question.
Zhu Yu stood up: "I'll go tell them."
He walked behind Tan Yuze, his shadow stretched long by the streetlight. Tan Yuze didn't turn around. The basketball slammed against the backboard again, but this time it didn't bounce back—Zhu Yu caught it with one hand.
“Yuze,” Zhu Yu said in a low voice, “Lu Yi is a smart aleck, but you know in your heart that he didn’t mean it. You got angry at him because you couldn’t find Xu Li.”
The basketball landed with a thud and rolled into the drain. Tan Yuze's shoulders slumped, as if his spine had been pulled out.
“The day she left,” his voice was hoarse, “I had thirty-seven missed calls on my phone, all from her. The last one was at 3:12 a.m., when I was asleep.”
Zhu Yu didn't speak, but simply put his hand on Tan Yuze's shoulder. Tan Yuze's T-shirt was soaked with sweat and clung to his back like an unhealable scab.
The next morning before reading time, Tan Yuze slammed a bottle of Yunnan Baiyao on Lu Yi's desk. The bottle was ice-cold and covered with a layer of condensation. "I'm sorry," Tan Yuze said.
His lips were still swollen, and he spoke indistinctly, "If I ever mention Xu Li again, I'm a dog." Tan Yuze stared at the medicine bottle and suddenly remembered that Xu Li had sprained her ankle during a PE class once, and he carried her to the infirmary. She whispered "thank you" in his ear, her breath like a feather brushing against his earlobe.
The sun shone brightly that day. A stalk of osmanthus blossom clung to her hair, landing on his neck and tickling him for the entire autumn. He unscrewed the medicine bottle, poured out a white pill, and placed it under his tongue. The bitter taste spread, but he smiled: "It's alright, I can be impulsive too."
Lu Yi breathed a sigh of relief and scratched his head: "Going to 'Night Cruise' this weekend? My treat. Just the few of us." Tan Yuze shook his head: "You guys go ahead, I need to finish my physics test."
That was actually a lie. He just wanted to go home, close the door, take Xu Li's English notes out of the drawer, and flip through them page by page. It was like cutting an old wound with a dull knife—painful, but a comforting pain.
Tan Yuze knew that if he asked, at least two people could tell him where Xu Li had gone. Mu Mu would know since she was in contact with Xu Li, and Xu Sheng would know, but he probably wouldn't tell him.
But he didn't ask.
It's not that I forgot, it's that I'm afraid.
He was afraid that hearing the words "the middle school she attends" would make him rush there immediately, climb over the wall into her dormitory, and call her name in the corridor at four in the morning. He was afraid that seeing her in a suit skirt would make him unable to resist pulling her into his arms, like grasping at a lifeline. He was afraid that she would frown and say, "What are you doing here?" and then turn and leave, leaving him alone on the spot, like a snail stripped of its shell, bloodied and mangled.
He was afraid he wouldn't be able to control himself.
So he swallowed all his questions, letting them ferment in his body, turning into migraines at night, into a burning sensation in his stomach, into repeatedly writing her name on draft paper and then erasing it.
He almost asked it once.
That day was the monthly exam, and the last question on the physics paper was about electromagnetic induction. He wrote "a conducting rod cutting magnetic field lines," and suddenly wrote the letters "XL" on his scratch paper. The pen tip pierced the paper, and the ink spread out in a small patch of blue.
He stared at that blue mass, his heart pounding. If he just looked up and asked Chen Sui in the front row—Xu Li's location would appear precisely like a point on a coordinate axis.
In the end, he simply tore off the page of draft paper, crumpled it into a ball, and stuffed it into his pocket. The pulp mixed with ink went into his pocket along with it.
The sound of cicadas heralds the arrival of summer vacation.
Lu Yi went to Beijing for a summer camp, and his WeChat Moments were filled with photos of the Forbidden City's red walls and Peking University's west gate. Bai Chuan went to Yunnan with his parents to teach, while Zhu Yu worked at a milk tea shop, standing for eight hours a day until his calves were swollen like radishes.
Tan Yuze didn't go anywhere. He locked himself in his room, using Xu Li's notebook as a codebook to solve every problem she had left behind. On the last page of the notebook, there was a line of small pencil writing:
If C = 2πr, then r = C/2π. If I miss you, will you—
The sentence ended abruptly, as if someone had suddenly pressed the pause button. Tan Yuze gently rubbed it with an eraser, trying to restore the following words, but only managed to rub out a clump of dust.
He lay in bed, covering his face with the notebook. The paper smelled faintly of jasmine, from her usual hand cream. In the darkness, he heard his own heartbeat, mingling with the cicadas' chirping on a June afternoon. That day, he dreamed for the first time that Xu Li turned back.
In my dream, she stood under the old locust tree, her suit skirt replaced by a school uniform skirt, the straps of her schoolbag digging into her shoulders until they were red. She waved to him, just like countless times before.
He curled his fingers, his palm empty.
At the end of August, Tan Yuze secretly went to Beijing.
He didn't tell anyone. The early morning bus was nearly empty. He sat in the last row, with the window slightly ajar, letting in a draft that smelled of gasoline.
The school wall was very high, with spikes at the top of the iron fence. He walked around the wall and found a gap in the northwest corner—two iron bars had been bent, like a grinning mouth. He crawled through, tearing a hole in his school uniform.
The campus was deserted; rainwater filled the fountain, with a few sycamore leaves floating in it. He walked to the teaching building and looked through the glass doors at the honor roll in the lobby.
In the first row, in Senior Three (1) class, Xu Li's name was prominently listed. In the photo, she had her hair tied in a ponytail, and was smiling, revealing her tiger teeth, but there was little smile in her eyes.
He reached out and touched the glass, leaving a hazy mark on his fingertip. A security guard's shout came from afar. He turned and ran, the sharp spikes of the iron fence cutting his arm, blood seeping out, but he smiled. On the bus ride home, he sat by the window, pressing his forehead against the glass. The bus crossed the bridge over the river, sunlight shattering on the surface like scattered silver.
He thought that was enough.
Knowing that she's there and living well is enough.
The classroom was moved from the third floor to the fifth floor. During the ten-minute break between classes, he leaned on the railing and looked down. He could see the first-year high school students doing military training on the playground, their camouflage uniforms looking like a moving green wave.
Lu Yi is back, a bit tanned. He pats Tan Yuze on the shoulder as soon as they meet: "Hey buddy, missed me?" Tan Yuze smiles, fine lines appearing at the corners of his eyes. Zhu Yu quits his job at the bubble tea shop and starts preparing for his art college entrance exam. Bai Chuan brings back a bag of Pu'er tea from Yunnan, saying it's for Tan Yuze to "cool down."
Life ticked by like a clock being wound up again. Only occasionally would Tan Yuze stare blankly at the blank space on his physics exam paper. On the draft paper, next to the diagram of electromagnetic induction, he unconsciously wrote the two characters "Zhiyuan" (meaning "reaching far"), then quickly crossed them out.
In October, the school held a sports meet. Tan Yuze signed up for the 3,000 meters. After finishing, he collapsed at the finish line. Zhu Yu handed him water and said, "Are you crazy? Are you trying to kill yourself by sprinting the last two laps?"
He laughed, panting, sweat stinging his eyes. On the podium, as he accepted the certificate, he suddenly spotted a figure in the crowd—a ponytail, a white shirt, and a school uniform skirt. His heart nearly stopped.
The next second, the girl turned around and saw that she was the art and literature representative of the first year of high school.
He breathed a sigh of relief, but also felt inexplicably lost.
In December, the first snow fell.
After evening self-study, Tan Yuze walked back to his dormitory alone. Under the streetlights, snowflakes fell like moths drawn to a flame. Passing by the bulletin board, he stopped. A letter to prospective senior high school students was posted in the window, signed Shanghai.
He leaned closer to look and, among the dense text, found the name "Xu Li"—she was back now. The letter read: "I will be hosting a Christmas party on December 24th, and all classmates are welcome to come and chat..."
He stood in the snow, his breath blurring the glass. Back in his dorm, he opened a drawer and took out Xu Li's notebook. The "XL" on the cover had been worn away by his handling.
He turned to the last page and used a pencil to complete the unfinished sentence:
"If I miss you, will you—on some snowy day—suddenly appear before me?"
After finishing writing, he closed the notebook and tucked it under his pillow. On Christmas Eve, he ultimately didn't go to see her. He, Lu Yi, Bai Chuan, and Zhu Yu stayed in their dorm room, sharing a bottle of Erguotou (a type of Chinese liquor). After a few rounds of drinks, Lu Yi sang "Christmas Knot" off-key, and Zhu Yu played "Castle in the Sky" on his guitar.
At midnight, the dormitory lights went out. Tan Yuze lay in bed, hearing the sound of fireworks in the distance. He took out his phone, the screen lit up and then went dark again. In his contacts, the name "Xu Li" lay quietly, the last call between them dated June 3rd.
He ultimately did not make the call.
He never asked.
It's not that I forgot, it's that I finally dared to admit it:
For some questions, the answer lies in time.
And time is slowly bringing the best answer.
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