Chapter 12 Days of...
Li Jiacong discovered that Li Sheng was very intelligent. Not only in terms of IQ, but also in his character. He was very insightful, and his personality was also stubborn, righteous, and courageous. He was like a protagonist in a martial arts novel who had accumulated knowledge and skills before unleashing his potential, like Zhang Wuji, who found a secret manual in the belly of a white ape, trained hard for several years, and then shone brightly at Bright Peak, surrounded by beautiful women.
But novels are novels. In reality, Li Sheng dropped out of school two years ago, has no relatives or friends, and his only means of livelihood are a dozen sheep and cheap crops from his fields. His life is predictable, and he may even be "shorter than" others.
"Li Sheng, I think you should go out and see what's going on." Li Jiacong leaned on the table, tilting his head to look at him. They looked like a pair of close classmates.
Li Sheng suddenly stopped writing, looked up, and asked, "Where to?"
“Anywhere is fine,” Li Jiacong said lazily. “Let’s go out for a walk and take a look around.”
"But I don't know where to go."
Li Jiacong nodded, pursing his lips in understanding. Leaving their hometown, they were in unfamiliar territory, and their destination was unimaginable. Li Sheng needed at least a "direction" to set off. Li Jiacong snapped his fingers, as if struck by a sudden thought. He jumped down, rummaged through a cabinet for a while, and pulled out a yellowed map—the one his father used when he was in school, pasted on the wall as a mural. He dusted it off and took it: "Here, look at the city names on it. Go to whichever one you like."
Li Sheng smiled slightly: "That's too casual."
"Being cautious is useless; you don't know what a place is like if you haven't been there before."
Li Sheng asked him earnestly, "What do you think is good about it?"
“If I had to choose, I’d choose the South…” He glanced at the map and pointed to the bottom, “This! Shenzhen! My dad said it’s developed really fast in recent years, there are lots of opportunities, and most of the people going there are young people.”
Li Sheng glanced at the map; Shenzhen was below it, and his location was near the northern border: "So far..." It almost spanned the entire country.
"It's a bit far... Oh well, whatever! Anyway... it's fine either way, you don't have to go out if you don't want to."
He was just offering a suggestion; he didn't want to influence anyone's life. Li Sheng nodded, slowly moved the map aside, picked up his pen, and continued working diligently on his workbook.
The two of them worked on their writing all afternoon, and Li Jiacong's arms ached from exhaustion. He rubbed his shoulders and told Li Sheng to stop writing and come out with him for some exercise.
The evening clouds in the countryside were exceptionally brilliant, the view unobstructed, and wisps of smoke rose from chimneys. Li Jiazong's heart was much calmer than when he first arrived; he was slowly beginning to see a touch of tranquility in these ordinary, worn-out scenes. Reaching the village entrance, he saw a noisy group of people gathered around something; gradually, a white curtain was drawn back.
A movie is playing.
In the countryside, an open-air movie was set up next to the brigade headquarters. Children sat around on stools, while adults stood and watched. Li Jiacong was initially excited, not knowing that such activities existed in the countryside. It was quite lively. He pulled Li Sheng and squeezed into the crowd, waiting for the projector to start. As soon as the lights came on, a beam of light shone out, and the film "Tracks in the Snowy Forest" appeared on the screen.
Li Jiacong's interest waned considerably: "It's too old, it's a war movie."
Seeing his expression, Li Sheng said, "They usually show two movies. Shall we walk around a bit and then come back to watch?"
"Then let me ask what the next item is."
He walked up to the projectionist and asked, but the projectionist, sitting with his legs crossed next to the projector, said with a smug shake of his foot, "The next show is a traditional opera."
Li Jiacong was in despair. The more cosmetic procedures he underwent, the older he looked. He turned to leave, but the projectionist suddenly called out to him, beckoning him mysteriously, "Want to see something good?"
Li Jiacong thought to himself, "That's nonsense," but asked with a smile, "Will you release it?"
“I can’t show it,” the projectionist said, beckoning to one of the people next to him. “You can go with Xiao Zhao, let him take you there.”
Li Jiacong looked up and saw the man, Xiao Zhao, from the village. He looked older than them and had a slick, roguish air about him. Xiao Zhao immediately came over, put his arm around Li Jiacong's shoulder, and said, "Hey, this must be Jiacong. Come on, let's go to my place—I have VCDs, some good movies."
Li Jiacong removed his hand from his body, but in the blink of an eye, he had already been pulled away. Li Sheng followed and came to his side: "Where are you going? Where are you going with Zhao Cheng?"
Li Jiacong whispered in his ear, "Going to his house—did you bring any money?"
"I brought it."
"How many?"
Li Sheng pulled a handful of banknotes from his pocket, some purple and some green. Li Jiacong glanced at them briefly and said, "That should be enough."
…
A group of people were sitting in Zhao Cheng's house, on the kang (a heated brick bed) and the floor. They were all about the same age as him. Li Sheng walked in first, and all eyes were on him.
"What? Li Sheng?"
A short, dark-skinned boy sat on the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed), rubbing his eyes. "What are you doing here?"
Someone nearby chimed in, "What's wrong? Can't the squad leader relax a bit?"
Zhao Cheng patted the short guy on the head and chimed in, "What's wrong with coming here? Don't make it sound like some kind of shady place."
The short boy touched his head and said, "I thought good students were different from us."
“What good student…” someone whispered, “He didn’t even go to high school.”
Li Sheng remained calm; he had cultivated his inner self, his emotions and desires never showing on his face. Li Jiazong, who was following behind, heard this. He stepped over the threshold and, whether intentionally or unintentionally, kicked over a stool, drawing everyone's attention back to him.
Li Jiazong raised his chin slightly, his gaze sweeping over the group of people who had just spoken. It was an overt display of contempt, blatant disdain. He possessed that ability; his demeanor, his appearance, his clothing—they were a stark contrast to the other young people in the room, creating a world apart. Being looked at like that by him stirred feelings of jealousy and anger within them. A moment of utter silence fell over the room; no one spoke.
The pampered young masters of the wealthy, raised with money, were different from these poor boys who toiled in the fields and barely knew any characters. He was Li Jiacong, not hard to guess at all. He had seen everyone here when he was a child, but Li Jiacong had no recollection of them.
Li Jiacong found a place to sit down, putting on an unpleasant expression.
Li Sheng sat next to him. This wasn't the first time he'd seen Li Jiacong like this—often impatient and disgusted with everything in front of him. He used to be a little afraid of him like this, but today was different. Perhaps Li Jiacong was… he thought with a touch of relief, maybe this time it was because he felt indignant on Li Jiacong's behalf.
Zhao Cheng glanced at the sky outside; it was still a bit bright. He took a disc out of a large box, carefully blew off the dust to make sure it was spotless, and gently placed it into the VCD player.
The television screen begins to display images; it's a very dark scene, starting with the back of a man. After a brief exchange, a rainforest appears.
"What movie is this?" someone had just asked when four large characters appeared on the screen in traditional Chinese: Days of Being Wild.
Hong Kong films have been popular for a long time, but they only reached the rural areas of the north seven or eight years later. This is a Wong Kar-wai film, but few people in this room know it. The first time they watched it, they all found it bland and strange, and the Cantonese was hard to understand. Someone started to complain: "Zhao Cheng! What are you showing? Did I come here to see this?"
"What's the rush? Just think of this as flirting," Zhao Cheng said, a cigarette dangling from his lips. "Can't you see it's still daylight outside?"
The group was forced to watch this incomprehensible film, grumbling and gossiping. Zhao Cheng, a shrewd businessman, brought over several cases of chilled beer, offering them to everyone who wanted some.
Li Sheng had never drunk alcohol before and hadn't planned to drink, but seeing that Li Jiacong had accepted a bottle, he decided to have one too.
He was looking for a bottle opener when Li Jiacong beckoned to him and said, "I'll use my teeth to open it for you, do you mind?"
Li Sheng handed him the beer.
With a whoosh, the bottle cap popped open, and tiny white bubbles rushed out of the bottle, like sweet soda. Li Sheng put his mouth to the bottle opening, and the pungent taste of beer assaulted his taste buds. It was nothing like he had imagined; it was bitter and numbing.
Li Jiacong tilted his head back and downed almost half the bottle in one gulp. Li Sheng stared at him in disbelief. Li Jiacong, looking straight at the television, said without glancing at him, "Is there something on my face?"
"No."
"Then why are you always staring at me? — Oh, Maggie Cheung is here."
Li Sheng turned his head, as if hiding something, and took a sip of bitter beer.
The room gradually fell silent, and everyone's attention slowly focused on the movie—all the young men in the room were captivated by the beautiful faces of Maggie Cheung and Carina Lau.
Maggie Cheung, wearing a midi skirt, has bright, dark eyes and a quiet, elegant demeanor, while Carina Lau plays a flamboyant and assertive dancer with a sharp, commanding presence. Both women have stunning figures, one a white rose, the other a red rose.
Li Sheng was also glued to the television, not because of the two female leads, but because of the plot—the male lead, played by Leslie Cheung, was raised by his adoptive mother, and he was constantly asking her about the whereabouts of his birth mother. Li Sheng really wanted to know if he ever found her.
The film's atmosphere is damp, tinged with purple, sweaty eroticism. It tells the story of a playboy, handsome yet heartless, loved by two women, both of whom he abandons. Because he is a "footless bird" who will never land, Yuddy dies on a train. Before he dies, he goes to see his mother, but she refuses to see him. Yuddy doesn't look back on his way out; he just wants to see her face. He says, "Since she won't give me a chance, I won't give her one either."
Near the end of the film, Yuddy's narration concludes:
"I used to think there was a kind of bird that could fly from the very beginning and only landed on the day it died. In fact, it never went anywhere; that bird was already dead from the start."
The movie ended. Li Sheng snapped out of his reverie, took a deep breath of the stale air, and realized he had been drinking. He'd finished a whole bottle, his face and body flushed, feeling slightly tipsy. He didn't know what had touched his heart—was it the beer, or the rainforest from the movie?
He felt depressed, while everyone else in the room became excited—it was getting dark, and the second movie they had been looking forward to was about to start.
Li Sheng turned to look at Li Jiacong, and when he turned back, he was stunned for a moment. There were five empty beer bottles next to Li Jiacong.
“You…see,” Li Sheng stammered, “I’ll wait for you outside.”
Li Jiacong glanced at him and said, "Are you having an allergic reaction?" Before he could answer, he said, "I'm not watching anymore. What kind of mood can I have watching movies with all these people? Let's go."
Li Sheng nodded blankly, then got up to pay for the movie and beer.
The two men emerged from the small hut and took a deep breath of fresh air. Zhao Cheng, sitting on a small stool in the yard, looked at them with a puzzled expression: "Why did you come out?"
Li Jiacong: "My eyes are tired, I'm going back to rest."
Zhao Cheng laughed: "Brother, the thing to massage your eyes is coming next."
Li Jiacong hummed twice, indicating his refusal. Seeing this, Zhao Cheng craned his neck to look at Li Sheng behind him and said with great enthusiasm, "Shengzi, are you sure you don't want to take a look?"
Li Sheng didn't say a word, didn't even glance at Zhao Cheng, and walked out. Li Jiacong watched Li Sheng's retreating figure and chuckled; Li Sheng wasn't walking in a straight line. Li Jiacong said, "I won't look anymore, thank you," and then followed Li Sheng.
Back at Li Jiazong's place, once inside, Li Jiazong started rummaging through things inside and outside the house. Li Sheng, sitting on the kang (heated brick bed), looked at him and asked, "What are you doing?"
“Looking for money,” Li Jiacong said, “for the movie ticket and drinks.”
"No need. Consider it my treat."
"Even close brothers should keep clear accounts." After saying that, he ran to his grandma's house. His grandma had gone to play mahjong, and his grandpa had probably gone to see an old movie. There was no one in the house. He rummaged around and found twenty yuan in the sewing box. He took it back and stuffed it into Li Sheng's pocket.
The two slowly climbed onto the kang (a heated brick bed) and leaned against the windowsill. Li Sheng picked up his English workbook, flipped to the back, and looked at it as if searching for something, but couldn't quite make it out. Li Jiacong stretched and asked him, "Did you understand that movie just now?"
"good."
Li Jiacong took out a cigarette and lit it: "What did you understand?"
Li Sheng looked up and said, "The character played by Leslie Cheung was quite confused, wasn't he?"
"Hmm?" Li Jiacong had drunk quite a bit, his tongue was thick. He usually liked to drink craft beer at home, and he liked to collect all the beer bottles, keeping a whole wardrobe of them. Today, he couldn't taste the flavor of this old dry beer, and he drank quite a bit, he was really craving it. Drinking beer and watching this movie gave him the illusion of being on a trip to Hong Kong.
Having just seen the wind, he finally got going: "You can still tell he's confused. I knew he didn't know what's good for him, those two are so pretty..." Li Jiacong realized that this made him seem shallow, so he didn't finish his sentence and instead said, "I just think the color tone is nice. Also, who's called A-Fei in this movie? I don't remember anyone named A-Fei."
“I was thinking the same thing, maybe it’s some kind of local dialect.” Li Sheng showed him his English workbook. He found it and pointed to a word, “The English word is below the title: Days of Being Wild.”
The workbook says "wild animal".
"Ah Fei" probably refers to a group of uneducated people.
Li Jiacong took the workbook and squeezed his hand into Li Sheng's: "...You're amazing, you can remember all of this. I didn't even know you had to write English."
Wild has many meanings: wild, natural, unrestrained, desolate.
Li Jiacong nodded very slowly: "I understand. I understand. But..."
Li Jiacong let go, lay down a bit, and looked at the patterns on the ceiling. He said things he wouldn't say when he was sober, because they sounded like he was being silly or pretentious. He said, "I find it hard to empathize with this movie. I'm not wild; I was tamed by my mom and dad."
Li Sheng lowered his eyes, rolled up his workbook, and pressed it against his chest. The oppressive feeling gradually took shape. In Li Jiacong's words, he saw himself reflected. The one who grew wildly was him, but what he had been doing all along was taming himself. He had tried and successfully turned himself into a silent, good person, but he knew that, like Xu Zai, his chest was filled with confusion. So he understood.
He looked at that word, and how apt it was. He lived in a wasteland, becoming a weed in the wasteland, wild and lowly.
If his background had been just a little bit better, he would have been more forgiving than Yuddy, and given his mother a chance to see him. Unfortunately, there were no "ifs" in his life, so he was not worthy to see her.
The oppressive feeling in his chest began to ache. Perhaps the alcohol had stirred his emotions, making him lose his composure. He desperately needed an outlet to vent his emotions! In his daze, Li Jiacong suddenly grabbed his hand and said, "Why are you so hot?"
Li Sheng looked at Li Jiacong's hand; the skin was much whiter and thinner than his own, and the fingers were long. Li Sheng turned his palm over, palm to palm, and grasped Li Jiacong's hand. Just like when he was a child, he had held hands with this person like this, but those were small hands that had pulled him close without a word, telling him to go buy something delicious. For the first time, he felt the warmth of a stranger, and that warmth came from these hands.
Li Jiacong was being pulled like this, but he didn't move. Looking up along his hand, he saw a slender, firm arm and deep, watery eyes that seemed to engulf him.
He suddenly asked, "Have you...have you ever seen those kinds of movies starring Zhao Chengjia?"
It was a cliché question, but Li Jiacong was curious. Li Sheng remained silent for a moment before answering, "I haven't seen it."
"Holy crap..." As expected, Li Jiacong was surprised and continued to ask, "You haven't seen that kind of thing either?"
Which one?
"Men, and men..." This is not a topic that should be discussed with Li Sheng. Li Jiacong clearly knows that Li Sheng likes men, and asking such a question crosses a sensitive line.
Li Sheng didn't speak, but tightened his grip on Li Jiacong's hand. Li Jiacong playfully shook it, letting his hand sway amidst the smells of alcohol and their breaths, but he didn't pull away. Li Jiacong suddenly laughed and asked bluntly, "Li Sheng, do you like me?"
As soon as he finished speaking, Li Sheng leaned down and kissed Li Jiacong on the lips. Their lips touched for about fifteen seconds, their breaths mingling. Li Sheng opened his lips, but instead of exploring Li Jiacong's lips, he said something:
You're asking a question you already know the answer to.
A note from the author:
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