Chapter 42: Bedtime Reasoning

Song Yu accepted Yue Zhishi’s friend request and even promised him he’d play together with him in a two person team after the college entrance exams.

He’d only started playing the game after he entered his first year of university.

In the beginning, Song Yu had thought he’d be able to easily get used to living away from home. He’d thought his heavy load of schoolwork would be able to completely fill up his every day life, but reality proved otherwise — no matter how tired he had been during the day, once he lay down on his bed and closed his eyes, he still found it very difficult to fall asleep.

He’d been later dragged into playing the game together with a roommate. He realised it could serve as a temporary distraction, so he played for a period of time. Song Yu was very good at sniping, his in-game operation very stable, and his ranking rose very quickly. But after playing for a while, the game’s ability to distract him clearly decreased, and so he no longer really wanted to play.

With his head lowered, Yue Zhishi happily stared at their friend interface in the game, and he asked if Song Yu could take him as a pupil. Song Yu very quickly rejected him.

“Why?” Yue Zhishi thought the teacher-pupil relationship in the game was really interesting, and many people carried others like this. His classmate kept trying to tempt Yue Zhishi into taking him as his teacher, but Yue Zhishi had never once been swayed. After learning that Song Yu had played this game before, Yue Zhishi wanted to play with him only.

“Isn’t our relationship complicated enough?” Song Yu said, looking at his document.

True.

Yue Zhishi felt it was easier to call him gege.

After ending their conversation about the game, the two of them tacitly started to sit together to study. Yue Zhishi felt like Song Yu had a magic power that could calm him down — when Yue Zhishi was next to him, as long as it wasn’t thundering, he found it easier to focus on memorising his work, and his memory also improved by a fair amount.

Both of them tended to forget the time after they started studying. Yue Zhishi finished his memorisation work and worked his way through some incorrect literature comprehension multiple choice questions. He lifted his head, and it was already 7:30pm.

“No wonder I’m a bit hungry.” Yue Zhishi leaned back on the chair. “It’s already past dinner time.”

Song Yu only then realised the time. He usually didn’t eat at set times, so he too forgot about dinner. He lifted his phone and asked Yue Zhishi, “What do you want to eat? Let’s order some delivery. The rain outside still hasn’t stopped, so everything nearby might already be flooded.”

“Can the delivery come all the way in here?” Yue Zhishi was doubtful. “I want to eat?river snail noodle soup.”

Song Yu questioned his request, but Yue Zhishi really did want to eat it. “The best time to have river snail noodle soup is when it’s raining. And hot pot too, that kind of hot and soupy meal is the best during rain.”

“What kind of reasoning is that,” he may have said, but Song Yu still sent a WeChat message to his roommate Chen Fangyuan, asking if he had any river snail noodle soup packets.

[Chen Fangyuan: I finished them all already. But I still have hot and sour noodles, they’re really good. I also have instant ramen noodles. They’re all on my desk, feel free to take some! I have ham sausages too!]

“Hot and sour noodles are fine too.” Yue Zhishi saw the chat screen on the laptop. “Instant ramen noodles should be delicious.”

The word ‘should’ made Song Yu feel he was really pitiful, so he stroked Yue Zhishi’s head.

Yue Zhishi ate an extremely unhealthy meal as he wished: hot and sour noodles soaked until they were soft and slippery, potato chips,?hot and spicy konjac chips?and a big pile of?roasted seaweed. He was already really full, but Song Yu still forced him to eat an apple. Yue Zhishi was stuffed until he completely didn’t want to move, slumping on the desk for a while.

Feeling like his stomach was doing its best to digest the food, Yue Zhishi’s large eyes scrolled around in every direction. The flowers he’d bought that afternoon were already a bit droopy, but they were still very fragrant. Many post it notes were stuck on the wall with study notes Yue Zhishi didn’t understand, and there were even some posts that looked like celestial charts and geological maps. Neatly arranged textbooks and tools were in a book shelf on the table, and there were also some typed essays.

The globe he’d made wasn’t there, and this made Yue Zhishi a bit disappointed. But his disappointment very quickly disappeared — he thought, handmade globes weren’t accurate enough, so maybe displaying it made Song Yu look like he wasn’t professional.

Unlike a watch that could be worn on his hand every day.

His eyes continued peeping around. Yue Zhishi saw a bottle the size of his palm near the insulation container. Its packaging was all in English, and it said something something soft candy, the first word foreign to Yue Zhishi.

Song Yu came out of the shower just then, and Yue Zhishi turned over and waved the bottle at him. “Is this edible?”

“No.” Song Yu walked over and took away the bottle from his hand, returning it to its original position. “Melatonin. It’s a hormone.”

Yue Zhishi automatically classified it as a nutritional supplement. “Can I eat it?”

“No.” Song Yu urged him to shower, so Yue Zhishi had no choice but to move.

Every time he was urged to do something, Yue Zhishi would be hit by the illusory sense of being roommates with Song Yu. This misconception very much pleased Yue Zhishi, as if they actually weren’t brothers three years apart but rather people the same age — they’d study together, go to school together and could even get out of bed and fall asleep together every day.

He wouldn’t need to wait at home every day, asking Lin Rong every week if Song Yu was coming home.

After both of them finished showering, they received Lin Rong’s video call, and the family of four, separated in two places, chatted for a very long time across the screen. It looked like Shanghai was also storming, and with Song Jin’s work temporarily cancelled, the two of them could only stay in their hotel and enjoy the river view. Song Jin joked that this was the rain the heavens prepared for their honeymoon and was pushed out of the view of the screen by Lin Rong.

Yue Zhishi also felt this rain was very coincidental, or else he might already be home by now. There would have been only been one person, one cat and one dog, more forlorn and desolate than anything else.

He glanced at Song Yu and thought he was even more lonely — he didn’t have a cat or a dog.

After hanging up the phone, Song Yu started urging him again, this time to sleep.

“Weren’t you saying you were sleep deprived? You can catch up on sleep today.”

Their dormitory was the classic four-person room with the bed at the top and desk down below. Song Yu told Yue Zhishi to go up and sleep in his bed since he used the same bed linen brand as the ones used at home. There shouldn’t be anything Yue Zhishi was allergic to.

Yue Zhishi obediently climbed into bed, and his phone was also taken away by Song Yu. The aircon was turned on, and he crawled under the blanket — in that moment, Song Yu’s familiar scent wrapped around him, creating an illusion that he could sink and infinitely fall into the softness of the bed. For a moment, he hoped he could remain forever buried here, where no one except Song Yu could find him.

The college entrance exams were very stressful, and studying was very tiring. He wanted to hide away under Song Yu’s blanket.

“I’m turning off the lights.” The lights in the dorm turned off as soon as Song Yu finished speaking. The darkness was like an even larger blanket falling down on him at a very quick speed to wrap around him. Yue Zhishi consciously shifted in towards the wall, leaving some space for Song Yu.

But he waited for a long time, and Song Yu still didn’t come up. He patiently waited for a little while longer and then, thinking a long amount of time had passed, couldn’t help but lean against the bed railing and look down. He saw Song Yu quietly sitting at the desk, reading a book.

“Aren’t you sleeping?” Yue Zhishi asked. “It’s already 10pm.”

“I’m not sleepy,” Song Yu said. “You should sleep first.” He then added, “I’ve already discussed it with my roommate, I’ll sleep in his bed.”

Yue Zhishi was incredibly disappointed. The wall he’d tightly stuck to and the space he’d left for Song Yu were instantaneously made meaningless.

He didn’t respond.

The two of them were silent for a while, and Yue Zhishi finally surrendered, flipping over and facing the wall to pretend he was already sleeping. But he heard the sound of Song Yu turning off the desk light and also heard Song Yu climbing up into another bed.

He silently consoled himself — this bed really was too small. Between being in an unclean bed or being forced into a tight and cramped space, maybe Song Yu only chose the option he could tolerate for longer.

The dark room was extraordinarily silent, and as Yue Zhishi kept persuading himself, he hazily fell into sleep. But just as he was in between sleep and consciousness, a white light flashed across outside the window, brightening up the room. A short moment later, a heavy crack of thunder sounded and shocked Yue Zhishi awake.

His reaction as he woke up was very loud. Song Yu immediately flipped and came over, thinking Yue Zhishi had fallen down. “Yue Zhishi?”

“Mm..” Yue Zhishi’s voice was very weak, giving off the feeling as if he was covered in cold sweat while sick. But he hadn’t fallen down, only covering his head with the blanket. His voice came out muffled and unclear. “I’m fine..”

He actually had always felt it was really embarrassing to tell other people he was still afraid of thunder at eighteen years old. He needed to train away his fear, and since he had fallen asleep just then, Yue Zhishi wanted to try to sleep again even though he was shocked enough to be covered in cold sweat.

But this thunder wouldn’t stop just because Yue Zhishi wanted it to stop. The most frightening thing about the thunder was that you could sense its frequency — you knew it was going to happen again very quickly, so it kept you anxious and uneasy, unable to relax.

After the thunder crashed three times, Yue Zhishi wanted to beg Song Yu to stay with him for a bit. He stretched out a hand outside the blanket, wanting to hold onto the railing as he got up.

But unexpectedly, the hand he stretched out was tightly caught.

Yue Zhishi moved away a corner of the blanket in confusion, his eyes peering out to look down, and saw Song Yu already standing under the bed.

“Are you okay?” Song Yu very lightly squeezed his fingertips. “Your hand’s really cold.”

Yue Zhishi shook his head, but another crack of thunder struck, his hand helplessly drawing back under the blanket. He was already so terrified, and Song Yu was already used to seeing him crying in fear — so Yue Zhishi felt there was no need for him to continue pretending to be strong.

“I can’t really sleep.” He didn’t say he was afraid. “Can you come up and stay with me for a bit?”

In the darkness, he thought he heard Song Yu sigh, very softly. Maybe he heard wrongly, because Song Yu still came up. Yue Zhishi felt a bit better, and he squeezed himself against the wall with all his might, hoping that when Song Yu finally lay down, Song Yu would feel Yue Zhishi didn’t actually take up that much space.

But reality proved that the bed was truly too small for two guys — especially when Song Yu was a tall 186cm.

“Am I crowding you?” Yue Zhishi sounded a bit apologetic, completely not daring to lean on Song Yu at all in fear of him thinking it was too cramped.

Song Yu said no, and then he said, “You’re very skinny.”

Yue Zhishi only then relaxed, and he stretched out a hand to pull Song Yu under the blanket. The space was very small — the two of them couldn’t lie on their backs at all and could only sleep on their sides. Song Yu lay on his side with his back facing Yue Zhishi, silent. Yue Zhishi turned the same direction as Song Yu, his back resting against the wall, and faced Song Yu’s broad back. The space he’d emptied out for Song Yu was filled to the brim, and it was like the heat diffusing from Song Yu’s back included some kind of healing substance. He couldn’t see it, couldn’t touch it, but it made Yue Zhishi feel very reassured.

They were like two croissants in a sealed bag. If he lost Song Yu, Yue Zhishi would feel like he was about to fall into danger, into great insecurity.

The older he was, the more he knew this anxiety wasn’t quite right. It was an incorrect anxiety. He’d been taught to be an independent person, and he’d tried his best to be one.

But if Song Yu was by his side, he still couldn’t help but draw near — and only then could he slightly relieve this trying, difficult to bear anxiety.

The sounds of rain and thunder mixed together, and they were essential elements in Yue Zhishi’s familiar memories. In his memories of being woken up as a child, he’d clung to Song Yu just like this, always not allowed to hug him.

So Yue Zhishi placed his forehead onto Song Yu’s back, just like when he was a child.

They hadn’t been this close to each other in a very long time. Yue Zhishi thought he could feel Song Yu’s heart beating, again and again, slowly and silently thumping against his muscles and bones. His mind and heart calmed down, but Yue Zhishi’s thoughts were still wildly flying, unconsciously returning to that night Song Yu had finished his college entrance exams. He thought about how it’d felt to be hugged by Song Yu after he’d fallen asleep.

That experience seemed to have been embedded in his body, hidden away — and it was only when he was so close to Song Yu that it would be accidentally triggered, reappearing again and breeding some kind of anticipation.

He had no way of controlling any of these feelings.

Song Yu didn’t move at all, and he also didn’t speak, as if he really was only there to accompany Yue Zhishi for a little while. As soon as he thought Song Yu might leave once he fell asleep, all of Yue Zhishi’s sleepiness completely disappeared.

Thunder boomed again and again, and Yue Zhishi gradually retreated back into the blanket. Song Yu couldn’t help but remind him, “Don’t cover your head with the blanket, it’s not good for your breathing.”

Only then did Yue Zhishi meekly shift back up, once again putting his forehead onto Song Yu’s body.

“Are you going to fall down?” he asked Song Yu.

Song Yu replied very quickly, “No.”

Yue Zhishi then said, “Sleep if you’re sleepy, you don’t need to care about me.”

Song Yu was quiet for a few moments, and then: “I wouldn’t have come up if I didn’t care about you.”

Good point.

“Are you finding it hard to sleep?” Song Yu spoke again after a long time, his voice sounding a bit awkward. “If you’re scared, you can lean on me.”

“Mn.” Yue Zhishi very obediently rested against him, his chin placed on Song Yu’s shoulder. He felt really comfortable like this, and his nose exhaled a breath in satisfaction.

And then Song Yu’s head slightly jerked, dodging away to the front.

Yue Zhishi actually really wanted to sleep, but whenever he closed his eyes, flashes of lightning would light up the room and awaken many of his memories — such as Song Yu wanting to send him away to a hotel, and Song Yu resting his hand against his in the cafeteria.

And the memory of him talking to that girl.

This was even more self-indulgent than begging Song Yu to stay with him until he slept, but Yue Zhishi really did not like it when he spoke to other people.

The sounds of thunder was unstoppable, just like the tug of war between an inexplicable sense of loss and his weak willpower in the midst of the heavy rain.

Just as Song Yu was staring at the pattern on his roommate’s bed curtain across from him in a daze, he heard Yue Zhishi open his mouth, very abruptly.

“Aunt Rong said the reason why you weren’t coming home might be because you have a girlfriend.”

Song Yu’s heart sank, and then he denied, “I don’t have one. It’s just because I’m a bit busy.”

He again heard Yue Zhishi say, “I only turned and ran away because I thought about what she said. I thought you were on a date and didn’t want to bother you.” He then added, “I would be a bit unnecessary if I showed up then.”

Song Yu was already very used to Yue Zhishi’s straightforwardness. He only thought it was a bit funny — at that time, he’d only replied a few times, nodding at the most, and his actions were interpreted into something like this.

“You think me standing twenty centimetres away while I spoke is dating?”

“Then what do you think dating should be like?”

Song Yu stopped speaking. After a long while, he repeated his earlier statement, “Anyway, I’m not dating.”

Yue Zhishi very lightly said okay, but he couldn’t help but say, “The girls and boys who are dating in my year, they’re always chatting to each other. They talk online, and then they continue talking even when they see each other.”

Song Yu felt Yue Zhishi still didn’t believe him, and being misunderstood as being in a relationship just by talking to someone was too absurd. “It would be a bit more logical if you saw me hugging someone and then thought I was in a relationship.”

Yue Zhishi said, his voice muffled, really?

Song Yu was about to say yes, but then he heard Yue Zhishi say, “That kind of reasoning isn’t reliable. You’ve hugged me before.”

Song Yu almost laughed when he heard this — he felt Yue Zhishi’s competitive heart was sometimes very strange. “Using examples from when we were younger is sophistry.”

“I’m not talking about when we were younger,” Yue Zhishi very quickly retorted. He seemed to feel speaking to Song Yu’s back contained very little convincing power, so he pulled Song Yu over, getting him to lay and face him directly.

In the dark, Song Yu could see his eyes — the slight glimmers from outside reaching in and illuminating his eyes. His stubborn face was astonishingly good-looking.

“That night I fell asleep while watching a documentary in your room after you finished your college entrance exams. That night you gave me your name badge — in the middle of the night, you turned over and pulled me into your arms.”

Solely just to demonstrate what happened, Yue Zhishi pulled open Song Yu’s arms. He burrowed his way in and buried his head into Song Yu’s chest.

“Just like this.”

The author has something to say:

You set yourself up for that, S.Yu.