Chapter 44: A Winding Echo

The sounds in the train were very noisy. Yue Zhishi stared at the messages on his phone screen, his face calm. His heart was beating very quickly.

He locked his screen and looked up at the train’s route and upcoming stops. He couldn’t help but turn on his phone once again — he read through Song Yu’s messages once more, and then he took a screenshot, as if this way he wouldn’t lose the words Song Yu had sent him.

His hand pulling on the strap handle, Yue Zhishi gazed at his reflection in the train’s glass windows and had a hallucination: the person in the window looked exactly like him, but that person was wearing Peiya’s student uniform.

And so he remembered the day Song Yu took Lin Rong’s place and came to his parent-teacher meeting.

It was last year’s October 10th, Yue Zhishi’s birthday. No one would be happy at having a parent-teacher meeting during their birthday. It was very cold that day, the temperature having dropped in the morning. Yue Zhishi was originally wearing his thin sports uniform when Lin Rong called him back and ordered him to change into his knitted vest and winter coat uniform.

Thinking about it later, Yue Zhishi was very grateful to Lin Rong for forcing him to wear his proper uniform. He later received Lin Rong’s messages during lunch, saying she needed to attend a very important party with Song Jin and that Song Yu was going to the parent-teacher meeting in her place. She even said they’ll make up for his birthday over the weekend.

His lunch of scrambled eggs with carrots and Sichuan shredded pork with carrots substituting the usual bamboo shoots was actually really hard to eat, but Yue Zhishi was remarkably happy, so excited he didn’t take a nap during his afternoon break. He rushed to clean and organise his entire desk, and when his desk mate came back later, she jumped in shock at his desk, as shiny as new.

“How’d you do this?”

Yue Zhishi finished scrubbing his desk with wipes for the third time, and after he threw them away, he patted his own hands. “With nothing but my hands.”

He sat behind this bright and clean desk for the next three lessons, and he fastidiously tidied away all the materials he used after each single lesson, making sure to even go through his drawers. It was finally time for the parent-teacher meeting. Most students hated these kinds of meetings — if they were lucky, they would be invisible during the entire meeting. But for those who weren’t that lucky, they were sending their parents to their own public execution.

It was the first time Yue Zhishi looked forward to the meeting so much.

The weather was worse compared to the morning, the sky completely covered in stormy clouds. Yue Zhishi started to worry if it was going to start raining, if Song Yu had brought an umbrella. Their class adviser came in early and pulled up her prepared PowerPoint on the presentation screen, telling the students to later wait outside in the corridor.

The first parent to arrive for their class was the mother of a female student. She was dressed very plainly and appeared in the classroom door looking a bit lost. Yue Zhishi watched as his classmate led her mother to her seat, and then he couldn’t help but go outside. He crouched near the corridor railings for a while before he went to wait at the top of the stairs.

“Le Le, is your mom or your dad coming?” Another male student was standing at the stairs, and he bumped Yue Zhishi with his shoulder.

“They’re both busy. My ge’s coming.”

“You have a brother? That’s great.”

A female classmate also walked over. “You didn’t know? Ah, that’s right — you weren’t here for junior high. His brother used to be our senior in high school, he’s handsome and had good grades.”

Yue Zhishi’s vain little heart swelled, and he said, in place of his gege, “He’s not as good as you make him out to be.” He then turned his head around, and in that moment, he saw Song Yu.

Song Yu wore a windbreaker the same black colour as his hair. It set off his sharp features and the outstanding air around him, and it made him extraordinarily easy to see in the crowd of parents. He tilted up his head as he walked up the stairs, and he just so happened to meet Yue Zhishi’s eyes. His originally straight mouth faintly moved, and the cold look on his face faded away slightly.

“Gege.” Yue Zhishi took a few steps forward and stood next to him after Song Yu reached the top of the stairs. “I’ll bring you to my seat.”

The girl behind him was still gossiping with the male classmate from before. “See, isn’t he tall and handsome?”

This was the first time Song Yu had come to Yue Zhishi’s classroom, but it felt like Yue Zhishi was the one who found it more novel and exciting.

His seat was in the second to last row of the third section of the classroom. Yue Zhishi brought Song Yu over, sat him down and pointed at the cup of warm water he’d just poured. “If you’re thirsty, you can drink this.”

Song Yu nodded as soon as he finished speaking. He surveyed his desk without much expression on his face, but he praised, “So clean.”

The female desk mate next to Song Yu sold Yue Zhishi out in front of a good-looking guy. “He was cleaning it the entire afternoon.”

Being thoroughly exposed, Yue Zhishi shot a glare at her. “I didn’t clean it for the?entire?afternoon..” He still wanted to recover some face, but he realised Song Yu didn’t seem to really care about it. He was looking around the classroom, so Yue Zhishi asked, “What are you looking at?”

Song Yu pulled his gaze back and looked at Yue Zhishi. “I realised I was in this classroom for my 2nd year of high school.”

Peiya was always changing classrooms, to the point sometimes even the repair team in school would throw away the classroom name plate. After Yue Zhishi entered high school, he’d changed classrooms four times, including the one time their year needed to split up for different streams. He never expected to graduate from the classroom Song Yu had spent his 2nd year in.

“Really?” To Song Yu, Yue Zhishi’s happiness always seemed to come from nowhere.

Song Yu nodded, his elbows on the table. He very tranquilly added, “I sat behind you.”

His sentence was too mesmerising.

As if they really were in the same classroom, as if he really did sit behind Yue Zhishi every day — and as long as Yue Zhishi wanted, he could turn around and see him.

In a parallel space-time continuum where time was delayed by one year — if that timeline overlapped with Yue Zhishi’s current universe, then Song Yu would’ve been able to stay with Yue Zhishi through every single difficult-to-endure day as he finished his last year of high school.

Yue Zhishi froze for a second, and then a smile bloomed outside of his control.

“Is there anything I can’t see in your desk?”

Yue Zhishi spread out his hands and generously said, “No, feel free to look.”

He only tidied up so cleanly because he wanted to take care of Song Yu’s obsession with cleanliness.

Their class adviser was pushing the students out of the room, so he had no way to continue staying for longer and could only follow his classmates out. Everyone ended up standing at the windows, peeking in, and observed the reactions between their teachers and their parents. However, Song Yu’s appearance in this parent-teacher meeting was a special case, and he particularly drew everyone’s attention. All of the surrounding classmates were talking about him. Boys said Song Yu played basketball really well, while girls said Song Yu had both handsome looks and fantastic grades — Yue Zhishi, with his dazzling older brother complex, had no way to compete.

He looked only at Song Yu. Other parents had their heads up, devoutly and seriously listening to the class adviser as she spoke, but Song Yu didn’t look up at all. He bent his waist and took out a stack of exam papers and textbooks from Yue Zhishi’s drawers.

“You’re dead,” his desk mate said. She was also standing outside the window. “Your brother’s looking at your exams. He won’t go back and tattle on you to your parents, will he?”

Everyone laughed, but Yue Zhishi was incredibly calm. “He won’t. He’s never tattled on me before, and besides, my mom and dad don’t really care if I get good grades or not.”

“Really? That’s so lucky.”

“Then why’d he take them out?”

“That’s right, I don’t like other people going through my things. Not even good-looking guys.”

Yue Zhishi wrinkled his brows when he heard this person speak. “He’s my ge, not ‘other people’. I like letting him go through my things.” He walked away to another side of the window after he spoke. He was famous for his good temper and popularity — so not only had he not gotten angry before, he had rarely even spoken harsh words to anyone. He was clearly not happy this time, and all the girls nearby were heavily astonished.

Another classmate said, “Le Le, you’re not similar to your brother at all, he looks so standoffish. But his facial features are very solid, very sharp — is he mixed too? How come his hair and eyes are so black?”

Yue Zhishi thought he had too many questions, but he still answered, “He’s not mixed.”

“No wonder, you two don’t look alike at all. You’re not real brothers right? Cousins?”

Yue Zhishi fell silent — he didn’t really want to answer this question.

After entering high school, he and Song Yu separated. Even if Yue Zhishi went again to the self-study room next to the high school class 3-5’s classroom, there was no longer anyone who could go home with him. Sometimes, he would stand in front of the college entrance exams honour board in the cafeteria and stare at Song Yu’s name in a daze, but this board stayed for only one year before the names were changed to others.

He slightly regretted staying at Peiya by himself. He should’ve gone to a new school, where he wouldn’t think of Song Yu at every moment. At the cafeteria, he’d think of the dishes Song Yu detested; at the sports ground, he’d think of how Song Yu had looked like when he was shooting a basketball.

And the cruelest, most hateful place was the open-air corridor on the third floor.

“If you’re not real brothers, then your relationship shouldn’t be that close.”

He gazed at the window glass, and his face overlapped with Song Yu’s side profile like a moment of double exposure in photography.

Abruptly, Yue Zhishi really, really hoped for Song Yu and him to look exactly alike — to the point other people would be able to guess their relationship at first glance. There would never again be any?questions, and he himself would no longer have to carry the anxious weight of constantly second-guessing himself.

The class adviser came down from the talking podium not much longer. She opened the door, telling the class monitor to either take them outside or to go home. She’d just closed the door again when a girl in the outer crowd suggested going to the cafeteria, and everyone agreed one by one. They all went down together.

Yue Zhishi left a bit wistfully, taking a few more looks before he walked away. Song Yu had taken off his windbreaker jacket and had draped it over the chair, wearing a white knit shirt. He sat there very peacefully, holding Yue Zhishi’s pen, and lowered his head with a very earnest expression as if he was considering something.

Yue Zhishi returned back to three years ago in a trance — he stood outside the classroom, waiting for his gege that had yet to finish his class.

“Let’s go, Le Le.”

Yue Zhishi turned. “I know.”

The content and general process of parent-teacher meetings were always very similar. The class adviser talked about the seriousness of the college entrance exams and reported the scores from the latest mock tests. Song Yu was very familiar with all of this — it was just that his role was now flipped, turning into the person who sat below and listened to the class adviser.

He didn’t really want to listen. He’d heard all of these things for three straight years, and he was so familiar with the content that even if he didn’t listen now, he would still be better at guiding the students than the parents now sitting in place, who knew nothing about college entrance exams.

Song Yu turned through Yue Zhishi’s exam papers. His English was as good as it always was, and even he was a bit curious — did blood truly carry knowledge? But Yue Zhishi’s math scores weren’t as great in comparison to the rest of his subjects: his scores fluctuated often and weren’t very stable. His scores were very high when he tested well, but when he didn’t, his scores were very far from the other students who did well.

He pulled out Yue Zhishi’s booklet of wrong answers, going through that as well, and noticed Yue Zhishi once again answered similar questions incorrectly in the newest test paper. To Song Yu, these questions were very straight-forward and had fairly standard answers, so he lifted up his pen and took this time to explain the questions to Yue Zhishi. In the wrong answers booklet, he even wrote down several common problem-solving methods.

He concentrated on Yue Zhishi’s work for some time, and then he suddenly heard the class adviser call out Yue Zhishi’s name. Song Yu lifted his head, realising all the parents in front were looking at him.

“The parent for our Yue Zhishi student is actually one of Peiya’s outstanding graduates: Song Yu. His grades were always at the front while he was still attending our school, and his score for the college entrance exams was also incredibly excellent.” The class adviser’s gaze was full of expectation as she looked at Song Yu. “It’s also such a coincidence that he came here today. Can you share with our other parents a bit of what you’ve learned from your study experience, or maybe what they should pay attention to as parents?”

Song Yu was quite unused to this kind of environment. He felt like he wasn’t Yue Zhishi’s older brother right now, but rather more like his father. He pressed his lips together at this strange shifting of seniority and was silent for a moment before he opened his mouth. He said, in a deep voice, “Actually, it’s already too late to be talking about studying.”

His words were truly too direct, and the class adviser shifted in slight awkwardness. “Ah, to be honest..”

“But I think there are still things parents need to do. If possible, it would be best to prevent putting too much pressure onto your children. Rather than constantly telling them to study or take care of their bodies, it would be better to care about their mental health — focus less on their education.” Song Yu finished speaking and left a little bit of room for the class adviser’s self-respect. He gave her a faint, slight smile. “I think everything else has been covered quite well by you, class adviser.”

Most likely because he carried the halo of a top-scorer, but there were parents who agreed with everything he said. After he finally sat back down, Song Yu continued placing his focus on his little brother’s test papers. He stacked the papers away neatly after he finished going through most of them and returned them back to the drawer. He placed the wrong answer booklet on top, so that Yue Zhishi would be able to see it as soon as he came back.

He had accidentally pulled out a math textbook at the same time he pulled out the test papers. It had a purple book cover, and seeing as he had nothing else to do, he opened it and flipped through it as well. Textbooks like these that didn’t need to be given to the teachers were usually filled in quite sparsely.

And as expected, not only was there not much work in it, this textbook looked like something Yue Zhishi used to waste time. The lower right hand corners contained simple drawings of an anime character Yue Zhishi really liked; when the pages were quickly flipped, the drawings turned into a full-blown fight sequence.

Only Yue Zhishi would be able to do something like this.

Song Yu abruptly felt parent-teacher meetings were really interesting. As he looked through the textbook again, many pages were covered by scribbles — the more Yue Zhishi wrote, the more illegible they became until one particular scribble turned into a heavy dot on the paper. Clearly, Yue Zhishi had been so sleepy he’d lost all consciousness, and yet he still persisted on sitting up straight, pretending to write.

Just by looking at these marks, Song Yu could imagine a lively, vivid Yue Zhishi.

He flipped to a random page. He paused, staring at it for a while, and then lifted up his pen to write down a line of words.

Time flew very quickly as he amused himself this way. After the meeting ended, quite a few parents came to Song Yu’s desk and hoped he could share a bit more with them. Even though Song Yu always spoke little and had a cold face, he couldn’t be too obvious about it. He said a few more things, and he only opened his mouth in blunt refusal when a parent asked for his contact details, hoping to hire him as a home tutor.

“I’m very busy. I don’t even go home all that often. If I really do need to tutor someone, then that someone will definitely be my family’s child. Right?”

He pulled on his windbreaker and left the classroom. Song Yu didn’t see any traces of Yue Zhishi, so he called him with no one picking up. Yue Zhishi’s phone was usually either on silent mode or turned off completely when he was at school, so Song Yu guessed Yue Zhishi didn’t see his call — he went to find him himself.

In reality, Yue Zhishi hadn’t even taken out his phone. He was surrounded by many classmates in the cafeteria, with him being the sole centre of a very awkward situation — a female classmate was suddenly confessing to him. He’d never once thought she would like him, and yet she’d prepared a small birthday surprise. Clamouring boys pressed him onto a chair, so Yue Zhishi couldn’t even get up.

“I specifically went out to get this cake today.” The girl was sitting across from him, and she pushed the cake until it reached him. She looked very bashful. “This shop’s cakes are really yummy, I needed to book a week ahead to get this.”

This cake truly did look very beautiful. It was rose and lychee flavoured, and words wishing Yue Zhishi a happy birthday were drawn on top.

Everyone was making a fuss by the side. Most of them didn’t know he was allergic to wheat, and Jiang Yufan, the only person who knew, was still in science class. They all wheedled Yue Zhishi to cut a piece and try it, and Yue Zhishi had no way of refusing — he thought he should be okay if he wiped off some of the frosting to taste.

So he lifted up a fork to swipe some down, secretly trying to calculate how he could later leave without looking too impolite.

But before he could implement his plan, in the next moment, his wrist was held by a familiar hand.

He lifted his head and immediately met Song Yu’s pair of cold and stern eyes.

“He’s allergic. He can’t casually eat cakes from outside places.” Song Yu’s voice was very cool, and he yanked Yue Zhishi to his feet.

The girl on the other side looked a bit awkward — she’d just confessed, and yet she ended up giving the person she liked something he might be allergic to. This situation was truly unlucky. But Yue Zhishi still nicely said, “Don’t worry, I’m okay. Thank you for buying it for me.”

Song Yu pulled him out without letting him continue to speak.

Wind was harshly blowing outside, and rain had just started to fall. There were already large droplets of water on the ground, and at the speed the rain was falling, Yue Zhishi guessed it was about to start showering. He shrank his neck back into his coat and followed behind Song Yu.

“You’re going to just eat anything anyone gives you? How many times do I have to say it?” Song Yu didn’t look happy. “You didn’t learn enough from your childhood?”

Yue Zhishi felt a bit wronged. “No, I wasn’t going to eat it. She just..”

Song Yu’s footsteps stopped, and he looked at Yue Zhishi. “You can eat things just because someone confessed to you?”

How did he know it was a confession..

Yue Zhishi stood there in confusion, briefly pouting before he smoothened out his face. “I wasn’t going to eat the cake. I just wanted to try the frosting so she’d feel better.”

Song Yu stayed in place for a little while, and the rain started to pour. He simply said he understood and walked towards his car before pulling out the keys. He pressed the button, and then he circled around to the passenger seat, opening the car door for Yue Zhishi.

Yue Zhishi meekly got into the car, sitting next to Song Yu. He realised Song Yu’s hair had gotten shorter — it truly was very dark, and it didn’t look very inviting to the touch. This difference in hair colour might be the largest disparity in his and Song Yu’s appearances.

He suddenly thought, maybe he should dye his hair black — would that make him look more like Song Yu?

He honestly, really wanted a distinctive and exclusive relationship that couldn’t be cut away at any time.

His brain swirled in chaos. Thunder suddenly rang outside, and Yue Zhishi raised a hand in automatic reflex — but Song Yu pressed his hand down. Song Yu didn’t speak, only using his other hand to turn on the car’s music player. He played relaxing, soothing classical piano music.

The hand holding onto Yue Zhishi had yet to move away.

In the entire world, Song Yu was the person who understood him the most. What he could eat, and what he couldn’t eat; what he liked, and what he didn’t like; and even the little habits he had during class — he held all that knowledge in the palm of his hand. All these small, minor details were accumulated from the passage of so many years.

Yue Zhishi watched as he twisted his body over, grabbing a cleanly beautiful white box from the backseat. He placed it onto Yue Zhishi’s lap.

“What’s this?”

“Open it yourself.”

A chocolate cake lay inside, and a rich fragrance wafted up. The cake’s smooth and shiny surface reflected a beautiful sheen just like a mirror. It looked very much like something Song Yu would make.

“There was no more wheat-free flour at home, so I needed to go to a few places to find almond flour. It’s a bit rushed.” Song Yu’s perfectionism lowered his own self-evaluation, but Yue Zhishi really liked it — he didn’t think Song Yu would remember his birthday, let alone spend so much effort to make him a cake.

“It looks really, really delicious.”

Yue Zhishi had even thought he needed to wait until the weekend to celebrate his birthday, and he’d even thought Song Yu wouldn’t come home and wouldn’t spend the day with him.

The white flash of lightning flew past, and without waiting for Yue Zhishi to move, Song Yu raised his hands first and covered his ears. Song Yu’s voice came the same time as the thunder, overlapping the beating of his heart.

“Happy birthday.”

Yue Zhishi remembered he sat in the car and ate a very large piece of cake. A tiny bit of chocolate ganache had even been smudged onto his nose, and Song Yu had been very treacherous — he didn’t tell him of that smudge at all, and Yue Zhishi didn’t find out until they arrived home.

He still remembered both Lin Rong and Song Jin hadn’t come home that day. He had clung to Song Yu, chattering about many things, and he’d stayed in Song Yu’s room as he did his homework until midnight had passed.

At that time, Song Yu had even asked him if he’d properly worked on the textbooks he’d spent money to buy.

Yue Zhishi had just thought Song Yu was randomly asking him from a parent’s perspective, as a residual effect from the parent-teacher meeting. Now that he thought about it again, Song Yu had been giving him a hint.

The subway ran much faster than normal. Yue Zhishi swiped his card and left the station, his curious heart driving him to rush home as quickly as he could, seeking the answer hidden away for so long.

Lin Rong had also just returned home from the airport and found it quite strange when she saw Yue Zhishi dive directly into his room as soon as he entered the house. She went upstairs with a bowl of red bean?double milk skin custard. Seeing Yue Zhishi strenuously reaching for the cardboard box on top of his bookshelf, she knocked on the open door. “Darling, what are you doing? Here, have some double milk skin custard.”

Yue Zhishi glanced at her, his arms still struggling to pull down the box. “Aunt Rong, are the textbooks I brought home last semester in this box?”

Lin Rong placed down the bowl and stood there, thinking. “No, I think I put them into that white cabinet for you.”

“Really? Let me have a look.”

Thinking Yue Zhishi might’ve received some kind of stimulation after visiting Wuhan U and wanted to strongly prepare for the last stretch before exams, Lin Rong didn’t dare bother him any longer. “Remember to eat the custard. If you want something, just tell me. Don’t overwork yourself.”

“I will.” Yue Zhishi knelt in front of the cabinet, searching through each book without lifting his head to her. Lin Rong closed the door behind her, and he searched for over ten minutes before he finally found the math textbooks he’d previously purchased. Yue Zhishi didn’t give up now that he had a narrower scope to search — he carried all those books to his desk and flipped through all of them.

He went through each one until he reached the textbook he’d previously drawn in and used most often to kill time. A sense of shame, half a year late, rose in his heart, and only then did Yue Zhishi faintly feel as though he’d found the right one.

What could it be.

The hand turning over his textbooks suddenly stopped, and Yue Zhishi’s gaze halted at the same time.

It was a textbook about mathematical functions. The exercises were all very long, and the first one was about calculating the flow of guests in a particular park. Yue Zhishi still remembered this question — it was tediously long, going on and on about things he didn’t understand, and even the?equivalence relation refinement?was ridiculously difficult. At that time, he’d been so tired from answering questions that after he finished reading it, all his brain could think about were the key words of park, guests and holiday. His brain hadn’t wanted to calculate it at all.

So then, in a fit of rebellion, he’d written down a row of words.

[Answer: I don’t want to do questions anymore, I only want to go out and play. The park has so many guests, it won’t be much just to add one more me.]

But when he looked back at it now, an extra line appeared below his words in an entirely different, swift and sharp handwriting.

[Endure for just a little while longer. I’ll take you after the entrance exams — I’ll take you wherever you want to go.]

Was this the encouragement Song Yu was talking about?

Yue Zhishi’s heart started to pound, pitter-pattering in its speed. He suddenly felt an illusion — it felt like he and Song Yu were two people living in two separate timelines in a science fiction movie, and in a wonderful, sudden moment, their timelines started to intersect.

The words he’d once written down, words no one knew about, now received a reply.

His fingertips were numb, and his heart was filled to the brim, about to overflow like rainwater. Yue Zhishi reached out a hand and very gently ran his fingers over Song Yu’s writing, unconsciously repeating them in his heart multiple times.

He felt there should be more; Song Yu wouldn’t have left behind just this one small trace. After tasting one little bit of sweetness, Yue Zhishi continued to turn the pages, seriously flipping through them many times. But he actually hadn’t slacked off often; he had conscientiously, diligently applied himself to most of the questions.

Song Yu didn’t seem to have played in many places.

Yue Zhishi was slightly dejected, but he was already very satisfied with the one answer he received.

He closed the book, and he stared at the cover in a daze. Something flashed across his mind, and his ears started to burn.

One time, when he hadn’t been paying attention in class, he’d done something very foolish.

Yue Zhishi frantically opened the textbook again as he thought about this, turning the pages until he finally found the one page that he never wanted to see again.

He had been so bored. As if he was practicing calligraphy, he’d written Song Yu’s name again and again — and looking back now at the name he’d repeated many, many times, Yue Zhishi felt his heart speed up again. He couldn’t tell if he was feeling embarrassment or something else. When he silently read out the name, only his own voice resounded in his brain. He called out gege’s name again and again, not hoping for an answer.

Unexpectedly, he froze. He stared at the last time he’d written that name, gaze fixed on the twentieth time he’d written those two characters.

[Song Yu]

A single word was added underneath, echoing back at him.

[Hm?]