Zhou Wu had always maintained a regular exercise routine. He needed to run at least five kilometres every day to feel comfortable.
He had missed his run that morning, so after returning home and catching up on sleep, he dragged Yeye out for a night run.
Halfway through, the dog could no longer keep going.
Zhou Wu nudged him twice with his leg in disdain, then stopped beside the bridge to rest.
“Yeye, shake. Shake.”
Qin Yun crouched with one hand suspended in the air for a very long time, only to receive the Samoyed’s merciless back in response.
He turned to complain.
“There’s something wrong with your dog. He isn’t friendly.”
“He’s selective,” Zhou Wu said lazily. “He doesn’t like interacting with ugly people.”
“?”
Qin Yun was shocked.
“This is how you treat the good brother who accompanied you on a night run?”
Zhou Wu was speechless.
Qin Yun had arrived uninvited, insisted on following him for a run and even used it as an excuse to borrow the sportswear Zhou Wu had recently bought.
Where did he find the nerve?
“That outfit cost seven thousand eight hundred. Transfer the money to me on WeChat.”
“Come on. Now you’re treating me like a stranger.”
Zhou Wu ignored him.
Leaning against the railing, he checked his watch before lowering his eyes towards the dog panting wildly at his feet.
“Two more minutes, then we’re leaving.”
“Don’t rush. This is perfect. Let’s talk for a while.”
Qin Yun stood and leaned sideways against the railing.
“When did things start between you and Wen Ci? Those scratches on your back before… Don’t tell me she was the one who—”
Zhou Wu said nothing, silently confirming it.
Qin Yun reached for Zhou Wu’s shirt again, only to be pushed away by his elbow.
Zhou Wu laughed and cursed.
“Are you ill? What are you doing?”
“I want to see what your back looks like again. I remember the scratches being pretty extreme.”
Qin Yun remained astonished.
“Wen Ci caused that kind of damage?!”
Wen Ci herself had probably been rather shocked too.
After that night, she had gone home and cut her nails.
The previous night, all that had scraped against him had been the soft pads of her fingertips.
The mark on his neck had been caused by the bracelet he had given her.
Even though it was the smallest size, it still hung loosely around Wen Ci’s wrist.
Whenever she tightly gripped his hand to stop herself from striking the headboard, the diamond bracelet moved wildly up and down her wrist.
Zhou Wu swallowed and replied perfunctorily, “They faded ages ago.”
“Do teachers naturally have strong hands?”
Qin Yun said, “Dou Yiqing’s manicure nearly scratched me to death last night.”
Remembering something, he lowered his head and laughed helplessly.
“Tch. I told you before that Dou Yiqing had a secret crush on me.”
“Otherwise, why did she only write down my name during high school and ignore everyone else’s? She was clearly trying to attract my attention.”
“And I was right. The night we arrived on the island, she pretended to be drunk and kissed me. F*ck, she even succeeded again last night…”
“She complained earlier that I message too often and blocked me again.”
Qin Yun chuckled.
“It’s nothing but playing hard to get. I saw through it ages ago.”
“Do you think I should buy a flat near Jiangcheng Middle School? Otherwise, when I eventually agree to date her, it’ll be inconvenient for her to visit after work.”
As Qin Yun spoke, he had already opened a property app and arranged the listings from highest to lowest price.
He selected a well-decorated flat and was about to show it to Zhou Wu when the other man suddenly turned towards him and asked without context,
“How many points did I score in the basketball final during our second year?”
“?”
Qin Yun was stunned by the question.
“I don’t even remember my university entrance exam score.”
Zhou Wu clicked his tongue faintly and looked back into the distance.
“Why are you suddenly asking?”
Qin Yun tried to remember.
“You scored the most in the entire match, anyway. You played like you were cheating.”
“Afterwards, a coach even asked whether you wanted to join the provincial team. Have you forgotten?”
“Even Old Yu took loads of photographs and uploaded them online.”
Zhou Wu paused.
“Where did he post them?”
Qin Yun scoffed.
“Where else could people post things back then? QQ Space.”
After returning home from the run, Zhou Wu opened his computer and downloaded QQ.
He could not remember how many years had passed since he last opened the application.
He had only created the account to play games.
After moving abroad and switching to other games, he had never logged in again.
He recovered the password using his phone number and signed in.
The group chat from the school anniversary appeared.
Zhou Wu scrolled briefly through the messages.
When he did not find the name he wanted, he exited, casually changed his profile picture to one of the default images and searched his contacts for Yu Binhong.
The old man had been rather fashionable back then.
His profile picture was a heavily pixelated selfie.
It was obvious that he too had abandoned the application long ago, since his last Space update had been seven years earlier.
Yu Binhong had many albums in his Space, each one clearly labelled.
Zhou Wu found the album for his year group, opened it and leaned back against the sofa as he scrolled through the photographs one by one.
Only a few images later, he found the person he wanted.
The photograph appeared to have been taken from the classroom doorway.
Because so much time had passed, the resolution was poor.
Most of the students lay sprawled across their desks, with only a scattered few still sitting upright.
Wen Ci was one of them.
She sat in the front row, her features still youthful.
Her eyelids drooped without energy, and she looked sleepy too.
One hand supported her cheek while the other held a pen.
She looked as though she might collapse at any moment.
She was so small.
Had she really been that tiny in high school?
Zhou Wu checked the date and calculated that it had been during their first year.
Yu Binhong had captioned the photograph:
**Students nowadays have no energy whatsoever.**
Qin Yun had commented beneath it:
**848, can’t we even sleep during break?**
Yu Binhong seemed to have treated the albums as disciplinary records.
Almost every photograph showed students breaking rules.
Zhou Wu scrolled for a long time without seeing Wen Ci again.
Instead, he found himself.
The photograph showed him asleep in the final row of the classroom.
Yu Binhong’s caption read:
**Zhou Wu, skipping PE.**
Zhou Wu laughed and was about to continue scrolling when he suddenly stopped.
It was during PE.
Only he and one other person remained inside the empty classroom.
After a while, he enlarged the photograph and looked at the blurry figure in the corner.
It was Wen Ci.
In the image, Zhou Wu wore the summer uniform.
The fabric across his back was slightly creased.
Wen Ci wore the autumn jacket, its zip neatly pulled up across her chest.
The two of them looked entirely out of place beside each other, as though they belonged to different seasons.
Wen Ci was bent over filling her bottle, yet her head was turned.
She was looking at him.
He faced the window.
Wen Ci faced him.
Neither noticed Yu Binhong secretly taking the photograph from the corridor.
In the next image, Zhou Wu stood in punishment against the corridor wall, wearing a grey sweatshirt.
Yu Binhong’s caption read:
**Zhou Wu, late and not wearing school uniform.**
In the corner beside the window in the front row, Wen Ci held up her English textbook.
Her head was secretly turned out from behind it.
She was looking at him.
The following photograph did not contain Zhou Wu, but Wen Ci was there.
The background was the teachers’ office.
Yu Binhong had written:
**Our class achieved the second-highest average score in the year group on this exam.**
Wen Ci stood with her back to the camera, holding an English test paper.
The contents were too blurred to read, but a small dog had clearly been drawn in the empty space.
Zhou Wu remembered losing five presentation marks because of that dog.
…
Eventually, he reached the photographs from the basketball match.
Zhou Wu ignored himself in the centre of the images and enlarged the audience in the background.
He searched through several photographs until his eyes began to blur.
Finally, in the final image, he found the person he wanted.
Wen Ci was not sitting among the spectators at all.
Outside the wire fence surrounding the basketball court stood a small, thin figure, rising onto her toes to look inside.
Beside her was the familiar old black bicycle.
Zhou Wu had thought about it for a long time the previous night.
If the person she liked truly was not Xiang Wenwen, then perhaps the qualities she had listed before had not belonged to Xiang Wenwen either.
As far as Zhou Wu knew, Xiang Wenwen could not play basketball at all.
Then Zhou Wu had remembered that Wen Ci must have watched one of his matches.
It had been too long ago.
He no longer remembered how he had played and had felt strangely concerned that perhaps he had performed badly.
That was why he had asked Qin Yun and eventually found this album.
Why had every spectator been so tall?
Could Wen Ci even see anything from where she stood?
Zhou Wu lowered his eyes and repeatedly enlarged and reduced Wen Ci’s figure.
Wen Ci really seemed to like him.
She had liked him since high school.
Zhou Wu put down the computer and went onto the balcony to smoke.
He lit the cigarette and held it between his fingers without taking a single drag.
Smoke slowly rose, only to be scattered by the night breeze.
The night was completely silent.
Zhou Wu could hear his own heartbeat.
With lazy absurdity, he tried to remember whether it had ever beaten this quickly before in his life.
From the moment he confirmed that Wen Ci liked him, Zhou Wu had become almost euphoric.
There was also another emotion mixed in that he could not clearly identify.
His ears felt hot.
He could not be bothered caring.
When had Wen Ci begun liking him?
During their first year?
He had no impression of her.
During their second year?
He had carried her to the school infirmary during sports day. She had said thank you, he had nodded, and that had been the end of it.
During their third year?
It must have been earlier than that.
By then, Wen Ci was already reminding him to submit his English homework.
She never bothered when Qin Yun failed to hand his in.
She had liked him yet never confessed.
That made sense.
A little liar like her would never confess.
She would only use alcohol to make herself brave enough to approach him for s*x, while deceiving him that she liked someone else.
Even if she had confessed back then, Zhou Wu might not have accepted.
He had hardly noticed her at all.
Had she liked him all this time?
How had she felt when she discovered he was dating Duan Wei?
After not seeing him for so many years following graduation, had she still liked him?
The cigarette burned down in his hand without him taking a single drag.
Zhou Wu threw the stub into the bin, lit another and held it.
By the time he realised what he was doing, he had already video-called Wen Ci.
She took a while to answer.
Wen Ci sat before a desk with a towel draped over her head, droplets of water falling from the ends of her wet hair.
“Sorry. I was just showering.”
Her phone lay flat on the desk.
Wen Ci looked down into the camera.
Even from such an unflattering angle, she somehow appeared slightly adorable.
Because of what she had said in the car that morning, her gaze remained evasive.
She asked guiltily, “What’s wrong?”
There were still things he had not fully untangled.
Something this important could not possibly be discussed over the phone.
Zhou Wu remained silent for two seconds.
“Yeye wants to see you.”
Wen Ci froze, then looked around.
“I miss him too. Where is he?”
“Beside my leg.”
Wen Ci rested both hands on the desk.
She looked slightly like the girl attending class in those photographs.
She waited.
When Zhou Wu made no further movement, she finally reminded him, “Then move the phone so I can see him?”
“I’m not moving it.”
“…”
“I lied just now. Dogs can’t speak.”
Zhou Wu lowered his eyes towards her.
“I wanted to see you.”
“…”
Beneath the desk lamp, Wen Ci’s face slowly turned red.
“Oh. Oh, all right.”
The call remained silent for several seconds.
Wen Ci leaned closer to the phone and negotiated with him.
“Then can I dry my hair and call you again? I look… slightly ugly right now.”
The cigarette burned down to Zhou Wu’s fingers.
He extinguished it.
Suddenly, he understood what the other emotion had been.
It was heartache.
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