The hot pot on the table was bubbling away, steam rising as Chen Yifang grumbled over the mismatched chopsticks in her hand. She fished out a slice of potato and placed it in Fu Zhi’an’s bowl, then glared at the bamboo chopsticks that were inching toward the spicy broth. “Your lips are already cracked, and you still want to eat spicy food?” she scolded sharply.
The man beside her smiled awkwardly, pulling his chopsticks back and sucking the spicy broth off them before reluctantly setting them down.
Fu Zhi’an poked at the potato slice in his bowl with his chopsticks. It had been cooked a bit too long and crumbled easily with just a little pressure. Chen Yifang was attentive to him, but when it came to food, she wasn’t as meticulous. She wouldn’t have cooked the potato so soft if she had known he liked it firmer. This kind of mushy potato was more to Chi Yu’s liking. For all his six-foot-tall, perpetually sullen demeanor, Chi Yu had a weakness for soft noodles, overly sweet cream cakes, and could sit quietly in a corner for hours with just a bag of jelly snacks.
Fu Zhi’an picked up a small piece of potato and put it in his mouth. The soft, starchy texture wasn’t bad after all.
“Was Chi Yu there when Aunt Wen Hua jumped?” The quiet boy suddenly broke the silence, his voice cutting through the soft bubbling of the hot pot. Fu Jianguo, who had been reaching for his drink, froze. He let out a long sigh, drained his glass, and then looked up at his son.
The night outside was as deep and dark as an oil painting, while the dry, heated air inside made Chi Yu’s throat parched. He pushed aside the papers covering his head, and the silhouette of the boy beside him slowly came into focus. He didn’t know when Fu Zhi’an had arrived, but his black coat was draped over the back of his chair. His long, pale fingers gripped a black pen, his posture perfectly straight as he bent over the paper, occasionally scribbling something down.
“Hmm?” Fu Zhi’an’s deep voice was tinged with fatigue as he finished the last section and turned his head, their eyes meeting.
“When did you get here?” Chi Yu averted his gaze, smoothing out the creased paper and picking up the pen that had fallen to the floor. He glanced at the paper under Fu Zhi’an’s hand, noting a circled answer in the first question. Fu Zhi’an gave him a quick glance before taking the paper from him, erasing the circle, and drawing two horizontal lines under the correct answer.
“Can’t you be more careful when you’re copying answers?” Fu Zhi’an moved his chair closer, explaining the concept and solution to the first problem, one word at a time.
Chi Yu had recently signed up for a tutoring class. After their trip to the amusement park, a girl handing out flyers at the entrance had caught sight of the four of them. She had smiled sweetly and handed the flyer directly to Chi Yu, her tone soft as she asked, “How about checking out our English tutoring classes?” There was something about struggling students that gave off a certain vibe, as if everything about them screamed, “I’m terrible at studying.”
Apparently eager to rid himself of this vibe, Chi Yu had scrawled his name on the sign-up sheet and stormed off to enroll in the tutoring class the very next day. The one-on-one cram course for the college entrance exam was expensive, and after half an hour in the study room, Chi Yu’s initial enthusiasm had all but evaporated. Staring at the tiny print on the paper made his temples throb. His phone screen displayed a photo that Fu Zhi’an had sent earlier—a bubbling pot of rich, red broth with vibrant slices of meat floating in it, looking tender and juicy.
“Bastard,” Chi Yu muttered under his breath, snapping a couple of photos of his own test paper and sending them back. Fu Zhi’an didn’t reply after that, and Chi Yu didn’t send another message either, pretending that Fu Zhi’an had drowned himself in the hot pot.
February’s wind carried a lazy warmth that made it hard to stay focused. Fu Zhi’an rested his chin on his hand, his half-lidded eyes studying Chi Yu. He dotted the empty spaces on his paper with black ink, one dot after another, until Chi Yu’s scalp tingled from the attention. Annoyed, he tossed his pen aside, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair, frowning at him. Under the light, Fu Zhi’an could see the boy’s flushed earlobes and the slight flutter of his long lashes.
Some things are hard to figure out, like why Fu Zhi’an suddenly leaned in, lips quirking up as he murmured that he wanted to count Chi Yu’s eyelashes.
“You’re nuts,” Chi Yu grumbled, turning his head away to avoid looking at him. His hands, resting on the armrest, clenched unconsciously, his knuckles turning white. Remembering the text message from their homeroom teacher that morning, Chi Yu pulled out his phone, swiping through it before casually asking, “What school are you planning to apply to?”
“Medical university, probably.”
Chi Yu’s head shot up, his dark eyes filled with confusion. He raised an eyebrow and asked, “Since when did you want to study medicine?”
Fu Zhi’an rolled up his sleeves, shrugged nonchalantly, and replied in a soft voice, “Just thought it might be interesting.” He looked up and smiled at Chi Yu, his gaze softening into a misty haze. “I guess I’m just destined to save lives.”
“What a load of crap.” Chi Yu scoffed, deliberately avoiding Fu Zhi’an’s smiling face.
The warm yellow light above the table cast a subdued glow. The mention of Wen Hua’s name had doused the lively atmosphere like a bucket of cold water. Chen Yifang stood up, turned the hotpot to its lowest setting, and sat back down. “Wen Hua must have really been at the end of her rope,” Fu Jianguo murmured, staring into his glass. Through the warped glass, he could see a distorted peach. “Otherwise, she wouldn’t have jumped.”
Wen Hua’s suicide had caused quite a stir at the time, even making the local newspaper the next day, taking up the prime space on the front page. The bold, black letters sprawled across the center of the paper, the stark contrast of black and white, along with the solemn layout, felt like an early announcement of her death. Fu Jianguo had been the officer on duty that day. It wasn’t until the ambulance came to take Wen Hua away that he noticed the boy standing on the hospital rooftop.
His face was speckled with mud, his expression blank as he stared down, his toes teetering on the edge of the step like a withered tree ready to fall.
Wen Hua had committed suicide, even taking off her newly purchased slippers and placing them neatly to the side before she jumped, as if she had no regrets. But Fu Jianguo always felt that she must have regretted it. If she had seen Chi Yu gasping for breath as he ran up the stairs, she would never have jumped. What had finally snapped Wen Hua’s last thread was a text message, one that was actually quite ordinary—just another taunt from the mistress. But Wen Hua not only had a heart condition, she was also suffering from depression.
In the years they had been neighbors, Fu Jianguo had never seen any of Wen Hua’s other family members. He had tried calling the father, Chi Yu’s father, who only appeared in their conversations, but the line was always busy.
“The rest you already know,” Fu Jianguo sighed, filling his glass again. “You were the one who brought Chi over that day.”
The rain had just stopped, and the wind that slipped through the seams of his clothes was damp. Fu Zhi’an was walking down the street with his headphones in, his eyes lowered as he carefully stepped over the puddles. Maybe the street was too quiet, or maybe the English recording in his ears was too crisp, but despite the crackle of static, Fu Zhi’an could still hear the footsteps behind him, splashing through the puddles.
He looked up. A boy in a black-and-white school uniform was walking toward him, carrying a white plastic bag that rustled in the wind. As the wind tugged at the cord of his headphones, Fu Zhi’an squinted at the boy’s red-rimmed eyes. The wind made the plastic bag in his hand rustle, and Fu Zhi’an could vaguely make out the shape of a pair of shoes inside.
As they got closer, Fu Zhi’an could see the boy’s tightly pressed lips and bloodshot eyes. He reached up to remove his headphones, but before he could, the boy suddenly hugged him.
It was a fierce hug, with bones colliding and arms like ropes binding him so tightly he could barely move. Fu Zhi’an didn’t say anything, just looked down at the boy resting his head on his shoulder. The boy’s soft hair brushed against his neck, his body trembling slightly, and his arms tightening with every passing second, as if the boy was trying to hide himself in Fu Zhi’an’s embrace.
Fu Zhi’an didn’t know the details, only that this person in his arms had completely distracted him. He hadn’t been able to focus on the English passage playing in his headphones; all he could think about was the faint scent of laundry detergent surrounding him. What happened next was beyond Fu Zhi’an’s expectations—Chi Yu’s father had come to take him away, and he never came back. Later, Fu Zhi’an met Chi Yu’s father. His car was parked downstairs, the man dressed in a perfectly tailored suit, the blue cufflinks gleaming brightly.
The broth in the hot pot had stopped bubbling, a thin layer of oil forming on the surface. Chen Yifang rubbed her reddened eyes, smiling as she stood up and walked to the kitchen. “I forgot the tofu I just cut. Let me go get it.” Staring at the crumbled potato in his bowl, Fu Zhi’an picked up his phone, typed a few words into the search bar, and read the results as his lashes cast a shadow over his eyes.
—Can heart disease be hereditary?
—Yes, it can be inherited from parents to children.
The room was hot and stuffy. The boy next to Fu Zhi’an glared at him, his brows furrowed in anger, but his bright eyes shone with a hidden light.
The things you like as a child, you tend to like even more as you grow up. This applies to people too. Maybe love has always been superficial—a few seconds of eye contact under warm yellow lights or a hug in the glow of the setting sun, enough to linger in memory for a long time. Fu Zhi’an thought there would be many more moments of eye contact with Chi Yu, mornings where their lips would meet in a soft kiss, and nights where their bodies would intertwine in warmth.
But one morning, when he arrived at the classroom and saw the empty desk in front of him, the drawer that had once been overflowing with comic books now cleaned out, and the colorful candy wrappers scattered across the windowsill, Fu Zhi’an realized something was wrong. Wang Xiao ran in through the front door, panting heavily as he grabbed Fu Zhi’an’s shoulder, bent over, and spoke in broken gasps.
“Chi Yu transferred schools.”
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