Chapter 1

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“Your name is Gao Yu? The ‘yu’ from ‘yōu yù?’” [1]

“No, the ‘yu’ from ‘yù yù cāng cāng.’” [2]

Ten years ago, I was attending my first year of high school. The first familiar person I saw in class was Zhao Pingchuan: a classmate of mine from elementary. As I didn’t know any of my other classmates, I soon started hanging out with him. Zhao Pingchuan had a large circle of friends, the one he was closest to in that circle was Li Weisen[3], who had a rather cultured name. Ever since school started however, Li Weisen had been late to class every day. I only saw his face a week after classes had officially begun.

The minute I laid my eyes on him, I felt a wave of irritation rise inside me. He looked like a gangster who had a permanent mischievous grin plastered on his face. He acted like we’d been friends for years and often made remarks about my appearance. I instinctively disliked him. But as Xiao Chuan[4] was friends with him, I tried not to argue with him. However, I’d already put his name down on my personal blacklist. Whenever he spoke to me, I would reply brusquely. And despite the fact that we hung out with the same crowd of people, I never paid him any attention.

If we are talking about being “sullen,” then Xiao Chuan did indeed have a somewhat depressive personality. Even though he was surrounded by a large crowd of friends, he would occasionally fall into periods of exaggerated grief and sorrow. I found that act of his hilarious. He was a bit artificial and a bit sly, but girls rather liked him for it. Apparently, he had started dating girls when he was just thirteen. Of course, he was involved in all the necessary fights with our gang as well. In our circle of friends, we solved all personal troubles as a group. It didn’t matter if it were a scuffle between two people, we’d all join in. At that age, everyone was simply too hot-blooded. We were all passable in looks, but our grades were disastrous. Besides that, we were all living the life. We were successful and invincible, be it in the battlefields of love or life.

For the most part, all of us had dated girls at one point. We didn’t dare go over the limits of what was appropriate, but hugs and kisses went all around. We had the most fun meeting up and sharing our experiences and secretly watching some Category III films[5]. We were all dirty-mouthed, especially during that hot-blooded age. All taboos were off with the jokes we cracked amongst ourselves. The ones who were the most creative were the three of us: Xiao Chuan, Li Weisen, and I. No matter what kind of nonsense Xiao Chuan came up with, I could latch on and add my own twists to the joke. Whenever Li Weisen spoke however, I would immediately quiet down. The spit that flew from his mouth while he talked was simply disgusting. He’d definitely made up all the things he’d bragged about. I didn’t believe a single word when he said he’d managed to catch a girl; even when he started describing how big the girl’s chest was, how thin a waist she had, or how pale her skin was.

There was finally a time when we ended up fighting. I had gone to the movies with the girl he was chasing. He punched me right outside the classroom. After some consoling words from Xiao Chuan, he stopped hitting me, but couldn’t resist calling me a sociopath who deliberately resented him. Although I could swear to god that I didn’t know he had a thing with the girl, I purposely incited him: “So what if I resent you, what can you do about it? She was the one who asked me out. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have noticed her at all!”

When he heard that, he pushed Xiao Chuan aside and charged at me. After a long, fierce fight, we were both bloodied and injured. Even the people who had come to stop us couldn’t avoid the wayward punch. Near the end of our scuffle, the zipper on his jacket made a long scrape against the side of my face. As I was writhing around in pain, he held me down and started punching me repeatedly. Needless to say, he won that fight. I was an appalling sight to behold afterwards. Perfectly satisfied at the results, he left me a warning: “You won’t win over me this entire lifetime!”

Having heard news of the fight, a teacher came over and asked me what happened. Following the rules of our group in which we didn’t breathe a word to outsiders, I said I had run into the wall. It was a lie that wouldn’t fool anyone, but the teacher was powerless to refute it with her limited intelligence.

Xiao Chuan tried to support me up from the ground, but I rejected his help. I ditched class that day and went home. As I lay on my bed mulling over the fight, I became angrier the more I thought about it. That bastard Li Weisen, what kind of goddamn hero did he think he was to have beaten me with that sort of cheap method!

As I lay there cursing 18 generations of Li Weisen’s ancestors, my dad came home. He dawdled for a moment in the living room before coming into my room. Despite seeing my sorry figure lying on the bed, for the first time ever, my dad didn’t scold me. He had on an odd expression that I’d never seen before: blank and lifeless, none of his normal vigor remained. He sat in my room for a long time without speaking.

It wasn’t until I bumped him—scared out of my wits at his state—that he started out of his reverie. He then told me something I’d never expected to hear: “Your mom… She left.”

I didn’t know how to react to that. I could only follow up with: “Where did she go?”

“I don’t know… She said she’s never coming back, never coming back to this house again… She took everything with her: clothes, documents, make-up… She only left behind a letter… But everything was fine just yesterday…”

More than shock, my dad’s self-mumbling numbed me to the core and an unprecedented fear rose inside me. I couldn’t listen to him anymore. I ran to my parents’ room and pulled open the closet. Sure enough…my mother’s clothes had all disappeared. The various bottles and jars that had been sitting on the bedside table were similarly nonexistent.

It was obvious what had happened: my beautiful mother didn’t want us anymore. Moreover, she hadn’t given us a single hint of what she was going to do. No, perhaps the brand-name sneakers she’d bought me the day before was the only proof. How clean of her, she’d cut me off with a single pair of shoes…

I didn’t hate her, and I feel the same even now. Back then however, I calmly understood something: I lived in a mercurial and irregular world. There wasn’t anything that wasn’t subject to change. This law applied even when it came to the one thing that was most capable of giving me the illusion otherwise: the home that I’d been born and raised in.

After that revelation, I took three days off from school. I did nothing but sleep. If the pain of my wounds woke me up, I’d get up and read a lousy book. I didn’t pick up the phone at all. I also didn’t cry a single tear during those three days. Besides drinking a few glasses of water, I didn’t eat anything, because my dad didn’t cook anything. He went to work every day but would stare off into space when he came home. I’d feel a suffocating pain whenever I glanced over at him. It was harder to face his blank expression than to endure the agony of hunger. On the morning of the fourth day, I took a shower and changed into clean clothes. Afterwards, I pulled out some money from the drawer and left for school.

When I reached school, Xiao Chuan chased me down and anxiously asked where I’d been for the past three days. He complained about how there wasn’t anyone at home when he’d called. I explained simply, “I didn’t go anywhere.” Afterwards, I pulled him along with me to eat breakfast at the school cafeteria.

My appetite was amazing that day. I ate two big bowls of noodles and two stuffed buns. My obvious starvation stopped Xiao Chuan’s incessant mumbling in its tracks.

“Holy cow, how many days haven’t you eaten?”

“Three days.”

“What! Did you take any medicine?”

“Didn’t need to. I’m not sick or anything. I simply wanted to sleep.”

“Then… Weisen, he…”

“If you see yourself as my bro, then don’t bring up his name again. I still want to eat something. Don’t try to hold me back.”

“It’s not that… He agreed to apologize to you. He really went overboard this time.”

“I don’t need his apology! Who asked you to do that! He wants to apologize? I don’t want to hear it!” Growling, I tossed my third stuffed bun away. “Why do you like doing unnecessary things like this? This is a problem between him and me. It has nothing to do with you!”

With a wounded expression, Xiao Chuan explained, “But both of you are my friends… How does that have nothing to do with me?”

All the anger flowed out of me when I saw the pitiful sight he made. For a moment, I forgot all the bad things that had happened these few days. Snickering, I said, “What are you doing? Isn’t your acting way too fake?”

“I’m being serious. Can’t you forgive him?”

“Forgive him? Ha, shouldn’t it be the other way around?” I lowered my voice, and said with a hint of anger, “Everybody thinks he’s all high and mighty, but he only won because of that sort of cheap method.”

“Haha. He had some bad injuries as well. Neither of you lost and neither of you won. Haha.”

Xiao Chuan’s hollow laugh made me smile.

“What the hell are you laughing for? Your expression is way too ugly! Way too fake! All right, let’s just forget this whole thing. Can you make a normal expression now?”

“For real? That’s great! I love you the most! Come, give me a kiss!”

Xiao Chuan’s face lit up with a smile and moved his puckered lips right in front of me. Frowning, I pushed him away, but couldn’t resist a smile in the end.

“How disgusting can you be? Stop fooling around.”

“Ah, I’m wounded. I was serious.”

Xiao Chuan’s loud voice attracted many eyes to us. Blushing, I gave him a light punch.

“Why are you yelling? Everybody’s going to think we are strange!”

“So what if we are strange? Maybe they are strange as well! Haha.”

Xiao Chuan’s broad smile wiped away the smidge of unease inside my heart. He was right. We were just fooling around. Where was the harm in that?

At that time of age, I was incapable of imaging any level of intimacy occurring between two people of the same sex. That distant, foreign world was as incomprehensible as an alien from a strange planet. I didn’t have a clear understanding of it. The only impression I had came from fragments of classic erotic novels that I had read in secret. At most, I had a minimal understanding of the perverse act it involved. Not long after that day however, a bolt from the blue hit me and I realized something: I, Gao Yu, would be wrapped in the chains of that disgraceful and sinful term for the rest of my life.

Translation Notes:

[1] 忧郁 (yōu yù) meaning sullen.

[2] 郁郁苍苍 (yù yù cāng cāng) meaning verdant forest.

[3] Weisen (唯森) meaning solitary forest.

[4] Xiao (小) is a form of endearment that is often added to Chinese names to show closeness. Alternatively, you may see double names such as “Chuan Chuan” which is also done frequently to show endearment.

[5] Explicit films rated 18+ in the Hong Kong film industry.

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