Chapter 2

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“Don’t bother looking for me anymore.”

“Why?”

“There’s isn’t a why. I’m just tired.”

I returned to my normal school life, but kept quiet about what had happened to my family from everyone, including Xiao Chuan. I didn’t want to see, listen, or even guess at the sympathetic faces and words people would offer me upon learning about it. I only needed to act the same as before, like nothing had ever happened.

However, I stopped being hostile towards Li Weisen. There were two reasons for that: One, I didn’t want to make things awkward for Xiao Chuan. Two, I had chanced upon Li Weisen in the classroom that day. He’d turned towards me and our similarly bruised faces were like mirrors. We burst into laughter at the sorry sight we made and all the problems between us seemed to have melted away. Thinking about it, Li Weisen hadn’t done anything to me that I couldn’t live with. Moreover, he’d readily apologized and allowed me to keep my reputation. What reason did I have to keep despising him?

On the way home that day, I bought an armload of snacks, bread, and fruit jam. After entering the door, I tossed a few to my dad, who was still staring blankly into space. I didn’t say anything to him and went to shower before camping out on my bed. I spent a long time stuffing myself full of those awful tasting bread and snacks. The next day when I was getting ready to leave, I saw that the coffee table was missing a few packages of food, but had an additional piece of paper.

After school ends, come home early. I’ll have dinner ready and waiting for you.

With that, my home life returned to normal the fifth day my mom decided to walk out on us. However, my dad and I never mentioned the matter to each other. It had become one of our secrets, a rapidly formed scar. At school, I became closer to my friends, including Li Weisen. After hanging around him for a while, I found that he wasn’t as irritating as I had imagined. Sure, he was a bit frivolous and liked to exaggerate. For some reason, he also liked teasing girls and fooling around with them. Xiao Chuan also had this problem, moreover… Well, I wasn’t much better. After putting aside my unintentional dislike for Li Weisen, the three of us became good friends who were inseparable for real.

If I had to say the one thing that changed due to the matter with my mom, it would be that I suddenly developed a sense of dread toward girls. I never knew what they were thinking, and I could never trust their words or their appearances. Trying to get along with girls became very tiring for me; to the point that I’d lost my normal enthusiasm upon seeing their clean faces and hearing their soft voices. As a result, I tried to break up with the girl I was dating. Faced with her angry expression, I was at a loss of how to explain myself. I could only offer her a “tired” as an explanation, and that “tired” earned me a hard slap to the face. I was especially glad that she didn’t cry; otherwise, I really wouldn’t know what to do.

My so-called first love wrapped up in such a simple manner. I didn’t feel any regret or sadness. Either I never really liked her, or I was a heartless bastard from birth who treated everyone aside from my friends with indifference. Friendship between men was something that couldn’t be defined with words. It was the kind of friendship where we’d put our lives on the line for each other and start a fight for something as simple as reputation. This was something girls would never understand.

Even though I was keeping a secret from my friends, it didn’t prevent us from becoming closer. The ten of us became a solid group. In doing so, we raised the alarm of the teachers at school. At the first sign of trouble, they would take each of us aside for a few words of guidance: “You’re still young. Don’t step onto the wrong path and get involved with the wrong group.”

We didn’t see anything bad about that. In fact, we were rather proud of ourselves as it proved the might of our group. Truly, we were too young back then. We were drunk on the vanity of having someone’s attention on us. It didn’t matter how that attention came about. We didn’t care that the teachers looked at us with loathing and treated us with contempt; playing tricks on them became our favorite pastime. It wasn’t until several of us took up our pencils and buckled down to study out of various reasons that we sighed at our immaturity. After all, students nowadays definitely dealt with more headaches and stress then we ever did.

Of course, none of us felt any shame for what we did back then. Xiao Chuan, Li Weisen, and I barely attended any of the nightly self-study sessions. After missing so many of them, the teachers didn’t even have the patience to care about us anymore. They decided to release the reins and gave us the freedom to do as we wished. In any case, their responsibility to us would end after we graduated.

The moment that set my lonely future in motion took place during one of those self-study sessions that we skipped like normal. Li Weisen was acting a bit unusual that night. He had drunk a lot of beer and smoked a lot of cigarettes, yet he hadn’t spoken a word since we arrived at the bar. I looked at Xiao Chuan and motioned with my eyes: What’s wrong with him?

Xiao Chuan pulled me over to the bathroom. In the overwhelming stench that was characteristic of public bathrooms, he told me Li Weisen’s secret.

For the last two years, he had been secretly in love with a girl but never confessed to her. He had prepared many gifts for her, yet never sent any of them out. He finally gathered up his courage and confessed to her today but received “no” as an answer. Despite that, he was going to guard her tonight on the road she always took home and quietly watch her go.

“Then what?” I asked Xiao Chuan dumbly. I couldn’t really believe the story. How could a frivolous person like Li Weisen be serious about a girl?

Using a wise voice that greatly contradicted with his young appearance, Xiao Chuan sighed. “Then? There isn’t a then. He says he has his pride, so he won’t pester her anymore. Rather, it’s good that it ended simply.”

“…Really?” I had a strange feeling inside my heart. Wasn’t he a bit too mature for his age? He was already serious about relationships at thirteen? Did that mean his normal frivolous image was fake? No wonder why he was furious with me when I had gone out with the girl he liked.

Like him, I also had a secret and took up a disguise every day. I feigned indifference to say goodbye to a person who had once been important to me. At that moment, I realized how similar we were. The two of us, we were one of a kind.

Many years later, I would discover how off the mark I was, but it was too late. The misconception I had been living under for so long couldn’t be washed away to allow me to relive my life from the beginning.

When Xiao Chuan and I returned to the bar, Li Weisen was gone. We ran out to search for him and found him sitting quietly on the steps leading up to a shopping center across the brightly lit street. His eyes were tracing after a lithe figure that swept past him gracefully.

Xiao Chuan and I didn’t go over to him. We stood on the other side of the street and watched him. Under the streetlight, I made out his face: there wasn’t much expression to be seen. The only thing that lingered on his features were the traces of pure loneliness. It was the same expression I made every night while forcing myself to forget about her; the same expression that reflected back at me in the mirror.

The strange feeling came back even stronger this time. I stood in my spot and stared at him motionlessly. Xiao Chuan said something to me, but I couldn’t hear him. In this world called Lonely, there was only me, and him.

Around an hour later, he stood up from the steps and walked over to us. He wound his arms around our shoulders and said, “You guys are great friends. That was some great loyalty I saw there. Let’s go.”

While walking, Xiao Chuan asked him, “Are you all right now?”

“I’m fine. We…” Smiling, he tightened his grip. “Let’s continue our late-night snack!”

“That’s how you should be acting!” Xiao Chuan laughed and started tickling him.

I couldn’t laugh. My heart suddenly beat faster and faster, thumping at an unprecedented rate. The arm he had around my shoulder seemed to burn me with its warmth. I didn’t know why I was reacting like that. Instead, I was scared. Extremely scared. His voice was the same as before, yet it was different at the same time. My face and the tips of my ears suddenly felt hot. I was definitely coming down with a cold, I thought.

My suspicions about this feeling of mine that had been deemed hopeless from the beginning were confirmed a few weeks later. I found I could no longer use a mere cold to explain what I was experiencing. I could no longer meet his eyes out of fear that my face would turn red. I felt awkward and ill at ease whenever he brushed against me. And whenever he spoke, I could feel my heart raging like a thunderstorm… It shocked and frightened me to the extent that I felt the apocalypse was coming. I didn’t have a cold; I was going crazy!

Yes, besides going crazy, I didn’t know how to explain it. It was… It was like how I would react whenever I saw a beautiful girl before. No… It was even worse. I had never lost my bearings when it came to a girl before. At that realization, I intentionally started treating him with indifference, while doubling my warmth for the other guys in our group. I was afraid that someone would see through my façade to the insanity I held within. However, whenever everybody’s attention was on something else, I would secretly peek at him out of the corners of my eyes. Later when I was alone, I would recall the scene and slowly reflect over every minute detail having to do with him. Eventually, I began to switch between moments of extreme silence and bouts of excessive liveliness.

He and Xiao Chuan were both smart. They soon noticed that I was acting weird. More than once, Xiao Chuan questioned me over whether I was still smarting over the fight I had with Li Weisen ages ago.

He, on the other hand, would confront me directly and say, “If you have something to say, then come out with it already! What the hell are you doing?”

What could I say? What could I do? After thinking a bit, I said, “I’m fine. I just feel down for some reason… It’ll be gone in a few days.”

I gave the same speech to myself: You’ll be fine in a few days. This isn’t normal! You know this! You can’t act like this! You must be the same as before. He’s your friend, one of your bros. Don’t act crazy! Even if you must pretend, you will pretend until the end!

Putting on an act wasn’t difficult for me. I only needed to make sure my heartbeat was never heard. I also gradually learned to control the blush that would decorate my face. After much effort, I managed to return to my former cheerful self on the surface. I joked around and continued spewing out profanities with my friends. I was bolder during fights than before. During those moments when fists were exchanged, I almost forgot that I was abnormal. When faced with him, I put all of my effort into steadying my gaze and making sure it didn’t wander. When I spoke, I made sure to control the level of calm I exuded, even if my palms were sweating profusely the whole time.

It seemed as if I were fighting a perilous battle where the only enemy was myself. Before sleeping each night, I would undergo a series of thought training with myself. Only afterwards would I feel safe enough to allow myself some room to breathe. I would spend a few minutes thinking of his voice, his movements, and his expressions…

During the winter sports festival at my school, I forwent signing up for the short-distance sprints that I excelled at, and instead selected to participate in the 3000-meter long-distance run that I normally wouldn’t even practice for. My homeroom teacher couldn’t stop smiling at my choice. I had solved a big problem for him.

My friends asked if I had gotten hit on the head. I laughed and answered, “That’s right. Do you guys want to run with me?”

The practice before the actual race was long and taxing. Taking advantage of the special permission I received from my homeroom teacher, I skipped the morning self-study sessions. In the hazy light of the early morning, I would run past street after street. I ran until I had trouble breathing, until my body threatened to collapse. Time and time again, I pushed my body to the limits and challenged my lack of endurance. Despite my physical exhaustion, I would feel a numbing calm spread across my heart at the end of my run.

Xiao Chuan skipped class twice to run with me, but I left him well and far behind each time. Li Weisen was cleverer than him. He would ride on a bike and keep pace with my steps while not forgetting to harass me the whole way. “Are you out of your mind? Can you at least stop and take a break?”

But I ran. My destination was an end I couldn’t see. Finally, I ran for the last time during the sports festival. I had managed to come in second in the whole school.

When I sped past the finish line, the two of them surrounded me. While panting for breath, I smiled at them.

Xiao Chuan jumped in excitement and gave me a punch. “I knew you could do it!”

Li Weisen, the one person I was still terrified of facing, revealed an astonished expression mixed with a hint of bewilderment. “I didn’t expect you to actually… You’ve really gotten me this time!”

From that moment on, I possessed astonishing endurance. In the days to follow, it would help me surmount the numerous obstacles that almost led me to the brink of collapse.

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