C3 Part5

Parsed with an automated reader. The content accuracy is not guranteed.

P – Chapter 3.4

P – Chapter 3.5

It didn’t matter how slowly he walked; he still arrived at the studio.

Just as Liang Sizhe was wavering about whether he should go inside to see Cao Ye or whether he should take a cab back in search of peace and quiet, Cao Ye’s sharp eyes caught sight of him — he’d been standing right inside the entrance of Studio 8 and had poked his head out. He shot up his arm and waved, saying, “Liang Sizhe, over here!” He spoke with a lowered voice, most likely worried about Zheng Yin and the others hearing him.

Dragging his feet, Liang Sizhe walked over, his hands in his pockets and body slightly wobbly. With a few steps to go, Cao Ye impatiently jogged out from inside the studio and grabbed his arm, taking large strides back inside. “Dear sir, you’re too slow!”

“What’s going on?” As Cao Ye hauled him in, Liang Sizhe silently thought, young master, you heard what they said inside the room. How could you be so thick to not react at all? But then he thought about it again — Cao Ye was Director Cao Xiuyuan’s only son. He probably never even considered other people being a threat to him…

“Have you even tried to guess what I’m doing?” Cao Ye pulled him into the room closest to the entrance, letting him go before going towards the sofa, bending over and picking up something. He then acted as though he was one of the hosts on the annual Lunar New Year television program, unfurling and shaking open a pair of jeans as though it was a scroll. Holding it up in front of Liang Sizhe, the words ‘please praise me’ shone brightly on his face. “Bet you didn’t guess this! I went to buy a pair of pants for you!”

Liang Sizhe froze when he saw the new pair of jeans in his hands. For the first time, the language system in his brain crashed; for a moment, he couldn’t think of what to say.

“Aren’t they nice?” Since Liang Sizhe didn’t react, Cao Ye flipped his head over to glance at the pants, still holding onto the top of the waistband.

——They really were quite nice. It was a clean, refreshing light acid wash pair of blue jeans with none of those trendy holes, and the brand logo on the waist made it clear that they weren’t cheap.

“Yeah.” His language system had yet to fully recover. Liang Sizhe could only briefly make a noise in response.

Seeing Liang Sizhe’s face still blank, Cao Ye thought he didn’t like them. He said, somewhat deflated, “But they’re still a bit nicer than your dirty ones, right?”

And now, Liang Sizhe thoroughly woke back up. He managed to pull out a hint of a smile with difficulty and said, “No, they’re really nice.”

Cao Ye returned immediately to his previous excitement, his left hand loosely gathering into a fist and thumping himself lightly on his right shoulder. “I thought so. How could I have terrible taste?” Handing the pants to Liang Sizhe, he urged, “Since there’s no one here at the moment, you should hurry up and change into these.” He headed towards the door as he spoke, peeking outside before lifting a hand to lock the door.

Liang Sizhe sat on the sofa with the jeans, curling over to take off his pair of wet and dirty ones. It was a warm day today, and just by walking over, the legs of his old pair of jeans had mostly dried from the wind. But his legs had been stained by the residual sewage water — there was a patch of dry mud left on one of his shins. He was rubbing it off with a hand, his head lowered, when he suddenly felt he’d been a bit unreasonable to have taken his anger out on Cao Ye. This young master, no matter what, made it hard for others to hate him.

“Didn’t you say you had no money?” Tugging the new jeans onto his legs, Liang Sizhe kept his head down and looked for something to say.

“Oh… I don’t have cash.” Cao Ye stood by the window, his face turned to look outside. He raised a hand and rubbed his nose at Liang Sizhe’s question. “But I have a bankcard. I’ve been mooching food off you because I’ve just been too lazy to withdraw some cash… The store earlier took card.”

“How much did you spend?” Liang Sizhe pretended to carelessly ask. If they were expensive, then it would be seriously painful…

“You wouldn’t be thinking about paying me back, right?” Cao Ye guessed the intention behind his question and waved a hand at him, saying, “Forget about it. My dad’s always asking for unreasonable things. Your pants wouldn’t have gotten dirty if it weren’t for him. It’s fine as long as you don’t take it to heart…”

Standing up from the sofa, Liang Sizhe finished pulling up the jeans up to his waist and zipped them up; he then bent back over to slide his belt out from his old pair of jeans, glancing at Cao Ye and smiling. “Are you trying to win people over for your dad?”

“Not even… I can’t be bothered dealing with him.” Cao Ye pursed his lips. “I don’t care about other people, but aren’t we friends?”

Slipping his belt around his waist, Liang Sizhe’s movements stopped for a moment, hearing that. “Yeah… friends.”

“Besides…” Cao Ye’s good mood was clear and obvious through his voice, unable to be hidden. “It wasn’t easy for us to come out. We should take the chance to eat well! You definitely wouldn’t be willing to go out with me if you were dressed like that… Oh yeah, I know of a particularly good Japanese restaurant around here. What do you think about eating there? I’ll treat…”

Rude, loud knocks on the door interrupted him, and a fairly angry, middle-aged male voice came from the outside. “Who’s in here?” He tried to open the door, turning the door handle, but it wouldn’t open since it was locked from the inside. Hammering at the door, the man impatiently yelled, “What are you doing inside? Come out!”

“Coming!” Cao Ye then quietly asked Liang Sizhe, “Hey, are you done?”

“Just about.” Liang Sizhe’s hand was at the back of his waist, trying to push his belt through the loops. “Almost done.”

The man outside prompted them again with irritation. “Hurry up! Don’t make me go in!”

“Uncle1, we’ll be out in just a second!” Cao Ye called out towards the door, and then he walked over, helping Liang Sizhe with his belt and his belt loops.

They heard the sound of a key being inserted into the lock; immediately after, the door was shoved open, and a bald, pudgy and ferocious looking uncle stood at the entrance. He saw the two boys inside standing very closely to each other, and one of them was even fastening up a belt with his head lowered. Having witnessed all kinds of scenes before, the security guard was first speechless — and then he clenched his taser in anger, steaming with fury.

Cao Ye looked up and gave him a sweet smile. “Uncle, we were just borrowing—”

Except the security guard was resistant to such schemes, scowling as he looked around the room. “Get out! What kind of indecent things2 are you guys doing in here?!”

“What indecent…” Liang Sizhe frowned, and before he could finish his sentence, the man interrupted him.

“I’ve seen plenty of people like you guys!” The security guard didn’t give them the chance to explain, brandishing his taser at them to signal them out. “Leave. I saw you guys sneaking in here earlier — I knew you guys wouldn’t be doing anything decent!” He pointed the taser at them. “Why aren’t you guys moving?! Get lost! Or do you want to get tased?”

“Can you tell us what we were doing?” Liang Sizhe took a step forward, staring at him.

“You know exactly what you guys were doing!” Thinking he was the one completely in the right, the guard’s voice was raised high and loud.

Cao Ye could sense that things were about to get out of hand; the two of them were close to getting into a fight with each other. If things escalated and Uncle Yin and the others had to be called over, it’d be hard to escape again. He hurriedly went to hold Liang Sizhe back, a hand going around his shoulders to drag him out the room. “Uncle, we’re leaving…”

Only after exiting the room did they discover that the film studio, deserted just a few minutes ago, was now filled with over a dozen young extras, waiting to shoot their scenes. Both men and women turned to look at them, and all of them had their mouths faintly open as they watched the fierce security guard drive the two youths who’d done ‘indecent things’ outside with his taser.

Words were shooting out of the uncle’s mouth like bullets, Beijing-accented curses flying out one after another, and Cao Ye kept trying to explain (“No… We didn’t… You’re mistaken…”), only to have his words shoved back at him under the uncle’s stream of curses. They were arbitrarily kicked out of the filming studio, and finally, the security guard stood at the entrance, filled with righteousness as he hollered, “I’ve seen plenty of people like you! Doing such obscene things so young! Just leave!”

Liang Sizhe was still furious as he stood in front of the studio. He couldn’t vent it out nor swallow it back down, and since Cao Ye had specifically gone to buy him a pair of ridiculously expensive pants, he couldn’t exactly lose his temper at him — he could only say, somewhat seething, “I say, young master. Do you actually not care? You’re just going to let him insult us like that?”

But Cao Ye retorted back, thinking he was being reasonable, “No… It’s just that if things become more serious and my dad needed to come over, would we still be able to go eat Japanese food tonight?”

Liang Sizhe looked at him, a bit speechless. “Is eating Japanese food that important?”

“Yeah,” Cao Ye nodded, “that place’s really yummy… Besides, we went in without telling them, so it’s normal if the security guard thought we went in to steal something3…”

“What do you mean, ‘steal’.” Liang Sizhe almost laughed in anger. “…You actually think he thought we were stealing stuff?”

“What else…?” Cao Ye said with bafflement, “‘Stealing chickens and touching dogs’. That’s what he just said. Isn’t that stealing?”

Liang Sizhe threw him a look. “HSK level 8, did you say?”

“What else would he think we were doing?” Cao Ye couldn’t understand it.

Liang Sizhe didn’t want to say anything anymore and simply shook his head. “Never mind. Just take it as though he thought we were stealing.”

Cao Ye swiftly replayed all of the things that’d just happened in his brain, and then after a few moments, things abruptly clicked — with sudden realisation, he loudly said, “Ah… So he thought we were… inside…”

“Yes,” Liang Sizhe interrupted him before he finished. “Exactly what you think.”

“I see…” Cao Ye lifted a hand and slapped his forehead. “Now that’s a big misunderstanding…”

The sun was setting, its power weakening; the shadows of the two boys stretched long on the ground.

For a while, they were a bit awkward with each other. No one spoke, and they walked out with their heads down.

After some time, Cao Ye opened his mouth and broke the silence. “Your original pair of jeans…”

Liang Sizhe didn’t need him to finish before he spoke. “I forgot them.”

“Do you want to go back…”

“Nah.”

It’d be rather embarrassing to go back and grab them — who knew what that dozen of extras were thinking of them… After thinking about it, Cao Ye said, “I’ll buy you another pair, then.”

By now, Liang Sizhe’s anger had already disappeared, and he chuckled at Cao Ye. “Do you normally sweet-talk girls like this?”

“Not at all, I’ve never bought clothes for girls before,” Cao Ye defended himself. “This was my first time buying clothes for someone!”

“Really… You’re pretty good with sizes.”

“We’re about the same height, so I bought the size I’m currently wearing…”

“All right. Thanks.” Liang Sizhe looked ahead. “Where’s that Japanese restaurant?”

“About one kilometre away.” Cao Ye jerked his chin in that direction. “It’s not far. We’ll get there soon.”

Nodding, Liang Sizhe didn’t say anything, only continuing to walk forward.

The restaurant was decorated elegantly; as soon as they walked in, cool air brushed against their faces.

A waiter led the two of them to table next to a window. Taking the menu, Cao Ye placed it on the table and started flipping through it. Once he ordered, he pushed the menu across the table towards Liang Sizhe. “What do you want to eat?”

Liang Sizhe didn’t have much of an appetite, so he nudged the menu back with a finger on its edge. “Whatever you order is fine.”

“All right. Then let’s have another serving of this.” Cao Ye pointed at the menu and said to the waiter, “This one… and this one. We’ll just start with these for now.”

“Would you like anything to drink?” the waiter asked after writing everything down. “The drinks are at the back of the menu.”

Turning the menu over, Cao Ye ran his eyes over the options, his eyes pausing at the bottom right-hand corner. “Let’s have a cup of the cherry, the mulberry, the raspberry… Ah, forget it. Just give us a cup of each flavour.”

“Yes, sir,” the waiter responded.

Cao Ye reached over and knocked on the part of the table in front of Liang Sizhe. “What about you? Want anything to drink?”

“Just ice water is fine,” Liang Sizhe absently said, his face turned towards the window, watching the cars driving past.

After returning the menu back to the waiter, Cao Ye looked at Liang Sizhe.

He’d originally wanted to say something, but the moment his eyes landed on Liang Sizhe’s face, his brain went blank — he forgot what he wanted to say.

Such long eyelashes. That was all that was left in his mind. They weren’t very curly and were weighed down a bit, and they followed the up and down movements of Liang Sizhe’s eyes as he blinked. In the tree outside the window, cicadas started chirping right then and there, their timing very apt — those two sweeps of lashes, opening and closing again and again, made him think of thin cicada wings.

His gaze slid from Liang Sizhe’s eyelashes to his left hand, left on the table. His fingers were long and slender, joints clear and distinct, and from the outside, they didn’t look like they’d ever been injured. So why exactly couldn’t he play the violin?

Liang Sizhe pulled his eyes away from the street outside. As soon as he turned back around, he saw Cao Ye absorbed in staring at his left hand, laid flat on the table.

After watching him for a few seconds, Liang Sizhe said, “If you’re curious, go ahead and ask.”

Only then did Cao Ye come out of his thoughts — he belatedly realised that it probably wasn’t too polite to have stared so intently at the wound Liang Sizhe didn’t want to talk about. Shifting away his eyes, Cao Ye scratched his forehead. “I don’t really have anything to ask…”

“Go ahead. What do you want to know?” Liang Sizhe’s voice sounded as though he didn’t care. “What’s wrong with my fingers? Is it true I can’t play violin anymore? What happened to me? Questions like those?”

“You don’t have to force yourself.” Cao Ye didn’t want him to think he was like the people inside the meeting room. He softly said, “If I was really going to ask, I would’ve asked two weeks ago…”

And now it was Liang Sizhe’s turn to start. “Two weeks ago? You… knew I used to play violin?”

“Yes…” Cao Ye said.

“Did you ask… Uncle Yin?” Saying ‘Uncle Yin’ was overly intimate, and it made Liang Sizhe feel a bit self-conscious; his tongue knotted for a moment in the middle of his sentence.

“No, not him,” Cao Ye quickly explained. “I guessed…”

“Huh?” Liang Sizhe was faintly surprised. “How’d you guess that?”

“I guessed the night I climbed up to the roof and saw you play the guitar,” Cao Ye confessed. “You were playing the Devil’s Trill Sonata, and you remembered the piece so well. You were even playing with your left hand, so I guessed… People who’ve never played the violin wouldn’t so bored to go out of their way to specifically learn that piece, right…”

So that’s why… Liang Sizhe gave a wry smile. And he’d been so relieved that night, too — but Cao Ye had guessed since so very long ago. He then asked, “Then why didn’t you ask about it?”

Cao Ye stretched out his arms and rested them on the table, his hands folding together. He somewhat uneasily grasped at the back of his hand with the fingers of his other hand, his posture like a primary school student caught doing something wrong. Twisting his face away to look out the window, he said in a quiet voice, “The words ‘don’t ask — if you ask, I’ll jump off the building’ were written all over your face. You didn’t want to talk about it at all, so how could I have brought it up…”

So he’d looked so pitiful? And he thought he’d been pretending so very well too, Liang Sizhe thought.

“So does that mean you also guessed that there was something wrong with my fingers?” Liang Sizhe continued to ask.

“Yeah,” Cao Ye replied. “But they were just guesses… You were so unhappy and climbed all the way up to the roof to play a violin piece with a guitar, so I thought it must’ve had something to do with the violin.”

Liang Sizhe lowered his head and bitterly smiled. A moment later, he let out a barely audible sigh. The young master sitting across from him was truly astonishingly smart — and astonishingly kind.

Translator has something to say:

Obviously the security guard isn’t Cao Ye’s uncle haha. Just another polite way of referencing people who are older than you when you don’t know their names! ↩The idiom used here is 偷鸡摸狗, translated literally into ‘stealing chickens and touching dogs’. Most often used to refer to people doing things they shouldn’t be doing (ahem) (although not always — it can also mean shady business dealings but obviously that’s not what the security guard means here) in places they shouldn’t be doing them. ↩Cao Ye here taking the idiom above very literally haha. ↩

Like this:Like Loading...

Related