When he arrived in Qin City, he had already taken his phone to a repair shop to have it completely wiped, clearing out the Trojan that had been implanted in it. But once bitten, twice shy. Ji Xun stared at the screen for two seconds, developing a faint shadow of trauma from WeChat conversations. He decided to just call directly.
The call connected quickly. Huo Ranyin’s voice sounded in Ji Xun’s ear, so close that if he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine Huo Ranyin sleeping next to him, whispering to him.
Just thinking about it made his body warm up as if in response.
“Hello?”
“You found Meng Fushan? That was fast,” Ji Xun said. “You really are petty and obsessed with him.”
“Are you willing to tell me about him now?” Huo Ranyin’s voice carried a hint of sarcastic teasing. “Your secret object of clandestine meetings that you didn’t want anyone to discover.”
“The way you say it makes it sound like there’s something illicit between us,” Ji Xun protested.
“Isn’t there?”
“No,” Ji Xun replied grumpily. “All my illicit relationships are—”
“Hm?”
“Are with you.”
He said it, as if he had let slip a sweet nothing he hadn’t intended to say. He felt a little embarrassed for a moment, averted his gaze, and stared at the decorative clock on the bedside table. It was a Western-style clock, with a naked little angel holding a bow and arrow perched on the round clock face. What was this angel called again?—Cupid.
He raised his hand and touched the heart-shaped arrowhead. The arrow “swoosh—” aimed at his heart.
He moved his eyes away again, and brought up Meng Fushan as a cover: “Alright, let me tell you about Meng Fushan. He was my university classmate. Speaking of him, I can also mention the case I handled at Qinjiang Affiliated High School before…”
2007
This was the third hostel Ji Xun had found deep in the alley.
The entrance to the hostel was very hidden. Outside was a small shop selling cigarettes and drinks. The shop’s sign was sponsored by Wahaha mineral water. On the bright red background, the five black characters “Friendship Shop” were not very conspicuous to begin with, let alone the much smaller characters below them that read “Rooms for rent, with internet, 50/day.”
The uncle at the shop looked at Ji Xun, and Ji Xun looked back at the uncle.
On the glass counter between them lay the bills and coins Ji Xun had scraped together from all his pockets.
A total of one 20, two 10s, one 5, two one-yuan coins, and one fifty-cent coin, totaling 47.5 yuan.
The uncle’s eyes shot out from behind the slit of his newspaper. In front of his face was a welfare lottery newspaper. This shop also ran a lottery business. “You’re still 2.5 short.”
Ji Xun fumbled in his wallet again, and finally, from a crevice in the wallet, he pulled out a 10-cent coin and placed it on the pile of money.
“10 cents,” the uncle said speechlessly. “You’re still short…”
“Uncle, please, please,” Ji Xun put his hands together. “This student is really broke. Besides, it doesn’t look like you get much business here anyway. Just round it down for me, okay?”
“Students should study hard. Why are you running here to stay in a hostel? Had a fight with your parents? You should be more understanding. They’re your own parents, how could they not have your best interests at heart?”
The uncle grumbled a few words, swept the money from the counter into the drawer below with his newspaper, and then handed out a card.
“Third floor, 301. Swipe the card to enter. Take care of the things inside. You’ll have to pay if you break anything.”
“I know, I know,” Ji Xun took the card and walked towards the stairs next to the shop.
He didn’t know when these stairs were built, but they were actually made of wood. An electric wire ran along the concrete wall, with a faulty light bulb wrapped in cobwebs hanging from it.
Stepping on it, it creaked and dropped dust.
But there was no time to be picky now. As Ji Xun was still walking up, he took out his phone and started calling his dorm mates.
Out of ammunition and supplies, requesting support!
The dorms at the Public Security University were for four people. He called them one by one. His roommate on the lower bunk sighed, “Bro, I’m a bit tight on cash recently too. I’ll give you two hundred for emergency.” The roommate on the lower bunk of the bed across from him sounded confused, “What’s this about solving a case? It sounds unreliable. You should come back quickly. I’m on edge every day answering the roll call for you in class, so scared the teacher will find out.” Nagging was nagging, but after he finished, he also gave three hundred yuan.
Now he had five hundred yuan. Ji Xun calculated that it was probably enough. He hadn’t originally planned to ask the last roommate for help.
The first two roommates were named Chu Jiayou and Cai Wenming. Their names were very easy to remember. When Ji Xun first moved into the dorm, he heard them joke about themselves, saying their names had “pig” and “vegetable,” a perfect combination of meat and vegetables, nutritionally complete.
These two were his roommates since freshman year. Ji Xun got along well with them. Only the last one, Meng Fushan, was not originally his roommate. He was his fixed partner in combat training classes.
This person was cold by nature, preferring to act rather than speak. His solitary figure on campus was like a lone wolf. At his most extreme, Ji Xun had trained with Meng Fushan for five days in one week, and in those five days, no matter what Ji Xun said, Meng Fushan had never responded with a single word.
It made Ji Xun think for a while that the other person had a problem with him. It wasn’t until the end of freshman year that Meng Fushan suddenly came to him and asked, “There’s an empty spot in your dorm. Can I move in?”
Only then did he realize that Meng Fushan was probably just someone who really didn’t like to talk. Besides that, he was also a very good buddy. For example, this time, Ji Xun had just vaguely mentioned his current predicament, and the other person directly said:
“A thousand.”
“Huh?”
Ji Xun was just opening the door as he finished climbing the stairs. You couldn’t expect much from a 50-yuan room. Almost everything exuded an air of old age and decay. When Ji Xun pushed the door open, his ears could only hear a loud creaking sound, as if the metal hinge of the door hadn’t been lubricated in ten thousand years.
“Sorry, I didn’t catch that just now. What did you say?”
“I can lend you a thousand yuan,” Meng Fushan said clearly, repeating himself.
“Bro, I’m not actually that short…” Ji Xun was flattered. His feeling now was similar to when Meng Fushan had specifically sought him out to transfer to his dorm. He always felt that their relationship hadn’t reached that level, yet the other person repeatedly exceeded his expectations.
“If I give it to you, just take it.” Meng Fushan was always simple and direct, sparing with his words. “I don’t want to go home for the winter break. You should have heard about my family situation. I’ll come to your place to hang out then. Just give me half your bed.”
Ji Xun really did know a thing or two about Meng Fushan’s family situation. It wasn’t that he had specifically inquired; he had heard it all from classmates’ gossip… Being popular was such a hassle. Even if you didn’t want to know, gossip grew wings and flew into your ears automatically.
Meng Fushan’s parents had divorced early on. During the summer of his high school graduation, his father made a decision to have the aunt he had been dating for many years move into their home. The aunt was also divorced and had a boy who was three years younger than Meng Fushan, now a junior high graduate, about to enter high school.
Meng Fushan was a bit unaccustomed to the newly added aunt and brother, but it didn’t matter, since he had already finished his college entrance exams and was about to leave home for university. But the brother the aunt brought was unwilling.
To sabotage the combination of the two families, the brother used every means possible. In the end, he even publicly declared himself gay and, in the middle of the night, broke into Meng Fushan’s room, woke the sleeping Meng Fushan, and confessed his love to him.
Meng Fushan had never spoken of the chaos, the nervous breakdown, the emotional collapse of that time. But just thinking about it, Ji Xun couldn’t help but shed a tear of sympathy for Meng Fushan.
In short, the final result was that Meng Fushan, who had been hesitating between several schools, as soon as his scores were out and he could fill in his choices, filled in the Capital Public Security University for his first, second, and third choices. He was determined to use the sunshine and masculinity to wash away the “creaminess” that had rubbed off on him—the three-years-younger brother his stepmother brought was a boy with effeminate looks.
However, after entering the Public Security University, Meng Fushan didn’t seem to have completely escaped the psychological shadow of his brother.
In his freshman year, there was a pair of bunkmates in his dorm who got along relatively well. It was inevitable that their actions were a bit more intimate, like putting arms around each other’s shoulders, hugging, showering together, sleeping in the same bed… From Ji Xun’s perspective, it was really nothing. But Meng Fushan still couldn’t stand it. At the end of his freshman year, he requested a dorm change from Ji Xun.
That request was made by Meng Fushan after a combat training session.
He still clearly remembered the scene of that day. That day, Meng Fushan had been a bit heavy-handed. Half of his shoulder was aching as if from a cramp. Grinning in pain, he took out a water bottle and a towel from his backpack to wipe his face.
That towel was a brown bear towel.
During his university years, many of his things were prepared by Ji Yu. His family had always practiced gender equality. He had as much pocket money as his sister. His pocket money was usually spent as soon as he got it each month. But Ji Yu, on the other hand, could save some money at the end of each month, sometimes one or two hundred, sometimes two or three hundred.
Girls clearly had many more things to spend money on than boys. He didn’t know how she managed to save it.
In short, because she had money on hand, Ji Yu would often give him small gifts, from backpack charms to water cups to towels to sports wristbands. Unknowingly, his daily use items were all provided by Ji Yu.
At that time, Ji Yu was only 14, and her aesthetic was always cute and adorable. Whenever he showed up with these cute little things, he would always attract a lot of attention in the dorm and in class.
He had also gotten used to showing off his cute little sister to everyone whenever he had the chance. He remembered that most of his classmates had pestered him about his sister, except for Meng Fushan, who always pretended not to hear and would walk past with a disdainful, cold expression.
But that time, after wiping his face with his sleeve and staring at his little bear towel for a good while, Meng Fushan asked to switch dorms. After he agreed, Meng Fushan added, as if gilding the lily:
“Is your sister really that cute?”
After briefly finishing the story of Meng Fushan from their university days, Ji Xun laughed into the phone at Huo Ranyin, “That guy, he’s actually quite funny. After I found out he moved to my dorm because he was homophobic, I seriously asked him, ‘What if I were GAY?’ Guess how he reacted?”
“How did he react?” Huo Ranyin asked curiously.
“He gave me a sidelong glance and coolly dropped two words, ‘Not possible’,” Ji Xun said.
“That’s a real slap in the face,” Huo Ranyin commented.
“His eyes are intermittently blind,” Ji Xun mocked. “Falling for Ji Yu was a rare moment of clarity in his blind life. It’s a pity Ji Yu never thought of him that way and always treated him like another older brother…”
A hint of this regret slipped out inadvertently, and was then erased by Ji Xun.
“There’s not much to say about Meng Fushan,” Ji Xun said.
Everyone meets many people in their life. Some people, although they are compatible with you in every way and as close as siblings, cannot escape the various tricks of fate. You can only watch as an uncrossable chasm forms between you, forcing both to turn their backs and walk away, growing ever more distant.
“Let me tell you about another person I met in Qin City,” Ji Xun continued.
In that instant, Huo Ranyin had a premonition. He held his breath, and after a long moment, he heard his own voice, sounding somewhat distorted.
“Who?”
“Zhou Zhaonan,” Ji Xun said. “A kid I met at Qinjiang University Affiliated High School.”
