Shan Yu couldn’t speak immediately.
It even took him several seconds to figure out what Chen Jian’s sentence meant. It was a perspective he had never thought of, never even considered.
He looked at Chen Jian.
His gaze then slowly fell on the fire pit behind him.
The fire in the pit was now burning more vigorously than before, the flickering flames carrying a golden, bright warmth. After watching for a long time, the heat made his eyes feel warm.
He sighed softly, shifted his gaze, and looked back at Chen Jian’s face.
“No matter when, as long as you’re here, I feel at ease. No trouble, no difficulty seems like a big deal,” Chen Jian looked at him, “But I can still feel that you could disappear at any moment.”
Shan Yu didn’t speak.
“You don’t mind others disappearing, because you yourself could disappear at any time,” Chen Jian said.
“I just wanted,” Shan Yu propped his head on his hand, unconsciously rubbing his temple, “to give you some leeway, some space to think. You already think a lot as it is…”
“I already told you, I remember everything,” Chen Jian said, “I don’t need to pretend I don’t remember.”
This sentence made Shan Yu raise his head slightly.
Yes, now that Chen Jian had said it, he suddenly realized he had overlooked a very important trait in Chen Jian.
He had always been thinking, just as Chen Jian had said, that he had no opportunity, no time to like anyone, that he didn’t have a life of his own, that besides his mother, he seemed to have no other intimate relationships… He had always hoped not to put any pressure on Chen Jian, not to push him, not to leave him without a way out…
But he had overlooked one point: similarly, for all these years, all the difficulties and hardships Chen Jian had encountered, he had carried them all by himself. A life that offered even less of a retreat than love, he had faced it all alone.
He didn’t need anyone to deliberately leave him leeway and space for his feelings. He could face it.
What he wanted was perhaps just the simplest form of certainty.
“I’m more afraid that you’ll also pretend not to remember,” Chen Jian said, then lowered his head to look at his hands. “Sometimes I feel you’re very distant… I do tend to overthink. I’ve thought about a lot of things: do you have some kind of problem, do you have some past that can’t be mentioned, have I crossed a line, should I cross it, can I cross it… But when you’re with Yue Lang and Yao Yi, it’s not like that. Is it because they are already on the other side of that line…”
“I…” Shan Yu pressed his index finger to Chen Jian’s lips. “Wait a minute.”
His mind had been full of ‘Chen Jian this, Chen Jian that…’ but Chen Jian had followed up with a sudden counter-attack, the spearhead aimed straight at his throat.
“There’s no line,” Shan Yu said, his finger still on his lips. “Chen Jian, there’s no line, no crossing or not crossing a line.”
“Mhm,” Chen Jian looked at him and responded.
Shan Yu slowly released his hand. Chen Jian took a breath, and Shan Yu’s finger pressed back again.
Chen Jian sighed through his nose.
“I know now. What you said, I know it all,” Shan Yu said.
“Mhm,” Chen Jian responded.
Shan Yu waited a few more seconds before releasing his hand again. He adjusted his posture and pulled out his phone from his pocket. “Add me as a friend, Manager?”
“Mhm,” Chen Jian took out his phone. “Will you still use your side account?”
“I will,” Shan Yu said. “If I used your photo for my main account’s profile picture, you’d probably poison me.”
Chen Jian glanced at him. “That photo, you took more than one, didn’t you?”
“I suggest you don’t look. Those are for me to keep,” Shan Yu said, handing his phone to Chen Jian.
“Shan Ren Du Yu?” Chen Jian scanned the code and asked. “The one with the feather profile picture?”
“It’s a bit cringe, don’t say it out loud, Chen Yu Luo Yan,” Shan Yu said.
Chen Jian smiled and sent a friend request.
The moment he accepted the friend request, Shan Yu couldn’t describe the feeling.
He was indeed reluctant to show his past to Chen Jian. His Moments feed didn’t matter much, but some parts of his past were things that even a long-time friend like Yue Lang would only hear about without commenting.
Perhaps there was a line, it’s just that on this side of the line, there was only him.
But just now, Chen Jian had stepped right onto that line.
Shan Yu’s Moments feed, he didn’t know if it had groups, was visible without any time restrictions.
However, the most recent post was already from four years ago.
This date made Chen Jian feel dazed for a moment, having so suddenly stumbled into Shan Yu’s world from four years ago.
-Let’s end it here.
Judging by the time, this sentence should have been from when Shan Yu reported Fang Xu. He didn’t know who it was addressed to.
Let’s end it here.
It was as if it drew a final stop in time. After this, Shan Yu never appeared again.
Chen Jian glanced at Shan Yu, then hesitantly looked back at the next post on his phone.
Further back in time, Shan Yu’s posting frequency was weekly.
They were mostly one-liners with a few casually taken photos.
The impression at a glance was that Shan Yu knew how to have fun and had many friends. Each post probably had many likes and comments.
-Having a meal.
-Mountain run.
-People who don’t re-rack their weights at the gym should be sentenced to death.
-Whoever recommended this night run route to me, it’s basically a map of the night market snack stalls.
-Listening to the concert of off-key artists at the KTV, I learned eight different ways to sing one song.
Chen Jian couldn’t help but laugh.
In the picture accompanying this post, he saw Yue Lang singing his heart out with his eyes closed, with a “Champion” sticker added next to him.
Chen Jian scrolled down a few more posts. In the brief words, he could vaguely see the Shan Yu from a few years ago, five hundred and twenty-seven kilometers away—familiar yet strange.
He wanted to keep scrolling, but with Shan Yu sitting right next to him, he felt the guilt of reading someone’s diary in front of them. So he exited and put his phone back in his pocket.
“I’ll look at it slowly when I get back,” Chen Jian said.
“It’s pretty much all like that, eating, drinking, and playing,” Shan Yu said. “Nothing serious.”
Indeed, judging by the timeline, Shan Yu had a company back then, but you couldn’t tell at all from his Moments.
But then again, Chen Jian’s own Moments feed didn’t show his real life either.
“You can’t say that,” Chen Jian thought for a moment. “Actually… you’re a really awesome person.”
Shan Yu started to laugh.
Chen Jian turned to look at him. “What’s wrong?”
Shan Yu didn’t speak. He leaned his head back against the chair and was silent for a long time.
Just when Chen Jian had given up waiting for him to speak, he finally said, “The kids in our family are all pretty awesome, except for me.”
Chen Jian was stunned, looking at him.
“Before the second grade of elementary school, I didn’t live at home most of the time,” Shan Yu said, still leaning back with his eyes closed. “My dad’s school was far away; he only came home on weekends. My mom’s company was just starting up back then, she was very busy with work. I mostly lived at my first aunt’s house, sometimes at my second aunt’s house…”
“Mhm,” Chen Jian responded very carefully.
“They were all very good to me,” Shan Yu said, “But… I still really missed home. Even if no one was home, I’d still make a fuss about wanting to go back. It was pretty annoying.”
“How could a child not miss home,” Chen Jian said.
“My two older female cousins were both very obedient and had good grades. My dad hoped I would be a good influence on them by living there,” Shan Yu smiled. “But I just wasn’t cut out for it. I couldn’t sit still, talked a lot, and had poor concentration…”
Chen Jian was silent.
“My first aunt was also quite strict with me, but it was no use. It seemed like I could never meet their expectations,” Shan Yu said. “And I was always getting sick. My aunts had to take me to the hospital every other day… With such excellent parents, I didn’t seem to inherit any of their good traits.”
Chen Jian looked at him with some surprise. It was hard for him to imagine Shan Yu saying such things. Even hearing it with his own ears, he found it a little hard to believe.
“Back then, I would think, was it because I was so bad that they didn’t want me around…” Shan Yu said.
“How could that be? Weren’t they busy?” Chen Jian said immediately.
“I certainly know that now.” Shan Yu opened his eyes and smiled at him. “But back then, I still thought that way. All my siblings and cousins, on both sides of the family, are very outstanding. You can tell just by looking at Liu Wu.”
Liu Wu is pretty great.
But you can’t compare them like that.
“Did someone say something to you?” Chen Jian asked.
“No,” Shan Yu shook his head. “My mom always said they had no preset expectations for my life, that I didn’t have to become some kind of outstanding person…”
“Isn’t that… a good thing?” Chen Jian said in a low voice.
“You only say that when you’re completely disappointed,” Shan Yu said.
Chen Jian was stunned.
“Without expectations, there’s no more disappointment,” Shan Yu’s voice grew softer. “But I still kept disappointing them.”
For a moment, Chen Jian didn’t know what to say. This was the first time he had seen this side of Shan Yu.
A Shan Yu who had completely lost his usual breezy, effortless demeanor.
Shan Yu didn’t go into great detail. He had some feelings but couldn’t be entirely sure why Shan Yu would have such an evaluation of himself.
He hesitated for a moment, then could only reach out and hold Shan Yu’s hand.
Shan Yu quickly squeezed his hand back.
Probably because he was sitting on the side farther from the fire pit, Shan Yu’s hand was a little cool.
Chen Jian looked down to confirm he was holding Shan Yu’s left hand, then used both of his hands to rub it.
Shan Yu didn’t speak again, and he didn’t either.
But this silence felt as if it was warmed by the fire pit behind them, not as awkward as he had imagined.
It was very peaceful.
“Excuse me,” Yue Lang’s voice suddenly came from behind. “Sorry to interrupt you drilling wood to make fire.”
Chen Jian was startled and reflexively tried to let go of Shan Yu’s hand, but Shan Yu grabbed it tightly.
“Are you two done being disheveled in the wind?” Shan Yu glanced back at Yue Lang.
“Mhm.” Yue Lang glanced at Yao Yi, who was behind him looking down at her camera. “Are you two heading down the mountain or staying here?”
“Heading down,” Shan Yu said. “If Manager Chen doesn’t make it to work on time tomorrow, Dayin will go bankrupt.”
Chen Jian sighed.
“Let’s go.” Shan Yu squeezed his fingers, let go of his hand, and stood up.
The mountain wind at night was much stronger than down below. When they were sitting on the terrace with the fire behind them, it wasn’t as noticeable. But now, as they walked out the main door, the wind blew so hard that Chen Jian swayed.
He pulled the hood of his jacket over his head.
When he turned his head to tell Shan Yu to hurry up and get in the car, he found Shan Yu looking at him.
“What?” he asked.
“Let’s swap clothes tomorrow,” Shan Yu said, tugging at his collar. “To think you’d buy a winter jacket without a hood…”
“It used to have a hood,” Chen Jian said. “It got torn later, so I threw it away.”
“This jacket of yours,” Shan Yu said as he opened the car door and got in, “just how many years have you been wearing it?”
“Not that many years,” Chen Jian said, also getting into the car and thinking as he fastened his seatbelt. “I bought it in my second year of high school, I think. I mostly wore my school uniform’s padded jacket back then, so I didn’t wear this one much.”
Shan Yu started the car, turned on the heat, honked once, and drove off.
Yue Lang also honked and followed behind them.
“There are no lights, drive a bit slower,” Chen Jian said, then remembered Shan Yu’s Moments feed. This was someone who used to go on mountain runs for fun.
“Mhm,” Shan Yu responded.
When they got back to Dayin, everyone was already resting. Only Sanbing was there, running in circles with Mushroom between the front desk and the bar.
“Is everyone asleep?” Chen Jian asked. “Did anything happen today?”
“Nothing much,” Sanbing said. “A lot of people checked in this afternoon. The light in 205 was broken, I changed the bulb. You should go to sleep, it’ll probably get busy tomorrow.”
“Mhm,” Chen Jian nodded.
Yue Lang and Yao Yi had already taken the elevator upstairs. Shan Yu leaned against the elevator door as usual, waiting.
Chen Jian walked over, stood with him, and asked in a low voice, “Does your hand need a dressing change?”
“No need. Tomorrow I’ll just get a new hand,” Shan Yu said.
Chen Jian started laughing and couldn’t help but ask, “Did you talk like this when you were a kid, too?”
“No, I was just talkative,” Shan Yu said. “A mouth needs to grow up slowly, too.”
Chen Jian walked into the elevator laughing, leaned against the wall, and looked at Shan Yu.
Shan Yu no longer had the melancholy from when he was talking about his childhood earlier. He was back to the state Chen Jian was used to seeing, the leisurely and at-ease Shan Yu.
“We need to hire two more people in the next couple of days, a waiter and a cleaner,” Shan Yu said.
“Hm?” Chen Jian was taken aback.
“Didn’t Sanbing say more people are checking in?” Shan Yu said.
“Yes,” Chen Jian looked at him. “Do we need to hire?”
“Short-term is fine. The kind of guest flow we had during the long holiday was just too exhausting,” Shan Yu said. “We can’t handle it.”
“Mhm, I’ll look for someone tomorrow,” Chen Jian nodded.
After getting out of the elevator, Chen Jian glanced towards the dorms. The lights were off; everyone should be asleep by now.
Only Yue Lang and Yao Yi were staying in the guest rooms on the fourth floor. He could hear them laughing in their room.
He didn’t know what they were laughing about.
They had been out playing all day, yet they were still so energetic this late.
Chen Jian hadn’t played at all and was already sleepy.
“Are you sleepy?” he asked, taking the first-aid kit from the cabinet, placing it on the coffee table, and glancing at Shan Yu on the sofa.
“Sleepy,” Shan Yu said. “Whether I can actually fall asleep is up to fate.”
Chen Jian sat down beside him, unwrapped the bandage, removed the gauze, and looked at the wound. It was a superficial wound, after all, and was healing much faster than the one on his leg.
While changing the dressing, he saw the medicine box under the coffee table again.
He hesitated but still didn’t ask. Shan Yu had clearly been in a bad mood when he mentioned his past earlier. He’d ask another time.
“What is it?” Shan Yu asked. “They’re just regular antibiotics and painkillers.”
Do you always split open the other person’s head and look inside before you speak?
Chen Jian glanced at him, truly not knowing how Shan Yu had trained such extremely keen observational skills.
“How did you know Zhou Lecheng’s medicine was… an antidepressant?” After asking, Chen Jian didn’t dare to look at Shan Yu.
He quickly lowered his head, covered the disinfected wound with gauze, and started wrapping the bandage. In a couple of days, the bandage probably wouldn’t be needed anymore; just taping the gauze would be enough.
“I took them for a while,” Shan Yu said.
Chen Jian’s hands paused while tying the bandage. He looked up at Shan Yu. “How long is ‘a while’?”
“About two years,” Shan Yu said, looking at him.
“Oh,” Chen Jian tugged at the end of the tied bandage, at a loss for words.
This question and Shan Yu’s answer were outside of his plans. He felt it was a bit cruel. After a moment of silence, when he spoke again, his voice felt a little hoarse. “Some things, if you don’t want to talk about them…”
I still really want to know.
“I probably wouldn’t bring it up myself,” Shan Yu said. “But if you ask, I’ll tell you.”
“…Mhm,” Chen Jian was still tugging at the end of the bandage, wondering if he should say something more.
“You’ve already tied it into a dead knot. Why don’t you just cut my hand off while you’re at it,” Shan Yu said, pinching the fingers that were pulling at the bandage.
Chen Jian came back to his senses and smiled.
“Chen Jian,” Shan Yu called his name.
“Hm?” Chen Jian looked at him.
Shan Yu didn’t speak, just looked at him.
In a very short time, before a single thought could even flash through Chen Jian’s mind, Shan Yu had already leaned in.
With warm breath, he gently kissed him on the lips.
