KMYB | Chapter 3

Worried that his new neighbor might think he was installing anti-theft devices because he was trying to guard against him, and end up feeling hurt, Xi Shui said to him, “Then I won’t install them.”

“You install them, it’s fine, that’s your freedom.” Zhou Zeqi’s eyes were dark and bright in the night. He brought the beer to his lips and took a drink, and the sound of him swallowing was so clear it reached Xi Shui’s ears.

“Oh,” Xi Shui scratched his hair. “Then not installing them is my freedom too.”

“…”

“What’s your name?”

Zhou Zeqi was holding the can in his hand. He changed his posture, leaning over the balcony railing, bending toward him in a way that made it feel like he could cross over with a light hop and land right in front of Xi Shui.

Xi Shui held onto the doorframe. “Xi Shui.”

“The Xi in xiao xi?”

“No, not the Xi with the three-dot water radical. But my friends all call me Xiao Xi, the Xi in xiao xi, the Xi with the three-dot water radical.” Xi Shui explained in great detail, because people always got his name wrong.

“Xiao Xi?” Zhou Zeqi raised an eyebrow. He had handsome features, and when his upper and lower teeth touched, there was somehow a touch of teasing allure.

Xi Shui said, “Right, Xiao Xi.”

Xi Shui asked, “What about you? What’s your name?”

“Zhou Zeqi, the Ze in swamp and the Qi in date.” Zhou Zeqi usually couldn’t be bothered to explain exactly which characters made up his name, but when socializing, there had to be give and take. His little neighbor was a bit slow, but very polite.

Xi Shui blinked, not knowing what to say next. “Oh~”

Zhou Zeqi looked at Xi Shui for a while, then suddenly turned back, pulled open the door to his own balcony, and called inside, “Bring me my phone.”

“For what?”

“Hurry up, I need it.”

There was a flurry of chaos inside.

“Where’s Old Zhou’s phone? Anyone seen it?”

“Nope.”

“It’s under your backpack.”

A hand holding a phone reached out from inside and asked, “What are you doing this late at night?”

Zhou Zeqi took the phone, opened WeChat, and said, “Nothing.”

Wu Fengyi caught a hint of a wild dog in heat from Zhou Zeqi’s expression. He suddenly stuck his head out onto the balcony and looked left, right, up, and down, but found nothing unusual, so he went back inside.

Xi Shui was still standing behind the floor-to-ceiling window.

Zhou Zeqi held the phone over the half-meter gap of the balcony. “Add me on WeChat.”

Xi Shui stayed where he was. “Why should I add you on WeChat?”

“?”

The hand holding out the phone remained suspended in midair, neither retracting nor showing any intention of doing so.

He licked his upper teeth with the tip of his tongue. “It’s like this, we’re neighbors now. Living so close, adding each other as friends means we can look out for one another.”

“Oh, right.”

The little swan flew out from the room and walked up to Zhou Zeqi. He took the phone from Zhou Zeqi’s hand, lowered his head, entered his phone number, and sent a friend request.

The phone screen wasn’t very bright, and the dim light fell across Xi Shui’s eyelashes, nose bridge, and lips, revealing a delicate, innocent face.

“I’ll accept it in a bit.” Xi Shui handed the phone back. “Bye-bye.”

After he spoke, without waiting for Zhou Zeqi to respond, he turned and went back inside.

At the same time, the sound of the retractable gate’s rollers sliding without pause along the track rang out. In the end, it locked.

Zhou Zeqi opened the pending requests list and tapped on Xi Shui’s avatar. It was a white swan with a long neck curved as it dozed on the grass.

Since Xi Shui still hadn’t accepted his friend request, Xi Shui’s Moments were currently invisible.

–

Although his sleep had been interrupted, Xi Shui still slept well.

Every day, he had to do his morning and evening training at fixed times, an hour and a half each session. He kept half an hour for breakfast and getting to school, which was just enough to make the eight o’clock class.

Basic training was divided into floor conditioning and barre and center work.

Xi Shui had never missed a single day of morning and evening training. He could practice kicks, shoulder opening, and floor stretches like pointed feet and ankles on his own. But if it came to stretches like hip-opening, then without years of accumulated practice, he needed a partner’s help.

But now Xi Shui could already complete most of the basic training by himself.

This summer, their class was going to the Capital Grand Theater to perform. The preliminary program was *The Dancer*, and they had already been rehearsing it for almost a month. *The Dancer* was one of the ballet world’s widely recognized highly difficult ballets, placed even before the classic *Swan Lake*.

Every role had been selected and compared carefully. Xi Shui was playing the male lead, Solor, and this was his first collaboration with his partner, so they were still in the adjustment phase.

A highly difficult ballet not only required dancers to perform every movement accurately without mistakes and with perfect teamwork, it also placed extremely high demands on stage presence and emotional explosiveness.

Xi Shui had talent in this area. He was born for dance.

He shone brilliantly onstage, infecting the audience while also infecting himself. He was agile and light, even capable of driving his partner’s emotions. He could reach a high degree of emotional resonance with the characters in the ballet, and he knew what was hidden deep inside them.

Maybe because his emotions were too rich onstage, he seemed especially pure and innocent offstage. The only thing he thought about was dance.

After morning training ended, Xi Shui slung his backpack over his shoulder and went downstairs. At the bottom, he happened to run into Zhou Zeqi, who was coming back from a run.

Zhou Zeqi was wearing a black tracksuit and had a black sweatband tied around his head. Sweat from his temples slid along his jaw and gathered at his chin.

He greeted Xi Shui naturally. “Up so early?”

Xi Shui was holding a hard-boiled egg in his hand. He tapped it against the doorframe at the entrance, cracked the shell, and while peeling it said, “I have class.”

“I’m going first.”

Xi Shui walked down the steps. He didn’t like egg yolk, so after eating the white, he stood at the door and looked around.

“Meow, meow…”

Zhou Zeqi stood on the steps behind him and watched.

A dirty but chubby orange cat emerged warily from behind the shrubs. There was a tag hanging around its neck that said, “Has an owner, don’t flirt.” It was probably someone’s pet from nearby. After it recognized a familiar face, it walked to Xi Shui’s feet, tail raised, and rubbed against him a few times.

Xi Shui crouched down, put the egg yolk in his hand on the ground, and stroked the orange cat’s head. “I’m going to class now. See you tonight.”

After saying goodbye to the orange cat, Xi Shui stood up and left with his canvas bag slung over his shoulder. Hanging from the zipper was a Doraemon doll, swaying left and right with his steps.

–

In the morning they had Ballet Appreciation, a theory class. In the afternoon they had Ballet Technique and Repertoire, and lately they had all been learning and rehearsing *The Dancer*.

Xi Shui was drinking water as he walked to the classroom when Lin Xiaojin suddenly rushed up from behind and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. “Hey!”

Xi Shui choked.

“Did you go back and check the forum last night?” Lin Xiaojin patted Xi Shui on the back. “Your heat with the Zhou Yama King is rising again.”

Zhou Yama King?

Zhou Zeqi.

He seemed… uh, he still hadn’t approved the friend request from last night.

“Why?” Xi Shui didn’t want Lin Xiaojin to know that he and Zhou Zeqi were neighbors and were about to become WeChat friends. Lin Xiaojin would definitely keep bothering him.

Because Lin Xiaojin was weird.

What he paid attention to was never a handsome guy’s grades or character. He cared whether the abs were six-pack or eight-pack, whether the legs were long, whether the bird… whether the bird was big, and whether the butt was perky.

“Yesterday there were so many people at the gymnasium, and you two were sitting together. Someone took a photo and posted it on the forum.”

“We weren’t sitting together.” Xi Shui corrected him. “I was in the audience, in the stands. He was down below in the athletes’ rest area.”

“You were up top and he was down below, even more exciting.”

This was also why Xi Shui thought Lin Xiaojin was strange.

Even though he spent all day with Lin Xiaojin, Lin Xiaojin would rather go to the forum and ship his CP with Zhou Zeqi, getting completely fooled by all those forum fanfics, even though he knew Xi Shui and Zhou Zeqi had never even spoken to each other.

So absolutely no way could Lin Xiaojin find out about their neighbor relationship now.

Otherwise Lin Xiaojin would definitely be down below with an astronomical telescope, shipping CP.

“By the way, let’s go eat hotpot on Saturday.”

“No,” Xi Shui shook his head, firm as could be. “I’ve already decided to eat fried chicken.”

“Add hotpot too.”

“I can only eat one kind of thing a day. If I eat too much, I’ll get fat.” Xi Shui reached out and pinched his own stomach. There wasn’t much flesh yet, but if he used force, he could still pinch up a little bit.

On this matter, Xi Shui was very strict with himself.

“What are you afraid of? Anyway, we’re only going to the Grand Theater during summer break, and there aren’t any competitions lately.”

Xi Shui wavered. Whenever he faced something delicious, he always hesitated.

“Look, let me analyze it for you,” Lin Xiaojin said, counting on his fingers as he walked with Xi Shui through the hallway. “Hotpot, right? We’re just eating meat. What is meat? High protein. Then we eat vegetables. What are vegetables? Vitamins! Add vinegar to the dipping sauce, and vinegar speeds up fat burning!”

Xi Shui rubbed his fingers against the water bottle. “You do have a point.”

“Right? And we can eat one meal, then dance two extra hours, or go run five kilometers. How about that?”

Xi Shui frowned with his delicate eyebrows. “To eat fried chicken, I already have to dance two extra hours.”

“…”

“Are there any other workouts that burn calories?” Xi Shui looked miserable. He really still had a lot of delicious things he hadn’t gotten to eat yet.

“Let me think.” Lin Xiaojin was equally serious.

Just then, a couple walked past the two of them, kissing as they went.

Xi Shui and Lin Xiaojin stared at them, turning their heads to follow them. Once they were far away, Xi Shui came back to himself and bumped Lin Xiaojin. “Don’t stare at people, that’s rude.”

“You were staring too.”

“Why are they walking while kissing?”

Lin Xiaojin looked at the couple’s backs, and a flash of white light went off in his head. He grabbed Xi Shui’s arm and said in his ear, “Dating burns calories.”

“Huh? What?” Xi Shui had never heard that before. “Because they’re kissing while walking?”

Lin Xiaojin said, “No, no. Dating means walking around together, right? You get excited, right? You kiss, right? And then… that.”

“That what?”

“That prick.”

“What are you pricking me for?”

Lin Xiaojin: “…”

Xi Shui looked innocently at Lin Xiaojin, who was about to blow up.

“Forget it, forget it, I’ll explain it to you properly.” Lin Xiaojin had suffered the consequences of being a face-obsessed fool. In his first year, Xi Shui hadn’t rented a place outside yet. On the first day of school, he carried his duffel bag and dragged his suitcase into the dorm, and the moment he pushed open the door, he saw Xi Shui sitting in a chair, holding a tablet and watching a movie.

The afternoon sun was golden, falling all around Xi Shui and into his eyes. His neck was long and slender.

It reminded Lin Xiaojin of something their high school homeroom teacher had once said: some people play white swans onstage. You think they dance well and act convincingly, because they were born white swans in the first place.

So in Lin Xiaojin’s eyes, Xi Shui’s inability to keep up with modern young people’s memes, his slowness, and his innocence all became advantages.

He was the friend he chose himself, so he’d just have to take it.

Lin Xiaojin gave Xi Shui a very detailed explanation.

Most fat is expelled through breathing. Once the heart rate reaches a certain frequency, fat can be burned.

Love makes your heart beat faster, your breathing quicken, plus kissing, plus other things. Of course it’s a perfect weight-loss exercise.

After listening, Xi Shui frowned. “That doesn’t seem very scientific.”

“What part isn’t scientific?”

“I’ll go home and search Baidu for the information.” Xi Shui said.

Lin Xiaojin said, “Baidu might not even be as scientific as me.”