WC ⋆ Chapter 31

Qi Lin called his mom back. With the New Year approaching, she couldn’t stop worrying about him being alone in another city. Figuring the two cities weren’t that far apart, she decided to come visit over the weekend.

Even though his mom hadn’t said it outright, Qi Lin could tell the situation was actually quite simple. His mom had come to terms with reality, while his dad still refused to face the consequences of his coming out.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, his mom couldn’t bear it any longer and took a step back first. She taught middle school Chinese, and this year she hadn’t taken on a graduating class. With winter break coming, she’d have plenty of free time to spend several days in the neighboring city.

She’d come and go on a single Saturday. Xing Yun hadn’t asked to come to his place, only said it would be fine to meet somewhere near the school.

This was the subtle, inherited sense of boundaries that ran through Qi Lin’s family. Living and working alone in a strange city was, in some sense, like setting up one’s own household. Qi Lin’s rental apartment had been given the distinct meaning of “Qi Lin’s home.” Even his own mother placed herself in the position of an outside visitor.

But this was still an unavoidable question they had to face. They needed to be prepared for the possibility that his mom might come to the apartment at any time.

There was no time to tidy up the place from scratch, so Qi Lin had no choice but to give her a preemptive heads-up, saying that friends occasionally came to stay over. Xing Yun hadn’t noticed anything off, and the topic passed as soon as it was raised.

This visit had come too suddenly, and Qi Lin wasn’t ready. He had no choice but to adjust his mindset to manage the information gap between himself and his family. There were still many lies between them waiting to be patched up.

He hadn’t told his family that he’d already quit his job. In Xing Yun’s eyes, he was renting an apartment in another city because of work.

Qi Lin didn’t want the lie to fall apart so soon. If Xing Yun found out he was throwing money away on rent while sitting alone in another city with nothing to show for it, she might soften and take him back home. By then, Qi Lin couldn’t think of a single reason he could use to convince Xing Yun to let him stay.

He couldn’t come clean about having a boyfriend either. That would make the whole quitting-and-renting situation look twisted. Xing Yun would probably think he’d rather live with some questionable man than make peace with his family.

Qi Lin didn’t want Jiang Yishen and his family to meet this way. His start with Jiang’s father had already been unpleasant enough. He didn’t need a second round.

Xing Yun’s visit threw everyone into a panic. Jiang Yishen was up at the crack of dawn, crawling out of bed at six o’clock to sweep the apartment, trying to look at it with objective eyes and check whether anything too intimate was left out in the open.

He put away his towel and cup one after another, then hid a few other personal items, but still felt it wasn’t enough.

They say you can see through a person by looking at their home, and Xing Yun was undoubtedly the person who knew Qi Lin best. Jiang Yishen suspected she could walk in, sweep the room with one glance, and figure out Qi Lin’s living situation, then deduce that there was a man living intimately with her son.

Qi Lin had slept uneasily that night too. He woke the moment Jiang Yishen stirred, but just lay there without moving, listening to the carefully muffled rustling sounds from the living room. His heart felt unsettled.

Deceiving family didn’t sit well with him, and the thought of sending Jiang Yishen out to hide for the day felt just as bad.

The half month he’d spent with Jiang Yishen since New Year’s had briefly pulled him out of the rhythm his life had fallen into in the second half of last year. He’d enjoyed a stretch of bright, good days. But now a tangled mess had descended again, knocking him right back to where he’d started.

His life had always been this messy. Tangled feelings, tangled family ties, a tangled career, all knotted together.

If you asked him to name what exactly was wrong, he probably couldn’t come up with one, two, or three specific things. But that rope twisted into a knot pressed against his chest, and it just made him feel stifled.

What had to come would have to be faced. The meeting place he’d arranged with Xing Yun was the school.

The school was the place Xing Yun knew best in this city. She’d come for his graduation ceremony, and at the ceremony she’d met Jiang Yishen and some of Qi Lin’s other friends.

The things Qi Lin and she had in common seemed to end at this school.

The wind was a little lighter today. Qi Lin had deliberately arrived a bit early. When he saw his mom walk out of the subway station by the school gate, his instinct was to pretend he hadn’t seen her.

Unfortunately, he didn’t manage to look away in time. Xing Yun had already spotted him. The eyes behind her lenses looked over at him, sharp and perceptive.

His mom was wearing a down jacket with the hood up and a turtleneck sweater pulled all the way up to her chin. Qi Lin watched her walk closer and closer and felt an inexplicable awkwardness, not knowing what to do with his hands and feet. Even when she stopped right in front of him, he couldn’t squeeze out a single word.

This wordless stiffness was something he went through every time he came home for a holiday, but his mom didn’t seem to notice his awkwardness at all. She just looked him over carefully, from his hair down to the hem of his clothes, and then said the first words she’d spoken since they met: “Let’s go.”

His mom’s throat condition always acted up during seasonal changes. It had been snowing lately, temperatures had dropped all at once, and with students in their final exam period, overtime was unavoidable. Qi Lin could hear from her voice that it sounded a little hoarse. A question formed on his lips, circled around, and was finally swallowed back down, transformed instead into a bowl of hot soup he ordered just for her.

Qi Lin took his mom to the cafeteria closest to Jiang Yishen’s dormitory. It was the one he visited most often, and a familiar place made him feel more settled.

“Are you adjusting all right here on your own?” Xing Yun asked.

“Mm.” Qi Lin nodded and led her to a quieter corner to sit down.

The cafeteria wasn’t very busy. With no classes during the exam period, students didn’t come to eat at the concentrated hours they usually did, and the place felt a little empty.

Xing Yun looked at him and asked again: “Is work going well?”

Qi Lin didn’t pause, nodding with about the same degree as before: “Going well.”

These were somewhat perfunctory questions. Qi Lin was waiting for her to get to the point.

“The New Year is at the end of the month. Are you still planning to come back?”

Qi Lin felt something like the grinding squeal of a guillotine blade turning. The question he didn’t want to face was being held up unavoidably in front of him.

Xing Yun read the answer in his silence. The answer didn’t satisfy her, but Qi Lin’s quietness also left her with nothing harsh to say.

After a long pause, she finally said: “Then I’ll count today as our New Year’s Eve dinner.”

In the distance, bowls and dishes clanged loudly at the serving window. Many sounds he’d never noticed before turned into noise, too distracting to focus through.

Qi Lin tried to find something appropriate to say, something that wouldn’t just be silence again, but the sound of footsteps, the clatter of dishes being returned, the flap of the plastic door curtain being lifted all plunged him into a dazed and noisy fog.

“After the New Year you’ll have your exams. I was originally thinking of waiting until after your exams to bring things up, but then I thought, we take exams to live our lives, not live our lives for the sake of exams. What needs to be said should be said, what needs to be done should be done. We can’t put everything on hold just because of exams.”

Qi Lin sat with his eyes lowered, listening, his mind nearly at a standstill. His fingers unconsciously rubbed the ring in his pocket.

Xing Yun left a pause for him to respond, the occupational habit of a teacher conducting a talk. She waited a moment before continuing: “What you said before, I’ve been thinking about it for the past half year, and I’ve asked some people I know.”

“Mm.”

“Mom isn’t going to disown her son over something like this, right?”

Qi Lin had lost count of how many times he’d said “mm,” but this one came from the heart. One of the chains wound around his chest came loose. It still weighed heavily on him, but seeing a lock come undone was seeing hope, and somehow it felt a little lighter.

“Your dad is a bit traditional. You need to give him some time,” Xing Yun said. “When there’s a conflict, it has to be resolved. This past half year has also been time set aside to adjust. That should be about enough. Come home after your exams.”

Qi Lin closed his eyes and rubbed them hard, scrubbing until his skin ached. Worry after worry surfaced in layers again. He took a deep breath, stood up, and said quietly: “Let’s eat first. What do you want? I’ll go get it for you.”

Xing Yun’s face showed a look of disapproval, the expression Qi Lin knew so well, the one that always made him tense up the moment he saw it. He knew Xing Yun was unhappy with him for changing the subject and actively dodging, but he was helpless. If the conversation continued, he didn’t know how to answer.

Perhaps taking into account that they were in a public place, Xing Yun only said briefly: “Same as you is fine.”

Qi Lin turned and walked away. Xing Yun watched his retreating figure, this time checking whether the clothes he was wearing were warm enough.

A figure suddenly blocked the view of Qi Lin shrinking into the distance. It was an unfamiliar face leaning in to say hello, warm and polite: “Hello, Auntie. We’ve met before. I’m Qi Lin’s classmate.”

A thin, tall young man with a pair of glasses on the bridge of his nose, the lenses looking like a fairly strong prescription.

Xing Yun didn’t recognize him, but since he’d mentioned Qi Lin’s name, she assumed he was a classmate she’d seen at the graduation ceremony and nodded as a greeting.

Any other time, she might have invited the classmate to sit down and eat with them. But today wasn’t a good time. In a little while she needed to talk to Qi Lin about things not meant for outside ears.

But this young man made himself completely at home, sitting right down in the chair beside her and looking back curiously toward Qi Lin at the serving counter: “Auntie, why did you two come back to school?”

“Just came to visit,” Xing Yun gave him a polite smile.

“Oh, I thought you’d come back to look for someone.” The young man scratched his head in an easy, casual way. “I saw Qi Lin come back to school yesterday too.”

“Yesterday?” Xing Yun repeated. “Wasn’t yesterday Friday?”

“Was it?” The young man laughed. “We’ve been taking finals these past couple of days. I’ve lost track of the dates.”

Xing Yun didn’t think much of it and just replied offhandedly: “Leaving work pretty early then.”

“Hm? Qi Lin?” The young man’s face wore a simple, guileless smile, but his eyes flickered with a smugness he couldn’t hide. The words that came out of his mouth turned theatrical, like a performance in a cheap stage play. “He’s not at work, is he.”

He savored the sight of the mother in front of him as her expression darkened, while he kept up the pretense of not noticing. He thought for a moment and continued as if to himself: “I’m not too sure either. Maybe you could ask his friend, the one he specifically came back to school to find yesterday. You probably know him…”

“Yu Jiaming.”

A firm voice cut in and interrupted him. Yu Jiaming knew when to quit while he was ahead. Taking advantage of the fact that Qi Lin couldn’t say anything in front of his family, he let his petty, triumphant expression show fully: “Xiao Qi’s back. You two eat up then, I’ll head off. Enjoy your meal!”

Qi Lin was holding two plates, his fingers pressed so tight they’d gone white. He stood at the edge of the table, jaw clenched, glaring at the direction Yu Jiaming had walked off in, not even daring to look down.

The table was far too quiet. Qi Lin felt the plates in his hands grow unprecedentedly heavy, maybe because the cafeteria auntie had scooped him an extra spoonful of rice just now. He was barely holding on.

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