E ⋆ Chapter 36

Thirty-Six (2019)

Yu Zhinian returned to the apartment next to school in a daze, his mind elsewhere.

Ren Heng and Chu Sifan had cleaned the apartment until it gleamed, like a showroom model. Every piece of furniture was arranged neatly, and even the marble countertop of the open kitchen’s island was spotless and new. Yu Zhinian sat on the sofa, recalling everything that had happened since he came back to He City.

Smith’s constant pestering about moving things, the broken door lock in the basement, the locksmith who couldn’t open it, the broken water pipes that made the rental uninhabitable, Yang Ke’s company troubles, the rushed marriage registration, the Hawaii trip that never happened. And there were Yang Ke’s dinner invitations, embraces that seemed both present and absent, the trip to Meng City, the care in the twilight, and lingering kisses.

Everything happened too fast. He didn’t have time to think about anything.

When Yang Ke was there, Yu Zhinian felt dizzy and disoriented, his soul scattered.

Yu Zhinian thought about what the article said, the real reason Yang Zhongyun had brought him from Sanwen to Ning City. He realized that from age fourteen to twenty-four, all these years, he seemed to have never spent a single day with a clear head.

He felt like a little stray dog on the verge of wandering, picked up by Yang Zhongyun because of his one-quarter special bloodline, made to do one thing after another that he had never done before.

He lived blindly, chasing after Yang Ke, believing that being chosen was simply luck.

Thinking it all over from the beginning, Yu Zhinian found a reasonable explanation for Yang Ke’s behavior. Yang Ke had known all along the secret about Yu Zhinian’s grandmother and Yang Zhongyun’s relationship, so he pitied him more than Yu Zhinian had realized. He wanted to help him get the inheritance, but didn’t want to tell him the truth, so he did many inexplicable things that gave the media and Deqin’s shareholders plenty of material to write ridiculous stories about.

Because Yang Ke had always been someone who was tough on the outside but soft on the inside, straightforward in his actions, clear in his goals, completely different from Yang Zhongyun.

It was just that Yu Zhinian’s so-called love, in the face of the revealed truth, seemed increasingly superfluous.

Once Yu Zhinian figured it out, he felt empty inside. He sat on the sofa hugging a cushion, eyes closed, staring blankly into space.

Yang Ke’s phone call pulled him back to reality. Outside the window, it had turned completely dark. The room had no lights on. He sat in the dimness, stripped of natural light.

The phone rang for a while before Yu Zhinian answered.

Yang Ke didn’t blame him for answering slowly. He just asked, “Where are you?”

Yu Zhinian heard Yang Ke’s voice and suddenly no longer felt like he had lost his senses. He told Yang Ke, “I just read an interview with Fang Liang.”

Yang Ke fell silent.

“Yang Ke,” Yu Zhinian pressed his back against the soft sofa cushion and asked, “does your company actually need money or not?”

Yang Ke didn’t think for long before telling Yu Zhinian “no,” either too lazy to make up another excuse or unable to come up with one.

“Are the things the article said about the locks and the rental house true?” Yu Zhinian asked.

Yang Ke said, “Yes.”

Both ends of the phone line fell into an abrupt silence. Yang Ke suddenly changed the subject and asked Yu Zhinian, “Aren’t you at the apartment next to school? Let me come pick you up.”

Yu Zhinian didn’t answer.

“I’m already downstairs at your building,” Yang Ke sounded like he was driving. Yu Zhinian heard the turn signal. Yang Ke asked quietly, “Can we meet and talk in person? Tell the security guard downstairs.”

“…” Yu Zhinian found it difficult, but he refused Yang Ke. “I don’t really want to see you right now.”

Yang Ke seemed to have gotten out of the car. The background noise became somewhat louder. He asked Yu Zhinian “why.”

“I did those things because the half-year separation period was almost up, and if we dragged it out any longer, registering the marriage would be a hassle,” Yang Ke explained to Yu Zhinian with some difficulty. “That night you were leaving, I wanted to stop you.”

“When you asked me if I was short on money,” his voice was very low as he told Yu Zhinian, “I thought that if I just admitted it, you wouldn’t leave, so I admitted it.”

“Yang Ke,” Yu Zhinian looked out the window, thought for a moment, and told him, “I think you shouldn’t be so indifferent about your marriage.”

“Marriage is very sacred,” Yu Zhinian recalled what Zhao Sibei had said back then and tried to persuade Yang Ke. “I really don’t want Grandpa’s shares or money. I don’t want you to marry me out of pity. If I wanted money, I wouldn’t have come back to do this project. I don’t think I’m that pitiful.”

“Yu Zhinian,” Yang Ke’s voice became slightly colder. “I’m not pitying you.”

Hearing Yang Ke’s easy, seemingly thoughtless denial, Yu Zhinian gripped his phone, unable to help but clench his teeth. “Aren’t you pitying me?”

He didn’t feel humiliated so much as sad. He breathed with difficulty and asked Yang Ke, “If you’re not pitying me, do you actually like me? Do you even know what liking someone feels like?”

“Yang Ke, it’s not like you just let me kiss you and then kiss me back, and that means you like me,” Yu Zhinian spoke very slowly. The area behind his ears up to the top of his head began to go numb. His stomach felt cold, like it was being stirred by an icicle. “Have you ever liked someone? You just casually dole out your pity on me…”

“Yu Zhinian.” Yang Ke called his name from the other end, as if hoping he would stop.

Yu Zhinian heard his name come from Yang Ke’s mouth and suddenly seemed unable to bear it anymore, wanting to resist.

“I don’t want this kind of pity,” perhaps the pressure and frustration of these past days had accumulated to an unbearable point. Yu Zhinian lost control of his emotions, venting uncontrollably. “I would rather you go date and marry someone else. I don’t want your sympathy at all.”

“Do you know what liking is? Do you know what I’m like?” he asked Yang Ke. “I think about you every single day. In high school, in college, when you paid attention to me, when you didn’t, when we lived together, when I came back to do the project. Every day I want to contact you, every day I regret, every time I think of you I get nervous. Just thinking of you makes me both happy and sad. I can’t refuse you, and I can’t stop thinking about you.”

He felt like he was dumping garbage, recklessly pouring out his feelings in an act of self-abandonment. He said the things he hadn’t said when Yang Ke forced him to wear the ring, when he wanted to take him to Hawaii, when he wanted him to stay a few more days at the villa.

“It’s like… part of me isn’t my own anymore. It just drifts along with you wherever you go. That’s what liking is. Do you understand? You don’t understand. So why do you insist on marrying me?”

“I went with you to buy rings, and I was sad. We went to register, and I was sad then too, because it was all fake. I thought I was helping you, so I did it. I didn’t expect that in the end you were still pitying me.”

His room was far too dark. There was no light at all.

Yu Zhinian cried for the first time since he had come to understand the world. He didn’t dare touch his face, afraid his palm would feel too many tears.

“I like you so much, and I don’t want your sympathy,” Yu Zhinian’s hand trembled uncontrollably as he spoke to Yang Ke. “Yang Ke, I want a little dignity.”

Yang Ke didn’t say another word. Yu Zhinian felt that Yang Ke was probably frightened by him. In front of Yang Ke, Yu Zhinian always seemed unable to manage his own words and actions, unable to put on a presentable face. He always did the wrong thing, said the wrong words, fell apart at inappropriate times, and even his voice was ugly and wretched.

“I’m sorry,” Yu Zhinian slowly recovered somewhat and apologized to Yang Ke. “I know you mean well.”

“But after I came back to do the project, I thought about what kind of person you would date. Actually,” he curled up, closed his eyes, and confessed to Yang Ke, “I think you might like someone with a very intense personality, really beautiful, from a good family, with a rich and full life. I think you might be suited to that kind of person, someone you’d have more in common with, someone more proud than me, not someone like me who spends every day in the library. You’d argue with him, and you’d make up with him. If he’s unhappy, you’d be unhappy too. You’d want him to be the happiest person in the world. If you marry me, you won’t be able to be with him right away.”

“Do you understand?” he asked Yang Ke.

Yang Ke breathed quietly on the other end. After a few seconds, suddenly there was no sound at all. Yu Zhinian’s phone had died.

Yu Zhinian walked around the apartment for a long time before he found a charging cable. He plugged his phone in, and after a while, when the phone restarted, it showed more than ten missed calls from Yang Ke. Yang Ke had also sent him a message asking, “Did your phone die? Can you answer when it’s charged?”

“The security guard won’t let me up,” Yang Ke said.

Yu Zhinian looked at the messages on his screen, at Yang Ke’s attitude of still wanting to communicate, and felt utterly bewildered.

For his first twenty-four years, he had faced every day seriously. He had faced his parents and elders’ aging and death, everything Yang Zhongyun had imposed on him and given to him, his own miserable love, Zhao Sibei’s care weighted with pressure.

He had never been a lucky person, but not once had he ever deserted in the face of life.

But on this day, Yu Zhinian really didn’t want to face anything anymore. He felt he couldn’t try to communicate with Yang Ke again, and he didn’t want to.

He texted Yang Ke, “Can you let me be alone for a few days?”

Yang Ke’s typing indicator showed for a long time before he replied “okay.”

After a few seconds, he asked, “How many days?”

“I don’t know,” Yu Zhinian replied.

Yu Zhinian turned off his phone. He felt dizzy and light-headed, his stomach growling with hunger, but there was no food in the apartment. In the end, he just drank some water.

He took his laptop from his backpack and mechanically read through his thesis several more times. The street scenes of Sanwen from his childhood lingered in his mind and refused to leave. He suddenly wanted to go back and see the place. He sent an email to his advisor asking about details regarding the independent research project.

That night, Yang Ke stayed downstairs at Yu Zhinian’s apartment building until nine o’clock, until Li Lu called him, wanting to meet to discuss a response to the lawsuit.

He couldn’t get through to Yu Zhinian’s phone. He also couldn’t figure out how to make Yu Zhinian understand that he didn’t want the kind of beautiful, well-born person Yu Zhinian had described at all. He only wanted Yu Zhinian, and from beginning to end he had never considered any other possibility.

The apartment building was beautifully decorated. Yu Zhinian was behind one of the lit windows, at most a hundred meters away from Yang Ke, much closer than the distance between Ning City and He City over the past half year.

On a May night without rain, the air was filled with the scent of green leaves and early summer. Pedestrians and cars came and went along the street.

Yang Ke stood in place, looked up and counted the seventeenth floor several times, waiting for Yu Zhinian to turn his phone back on.

He felt that this time, Yu Zhinian really was going to leave him.