KMYB | Chapter 2

"Xiao Xi, don’t look at him and think he’s not here to play in the basketball tournament. When he was in high school, he already got into our province’s tennis team, but he quit later because his family had a company to inherit."

"And that pair of sneakers you said was especially comfortable before? That brand is his family’s. That’s part of why people at the sports institute practically worship him," Lin Xiaojin obviously knew a lot. "In high school, he got the title of national second-level sanda athlete. In his first year of college, he played a tennis match against the vice captain of our province’s team. You definitely didn’t see it, but I did. He ground the other guy into the floor!"

"You know why he’s not taking part in this basketball tournament? Because he could take down the entire Beijing Sports University by himself, so they voted him out and wouldn’t let him play. Otherwise, there’d be no suspense left in this match."

Whether it was Beijing Sports, Beijing Dance, or Beijing University, strength came first.

Xi Shui frowned in confusion. "That’s such a pity if he doesn’t keep playing matches."

"Who says otherwise?" Lin Xiaojin spread his hands. "But everyone has their own ambitions. If my family had a company worth hundreds of billions waiting for me to inherit, I’d go to the counselor and drop out tomorrow."

Their conversation was carried clearly into Zhou Zeqi’s ears.

Zhou Zeqi gave a low laugh, twisted off the cap of his mineral water bottle, and tipped his head back lazily to drink.

"Ah, then I’d quit too."

Xi Shui’s voice was very easy to recognize, soft and smooth, his pronunciation clear, his pace a little slower than other people’s, as if he had thought it through carefully before saying it.

Lin Xiaojin didn’t speak again. His attention went to Wu Fengyi, who was right below the stands.

Meng Kewen had one arm around Wu Fengyi’s shoulder and lifted his chin toward Lin Xiaojin’s direction. "My childhood friend. He likes you… your abs."

Wu Fengyi slapped his hand away and shifted his gaze from Meng Kewen’s childhood friend’s face to the face of Xi Shui beside him. The other boy was looking down at his phone, his neck long and elegant, his loose T-shirt making his frame look even thinner and more delicate, a stark contrast to the noise all around him.

Meng Kewen waved a hand in front of Wu Fengyi’s eyes. "What are you looking at?"

"That’s your childhood friend too?"

"No," Meng Kewen said. "That’s my childhood friend’s friend, here with him."

"You don’t know him?" Meng Kewen sounded a little surprised.

"Should I?"

"That’s Old Zhou’s rumored boyfriend!!!" Meng Kewen kept his voice very low, but the excitement in it still came through.

Every pore in his body seemed to light up with excitement.

So much so that even Zhou Zeqi looked over at him.

"What boyfriend?" Zhou Zeqi always looked lazy and unrestrained. Leaning against the wall, he accidentally bumped the back of his head into something hard.

He turned around and saw that he had hit the toe of his childhood friend’s friend’s canvas shoe.

Xi Shui hadn’t expected him to suddenly lean back. He pulled his foot in a little. "Sorry."

Zhou Zeqi hummed through his nose, shifted his gaze away, and spoke to Meng Kewen. "I’m asking you, what boyfriend?"

Meng Kewen crouched down. "That post on the forum with the CP rankings, wasn’t there one last semester? You even looked at it, and said his dancing looked good, that he was a match for you."

Wu Fengyi grinned.

Old Zhou had no shame.

Zhou Zeqi acted like he had never said that. "What dance does he do?"

"Ballet, the one where they stand on tiptoe and spin around." Meng Kewen raised both hands above his head and spun once on the spot while crouching.

"Oh…" A glint flashed in Zhou Zeqi’s eyes. He dragged out the end of the line, his tone stretched long and low. "That little swan from Beijing Dance."

–

The competition had reached a fever pitch. Xi Shui checked the time, then patted Lin Xiaojin, who was so excited he had already stood up. "I need to go back."

Lin Xiaojin nodded hard. "Be safe on the way back."

"You head back to the dorm early too. You still have early training tomorrow morning."

Xi Shui picked up the water bottle on the ground, pulled the two-finger-wide strap loose from it, and slung it over one shoulder together with his shoulder bag. Then he ducked down and left from the stairs at the side.

The apartment complex where he lived was right next to the school. Since the hospital, mall, and elementary school were all fairly close by, the rent was pretty high, but because it was convenient, quite a few teachers and students from the school rented places here.

At this hour, when Xi Shui stepped into the elevator, he found several workers inside, with a tall stack of cardboard boxes piled at their feet. It looked like they were moving.

Xi Shui reached out to press his floor button and found that the seventeenth floor had already been pressed.

New neighbors?

When they arrived at the seventeenth floor, Xi Shui stepped aside and let the workers out first. One of them hurriedly said, "You go first, you go first. We’ve got so much stuff."

"Okay." Xi Shui answered, while reaching into his bag for his keys. There was only one door key on his key ring, but it was hung with a pink panther plush doll nearly twenty centimeters long, so it was always a little difficult to fish out.

Just as he was tugging at the pink panther’s leg to pull it free, the workers came out of the elevator with their cart and wheeled it to the apartment next to Xi Shui’s. The new neighbors and Xi Shui were separated by just one wall.

After he got inside, Xi Shui tossed his bag and water bottle down at the entryway, took off his shoes, and ran barefoot to check his weight.

After the number on the scale changed a few times, it stopped at exactly 50 kg.

Dancers can’t be fat, that was one of the rules his parents had warned Xi Shui about since he was little.

Of course, there were ballet dancers who specifically played plump roles, but the market demand for those roles was nowhere near as great as the demand for slender, delicate ballet dancers.

Still, as a boy, Xi Shui also couldn’t be too thin. He understood that very well himself. Male dancers often needed to lift female dancers and perform some highly difficult dance movements.

Although Xi Shui had talent in ballet, he had one huge flaw.

He loved snacks and good food.

Usually, if Xi Shui practiced an extra hour, it was so he could eat one more bite of rice, two more crackers, one more sip of milk tea.

Xi Shui had a normal body type and no digestive problems. If he ate more, he would gain weight, and if he ate less, he would lose it. But because he exercised so much every day, it wasn’t that easy to put on weight, though losing it happened pretty quickly.

Still, even if he was the kind who didn’t gain weight easily, he couldn’t resist being greedy for food.

A new fried chicken shop had opened in the school’s food court. It looked delicious, and the calories were sky-high.

He had wanted to eat it for days. Just hold out one more day, there were no classes on Saturday morning, so he’d go then.

The apartment Xi Shui lived in had a living room and two bedrooms facing south. The bedroom he usually slept in faced the morning sun, while the practice room faced the afternoon sun. The practice room had a small balcony, right up against the large balcony of the apartment next door.

Xi Shui had checked. If the person next door wanted to come over, they could climb onto the balcony and jump across with ease.

But since no one had lived next door before, Xi Shui had never really taken it to heart.

Now that there were new neighbors…

Xi Shui called his mother.

Li Wanzhi was applying a clay mask to her face. After Xi Shui finished explaining, she let out an "oh my" and said, "That really isn’t very safe."

"Right," Xi Shui agreed.

"Then order yourself a set of anti-theft grilles online. Don’t buy plastic ones, install them yourself, and I’ll talk to your godmother." The landlord was Li Wanzhi’s best friend, and also Xi Shui’s godmother. She only symbolically charged five hundred yuan in rent.

"I don’t know how to install them."

Li Wanzhi didn’t know how either. "Use a wrench and screws. If that doesn’t work, call a worker to do it."

After Xi Shui washed his face, he answered, "Okay."

Once the matter of installing the anti-theft grilles was settled, Li Wanzhi asked Xi Shui whether he had been overeating at school, whether he had been attending classes and practicing properly, and whether the dance for the Varna competition was being prepared.

After Xi Shui answered everything one by one, the call with Li Wanzhi ended.

–

He kept a regular schedule. At eleven every night, he would wash up and lie down in bed. Once he lay down, he could fall asleep within three minutes, and sleep straight through until morning.

But tonight there was a small accident. The floor-to-ceiling window on the balcony of his practice room hadn’t been shut, and the door to the practice room and the door to his sleeping bedroom also hadn’t been closed.

The laughter and talking from the new neighbors next door drifted in through the balcony and woke Xi Shui.

He glanced at the time. It was almost one in the morning.

He couldn’t really blame anyone else. The soundproofing in this apartment was actually very good. Xi Shui had never heard a peep from upstairs or downstairs. Tonight he had simply forgotten that the apartment next door was occupied now, and forgotten to close the door.

He got out of bed. His mind was still foggy, and he couldn’t be bothered to put on shoes. He ran barefoot to the practice room to close the balcony door.

The floor-to-ceiling window in the practice room was one full wall of sliding glass. Xi Shui reached into the gap by the wall to pull the latch, and as he lifted his eyes slightly, he met the gaze of the new neighbor next door, who was leaning on the balcony and drinking beer.

The boy’s posture was relaxed. He had changed out of the T-shirt he had worn at school earlier. A white tank top couldn’t hide the sleek, well-defined muscles on his arms, and even from that distance, Xi Shui could feel a highly aggressive aura rushing straight at him from the other man.

When the new neighbor saw Xi Shui standing in the dark, pale and a little dazed, he lowered the can he had already brought to his lips and raised a brow.

A few hours earlier, Xi Shui had seen this new neighbor, the Sports Institute’s Zhou Yanguang, the rumored CP from the forum.

With the intention of getting along with his neighbor, Xi Shui took the initiative to greet Zhou Zeqi. He lifted a hand and waved. "Hi."

Zhou Zeqi leaned his elbow on the balcony railing. "Did I wake you?" His voice was the complete opposite of Xi Shui’s. He had already passed through puberty and become an adult man, but he still hadn’t lost the youthful vigor of campus life.

"No, I forgot to close the window," Xi Shui explained.

He stood inside the window, wearing a thin white cotton sleep shirt and long pants that reached his feet. The dark solid-wood floor made the toes that rested on it look as white as snow.

Zhou Zeqi’s gaze returned to Xi Shui’s face. "I’ll tell them to keep it down in a bit. Sorry." After he said that, he reached out and pulled his balcony door closed on his side, and the lively talking immediately quieted down a lot.

Seeing how easygoing and considerate he was, Xi Shui felt that he didn’t seem as fierce as Lin Xiaojin had described on the forum. So why did they give him such a nickname as Zhou Yanguang?

"It’s fine," Xi Shui didn’t want to trouble him too much. He pointed at his own balcony. "I’ll just install anti-theft grilles in a couple of days and that’ll be enough."

"?"

"…" Zhou Zeqi showed a somewhat puzzled expression. "Anti-theft grilles? To guard against me?"

When Xi Shui understood Zhou Zeqi’s confusion, he said a little awkwardly, "Don’t you think our balconies are too close together? It’s not safe."

At the end, he added, "It’s not safe for you either."

The two balconies were separated by less than half a meter. It was practically easy to just walk back and forth.

Zhou Zeqi stared at Xi Shui’s eyelashes, which trembled so nervously they wouldn’t stop, for a while, then laughed. When he laughed, his eyes were calm. "What’s unsafe for me? Do you have some improper thoughts about me?"

Improper thoughts?

!

Never, not even once!

Xi Shui’s ears turned red as he shook his head repeatedly. "No, no, I don’t have any improper thoughts."

Zhou Zeqi pressed step by step. "Or do you mean your anti-theft grilles can block noise?"

Xi Shui retreated step by step. "I was just saying it like that." At first he hadn’t even meant them to block noise, just to guard against the new neighbor.

Because before this, Xi Shui hadn’t known that his new neighbor was his schoolmate.

Although Beijing Dance and Beijing Sports had never gotten along for a long time, no matter what, it was still far more reassuring than someone whose name and identity were completely unknown.

Now that he knew the new neighbor was Zhou Zeqi, Xi Shui thought naively, then there was no need to guard against anything.

——————–

Author’s note:

Xiao Xi: silly little swan