TA •Chapter 84

He might have gone to buy lunch.

He might have gone to collect rent.

He might have gone out to buy cigarettes at the entrance.

He might have left his phone uncharged.

…

Before he saw those cigarette box papers on the table, Cheng Ke could still ignore the fact that Jiang Yuduo had countless reasons for not being in the room, and comfort himself with the thought that his phone had never once been turned off. Maybe he would be back in a little while.

Now those few cigarette box papers were just lying there on the table. Before he could even make out what was written on them, Cheng Ke immediately remembered the scene from yesterday, when he came out after watching the video and saw Jiang Yuduo writing something on the cigarette box papers.

He understood at once.

Regret.

Why hadn’t he paid attention then!

Aside from handing people his business card, Jiang Yuduo rarely wrote anything himself. Why hadn’t he noticed!

If only he had asked one question, if only he had taken even a single look, maybe he wouldn’t have had to face this kind of scene today!

"Fuck!" Cheng Ke cursed again through clenched teeth.

After lowering his head and closing his eyes to take several deep breaths, he moved the table back into place, since he had kicked it out of position, and slowly arranged the cigarette box papers one by one on top of it.

This was Cheng Ke’s first time seeing so much of Jiang Yuduo’s writing.

Big, and ugly.

The best-looking words Jiang Yuduo had ever written were probably just the signature on the rental agreement.

Cheng Ke. Sorry.

I’m not stopping you from pulling me. I just don’t think you can hold me back.

There’s plenty to eat. Finish it and buy more yourself.

Cat for Chen Qing.

Forget it, don’t give it to him. Help me keep it.

If you don’t want to keep it, then give it to him.

You’re good. You’re really good.

Like you.

I’m afraid I won’t be okay yet and you’ll already be gone.

I’m especially afraid I won’t be okay yet and you’ll already be gone.

It takes me too long to get better.

I’ll just do it myself. If you can’t wait, then go. It’s fine.

Tell Chen Qing I left. I might be gone for a long time. He knows how to deal with it.

I took half the towels and toothbrushes.

Cheng Ke. I really like you.

I don’t know how long you can like me for. If you don’t like me anymore, then go.

…

There were a lot, as if they had used up the stack of cigarette box papers Jiang Yuduo usually kept under the coffee table.

The writing was all big and ugly. Each sheet only held a few words. Some were fairly neat, some were so messy they were almost impossible to recognize.

Maybe Jiang Yuduo had never written this much in his entire life. By the end, his handwriting had become chaotic, but after every sentence, he carefully wrote a period.

Cheng Ke didn’t know what time Jiang Yuduo had used, or what kind of state of mind he had been in, to write down so many words.

He knew nothing.

He hadn’t even finished reading these cigarette box papers, and the writing on them had already blurred beyond recognition. He rubbed hard at his eyes twice, but tears quickly filled them again.

He had always paid close attention to Jiang Yuduo’s mood, but this time he had only chalked up all of Jiang Yuduo’s odd behavior to self-harm and… jerking off.

Cheng Ke, are your brains fucking shot along with it!

"Jijia!" Chen Qing’s anxious voice came from the window.

Cheng Ke was jolted awake by the shout. He hurriedly gathered all the cigarette box papers on the table, stuffed them into his pocket, and answered, "I’m here!"

After quickly rushing into the bathroom to wipe his face, Chen Qing used the key to open the door and came in.

"Why are you here?" Cheng Ke asked.

"How could I not come!" Chen Qing said. "You said those two things out of nowhere, and when I called back, you wouldn’t pick up! I called Third Brother too, but his phone was off!"

"He…" Cheng Ke bit his lip and glanced at his phone, only then realizing Chen Qing had called him three times in a row, and he hadn’t heard any of them. "He said it would be a long time before he came back, and that if it was anything else, you knew how to handle it."

Chen Qing stared blankly for a long time. "Where did he go?"

"I don’t know," Cheng Ke said.

"Did you two fight?" Chen Qing asked.

"No." Cheng Ke answered.

"Then why did he suddenly leave?" Chen Qing asked. "He’s never done this before."

Cheng Ke suddenly realized that Chen Qing’s voice had turned hoarse with tears. He hurriedly looked at him. "Qing’er…"

"You just tell me whether his sudden disappearance has anything to do with you!" Chen Qing’s eyes were red as he glared at him and pressed on. "Does it have anything to do with you! I need someone to take my fucking anger out on!"

Cheng Ke said nothing.

Did it have anything to do with him?

Of course it did.

But he didn’t dare say it out loud. He could think it in his head, a thousand times, ten thousand times, but saying it out loud would be like turning imagination into reality, and he couldn’t quite accept that.

Chen Qing stared at him. The two of them stood frozen in the middle of the room. In the end, Chen Qing pulled over a chair and sat down, wiping his tears. "Forget it. Yelling at you won’t accomplish anything."

Cheng Ke stayed standing.

"You look awful," Chen Qing said, wiping his face again. "Sit down."

Cheng Ke glanced at him and sat down, putting his hand into his pocket and gripping the stack of cigarette box papers tightly.

"Did he leave you a message?" Chen Qing asked. "Did he say anything else?"

"…No." Cheng Ke said.

"Did he say whether he was coming back?" Chen Qing asked again.

"He did." Cheng Ke nodded.

"Then what do you think…" Chen Qing looked at him. "Will he come back?"

Cheng Ke froze. Turning his head, he hadn’t expected Chen Qing to ask that, and suddenly felt his hand go a little cold.

"Why," Cheng Ke controlled his emotions, "are you asking that?"

Chen Qing frowned and rubbed at his eyes again. "I’ve always felt Third Brother would leave sooner or later."

Cheng Ke looked at him.

"Sometimes I feel like he’s just the same as us, hanging around on the streets, he’s the boss, leading us around, and if anything happens, he’s got our backs," Chen Qing’s voice trembled a little. "But sometimes I can also tell he’s not the same as people like us. Not the same as you either. Not the same as anybody."

"Really." Cheng Ke said softly.

"He treats me like a brother. He’s my best friend," Chen Qing said. "We talk about everything when we’re together, but I know, I tell him everything, and there are a lot of things he never told me, and never will in this lifetime."

Cheng Ke’s fingers lightly rubbed over the cigarette box papers.

Chen Qing sat to the side and said nothing more. He cried in silence for a while, then went into the bathroom to wash his face.

"If he’s not staying here, Sister Xi won’t take the place back," Chen Qing said, sitting down again and wiping the water off his face. "Why don’t you return the place you rented over there and stay here for now?"

Cheng Ke froze. He hadn’t even thought about that yet.

"It’s not really to save money," Chen Qing said. "We’ve still got a whole bunch of brothers around. If they find out Third Brother’s gone somewhere and nobody knows where, things are definitely going to get messy. Zhang Daqi’s side had just been held down too… You and Third Brother have a relationship that isn’t ordinary. Everybody can see that. If you stay here, things can still stay steady for a while. Whether everyone stays together or breaks apart, we still need time for that."

"Mm." Cheng Ke answered.

"He used to help Sister Xi with things. I can keep handling that part," Chen Qing paused. After a few seconds of silence, he suddenly burst into loud sobs, speaking between cries. "Did Third Brother say anything else…"

"Qing’er, Qing’er," Cheng Ke was at a loss, shaken by the sudden wail. "Don’t cry."

"Aren’t you crying too? You think I didn’t see?" Chen Qing cried as he spoke. "When I came in, your eyes were still red!"

Cheng Ke was suddenly at a loss for how to comfort him.

Normally, he wouldn’t have bothered anymore. At most he would have just sat to the side and watched Chen Qing cry it out.

But today was different. Jiang Yuduo had suddenly vanished from his life, and he had no mental preparation at all. It was like a staircase he had walked up ten thousand times without ever needing to look where he was going had suddenly disappeared, and he had stepped straight into confusion.

Now, looking at Chen Qing, it felt like he could still grasp a little trace of Jiang Yuduo.

"Stop crying," Cheng Ke said. "If he comes back and hears you crying like this, he’ll definitely call you a coward."

"Go ahead and curse me, I’m used to it," Chen Qing said through tears.

Before Cheng Ke could think of the next thing to say to comfort him, Chen Qing suddenly stood up, grabbed two tissues, and pressed them to his eyes. "Forget it, I’ll go back and cry there. If you need anything, call me."

"…Okay." Cheng Ke looked at him.

"If he contacts you, tell me right away." Chen Qing said.

"Definitely." Cheng Ke said.

"If he contacts me…" Chen Qing stopped halfway through, turned, and walked toward the door as his crying grew louder. "Forget it, he’ll definitely contact you first…"

After hearing Chen Qing drive away, Cheng Ke stood frozen in the room for a long time.

The room was so quiet that he could barely stand it, as if he had been wrapped inside jelly. Even though it was broad daylight, and there were passersby outside the window and neighbors talking, he couldn’t hear a thing.

He got up and walked to the window, standing in the spot Jiang Yuduo usually stood in, peering out through the gap in the curtains.

Everything was as usual.

Just like every time he had walked down this little street, the afternoon sun, the north wind that was no longer so cold, the garbage bin that looked filthy…

He wanted to cry.

But he couldn’t.

Back at the table, he wanted to take out Jiang Yuduo’s cigarette box papers and lay them back down on the tabletop, but he didn’t have the courage.

He didn’t have the courage to put those somewhat stiff, blunt, yet full of helplessness words in front of him again.

In the end, he went into the bedroom, tucked all the cigarette box papers under the pillow, and lit a cigarette.

After smoking one in the backyard, he took out his phone and opened the contacts.

Luo-jie.

He hadn’t even gotten around to calling the number under that name once. Their WeChat contact had only a few simple messages from before, and he had never even had the chance to report Jiang Yuduo’s situation to Luo-jie.

Jiang Yuduo had just left like that.

Decisive and clean.

No, no, not necessarily decisive and clean… Yesterday, Jiang Yuduo had been saying goodbye to him the whole time. It was him who hadn’t heard it.

Before calling Luo-jie, Cheng Ke, with hopeless struggle, dialed Jiang Yuduo’s number again.

The number you have dialed…

"Go to hell." Cheng Ke hung up.

After finishing another cigarette, he tapped Luo-jie’s name and dialed.

"Hello?" Luo-jie’s voice came through.

"Hello, Teacher Luo," Cheng Ke took a breath. "I’m Cheng Ke."

"Hello, Xiao Cheng." Luo-jie said.

"Do you have time right now?" Cheng Ke asked.

"Mm," Luo-jie’s voice remained as gentle as always. "Go ahead."

"It’s like this," Cheng Ke bit his lip. "This morning… no, this afternoon, Jiang Yuduo suddenly… disappeared."

"Disappeared?" Luo-jie paused.

"I mean… he left me a pile of notes. Maybe it was… because he was afraid of hurting me. Yesterday… yesterday he recorded a video for me," Cheng Ke said with some difficulty. Each of these things, every sentence he said, felt like a knife being driven into his heart. "His… his self-harm behavior, he recorded it…"

"Can you send me the video to look at?" Luo-jie said. "And the notes."

"Mm, I was planning to send them to you anyway, but I didn’t get the chance. When I got up today, he had already… left." Cheng Ke felt it becoming hard to breathe, and his heartbeat had completely gone out of rhythm.

It took him a long time before he suddenly found the source of this panic. Even his voice started to tremble uncontrollably. "Teacher Luo, he hasn’t contacted you?"

"No," Luo-jie said. "He knows both my mobile number and my landline. Let me check if I missed any calls on the landline… No."

Cheng Ke braced one hand against the wall just to stay upright, but then a wave of soreness shot through his right wrist. Only then did he realize he was holding the phone in his left hand and had been pressing his right hand against the wall.

"Then he might…" Cheng Ke turned and leaned against the wall. "Would he go find you?"

"That’s uncertain," Luo-jie said. "We don’t know what state of mind he was in when he left. If he feels tense, unsafe, he won’t trust anyone, including me."

"If he, if he didn’t come to find you, and just hid somewhere," Cheng Ke said softly, "would he be in danger?"

"I need to see that video and the notes he left before I can make a rough judgment," Luo-jie said. "Based on his previous condition, there shouldn’t be any danger. He would consciously control the degree to which he injured himself. And I said before that he didn’t have suicidal tendencies."

"Mm," Cheng Ke felt like his throat was almost unable to produce sound, "I’ll send everything to you right away. If he contacts you…"

"I’ll let you know," Luo-jie said. "Relax a little. The chance that he’ll contact me is still relatively high."

"Okay, thank you." Cheng Ke said.

After hanging up, Cheng Ke wasted no time at all. He first sent the video to Luo-jie, then ran into the bedroom, took all the cigarette box papers out from under the pillow, arranged them, and took photos.

When he saw the words Jiang Yuduo had written through the camera lens, Cheng Ke’s vision blurred again.

He sent the photos to Luo-jie, and didn’t dare look again at those big, ugly words that were almost spilling off the edges of the paper. He gathered them all up and put them back under the pillow.

Then he threw down his phone and started checking the room.

Jiang Yuduo’s wardrobe was basically unchanged. He didn’t have many clothes, so a quick rummage made everything almost clear at a glance. Aside from the set he had been wearing, he had only taken the jacket he had swapped over to Cheng Ke.

"Idiot!" Cheng Ke cursed through clenched teeth.

But aside from that, he couldn’t tell what else Jiang Yuduo had taken.

He wasn’t deviant enough. He didn’t watch Jiang Yuduo every day, didn’t circle around his room every day touching and looking at everything, because he trusted Jiang Yuduo. He had never imagined there would be a day like this.

Clearly, Jiang Yuduo had not trusted him.

Or rather, Jiang Yuduo hadn’t trusted himself.

He didn’t trust that he could get "better," and he didn’t trust that Cheng Ke could keep staying by his side under these circumstances.

"Idiot!" Cheng Ke really couldn’t find any other words to vent the feelings in his heart, feelings that he couldn’t quite name but which were miserable, angry, helpless, and also, goddamn, very worried. So he could only curse again viciously.

Extremely viciously.

Spit even hit the wardrobe door.

He went to get a wet tissue and wiped the door clean.

Jiang Yuduo didn’t keep wet tissues at home, but Cheng Ke liked using them, so yesterday he had bought eight packs.

After wiping the wardrobe door, he discovered his face was already covered in tears.

That made him somewhat angry. He kicked the door and sat down on the edge of the bed.

When Luo-jie’s call came in, he glanced at the time. It was already five.

Jiang Yuduo had been right. Time couldn’t be passed by, and there was no need to pass it.

"Teacher Luo, how is it?" Cheng Ke answered the phone and asked anxiously. After asking, though, he started to feel cowardly and wanted to hang up before Luo-jie even spoke.

"I took a look. He probably won’t be in much danger, about the same as before," Luo-jie said. "This time, the key to his avoidance, or rather, the difference… still had to do with you."

"Avoidance?" Cheng Ke froze. "How could he be avoiding it? He made a huge decision to face his illness. He brought me to see you, and now he recorded a video so I could see his condition. How could he be avoiding it?"

"In this regard, he wasn’t avoiding it," Luo-jie said gently. "What he was avoiding was you. He couldn’t face you disappearing."

"I won’t disappear!" Cheng Ke couldn’t help raising his voice. "I said I would be here! Always here!"

"Xiao Jiang lacks an extreme sense of security. Such a promise can’t keep his emotions stable," Luo-jie said. "He has decided that he will hurt you, and he has also decided that even if he doesn’t hurt you, you’ll still be unable to bear the treatment process and will eventually leave."

"So he just decided I’d disappear, right?" Cheng Ke said.

"You could say that. He lacks security, lacks confidence," Luo-jie said. "You could also say he wanted to avoid the process of you disappearing. But these are only my very hurried preliminary judgments. If he can come find me, and I talk with him, then I’ll be able to understand his thoughts more deeply."

"He still hasn’t contacted you, has he?" Cheng Ke asked weakly, asking a piece of nonsense that he already knew was nonsense, but still couldn’t stop himself from asking.

"Not yet," Luo-jie said.

"I understand." Cheng Ke said. "If he contacts you, if you think it’s appropriate to say this, please tell him for me that I’m not going anywhere."

I’m not going anywhere.

I’m just staying right here.

You want to jerk off and then run? Go to hell with that fucking sleep with someone and dump them nonsense! It’s not that easy!

If you’ve got the guts, then don’t come back!

If you dare come back, I fucking dare to kill you without even counting one, two, three!

Cheng Ke hugged his head and crouched down on the floor, burying his face in his knees, and then he heard his own suppressed, not-at-all pleasant crying.