Cheng Boyan turned his head, and when he saw the person behind him, he froze for a moment. After several seconds, he finally said: “Da Jiang?” (NT: big brother Jiang)

Xiang Xi also turned around. Behind them stood a man who looked a little over thirty, wearing glasses, looking rather scholarly—pretty much like those “young and promising CEOs” you often see on TV.

“Yes, I almost thought I had mistaken you for someone else.” The man called Da Jiang smiled and reached out his hand. “Long time no see.”

Cheng Boyan smiled a little, nodded at Da Jiang, but did not shake his hand: “Long time no see. Here to buy books?”

“No, just looking around.” Da Jiang withdrew his hand. “You really are… haven’t changed much.”

“How could I change?” Cheng Boyan said with a smile.

Da Jiang’s gaze fell on the book Xiang Xi was holding. He froze for a moment: “You’re buying books here? Did you get married?”

“No.” Cheng Boyan answered very simply.

“Oh, I figured. I also… haven’t.” Da Jiang probably saw that Cheng Boyan didn’t want to say much more, so he looked again at Xiang Xi. “Buying for a friend’s kid? This set’s good, comes with pinyin and English.”

Pinyin and English? Xiang Xi lowered his head and looked at the book in his hands, but he couldn’t even tell which was English and which was pinyin.

“You’ve bought it before?” Cheng Boyan flipped through the book.

“Our company published it.” Da Jiang laughed, pulled out a business card, and handed it to Cheng Boyan, then pointed at the shelf next to them. “All of these are ours. I drop by here every now and then.”

“Oh,” Cheng Boyan accepted the card and glanced at him. “So you’re in publishing now? No wonder you’re even wearing plain lenses.”

“You still talk like that,” Da Jiang touched his glasses, then pulled out another card and handed it to Xiang Xi.
“Please take care of me.” (NT: a polite idiom used when giving your business card or asking someone to offer guidance/help.)

Xiang Xi noticed that this person was handing the card with both hands, so after hesitating for a moment, he copied Cheng Boyan’s gesture and accepted it with both hands.

He could recognize the name on the card. Such a simple name was honestly delightful: Liu Jiang (NT: 刘江. Still quite complicated for a non Chinese!)—much easier to recognize than Cheng Boyan’s more complex name.

Cheng Boyan and this Liu Jiang kept up a stiff, awkward conversation, making small talk. Xiang Xi found it boring, so he turned around and wandered off.

This Liu Jiang was rather strange. Cheng Boyan wasn’t showing much warmth at all, but Liu Jiang still didn’t seem to have any intention of leaving. If it were him, Xiang Xi thought, he would’ve walked off long ago if someone treated him so coldly.

But then again, Cheng Boyan was never overly warm to people, so maybe these old acquaintances were used to it.

Xiang Xi wandered slowly along the shelves, looking at the colourful covers of children’s books and trying to pick out the characters he recognized. After circling around twice, he was quite satisfied.

Not bad—actually, I recognize quite a lot of characters after all.

After a couple more rounds, he saw Cheng Boyan walking over; Liu Jiang was already heading toward the elevator.

“Finished chatting?” Xiang Xi put down a literacy poster he had been holding.

“Mm.” Cheng Boyan nodded and patted the books in his hand. “Let’s go. Take these for now and read them slowly at home.”

“Your friend?” Xiang Xi followed him to the cashier, then pulled out the business card again to look at it. “So it’s a company? Is he some boss? He looks pretty much like a boss to me.”

“Distribution manager,” Cheng Boyan turned his head, “from the school next door back then.”

“College?” Xiang Xi asked.

“Mm,” Cheng Boyan replied.

“He looks older than you.” Xiang Xi thought for a moment, then suddenly grinned. “Hey, maybe all your classmates are married now, so when he heard you’re still single, he felt like—he found a fellow comrade-in-arms, someone who’s not a different companion anymore.”

“Is that so?” Cheng Boyan also smiled. “I’ll tell you later.”

The books were paid for by Cheng Boyan—he had a bookstore card with money still on it.

Xiang Xi stood to the side, watching as the clerk stamped the books and slipped them into a bag. He felt a kind of deep satisfaction in his heart. Even though they were only a few children’s books, holding them in his hands felt weighty, almost solemn.

After leaving the bookstore, Cheng Boyan also bought him a beautiful soft-cover notebook, a fountain pen, and a bottle of ink at the stationery shop next door.

“Why not just buy a ballpoint or gel pen? Wouldn’t that do? Fountain pens are so expensive, and using them is such a hassle.” As soon as Xiang Xi thought about refilling ink, he already felt it was too troublesome.

“A fountain pen writes more comfortably,” Cheng Boyan said.

“For someone like me who only writes numbers and his own name, I can’t feel the difference,” Xiang Xi looked at the fountain pen in his hand. It was very pretty, but it clearly didn’t belong to his world. “A gel pen works fine for me.”

“Use the fountain pen.” Cheng Boyan didn’t even look at him.

“Why!” Xiang Xi was exasperated.

“Because it writes more comfortably. Didn’t I just say so?” Cheng Boyan replied.

“…Fine, fine.” Xiang Xi put the pen back in the bag.

“Hungry?” Cheng Boyan asked as he got into the car. “What do you want to eat?”

“Anything. Just nothing too complicated,” Xiang Xi flipped through a book in the passenger seat. “Anyway, whatever you want to eat, I’ve never had it; whatever I want to eat, you think it’s dirty.”

“…Then I’ll just pick a place.” Cheng Boyan started the car.

“Mm.” Xiang Xi closed the book and turned his face toward him. “So, tell me.”

“Tell you what?” Cheng Boyan asked.

“Hey, you’re not that old but your brain’s already mushy,” Xiang Xi clicked his tongue. “That classmate of yours, the supervisor.”

“Oh, I forgot.” Cheng Boyan smiled. “Liu Jiang. You two would definitely have common ground.”

“Don’t kid me. That guy’s obviously management.” Xiang Xi leaned back in his seat and pushed against the little drawer in front of him with his knee. “What common ground could we have?”

“You’re both sloppy,” Cheng Boyan said, then thought for a moment and clicked his tongue again. “Actually, he’s even sloppier than you.”

“I’m pretty particular, you know…” Xiang Xi clicked his tongue too. “I’m a guy who actually rubs his hands with disinfectant now. How sloppy can he be? He looked pretty put-together to me—dressed well, clean-shaven.”

Xiang Xi was genuinely interested in the stories of Master of Cleanliness Cheng Boyan waging war against all things messy. For someone with a cleanliness obsession who refused to admit it, he’d survived surprisingly well—if he’d been born in Zhao Jiayao, he probably would’ve killed himself to escape this filthy world.

“At first, I didn’t notice either. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been so close to him… He rented a place near school. I stopped by once and saw it for myself,” Cheng Boyan frowned. “Really, you can’t judge a book by its cover.”

“Was it filthy?” Xiang Xi found it hard to imagine.

“He never used bowls for meals, just takeout. And he never threw away the containers. They piled up in the room until it smelled terrible.” Cheng Boyan frowned. “And the walls were full of black streaks, all made from dragging his fingers across them.”

“What kind of hobby is that, scratching walls?” Xiang Xi wasn’t especially bothered by the takeout boxes. In Dawao, lots of people kept chickens. Sometimes they’d come inside and shit all over the floor, and Uncle Ping could still calmly sip his tea beside the piles until someone else cleaned it. The smell was just as unbearable.

“At night he didn’t turn on the lights to go to the bathroom. He just ran his finger along the wall the whole way, using it as a guide,” Cheng Boyan explained.

“That would actually leave marks? Was he dipping ink?” Xiang Xi was dumbfounded.

“No ink. His own filth. Probably never washed his hands properly,” Cheng Boyan said. “Whenever I think about how those hands touched my face, I just…”

Xiang Xi glanced at his own hand, then rubbed his finger hard against the white car door. No black streaks. Relieved, he froze for a moment. “Touched your face?”

Cheng Boyan didn’t reply right away. After a while, he cleared his throat. “…Yeah.”

“He touched your face?” Xiang Xi suddenly thought of something and stared at Cheng Boyan.

“What?” Cheng Boyan glanced at him.

“N-no, nothing.” Xiang Xi turned away awkwardly. “I was just asking.”

Cheng Boyan chuckled but said nothing.

Xiang Xi didn’t know what that laugh meant, and he didn’t dare press further. He hugged the bag of books and looked out the window.

Watching the restaurants flashing past outside, Xiang Xi started to feel his stomach growl. And when he got hungry, he’d start craving things. He tapped the car window. “Let’s have noodles. Knife-cut noodles?”

“Alright,” Cheng Boyan said.

After that, Xiang Xi couldn’t find anything else to say. He leaned against the seat, gazing out the window again, but his mind kept circling back to guessing at the relationship between Liu Jiang and Cheng Boyan.

Touched his face?

(NT: Unless you are very close to someone, touching their face is considered highly disrespectful in China, where the face isn’t just a physical feature—it symbolizes a person’s dignity, social standing, and respect.)

Most people don’t touch other people’s faces. He himself had never done that. When he was a kid, lots of people would pinch or touch his face, but that was different—kids attract that. Cheng Boyan wasn’t a kid anymore.

Xiang Xi stole a glance at him. If that was the case… then maybe the two of them really were something. At least, they seemed like the same kind of people.

“What are you thinking about?” Cheng Boyan suddenly asked.

“Huh?” Xiang Xi jumped, almost worried that he’d gotten so caught up in his thoughts that he’d said something out loud.

“It’s not as complicated as you think.” Cheng Boyan smiled. “Before I saw his place, I actually quite liked him.”

“…Oh, oh.” Xiang Xi quickly nodded, then thought for a moment, turned his head, and couldn’t help but ask another question: “Then… what about him?”

“About the same,” Cheng Boyan said. Up ahead was a red light; he stopped the car, turned his head to look at Xiang Xi. “It was just at that stage of wanting to start, but not having started yet.”

“Oh—” Xiang Xi drew out the sound, putting on an expression of “I see,” though in truth he had no idea what “that stage of wanting to start but not having started” even meant.

“Don’t pretend to understand if you don’t.” Cheng Boyan said.

“You saw through me, huh?” Xiang Xi chuckled, a little embarrassed, scratching his head. “I haven’t experienced that… So that’s the reason you didn’t start anything with him?”

“Mm.” Cheng Boyan smiled again.

“Then afterwards… did you have anyone else?” Xiang Xi thought for a moment. “The way I see it, with your condition, it might be tough. Maybe if someone makes noise when eating, you wouldn’t even start with them.”

“Not necessarily. Back then I didn’t really understand. When I met someone of the same kind, I just wanted to get closer—can’t really count it as true liking.” After saying this, Cheng Boyan paused, then suddenly leaned back in his seat and burst into laughter, laughing for quite a while without stopping.

Xiang Xi was completely baffled by his laughter, staring blankly until he suddenly realized—Cheng Boyan had once said Xiang Xi made noise when eating.

“Hey!” Xiang Xi shouted, “That’s not what I meant!”

“Whoa, with a voice like that…” Cheng Boyan almost stalled the car as he pulled out, still laughing. “Did I say it was about you?”

“Then what the hell are you laughing at!” Xiang Xi slapped the car window. Thinking back to how he’d asked earlier why Cheng Boyan was helping him so much, he suddenly felt pretty embarrassed.

“I was just laughing for a bit. Laughing for the sake of it.” Cheng Boyan was still laughing.

“Will you quit it already!” Xiang Xi glared at him.

“Mm?” Cheng Boyan glanced at him and started laughing again. “I can’t quit it…”

“Are you ever going to stop!” Xiang Xi yelled again, then cut him off before he could speak: “No, you’re not going to stop. I’ll just say it for you.”

Xiang Xi hadn’t had knife-cut noodles in ages. Cheng Boyan drove around the streets a few times before finally finding a shop. At first Cheng thought the place wasn’t all that clean, but since there was a parking space right outside, he decided they’d just eat there.

“Get parking spaces, conquer the world (NT: The original idiom is 得天下, “gain the world, conquer all”)!” Xiang Xi jumped out of the car, still hugging the bag of books.

“Leave the stuff in the car,” Cheng Boyan said. “No one’s going to steal a few storybooks with pinyin.”

“Forgot.” Xiang Xi tossed the bag back inside. “Who says no one would steal them? This is a whole set of English storybooks—most people wouldn’t even understand them!”

The noodle shop was busy. Many people stood waiting near the pickup counter. While Cheng Boyan paid, Xiang Xi grabbed a seat by the counter.

When Cheng finished paying and sat across from him, Xiang Xi asked: “Did you add beef for me?”

“Yeah.” Cheng Boyan said.

“I’m starving,” Xiang Xi rubbed his belly. “Did you add it for yourself?”

“Added vegetables.” Cheng Boyan smiled.

“What kind of tiger are you supposed to be?” Xiang Xi sighed. “Even a gecko eats meat.”

Cheng Boyan laughed and patted his shoulder. “I’ve already passed the growth stage when I need meat. You eat more. Weren’t you saying you’re born in the year of the chicken, dog, or rat? Those are all little animals.”

“True.” Xiang Xi nodded.

“You don’t even know your own birthday?” Cheng Boyan asked.

“I don’t. Who would know that kind of thing? Uncle Ping never told me in detail,” Xiang Xi looked down, a bit gloomy, lowering his voice. “The birthday on my ID card is just the day I had someone help me make it.”

“So which zodiac did you pick for yourself?” Cheng Boyan looked at him.

“Dog.” Xiang Xi scratched his head. “I thought it suited me. One of those unwanted stray dogs.”

“Don’t put it like that. Stray or not, every dog can still live its own life. You’ve always lived pretty… stubbornly (NT: conveys the notion of being obstinate but also resilient), haven’t you? Like you’ve got thorns all over you.” Cheng Boyan squeezed his shoulder lightly.

“…Yeah, I’m a rose with thorns.” Xiang Xi glanced at him and grinned.

“A rose, huh?” Cheng Boyan looked him over, then laughed. “More like a prickly mutt.”

The two of them laughed for a long time. Other people started looking over, and only then did Cheng Boyan force himself to stop smiling—this was the first time he’d ever laughed that much in public.

Xiang Xi didn’t care, and kept laughing for a while before finally stopping.

After finishing their noodles, Cheng Boyan drove Xiang Xi back. He stopped at the intersection and looked down the pitch-black alley, sighing. “Once you’ve stayed three months, move somewhere else. This place looks too much like a bandits’ den.”

“We’ll see when the time comes. Honestly, it’s not bad. Just no street lights. But even if there were, they wouldn’t last—people play with slingshots at night.” Xiang Xi chuckled. “I grew up in a real den of thieves. This place is way higher-end than that.”

Cheng Boyan gave him a glance but didn’t pursue the subject. He pointed at the books: “Read them when you get home. You don’t know pinyin either, right?”

“Don’t know. But I don’t need pinyin. Let me say again—I’m not someone who can’t recognize a single character. If you give me pictures, I can figure it out!”

“Fine. If there’s anything you don’t get, ask me.” Cheng Boyan smiled.

“Wait and see me master it in no time!” Xiang Xi snapped his fingers, pushed the car door open, and hopped out. “I’m off!”

“Mm.” Cheng Boyan nodded. “Good night.”

“Good night!” Xiang Xi shut the car door, gave the front of the hood two pats with the bag in his hand, and ran off into the pitch-dark little road.

This going grocery shopping with a “mom” thing was actually kind of fun, Xiang Xi thought as he got back to his place. He sat on the bed and flipped open the book for a while. Many names of products—daily necessities, snacks, vegetables—were all laid out with a picture and a word labelled underneath.

But Xiang Xi got annoyed after not even twenty minutes, and even started to get sleepy.

He shut the book, hopped off the bed to take a shower, and came out feeling all refreshed again. He picked up the book once more, but after glancing at just a few words and trying to copy down the word biscuit in his notebook, drowsiness hit him again.

He collapsed onto the bed. Cheng Boyan really does understand me, he thought. If this were a dictionary, I wouldn’t even get through a single page before conking out completely.

He really admired Cheng Boyan’s ability to sit and read for two or three hours straight.

So with all the starting and stopping, scribbling crooked characters here and there for two hours, Xiang Xi eventually just couldn’t keep his eyes open. Lying on the bed, he still thought, I’ll get up and read a couple more pages later. But the next time he opened his eyes, it was already daylight.

Still, even though yesterday’s studying hadn’t been very efficient, it was better than doing nothing at all. At work, while looking at the shelves, Xiang Xi recognized several words he’d studied the night before, and instantly felt he’d taken a big step forward toward becoming a cultured person.

Fang Yan was very surprised when he heard Xiang Xi had started working at the supermarket. After congratulating him, he drove over early in the morning, even came inside, and bought some food.

“Don’t film the supermarket’s name,” Xiang Xi whispered to him while he was choosing things. “That’s not good.”

“Mm, I didn’t film it, don’t worry. I didn’t even get the storefront in frame. The main subject is you,” Fang Yan said. “I only filmed you. How’s the work here going?”

“Double sixes, all smooth,” Xiang Xi said, turning to walk away. “Finish buying and leave quickly.”
(NT: ‘Double sixes, all smooth’ comes from dice/gambling culture, meaning everything is going extremely well. The number six is considered lucky in Chinese culture)

After lunch, Song Yi called him into the office.

Xiang Xi went in nervously, worried Song Yi had found out about Fang Yan and was going to give him trouble.

“How’s it feeling?” Song Yi sat behind the desk, a pen in hand, a sheet of paper in front of him.

“Pretty good. I’m slowly getting used to the work.” Xiang Xi said.

“Mm. You’re quite smart, so this stuff isn’t hard to learn.” Song Yi tapped the pen lightly on the paper twice. “Here’s a form that needs to be filled out…”

“A form?” Xiang Xi froze.

“Just for the records,” Song Yi smiled. “You can just tell me, I’ll write it down.”

“Oh.” Xiang Xi let out a breath of relief.

The form was just an employee registration form: name, age, address, phone number, and so on. Normally this kind of thing wouldn’t need Song Yi to do personally, but clearly he worried Xiang Xi would struggle filling it out.

Xiang Xi answered all of Song Yi’s questions, but the very last one left him silent.

“Bank account number? Your wages will just be transferred to your card.” Song Yi said.

Xiang Xi was quiet for a long time before finally whispering: “I don’t have a card.”

“That’s fine,” Song Yi glanced at him. “Go get one made.”

“I… can’t make a card.” Xiang Xi answered with great difficulty, not knowing how to explain.

(NT: Probably because, as he was born outside the household registration system, he has no national ID, which is mandatory when opening a bank account)

“Hm?” Song Yi was taken aback for a moment, but quickly lowered his head and kept writing. “Then we’ll pay you in cash. No problem.”

“Thanks, Brother Song.” Xiang Xi said.

When he walked out of the office, Xiang Xi felt a bit dejected.

*

These two days, Cheng Boyan was on duty. After dinner, he sat in the nurses’ station listening to the young nurses chat for a while, then returned to his office. Just as he was about to use the quiet time to finish writing up some patient admission records, his phone rang on the desk.

He picked it up, thinking it might be Xiang Xi calling to report his reading progress, but the screen showed Song Yi’s number.

“Calling me for food?” Cheng Boyan answered with a laugh.

“If I call, does that mean I can eat earlier?” Song Yi chuckled. “Busy? I have something to talk to you about.”

“Not too busy. Go ahead.” Cheng Boyan said.

“That Xiang Xi—do you know much about his situation? I mean, his background and all that.” Song Yi asked.

“I know the basics,” Cheng Boyan picked up his cup and took a sip of water. “Why?”

“He doesn’t even have an ID card, does he?” Song Yi asked directly, without beating around the bush.

“…He doesn’t.” Cheng Boyan paused. “Does that affect his job?”

“Not here, of course not.” Song Yi was quiet for a moment, then his voice softened. “Boyan, do you… really have some feelings for this kid?”

“What’s wrong?” Cheng Boyan put down his cup.

“Nothing. Just worried you’re bringing trouble on yourself,” Song Yi said. “He’s never been to school, doesn’t have an ID card—fine, forget all that. But hasn’t he also gotten into some trouble before?”

“What do you mean?” Cheng Boyan frowned. He had planned to explain Xiang Xi’s situation to Song Yi over a meal, but being asked so suddenly, his first thought was: Has trouble already followed him to the supermarket?

“Some guy, not sure if he’s a reporter or what, hung around outside the supermarket all morning, and even went inside,” Song Yi said. “I saw him talking to Xiang Xi. Do you know what that’s about?”

 

Translator : DarNan