For the week that the photography exhibition was on, Xiang Xi went there every day to wander around. Whenever he saw someone lingering in front of his photograph I Saw the Light, he would stare at the person’s face for a long time.

Do you like it?

Isn’t it really something?

Isn’t it amazing!

Don’t you think the person who took this photograph is extraordinary!

I’m right here!

Look at me!

I’m the one who took it…

On the final day, Xiang Xi even took his camera with him, but he was too embarrassed to carry it openly inside. He took a few photographs at the entrance, then slipped inside and, like a thief, took two photographs of his own photograph and “work,” before quickly stuffing the camera back into his bag.

Just as he turned around and was about to leave, someone called his name from beside him: “Xiang Xi.”

“Hmm.” He turned his head.

When he saw Director Xu and Uncle Cheng, his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets, and he hurriedly bowed. “Auntie, Uncle.”

“Is this the one?” Uncle Cheng asked with a smile, pointing at the photograph.

“…Yes.” Xiang Xi had originally always hoped that someone would stop in front of this photograph, but now that Uncle Cheng had suddenly asked him about it, he became embarrassed again. “I just took it casually. It can’t compare with those photographers’ work.”

“It’s very good.” Director Xu stepped closer to the photograph. “I’ve never really paid much attention to things like this. I didn’t know that such an ordinary scene could also be so beautiful.”

Xiang Xi felt as though his face were burning. He took a bottle of water, pressed it against his face, and rolled it around for a while before finally remembering to hand it to Director Xu. “Auntie, have some water.”

“Thank you.” Director Xu accepted the water with a smile. “I had some coffee when I came in, so my mouth happens to feel a little unpleasant.”

“Xiang Xi.” Uncle Cheng patted him on the shoulder. “Impressive. Keep it up.”

Xiang Xi gave two little embarrassed laughs without saying anything.

He had originally felt that there was no one left for him to show off to, but now that Director Xu and Uncle Cheng had seen it too, he suddenly felt that there was nothing left to show off about. He was more or less satisfied.

After the exhibition ended, Fang Yin transferred the money to the Cheng Boyan card that Xiang Xi was carrying. When Xiang Xi checked the payment, he discovered that Fang Yin had transferred an extra thousand yuan.

“Did you calculate the amount wrong?” Xiang Xi called Fang Yin.

“No. The extra amount is from me personally,” Fang Yin said with a smile. “Consider it encouragement. I originally wanted to encourage you verbally, but I figured that for a money-lover like you, this might give you more motivation.”

“Brother, you really know how to handle people,” Xiang Xi complimented Fang Yin. “Thank you. Really.”

“If you want to learn photography, come find me. I won’t charge you; just consider it an exchange,” Fang Yin said.

“Okay!” Xiang Xi nodded.

After the exhibition, life returned to how it had been before: going to Yunshui to make tea, staying at home whenever he had nothing to do and tidying the house according to Cheng the Clean Freak’s requirements, buying groceries, competing with Cheng Boyan over who would cook…

Their battle over cooking never produced a clear winner. Holding his phone, Xiang Xi felt that he absolutely had to come up with a killer move to bring Cheng Boyan under control.

Seeing Hu Hai’s name on his phone, he pressed the call button.

“Xiang Xi?” Hu Hai answered.

“Ge,” Xiang Xi began very seriously, “there’s something I’d like to ask you for help with.”

“Get down on your knees, then,” Hu Hai said.

Xiang Xi laughed for a long time. “Seriously, it’s a proper matter.”

“Let’s hear it.” Hu Hai smiled.

“Teach me how to make a few dishes. Two or three would be fine, even one would do,” Xiang Xi said. “Something simple and easy to make, not troublesome, but that tastes like it was made by a master chef the moment you eat it.”

“…What kind of requirements are those?” Hu Hai was taken aback. “You want to show Doctor Cheng what you can do?”

“No, I don’t want to show him just one trick. I want to completely knock him flat,” Xiang Xi said viciously.

Hu Hai laughed, and after a while said, “All right. Come over when you have time. I’ll teach you how to make kung pao chicken, and then shredded cabbage by hand. One meat dish and one vegetable dish, and you’ll have the set.”

(NT: Kung Pao chicken (宫保鸡丁, gōngbǎo jīdīng) is a Sichuan dish of diced chicken stir-fried with peanuts, dried chillies, and a savoury-sweet-spicy sauce, named after Ding Baozhen, a Qing government official; his shortened title was Gongbao).

Xiang Xi had not told Cheng Boyan about his plan to learn cooking from Hu Hai. He intended to master it first, then make his grand debut with a bang as Chef Xiang, dazzling and resplendent, appearing out of nowhere and scaring Cheng Boyan half to death.

He was quite familiar with the work at Yunshui by now. The regular customers would often call him “Master Xiao Xi,” which, besides making him rather pleased with himself, gave him the illusion that he had become a monk who had renounced the world.

After officially working for a month, he received his salary. He had originally used Cheng Boyan’s card, so all the money had been deposited into that card.

Xiang Xi excitedly made a trip to the bank and checked the balance at the ATM.

There was suddenly quite a bit more money in the account. If there had not been people waiting behind him, Xiang Xi would have stared at the numbers without wanting to move.

After the person behind him coughed, he hesitated, left two thousand in the account, withdrew the rest, and then turned around and went into the bank.

“I want to get a bank card,” he asked a security guard. “How do I do that?”

“Take a number and fill out a form over here.” The security guard helped him take a number and then brought him an application form for opening a bank account.

The moment Xiang Xi saw the writing on it, his head began to ache. He had to write again?

“Thank you.” Holding the form, he began filling it out by copying from a sample form on the desk: Xiang Xi, identity card, identity card number, female…

After struggling to write two lines without even finishing them, he awkwardly scratched his head and said to the security guard, “Big brother, could you give me another one? I accidentally wrote my gender as female…”

The security guard laughed and brought him another form. “Copy from it, but don’t copy it word for word.”

Xiang Xi simply wanted to get a bank card. Back when he used to secretly save money, he had always wanted a bank card of his own. And this was his first time officially using his identity card, so he found it rather interesting.

But he had not expected getting a card to be so troublesome. There was a whole pile of things to fill out.

By the time he had struggled for ages, sweating as he finally finished the form, he discovered that he had already missed the number he had taken.

“Damn it.” Feeling somewhat frustrated, he went back and took another number, then sat in the bank lobby and waited.

When his turn finally came again, he handed his identity card to the bank clerk, feeling somewhat overwhelmed with emotion. He was particularly hoping that the clerk would suspect his identity card was fake, so that he could coolly say, “Go check it!”

Unfortunately, the clerk merely held his identity card up next to his face, looked at it, and then went off to photocopy it.

“Would you like to activate online banking?” the clerk asked.

“Online banking?” Xiang Xi hesitated. He did not understand this sort of thing. “If I don’t activate it now, can I do it later?”

“You can.”

“Then I’ll worry about that later. Just make the card for me first.” He could not figure this stuff out; he would have to go home and ask Cheng Boyan.

The bank card was issued fairly quickly. In the end, Xiang Xi had to sign his name on the form as the clerk instructed. He only signed because there was no other way around it. He had not written for a while, and the square, block-like handwriting he had finally managed to develop had regressed back into its grasshopper-like form.

When the clerk handed him the card, he accepted it very carefully, looked at it for a long time before finally getting up and walking away, then grabbed the security guard again and had him teach him how to use the ATM to deposit money into the card.

After depositing all the money he had withdrawn earlier, he finally walked out of the bank clutching his bag.

This bag was far too valuable, far too important. His money, his identity card, and Song Yi’s camera were all inside. He absolutely had to hold onto it.

He hugged the bag as he got on the bus, hugged it as he got off, then hugged it as he entered the shopping mall beside Cheng Boyan’s hospital—the same mall where he had looked at watches that day.

“Show me that dark-blue one.” Xiang Xi went straight to the counter without looking at anything else and pointed directly at the model he had looked at that day, his goal perfectly clear.

“Have you decided on the dark blue?” the salesgirl asked with a smile as she took the watch out for him.

“Hm?” Xiang Xi froze for a moment and looked up at her. “You remember me?”

“Of course I do,” the girl said. “We’re very good at remembering faces, especially handsome guys.”

Xiang Xi smiled without saying anything.

There was really nothing left to consider about the watch. He had already turned it over and over and examined it thoroughly that day. He rubbed the strap; it felt quite good. “I’ll take this one. Put it in a pretty box for me and tie a ribbon around it. I’m giving it to someone. Is that okay?”

“Sure,” the girl said. “We’ll match it with a blue flower.”

Xiang Xi took the receipt to the cashier to pay. The cashier asked, “Cash or card?”

“Card.” Xiang Xi coolly took out Cheng Boyan’s card and handed it over.

After paying for the watch, there would still be some money left on the card for his usual spending.

“Please sign here.” The cashier handed him the printed receipt.

“What? Sign again?” Xiang Xi instantly felt as though his hair was about to explode, and his face seemed to itch all over.

Signing his own name would have been one thing, but this was Cheng Boyan’s card. Writing Cheng Boyan’s name was practically torture.

He took the pen reluctantly. He had practised Cheng Boyan’s name countless times, but when it came time to write it, he still had to think for a long while. His handwriting was already laborious, stroke by stroke, and with the cashier constantly watching him with a strange look, he wrote even more slowly. He could not help pressing down harder and harder, as though he were about to flatten the tip of the pen.

*

Cheng Boyan had an unusually quiet day at work. He did not encounter any particularly difficult patients; there was only a middle-aged man whose cervical spine was seriously deformed. The man had been perfectly fine when he arrived. While looking at the X-rays, Cheng Boyan said, “Look, normally the cervical spine has a curve here. You don’t have that curve here.”

As soon as the man heard that, he became convinced that he was going to die. No curve meant death. He was going to die. He was going to die the moment he walked out of the hospital entrance.

Cheng Boyan spent nearly twenty minutes explaining it to him, until his throat was almost hoarse, before the man finally believed that losing that curve would not kill him.

When Cheng Boyan changed clothes after work, he felt that his throat probably would not recover today. He was probably coming down with some internal heat.

On his way out of the consultation room, he ran into Doctor Liu, who stepped forward and stopped him. “Give me a throat lozenge.”

Ever since something had gone slightly wrong with his health last time, Doctor Liu had turned into a walking medicine cabinet. Although there was nothing seriously wrong with him, he had become particularly attentive to his health. He kept things like vitamins in a drawer, along with all sorts of little surprises such as throat lozenges.

“Coming to my place for dinner tonight?” Doctor Liu gave him a throat lozenge. “Feels like we haven’t talked in ages. Your sister-in-law was asking about you the other day.”

“Hey,” Cheng Boyan laughed. “Don’t scare me.”

“You’re never serious once you get off work.” Doctor Liu gave him a look.

“I’m not very serious at work either.” Cheng Boyan smiled. “I’m not going today. I’ll come over when I get a day off in a few days. Right now, once I finish work, I just want to turn into a puddle of mud and collapse on the ground without getting back up.”

As soon as Cheng Boyan left the hospital, he felt that he had probably dressed too lightly today. Once the sun had set, the wind blowing against him was chilling to the bone.

He tugged at his collar and hurried into the parking lot.

When he reached his car and was just about to get in, he suddenly saw a dark shadow against the wall near the back of the car.

He froze for a moment, then looked again and saw a hand on the ground.

“Who is it?” Every hair on his body stood on end.

There was no response from that side.

He hesitated, then walked over. Someone was sitting on the ground behind the car, leaning against it with his head lowered.

Cheng Boyan did not need to look closely. One glance was enough for him to recognize him.

It was his precious son, Xiang Xi.

But seeing Xiang Xi appear behind the car like this gave him a serious fright. He had no time to ponder the strangely familiar scene and hurriedly rushed over.

«Xiang Xi?» He grabbed Xiang Xi by the arm. «What happened to you?»

Two seconds later, Xiang Xi raised his head and smiled at him. «You got off work pretty early today.»

«What is this supposed to mean?» Cheng Boyan knew as soon as he heard the kid's voice that he was fine. He stood up and hauled him off the ground. «What are you playing at?!»

«Having a little nostalgia,» Xiang Xi hugged him, knocking his chin lightly against Cheng Boyan's shoulder, and giggled. «Didn't scare you, did I?»

«Not too bad. Didn't scare me that much.» Cheng Boyan put an arm around him and patted him, then looked at the dust rising behind Xiang Xi in the light and sighed. «You've gotten me dirty.»

Xiang Xi laughed and let go of him. He ran about ten meters away, then vigorously dusted off his own clothes and trousers before running back. «Clean.»

«You were waiting for me to get off work? Why didn't you come into the hospital? You didn't even call me.» Cheng Boyan touched the tip of his nose.

«I told you I was having a little nostalgia.» Xiang Xi grinned and took a paper bag out of his backpack. «Here, this is for you.»

«For me? It's not a holiday or anything...» Cheng Boyan was startled. He took the bag and saw the brand logo on it. «A watch?»

«Yeah.» Xiang Xi shook his wrist. «Same brand as mine, but more expensive.»

«Why did you buy me a watch?» Cheng Boyan asked in surprise as he took out the little box inside. There was also a beautiful blue satin flower on it.

«Didn't you say you wanted a watch, one that cost over a thousand...» Xiang Xi leaned against the car and smiled.

«Don't lean against the car. It's covered in dirt!» Cheng Boyan interrupted him.

«Oh!» Xiang Xi immediately straightened up. «One that costs over a thousand. Nothing under a thousand. That's what you said.»

«...I was only teasing you.» Cheng Boyan put an arm around him. «You actually took me seriously?»

«I knew you were teasing me. I just wanted to give you one.» Xiang Xi smiled. «Open it and see if you like it.»

Cheng Boyan opened the box. Inside was a dark-blue watch, quite handsome. Compared with Xiang Xi's youth watch, this one could probably be considered a young-adult watch.

«I like it. You have pretty good taste. Put it on me.» Cheng Boyan held out his hand. «Why did you choose blue?»

«Didn't you say you liked dark blue? I didn't make you dislike this colour, did I?» Xiang Xi suddenly became nervous. «If you don't like it, I'll go exchange it for another one. There's black, white, red, bright yellow, and... powder blue. Do you want powder blue?»

«...Put it on me.» Cheng Boyan helplessly held out his hand again. «I never said I didn't like this blue.»

«Oh. You scared me several times there.» Xiang Xi lowered his head and put the watch on him, then pulled his arm back and forth, looking at it from different angles. «It really suits you. Looks good!»

«Mm.» Cheng Boyan kissed him on the forehead. «I really love this watch.»

Xiang Xi had him hold up his arm and turn around twice, then stepped backward and forward, inspecting it from every possible angle before finally patting him. «All right.»

«Had enough?» Cheng Boyan laughed and opened the car door. «Get in.»

«It's the first time I've officially given you a present. It has to be perfect.» Xiang Xi jumped into the car.

«That lollipop you gave me is still in the refrigerator.» Cheng Boyan said.

«You're kidding!» Xiang Xi stared at him in amazement. «How long has it been? It's gone bad, hasn't it? It's grown mold, hasn't it? Oh my god, aren't you a germaphobe? Aren't you super particular about hygiene? How can you keep one piece of candy for this long...»

«I wrapped it in plastic wrap and put it in the freezer. It hasn't gone bad. If it does, I'll deal with it then.» Cheng Boyan laughed.

«Don't tell me you even take it out, lick it a couple of times, then wrap it back up and put it away again?» Xiang Xi laughed. «That's how I used to eat candy when I was little. I'd unwrap it, lick it a few times to get a taste, then wrap it back up and put it in my pocket. One piece of candy could last me several days. I'd deeply and seriously savour the sincerity that the person who made the candy had poured into that piece of candy.»

«You're crazy.» Cheng Boyan laughed for a long while. «How filthy!»

«Uncle Ping rarely bought me snacks. I didn't have anything to eat when I was little. Later, once I could make money myself, I finally felt secure. So that's why money is such a beautiful thing.» Xiang Xi suddenly slapped his thigh halfway through. «Oh, right, speaking of money, I just remembered. There's something else I have to give you.»

«What else?» Cheng Boyan was just about to start the car, but stopped when he heard this. «Did you find money today? If you've got too much, give it to me. I'll spend it for you.»

«Mm.» Xiang Xi lowered his head and rummaged through his bag for a long time. From the very bottom, he pulled out a bank card, pinched it between his fingers, held it out in front of Cheng Boyan, and gave it a little wave. «It's for you. Take it, Xiao Cheng. You've worked hard driving every day.»

«What's this?» Cheng Boyan couldn't see it clearly at first. Xiang Xi was practically poking the card into his eyes, so he had to lean his head back to see it properly. «A bank card?»

«Yes.» Xiang Xi nodded.

«You opened a bank account?» Cheng Boyan had just reached out to take it when Xiang Xi pulled his hand back. He looked at him. «What? You won't let me see it?»

«Of course I'll let you see it. More than that, I'm giving it straight to you.» Xiang Xi held the card between his fingers and waved it again. «I'm just enjoying the feeling of casually waving my hand and giving my boyfriend a bank card.»

«How does it feel?» Cheng Boyan still had his hand held out. «Want me to put the money in it for you?»

«No.» Xiang Xi grabbed his hand and pressed the card into his palm. «It's for you. From now on, all my money will be kept in here. It's yours.»

Cheng Boyan stared at the card in his hand. After a long while, he finally asked, «Why?»

«No particular reason. I use your card, and you use mine.» Xiang Xi smiled. «It feels good.»

«Baby, the card I gave you is one I don't normally use.» Cheng Boyan put an arm around him and pressed his forehead against Xiang Xi's. «Are you stupid?»

«I'm not stupid. I just think...» Xiang Xi smiled. «I wanted to do something. I mean, you don't lack this, you don't lack that. You don't lack anything, and on top of that, you've got a handsome boyfriend like me... But I still need to leave some kind of mark on you, so I gave you this. I kept some spending money for myself.»

«I understand.» Cheng Boyan kissed him. «I'll keep it safe.»

«Wait, there's one more thing I haven't said.» Xiang Xi pushed him away, took off his shoes, bent one leg up onto the car seat, rested his arm on his knee, and lifted his chin toward Cheng Boyan. «Take good care of the card. If you want to eat something, want to buy something, or see something you like, just swipe it.»

Cheng Boyan looked at him and laughed, then nodded. «Understood, Boss.»

«If the money runs out, then... then tell me.» Xiang Xi continued.

«What happens if it runs out?» Cheng Boyan asked.

«If it runs out... if it runs out, then just wait.» Xiang Xi laughed halfway through. «Oh, wait until I get paid.»

«Okay.» Cheng Boyan put on an exaggerated voice. «Oh my, I'm someone who has a sugar daddy now. I'm so excited.»

«Drive.» Xiang Xi waved his hand.

«Yes, sir.» Cheng Boyan started the car. «We'll stop at the supermarket on the way and buy some groceries. What do you want for dinner?»

«...Meat.» Xiang Xi said.

«Beef? I'll stir-fry some beef with green peppers for you.»

«Let's buy some ribs. I'll make sweet-and-sour... Let's just eat out.»

«And some broccoli. We can stir-fry that with meat too.»

«A Hong Kong-style tea restaurant.»

«There's still a packet of seaweed at home. I can make seaweed soup. If you're still craving something, I can also make some cold seaweed salad...»

«Cheng Boyan, just you wait. Sooner or later, I'll deal with you.»

«Buy some garlic.»

«Just you wait!»

 

End of main story

 

Translator : DarNan