Following the flow of people out of the subway station led straight to the basement level of a certain central shopping mall.
Song Rong had heard Xiang Xun mention that large shopping malls like this all closed up by evening. He had no heart to browse those brightly lit, exquisite shops, and instead headed straight for the digital specialty stores displaying rows of mobile phones.
It was only after entering the store that he remembered to ask Gu Xuanlang: “What was it that you wanted to buy again?”
Gu Xuanlang’s gaze swept over the shelves, and he casually picked up a pair of headphones, looking as if he were done with business: “Take your time picking.”
Not expecting the other person to have bought his desired electronic product so quickly, Song Rong didn’t want to linger here much longer either: “I don’t have any other requirements for a phone.”
He added immediately: “Just like yours will do.”
He swore that he had simply taken a fancy to the smooth model and cool color of Gu Xuanlang’s phone, and definitely wasn’t trying to use a couple’s phone with him.
Understanding the hint, Gu Xuanlang took the initiative to step forward and call over a store clerk.
Song Rong waited awkwardly in place, thinking to himself that Gu Xuanlang had been like this for a long time: clearly not a monster who enjoyed dealing with humans, but for his sake, whether big or small matters, he always forced himself to charge to the very front. Even after so much time had passed, this point still hadn’t changed.
Perhaps Gu Xuanlang wanted to show positive effort and find a chance to make up with him?
The trace of sweet, lingering warmth at the bottom of his heart that was previously there became infinitely magnified, even carrying a tiny bit of the pride of “having won.” Song Rong suppressed the corners of his lips that kept wanting to curl upward.
Drawing back his thoughts, Gu Xuanlang had returned as well.
Noticing that he was carrying a paper bag printed with a mobile phone brand logo, Song Rong, who was still unfamiliar with the shopping process in malls, hurried over: “I’ll pay.”
Gu Xuanlang handed him the paper bag: “Already paid.”
The bag felt heavy.
The new phone was already inside.
Song Rong let out an “Ah,” and pulled an envelope containing his subsidy out of his pocket: “Then I’ll give you the money.”
Gu Xuanlang shook his head.
Realizing this meant he didn’t intend to take it, Song Rong grew anxious and tried to shove the money over: “How can that be? Team Leader Kuiqing gave me two thousand yuan in subsidies. I have money, there’s no reason for you to pay for me.”
His original intention in saying this was to make Gu Xuanlang reply with something like “We’re lovers, why wouldn’t there be a reason” or “You and I don’t need to calculate things so clearly between us.” After all, he used to love keeping that kind of emphasis on their intimate relationship constantly on his lips.
Song Rong secretly told himself that if Gu Xuanlang said something similar, he would reluctantly forgive him and end the two-thousand-year cold war between them.
Yet after waiting for a long time, the only response by his ear was a faint reply: “Not enough.”
“What?”
“Two thousand yuan isn’t enough, so don’t give it.”
Song Rong: “Digital error.”
The times have changed.
And Gu Xuanlang has changed too.
Song Rong’s impression of human currency was still stuck in the era of broken silver pieces, back when a string of cash could buy two pounds of pork and a single ingot of silver could last several months; later on, he had intermittently encountered silver notes, coins, and paper money, but converting back and forth and calculating it all out meant his brain capacity wasn’t enough, so he simply stopped keeping track. And now, carrying a massive subsidy in his pocket along with three hundred yuan of prepaid salary, he always figured buying a smartphone would definitely be more than enough.
Who would have thought he’d lose face in front of Gu Xuanlang.
He was both indignant and embarrassed, and right as he opened his mouth, his own saliva choked him: “Cough, cough, cough. Is it still off by a lot? Then take the two thousand first anyway, and when I get my salary, I’ll make up the difference for you. You’ve just arrived here, cough, and certainly don’t have much money either. You need to keep a little for yourself.”
Over the years, Song Rong had always struggled right on the borderline of food and clothing. He knew very well how important money was to a monster trying to live alongside humans: Gu Xuanlang had just joined the Special Operations Division, needed to live in a dorm, had to purchase daily necessities, and in case he caught a cold or fell ill, he would need money to see a doctor.
The kind little matsutake came back to life.
Gu Xuanlang, however, didn’t appreciate it at all: “My annual salary is quite high.”
A-Annual salary.
Hearing this familiar yet unfamiliar vocabulary, Song Rong coughed even harder, the corners of his eyes stained with a physiological red, even his eyelashes turning damp.
Gu Xuanlang wanted to help smooth things over for him, but reached out and then paused, only suggesting: “Let’s go to the hospital.”
Song Rong shook his head: “I’m fine, just drinking some water will do. I remember there’s a convenience store near the subway station exit.”
The implication was that they could head back.
Gu Xuanlang pressed his lips together and sized him up, confirming that he really had just choked on his saliva before rearranging the itinerary: “It’s still early.”
Song Rong tilted his head in bewilderment.
The next second, a fairly calm invitation from the other person reached his ear: “Do you want to have dinner together?”
Song Rong’s heart skipped a beat. He didn’t say anything out loud, but deep down, a voice had already agreed for him.
Of course he did.
What was more, he was now “short-handed after taking people’s things” and urgently wanted to reclaim his dignity. Hearing Gu Xuanlang proactively bring up dinner, he started buzzing about treating him to a big meal: “My roommate said there’s a hot pot restaurant downtown that’s especially good, and you can buy group-buying sets in advance. Do you know what group-buying is? It’s using very little money to buy very expensive things. I’m treating you to a group-buying set not because I’m stingy; modern people all do this. Using group-buying is a fine virtue, and also a kind of life wisdom.”
These were all things he had heard from Xiang Xun.
Now they had become his talking points in front of Gu Xuanlang.
That rumored hot pot restaurant was two blocks away from the mall where the two had bought phones. Song Rong chattered all the way there, and Gu Xuanlang patiently listened, finding openings to teach him how to use navigation, register common apps, and bind a bank card—oh, a bank card with a zero balance.
Just when the navigation prompt indicated they were one hundred meters away from the destination, a dull clap of thunder that rang out unpreventably drowned out Song Rong’s voice.
He shrank his neck and looked up to observe the sky that had grown dark at some unknown point: “The weather in Huai’an these past few days is so weird. It was just bright sunshine a moment ago, and now it’s going to rain. Good thing I have the habit of bringing an umbrella.”
As he spoke, he patted the long-handled umbrella he was holding against his chest.
He took the opportunity to steal a glance at Gu Xuanlang: if the rain turned out to be too heavy, he wouldn’t mind sharing an umbrella with him.
The person beside him didn’t respond.
Gu Xuanlang’s tightly knitted brows made Song Rong inexplicably nervous. After weighing things for a long time, he thought of a possibility: “Oh, this umbrella was given to me by my roommate. He’s also a mushroom, and knows umbrellas are very important to us.”
Song Rong remembered: Gu Xuanlang had once given him an oiled-paper umbrella.
That guy had personally gone up the mountain to cut bamboo for the ribs, and with his own hands brushed tung oil onto the canopy, even thoughtfully carving a little mushroom on the handle. Song Rong had treasured the gift immensely after receiving it, carrying it on sunny days and never letting it leave his hand on rainy days. If he hadn’t been afraid of crushing it, he would have hugged it even while sleeping. Later, when the two went into a cold war, that oiled-paper umbrella, which looked like a token of love, had no idea where it was thrown, never to be found again.
Finding out his lover had changed to a new umbrella, he must be unhappy, right?
Song Rong nodded to himself, positive he had found the crux of why Gu Xuanlang was upset.
However.
Gu Xuanlang, upon hearing the explanation, only let out a bland, indifferent “Mn,” as if what troubled him wasn’t the new umbrella printed with a certain milk brand’s logo in his lover’s hand.
The man’s gaze sweeping toward the dark clouds overhead flashed with a hint of vigilance.
The wind carried dust, sand, and an indescribable bloody stench, blowing so hard people couldn’t open their eyes. Passersby around them also began to complain about this unpredictable weather, and following a rumbling thunderclap, visible lightning pierced through the clouds.
Song Rong was startled, his peripheral vision inadvertently sweeping across a few young men and women walking toward them. They were whispering something among themselves, and occasionally words like “mission” or “fieldwork” could be heard.
A bit ringing a bell, and a bit familiar.
It took him half a day to react: “Those look like colleagues from the Special Operations Division.”
Gu Xuanlang had crossed paths with those faces and quickly recognized them as members of the Supervision Department’s Action Squad. With a cold face, he immediately instructed Song Rong: “You head back first.”
Song Rong, who was still fixated on buying the group-buying set meal, let out an “Ah”: “Aren’t we going to eat hot pot?”
Gu Xuanlang’s gaze locked onto those figures, focusing across the street, his tone turning cold and rigid: “Go back!”
“W-Where back?”
“The Special Operations Division.”
After a two-second pause, he corrected himself: “Go anywhere, just don’t follow me!”
Song Rong froze in place, opening his eyes wide in disbelief: Gu Xuanlang’s tone, his demeanor, made it seem as if he had already assumed Song Rong would blindly follow him like a piece of dog-skin plaster, sticking to him and impossible to chase away. This scene was no different from the exact moment right before their dispute broke out years ago.
The wind on the street was inexplicably boisterous.
At that moment, Song Rong felt as if he had plunged into an ice cellar, his whole body shivering with cold, while his cheeks burned with pain as if he had been heavily slapped by an invisible hand.
Who wants to follow him?!
Bottling up a nameless fire, Song Rong didn’t hesitate anymore, turned around, and walked away.
Yet before he had even taken a few steps, he was scooped up by the back collar by the pursuing Gu Xuanlang and shoved directly into a waiting taxi by the side of the road: “Driver, please take him to the Jianhua Second-Hand Goods and Salvage Market. As fast as possible, don’t stop midway.”
The speed of the action and the strength behind it gave Song Rong no time to react.
He poked his head out of the rolled-down car window and interrogated the arbitrary fellow: “What right do you have to make decisions for me?!”
As if intimidated by this low roar, Gu Xuanlang’s movements slowed by half a beat. He steadied himself, still slammed the car door shut with a bang, and ran off in the opposite direction.
The vehicle slowly started moving.
Song Rong bit his lower lip, watching with his own eyes as that back profile grew further and further away, smaller and smaller, until it finally disappeared from view.
Noticing that the passenger was in a bad mood, the driver proactively struck up conversation all the way to ease the awkwardness. Song Rong listened and answered with a distracted mind, secretly cursing the stone in the latrine for throwing a tantrum again, until he learned upon stopping that the taxi fare was seventy-nine yuan and six fen, at which point he let out a heartfelt gasp of dismay.
Another flavor of heartache was added to his already irritable, congested, and aggrieved negative emotions.
Gu Xuanlang really was a menace to others!
Song Rong didn’t return to the Special Operations Division; instead, he had the driver drop him off right downstairs at the unit’s dormitory building.
Strangely enough.
This rain had arrived aggressively, but the area affected seemed to be limited only to downtown. Once the taxi drove two blocks out, not a single drop of rain could be seen anymore, and out here in the suburbs, the sky was completely clear and cloudless, with sunlight glaringly bright.
Song Rong figured that among his colleagues there were plenty of capable and extraordinary people, so someone had probably set up some kind of barrier nearby.
But none of that mattered to him anymore.
Climb the stairs, open the door, go inside.
Threw his huffy self onto the bed.
Rarely, all three of his roommates were gathered in the dorm watching a movie. Hearing that Song Rong had gone to the city tonight to buy a new phone, and even went with his boyfriend whom he was in a cold war with, they swarmed over in a flurry, some to inspect and some to gossip.
Xiang Xun went straight to the point: “Did you and the guy surnamed Gu make up?”