Other than him, no one else could see this bizarre scene.
Jiang Lu flipped back two pages, but the pages after were completely blank.
“This was just drawn,” Lin Xuan smiled. “There wasn’t enough time, but I plan to fill in the previous drawings when I have some free time.”
“I’ll show you when I finish them, okay?”
Jiang Lu nodded. “Okay.”
Chen Feng and the others seemed to just realize he was gone, and turned around to look for him.
Seeing that Lin Xuan was tagging along beside him again, Chen Feng sent a WeChat message asking: [Is Lin Xuan following you to class again?]
Jiang Lu replied: [No. He is taking this class too. It is just a coincidence.]
This elective course was open to the entire college.
Chen Feng: [Alright.]
[Tang Yuan and the others went to the same high school as Lin Xuan and know a bit about him. We just asked around for you. Want to hear about it?]
Jiang Lu glanced at Lin Xuan. Lin Xuan tilted his head. “?”
Jiang Lu looked down at his phone: [?]
Chen Feng: [Lin Xuan had a bad reputation back then. Word is, he has psychological issues.]
[When he was a little kid, he had a bird he liked a lot. Later, it got run over and crushed by a car, but he didn’t react at all. He was only about six years old back then, yet he was completely calm seeing his pet crushed into a bloody pulp. He didn’t cry or make a fuss, acting like he had never even raised it.
At the time, everyone around him thought he was just overwhelmed by grief, but later someone found out he had drawn dozens of pictures of birds being killed. Every single death method was different, all of them violent and bloody. He even brought them to school, which terrified the teachers and classmates.
His dad called him a psychopath, and that remark spread all over their school at the time.]
[In high school, his mom jumped to her death right in front of him, and his expression didn’t even change.]
[Anyway, this guy has some issues. You should be careful around him.]
Jiang Lu suddenly remembered the pretty little bird Lin Xuan had shown him a couple of days ago, and the lost tone in Lin Xuan’s voice when he talked about the bird leaving: “However, I didn’t take good care of it, and it flew away.”
So that was the kind of flying away it was. Jiang Lu thought with a bit of vexation, What did I say back then? I actually said it was probably yearning for freedom.
From afar, Chen Feng saw him staring blankly at his phone and shot a question mark over: [?]
“What’s wrong?” Lin Xuan tilted his head, noticing him frown, and asked in a gentle voice.
Jiang Lu shook his head. “Nothing.”
Lin Xuan glanced back at Chen Feng, then suddenly smiled. “You found out?”
Jiang Lu turned his phone over. Not intending to let him know that Chen Feng had been gossiping behind his back, he played dumb and said, “Huh?”
“About my past.” Lin Xuan let out a helpless sigh. “The person sitting with your roommate is my high school classmate.”
“Did they tell you I wasn’t very popular back then?”
Jiang Lu didn’t say anything.
“From elementary school all the way through high school, I really wasn’t very popular,” Lin Xuan said, his tone actually sounding somewhat breezy. “Or rather, I was given the silent treatment and ostracized.”
“Because,” Jiang Lu said, “of those things from when you were little?”
“Pretty much.” Lin Xuan furrowed his brows slightly, but quickly relaxed them. “What did they tell you? That the bird I raised died? Or that my mom jumped to her death right in front of me?”
Before Jiang Lu could answer, Lin Xuan continued on his own, “I really wasn’t all that sad when the little bird died. I was reflecting on it; maybe I should have caged it. Even though it lost its freedom, it would have been safe.”
“I shouldn’t have given it freedom.” His gaze grew dark and heavy, like spilled ink. Staring at Jiang Lu’s pretty face, his voice was soft, like a spellbinding whisper. “Because I like him and care about him, if he leaves me, the world becomes dangerous to him. I’m afraid that if he leaves me, I will lose him forever.”
“That’s why I couldn’t help imagining every single worst-case scenario he might encounter if he left me.”
“Sometimes I think, if I like someone, my logic might operate the same way.”
Lin Xuan’s voice was very soft. “To a normal person, my affection might feel suffocating.”
“However,” he smiled again, “luckily, I don’t have anyone I like yet.”
Jiang Lu couldn’t read the look in his eyes, but when he heard him say that, his heart suddenly fluttered gently.
It was very subtle.
“So I really did draw a lot of those bloody and violent pictures.” Lin Xuan gave a self-deprecating chuckle. “Sorry, I didn’t finish explaining this afternoon.”
“I originally thought about trying to hide it,” he curved his lips slightly, carrying a faint bitterness, “I just didn’t expect the time when I had to confess to you would come so quickly.”
“My family wouldn’t let me learn to paint. On one hand, they thought it was slacking off from proper work, and on the other hand, it was because of these drawings. They said I wasn’t normal, and it scared them.”
“My mom jumped to her death right in front of me,” Lin Xuan frowned and pondered for a moment. “Actually, I knew there was a platform two meters down; she couldn’t die from that. But I didn’t expect that after she fell, she wouldn’t land in the middle of the platform.”
“As for the reason she jumped…” He looked somewhat dazed. “Probably wanted to provoke me? I don’t really know. All these years, they’ve rarely talked to me because they insisted I was abnormal. Even my friends were people they arranged.”
“I suppose I really am abnormal.”
“Classmate Jiang Lu, are you scared?”
Jiang Lu curled his fingers inward. Instead of answering the question, he asked, “Why didn’t you explain it to those people?”
Lin Xuan smiled. “Classmate Jiang Lu, some people will only believe what they see and hear.”
Jiang Lu didn’t continue the topic. He suddenly said, “Can I have this drawing?”
“You can.” Lin Xuan nodded. At that moment, the professor entered through the front door, and the classroom gradually quieted down. He also lowered his voice, “You take it apart.”
Jiang Lu carefully removed the drawing and tucked it inside his book. While listening to the professor talk at the front, his mind drifted back to what Lin Xuan had just said.
He thought he probably knew where the scars on Lin Xuan’s body came from.
Parents who casually judged their son to be a psychopath, even letting that rumor spread to become a reason for others to torment him; and who later staged a fake suicide out of the belief that their son was abnormal, only for an accident to happen that made his already poor situation even worse, what kind of good parents could they possibly be?
As for Lin Xuan’s hobby of painting, whether it was considered neglecting proper work or because they were scared of his drawings and forced him to stop, only they themselves knew.
Lin Xuan might indeed have some issues, but the ones with the bigger problems were his parents. These two people were the root cause of everything Lin Xuan had suffered.
A sense of shared sorrow rose in Jiang Lu’s heart.
How pitiful.
As pitiful as him.
A trace of emotional stirring showed on Jiang Lu’s face.
Lin Xuan kept an eye on Jiang Lu’s reaction. When he noticed the pity in the depths of Jiang Lu’s eyes, he almost couldn’t hold back his laughter.
Everything he said was, of course, true.
Drawing those pictures was true, being quietly ostracized was true, reflecting on giving the little bird too much freedom was true, and his mother breaking down and jumping because of him was true. What his father said about him being a psychopath was also true.
He hadn’t lied; he had simply stated a part of the truth, and it had easily tricked Classmate Jiang Lu into feeling soft-hearted toward him.
Feel even softer toward me.
Suppressing the excitement in his eyes, Lin Xuan watched out of the corner of his eye as Jiang Lu slowly tapped away at his keyboard.
Jiang Lu used a nine-key keypad.
Lin Xuan’s fingertips followed the movement of Jiang Lu’s fingertips, turning it over and over in his mind.
[I, think, he, is, a, good, person.]
Lin Xuan was so stimulated that the tip of his tongue went numb.
Too adorable.
Chen Feng: [?]
Chen Feng: [What kind of love potion did he feed you?]
Jiang Lu ignored him.
The professor for this class was up in years, but not rigid at all. As soon as the semester started, he cheerfully told everyone that as long as they answered the roll call, they could leave early.
Therefore, as soon as the roll call for the first class ended and the lecture finished, the classroom quickly emptied by half.
Shi Jiayu and the other two greeted Jiang Lu and left together with Tang Yuan and Yu Jingrong.
Jiang Lu didn’t leave, though. He was always very serious about his classes and stayed behind after class to copy down the notes he didn’t have time to write during the lecture. As he copied, he listened to the rustling sound of Lin Xuan’s pencil tip grazing against the sketchbook, feeling a sense of peace in his heart.
That rustling sound lingered by his ears for two whole classes. By the time he returned to the dormitory, he felt as if he could still hear it.
Xie Yu and the other two didn’t return until close to curfew, by which time Jiang Lu had already gone to bed.
Seeing Jiang Lu’s slippers neatly placed in front of the ladder with the toes unfailingly pointing outward, reminiscent of what Jiang Lu had said about how having shoe toes face the bed invited bad spirits, Shi Jiayu lifted Jiang Lu’s bed curtain. Just as he was about to speak to him, he saw Jiang Lu lying facing the wall with his phone charging beside his pillow, so he quietly lowered the curtain.
“Is Xiao Lu asleep?” Xie Yu asked, understanding the situation at a glance.
“Yeah.” Shi Jiayu nodded. “Keep the noise down.”
The three of them squeezed out onto the balcony, closing the balcony door behind them for fear of waking Jiang Lu. The three college guys squeezed onto the balcony in miserable discomfort.
While brushing his teeth, Shi Jiayu suddenly said, “Was Xiao Lu unhappy today? I noticed he didn’t talk much.”
“Nah, probably not.” Chen Feng was rather thick-skinned. “Didn’t he sit with Lin Xuan? How could he chat with us?”
“I actually saw him asking in the group chat earlier about when we were coming back, but I forgot to reply.”
Xie Yu fished out his phone and sure enough saw a message from Jiang Lu sitting in the WeChat group chat. No one had replied; it looked rather pitiful.
“Xiao Lu isn’t that petty.” Xie Yu didn’t pay much attention to it. “We’ll just drag him along next time. It’s not like you guys don’t know Xiao Lu doesn’t walk back with us when he has class. Stop making plans during class times.”
“Right,” Xie Yu tucked his phone into his pocket and asked Chen Feng, “What was Xiao Lu’s reaction when you told him about Lin Xuan’s issues?”
Chen Feng: “Never mind him, he thinks he’s a good person.”
Xie Yu: “…”
“Lin Xuan probably explained it to him,” Shi Jiayu took a neutral stance. “You can’t just strip the person involved of their right to speak. Whether he’s actually a good person is really hard to say. None of us are his classmates, and everything we heard are rumors that have passed through who knows how many hands.”
“Whatever.” Xie Yu rinsed his mouth with swishing noises. “It’s not like we’re going to let Xiao Lu get bullied right under our noses.”
“Hard to say,” Shi Jiayu remarked. “I feel like Xiao Lu has this sense of being out of sync with the times.”
Chen Feng: “?” What sense of being out of sync with the times?
Xie Yu: “If you want to praise Xiao Lu for being pure, just say it directly. You sounding all high-and-mighty. Writing an English composition or what?”
Shi Jiayu was overjoyed. “How did you know I got 149 on the college entrance exam English test?!”
Xie Yu said with petty jealousy, “Damn it…”
Jiang Lu hadn’t been sleeping very deeply to begin with, and with those three whispering and giggling on the balcony, he was still woken up.
Pulling back the curtain, he saw the three of them laughing and talking in hushed tones about something.
Xie Yu pushed open the balcony sliding door, and Chen Feng’s voice drilled right in: “I am going to dye this thing green!”
Shi Jiayu: “Are you fucking retarded, you non-mainstream punk? Don’t walk next to me, I would be too embarrassed.”
“What do you know about true swag?”
Xie Yu ignored those two and, seeing Jiang Lu waking up all groggy with his head poked out from behind the bed canopy, couldn’t help laughing out loud. “Did we wake you up?”
“Mm.” Jiang Lu rubbed his eyes and asked, “What are you guys talking about? What is green?”
“Oh, this.” Chen Feng stepped inside and said, “Tang Yuan said he is going to dye his hair and asked if we want to go.”
Xie Yu snorted derisively. “Dyeing hair in packs now? Are you little girls? Next are you going to hold hands to go to the restroom?”
Shi Jiayu: “Hahahahaha.”
Turning his head, Xie Yu saw Jiang Lu sitting on the bed with his eyelashes lowered and a somewhat low-spirited look on his face. Xie Yu pinched Jiang Lu’s soft cheek. “What is wrong? Your face is long enough to hit the floor. Who upset our baby Xiao Lu?”
“Nothing.” Jiang Lu slowly shook his head and said, “Didn’t get enough sleep.”
He thought about it, still feeling a bit puzzled, and asked, “How did you guys suddenly get so close with Tang Yuan and the others?”
“We played a couple of games together,” Shi Jiayu explained. “Location services were on at the time, and they found us through ‘People Nearby’. They are pretty good at the game, and once we chatted and realized we were alumni, we naturally got close.”
Jiang Lu nodded, not intending to interfere with his roommates’ freedom to make friends. He ducked back behind his bed curtain and let out a silent breath of relief. The phone by his pillow lit up.
He tilted his head. It was a message from Lin Xuan.
Lin Xuan: [Classmate Jiang Lu, good night ^_^]
Jiang Lu curled his lips into a smile: [Good night]
Lin Xuan: [You didn’t choose to stay away from me after hearing those rumors. Classmate Jiang Lu, you are the first person to do that. I am very happy.]
[And about Classmate Jiang Lu agreeing to be my muse.]
[Thank you ^_^]
Jiang Lu pressed his fingertip against his phone case until it turned almost white.
After Lin Xuan appeared tonight, the panic in his heart never surfaced again.
He had agreed to be Lin Xuan’s muse, so Lin Xuan needed him now.
Jiang Lu stared blankly at the screen, almost unable to suppress his dark thoughts. He couldn’t help feeling glad that Lin Xuan didn’t have other friends; otherwise, he might have had to bite the bullet and cozy up to those two people who clearly didn’t welcome him.
Jiang Lu quickly felt ashamed for having such a thought.
For Lin Xuan to proactively bare his pain to him, making a victim retell the process of being hurt, was also a form of harm to the victim.
He could not, and should not, treat Lin Xuan’s pain as his own piece of luck.
However, his three roommates’ actions today made him feel a vague sense of unease. Jiang Lu selfishly prayed that Lin Xuan would not encounter another muse.
In a certain fleeting moment, he wanted Lin Xuan to know that they shared the same misery, wanting to grab onto Lin Xuan like grasping at a straw to save his life.
The rustling sound of a pencil tip gliding across sketching paper echoed continuously, while a tablet placed to the side kept flashing with the words: The other person is typing.
After a long while, the WeChat notification chime sounded.
Ding-dong.
The naked youth, whose calves were being firmly held, had already grown a pair of eyes brimming with spring-like moisture. Yet it was at this moment that Lin Xuan stopped his pencil and glanced sideways at the tablet.
Jiang Lu: [We are already friends, anyway.]
[Friends are supposed to understand and respect each other, right?]
[Sincerity trades for sincerity.]
[^_^]