Two days later at school, Xu Fangfei ran into Zhao Yimin again.
The school bully leader still had a piece of gauze stuck to his head, yet he maintained that same rampant attitude. His school uniform was worn sloppily and askew, with three to five lackey-like followers trailing behind him, as if he wanted to plaster the word “hoodlum” directly onto his face. Only today, something was different from usual.
The instant he saw Xu Fangfei’s figure, Zhao Yimin’s expression stiffened and changed, as if she were some kind of plague or virus, something that had made him suffer memorably. Even a single glance left him shaken with lingering fear.
Zhao Yimin spat on the ground in frustration, subconsciously reached up to touch the injury on his head, then muttered curses under his breath as he said something quietly to the people beside him.
The group walked away.
Yang Lu exclaimed behind her in sheer satisfaction and cursed in a lowered voice. “Serves him right, serves him right! Look at him, that big patch of gauze stuck on his forehead. He got beaten up, didn’t he? Let that idiot who usually bullies the weak and fears the strong swagger around all he wants!”
Xu Fangfei did not respond. Not wanting to stir up any more trouble, she grabbed Yang Lu and hurried back to the classroom.
*
That evening, after returning home from evening self-study, the moment Xu Fangfei stepped through the door, she smelled a rich aroma of meat broth rushing toward her.
She twitched her nose and followed the scent into the kitchen, exclaiming in surprise, “Mom, you stewed ribs?”
“You twisted your ankle. Your grandpa told me to buy a couple of marrow bones to nourish you,” Qiao Huilan said as she spoke, pouring a large bowl of bone soup out of the clay pot.
Xu Fangfei quietly stuck out her tongue and said softly, “It’s just a minor skin injury. I didn’t even hurt the bone. Isn’t this a bit too much nourishment?”
Qiao Huilan poked her on the forehead. “Your grandpa feels sorry for you. Go wash your hands.”
Xu Fangfei smiled and nodded. After washing her hands, she sat back down at the dining table and gnawed on the marrow bones.
She was taking small bites when she suddenly heard a light “pa” beside her, as something was set down. Xu Fangfei froze and instinctively turned her head to look.
She discovered that it was actually a mobile phone.
Xu Fangfei stared wide-eyed in astonishment. Before she could speak, Qiao Huilan spoke first. Her voice was gentle. “From now on, if you get out late after school or run into something on the road, call Mom. That way, your grandpa and I won’t be worrying at home.”
Xu Fangfei hesitated, her expression complicated. She wanted to say something but stopped herself.
Seeing her daughter’s concern, Qiao Huilan’s mind turned quickly and she added at once, “Oh, this was given to me by Auntie Chen. You know Auntie Chen, right? The shop owner next to our stall, the one who sells Buddha statues. Her son is promising. He just started working this year and bought her the latest model; it seems like it’s even an Apple. This old phone, she just gave it to me.”
Xu Fangfei looked up, a little surprised. “Really?”
“Yes.” A smile surfaced on Qiao Huilan’s face.
Hearing this, the burden in Xu Fangfei’s heart lightened by more than half, and a smile spread across her face as well. “Mom, help me thank Auntie Chen… no, wait. This weekend, I’ll go thank her in person!”
Qiao Huilan took in her daughter’s genuine joy and excitement. A wave of bitterness rose in her nose, but her smile remained unchanged. She stroked Xu Fangfei’s cheek and nodded at her.
Qiao Huilan thoughtfully had the SIM card prepared for Xu Fangfei in advance.
Getting her first mobile phone in her life, Xu Fangfei was extremely happy and did not mind anything else.
She plugged it in to charge, using the time she spent doing homework to let the battery fill. After finishing, she cradled the phone like a treasure and studied it carefully.
Although this phone was not a big brand, it had all the basic functions of a smartphone.
Xu Fangfei carefully browsed the app store, found the music app with the highest ratings, tapped to download it, then slowly typed four characters into the song search bar: Ideal City.
The song popped up very quickly.
Xu Fangfei stared at the round play button. Her heart tightened for no reason, and then her finger tapped lightly.
The prelude slowly sounded in this quiet, fortunate night. The male singer’s hoarse voice drifted out from the speaker of the secondhand phone, piercing through all garish illusions as he sang softly and shallowly:
The lonely eagle, cloaked in years of dust and an entire dusk,
When will it grow weary, when will it rest,
When will it have a journey home?
The southbound geese, covered by a thousand miles of yellow clouds and heavy snow,
When will they settle? When will they dock?
When will they have a journey home?
Listening to the melody and lyrics, Xu Fangfei unconsciously began to sing along. “I want to board that train returning home, softly looking back at the city that holds my youth. I want the wind to carry my longing to faraway places, gently delivering it to the girl I can never forget…”
When the song ended, the ethereal mood dissipated entirely into emptiness, returning to reality. Around her, only faintly suppressed moans and gasps remained.
Xu Fangfei realized in embarrassment that the apartment downstairs, 3206, had once again started playing an adult action film.
She: “……”
Xu Fangfei suddenly remembered that in Grade 10, someone in her class had somehow gotten hold of a book with most of its cover peeled off, called Green Snake, written by the Hong Kong writer Li Bihua, who was hailed as “the number one romance writer under heaven.”
Young people’s desire to explore was endless. The strange, enchanting love in the book was bleak and beautiful. No one really understood it, yet it sparked a wave of people competing to pass it around. As if not having read this book meant one could not be a trendsetter in the class.
Xu Fangfei had also been one of those muddleheaded trend-chasers.
Looking back now, she could no longer remember most of the text, but there was one line she remembered particularly clearly. When you encounter such a man, his only skill is being affectionate.
Xu Fangfei held her phone and glanced out at the night sky, falling into a daze.
In this desolate and bleak night, with the addition of the sounds of love and desire from downstairs, her state of mind had gone from initial shock and curiosity to the present familiarity and indifference. Thinking about it carefully, it was almost a little ridiculous.
Fortunately, from now on, she would no longer have to force herself to fall asleep to those licentious words.
Xu Fangfei went to bed. She placed the phone by her ear on the pillow and played Ideal City. The song echoed through the lonely night and quickly swallowed up the sounds of intimacy downstairs.
She closed her eyes, curved her lips slightly, and fell asleep peacefully.
Only in the second before entering her dreams did a question pop up, as if guided by some unseen force: she wondered whether 3206 had finished eating those four buns.
*
Recently, good fortune had been especially kind.
The very next night, when Xu Fangfei entered the apartment building in the dark, she was surprised to discover that the long-broken sound-activated light in the stairwell had actually turned on, as if by a miracle.
Joy rose in her heart, and even her steps became unconsciously lighter. She finally understood why everyone prayed for continuous good luck.
One stroke of luck was luck. When linked together, it became fortune. If fortune could be accompanied by a bit more blessing, it would form nothing short of a perfect life.
As Xu Fangfei thought this, she walked up the stairs with ease. When she reached the third floor, however, her steps suddenly came to a halt.
Separated by just one door, the sounds of flesh colliding, the raised tones, and the noise inside were unmistakably clear.
The wooden bed wailed and whimpered in mournful cries, miserable and pitiful, accusing a man and a woman of caring only about satisfying their physical desires, showing not the slightest mercy to its advanced age, and instead determined to send it into early retirement.
During these few seconds of pause, the sound-activated light failed to detect any footsteps. With a loud thump, the surroundings once again sank into darkness.
In the darkness. Thump, thump, the sound of a heartbeat thundered again and again, almost bursting Xu Fangfei’s eardrums.
She hugged the physics textbook tightly to her chest. A flush like blazing sunset clouds swept straight from her cheeks up to the tips of her ears. The next moment, she keenly sensed footsteps sounding outside the apartment building, drawing closer. She snapped back to her senses at once, lowered her head, turned around, and hurried upstairs.
Afraid of being discovered, she even deliberately lightened her steps, careful not to trigger the sound-activated light.
When she reached her apartment door on the fourth floor, Xu Fangfei did not immediately unlock it and go inside.
Her pale, slender fingers, clutching the physics book, tightened unconsciously. She quietly poked her head out and looked down toward the lower floors.
The person coming upstairs was tall and broad-shouldered, yet his steps were even lighter than those of a girl like her, completely soundless. By a faint sliver of moonlight, like ghostly pupils, Xu Fangfei saw his face and froze in shock—
It was the man from 3206.
His face was expressionless, his features cold and stern. Perhaps because the moonlight was too cold, those thin, well-shaped lips looked a little pale at this moment.
So it turned out that the one stirring up passion inside 3206 right now was not him.
Xu Fangfei recalled the “visitors” she had seen a few days earlier. Not a single one of them looked decent. She suddenly understood and could not help but secretly mutter to herself. Sure enough, birds of a feather flock together. Even this kind of hobby could be perfectly synchronized. Playing mahjong in the middle of the night, rolling in bed in the middle of the night.
Her thoughts were running wild when she suddenly saw 3206 lift his hand and take off the black shirt he was wearing.
Xu Fangfei: “.”
Xu Fangfei was stunned.
Caught completely off guard, the image of a handsome man half-undressed crashed straight into her eyes. He was left with only a pair of long pants. Different from the lean, slender build of a boy, he had broad shoulders and a narrow waist. The lines of his body were clean and well-defined, not excessively intimidating, yet every muscle was compact and distinct, taut and controlled…
Oh. My.
Xu Fangfei’s face flushed bright red in an instant. Just as she was about to silently chant that form is emptiness and emptiness is form and tear her gaze away, 3206 turned slightly.
Then she saw something even more shocking.
A knife scar, neither long nor short, cut across part of the man’s lean lower back, and fresh blood was still seeping out.
Xu Fangfei: “……”
3206 casually wrapped his blood-stained right hand with his clothes, grasped the door handle, turned the key a few times in the lock, and went inside. Bang. The door shut tight.
That night, when she later thought back on it, Xu Fangfei could hardly remember how she had even opened the door and gotten home.
Her mind was numb. When she finally came to her senses clearly, she realized she had already changed into her slippers and was sitting at the dining table at home.
Qiao Huilan brought out the reheated home-style dishes as usual.
Xu Fangfei shook her head, forcing away the image of that blood-streaked knife scar that kept flashing before her eyes, and lowered her head to shovel rice into her mouth with her chopsticks.
“Feifei, the sound-activated light has been fixed,” Qiao Huilan suddenly said.
“Mm.” Xu Fangfei gathered her thoughts and smiled, pretending to be relaxed as she joked, “Looks like Uncle Zhang the gatekeeper finally found his conscience.”
Qiao Huilan looked puzzled. “What does that have to do with Uncle Zhang?”
Xu Fangfei lifted her thick eyelashes. “Wasn’t it Uncle Zhang who fixed it?”
“No.” Qiao Huilan shook her head and said with a smile, “It was that young man from downstairs, 3206, who fixed it. Do you remember him? Tall and handsome, very fair-skinned. He even shone a light for us a few days ago.”
Completely beyond her control, Xu Fangfei once again thought of that man and the injury on his body.
Her chest tightened for no apparent reason. She could not describe exactly what the feeling was. She felt a bit of sighing resignation. Every time he got hurt, he never went to the hospital. Without even thinking, she knew the things he did must all be shady and unspeakable.
At the same time, deep in her heart, she could not help but let a trace of sympathy overflow.
Looking at it this way, that bad man somehow seemed a little pitiful.