The next day.
Cheng Shixu woke up to see Ning Shen already sitting at the desk, wearing headphones and working on practice problems. The MP3 player was placed to one side; he was likely listening to English news. “Morning, Shen-shen.”
“You are awake. Get up quickly. I bought fried dough sticks and bread, and they are on your desk.” Ning Shen took off one earphone and turned around to greet him. “What kind of dream were you having yesterday? You were laughing in a way that was genuinely terrifying.”
Dream…
Cheng Shixu paused. “Nothing much. I just dreamed about something delicious.” Ever since he was reborn, he always had dreams—fragmented, chaotic memories of his past life.
He wondered if it was because he had discovered yesterday that it was Lu Jian who had taken him to the hospital from his college lab in his past life. His emotions had been on a roller coaster, leading to some bizarre dreams, recollections he previously had no impression of, left gathering dust in the corners of his mind.
Discovering that Lu Jian had appeared in different stages of his life was a massive blow to him. He had always assumed their relationship was based on “love at first sight.” The incident with the necklace made him think Lu Jian had met him once before and was a secret admirer.
In reality, even with the necklace, the debt of the 300,000 yuan, and their interactions, Lu Jian remained guarded and distant. There were so many things he refused to tell him.
So, did Lu Jian really fall for him at first sight, or was it a debt he felt compelled to repay, which then soured over the long passage of time? Could Lu Jian even distinguish what that “souring” was?
No wonder that day at the matchmaking meeting, Lu Jian had looked at him with a momentary flash of surprise, yet it was not the awkward avoidance of a stranger. He had attributed that look to “love at first sight.”
Actually, it was not that at all.
He seemed to have never truly understood what the real Lu Jian was like. Even with the young Lu Jian right before his eyes, it felt as though he could never touch the person behind the mask.
When did he start wearing that mask? Was it because of the necklace or the laboratory?
Lu Jian had always set up his stall at the West University gate. He and He Yu had frequented the student street for late-night snacks; Lu Jian must have seen him countless times. Did he only wear that mask in front of him, or had he put it on long ago just to survive?
He jumped out of bed and walked to the balcony to wash up. Recalling the unspoken, empathetic glance between Lu Jian and Jin Yi yesterday, he realized he was still jealous of Jin Yi. Jin Yi had seen every version of Lu Jian.
Whether it was childhood or adulthood, Jin Yi had always been dissatisfied with him.
At first, he thought Jin Yi was unhappy because his appearance meant the two brothers spent less time together, or at least less time doing things together.
It was not until yesterday that he seemed to glimpse the truth behind Jin Yi’s dissatisfaction.
Narcissistically, he thought it was because his presence had changed Lu Jian, making him “un-Lu Jian.” As a brother who grew up with him, watching Lu Jian suppress his emotions and personality day by day, it was only natural for him to be dissatisfied with the culprit.
Thinking from a different perspective, was Fu Chenming not the same? After He Yu was “flipped” by Lu Jian, Fu Chenming was so angry he wanted to break ties with He Yu. He had told him repeatedly not to date like that, saying that compatible people should be comfortable together, and that he would not stop loving things like horseback riding, clubbing, or extreme sports just because of him.
“You have become unlike yourself, A-Xu.”
That was the last thing Fu Chenming said to him before he died. Fu Chenming and Jin Yi were quite similar—they just could not stand Lu Jian. Even though it was absurd since he was the one pretending, not Lu Jian—Fu Chenming took all his anger out on Lu Jian. Yet, it was understandable.
After all, they were childhood friends; Fu Chenming and Lu Jian only knew each other because of him.
Every time they had a gathering, Fu Chenming would always ask in the group chat if Lu Jian was going. If Lu Jian went, he would not show up. Even if they were halfway through drinking and Lu Jian came to pick him up, Fu Chenming would immediately get up and leave.
Lu Jian was sensitive, which led to him rarely attending gatherings later on. If he did come to pick him up, he would wait in the parking lot—waiting for one or two hours at a time.
He did not want Lu Jian to wait, so he would leave early, which earned him a scolding from Fu Chenming. “You ditch your buddies once you are in love; you are really something. Everyone has a social life. If he keeps watching you like this once or twice, is he trying to make sure you have no friends left so you can never leave him?!”
Cheng Shixu was helpless. Lu Jian never controlled him; it was all his own choice. He cared about his friends, so he would go to the gatherings, but he also cared about Lu Jian. Lu Jian did not have time every day; he was very busy, returning home late two or three days a week and traveling for business every month. He just wanted to connect when Lu Jian was home, even if it meant just lying together on their phones without doing anything.
It was not like Fu Chenming said—that he had no friends because of Lu Jian. Weren’t things fine as they were?
Because of this, Jin Yi never gave him a good look, which he could understand.
He felt like the two of them should have a lot to talk about. Cheng Shixu spat out his toothpaste, pondering that since Jin Yi had remained single in his past life and Fu Chenming also did not have a partner, he should find an opportunity to set them up.
“Shen-shen~” Cheng Shixu returned to his seat, feeling as if his soul had been sucked out. After that dream, he wanted more than ever not to have been reborn, or to have chosen a different path. Or perhaps, if he had just waited for Lu Jian’s driver to pick him up, he would not have to be doing these wretched problems now, which were giving him a massive headache. But he had to accept his fate.
“What is it?” Ning Shen was marking his English textbook with colored pens. Hearing the listless sound from behind, he turned off his MP3 player.
“I do not want to live anymore. My head hurts every time I see these test papers.” Cheng Shixu put a pen between his lips, slumped back in his chair, and let his hands hang down, empty. “Why are there so many papers?” He glanced at the dozen or so sets of practice papers distributed on Friday, all specialized exercises. He picked up one filled with reading comprehension questions. “You tell me, why do they always ask what social background is reflected in the text? If you want to write something, just write it. There is not that much social background to reflect.”
Ning Shen laughed. “You told me the day before yesterday that society is different now and that the style of web novels is different, too. Anything written reflects some kind of social background.”
Cheng Shixu sighed. “I know. It is just annoying during exams.” Back then, novels were mostly pirated copies bought at roadside stalls—cultivation and leveling-up stories where the protagonist struggles from the bottom. Even apocalypse stories were mostly about fighting zombies. In his past life, most of the novels of the same type had protagonists who just “lay flat.” The cultivators were not grassroots but had “heavenly spiritual roots,” the apocalyptic survivors were not fighting zombies but hoarding supplies, and urban son-in-law stories were a dime a dozen.
That could be considered a reflection of a certain social background; there was no passion left in them.
“You had better do them quickly. The teacher will be lecturing on them in class tomorrow.” Ning Shen urged him. “Where did you go to play yesterday? You returned to the dorm so late; I thought you were not coming back.” Occasionally, Cheng Shixu would go home to stay on weekends. He had fallen asleep early yesterday, but in a daze, he heard some movement. Opening his eyes, he saw Cheng Shixu using his phone as a flashlight; he had almost thought a thief had broken in.
Cheng Shixu took his pen, twirling it, and said, “I went to see Lu Jian.”
“Eh? You found the real one?” Last time Cheng Shixu had said he identified the wrong person and even placed an ad in the newspaper. He had not heard Cheng Shixu mention it in a long time, so he was curious. “Is he similar to the one at the vocational school?”
Cheng Shixu nodded. “I found him. He is quite similar to the one at the vocational school.” He leaned over toward Ning Shen. “Can you believe it? It was the same person. I was the one who got it confused.”
“Ah? But the photo is still a bit different from the one at the vocational school.” At the time, the photo had been edited by Ning Shen. He felt they were indeed quite different, the hairstyle and the way of dressing were far apart. Do people change their appearance as they grow up? Was it not said that “mountains and rivers may change, but the nature of a man remains the same”?
The look in his eyes was also very different. He had edited it all according to Cheng Shixu’s description.
Cheng Shixu nodded again, pulling his chair over and resting an arm on Ning Shen’s shoulder. “It is the same person. Shen-shen, if you discovered in the future that your online dating partner was different from what you imagined, what would you do?”
Ning Shen said, “Different?” He nudged Cheng Shixu. “Are you hinting at me?” His online dating was all based on edited photos. “But when I turned on the video call, my girlfriend found out I was round, and she did not say anything.”
“Besides, she is different from her photos, too. It is not even the same face.” He could edit photos and was an art student. He had seen the photos his online girlfriend sent, and they were not edited. During the video calls, she did not talk much; she said she was a mute and felt very inferior, which was why she did not dare to tell him. He did not think it was a big deal.
“The face is not even the same? Are you dating someone using photos from the internet?” Cheng Shixu was shocked.
Ning Shen said, “Yes. She said that online dating requires using internet pictures.” As he spoke, he looked a bit shy. “However, her real appearance is not much different from the photos. Both are very beautiful.” The photos were very heroic-looking, and in the video, she was even more so.
Cheng Shixu asked, “Do you have any screenshots? Let me take a look.” He was quite curious. “What has you so infatuated?”
“No. Secretly taking screenshots during a video call feels disrespectful.” It felt like he did not respect people.
“Alright. So do you still like her?” Cheng Shixu felt that this was different from his situation with Lu Jian.
Ning Shen nodded. “I like her. I do not like her because of her looks or anything else; I just like her because she is her.” Learning art was very expensive; his family did not support him, and his father often belittled his work, calling it neither fish nor fowl. Only she had always supported him.
It was an accidental encounter. He had wanted to add a classmate’s Q.Q number, but he entered the wrong digit and added her instead. At first, neither of them spoke. Later, he had no one to talk to and sent a couple of random messages, and gradually, they started communicating. Later, it just naturally happened that they were together.
Only after they were together did they send each other photos. His was edited, and hers were internet pictures. You could say they were on the same wavelength.
“Alright, what is her name?”
Ning Shen said, “She only said her name is Mingming. The ‘ming’ with a mouth and a bird.”
When Cheng Shixu heard this, he laughed. “That is the same nickname as my childhood friend.” Fu Chenming was very beautiful and looked like a doll when he was small. Aunt Fu called him “Mingming” and always made him wear skirts, saying she was raising him as a daughter. Because of this, when they went out together, some parents would mistake his gender.
There was another thing they never mentioned. Perhaps because he wore skirts and girls’ clothes from a young age, Fu Chenming once thought he was a girl. He went to the girls’ bathroom in kindergarten and was beaten up by the female classmates several times. He developed a gender identity disorder, only realizing he was a boy when he started to hit puberty.
What was even more absurd was that once the obstacle was cleared, the first thing Fu Chenming did was run over to compare his bird with theirs. He Yu almost had his ripped off, while Cheng Shixu ran fast and escaped the clutches.
After growing up, every time there was a gathering, this story would be mentioned by one friend or another. Some even said that maybe He Yu had been “handled” by Fu Chenming, that his “second child” had withered, which was why he had been single ever since. They urged him to see a doctor since technology was advanced now, and some even teased Fu Chenming to take responsibility for He Yu. This had become a joke among the elders. Every New Year, when they gathered together, the elders urging them to marry would always bring them up.
He Yu cursed that he would rather be single for life than be with a dog like Fu Chenming. Fu Chenming, however, would lean over and hug him, saying, “It is fine, buddy, I will take responsibility for you,” and as he spoke, his hands would pretend to probe inside. He Yu found it unbearably annoying.
“That is a coincidence. Is your childhood friend a boy or a girl?”
“A boy. He is definitely not your online dating partner; it cannot be that coincidental.” After Cheng Shixu finished speaking, he let him go. “Do the test papers; otherwise, you will not have anything to listen to in class tomorrow.”
“That is true.”
After finishing one test paper, Cheng Shixu checked the time. It was almost lunch. He prepared to go find Lu Jian for lunch. He sent a message but got no reply, so he called him directly. This time, he answered. The background noise was very chaotic, and he could hear some cheering; he did not know where he was.
“Something up?”
“Let us go have lunch. I know a snack shop with pretty good food. Let us go together.” Cheng Shixu issued an invitation.
Lu Jian glanced at Jin Yi, who was bruised and swollen on the ring behind him, twisting his body to dodge a punch from his opponent. He walked to the corner, opened a small door, and went in to block the noise. “I am busy. You go eat.” He also had to go up and fight a match in a little while. One match was 5,000 yuan; he could pay off his debt sooner.
Cheng Shixu said dejectedly, “Are you working part-time? Then I will pack a lunch and bring it over.”
“No need.” Lu Jian pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and bit into it with irritation. “You eat first.”
“You never eat your three meals on time. It does not matter if you eat with me. Are you setting up a stall or are you at some shop? I will go find you.” Cheng Shixu had no idea how much trouble his persistence was causing Lu Jian. Lu Jian heard this and said, “No need. I am busy. That is all.”
After hanging up, a voice came from behind him.
“Chatting with your little boyfriend?”
Lu Jian turned his head to look. Lu Ye did not know when he had sat in this small utility room, playing with a metal lighter. Clang, he opened it, and the fire lit up; click, he closed it, and the flame disappeared.
Clang, click. Clang, click. He continued.
“Why are you here?” Lu Jian had stopped working at Lu Ye’s boxing gym a long time ago. Lu Ye was too ruthless; it was better not to have contact with him.
Lu Ye looked at him sideways and gave a sinister laugh. “I am here to find you. Both you and Jin Yi have improved a lot. Help me fight a match. I will pay the price agreed upon before—300,000 yuan.” He said this as he stood up, walking until he stopped at a distance of two body lengths from Lu Jian; only at this distance could he look Lu Jian in the eye. He had never liked looking up at people.
His gym had recently been targeted by someone he did not know; several top boxers had come to challenge him, and he had lost several matches in a row. He needed someone like Lu Jian, who did not care about his life as long as he got paid, to go up and help him win back his standing.
300,000 yuan.
Lu Jian turned around, yet he recalled Cheng Shixu’s endless chatter. If he had paid back those 300,000 yuan earlier, he could have refused Cheng Shixu quite cleanly when he came looking for him.
However, working for Lu Ye meant returning to the beginning.
He had pawned the necklace precisely because he did not want to work for Lu Ye. Now, if he went to fight, what was the point of his original persistence? He did not want to fight in black-market matches; he wanted to become a boxer in a legitimate way, not hide in this dark basement, signing one life-and-death contract after another.
“Have you spent so long in the orphanage that you forgot your surname?” Lu Ye tapped the lighter against Lu Jian’s chest. “You should know which ‘Lu’ your surname is. It does not matter if you do not want to agree, but would your little boyfriend fight a match for you? I went to Experimental High School to find him a few days ago; he looked very calm. I heard he is also a top student.” He said the words one by one, like a water ghost howling on the shore, “Drag them all into the water,” cold and weird.
“You went to find him?!” Lu Jian’s expression was no longer calm. He reached out and grabbed Lu Ye’s hair. “Who told you to go find him!”
Hiss. Lu Ye laughed and said, “That is a bit painful. You pull my hair, and I will ruin one of his hands. Who do you think hurts more? I have looked into it; he is only the son of a landlady.”
Lu Jian pulled his head closer with even more force. “Your goal is to have me disappear completely. Do not worry, I will not go back to your Lu family to fight for things. My surname is ‘Lu’ from ‘Malulu’, given to me by the orphanage director. No matter how powerful your Lu family is, it has nothing to do with me!”
If it were not for the fact that he was accompanying the director at the hospital that day and Lu Ye happened to arrive, and the director got emotional after seeing him, he would not have known he was not an orphan but a member of the Lu family. The director himself did not even know the specific details.
After finishing, he released Lu Ye, watched him rub the back of his head, and gave a cold laugh. “300,000 yuan, give it to me, and I will disappear immediately. I am a very vulgar person; money can solve the problem, and you do not need to go to such trouble. Cheng Shixu is just an outsider; he has nothing to do with me. Do some good deeds.”
He had not mentioned this to Jin Yi and would not in the future. Jin Yi actually quite hoped for family; he would always squat at the entrance of the welfare institute as a child, waiting for people who came to adopt to bring him along. If he knew he actually had a “family,” he might try to persuade him this was the biggest difference between his and Jin Yi’s personalities.
He insisted that his family was the welfare institute. Whenever people came to adopt children, he would hide; he did not want to leave the director. There were not many healthy children in the welfare institute; the few were adopted quickly, leaving only those with physical disabilities.
Jin Yi had been adopted twice. Once by an old man in his sixties who said his career suffered after adopting him, and Jin Yi was returned because he was unlucky. The second time was by a couple who had been childless for years, but they got pregnant within a year of adopting him, and Jin Yi was returned again. Even so, he was still looking forward to “family.”
Good or bad did not matter.
Jin Yi had a very soft heart. Once, he met a beggar kneeling on the street posting a poster saying his family was sick and he had no money to save them, promising to pay him back once the pension was issued. It was an obvious liar, but he still gave away all his savings. That liar never appeared again.
Jin Yi, however, said, “It is better if he is a liar; that means no one in his family is seriously ill.”
Therefore, he chose not to tell Jin Yi about this; anyway, he had no intention of returning to that so-called Lu family.
“Are you serious?” Lu Ye’s eyes lit up. The old man in his family was dissatisfied with him and had been searching the world for this cousin; he had not expected to find him first.
“300,000 yuan.” Lu Jian held out his hand to him. “Give it now, and I will disappear from Xicheng.”
Lu Ye: “Deal!”
After the transaction ended, Lu Jian walked out. He saw Jin Yi on the ring throwing the final punch, heavily knocking his opponent to the ground. The referee crawled to the side of that boxer to count down. The whole scene quieted down, waiting for the final number.
“Three.” “Two.” “One!” “Jin Yi wins!” The referee grabbed Jin Yi’s hand and waved it upward. The whole scene boiled over; many people had bet on Jin Yi to win.
On the ring, Jin Yi smiled smugly at him with his bruised and swollen face, then sucked in a cold breath after pulling at a wound. This fool, he had some money but did not even know to buy himself two good sets of clothes; the edge of the underwear he had showing was already pilling.
Returning to the backstage, Jin Yi bit into a cigarette and said, “That guy nearly tired me to death. You do not know how he was like a loach; every time I grabbed him, he slipped away. He must have applied essential oils beforehand; no boxer has skin that slippery.” He was covered in hot sweat, and there were not many intact pieces of skin on his body. Lu Jian was helping him treat some bleeding wounds. “Do not fight so desperately next time.”
He decided to leave Xicheng. Jin Yi wanted to box, and his mentor was also in Xicheng, so he would not leave with him.
He touched Jin Yi’s head. “Wait for your brother to earn back the 5,000 yuan, and let us go have a good drink tonight.”
“Tsk, talking as if it is a parting of life and death. Do you not know that the most feared thing in the boxing arena is a flag like that?” Jin Yi wiped his boxing gloves clean. “Here, this is my lucky pair of gloves. Hurry up and finish, I am going to get a massage tonight.”
Lu Jian smiled and agreed. Taking off his jacket, the coach walked to his side to help him warm up. “Your opponent later is fast with his punches, skilled in left hooks. Remember to dodge, aim for his vitals, understand?”
“Okay.”
After the warm-up, Lu Jian walked out wearing his boxing gloves. As he stepped onto the ring, he inadvertently saw someone walk into the audience area. After that person sat down, he saw the face clearly, it was Cheng Shixu.
How did he know he was here?