He Yun wanted to say something, hesitated, and hesitated again.
In the end, he chose to keep his mouth shut.
“I’m full, ugh.” Siyu took a sip of the grape juice. “Let’s go!”
He Yun picked up the juice bottle and put it back into his bag, his peripheral vision catching Siyu as he pounded his legs.
After a moment of silent thought, he asked, “I’ve seen you sit straight down on the floor in the hallway before.”
“Yeah, but there are bugs out in the wild, you know.”
Siyu stretched his arms and shrugged.
He Yun didn’t comment, shouldered his bag, and set off toward Beachy Head with Siyu.
The path was much easier to walk, but the coastal scenery remained stunning.
The short five-kilometer journey took them nearly two hours.
For no other reason than the fact that wherever Siyu was, He Yun couldn’t help picking up his camera.
He had photographed towering snow-capped mountains, magnificent rain forests, endless grasslands, and the breathtaking deep sea, yet he had never been so obsessed with portraiture.
“I brought the wrong lens for you.”
He Yun tapped his fingertips against the camera, which was better suited for capturing sweeping natural landscapes.
With daylight saving time over, the sunlight was hurriedly chased away.
He Yun captured the profile of Siyu brushing his hair back, along with the illuminated seaside town behind him.
“Siyu!”
He Yun lowered his camera and ran over to Siyu, who had clutched his chest and squatted down.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
He Yun watched as his fingertips brushed across Siyu’s palm.
“I’m tired,” Siyu stood up. “We’re finally heading into town, let’s hurry up.”
He Yun slowly retracted his empty right hand and nodded.
During the New Year holiday, visitors to Eastbourne were not particularly numerous, and the beach umbrellas and lounge chairs that should have graced the beach didn’t dare show their faces in the winter cold wind.
Whenever He Yun saw a bench, he wanted to call out to the person ahead of him, but Siyu’s attention was always drawn away by something else.
Seemingly tireless, Siyu skipped and hopped around, wandering all over the streets.
“This restaurant has great reviews,” He Yun finally caught hold of Siyu. “Let’s go inside.”
“No.”
Siyu shook off his hand and turned, disappearing once again into a range beyond He Yun’s reach.
Woof!
He Yun lowered the hand he was using to massage his forehead and turned to look at the Bernese Mountain Dog tied up outside Bistrot Pierre, which was offering sincere advice.
“He’s not like you,” He Yun said with equal sincerity. “He can’t be tied up.”
Bernese Mountain Dog: .
He Yun was completely helpless against Siyu. He was like a gust of wind, impossible to catch no matter how hard he tried.
In the time that followed, the closest he got to Siyu was standing in the long queue winding beneath the seaside Ferris wheel.
Even so, He Yun, who had gone to buy Pollo Tacos, returned a bit late and could only watch as a family of four wedged themselves into the line between him and Siyu.
[HY: Come over and eat.]
[A Jade That Never Sits on the Ground: I won’t]
He Yun stared at Siyu’s WeChat display name, which had been changed at who knows what hour, and fell into a long silence.
He put away his phone and stepped out of the queue.
“Eat a little.”
He Yun shoved the food box into Siyu’s hands.
Siyu: “Mr. Stranger, please don’t cut in line.”
Queue: A chorus of collective stares.
He Yun:
He Yun finally understood what it felt like to grind one’s teeth in frustration.
He turned around, looking at the young couple who had originally been queued up behind him, and they cheerfully signaled for him to return to the line with eyes full of utter pity.
Boy: “Dude, I get it. You had a fight with your girlfriend, right?”
He Yun: .
Girl: “What she wants, just give it to her.”
He Yun: .
“Hey!” Siyu leaped out from the ticket gate. “Hahaha, you were scared by me, weren’t you? Hey, hey, hey!”
Without giving him a choice, He Yun grabbed Siyu and pulled him aboard a white Ferris wheel gondola.
Through the glass, the couple who had spent ten minutes imparting relationship advice to him stared at him with burning gazes.
Boy: Clenches fist and punches chest.
Girl: Gives a thumbs-up.
He Yun: Raises hand stiffly.
“So pretty, even prettier than the London Eye!”
Siyu pressed against the glass on the left.
He Yun moved over to the left seat.
“I’ve never been to Eastbourne before. I didn’t expect the Victorian town to look like this from an aerial view.”
Siyu pressed against the glass on the right.
He Yun moved over to the right seat.
Finally, He Yun waited as Siyu walked toward him.
He straightened his posture, extended his left hand, and prepared to pull him in.
And Siyu ran off again.
Siyu knelt on one knee on the seat beside He Yun, gazing out into the distance.
The juncture where the dark blue night sky met the Atlantic Ocean was heavily blurred.
The culprit was a wispy white cloud floating on the horizon; it looked like a paintbrush dipped in a bit of white pigment, making a few casual strokes without a care, yet quite naturally disrupting the quiet deep sea.
“Looks like it’s going to rain,” Siyu tilted his head slightly, lowered his leg, and backed away. “It’ll be better ov… ooh!”
A force he couldn’t resist tugged at his wrist, causing him to stumble a few steps off balance. A sensation of weightlessness washed over him as he tumbled straight into He Yun’s arms.
“Can you look at me now?”
He Yun said.
Siyu looked in a daze at He Yun’s face just inches away, nodding blankly.
Yet He Yun didn’t seem inclined to let him off easily.
“It seems that the moment anything doesn’t go your way, you flick your pretty tail and run off. Once you get caught, you put on this innocent look all over again.”
He Yun tightened his arms around Siyu’s lower back, trapping him between his thighs and the crook of his arm.
“Siyu, you’re really a lot of trouble.”
The bright moon hung high in the night sky, and He Yun’s heart hung in Siyu’s hands.
“I’m not a trouble at all.” Siyu reached out to wrap his arms around He Yun’s neck, scooting even closer into his embrace. “It’s all your fault.”
He Yun turned his head to look at him, their breaths mingling.
“If you had just hugged me a little earlier.”
The white Ferris wheel rose to its highest point, and the chests pressed closely together transmitted every single beat of their racing hearts.
“After being hugged, what will your next demand be?”
He Yun’s gaze drifted downward.
Being this close, every subtle movement of Siyu’s was captured entirely by his eyes.
His damp lips parted slightly, the tip of his tongue peeking out from between white teeth with a faint, reddish tint.
“Take a guess.”
He Yun could guess.
He Yun didn’t dare to guess.
Siyu, you’re really a lot of trouble.
When Siyu appeared in his hotel room that night, this was the exact thought running through He Yun’s mind.
On the creamy white vintage walls, four tall windows faced the Atlantic Ocean; the left and right ones were tilted slightly open, and a white cushioned lounge chair sat in the center. Siyu was sitting on it with his knees pulled to his chest, staring blankly out the window.
That was what He Yun saw when he walked out of the bathroom.
“Is the heating still not fixed?”
He Yun averted his eyes from Siyu’s slightly parted bathrobe collar, sat down on the edge of the bed, and lowered his head to dry his wet hair.
“It’s fixed.”
Siyu answered promptly.
The fingers holding the white towel paused for a second before He Yun resumed rubbing his hair. “Then why are you…”
“I didn’t want to be in a room by myself.”
A flicker of a smile emerged in He Yun’s eyes behind the strands of black hair: True to form, Siyu always came up with all sorts of reasons that made it hard to refuse.
“You…”
“The ocean at night is really terrifying.”
Siyu’s voice was very soft, sounding less like a complaint and more like a spoiled whisper.
Something was very wrong.
He Yun thought.
Hearing the footsteps beside him, Siyu looked away from the ocean surface emitting a faint black glow and turned to look at He Yun sitting at the foot of the bed.
Using his knuckle-defined hand, He Yun casually brushed his wet hair back, leaned forward with his elbows propped on his knees, and stared fixedly at him.
“The ocean during the day is like a dark blue flannel blanket; it seems to speak with its waves, but at the same time, it silently tempts me to lie down in it.”
Siyu’s words carried no fluctuation or trailing notes, like grains of sand lying on a beach and being constantly eroded by bone-chilling seawater.
He turned his head to continue looking out the window.
“The ocean at night is like an invisibility cloak hiding treasures; every now and then, a corner of it gets lifted by the wind, making me want to walk over and take a look at the gems it possesses.”
Siyu didn’t wait for He Yun to speak. The other man simply listened like a well-mannered audience member sitting in the stands watching a protagonist’s monologue on stage.
Gradually, Siyu’s eyelids grew heavier and heavier, while the ocean before his eyes grew increasingly bright.
“Goodnight.”
Siyu walked over to the door and turned the carved doorknob.
“Stay.”
He Yun’s voice came from behind him.
Immediately following, a breeze stirred beside him, and click.
He Yun locked the door.
“Stay and keep me company.”
Siyu didn’t answer.
“You make a lot of unreasonable demands, but I only have this one.”
Siyu raised his eyes to look at him.
The next second, the room lights were switched off by He Yun.
In the darkness, Siyu’s cold, stiff fingertips were caught and held.
“Still cold?”
He Yun’s low query came from behind.
Siyu lay on his side and nodded, a tear hanging at the corner of his eye falling away.
Soon, a rustling sound arose, and both the back of his neck and his ears were covered by He Yun.
“How about this?”
He Yun asked.
“Still cold.”
Siyu kept his eyes open as his tears continued to flow.
The next second, he was pulled tightly into He Yun’s arms, separated only by the fluffy white bedcovers.
“My arms hurt. The wind blew on them, they hurt really bad.”
The pressure weighing down on him vanished.
Then, a warm palm grasped his bare arm beneath the covers.
Their body temperatures climbed, their skin smooth and soft.
Siyu’s cold soles also brushed against He Yun’s gradually approaching ankles.
“You’re going to get cold.”
Siyu tried to move his foot away, but his whole body was sinking into a quagmire, and he didn’t even have the strength to wipe away the tear on the tip of his nose.
“I won’t.”
He Yun’s ankle slid downward all the way until Siyu’s sole rested right on top of his instep, and then he stopped.
He slowly bent his knees, using his firmly mused calves to press seamlessly and closely against Siyu’s soft, cool calves.
His knees rested right in the hollows of Siyu’s knees.
It felt as though Siyu wasn’t lying on his side on the bed, but rather sitting right in He Yun’s lap.
“Go to sleep.”
The tears on the tip of Siyu’s nose and the corners of his eyes were wiped away.
“You won’t be cold anymore.”
The bedcovers were soft, and the skin beneath his palm was even softer.
So soft that if he hadn’t grabbed hold of him tonight, he might have vanished into the Atlantic Ocean that had been tempting him to walk in.
He Yun closed his eyes.
Siyu’s tone and demeanor in praising the ocean were far too familiar; his mother had once praised a letter opener formerly used by Madame de Pompadour in the exact same way.
The next day, he had found his mother attempting to slit her wrists beneath the wax tree in the garden of the estate that was about to be repossessed by the bank.
“Maybe precisely because you’re troublesome, I want to understand you a little more. Give me a little more time.”
Yet Siyu didn’t seem inclined to give him that chance.
Click.
He Yun opened his eyes, sat up, and looked toward the tightly shut bedroom door.
The sound of the door closing had clearly just rung out, so why were the pillows and blankets beside him so cold?
He Yun chased after him.
“Siyu!”
The extended dark blue carpet beneath his feet and the empty corridor offered no answers.
Siyu was like a gust of wind, impossible to catch no matter how hard he tried.
He barged recklessly into his life, only to wave goodbye with a smile after some future awakening.
And this time, there wasn’t even a goodbye.
He Yun sprinted toward the elevator.
“Don’t you brush your teeth when you get up in the morning?”
Siyu poked his head out from his original room, his mouth full of foam around a toothbrush, his eyes looking more innocent than ever.
“Here!” Siyu handed over an unopened toothbrush. “Your room was out, I just went and got one for you.”
Bam!
Siyu watched in dumbfounded shock as He Yun snatched the toothbrush, turned around, slammed the door shut, and walked away.
“He Yun, talk to me!”
Siyu bounced and rolled around in the passenger seat like a fish just landed on the shore.
“If you don’t talk to me again, I’m really going to be mad!”
As soon as he finished speaking, He Yun truly slowed the car to a stop and turned his head.
He Yun: “Passport.”
The corners of Siyu’s mouth, which had just lifted, drooped back down. He dug the dark red booklet out of his bag and tossed it into He Yun’s lap.
He Yun glanced at him and handed their passports over to the customs officer.
Soon, after having the car’s passport stamped, He Yun followed the directions and drove the car onto the train heading to Calais, France.
This was an itinerary they had booked early on.
Siyu took charge of saying where he wanted to go, and He Yun took charge of making Siyu’s wishes a reality in the shortest time possible.
Inside the rectangular train compartment, which wasn’t narrow but was sufficiently enclosed, Siyu’s ears were made extremely uncomfortable by the air pressure of the Channel Tunnel.
Yet to make matters worse, He Yun was stubbornly refusing to budge, stubbornly keeping his mouth shut and not saying a single word.
While he was feeling thoroughly annoyed, a video call from Nie Shuang happened to crash right into his line of fire.
“What?!”
Nie Shuang, who had originally intended to ask when he would arrive at the hotel, froze, his brain spinning at eight hundred revolutions a minute.
“N- nothing!” Nie Shuang raised his hands in surrender. “Bro, have fun! Have a great time!”
Siyu tossed his phone onto the center console and resumed crossing his arms to glare at He Yun.
“Last chance. If you don’t talk, I’m jumping out of the train!”
“Even if you jump, you’ll still land inside the train.”
“…”
Siyu unbuckled his seatbelt and lunged toward He Yun. “What on earth are you throwing a temper tantrum about?”
He Yun, whose collar had been grabbed, wore a calm expression. “Most of the time, I want to ask you that exact question.”
Siyu was momentarily choked up, quickly cutting in, “I’m the one asking you right now!”
He Yun looked at him without speaking.
Siyu narrowed his eyes and threatened, “If you don’t talk this instant, don’t blame me for clinging to you and refusing to get up.”
With that, he pressed even closer into He Yun’s embrace.
He Yun’s chest was pressed by Siyu’s arm, making it temporarily impossible for him to gauge the rhythm of his own heartbeat.
“This morning, I thought you had left again without a single word of warning, just like that day.”
Siyu was stunned, the fingers clutching He Yun’s collar losing their tension.
Seeing Siyu uncharacteristically at a loss for words, He Yun realized he was being overly presumptuous.
He and Siyu had no formal relationship whatsoever; whether Siyu left or stayed, there was no need for him to explain himself.
“Sorry.”
“So do you want to give me a morning kiss next time?”
He Yun froze.
Immediately after, like a little cat made of water, Siyu slowly slid down and settled right into his lap.
“I won’t leave without a sound,” Siyu raised his head to look at him. “Because I’d want to see the look on your face when you can’t bear to let me go.”
He Yun’s Adam’s apple bobbed too obviously, and his motion of looking away was so pronounced that Siyu couldn’t help laughing out loud.
“I already said,” He Yun gently pushed against Siyu’s hand resting on his shoulder, “don’t cling to me and refuse to get up.”
“Sorry about that.”
Siyu was still the same, apologizing far too quickly without a shred of sincerity.
“I lied.”
“I’m a liar.”
“Go ahead and call the police.”
A silence of several seconds.
“Siyu,” He Yun looked at him, “you’re really a lot of trouble.”
Siyu nestled in He Yun’s arms for half an hour before finally, with great reluctance, sitting back in the passenger seat once the train pulled into the port of Calais.
The highway toward Paris was completely smooth. Siyu lowered the car roof, pulled out his phone, turned sideways, and snapped the first-ever photo of himself and He Yun together.
The wind was too strong, so even Siyu, who wouldn’t blink even when facing hundreds of flashing lights, inevitably ended up with a photo he wasn’t happy with.
The car stopped at a rest area.
Leaning against the car door, Siyu inspected the photo and complained, “Both of us look so good, why did this turn out so ugly!”
It wasn’t ugly at all.
Whether it was Siyu’s smiling eyes crinkled into pear-dimpled happiness or He Yun’s sharp, handsome Eurasian features behind him.
Adding a filter would allow it to grace the cover of Vogue directly, yet Siyu remained dissatisfied.
“Siyu.”
“Hm?”
The moment Siyu raised his head, He Yun’s face leaned in, and the camera’s shutter click sounded synchronously.
“What, what are you laughing at?!” Siyu looked at He Yun, who wore an ambiguous, inscrutable smile. “You didn’t take an ugly picture of me, did you? Let me see!”
Siyu reached out to snatch the camera, but He Yun used his height advantage to tease him, dodging like a short-legged cat swatting at a feather.
He Yun: “360 degrees without a dead angle?”
Siyu: Nervous.
He Yun: “Expression management on par with a stage idol?”
Siyu: Swallows saliva.
He Yun: “After a butterfly flutters past your face, will it be so ashamed in the next second that it crashes into a flower and dies?”
Siyu: Gradually going wild.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk.”
“He Yun! I’m going to kill you!”
Of course, Siyu couldn’t outrun He Yun, who had won the five-year cross-country running championship at Hampstead Boys’ School, unless the latter willingly let himself be pinned down onto the lawn by him.
“Caught you.”
Siyu sat astride He Yun’s solid abdomen, his knees kneeling on either side of his waist, raising a hand to grab the camera in his grip.
He Yun’s arms dodged up toward his head, and in a momentary lapse of attention, Siyu lunged forward directly.
“Careful.”
He Yun released his grip on the camera and instinctively steadied Siyu’s shoulders and cheeks.
Both of them froze.
They were so close there was a risk of kissing.
No matter what Siyu was thinking, he definitely wanted to do just that.
He Yun pressed the back of Siyu’s head, pulling him toward himself.