For the entire evening, a low-pressure atmosphere seemed to hang around Ji Wangcheng.
Most of the time, his expression was faint and unreadable, making it difficult to tell how he was feeling just by looking at him.
Li Xingchuan returned to the dormitory with him. After taking a shower and coming back, he discovered that Li Xuanzhi had actually begun chanting Buddhist scriptures.
The tablet that had previously been dominated by female streamers now displayed a picture of a wooden fish. Li Xuanzhi had his eyes closed, one hand tapping the virtual wooden fish on the screen while the other slowly rolled his string of Buddhist prayer beads. His lips moved continuously as he murmured the scriptures under his breath.
Li Xingchuan couldn’t help laughing. “What are you doing?”
The remaining four temporary roommates, along with Shan Bai, were either sitting or lying down, completely absorbed in Li Xuanzhi’s chanting. They looked as though they were listening to heavenly music, their expressions peaceful and blissful, and not one of them moved a muscle.
Ji Wangcheng, on the other hand, remained completely unmoved.
Li Xingchuan looked around in confusion. “…What’s wrong with all of you?”
Only then did the five people finally notice that he had returned.
One of them pressed his palms together and said solemnly, “We’re listening to a venerable monk recite the scriptures. Please do not disturb us.”
Another immediately agreed. “I don’t know why, but listening to Li Xuanzhi chant for a while makes me feel so peaceful. It’s like all the distracting thoughts in my mind have disappeared…”
Shan Bai murmured reverently, “May Buddha show compassion. May Buddha show compassion.”
“It’s just a little hobby of mine. Please forgive me for the spectacle.” Li Xuanzhi stopped what he was doing. Although he was speaking to Li Xingchuan, his gaze kept drifting toward Ji Wangcheng from time to time. “The weather is hot, so I’m reciting the Heart-Cleansing Mantra to calm the mind and keep impatience and arrogance at bay.”
Li Xingchuan found the whole thing quite novel. He sat down on the edge of his bed and joined the others in listening to Li Xuanzhi chant.
The Heart-Cleansing Mantra had a very monotonous tune. Once the initial novelty wore off, Li Xingchuan quickly lost interest.
When he turned his head, he discovered that everyone else’s expressions looked as though they had been spiritually delivered to the afterlife by the Heart-Cleansing Mantra. Every single person seemed to have their soul floating outside their body, wearing an inexplicably devout expression.
Li Xingchuan: “…?”
Were these guys really that enthusiastic about humoring someone? Their acting was so convincing!
He waited a little longer, only to discover that they weren’t putting on an act or deliberately playing along with Li Xuanzhi at all. They were genuinely immersing themselves in the sound of the Buddhist chanting with their whole hearts and souls.
Li Xingchuan was utterly astonished.
However, he had grown up watching people praise his unreliable, con-artist mother as a spiritual medium, so this sort of thing no longer surprised him in the slightest. He simply thought to himself that the comprehensive popularization of materialism still had a long and arduous road ahead of it.
Then, without the slightest psychological burden, he went back to doing his own things. He tidied up his messy wardrobe and tossed the clothes he had changed out of into the laundry basket.
He was the only person in the entire dormitory walking around and moving from place to place. Compared with everyone else, who was so engrossed in listening to the scriptures that they seemed to have forgotten the world existed, he looked like a hyperactive person who was completely impervious to reason or persuasion.
Ten minutes later, Li Xuanzhi finally finished reciting his Heart-Cleansing Mantra.
Li Xingchuan applauded and offered his praise with absolutely no sincerity whatsoever.
Then he noticed that the expressions on his two roommates’ faces looked a little strange.
Li Xingchuan asked, “What’s wrong?”
Shan Bai said, “You… why didn’t you react at all?”
Li Xingchuan looked puzzled. “Was I supposed to react somehow?”
Shan Bai hesitated. “Uh, I mean, weren’t you supposed to feel as though your spirit had truly been elevated to a higher level? To enter a state where the four elements are all empty, where you have no desires or worldly attachments, and where you feel nothing but the Buddha’s compassion?”
The moment he heard that description, Li Xingchuan’s expression became decidedly peculiar.
He cleared his throat. “…Watch what you’re saying. Don’t go making dirty jokes out of nowhere.”
Shan Bai stared at him in confusion. “Huh? I was speaking perfectly normally… Wait, what on earth were you thinking?!”
University students were quick to move on to the next exciting thing. The article’s popularity didn’t last very long, and after that one evening had passed, the inexplicable flood of friend requests gradually disappeared.
Even so, Li Xingchuan had become one of the more noticeable freshmen in his year.
Whenever the students were given a break, girls from neighboring departments would walk past their formation in groups. They would sneak glances in his direction, lower their voices, and tell their companions, “Look, that’s Li Xingchuan.”
It was just like how girls in high school would deliberately walk past the entrance of a particular classroom, pretending they had somewhere to go.
The military training base maintained strict entry and exit procedures. Freshmen needed an approved leave slip to go outside, and even senior students had to obtain permission before entering.
On the tenth day, following the news department senior who had visited previously, a new face appeared beneath the shade of the trees.
The newly arrived senior was exceptionally beautiful. She had a face no larger than a palm and long, fluffy black hair that billowed like clouds. She had arrived as early as four in the afternoon, wearing an identification badge around her neck and maintaining a perfectly serious expression.
During the afternoon break, the boys’ conversation shifted to the beautiful senior who had just arrived.
“She looks like she’s in her third or fourth year. She’s got such a nice aura.”
“Is she from the news department, too? She’s carrying a GoPro.”
“Come on, brother, go ask for her WeChat and pass it on to me.”
“Get lost! Why don’t you go yourself, you coward?”
When the day’s activities finally ended at five and everyone began gradually dispersing, the senior called out to Li Xingchuan.
“Student Li, do you have a moment to talk? There’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”
Li Xingchuan was certain he had never met her before. Still, since she had approached him and invited him to talk, he didn’t feel comfortable refusing outright. He turned to the person beside him and said, “You go ahead first. I’ll come over once I’m finished here.”
He had barely taken two steps when Ji Wangcheng suddenly reached out and caught him by the forearm.
Ji Wangcheng looked at him without changing his expression.
It was difficult to imagine that, in weather this unbearably hot, his palm could actually feel slightly cool against Li Xingchuan’s skin, like a piece of jade with a smooth, lustrous surface.
Li Xingchuan asked, “What’s wrong?”
Ji Wangcheng didn’t answer immediately.
“…Why don’t you wait for me for a bit, then?” Li Xingchuan thought about it and guessed that Ji Wangcheng probably didn’t want to go to the cafeteria and queue alone. He explained patiently, “I don’t even know what she wants to talk to me about. I’ll be as quick as I can.”
Ji Wangcheng studied him for a second, his gaze scrutinizing, then slowly nodded and released his arm.
The administrative building stood right beside the sports field. The military training base had originally been converted from an abandoned high school, so the so-called administrative building had a layout quite similar to that of an ordinary school. The first floor was an open, elevated space, while the floors above it had been converted into offices.
As Li Xingchuan followed the senior toward the open space on the ground floor, he spent the less-than-one-minute walk imagining all sorts of possibilities.
For instance, perhaps he wasn’t actually Ms. Li’s biological son. Judging by the way she treated him, he certainly seemed like the sort of child someone had received as a free gift after topping up their phone account.
If that really were the case, his grandmother might be devastated. No matter how he looked at it…
The senior suddenly asked, “Student Li, have you considered joining any of the university’s clubs?”
Li Xingchuan blinked. “Huh?”
The senior smiled warmly. “I’m Sun Yu, the head of the Student Union’s Arts Department. Jin Rui, one of the members of our department, also graduated from Yucheng No. 1 High School. She told us that you placed second in your high school’s Top Ten Singers competition, and she even showed us a video of your performance. We all think you’re exceptionally talented. Once the faculty-level Top Ten Singers competition finishes in October, the university-wide competition will begin…”
Li Xingchuan understood immediately. The Arts Department had come to poach him before anyone else could get their hands on him.
The university’s club recruitment event, known as the Hundred Clubs Battle, would take place after military training ended and the semester officially began. But the senior students were just like HR recruiters during autumn hiring season. They would sneak into the freshmen group chats in advance, quietly advertise their own departments, and do everything they could to win over the incoming students.
Li Xingchuan had already been considering joining a club himself. He really was good at singing, and he wanted to take advantage of the relatively relaxed first year of university to join a campus organization, experience a little more of university life, and earn some additional points for his comprehensive assessment.
Since their goals aligned, he readily agreed.
Having achieved her objective, Sun Yu beamed with delight. She handed him the canvas tote bag she had been carrying throughout their conversation.
“Great! Then I hope you can escape the misery of military training soon. This is just a little something for you. I’ll see you on campus!”
With that, she left.
Inside the canvas bag was a cup of watermelon slush that was only half-frozen, along with some small snacks such as potato chips and ham sausages.
There was a little convenience store beside the cafeteria at the military training base, but most of the snacks it sold were hardly anything to get excited about. Half of one freezer was filled with counterfeit versions of familiar treats like Duokeai and Dari Rabbit, and getting your hands on a little ice cream bar sometimes required an outright struggle.
After ten whole days, seeing a normal selection of snacks again left Li Xingchuan with a complicated mix of emotions, as though he had been away from civilization for half his life.
After the senior left, he gave the watermelon slush to Ji Wangcheng.
Ji Wangcheng asked, “Where did this come from?”
Li Xingchuan answered, “The senior gave it to me.”
Ji Wangcheng said, “I don’t want it.”
He seemed a little unhappy.
Li Xingchuan looped an arm around Ji Wangcheng’s neck, putting him in a playful headlock. Pretending to be angry, he said, “Your Brother Shan is saving something this good for you, and you don’t even thank me for my great generosity? Instead, you’re being picky and complaining? Have you forgotten your place? Come on, drink it. Whether you want to or not, you’re drinking it.”
The moment Ji Wangcheng found himself trapped in Li Xingchuan’s headlock, his entire body stiffened.
“…Shanshan, let go of me.”
Li Xingchuan refused. “No. Not unless you drink it first.”
All of a sudden, Ji Wangcheng became remarkably obedient. He did exactly as instructed, meekly poking a straw through the plastic seal and taking a sip.
Only then was Li Xingchuan satisfied. He checked the time and saw that it was already 5:40 p.m., so he suggested, “Why don’t we just wait until six-thirty to have dinner? It’s the busiest time right now, and if we wait until six-thirty, we can still make it in time for a late-night snack.”
“Oh.” Ji Wangcheng asked, “Why did she come looking for you?”
Li Xingchuan answered with complete shamelessness, “I’m handsome, and I sing well. If she doesn’t come looking for me, then who else is she supposed to look for?”
Suddenly, he remembered that he hadn’t actually told Ji Wangcheng about the high school singing competition before. Yucheng No. 1 High School held its annual Top Ten Singers competition every September, after the new semester began. The contest ran for nearly a month, eventually selecting ten winners, with the top three given the opportunity to perform at the school’s anniversary celebration at the end of September.
During his second year of high school, Li Xingchuan had won second place. Very few people made a point of remembering the runner-up, and by the time he met Ji Wangcheng during the following summer vacation, almost an entire year later, even Li Xingchuan himself had more or less forgotten about the competition.
Although nearly two years had passed since then, now that he had remembered it, Li Xingchuan still wanted to show off a little in front of Ji Wangcheng.
Shanshan-style bragging was usually carried out in the most straightforward, unpretentious manner possible: rather than waiting for someone else to ask, he would simply announce it himself.
“I came second in my high school’s Top Ten Singers competition, you know.” He looked immensely pleased with himself. “I’ve even got a video. Want to watch it?”
Ji Wangcheng didn’t even blink before answering decisively, “Yes.”
Li Xingchuan had changed to a new phone after graduation, so the video hadn’t been saved in his photo gallery. He rummaged through his WeChat Moments instead and eventually found a little over one minute of footage recorded live at the event.
The video had been shot vertically. Two rows of people stood in front of the person recording, and the bottom of the frame was filled with a mass of dark heads.
Li Xingchuan had chosen a familiar, catchy pop song for his performance. The melody was simple and upbeat, and the lyrics were easy to remember and sing along to.
The stage lighting had been excellent in person, but on camera, it was somewhat overexposed, blurring many of his facial features. When Li Xingchuan began singing, he made a sweeping gesture with one hand. His face wasn’t particularly clear in the footage, but the exuberant vitality and infectious energy radiating from him were impossible to suppress.
When he reached the line, Love should be open and honest, not pretending until the end of time, almost the entire audience sang along with him. Their voices overwhelmed his own in the phone’s recording.
The camera then turned around to capture the crowd behind it. In the darkness, one young, relaxed face after another came into view, interspersed with colorful points of light from glow sticks and the flashlights on people’s phones.
As he finished the first chorus and the instrumental interlude began, thunderous applause erupted, accompanied by excited cheers and shouts.
“Sounds great!”
“Too handsome!”
“Li Xingchuan!”
Someone even took advantage of the commotion to shout, “Marry me!”
Li Xingchuan heard that from the stage, too, and couldn’t hold back his laughter.
At the time, he was still growing taller. His eyes curved into crescents when he smiled, his chin was pointed, and the straight, lean line of his shoulders filled out the seams of his short-sleeved shirt. Brilliant stage lights shone down from above, illuminating the spirited young man standing in the center of the stage. Just like his nickname, he was positively sparkling.
The video ended on that very frame, capturing his bright, radiant smile.
Ji Wangcheng dragged the progress bar back and watched it again.
The smug little “Well? What do you think?” that had been poised on the tip of Li Xingchuan’s tongue suddenly became impossible to say.
Between boys, compliments about each other’s actual appearance were surprisingly rare. They could boast endlessly about how skilled their buddies were at gaming or how popular they were with other people, but they would never stare at one another for ages before suddenly announcing, “You’re so handsome.”
Nor would they save pictures of their buddies looking particularly good. Memes were, of course, an exception.
Usually, anyone who did something like that would get punched twice and receive a laughing insult along the lines of, “You’re so damn weird.”
Yet when Ji Wangcheng did it, everything seemed perfectly natural, as effortless as breathing. It was so natural that Li Xingchuan almost felt as though he were the one being strange for feeling awkward about it.
He was a little embarrassed, but at the same time, there was a subtle sense of satisfaction mixed into his feelings. After all, this was proof that his childhood friend truly valued him—
“Okay, okay, that’s enough. You’ve watched it enough times.” Li Xingchuan cleared his throat twice, his cheeks tinged with a faint blush. “You’ve played it eight times already. Are you doing this on purpose to embarrass me?”
…Sometimes, Ji Wangcheng’s way of showing how much he “valued” him was simply too much for Li Xingchuan to handle.
“I’m not,” Ji Wangcheng said.
Li Xingchuan retorted, “Like hell, you’re not! If you love watching it so much, why don’t I send it to you so you can watch it once every morning and once every night?!”
Ji Wangcheng replied, “All right.”
Li Xingchuan: “??!!!”
Unable to tolerate it any longer, he snatched his phone back, just in case Ji Wangcheng really did forward the video to himself and start playing it on an endless loop every day.
The person whose phone had been stolen stared at him with an aggrieved, accusatory look.
Ji Wangcheng’s pupils were naturally light in color, a pale amber that resembled a lake in which the twilight had settled.
Li Xingchuan snapped at him, “What are you looking at? It’s my phone, so I decide what happens to it.”
Ji Wangcheng said earnestly, “Send it to me.”
“No.” Li Xingchuan was convinced that Ji Wangcheng was deliberately teasing him, so he quickly changed the subject. “The senior invited me to join the Arts Department, and I agreed. I heard that the university-wide Top Ten Singers competition will even be livestreamed online. Last year, the number of people watching online…”
Half of the open ground floor was being used to store goods packed in cardboard boxes, while the other half served as a parking area. The two of them were standing on the parking side. Bicycles and electric scooters leaned haphazardly against one another, and the space was fairly empty, causing their voices to echo faintly.
Thanks to the openness of the area, it was also noticeably cooler than the sports field outside.
Ji Wangcheng crushed the empty plastic cup in his hand, his brows drawing together ever so slightly.
“Will there be a lot of people?” he asked.
Li Xingchuan replied, “Probably quite a lot.”
The gentle expression on Ji Wangcheng’s face disappeared completely. He stared straight at Li Xingchuan, his thoughts impossible to read.
A gust of wind rushed through the entrance, producing a strangely eerie echo that raised inexplicable goosebumps.
Outside, the sky was growing dark.
Summer hadn’t even ended yet. The sun usually didn’t set until after five, so the horizon should, by all rights, still have been burning with a soft orange glow.
Instead, the sky had changed without warning, as though it had suddenly turned hostile.
Li Xingchuan walked over to the entrance and peered outside.
Was there going to be a sudden shower?