That day, Yan Jun was busy until rather late.
The fake kid was probably sleepy; when Yan Jun returned to the attic, that figure on the bed was already lying down quietly and soundly. Yan Jun walked absentmindedly to the desk and sat down. Remembering his height, which hadn’t shown any progress for half a year, he reached under the desk and pulled out a carton of milk.
The box was tipped over lightly, falling to the floor with a “thud” sound. It seemed he would have to go to the supermarket to restock tomorrow.
As he was absentmindedly sipping the milk, Qin Yize’s voice suddenly came from the side: “Older brother, are you still not going to sleep?”
Turning his head to look, that kid’s eyes were clear—he hadn’t been asleep at all!
Yan Jun glanced at him gloomily, finished the milk in one breath, and got up to go downstairs: “I’m going to rinse my mouth and go to sleep right away.”
After the lights were turned off, two tall, strapping young men lay in bed, quiet and still, inexplicably giving off a feeling of “relying on each other for survival.”
After a while, Qin Yize suddenly pulled the quilt over him, earnestly spreading it out and covering his belly well. Yan Jun smiled with amusement, grabbed a corner of the quilt, and squinted sideways: “What are you doing? Are you not mad at me anymore?”
The fake kid was silent for two seconds, then muttered in a muffled voice: “Just a tiny bit left. This time I can forgive you, but you can’t roar at me anymore in the future.”
Yan Jun smiled in the darkness, gave a vague “hmm,” and answered.
Seeing that he agreed, the fake kid completely threw the matter to the back of his mind and leaned in closely and affectionately. He rested his chin on Yan Jun’s shoulder, a pair of eyes gazing intently at the older brother in the dim light, and asked softly: “Older brother, that eldest aunt of yours… when did she get a divorce?”
“Why are you asking about this?” Yan Jun was not very willing to answer.
The fake kid hummed in a small voice: “…I want to know how long you’ve been making steamed buns.”
Yan Jun hesitated for a few seconds, and after a while replied: “More than a year.”
“So long!” Qin Yize muttered to himself thoughtfully, “Then wouldn’t I have to practice for a year to learn how to make steamed buns?”
…So he was pondering about this! Yan Jun smiled despite himself: “Why on earth do you have to master it?”
“I said it, to help you make more buns! That way, eldest aunt can pay off her debts sooner, and you won’t have to work this hard.”
Listening to his deadpan and serious voice, Yan Jun was at a loss for words in the dark for a brief moment, inexplicably feeling an urge to laugh: “You’re going to go home one day.”
“I can choose not to go home!” The fake kid hummed unconcernedly.
“You don’t want your parents anymore? That family portrait is still lying inside the drawer, did you forget?”
“I didn’t abandon them…” A trace of a guilty conscience leaked into the fake kid’s voice, but he still sounded righteous and plausible: “But I don’t remember them right now anyway. I’m just living at your place, and I’ll go back when I remember, can’t I?”
“What if you never remember?”
“Never remember then!” A secret excitement leaked out of the fake kid’s voice, “Then I’ll just keep living with you!”
“Talking nonsense.” Giving a light scoff, Yan Jun fell silent for a few seconds, and unusually, rubbed the kid’s head: “Stop letting your imagination run wild, go to sleep quickly! We still have to get up at three o’clock tomorrow.”
“Oh, okay.” Thinking of the morning chores, Qin Yize closed his eyes with full motivation, his arm wrapping around Yan Jun’s waist as before: “Older brother, you’re so cool and refreshing~ And you smell nice!”
This time Yan Jun did not push him away again, but instead lay there quietly, wondering what he was pondering.
Early the next morning, the two of them struggled to crawl out of bed to make buns, yawning continuously, almost forgetting to add the yeast.
When wrapping the buns, Yan Jun was as stingy as ever, giving him only ten wrapper skins. Qin Yize looked at him with dissatisfaction and said with depression: “Older brother, you only let me make ten, how am I supposed to practice?”
“If I let you practice any more, does Ah-po even need to sell buns?” Yan Jun kept his eyes straight ahead as exquisite, standard large buns took shape in his hands.
His movements were truly too fast, and Qin Yize couldn’t see clearly, so he couldn’t help grabbing his hand: “Older brother, slow down a bit, demonstrate slowly for me…”
Glancing at him in disdain, Yan Jun had no choice but to stretch out both hands and perform a slow-motion demonstration: “Your index finger needs to be placed a bit lower, your thumb holds the wrapper skin, and your fingertip presses against the root of your index finger, pinching and pulling upward at the same time…”
Qin Yize watched attentively while imitating step by step. After finishing a bun, he blinked his eyes and revealed an expression of sudden enlightenment: “I think I know how to do it now.”
Yan Jun let out a “che” and didn’t take it to heart: “Fine, fine, then go ahead and make them!”
At three-thirty in the afternoon, Yan Jun went to school for training as usual. There was no sun today, the weather was overcast and gloomy, and although it wasn’t scorching, the air was extremely muggy. A bunch of physical education students were not performing very well, and only Yan Jun was running sprints on the track over and over again as if he had taken some medicine.
Cheng Yusong, who often competed with him for first place in the one-hundred-meter dash, stood beside Teacher Zhang, cast a disdainful sideways glance, and whispered: “No matter how much he trains, isn’t he still like that? Muscle mass is not enough, stride frequency cannot be raised, training more has no meaning.”
Teacher Zhang didn’t pay attention to him, only focusing intently on Yan Jun’s running posture, his finger pressing the stopwatch: “…11 seconds 03! Not bad, there’s improvement.”
Yan Jun walked over, panting heavily, sweat pouring off him like rain, and his hair completely soaked. Teacher Zhang beckoned him over and solemnly exhorted: “If you want to test into a good school, you must get your time down to 11 seconds, understand? Eat more meat and strengthen your muscle power! You aren’t robust enough.”
“Mm.” He nodded with a gloomy face, sweat hanging all over his eyelashes, not knowing whether he even listened or not.
Word had it that You Xinyao had already been recommended for admission to K University… Qin Yize was little different from her, so getting into K University would definitely be a piece of cake.
Yet just such an honor student was learning how to make steamed buns in his house this morning.
Feeling stuffy in his heart, Yan Jun stood helplessly in front of the bulletin board, feeling only that the future was a sheet of blank confusion. Logically speaking, Qin Yize’s brain had recovered, and his memory and mental age should also recover together… Could it be that he needed a little bit of stimulation?
Suddenly thinking this plan was feasible, Yan Jun quickly stopped his bicycle and rushed into the teaching building.
The fake kid poked his head out from his own attic: “Older brother, I’m right here!”
How strange, this kid was actually at home? Yan Jun walked back in disbelief and saw him sitting at the desk, intently messing with a pile of plasticine, rolling them into small round balls.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m making buns!” Qin Yize earnestly held up those “dough pieces,” carefully flattening and shaping them, then stuffed a flat pebble inside, and pinched the pleats to seal the opening little by little: “Since you won’t let me make more buns to practice with, I had no choice but to borrow plasticine from Xiao Hui to practice!”
“You…” Yan Jun suddenly opened his mouth and stammered, unable to speak. He stood dazed behind Qin Yize, watching how this fake kid realistically made pleats and sealed the edges, practicing repeatedly over and over again. A thought inexplicably appeared in his mind: No wonder people are honor students… If there are no conditions, they create conditions, and no matter what they do, they want to do it their best.
Putting down his backpack, he didn’t disturb Qin Yize any further and silently went downstairs.
Before sleeping at night, Yan Jun took out that stack of test papers, hesitated for a moment, and called over the fake kid who was lying on the bed hugging a body pillow and playing games:
“Xiaoshu, I have a few test papers here, try doing them and see if you know how.”
“Test papers?” Qin Yize had no suspicions, put down the game console, shuffled over, and leaned against the edge of the desk to pick up a math paper, gazing at it intently. Yan Jun closely observed his face without daring to let out a big breath. After a while, Qin Yize stretched out his hand, eyes fixed straight ahead: “I want a pen.”
Holy shit! Yan Jun hurriedly found a pen and gave it to him: He actually knows how!
Spreading the test paper out on the desk, Qin Yize wrote like flying, the multiple-choice questions in the front requiring almost no calculation, and selected the answers in the blink of an eye.
Yan Jun watched in a daze and couldn’t help asking: “You… you still remember how to do test problems, why can’t you remember past events?”
“Huh?” The fake kid raised his head, his expression turning extraordinarily innocent: “I don’t know either. Not being able to remember means not being able to remember, but I still know how to do problems.”
In a mere twenty minutes, Qin Yize finished writing a whole test paper for him, and even gave a review: “Pretty simple, not much difficulty.”
Yan Jun: …Is this the strength of the second-ranking student in the grade?
Not wanting to humiliate himself any further, Yan Jun silently put away the other test papers and racked his brain to find some pictures of the school to show Qin Yize: “Then do you remember these buildings, do you have any impression?”
The familiar playground, auditorium, teaching building, and even the laboratory building—Qin Yize watched and recalled them earnestly, then shook his head with regret: “Not much impression.”
Turning off the lights in a fit of exasperation, Yan Jun threw himself onto the bed and said with a broken-can-is-broken attitude: “Whatever, go to sleep!”
“Oh.” The fake kid had no objections, and instead lay down very proactively, facing him. At this moment Yan Jun turned over onto his stomach, looking listless and resigned. Qin Yize then leaned closer a bit, reaching out to hug him.
“Older brother,” the fake kid’s voice, though like an adult’s, always carried a sort of carefree and innocent tone, “do you really want me to go home?”
“I can tell them!” Qin Yize hugged him tightly and earnestly, his tone growing more solemn: “I’ll just say, from now on I’m living at your place; if they don’t let me, I’ll secretly come over by myself. Anyway, I’m such a big person, even if they want to stop me they won’t be able to.”
“…So you do know you’re big!” Yan Jun sneered.
Yan Jun was already shocked enough, this fake kid’s mind had regressed, but his IQ was still there! Sighing for a while, he belatedly felt this guy’s hand rubbing against his abdominal muscles, and he jumped in fright, immediately darting away: “What are you blindly groping around for?!”
“To… touch it for a bit.” Qin Yize was self-righteous. Seeing that his older brother had turned his back, he reached out and hugged him again, skillfully pressing close: “Older brother, turn around please, I like looking at your face when I talk.”
“Stop yakking and go to sleep!”
“Hmph…” Hugging him tight and rubbing against him again, the fake kid felt extremely comfortable. Just as he wanted to rest his face against the back of his older brother’s neck, that person suddenly low-roared through gritted teeth: “Don’t you dare rub against me!”
Qin Yize pouted unhappily, and had no choice but to leave his older brother’s round and pert buttocks, lowering his head to fall asleep.
The next afternoon, the milk, cooking oil, and salt at home officially ran out, so Yan Jun had no choice but to go to the supermarket to restock. The fake kid couldn’t bear him leaving the house without taking him along, and insisted on following with righteous reasons:
“I can help you carry things! Milk is very heavy, and the oil is heavy too. With one more person, we can carry two more boxes.”
This stinky kid, his brain wasn’t agile, but his grand principles came out in whole sets! Yan Jun was worn down by his nagging and lost his temper: “Fine, fine, let’s go, let’s go!”
The supermarket was not far from Jinghe Road, and it took ten or twenty minutes to walk there. Both young men were wearing basketball jerseys, tall and thin. One had a cool, stern face, while the other had a gentle and warm handsome visage, and everyone passing by couldn’t help taking a few extra looks.
Arriving at the supermarket, Yan Jun walked with a clear target toward the grain and oil aisle, taking the lead to lift two jugs of cooking oil. Six bags of salt, a strip of yeast powder, and toothpaste also needed to be bought… Qin Yize followed closely step by step behind him and suddenly said: “Older brother, the toothpaste needs to be lemon flavor.”
So he exchanged the green tea flavor for lemon and tossed it into his arms: “Hold it yourself.”
Finally, the two walked to the milk aisle. Seeing that near-expiration milk was on discount, Yan Jun’s eyes lit up, and he turned the carton over to check the production date: it would expire in 25 days… He drank two cartons a day, and Qin Yize sometimes drank one and sometimes two, so he might as well buy two boxes first!
Looking back to wink at the fake kid, he said: “Take two boxes.”
Qin Yize asked uncomprehendingly: “Older brother, it’s on sale, why aren’t you buying more?”
“Why buy so many?” Yan Jun walked toward the cash register without looking back, his brow furrowing tightly: Who knows when you might go back home, are you going to buy a bunch just to wait for them to expire?
“Hmph…” The fake kid hummed, walking over after a moment. He was actually holding four boxes of milk in his arms!
Yan Jun was so angry he wanted to hit someone: “What kind of illness do you have! Buying this many, if you go home, am I supposed to drink myself to death?!”
“Then I’ll take them home together with me.” The fake kid also had a stubborn temper, sticking out his neck without yielding an inch, and insisted on buying them.
Having no choice, Yan Jun cursed with an oath and paid for it: “If you don’t take them away, I’ll carry the milk on my back and chase you all the way to your house!”
Qin Yize glanced at him sideways and silently curled his lips: “Always thinking of driving me away…”
“What are you muttering blindly about? Let’s go!”
“Oh!” Hugging the four boxes of milk, he hurried to catch up.
Yan Jun’s heartbeat couldn’t help skipping a beat.
Holding his breath, he pulled open the drawer and took out his phone. The screen displayed two missed calls and one text message.
The text message came from a string of unfamiliar numbers and contained only a dozen words: Yize, don’t be too willful, hurry up and call me back!