The doctor prescribed three days of intravenous drips but when it was the second day, other than still being very weak and unable to eat, Xu Tangcheng didn't have any other symptoms. He couldn't keep occupying the temporary bed in the emergency department. Yi Zhe wanted to get Xu Tangcheng admitted but Xu Tangcheng stopped him, saying that he would ask the doctor if he could return to campus and have the drips administered there.

After asking the doctor, the doctor authorised a hospital transfer letter and prescribed two days' worth of medicine.

For these two days, Xu Tangcheng could only eat congee and at the very start, he had even only been able to drink very thin rice gruel. The congee sold in the campus cafeterias were either too watery or too heavy. Yi Zhe made a complete round of the cafeterias and found that there was really nothing that looked good, so he went to a congee stall near the university and bought two portions of congee for takeaway.

On a winter's day, they were wrapped in a jacket and were still hot when delivered to Xu Tangcheng's dorm.

"This one is millet and pumpkin congee, this one is vegetable congee." Yi Zhe took off the lids on both food containers. "One is sweet, one is savoury. Which one do you want?"

Xu Tangcheng held up the spoon. On his hand, there was still a very faint white mark from the medical tape. He looked up and saw that Yi Zhe's face was flushed from being blown by the wind.

He knew this congee stall. The taste was very good but it wasn't very near campus. Walking there took nearly twenty minutes and even if he took the bus, there might not be one arriving right when he wanted to get on. The bus stops for the trip there and back were also some distance away from the congee stall.

When he looked at Yi Zhe's eyes that were looking at him, Xu Tangcheng suddenly realised that those eyes had long since contained too many things that he had no way to respond to.

Such infinitesimal care, so deeply he treasured him.

In the past, he had never noticed; now, he had no way to ignore.

"I'll have the millet congee." Lowering his head and avoiding Yi Zhe's gaze, he pushed the other portion to Yi Zhe. "Have you eaten?"

Yi Zhe shook his head, then pushed that portion back to him. "I'm not hungry, you eat first. You can alternate between them. Just eat a little bit of the rice and millet, and finish the soup in both."

Xu Tangcheng silently took a spoonful and brought it to his mouth.

It was very fragrant and the temperature was also just right.

After another two mouthfuls, he said to Yi Zhe, "You should hurry up and go to the cafeteria to eat. Any later and they will be out of food. Eat more, you haven't been eating well these two days."

He had been sick for two days and along with that, Yi Zhe had been busy taking care of things, skipping meals and becoming thinner even more than Xu Tangcheng had. In the past, his face had just the right amount of flesh but when Xu Tangcheng looked at it today, his cheekbones were more prominent.

But Yi Zhe still shook his head. He was worried and wanted to watch until Xu Tangcheng finished eating.

Xu Tangcheng still wanted to persuade him but right at that moment, there was a sound from the dorm room door. Carrying a large black plastic bag that was wider than himself, Cheng Xu pushed the door open with his elbow and squeezed in.

"What happened?" After he came in, Cheng Xu immediately put the bag aside on the floor and ran over to Xu Tangcheng's side. "What did you get sick with that's so serious?"

Faced with his question, Xu Tangcheng stared blankly. "How did you know I was sick?"

Even his coursemates didn't know that he was sick. The only person who knew was Yi Zhe. Xu Tangcheng turned to look at Yi Zhe. Yi Zhe hurriedly shook his head to indicate that it had nothing to do with him.

"Someone told me."

Cheng Xu was rather evasive as he said that, making Xu Tangcheng curious.

"Who?" He pressed for an answer.

Only then did Cheng Xu say a name. When Xu Tangcheng heard this unfamiliar name, he became even more curious. "Who's Zheng Yikun?"

"My coursemate." At the side, Yi Zhe suddenly interjected. After saying that, he seemed to recall something and added, "But I didn't say anything."

Logically, Zheng Yikun shouldn't even know who Xu Tangcheng was. Other than that photo that didn't show the face, Zheng Yikun had never met him. Yi Zhe thought carefully and finally remembered that he had indeed told Zheng Yikun that he had to go to the hospital.

That day, he had suddenly run out of the classroom and then did not return to the dorm the whole night. Zheng Yikun naturally wanted to find out why when he bumped into Yi Zhe later. But he hadn't asked anything specific; he had only pulled Yi Zhe to a stop and asked where he was going. At that time, Yi Zhe had been rushing to accompany Xu Tangcheng while he was on the drip so he had said without thinking, "To the hospital."

Sitting there and thinking back on it, Yi Zhe was very puzzled. Just from that one line "To the hospital," Zheng Yikun could deduce that the person who was sick was Xu Tangcheng and that he was seriously ill?

After Xu Tangcheng heard Yi Zhe explain, he stirred the congee and didn't say anything, thinking of something. He persuaded Yi Zhe to hurry to the cafetera and eat something, then finally turned and called Cheng Xu.

"Are you and this Zheng Yikun close?"

"No." Without even thinking, Cheng Xu immediately shook his head. "He always likes to tease me, I don't like being with him."

After saying that, he opened the large black plastic bag.

Xu Tangcheng turned his head to look and saw that it was actually a very large bear. It was already very large when flattened in the bag just now. At this moment, it was decompressing and would probably be taller than Cheng Xu when pulled up. Xu Tangcheng nearly choked on the congee in his mouth out of shock. "Where did you get such a large bear?"

"It's… from Zheng Yikun." He swallowed down the "a present" part.

Xu Tangcheng immediately felt that something was wrong. "Weren't you out on a work trip with your teacher?"

Cheng Xu nodded. "Yeah but the moment my flight landed, he called me. He said that he was at the airport and insisted that I followed him back in his car. After I got into the car, he said that he won the bear at an arcade yesterday and insisted on giving it to me."

If it was in the past, Xu Tangcheng wouldn't think much of it. But what happened at the hospital made him open a door that he had never noticed. He'd kept turning it over in his head for the past two days, recalling many things from the past. Without realising it, he'd become more sensitive towards certain things.

Rather than calling it being sensitive, perhaps it should be called intuition. And he had an even stronger intuition that this person called Zheng Yikun, whether they were a boy or a girl, did not suit Cheng Xu.

Just from Zheng Yikun telling Cheng Xu that he was sick and even seriously ill, he could tell that this person was very smart. They could figure out another person's line of thought and easily deduce the key points, filling in the blanks to complete the story.

Meanwhile, Cheng Xu…

Xu Tangcheng looked at the person who was hugging that large bear and mulling over where to put it.

...he was likely the type of person who, upon being sold off, would still help the seller count the money and say that it was ten yuan short.

Xu Tangcheng brought another scoop of congee to his mouth. After spending such a long time thinking, the congee was already a little cold. He took another two small mouthfuls and didn't dare eat anymore. He tidied up the food containers, then looked at Cheng Xu's back while Cheng Xu was tidying his things. After deliberating for a while, he opened his mouth.

"You… should stay away from that Zheng Yikun." After saying that, Xu Tangcheng felt that he might be a little prejudiced. After all, he had never even met Zheng Yikun before. All his conclusions were purely guesses. So he changed his words, "Or maybe, when I have the time, I'll get to know him through Yi Zhe."

That didn't sound right either.

Xu Tangcheng felt that his words were no longer making sense. He hadn't eaten for more than two days and had been thinking all sorts of messy thoughts the whole time. It was making him lose his ability to think. Seeing that Cheng Xu was looking at him curiously, he sighed and said, "Nevermind, it's fine. Let's talk about it again later."

Meanwhile, when Yi Zhe went downstairs, he saw the person they had been talking about standing next to a willow tree and smoking. His eyes were narrowed, looking at somebody.

Zheng Yikun also saw Yi Zhe. He waved at him and gave him a lopsided smile.

Yi Zhe swept his gaze to the side and saw that this person had changed his car again.

After Xu Tangcheng was more or less recovered, Yi Zhe still could not change his habit of fussing over him. Even though Xu Tangcheng went back to being busy and they practically couldn't meet at all, he would either call or text every day, reminding Xu Tangcheng that he should eat regularly no matter how busy he was.

The winter vacation for post-graduate students began a little later and within their faculty, Xu Tangcheng's lab was also nearly the last one to go on vacation. Undergraduate students should have long since started their holidays but Yi Zhe hadn't left.

Cheng Xu looked at the phone at the side that was flashing non-stop and asked Xu Tangcheng softly, "Aren't you going to pick up?"

Xu Tangcheng looked at it in silence for a while before accepting the call. He responded to Yi Zhe's reminders with very succinct replies.

After hanging up, he faced the screen filled with code but found himself unable to focus no matter how he tried. The cursor kept blinking single-mindedly, pulsing until his forehead was pounding painfully.

After some of the students on campus had left one after another, the printer that Xu Tangcheng often went to closed their shop. He urgently needed to print a mission statement for a project today so he went to the one on the south side of the campus. Coincidentally, when he was waiting for a free printer, he bumped into Lu Ming.

"Still here?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Lu Ming said angrily, then continued. "We had a dance competition this semester, right? Song Ruizhi came to look for me at the beginning of the month and asked me to report the details. It's so damn troublesome."

Song Ruizhi was the teacher currently in charge of the student council. When he took the post, Xu Tangcheng was already in Year 4 of university and had withdrawn from the student council. However, he'd heard a little about the way this teacher did things. At the very least, based on what he knew, there were quite a number of students who grumbled about him.

"I've really had enough of him. When we organised the competition, he said this dance is not allowed, that dance is not allowed. A girl was jazz dancing perfectly well but he just had to say that her dance was not very proper and that we could not dance like that when the leaders are here. You won't be able to guess how many faults he found with us during rehearsal. From the stage decoration to the arrangement of the program, the rules, the process," Lu Ming raised his hand, one finger held up, "187 . He made us write down each one and fix them. At that time, I wanted to poke his face with the pen."

187?

Even Xu Tangcheng was shocked by this number.

Lu Ming continued to say, "The problem was, he didn't know anything either. Let me ask you, what kind of suggestions could he have? Just take the jazz thing as an example, if we did as he said, what the fuck were we going to dance? I told them to dance according to what he said during rehearsal and for the real performance, they should just dance the way it should be done."

Xu Tangcheng's brows furrowed. "Didn't he scold you right there and then?"

"He did. He immediately called a few of us over and scolded us in the corridor," Lu Ming exclaimed. "But he can do as he likes. I'm not expecting anything from the student council anymore. When I'm done leading them for the second half of the year, I'm gonna fuck off. I don't expect him to say anything nice for me."

Thanks to the teacher from a certain lab, Xu Tangcheng understood very well what it felt like to have a supervisor who caused trouble for nothing. He patted Lu Ming's shoulder and comforted him. "It's okay, being in the student council means having to deal with the teachers. He won't do anything to you either. Furthermore, everyone saw that you did a good job organising the activity. It's not something he can take from you just by saying a few words."

"That's what I think too, that's why I can't be bothered to deal with him. But I still need to hand in my self-review." Lu Ming smiled, unbothered.

Xu Tangcheng went over to the printer to take his materials and walked over to the table to tidy them. Lu Ming suddenly turned and said, "By the way, they told me that Yi Zhe wants to withdraw."

"Withdraw?"

"Yeah. He's your younger brother, right? I mentioned that to the people in the literature and arts division, telling them to take good care of him. A few days ago, they told me that Yi Zhe doesn't want to stay in the student council anymore, that he wants to withdraw."

Now, just hearing the name Yi Zhe being brought up gave Xu Tangcheng a feeling that was different from the past. He tidied the papers in his hands and stacked them against the desk to align them. He did it again and again, still not done even after a long while.

"What's the reason, do you know?"

"Mm…" Lu Ming pulled out the USB drive. "I'll tell you later when we get out of here."

On his way back after delivering the materials to the science and technology office, Xu Tangcheng kept thinking about what Lu Ming had said.

He couldn't fit in?

Xu Tangcheng was already aware of this point. But he'd felt that Yi Zhe was much better now and shouldn't have major issues in this area.

As for having conflicts with the teacher, hmm, he should know this too.

When he reached the sports field, Xu Tangcheng let out a heavy exhale. He looked around him and picked a spot in the grandstand to sit down.

He felt that he had noticed too late—the way Yi Zhe was with him and the way he was with others had always been different.

After accidentally stumbling upon Yi Zhe's intentions, the reason behind many things seemed to become traceable. Why he had applied to this university, why he had applied to the same course as him—all at once, he had the answer.

He even suddenly recalled that not long ago, when he was pouring his thoughts out to Yi Zhe, he had asked, "Do you have anyone that you like?"

As he rubbed the thinnest and softest one of his fingers, Xu Tangcheng realised for the first time that it turned out that there were some problems that could immediately be determined to be unsolvable the moment they appeared. No matter which line of thought he followed, no matter what kind of plan he tried to look for, nothing could solve this problem.

His phone sounded again. It was still that same name, still at this same time.

Xu Tangcheng sat there quietly. He didn't pick up this call.

A problem that could not be solved. Then, it was better not to do it.

He saw the phone screen go dim. But very quickly, it brightened again. That persistence that would never come to a stop made him feel scared. All of a sudden, he didn't know how he should face this younger brother of his that he had always been partial to, that he had never wanted to have to bear any unjust treatment.

He now finally understood how powerless he was. He didn't even dare to analyse his own feelings objectively, or to consider if there was a possibility of embracing him. He didn't dare face him and similarly, he didn't dare face himself. The way his heart ached for him, the way he was partial to him—he also did not dare examine exactly how those feelings came to be.

Because he knew—if he, too, walked on this path, just based on how that young man had the courage to forge his way ahead, there would really be no turning back for them.

T/N:

The "very thin rice gruel" that was the only thing Xu Tangcheng could eat early in his recovery in specifically 米汤 mǐ tāng. It is the water accumulated on the surface when cooking rice using high-quality rice grains and is very nourishing, suitable for recovery from illnesses.

Xu Tangcheng thinking "whether they were a boy or a girl" when wondering about Zheng Yikun is because—as mentioned in an earlier chapter—spoken Chinese does not differentiate between "he" and "she," so even if Cheng Xu meant "he" when talking about Zheng Yikun, it wouldn't sound any different than if he meant "she."