For the few days following the day Yi Zhe disappeared without reason, Shan-ge was cross with him. However, Yi Zhe was already used to this treatment. Other than being careful not to make Shan-ge angry again and to remain in his place, following his usual routine to measure the data he needed to measure and conduct the experiments he had to conduct, he was not the least bit affected by his da-shixiong’s angry face. On the other hand, Xu Ren was to be pitied. Not only was he trapped between the two as a messenger, he also had to humour them one after another, and was completely wiped out.
“What’s this?” Yi Zhe picked up the envelope and letter paper Xu Ren put on the desk and asked.
“Family letters,” Xu Ren said. “Shan-ge brought them over. We’ll each write a letter and post them from here.”
Family letter?
Yi Zhe thought it strange. He had never written such a thing.
“Hurry up and write. Shan-ge said that we should write the letters in these two days and pass them to him.”
Yi Zhe turned the envelope over, then back again. He asked Xu Ren, “Why do we need to write this?”
“Huh?”
Xu Ren couldn’t come up with an answer for this question. A letter to your family, did it need a reason?
Yi Zhe tossed the envelope aside.
Unlike Yi Zhe’s indifference, Xu Ren was so excited that he even purposely washed his hands before taking up his pen, saying that he wanted to use an even more sincere attitude to write the first love letter of his life. But he only had that little bit of ink in his belly; even when added with water, it wasn’t enough to fill up a love letter of many pages. Even by the time his hand was aching from gripping the pen, Xu Ren had only written a single “To,” with nothing after that.
“Hey, Yi Zhe.” He stretched his arm out and rapped on the desk, getting the attention of the person sitting next to him. “I want to write a love letter to my goddess, how should I write it?”
Yi Zhe was fixing a broken clock, his head stuck inside in the middle of the tiny components. He had long forgotten that business about family letters. He shifted his gaze to Xu Ren. After a brief silence, he asked, “You’re writing a love letter?”
“Yeap.”
Love letters were also counted as family letters. Upon this realisation, Yi Zhe felt that this activity was quite meaningful.
“You should write one too!” Xu Ren suddenly said. “Didn’t you say that you and your girlfriend ‘didn’t really break up’? Write her a letter that’s posted all the way from the South Pole, how romantic is that. You two might just again become as sweet as you were at the start.”
Yi Zhe didn’t correct Xu Ren’s usage of “girlfriend.” Instead, he seriously considered the matter of writing a love letter.
“But what should I do,” Xu Ren fretted. “I can’t write anything.”
Seeing that he was clutching his hair again, Yi Zhe couldn’t help but say, “Stop pulling, just write whatever you think of.”
“What I think of is too simple. It’s just that I want to see her and that I like her a lot.”
“Then just write that.”
“Write that?” Xu Ren shrank his neck back and frowned. “That’s too direct, isn’t it? It’s only a few words and it also shows how uncultured I am. My goddess loves reading so much, she’ll definitely be able to tell that I’ve never finished reading even one great work.”
“You’re not writing a book anyway…” Yi Zhe felt that his line of thought was very strange but seeing that Xu Ren truly wanted to write a flowery piece, he respected his opinion and didn’t say anymore.
He fixed the clock and adjusted the time, then put it back between their two desks. The second hand ticked by, leading Xu Ren into staring at it in a stupor.
“Ai… they shouldn’t put this kind of clock here,” Xu Ren said. “I can’t even tell if it’s nine in the morning now or nine at night.”
Four months of no sun, a chill of negative eighty degrees.
“It’s night.”
Yi Zhe smoothed out the paper but after writing just a few words, he stayed his pen.
Just as Xu Ren had said, if he were to write a letter to Xu Tangcheng, the contents would be very simple. He didn’t want to write anything, he didn’t want to describe what life here was like, what the scenery here was like. He didn’t want to talk about the long period of adjustment he went through, nor did he want to talk about how the polar night and the midnight sun were messing up his sleep patterns. He only wanted to write a single line: I miss you.
No need for adjectives, no need for anything else. Because Xu Tangcheng would understand.
After a long while, Xu Ren squeezed out a few lines. He brought them over hesitantly to show Yi Zhe.
“What do you think?”
Yi Zhe took a look, then weighed his words in his heart. In the end, he still spoke his honest thoughts. “I am sadly unable to appreciate it.”
“Ah…” Xu Ren dropped his head, his head smacking against the desk. “It’s so hard.”
Xu Ren really couldn’t come up with anything and carried a bellyful of frustration to bed. Meanwhile, Yi Zhe faced the empty letter paper and spaced out for a while, then tore off the first page on which he had written a few words. When he picked up the pen again, he changed the addressee.
The polar night finally went by amidst the increasing impatience among the humans. The naked race also went on as planned. It was the most special sunrise Yi Zhe had ever seen. Everyone in the research station came out of their rooms, shrieking and running, or looking into the distance and cheering. At that moment, there were truly no borders between nations. Every one of them was simply an individual who had craved the light for too long.
Shan-ge stood beside Yi Zhe. Initially he wanted to joke about the body shape of one of the Americans who could really talk but when he turned around, he saw that Yi Zhe’s gaze was passing over the people going wild with joy to meld with the sparse light up ahead.
“Not going to run?” Shan-ge nudged Yi Zhe with his elbow.
Yi Zhe very quickly withdrew his gaze. The corners of his mouth quirked up, then swiftly fell. “Never mind.”
Something like running naked, he still wasn’t used to it.
His quietness contrasted too sharply with the surroundings. Shan-ge had a guess in his heart. He wrapped an arm around Yi Zhe’s shoulders, giving them a squeeze. “Missing home?”
The bank card was still in his pocket, like a protective talisman.
Yi Zhe gripped it lightly and nodded.
He missed home.
“Then work hard. If the last part of the work goes well, we’ll be able to go back very soon.” Looking towards the sun, Shan-ge also let out a long sigh. He repeated, “Even the sun’s out now. It’ll be soon.”
Yi Zhe agreed with those words. The sun was out, which meant that between now and their departure, there were only three months left.
“If you miss your family too much, give them a call. I see that you hide yourself in your room all day, it makes me afraid you’ll stifle yourself until something goes wrong, and you’ll take a gun and shoot everyone here.”
Yi Zhe was humoured into laughing. “Am I that gloomy?”
“You just don’t realise it yourself. Go and ask Xu Ren how many times he bugged me about how you’re unhappy. Other people would pretend to be fine when they’re unhappy; you, when you’re unhappy, it’s written all over your face, scaring him into asking me every day whether or not to organise some sort of fun activity and make the mood livelier.”
Yi Zhe looked at Xu Ren who was not far away and leaping up to cheer other people on, and felt rather surprised. When he thought further, he finally understood why Xu Ren insisted on telling him jokes every night before bed.
In actual fact, Yi Zhe didn’t think he was as unhappy as Shan-ge said. Thinking wistfully was now a habit, and no longer felt as painful and helpless as it had been when they first parted. At that time, it had seemed like waves crashing over him, engulfing his world; now, it was like water dripping from the eaves, soft and quiet, but dripping right into his heart, enough to dampen that area.
As for sudden moments when he missed him so much, so terribly much—there were indeed such moments. For example, there was once when Yi Zhe came back from the signal station and met a swaying, waddling penguin. He stopped walking and waited for a while. The penguin also didn’t leave, and turned its head every now and then to look at him. Yi Zhe walked ahead, the penguin followed. Yi Zhe stopped, the penguin stopped. At that moment, Yi Zhe suddenly missed Xu Tangcheng very much.
Like he was possessed, Yi Zhe said a lot of things to that penguin. Stuff like Xu Tangcheng taking him out for noodles, Xu Tangcheng buying him clothes and a watch, Xu Tangcheng cleaning up his shit after he caused a mess, and even Xu Tangcheng liking to lie on his right when sleeping, gently holding one of Yi Zhe’s arms. Finally, he told the penguin, “I wonder if he’s sleeping well now.”
“I think the curtains this exploration team has are pretty good. They block out more light than the ones I bought before. Do you think I can buy a set from them? But the windows here are very small. Should I buy a few more sets and then join them up?”
The penguin looked at him without saying anything. Yi Zhe continued to ask, “Do you think they’ll sell them?”
“He… can’t have forgotten me, can he?”
After a while, the penguin seemed to finally be tired of him, or perhaps it thought that it had already finished listening to this man’s story. As Yi Zhe lowered his head and repeated his last line, it left quietly.
Faced with emptiness, Yi Zhe stood up and turned one circle but still could not see the figure of his listener. For the first time, he truly felt lonely. All around him were glaciers, he was miniscule in comparison.
He faced the sky and exhaled. And only then did he lift the large box and slowly made his way back.
As for phone calls, they could actually make satellite calls here. Yi Zhe had also once made a call due to Zhao Weifan’s fierce insistence to satisfy her curiosity. Not only curiosity, but also her desire to show off. When her roommate and the girls from the next door heard that she was on the phone with someone in the South Pole, they all came to look. And Zhao Weifan just had to be called away at that moment, so Yi Zhe was forced to chat with a few girls he didn’t know for fifteen minutes. From then on, Yi Zhe stripped Zhao Weifan of her phone privileges and limited their communication to emails.
Yi Zhe actually also really wanted to give Xu Tangcheng a call, even if only to let him experience a satellite phone call from such a far distance away or to let him also show off to others. But ever since he came to the South Pole, even swiping the bank card was no longer possible. The two of them had completely stopped communicating; he could only depend on his heart, thinking of him, missing him.
But it was good this way too. He hadn’t swiped the card for so long, Xu Tangcheng should know that he was in the South Pole now.
Xu Ren’s arrival wasn’t timed well. He had been there for barely a month when he started experiencing the polar night. Hence, when he finally endured to the end of the long night, he immediately made noise about going out to take photos, wanting to take photos at the southernmost point. Shan-ge became irritated with his nagging after half an hour and pointed in a direction, saying, “The Geographic South Pole is right there, there’s a sign. Go, the two of you go and take pictures.”
“No…” Xu Ren said. “We three are together. Aren’t we a team?”
Shan-ge thought, Why don’t I hear you talk about being a team on a usual day when I’m telling you what to do?
Despite that, Xu Ren still grabbed hold of them, each hand holding one person, and dragged them to the Geographic South Pole.
Not only that; when they reached the spot, Xu Ren looked at the U.S. and U.K. flags standing at either side of the sign and dug out three small hand-held China flags from his bag, giving each of them one.
Shan-ge took a look and was amused. “Your preparations are pretty complete.”
“I won’t take pictures,” Yi Zhe said. “I’ll take for the two of you.”
“Nah.” As much as Shan-ge didn’t like taking photos, after going through an ideological battle, he stood on Xu Ren’s side in the end. “It’s the southernmost point. Take a photo here and in the future, you can talk about your brilliant past with your wife and spouse. How great is that! C’mon, hurry up.”
“Isn’t wife and spouse the same person?” Xu Ren’s laughter was especially loud. “Shan-ge, your brain’s gone silly from the cold!”
“Your wife and kids!” Shan-ge dragged Yi Zhe over and yelled at Xu Ren who was fixing the camera. “Cut your crap!”
When the shutter went off, Yi Zhe was smiling in amusement at Shan-ge and Xu Ren’s quibbling. Hence, when Xu Tangcheng later on saw this photo in someone else’s phone, what he saw was Yi Zhe, who had left him for a very long time, faintly smiling.
On the day they were going home, Shan-ge and Xu Ren both had their hearts set on the return journey. Only Yi Zhe was nervous. Shan-ge thought that he had been at the South Pole for too long, so he wasn’t feeling well in the plane and quickly asked if he needed a doctor to check on him.
Yi Zhe shook his head. For some reason, the tip of his nose was covered in sweat.
The plane took off and gained altitude, bidding farewell to this bitterly cold place he had lived for a year.
As usually, they first followed the others to the United States and rested before switching planes to Beijing. When he got off the plane and walked through the long corridor, Yi Zhe felt as though an entire lifetime had passed. The air wasn’t pleasant, the dense crowd of humans unpalatable, yet they made Yi Zhe feel as though he had returned to the real world, putting an end to his prior isolation from the world.
Shan-ge turned around to ask if Yi Zhe needed a ride back. Yi Zhe politely declined, saying that he wanted to go buy some things. Shan-ge had a fiancée. When his eyes spied the exit, his gaze swept around, looking for the woman whose lifetime would be entangled with his and thus, he did not insist. He told Yi Zhe to get a good rest when he got back and to join a meet-up tomorrow with a few friends from their lab. Shan-ge was footing the bill.
Yi Zhe found a random shop in the airport that sold food. He swiped the card—a report of his travels—then took the subway home as usual.
The Airport Line fare was still twenty-five yuan. Line 13 was still very packed. His head… also still had the way home that Xu Tangcheng had once said into his ear.
It had been a long time since anyone entered the rented apartment. The smell inside wasn’t very nice. In the past, when they came back after Lunar New Year, Xu Tangcheng had always muttered as he changed his shoes after coming in, “Hurry up and ventilate the place.” So, just like Xu Tangcheng, Yi Zhe opened all the windows that could be opened and before he even thought about resting, he found a cloth and began wiping away the dust that had visibly accumulated.
It was really exhausting to be rushing around for so long. When he was done, Yi Zhe intended to lie down on the sofa for a short break. In the end, he knocked out and fell asleep.
Perhaps the heating in the apartment was blocked, the place was rather cold. Yi Zhe woke up from the chill in the middle of the night. The rather unusual feel on his cheeks made him think for a while before he recalled that this was Beijing, he was back now.
His mind and senses woke up. He slowly stood up. He walked a circle in the empty apartment, finally ending in front of the door to the bedroom.
But after standing there for about a quarter of an hour, his hand landing on the handle twice, he still did not open the door.
The next evening, Yi Zhe went on time to the restaurant where Shan-ge made his reservation. It was all familiar faces there and the purpose was very simple: to celebrate the work done by the three of them and welcome them home from their travels.
Dinner, KTV, the entire chain of events proceeded the way it had in the past, with Friendship is Forever as the theme. Yi Zhe drank quite a bit during dinner and when they got to the KTV, he sat leaning against the sofa, his head dizzy, listening to the group of people howl like ghosts and wolves. The others were still fine, it was only Shan-ge and Xu Ren, who had gone through the battle with him at the South Pole, who insisted on not letting him off and demanded incessantly that he sing. Yi Zhe said he didn’t know how to and Shan-ge retorted, “Do you see anyone here who can?”
In the end, unwilling to put a damper on everyone’s mood, Yi Zhe stood up. He went over to the karaoke machine and selected Sunny Day. The opening beats sounded, the lyrics came out, and already a diehard fan of Jay Chou was clapping and cheering.
“My favourite song! I want to duet, I want to duet!”
Xu Ren pushed the guy down. “No duet, you can pick a solo later!”
Yi Zhe really did not know how to sing. Just this one song, he had once spent a full three months practising.
Because he had thought of singing it to Xu Tangcheng one day.
After he sang the song, before he could reminisce about his sorrow, everyone was already praising him as a deeply hidden talent. Xu Ren’s cheering was the rowdiest, insisting that he sing another song. Yi Zhe smiled and pleaded for mercy, quickly pushing the mic into Xu Ren’s hands and telling him to sing.
Yi Zhe rubbed his head and ducked into a corner to sit down. As he looked at the light and shadow gradually blurring before him, he suddenly had a feeling of being in a long dream.
A long, long dream; still the same dream.
He seemed to be again seeing Xu Tangcheng leaning against his shoulder and singing this song, an index finger wound around his little finger, tugging it every now and then. How had he felt at that time? His heartbeat had sped up, nervous, yet he had been so reluctant to let go of that unreality.
Yi Zhe faced the bright colours and smiled. That night was their beginning. Xu Tangcheng’s one single decision had let the dream proceed smoothly, as it should, and his life gained a person that was the most worthy of being shown off.
Xu Ren could be considered a mic hog. His singing was also decent and wasn’t really a torture on their ears. Yi Zhe hadn’t heard most of the songs tonight; even if there was one that sounded familiar, he didn’t know what song it was. Xu Ren picked a concert version of a song. Yi Zhe looked at the singer’s name and recalled that it was Xu Ren’s favourite singer. At that moment, someone called out from below, “Wow, Xu Ren. A Cantonese song.”
Everyone laughed along, praised along. Yi Zhe also watched them with his mouth curved in a smile.
Xu Ren stood in the middle of the private room. For the first line of the song, he sang with his eyes closed, both hands cupped around the mic, deeply emotional. There was someone who knew that Xu Ren had succeeded in chasing the girl of his dreams, and crouched down in front and to the side of him with their phone up, wanting to help him record this emotional performance. Unable to escape his personality of liking to play to the crowd, Xu Ren made all sorts of expressive gestures at the phone.
At the start, Yi Zhe was truly watching the excitement. He only felt that the song was a little familiar but he couldn’t recall where he had heard it before. It was only when Xu Ren imitated the man on the screen to say a line in Cantonese and the music became a little louder that Yi Zhe suddenly struck a point in his memories.
When he came back to himself, the song was just hitting the climax. Xu Ren turned around to face the row of people sitting behind him and shouted, “Thank you!”
There were some who very cooperatively stood up and shook his hand. But when Xu Ren walked to Yi Zhe’s side, Yi Zhe had his eyes open wide and staring at the screen.
Birthday song…
Yi Zhe suddenly got up. He collided with Xu Ren who was standing in front of him and the performance of the song was also interrupted.
“What song is this?”
What song was it? He had only seen the singer’s name just now, he hadn’t looked closely.
Xu Ren had his shoulders seized by Yi Zhe and was stunned.
Yi Zhe asked again, “What song is this?”
Hesitantly, Xu Ren said a few words. The hands on his shoulders suddenly slid off.
“Sorry, I suddenly… have something on.”
After saying that, Yi Zhe picked up his jacket and rushed out the door.
Why do you believe everything he says?
Birthday song?
Even though the camera had been left behind, Yi Zhe didn’t listen to Xu Tangcheng and had never turned it on. When he missed him, he didn’t dare to turn it on at all because he felt that if he saw those images, he would feel even more terrible.
Yi Zhe took a cab back to the rented apartment. On the way, he looked up that song on his phone. The instant he finished reading the lyrics, he felt that his self-development for the past two years had completely gone to waste.
He got off the cab and ran up the building. Then, from the cabinet, he dug out the camera and put in the batteries.
He couldn’t wait to confirm his hazy memories but when he pressed the play button, what came out was not any image that he was familiar with. Instead, it was half of Xu Tangcheng’s face.
His finger paused. Yi Zhe suddenly sensed something. He pressed the play button, too afraid to believe.
The scene on screen shook a couple of times. Xu Tangcheng seemed to be adjusting the angle of the lens. Then, he sat on the chair behind him.
Yi Zhe didn’t know if it was because he had run too fast just now; when his tense nerves slackened, he lost all his strength instantly. His butt landed on the cold floor, his eyes watching the tiny screen, the Xu Tangcheng from two years ago.
“Yi Zhe.”
Xu Tangcheng unfolded a piece of paper in his hands and called out to him.
During the pause, Yi Zhe replied softly. “Mm.”
Xu Tangcheng smiled and said. “I actually have a lot to say to you before I leave but my heart hurts too much right now. If I say them while facing you, I’m afraid I’ll cry again. Furthermore, I’m probably influenced by my family, or perhaps it’s my personality, but I’m not good at expressing my feelings directly. But I have so much I want to say to you and I don’t want to just leave you a letter, so I decided to record a video. My following words may be a little… corny, but you have to like them.”
After saying those words to explain the circumstances and as a preview, Xu Tangcheng finally entered the main topic. Yi Zhe straightened out both legs, found a comfortable position, and began listening to the message Xu Tangcheng had left.
“Yi Zhe, this letter has two main topics. One is ‘I’m sorry,’ the other is ‘I love you.’ We’ll first talk about the first one.
“We’ve been together for so long. Actually, I’ve always wanted to make an apology to you. To be exact, I want to make many apologies to you. Thinking about it, I’m obviously the older one but you were the one who came close to me at the start. Meanwhile, I didn’t know how to respond to your feelings, so I hesitated and avoided you.” At this point, Xu Tangcheng smiled at the camera. “That’s right, that time when we ate together in a group and I didn’t take the seat next to you—I really regret it.
“Another thing I want to apologise for is, of course, our temporary separation. A very long time ago, I already knew that my family would be a huge obstacle. But, I’m sorry, Yi Zhe. It’s been so long but I still haven’t thought of a way to solve it. Because I haven’t been able to think of a way all this while, I kept putting off being honest with them, putting it off until we were discovered, resulting in a fierce opposition. But Yi Zhe, in this entire thing, what made me hurt the most was not my family’s fierce opposition, but my own lack of a position. I know that my parents are traditional but what made me at a loss for what to do was that I realised that I have always been accepting this traditionality. For the past over twenty years, I have enjoyed this traditional love of theirs as a matter of fact. When my mum washed my clothes, brought me meals, gave me money, and even when I was in university and she helped me buy a car, I have never told them that their love was too traditional, that I want to be independent, that I want to live my own life, that you two don’t have to bother with me. Therefore, when I realise how this traditional love is restricting me, I also can’t just tell them that their love is wrong, that I am independent and free, that you two shouldn’t use your love to control me. To always only put forward a rationale that is beneficial to yourself is not independence and freedom, it is selfishness. That’s why, I want to apologise to you. I was the one who did not do well enough and caused us to go through so much. Telling you all these is also to tell you that I agree to leave not because I care more for my family. I love you no less than I love my family. In fact, you’re the one I want to hide away and treasure, the one who is even more special.
“And now we enter the second topic, that I love you.
“I love you, to what extent? Actually, we’ve been together for so long and I’ve always felt that I don’t treat you well enough, that I can be better to you. There were even many times when I felt that I wasn’t good enough for you. The reason why I think this way is because you’re really too good.” After saying that, Xu Tangcheng smiled at the camera. “You’re really too good. You’re braver than I am, you stand more firm than I do. In my nature, there is still cowardice and timidness, but not in yours. You tell me directly that you like me, you give me everything that is good, you love me with your entire heart, without caring for anything else. But I was not able to do that. I look forward and back too cautiously, there are too many things that I didn’t handle well. At every such moment, I feel that I’m not good enough for you. I even need to consider my family; just by doing this, I feel that the love I give you is too little. On this point, I will work harder in the future. You can keep this video and the letter in the camera bag as proof to evaluate my performance in the future.
“I know that you’re very afraid of us separating. I am, too. The reason why I record this video is because I’m afraid that you’ll be afraid. At the club, you told me not to forget you. This is something I need to scold you for. Do I make you feel so insecure? How could I forget you. But this is also where I want to praise you, because this question has never occurred to me. I have never thought that you would forget me. You make me feel that you will always love me. See, how amazing you are. That’s why, this is also something I did not do well. In the future, I will fix this misconception of yours properly.
“There’s another thing I want to say. A few days ago, you took me to that slope. I want to apologise for that too. Because when we first started to dive down, I was too scared, so I didn’t listen to you. I accidentally opened my eyes for a bit. And then… I saw that you didn’t really let go of the handlebar. Were you also scared? Scared that you would make me fall? Then, let us make a promise now. Wait for me to go back and take me again to that slope. When the time comes, I won’t open my eyes and you’ll also let go of the handlebar completely and hold me with both arms. Let us both be unafraid.
“Lastly, Yi Zhe, I love you. I love you so, so much. I don’t know how to express it, I just love you very much.”
Xu Tangcheng was such an introverted person. Yi Zhe had never heard him say, “I love you.” But he had only never heard those words. If this wasn’t merely a video, there were so many things he wanted to refute.
What do you mean you’re not good enough for me?
What do you mean the love you give is little?
What do you mean you didn’t do well?
There’s no one better than you.
But even if Xu Tangcheng was right in front of him, Yi Zhe probably couldn’t say those words out loud. He held the camera and cried, wiping his tears on his face miserably with his sleeve. Then, he continued to press play and found the video taken at Blue Harbour.
He had asked Xu Tangcheng to sing him a birthday song. Xu Tangcheng had hummed a tune and then said that it was a birthday song from Ecuador.
And he had believed it.
Liar.
He had clearly considered their future even so long ago. He knew very well what kind of dilemma he would have to face but he still accepted him and had never even mentioned a word of his difficulty, giving him those few most beautiful years.
He had also clearly—since so long ago—already told him that he was the love of his life.
The birthday song that Xu Tangcheng sang for Yi Zhe was Love of My Life.
Alan Tam, 1991.