Xu Tangcheng finally realised his dream of bringing Yi Zhe out for a spin on his little electric scooter.

Even though it was rather cramped for two grown men to sit together on it, having Yi Zhe’s arms around him in the open made him feel that the scooter size was just right.

Yi Zhe stayed at Sanya for a few days. In Xu Tangxi’s words, the two of them seemed to be joined at the hip and would even go to the bathroom together if they could. Xu Tangcheng realised that they might not have minded their behaviour well and were a little too unbridled, but he did not make any deliberate changes. They had not seen each other for so long. Even if they hug each other all day every day now, it wasn’t too outrageous.

The bed in Xu Tangcheng’s room was a little small but at night, they still insisted on squeezing into the same bed to sleep.

Even after a few days, when Xu Tangcheng lay down beside Yi Zhe, he still felt that it was all very unreal. He couldn’t sleep. His eyes half-closed, he brought his hand up every now and then to touch Yi Zhe on his arm, on his belly.

Yi Zhe endured it for a while. Then, he couldn’t endure anymore and caught the hand that was roving over the skin of his stomach. He turned over and whispered into Xu Tangcheng’s ear, “Stop touching. If you go on, I won’t be able to take it anymore.”

With his eyes closed, Xu Tangcheng laughed aloud. He opened his eyes, then drew close to Yi Zhe more forcefully than ever and kissed him.

Zhou Hui and Xu Yueliang were right in the next room. Yi Zhe had only been there for a few days; no matter what, he didn’t dare do anything. He lifted a leg and pinned down Xu Tangcheng’s legs, then used his arm to stop those arms from moving around.

Xu Tangcheng folded his arm back and rubbed the arm stretched across his body. “Your arm’s grown thicker.”

“I work out every day.” As Yi Zhe spoke, he even lifted his arm and let Xu Tangcheng touch the muscles there.

After pinching a couple of times, Xu Tangcheng couldn’t help thinking of that line—support him in his old age and see him off on his final journey.

The hour was late and he still had to go to work tomorrow. In the past, Xu Tangcheng was usually already asleep by this time. But today, he suddenly brought his hand up to pinch Yi Zhe’s chin and say, “Let’s chat.”

“Okay.” Yi Zhe lay on his back and asked, “What do you want to chat about?”

“Tell me about your time at the South Pole?”

“There’s nothing special about it. It’s just very cold.” Yi Zhe thought seriously for a while, then continued. “We went over with the Americans, we weren’t at the Chinese research station. Before going, we did a lot of psychological assessments because carrying guns is permitted there. Living in that kind of place for a long time can easily lead to an unstable mental state. They’re afraid that someone would suddenly have psychological issues and take a gun and shoot randomly. Actually, when doing the psychological assessments, I was very afraid that I wouldn’t pass because I missed you too much. I felt that I was almost sick from missing you. Luckily, I passed in the end.”

Xu Tangcheng listened seriously. He held Yi Zhe’s hand.

You’ve worked so hard.

“Over there, we basically just ate meat. Every week, we could only eat vegetables for one day. The vegetables were transported there from New Zealand. I stayed there for a year and the place where I was is very near the southernmost point. Thinking of it, I felt that the whole year was either the midnight sun or the polar night, there were barely a handful of normal days. During the polar night, I saw the aurorae. They’re very beautiful. I have photos, I’ll show you when you go back. But other than the aurorae, there’s nothing good about the polar night. There’s no sun at all the whole day and my body clock was messed up. I didn’t know what the time was. It was really very hard to bear. For a period of time, my roommate and I lost hair. It was especially serious for him. At first I thought the midnight sun would be better but it was actually also very hard to bear. At that time, I basically experienced what you felt, wanting to sleep but unable to fall asleep. But the curtains we had were decent, they were very good at blocking out the light.” At this point, Yi Zhe grumbled, a little upset. “But when I was leaving and wanted to buy some curtains from them, they actually refused to sell to me.”

Xu Tangcheng laughed. “Why did you want to buy their curtains?”

“To hang in our home. Those are better than the ones I bought.”

Hearing that, Xu Tangcheng propped his legs up and rocked right and left as he laughed uncontrollably.

“Let me think if there was anything fun… Oh, right, when the polar night ended, they had a naked race.”

“Naked race? At the South Pole?”

“Yeah. I realised that they were truly unafraid of the cold. But at that time, there was an American who ran out and didn’t come back even after three minutes. The search-and-rescue team rushed out to find him. In that place, ten minutes of exposure is enough to freeze a person completely…”

“Did they find him?”

“They did. Ah, that’s right, at the South Pole, it’s very easy to lose your way because your surroundings are a vast expanse of whiteness. There isn’t much difference and there are no directions. If you walk just a bit further out, it’s easy to lose your way back.”

Xu Tangcheng nodded in the darkness. He asked worriedly, “Then, did you ever run off on your own?”

“Me?” Yi Zhe was just about to deny it when he thought of something. His voice lowered guiltily, “There was one time…”

“Hmm?”

“But there was a reason for it. My mum…” Yi Zhe fell silent for a short while, then said, “passed away.”

Xiang Xiyi?

Xu Tangcheng turned his head in surprise. He couldn’t see Yi Zhe’s face clearly but he could roughly make out that he was facing up, looking at the ceiling.

“How did she…”

“She was sick but did not get it treated. She passed away last year. At that time, I… couldn’t completely accept it so my mood wasn’t good. I went out one time without telling them. But I went back on my own.”

After those words, for a while neither of them spoke.

“Do you know? I suddenly… liked her a little. But it was too late.”

Xu Tangcheng turned his body over soundlessly. He rested a hand on Yi Zhe’s chest and patted it.

“These two years, I understood something. In the past, I felt that she was harsh and mean, that she loved no one. But later on, I suddenly thought that she actually wasn’t like that from the start.” Yi Zhe paused. “If she had been someone who only lived for herself from the very start, she wouldn’t have gotten married, and there wouldn’t be me and Yi Xun. So I thought that in the past, she was probably someone completely different from who she was later.”

Perhaps she had been simple and naive, perhaps she had loved deeply.

“Mm.”

When examined carefully, no one had a spotless and easy past. It was just that if a person didn’t become someone you cared about, you would never get to know and understand their sorrows.

“That’s why I wonder, if the one she got to know from the start was Duan Xiqiao, would it have been better?”

At this moment, when Xu Tangcheng heard those words, he finally understood even more the changes Yi Zhe had gone through. He was still that simple and brave young man, but he was making himself a part of this world, accepting the good and the bad, the satisfaction and the regret.

The stillness of the night could not conceal Yi Zhe’s emotions, nor could it conceal Xu Tangcheng’s. He craned his neck and kissed Yi Zhe’s lower jaw. Yi Zhe also very quickly returned the kiss.

“Tangcheng.”

After chatting for so long, when they were about to sleep, Yi Zhe suddenly called out to him.

“Hmm?”

“These two years, did you miss me?”

Xu Tangcheng’s eyes were half-closed and he was just about to fall asleep but when he heard those words, he woke up completely.

The single line brought him back to the hustle and bustle of the past two years. He opened his eyes and shifted his head nearer to Yi Zhe’s shoulder, seriously mulling over the answer to this question.

“I also understood something.”

“What thing?”

Xu Tangcheng stared at the ceiling in a stupor for a while, then said, “It is not only the perfect and happy endings that fill a person with anticipation.”

Yi Zhe tried his best to understand but he still felt that Xu Tangcheng was making things difficult for him. He flipped over and pinned Xu Tangcheng down, looking into his eyes in the darkness, and said, “Don’t understand.”

“You don’t understand?” Xu Tangcheng lifted his neck, knocking his head against Yi Zhe’s, and laughed. “Dummy.”

Yi Zhe didn’t care if Xu Tangcheng said he was a dummy; he immediately slipped his hand behind Xu Tangcheng’s back, pulling his entire body into Yi Zhe’s embrace. He threatened, “Hurry up and tell me, what does it mean?”

“It means…” Xu Tangcheng was done laughing. His hand stroked through Yi Zhe’s hair, again and again. He explained, “What fills a person with anticipation is another person.”

Yi Zhe again mulled over those words quietly. He dismantled the sentence word by word, then reassembled it. Finally, he planted a rough kiss on Xu Tangcheng.

“I still don’t really get it. But let’s just treat it as me being uncultured. I don’t understand these profound things, I just want a perfect and happy ending.”

Xu Tangcheng was stunned for a moment. Then, he laughed.

Mm.

Unsure whether or not this counted as a diversion, Yi Zhe lay back down. After a while, he recalled. “Wait, you haven’t said whether or not you missed me.”

Xu Tangcheng answered blearily, “Didn’t I just say?”

“You didn’t.”

“I did.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did.”

Yi Zhe thought of that incomprehensible line and was a little gloomy, “That’s not counted…”

“It is…”

In the end, Yi Zhe failed to get the answer he wanted to the question he had spent an entire night brooding over. Xu Tangcheng fell asleep first. Yi Zhe kissed his forehead softly and whispered, “In any case, I missed you every day.”

He had eaten too much fruit during the day and also drank a few glasses of the flower-and-fruit tea that Xu Tangxi brewed. In the middle of the night, Yi Zhe was unsurprisingly woken up by the very urgent need to use the bathroom. But they had slept late in the first place and Xu Tangcheng also had to go to work in the morning. Yi Zhe was afraid of waking up Xu Tangcheng when Xu Tangcheng did not sleep easily, so he kept himself stiff, not daring to move, trying to make himself fall back asleep.

But this wasn’t something that could be suppressed at will. For fifteen minutes, Yi Zhe lay in bed, despairing, before ultimately clambering up with his body tense and his movements tiny. The way he looked bending over with his arms slightly open was exactly like a cat sneaking food from the kitchen. 

He didn’t put on slippers. He went to the ensuite bathroom on his tiptoes but when he came out after he was done, he saw that Xu Tangcheng was turning over in bed.

His heart jolted. Swiftly but just as carefully, he climbed into bed. When he saw that Xu Tangcheng already had his eyes open, he quickly drew the other person into his arms and cajoled in a soft voice, “Did I wake you? I went to the bathroom. It’s still early, you should sleep more.”

Xu Tangcheng didn’t say anything. Yi Zhe saw him close his eyes, and also let his own fall shut.

When his mind was hazy and nearly falling asleep, he suddenly heard a voice say, “I woke up just now and realised that the bed was empty beside me.”

Yi Zhe immediately opened his eyes and finally saw that Xu Tangcheng had woken up completely at some point. His head was resting on Yi Zhe’s shoulder, one hand drawing the curtain back to look at the moon outside the window.

Moonlight streamed in, stopping on his face. In this quiet scene, Yi Zhe suddenly felt as though he was seeing the Xu Tangcheng who had been here alone for two years.

“Actually, I did.”

As Yi Zhe’s arms slowly tightened, Xu Tangcheng said those words.

It seemed to come out of nowhere but Yi Zhe very quickly understood that he was answering the question he had kept asking before sleeping.

“Even though I purposely filled up my time, purposely kept myself so busy I had no time to spare, there were times when I didn’t manage to make plans or control myself.”

Ever since they met again, Xu Tangcheng had been warm and smiling. He'd not brought up how he went through the past two years, nor had he said anything about the torment he went through for the person named “Yi Zhe.” Even when Yi Zhe had questioned him just now, he had not said: I missed you. I missed you terribly.

But right now, his voice was quiet and calm, suddenly losing the strength it had during the day, revealing the weakness of having no strength to fight back.

“When were those times?” Yi Zhe’s heart ached for him. He wrapped his arms around him, asking softly.

Xu Tangcheng let go of the curtain. The room returned to darkness, just like each and every one of those similarly late hours of the night that had entrapped the person awakened by accident from his dream.

“Just like now. Sometimes, when sleeping at night, I'd wake up suddenly. One second, two seconds, I'm still not fully awake and I don't know anything. But by the third second, before my eyes open fully, I'd again think of… a certain thing. Even just now, when I woke up, I was thinking the same thing.”

He sensed that he was perhaps going to hear the answer he wanted but all of a sudden, Yi Zhe no longer wanted to hear it—because the Xu Tangcheng who was saying those words was too lonely, just like a little boy at preschool who suddenly couldn’t find a friend to play with him.

Yi Zhe couldn’t help lowering his head and nuzzling the side of Xu Tangcheng’s face. He asked, "Thinking of?”

“I was thinking…”

Xu Tangcheng stared into the darkness in front of him. After a while, he finally said slowly, “I was thinking… Yi Zhe is in a place so very far away.”

— END OF MAIN STORY —