After pushing Zhuang Xu aside, Li Shanqing felt a numb and painful sensation on his lips and tongue. Coupled with a dizzy and muddled head, wasn’t this absolutely an allergic reaction! He swayed over to his suitcase, rummaging for his allergy medication, feeling very angry as he searched. However, there was also a sense of panic from an unknown source, he did not know where it came from.
His shoulder still felt as if it were being pressed down hard, and his heart was beating so fast it felt like it would leap out of his chest—Zhuang Xu had not even drunk that much. Even if it was an allergic reaction, it should not be so severe as to make his legs this weak, right?
Li Shanqing, unsettled, found the medicine—although this type of medication was not the most effective for an alcohol allergy and would also cause drowsiness, there was no other choice. He tore open the package, needing water to swallow it. When he turned around, Zhuang Xu, the perpetrator, had suddenly learned to be considerate and timely handed him a bottle of water. However, when Li Shanqing met his eyes, he found that not only was Zhuang Xu completely without guilt, but the corners of his lips also twitched flatly, as if with a hint of ridicule and contempt for Li Shanqing.
He had caused Li Shanqing to have an allergic reaction, yet he did not say a word, nor did he apologize. Li Shanqing did not even know where to begin scolding him. After taking the medicine, he weakly accused, “What are you doing! We can argue if we argue, but why did you have to get physical?”
Zhuang Xu watched him quietly for a few seconds, then said calmly: “Didn’t you yourself want to see the world?”
Li Shanqing was shocked and choked by his direct statement: “You, you, you!” After “you-ing” for a long time, he finally managed to form a coherent, aggrieved sentence: “My God, this is how you have fun out there? Zhuang Xu, I really misjudged you. You look so pure and ascetic on the outside, how did your private life become such a mess?”
For some reason, upon hearing the words “pure and ascetic,” Zhuang Xu smiled, though there was no trace of a smile in his eyes. He looked down at Li Shanqing: “Do you really think I have time for a messy private life?”
“But aren’t you going to…” Li Shanqing trailed off halfway through his sentence, suddenly realizing that the look in Zhuang Xu’s eyes did not seem to be one of ridicule.
Although Zhuang Xu was expressionless, his jaw was slightly clenched, as if he were more hurt than the only person in the room having an allergic reaction. Li Shanqing’s brain and tongue became sluggish for a moment, and he could not continue speaking.
Seeing him fall silent, Zhuang Xu took the water bottle from his hand and, at the very least, said a concerned word: “Are you uncomfortable anywhere else now?”
“Let me think,” Li Shanqing said, still feeling a bit of numbness on his tongue. “Can you check if my tongue is swollen?” He opened his mouth and stuck the tip of his tongue out for Zhuang Xu to see.
Zhuang Xu’s gaze swept over, but for some reason, he immediately looked away, as if Li Shanqing’s action was something he could not bear to look at, and said with lightning speed: “I can’t tell.”
Then he screwed the cap back on, placed the bottle on the cabinet, glanced at his watch, and said: “It’s getting late. I’ll head back once I confirm you’re okay.”
“…You’re still going to their place?” Li Shanqing had been in a daze, but hearing Zhuang Xu say he was leaving, a baseless heartache appeared, and he could not help but ask him in a soft voice.
Zhuang Xu looked at his face, perhaps growing impatient with his incessant questioning, so annoyed that his expression vanished. He was silent for a small while, as if he had just made a decision, then picked up his phone, called that person, and put it on speaker.
The person’s name sounded like a girl’s, but the voice that answered was a man’s: “Zhuang Xu, have you arrived?”
“No,” Zhuang Xu said to him, “Something came up, I can’t make it over.”
The other person seemed to find it a great pity, saying they would be staying very late and urged Zhuang Xu to come over after he finished his business. Zhuang Xu refused, politely but with no room for negotiation.
After hanging up, Zhuang Xu looked at Li Shanqing, as if questioning a very large, tangible problem: “Any other questions?”
Li Shanqing knew that Zhuang Xu certainly did not want to answer right now, but he still could not resist asking: “Then when will we see each other next time?” Because opportunities to catch Zhuang Xu were too rare.
Zhuang Xu, however, shot him down coldly: “Li Shanqing, what is the necessity for us to meet at all?”
Zhuang Xu did not seem to be in a good mood. Perhaps the day spent with Li Shanqing had been an agonizing experience for him. The effects of Li Shanqing’s allergy medicine were setting in; he was a bit sleepy and a bit muddled. Unable to come up with a necessary reason for them to stay in contact, Zhuang Xu left.
Leaving Li Shanqing alone in the room, utterly bewildered.
He lay on the bed and slept for a short while, drifting in a half-asleep, half-awake state. Suddenly, it dawned on him what Zhuang Xu had just done. Zhuang Xu had kissed him out of anger.
Logically, kissing is something that can be done by couples, or by heterosexual or homosexual people with more open views on sex. Was Zhuang Xu open?
Could it be the alcohol? His tolerance for alcohol was too poor.
And Zhuang Xu got this angry just from a few words from Li Shanqing? What was there to be angry about? So petty.
Li Shanqing let his thoughts run wild for a while, then got up to wash. He turned on the shower, and as the warm water cascaded over his body, he started thinking again, what on earth was Zhuang Xu doing? Why did he kiss people randomly when he got angry? Why could he not understand it at all?
And how should he answer the question Zhuang Xu asked?
“What is the necessity for us to meet?” There were very few questions in this world that Li Shanqing could not answer, but aside from playful, unreasonable remarks, he could not find a solution.
Because he and Zhuang Xu indeed had no necessity to meet.
…Was there really none? Why not? Li Shanqing wanted to see him, was that not a reason?
After finishing his shower, Li Shanqing felt extremely frustrated. He dried his hair and went back to bed to continue sleeping.
In his dream, a bizarrely shaped monster appeared, roaming the late-night streets of Licheng, emitting colorful streams of smoke that contained a magic that made people ignorant and foolish. It drifted through sturdy windows, bypassed thick curtains, and every single person was deeply affected by it. Li Shanqing, who had come to this city innocently, also became unlike himself.
After waking up, Li Shanqing suddenly felt that the scoreboards were meaningless and very childish, and decided to reset both of them to zero. Zhuang Xu’s secretary called him, saying the plane was ready, and asked if it was convenient to pick him up at twelve noon.
Li Shanqing said yes. At twelve, he went downstairs. Zhuang Xu was not in the car, only the driver and the secretary. They went to an airport in the northwest of Licheng, arriving after about a half-hour drive. The plane’s main color was blue and it looked very new. When he entered the cabin, a doctor was already waiting, and the oxygen equipment Li Shanqing needed was also prepared.
The ultraviolet rays were very strong. Li Shanqing felt the sun burn him. The parts of his neck and the back of his hands that his hat did not fully cover broke out in a rash. The doctor saw it and applied some ointment for him.
After landing, Li Shanqing thought of Zhuang Xu’s words, “no necessity to meet,” and did not send Zhuang Xu a message. He went to the lab first and stayed with his team members until past eight o’clock. It was Senior Zixi who first noticed, asking him: “Shanqing, why do you seem to be in a bad mood today?”
“How could that be?” Li Shanqing smiled, unwilling to admit it. “Maybe I’ve been a little tired lately.” Then he turned to look at a certain classmate sitting nearby, one he often tempted and exploited, and teased with a grin: “I just wonder if there will be a kind-hearted person who, seeing their classmate unable to work, will want to help them process their data…”
A bit later in the evening, Lu Zhengming gave Li Shanqing a call, saying he planned to introduce him to two experts from a psychology data company. This brought Li Shanqing’s life back on track.
Everything was as usual, nothing new, with only one difference: Li Shanqing and Zhuang Xu’s contact became less frequent.
This was because Li Shanqing felt that the rejection in Zhuang Xu’s eyes on the day they parted had reached a level he did not want to face. Therefore, for the first time, he hesitated to harass Zhuang Xu, and often found himself unable to press the send button on the messages he had mostly finished composing.
After all, if there was no necessity to meet, was there a necessity to stay in contact?
During that period, Li Shanqing often thought about Zhuang Xu kissing him. After thinking about it, his lips and teeth would have a phantom-like pain, but when he touched them, there were no wounds. This troubled him.
He felt he had missed something and wanted to ask Zhuang Xu, but he was afraid that if he asked, Zhuang Xu would get angry again. So he decided to think it over carefully himself and to also go and learn about it. However, where he should go to learn, he had no idea at all.
Just like that, with various reasons piling up, after leaving Licheng, for about half a month, Li Shanqing barely contacted Zhuang Xu. It seemed that because of everything that happened that night, he had belatedly grown up a little, realized something, and no longer pushed all the responsibility onto Zhuang Xu or childishly blamed Zhuang Xu in his heart. He became a little melancholic, having things on his mind.
At the end of October, Li Shanqing saw in the news that SyncPulse had finally been approved and could be launched on the market. He sent a message to Zhuang Xu to say congratulations.
He had originally thought it would take a long time for Zhuang Xu to reply, but Zhuang Xu replied immediately, saying: “Thank you.”
Li Shanqing thought for a long time, then asked him: “How have you been lately?”
Zhuang Xu said “Fine.” Li Shanqing typed out “When are you passing through Fancheng,” then deleted it after typing it, confirming that he had never been this indecisive in his entire life. He also did not know what he was afraid of, what he was struggling with.
In early November, Zhuang Xu, with whom he had not been in contact for a few days, suddenly gave him a call at three o’clock on a Thursday afternoon.
It was hard for Li Shanqing to forget that call, because he immediately calculated that it was five o’clock in the morning in Binhai. The silence on Zhuang Xu’s end was so profound that Li Shanqing felt he could see, through the sound, the unlit darkness of Binhai’s night.
At first, Zhuang Xu said something strange: “I forgot to ask, after that day, did your alcohol allergy symptoms get any better?”
“They were gone long ago.” Li Shanqing had just gotten out of class and was on his way to the lab. He found the question strange.
If it had not gotten better by now, he probably would not still be alive.
After he answered, Zhuang Xu was very silent on the phone. Li Shanqing asked casually: “Hello, hello, hello? Where did you go, why aren’t you talking?”
After a while, Zhuang Xu said: “My mom’s cancer has relapsed.”
Zhuang Xu’s voice was very low, and Li Shanqing’s heart also stopped being normal. It was probably from this moment that he was no longer so slow. He asked Zhuang Xu: “When was it diagnosed?”
Zhuang Xu said “Yesterday,” and Li Shanqing also fell silent.
He forgot how the call ended, only remembering the feeling Zhuang Xu’s low spirits gave him. So on that day, for the first time, Li Shanqing made a decision that was not beneficial to his own health. He took two days off, bought a plane ticket back to Binhai without notifying anyone except Mary, and only then did he search for a bunch of solutions, applying to carry an oxygen concentrator, and driving himself to the airport.
On the plane, sitting in his seat, wearing his mask tightly, Li Shanqing hesitated for a second. But it was not a hesitation about whether to return to Binhai, but rather thinking about what to do if he got sick again, hoping his parents would not be angry. He did not know why he wanted to be by Zhuang Xu’s side so much, but he really did.
After he turned twenty-one, when Li Shanqing got bored with work sometimes, he began to analyze the various stages of his life. He listed the day Zhuang Xu forcibly kissed him as his first heartbreak, and defined the day he returned to Binhai as something he stubbornly had to do out of self-indulgent emotion after falling in love.
Zhuang Xu had not asked him to go back, and there was nothing he could do even if he went. Yet he insisted on going, wasting time, meaningless.
However, even knowing this, Li Shanqing would never force himself to change anything. After all, his life later took such a sharp downturn that finding this one thing he liked to do, continuing to pester Zhuang Xu, was the only way to let his life retain a shred of joy.
Besides, it was Zhuang Xu who kissed him first.
This was of course Zhuang Xu’s responsibility, for making Li Shanqing have an allergic reaction with alcohol. Love, too, was like an illness.
