/
Chapter 45: Left-Behind Signs
The late replies didn’t lessen any of the joy Yue Zhishi felt at finding them — rather, discovering them so late doubled his surprise.
Before heading back to school for his evening self-study session, he placed into his schoolbag the textbook he’d thrown into a random corner for half a year. But the book was too heavy, so Yue Zhishi took it out again, carefully cutting out the two pages with Song Yu’s replies and tucking them into the grey sketchbook Song Yu had previously given him.
Looking at Song Yu’s handwriting, Yue Zhishi was suddenly struck by a strong urge to share what he’d just received. He didn’t have someone suitable to share the messages with though, so after thinking a while, he finally posted a post on QQ visible only to himself.
[Cheese1010: Messages after half a year — received!]
Yue Zhishi felt like Song Yu might be a talent sent by the heavens to soothe him. He had never thought he could one day not only not be anxious about separating from Song Yu, but also unable to hold himself back from rushing home.
No matter when, as long as Song Yu gave him the slightest left-behind hint or signs, it would always be able to arouse his emotions.
His phone vibrated — a message from Song Yu.
[Gege: Home yet?]
Yue Zhishi initially replied without thinking, but then he deleted the two words he typed in and instead, sent over his photo of the two textbook pages.
[Yue Zhishi: You’re too good at hiding things. I wouldn’t have been able to hold it in for so long and would’ve brought it out for you to see ages ago.]
Reading Yue Zhishi’s reply, Song Yu was distracted, thinking of how Yue Zhishi used to play hide and seek when they were younger. Yue Zhishi truly was just like how he said; if both of them were hiding together, Yue Zhishi would never be able to wait and stay still. If they still hadn’t been found after a while, Yue Zhishi would always want to leave their hiding spot. Song Yu had always needed to cover his mouth, forcing him to stay with him and not letting him go out.
Sometimes, Song Yu had the one seeking. If he called out Yue Zhishi’s name in a room and if Yue Zhishi was in there, there would always be some noise or movement. So Yue Zhishi would always lose — because he could never keep hidden.
But Song Yu hadn’t been like that. As long as he wanted to hide, Yue Zhishi would never be able to find him. Yue Zhishi would start crying out of panic, and Song Yu would stand up by himself when he could no longer stand it.
The relationship between them seemed to always be like this — they could never clearly tell who was the one forcing the other to do something.
The dormitory door was suddenly opened. Song Yu came out of his daze and looked over to see Chen Fangyuan, who appeared to have just come back from outside. He noisily grumbled about how tired he was, chucking his bag onto his own desk. “I thought it was going to flood for a week and was hoping for a holiday. Who’d have thought all the water would’ve disappeared today. It clearly isn’t the right time to have an ocean view.”
As he spoke, he saw the neatly arranged pastries on his desk and was a bit puzzled. He glanced at the other desks in the room, and then he shoved his hands into his pockets and strutted over to Song Yu.
“Tsk tsk tsk
”
Song Yu blankly lifted his head and gave him a look before he returned his eyes back to his book. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Tell me honestly, did you bring a girl in here?!”
Song Yu wrinkled his brows and flipped a page. He said calmly, “You must’ve gone crazy.”
Chen Fangyuan braced himself up on Song Yu’s desk. “Don’t even think about lying to me. There are already gifts to us on our desk.”
Song Yu didn’t even bother lifting his head. “Someone from my family sent it over. I put it on your desks.”
“Bullshit. You never placed things so nicely on our desks. Every time you came back with stuff from home, you’d always left it on the window frame and told us to get it ourselves. Besides, look at this.” Chen Fangyuan pointed at the flowers hanging on Song Yu’s wall. “Look at these little white flowers!”
Being a full-blown drama queen, Chen Fangyuan stood in front of Song Yu’s desk and laboriously sniffed at the flowers’ fragrance like a little puppy. He then exclaimed, full of pleasure and satisfaction, “Ah, the perfume of my sister-in-law.”
Song Yu could feel goosebumps popping up on his skin. “
.You’re sick.”
“I have a very serious case of appearance obsession. Since your eyes are grown on the top of your head, anyone who can get you to lower them and give her a look must be a super gorgeous lady. She must definitely be a pale-skinned, beautiful, long-legged sweetheart. I want to see her.”
Even though he clearly knew Chen Fangyuan was someone who liked to constantly quip and make jokes, Song Yu seemed to be brainwashed by his diabolical chattering — he seriously compared his description one by one.
Pale-skinned, beautiful, long-legged, sweetheart
 Honestly, there wasn’t much difference.
Being mixed-race would probably be even better in Chen Fangyuan’s eyes.
“I feel like my desk’s been tidied by my sister-in-law, it’s so clean.” Chen Fangyuan jumped back over, rubbing the top of his desk. It was way too spotless, so he thought about how it’d looked like before he left. “I remember there were a few books lying around in a mess, and the chair wasn’t pushed in neatly.”
Song Yu was speechless. “I cleaned them up.”
Chen Fangyuan directly rejected his words. “I don’t believe you. You’re not that good of a person — I definitely have a sister-in-law now. I want to see her!”
“Go see her in your dreams.”
Song Yu didn’t want to explain that the person who’d visited was his younger brother. Besides, Chen Fangyuan wouldn’t believe him even if he told him.
As expected, when Chen Fangyuan saw the toiletries that had yet to be put away in the bathroom, he immediately started to loudly make a fuss.
“She even stayed the night?! Song Yu, you! You’ve got some guts!”
Song Yu popped in his earphones, sighing, “I’m not like that. You’re overthinking it.”
One week after Yue Zhishi returned back to school, Peiya held its 70th anniversary celebration ceremony. The school considered this anniversary year very important, and everything was done with great momentum and effort. The junior and high school departments were both brought together, and they loudly and happily celebrated for quite a few days.
But the joy all belonged to others — Yue Zhishi, as a high school third year student, had no time to participate in anything.
In this aspect, Peiya had always been very willing to spend money. In order to memorialise their 70th anniversary, the school leaders specifically invited a crew of professional cameramen to film the entire school celebrations. Yue Zhishi, who had no fate with the celebrations, was accidentally pulled to the side as he walked back to his classroom building with his classmates from the cafeteria. He was stopped by the filming director and was asked to record a short interview and blessings for Peiya.
The school celebrations included parties and cultural festivals, and the scope of their invitations was very wide — even someone like Song Yu, who graduated three years ago, also received a message. It was just that he was too busy and didn’t have the time to go back.
And since Yue Zhishi wasn’t participating, Song Yu didn’t think there was any need for him to go back.
But on the night of the celebration ceremony, Song Yu received a WeChat link from Lin Rong as he sat in his dorm and wrote a report. Videos and photos all poured out once he opened it; Lin Rong had run over by herself to play.
[Mom: I went to see Le Le and took some videos while I was there. Have a look!]
At this point, it was entirely more like she’d gone to see Le Le while she was there.
Song Yu wasn’t too interested in the photos and videos she sent over. He carelessly scrolled down, and since there wasn’t anything new, he was about to close out of it. Just then, Lin Rong sent over a new message — this time, it was just a repost of an official WeChat account’s post.
[Mom: Xiao Yu, hurry and have a look, Le Le’s in the video in this post! 3 minutes 12 seconds!]
Song Yu only then clicked into it after seeing her message. The link jumped to Peiya Secondary School’s official Weibo account and was an article recording all the celebrations held for this year’s anniversary. Song Yu moved his mouse, looking for the video his mom mentioned, and finally saw it at the very bottom. It was captioned as Peiya students and teachers celebrating the school’s 70th anniversary.
He’d just clicked on it when dormitory leader Wang Chengzhi walked over with his phone. “Song Yu, have you filled in the application form? I’ve sent it to you already.”
“I’ll fill in it later.”
“What are you doing?” Wang Chengzhi took a look at his laptop. “School anniversary? You’re from Peiya? I saw a lot of people posting it about it lately in my moments — guess they’re all your school mates.”
Song Yu nodded. He directly forwarded the video to the 3 minutes 12 seconds Lin Rong had said and, sure enough, saw Yue Zhishi.
In the video, that guy was walking around unsuspectingly and didn’t even look at where he was going; he was even a bit stunned when he was stopped.
The interview host was very friendly, guiding Yue Zhishi to look at the camera. “Hello, student. Have you participated in the Peiya anniversary celebrations lately?”
It seemed like there was more than one camera — Yue Zhishi looked around for a while. “Ah, I
 I’m in my third year of high school. I don’t have the time to get involved, but I’m actually really envious of all the students who have.”
The host then asked a few more questions, and Yue Zhishi answered them very sincerely and even stood very tall and straight.
Seeing Song Yu watching so earnestly, Wang Chengzhi couldn’t help but ask, “This handsome little fellow looks mixed. You know him?”
Song Yu glanced at his dormitory leader. “Yes, a little brother in my family.”
“You even have a brother, so lucky.” Wang Chengzhi clearly misunderstood him. “Your family genes go against the laws of nature.”
Song Yu didn’t explain, and when he returned back to the video, the interview had already reached the stage of sending Peiya his blessings. Yue Zhishi smiled like a sunflower, his posture perfectly straight. “I wish our school will be better every year and will continue on for another seventy years.”
Another boy suddenly appeared in the video at this moment — he was very tall, taller than Yue Zhishi by over half a head. His hair was very short, and he threw an arm over Yue Zhishi’s shoulders from the back, his smile very bright. “Seventy years isn’t enough. Make it another seven hundred years.”
In the video, Yue Zhishi didn’t immediately push him off. Instead, he was amused enough to laugh. “Seven hundred years is too long.”
That boy continued holding onto Yue Zhishi with this intimate posture, and he even reached out a hand to the camera, shifting it into the shape of half a love heart. Yue Zhishi didn’t get it at first and was lightly shoved by the boy’s shoulder — he only then understood, and Yue Zhishi foolishly laughed as he slapped away that boy’s hand. “You’re so strange.”
“What’s so strange about this? Peiya, happy birthday!”
Very quickly, the camera shot changed, and the people in the video became other students. Wang Chengzhi was just sighing, “Your brother’s looks stand out among the crowd of people in the video. Even though that other student just now was also a bit good-looking, he’s a long way off from your brother.”
As he spoke, he noticed Song Yu didn’t respond and was being a bit strange. He lowered his head and looked at him — Song Yu’s mood seemed to have changed for the worse.
Was it just his imagination?
Song Yu didn’t watch that video anymore. He closed it right away and opened his chat with Wang Chengzhi to find that form.
“Is this the application you were talking about?”
Wang Chengzhi replied, “Ah, yes
 just send it to me after you’ve filled it in.”
What the hell, he felt like a completely different person.
That night, Song Yu was extraordinarily reticent. And completely unusually, he got into bed really early, looking as he was planning to sleep. Chen Fangyuan was in the bed across from him and felt like something was wrong, so he sent a message to Wang Chengzhi.
[Chen Fangyuan: What’s wrong with Sending Fish today? He’s in bed so early, he can’t be sick, can he?]
[Wang Chengzhi: I don’t know, he was a bit weird earlier when he was filling in the application form. I think he suddenly became unhappy after watching a video.]
[Chen Fangyuan: Video? Fuck, my Fish bro wouldn’t have been cheated on??]
[Wang Chengzhi: 

how is that possible, he doesn’t even have a partner. How could he get cheated on when he’s not dating.]
[Chen Fangyuan: I think he does, my sixth sense is telling me Song Yu is dating.]
The Song Yu laying in bed had entirely no idea of his two roommates’ chat. He simply wanted to sleep earlier, but contrarily to what he wanted, the more he wanted to sleep early, the less he was able to fall asleep.
He opened his phone once again, the light shining onto the wall. He hesitated and then opened the chat history between him and Lin Rong, staring at that link — he was about to click on it, but then a new WeChat notification popped up. It was Yue Zhishi.
[Yue Zhishi: Gege, I got a really high score for this week’s math test, look.]
Yue Zhishi sent across a photo of his test paper and then very happily pulled out the paper again to look at it. Not long after, he received Song Yu’s reply.
[Gege: Mn.]
Only a ‘mn’? Yue Zhishi was a bit disappointed at this reply, but he noticed, at the very top of the chat, that Song Yu was currently typing. He patiently waited and waited, waited until the currently typing indicator disappeared and yet no new messages appeared. After a little while longer, it once again said Song Yu was currently typing

Yue Zhishi impatiently sent over a message.
[Yue Zhishi: Are you writing an essay gege]
One minute later, he finally received a message from Song Yu.
He first sent over a screenshot of Yue Zhishi’s interview. The screenshot was of nothing else except that incomplete love heart.
[Gege: Is this the guy who was dragging you to play games?]