Chapter 46: Two-Way Sleeping Aid

Yue Zhishi frowned as he looked at the screenshot Song Yu sent over.

[Yue Zhishi: You took a terrible looking screenshot of me, I’m all blurry]

[Gege: Don’t change the topic.]

Yue Zhishi thought for a while and felt this was a great opportunity to give Song Yu a phone call. He prepared to press the voice call button, but he accidentally pressed the wrong option and sent over a video call request instead.

As he moved about in a panic, Yue Zhishi wanted to quickly hang up and send over a new request before Song Yu noticed — but Song Yu actually picked up the video call.

In the camera, Song Yu’s side was completely dark, looking as if all the lights in his room had already been turned off. The only source of light was from Song Yu’s phone screen, and it was only enough to illuminate Song Yu’s face.

It was strange — Song Yu turned incredibly good-looking underneath this kind of light. The camera was very close to his face, and his facial features were very much magnified. It was almost as if he was right next to him.

Yue Zhishi stared at him for a little bit. His phone vibrated, so he left the video call screen to see a message from Song Yu.

[Gege: Why a video call?]

[Gege: Dorm lights are all off, I can’t talk.]

Yue Zhishi returned back to the video call and gave Song Yu an OK hand sign, telling him, “I originally wanted to voice call, I just accidentally pressed the wrong button.”

His phone vibrated again.

[Gege: Then I’m hanging up.]

Yue Zhishi immediately shook his head at Song Yu. “Don’t don’t don’t, I want to video chat with you, just for a little while.”

[Gege: Don’t you have anything to explain?]

Yue Zhishi only then remembered why he originally wanted to call. “Ah, right. You were talking about games. I don’t really play anymore, I haven’t played even once ever since I came back. The guy in the screenshot is the classmate who played with me last time. I’ve told you this before, but how did you know it was him?”

In the video, Yue Zhishi could see Song Yu’s flat lips. He didn’t look very happy, so Yue Zhishi softened his voice and called out, gege. Only then did his phone vibrate again.

[Gege: I guessed.]

“You’re so amazing, you got it right on the first guess. I actually only played with him two or three times. He plays more often with the other guys in our class.”

[Gege: Are you guys close?]

After reading that message, Yue Zhishi picked up the yoghurt on his desk, took a sip and casually said, “We’re okay. I get along well with everyone else in our class.”

Song Yu typed in a few words, deciding at the end to delete and change the person he wanted to compare with.

[Gege: What about compared to Jiang Yufan.]

Yue Zhishi pretty much replied without a single bit of hesitation. “That’s not a valid comparison at all, we only met in 2nd year after our year split class streams. Of course my relationship with Jiang Yufan is the strongest.”

Song Yu felt the tightness in his chest relax upon hearing Yue Zhishi’s words.

He didn’t know whether his intuition was right or not, but he truly wasn’t in a good mood after watching that video.

It wasn’t often Yue Zhishi had the opportunity to video chat with Song Yu, so he took the chance to tell gege a bunch of stuff that had recently happened. How much weight Cotton Candy recently gained again, how many cans of cat food Orange ate every day — Song Yu’s expression didn’t change much under the camera, but he flipped over, looking as if he shifted over to a more comfortable, more relaxed sleeping position.

As he continued looking at the screen, Yue Zhishi also lay down on his desk without realising, his head on its side resting in the crook of his elbows. Song Yu’s eyelashes were very obvious at such a close distance, the contours of his face right in front of Yue Zhishi’s eyes.

He quietly watched him, and Yue Zhishi felt like he once again returned to that night he and Song Yu had been trapped together due to the storm.

“Gege, how come you’re sleeping so early? Are you really tired?”

After listening to Yue Zhishi speak for such a long time, Song Yu was a bit absent-minded and forgot he couldn’t open his mouth to speak. He said, “Mn.”

“I won’t chat with you for too long then, in case I’m bothering your sleep. I still need to memorise some texts.” Yue Zhishi was afraid Song Yu was still thinking he was playing games, so he specifically said, “I’m going to uninstall that game in a bit, I’ll download it again after the exams.”

Song Yu didn’t speak, but the curve of his mouth slightly eased. Yue Zhishi smiled at him and said, “Hurry and sleep. Good night.”

“Good night.”

Song Yu subconsciously murmured in reply and then hung up the video. He abruptly heard sneaky laughter spiralling through the dorm room and uncertainly turned around. Three cell phone torches shone directly at him, almost exactly as if he was being interrogated by three people at the same time.

“Who’re you saying good night to, handsome man — you’re being so attentive, your ice cool persona’s smashed to bits.”

“You’re thinking too much, he’s definitely saying good night to me.”

“Fuck, is someone else losing their single status in our dorm?”

“You guys really have nothing else to talk about.” Song Yu put in his earphones, closing his eyes to sleep.

This time, he fell asleep very quickly.

The college entrance exams were imminent. A large countdown number was written on the upper right hand corner of the classroom’s blackboard, and it changed every day, the number reducing as the days passed.

Everyone started arriving earlier and earlier and started leaving later and later — all of their energy and time were invested into their final sprint of studying.

The atmosphere felt like it was being compressed tighter as well. The air turned so heavy it was hard to move, and it pressed onto everyone’s shoulders together along with all the knowledge they couldn’t remember.

Yue Zhishi’s heart was much lighter, his psychological state more peaceful compared to everyone else. His desk mate had already cried twice, and she’d even hid from Yue Zhishi the first time as she cried in the female bathroom. When she returned with red eyes, Yue Zhishi knew she was stressed and gave her the rainbow candy he’d just bought. For the second time, she directly collapsed and cried onto her desk.

“Come on, Zhang Yueyue, you’re already crying when it’s not even the exams yet.”

Hearing someone joke like this, Yue Zhishi said seriously, “Crying is an effective way of relieving stress. You should cry before the exams — it’ll be too late to cry after.”

And just like that, the last ten-odd days before the college entrances exams streaked by in chaos and turmoil. The last night before the exams arrived in a flash, and in order to relax them all, their class adviser stood at the podium and told them her embarrassing stories back when she’d taken the exams. As he sat there and listened, Yue Zhishi fell into a bit of a daze.

He’d clearly really hated waking up so early and coming home so late every day. He hated reviewing and memorising all the different kinds of little knowledge requirements day in and day out and hated answering the same kinds of questions again and again. These kind of monotonous, dull and tightly scheduled days — he had looked forward to them ending earlier every day.

But when the day finally arrived and he could see the end, Yue Zhishi wasn’t willing to leave those days behind.

There were still thirty seconds to the end of the night self-study session. A boy in their class suddenly yelled out, “High school year 3, class 10, jiayou!”

Everyone was originally a bit stunned, but after only two, three seconds, someone laughed — and someone followed along and yelled out jiayou as well. More and more people joined in, and their loud voices passed through the walls and spread to the next door class.

They didn’t know how, but the entire high school third year students started yelling and screaming. Their voices reverberated through the entire building — as if they were all cheering on each other.

After he rode home, Yue Zhishi drank a cup of warm milk under Lin Rong’s instructions. He showered and cleaned up early, got into bed and checked all the things he needed to bring tomorrow to the examination centre before preparing to go to sleep.

It was only 10:30pm when he lay down on his bed.

There was no way he could fall asleep.

He tossed and turned for a very long time, and Yue Zhishi realised his heart was beating very quickly. His brain couldn’t stop thinking about tomorrow, and he became more awake the longer he thought about it.

He was too nervous.

He pulled out his phone. The lock screen lit up — it was the photo he’d taken of Wuhan U’s front entrance the last time he was there. He stared at it for a long time in the darkness. He didn’t come back to attention until a message from Song Yu appeared.

[Gege: Remember to double check every pen to see if they work. Relax.]

How could it be so easy. Yue Zhishi felt gloomy: when it was Song Yu’s turn for the entrance exams, it was Yue Zhishi who’d fallen sick from nervousness, and now when it was finally his turn, he was still so nervous. He was nervous twice for something he was going to take only once — what a loss.

He felt there was no way he was going to fall asleep if he continued on this way. He hesitated for a time before he finally couldn’t hold himself back from giving Song Yu a call. The phone rang only once, and then it was picked up.

“What’s wrong?” Song Yu’s voice was incredibly low through the airwaves. As it passed to him in the darkness of nighttime, it gave Yue Zhishi a concrete sense of comfort, as if it was a grey cloud. It looked very cold, but when he reached out a hand to touch it, he could feel its softness.

Yue Zhishi was snuggled underneath his blanket. He flipped over, saying, “I have a bit of insomnia.”

“Can’t sleep?”

He heard Song Yu deliberately lowering the volume of his voice.

“Mn. I tried sleeping, but maybe I’m too nervous, because the more I tell myself to sleep the more I feel awake. Can you talk to me for a bit and distract me?”

Song Yu was quiet for two seconds. “Are you sure you won’t be even less likely to sleep after hearing me talk?”

Yue Zhishi thought for a bit and felt Song Yu was right — but there was an exception. “But when you talk to me about math questions, I get sleepy so easily.”

It sounded like Song Yu lightly laughed, over the phone. Yue Zhishi keenly heard him, so he laughed as well.

“Where can I find math questions for you right now?” Song Yu’s voice carried a slight hint of helplessness.

“True.” Yue Zhishi closed his eyes, imagining Song Yu was right next to him. “Then can you pretend to be a math teacher and lecture to me about something I’d fall asleep to?”

Some scuffling noises transferred over through the phone, and they sounded like someone was looking for something. Very quickly, Yue Zhishi heard Song Yu stand up and move somewhere else; the background sounds changed, and it sounded like there was a lot of empty space where Song Yu was.

After a few seconds, he heard Song Yu quietly ask, “What do you think about Oxford’s Very Short Introductions: Mathematics?”

“Even just the title of it sounds really sleep-inducing,” Yue Zhishi said, agreeing.

He heard the sound of pages turning, and shortly after, Song Yu started speaking in a deep voice. His speaking voice was very low with very little emotional fluctuations, but it resonated very beautifully and calmed Yue Zhishi’s restless spirits.

“…When we examine the answer to a physics problem, eighty to ninety percent of the time, we can draw a clear line between the scientific and mathematical contributions to the answer…”

The words he recited were obscure and hard to understand. But as they entered into Yue Zhishi’s ear, the words seemed to peel away and become simple audio waves, pouring into Yue Zhishi’s heart. It felt like he was moving up and down with the undulation of the waves, and his breathing slowed, his limbs slackening — he finally entered a calm and serene state of mind.

“…It turns out that even very simple models of the interacting particle system are extremely complex. They have led to exceedingly difficult to solve — in fact, most of the unsolved — mathematical problems.”

As he heard the steady breathing from over the phone, Song Yu slowed down the speed of his words until he finally came to a stop.

The most complicated, hardest to solve problem in the world seemed to have temporarily received some peace.

“Good night.”

Standing in an empty corridor, Song Yu softly closed the book in his hands. He stood there quietly for a moment and then returned back to his dorm.

–

The time during the exams seemed to flow at a different speed compared to all other times. It felt like he’d only just entered the examination centre and watched the proctor open the sealed bag of exams — and then suddenly, one day had gone by.

After finishing his first day, Yue Zhishi felt like he’d done quite well. The math exam had quite a few questions he’d specifically studied for. Peiya had organised a school bus to take them all back to school, and students on the bus were all comparing answers. He didn’t want to listen to them, so he put on his earphones and listened to music.

People were saying their examination questions had entered onto Weibo’s hot searches. Yue Zhishi wasn’t in the mood to look it up — he only opened the chat between him and Song Yu.

[Yue Zhishi: The book you read to me yesterday was great for sleeping.]

[Yue Zhishi: Do you read it too when you can’t sleep?]

He only received Song Yu’s reply when they were about to get off the bus, Song Yu’s helplessness towards him leaking through the words.

[Gege: I don’t read this kind of book because I need to sleep.]

Yue Zhishi laughed at his phone.

The English and literature analysis exams the second day were both his strengths, but Yue Zhishi still begged Song Yu to read another night’s worth of that book. Song Yu agreed.

A senior sister in the same research lab saw Song Yu stand up and head towards the kitchenette next door with a thick book in his hands. She thought he wanted to take a break — he’d worked through the entire day without even eating dinner, all just to finish organising the data earlier.

She thought for a bit and then opened a drawer. She pulled out a bag of granola and a packet of oreos and got up, preparing to give them to her junior brother.

She walked to the entrance of the kitchenette and saw Song Yu’s back. He wore earphones and recited out the book’s contents in a speed neither too fast or too slow — his voice didn’t really sound different, but the tone of it was completely different compared to what he usually used in the research lab, no longer cold and emotionless.

This was very tricky to hear, because he wasn’t reciting some prose poetry, but rather some boring mathematics and science book — and yet the flow of emotions concealed in his voice was crystal clear and easily heard.

Her intuition told her not to bother him, and so she lightly closed the door, placing the granola and cookies onto Song Yu’s empty workspace.

She suddenly realised — this perpetually taciturn and uncommunicative junior brother wasn’t really all that different.

Desperately compressing the amount of work even three days might not be enough to complete into two days — he was probably rushing to go somewhere, to see someone.

Yue Zhishi was full of energy from the nighttime’s sleeping aid reading materials. He specialised in the second day’s exam topics, and the weather was also fantastic. Everything went very smoothly, and when the bell finally rang at the end, he finally looked at the name written on the exam paper.

It felt like he was participating in a long-distance stamina test. He kept desperately running forward, following the rules and wishes of other people in a never-ending struggle with his willpower.

When it reached the final second, the timer on the stop watch was pressed. The energy from his entire body leaked away, and he left this track that had trapped him.

It was finally finished.

Everyone was much calmer than expected, with only one student loudly yelling out something after he left the exam venue. Yue Zhishi followed along in the bustling streams of people, heading outside; there were many parents and families waiting, and he had nowhere to focus his eyes, only a tiny thought telling him to repeatedly search around.

And finally, his eyes accidentally met with another pair of eyes.

Song Yu wore a white t-shirt and blue jeans, his head covered with the baseball cap Yue Zhishi had worn last time to see him at Wuhan U. He gave him a very slight smile.

He clearly was dressed very normally, and yet Yue Zhishi felt all the light had wrapped around his body.

He ran forward, stopping in front of Song Yu.

“Looks like you did well.” Song Yu simply assessed his mood.

Yue Zhishi couldn’t hide the smile on his face. “I’m already really close to my first college entrance exams wish — looks like the koi fish at Wuhan U really did protect me after all.”

Song Yu raised an eyebrow. “You stepped on it, and yet it still protected you — what a fish to repay injury with kindness.”

The two of them saw Lin Rong and Song Jin not too far away as they continued speaking and waved at them. It had been a while since the entire family gathered together, and Lin Rong sat in the passenger seat, happily chattering away. To Yue Zhishi, it felt like he entered some kind of time loop — it felt like he returned to three years ago, with Uncle Song driving the car and Aunt Rong sitting in the passenger seat as they carefully planned out what to do after the exams.

“Let’s eat at home, I already made the dishes you two like the most as well as a cheesecake and some mango pomelo sago.”

Yue Zhishi nodded. He watched as Song Yu leaned back against the upholstered seat and quietly asked when he arrived.

“Just then. I took the subway over,” Song Yu said very simply.

Taking the subway must’ve been very tiring. Yue Zhishi asked again, “You didn’t drive?”

“I’m a bit sleepy.” Song Yu’s elbow was wedged against the car windowsill as he held his chin. “It’ll be dangerous to drive.”

Yue Zhishi moved a bit closer and pulled at Song Yu’s arm. He patted his own shoulder, his face confidently saying he was worth relying on. “You can sleep on me.”

Song Yu glanced at him and then turned his face away. “I’m not a child like you.”

Lin Rong couldn’t help but laugh after hearing that exchange. “Now that’s where you’re wrong. In this car today, Le Le is the biggest.”

Song Jin was driving, but he very cooperatively asked why. Lin Rong said, “Because examinees are the biggest.”

“That’s right.” Yue Zhishi pulled at Song Yu, simply just to drag him to his own shoulder. “Just sleep on me for a bit, we’ll be home when you wake up.”

As if afraid Song Yu wouldn’t agree, Yue Zhishi leaned in, right to his ear, and said very softly, “Just think of it as a gift in return for the last two days. Didn’t you also help me sleep?”

Yue Zhishi’s hand grabbed at his shoulder, and he felt like Song Yu’s body stiffened for a bit. Luckily, his argument seemed to have worked — Song Yu agreed at the end. He curved over a bit unwillingly, shifting around for a better position and looking as if he wasn’t really satisfied. Yue Zhishi thought he wanted to get back up and said in a bit of fluster, “Do my shoulder bones stick out too much? Are you not comfortable?”

“Yeah.”

In the next moment, the Song Yu who Yue Zhishi thought was going to sit straight back up, tugged the brim of his cap lower and lay back down. But this time, he wasn’t aiming for Yue Zhishi’s shoulder — he directly lay down on Yue Zhishi’s legs.

“This is much better.”