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Chapter 72: To Fall Sick from Yearning
After being given their theme, the law school’s design team came together many times to discuss ideas.
They pulled together numerous photos that had to do with rain, as well as any related designs and runway shows in the fashion industry. Chen Pi was a particularly attentive and careful person despite all his talk of ‘stirring up water’ — he secretly inquired about all the possible judges who could appear and looked up their previous works in order to examine their preferences.
“I’ve organised all of our previous inspiration and rough drafts into this little booklet.” Xiao Qi walked over meekly and gave everyone a small book.
Yue Zhishi was currently immersed in his thoughts, but he still shot her an appreciative smile as soon as he saw what she was giving him. “You’re awesome.”
Even though Xiao Qi still spoke softly and weakly, she did things more confidently after being encouraged.
“I feel like our designs need to lean towards the soft, graceful style. A bit more ‘celestial heavenly being’.” Zhou Yi shuffled the sketches he had next to him. “Yup. Since whenever I think of rain, I always think of the misty, smoky rain in the area south of the Yangtze River.”
“That style’s too outdated now.” Qu Zhi expressed her opinion very straightforwardly. “If we design to that style, then we’ll bump into the team with the ‘Chinese traditional wear’ theme.”
Zhou Yi gloomily said, okay. Xiao Qi then cautiously raised her hand. “Then, what about if we start from fabrics?”
“Fabrics? Stuff like polyester and nylon?” Chen Pi asked, twirling a pen.
Xiao Qi very rapidly sketched a rough design on her drawing paper and showed it to them. It was a long dress, and the bustle was replaced with the Chinese pavilions usually drawn on ancient Chinese umbrellas. “For example, we could use oilskin or a similar fabric on the dress as an embellishment
”
Qu Zhi nodded. “We could also use nylon or transparent plastic materials to design a raincoat-like suit. It should look pretty fashionable.”
“But if we do that
” Nan Jia pulled out a tiny query. “Wouldn’t our theme diverge from rain to umbrella? And I still can’t see a clear structure to our designs. I feel like all of the ideas everyone’s been giving out — like using the fabric and structure of umbrellas, the colour and texture of rainwater or people’s psychological feelings during the rain — all of those ideas lean more towards our final presentation of our collection.”
Zhou Yi scratched his head as well. “There’s no thread running through them. The ideas are all very scattered around.”
“Yes.” Nan Jia pointed out something rather important. “If the fashion show requires three rounds, then there should be at least three different secondary concepts linked to our main theme. Or else we’ll be really disadvantaged during the actual show.”
“Our theme doesn’t have an exact scope to it like the ‘millennium’ or ‘Chinese traditional wear’ themes anyway. It’ll be really hard to have a concept for each of the three rounds in our collection.” Releasing a very loud sigh, Chen Pi found their theme more and more troublesome. “Ah, I’m so annoyed. Let’s just destroy everything.”
Yue Zhishi was focused on flipping through that the little booklet, and he stood out for being so quiet during the discussion. He stared at some of the sketches they’d drawn before, and realised both Xiao Qi and Zhou Yi’s designs tended to be rather traditional, presenting the lasting appeal of Chinese culture; their works had elements from water sleeves, oiled-paper umbrellas and bamboo hats. Chen Pi and Qu Zhi’s works were clearly modern — perhaps even postmodern — with their nylon fabrics and elements made out of transparent plastic materials. Qu Zhi was especially so; a large majority of her designs were grey or black, and they were combined with bright, highly contrasted fluorescent green, blue and red colours. Her style was clear and distinctive.
“Were you designing to a cyberpunk aesthetic?” Yue Zhishi asked Qu Zhi, holding her sketches.
Qu Zhi nodded. “I felt like there was never-ending rain in cyberpunk works, and the rain would always be dark, heavy drizzle.” She then looked at the designs in front of Yue Zhishi — they were all very disconnected. “Is it hard to integrate everything together? I feel like everyone’s design preferences are too different.”
“Why don’t we just directly let everyone design to their own styles,” Chen Pi suggested. “Like Qu Zhi can do a cyberpunk set and Xiao Qi can make a gentle, traditional set with Zhou Yi. And then we can just design the last set with something else.”
“That’s too casual,” Zhou Yi said, his voice low and very soft.
“I think so too, but if we really can’t link everything together, then we might as well separate them into three sections. It’ll be fine if there’s some connection among them.”
Yue Zhishi was reclining on top of his desk, listening to everyone with his eyes closed. The word ‘rain’ was brought up again and again, and it brought forth his memories again and again, from three years old to nineteen — from the past to now.
Past, present.
“Wait.” Opening his eyes, Yue Zhishi raised his head, his light-coloured pupils shining under the lights. “I have an idea.”
He stood up as he talked, circling out of his desk to the whiteboard, and stuck everyone’s disorderly rough drafts onto the board with magnets — from Zhou Yi’s water sleeves and straw rain capes to Xiao Qi’s bamboo pavilion umbrella dress, his and Chen Pi’s modern style drawings and finally, Qu Zhi’s postmodern cyberpunk.
“Isn’t this actually a continuous timeline?” Yue Zhishi turned his face towards the group. “Rain runs through all times. To say it differently — no matter how eras change and transform, rain will always fall.”
“The times of rain!” Pleasant surprise covered Nan Jia’s face. “I think it’s a pretty good idea to have time be the thread running through all these different design styles.” She’d even thought about what kind of background and music they could use during their show. “If we follow this order, we can use traditional Chinese instruments like guzheng and dizi in the beginning, and then transition to futuristic electronic music at the end.”
“That’s super cool.” Qu Zhi agreed with her thoughts with a short sentence.
Yue Zhishi continued on. “If we use ‘time’ in the first round, then in the second round, I think we can use ‘space’ as a parallel design concept.”
Xiao Qi timidly asked, “Space as in different countries?”
“Won’t the scope be too narrow if we limit it to countries?” Qu Zhi pressed down the end of her ballpoint pen. “If we’re using ‘space’, then we should think larger, more widely.”
Yue Zhishi nodded very quickly. “Yes, I just remembered that when rain falls in different places, it’s never exactly the same.” He tried describing it to everyone. “If rain falls on a lake, it’ll show up as dotted, spreading ripples. If it falls on car windows, it’ll turn into transparent lines. If it falls onto an umbrella, sometimes it’ll condense into beads of water.”
“Clouds and lakes, the grasslands and leaf tips seeping with rainwater — rain will fall on all of them. We can utilise these different places to create rain’s sense of space. We can combine this part with creative uses of fabric materials. If we can simulate ‘space’ with both our techniques and fabrics, then I think we’ll be able to get extra points in terms of designing.”
He initially didn’t think much of it after saying everything in one go, but when Yue Zhishi realised everyone was staring at him, he was a bit embarrassed. He lifted a hand, ruffling his hair, and turned back to his usual goodnatured self. Very lightly, he released an ‘ah’ and said, “That’s just some of my very immature thoughts.”
The words had just left his mouth when Chen Pi started clapping his hands like a seal in an aquarium. “Fucking awesome!”
“That’s not mature? Then my thoughts were in kindergarten,” Zhou Yi forlornly said.
Everyone broke into laughter.
“Time and space. Both of these focal points are impressive. As expected of you, Le Le, your idea during the preliminary round was also very unique.” Nan Jia recorded down the notes. “Leave the runway design to me — no matter if it’s the music or the lighting, I’ll do my best for you guys.”
“There’s still the last round.” After being cheerful for a few moments, a bit of mournfulness leaked out of Zhou Yi once again. “The first two concepts are both so good; there’s going to be a lot of pressure on the third one.”
Xiao Qi also slightly nodded. “And, and it also needs to elevate the main theme
 So hard, how are we meant to elevate ‘rain’?”
That truly was something incredibly hard to do.
The meeting was temporarily paused since everyone had compulsory classes in the afternoon. It was already a very difficult breakthrough to have confirmed the design concepts for two out of their three fashion show rounds — at least with those two concepts, a few people on their team could now start their initial drafts.
Nan Jia was still sick despite taking some medicine. She even had a fever, but this time, Yue Zhishi didn’t get the opportunity to go to the doctor with her; Qu Zhi went with her instead.
But she didn’t bring her motorcycle, and this left Yue Zhishi extremely disappointed — he’d really wanted to see it.
After attending an entire day’s worth of classes, plus the design meeting during the lunch break period, Yue Zhishi felt like his entire body had been hollowed out. He knocked into a corner of the fire extinguisher box in the corridor very carelessly as he came out of his classroom, and his leg only started to ache once he was on Cherry Blossom Avenue.
Looking out at this familiar road, he thought of that day he came to Wuhan U to visit Song Yu — he thought of that little koi fish he’d accidentally stepped on and wondered if it’d managed to return back to its pond.
Yue Zhishi hoped it could rain heavily tonight, so that he could stand under it and be given some inspiration. But the rain never fell, and he started to miss Song Yu more as the day went on.
Yue Zhishi had a poor appetite as he ate dinner in the cafeteria; he’d only eaten half a bowl of plain porridge before he typed a message to Song Yu.
[Le Le: I suggested a very decent idea, and everyone happily accepted it. Now we’ve settled on the design concepts for the first two rounds, and we can now start the next step of our work!]
Before he sent it out, he deleted the words ‘very decent’ and ‘happily’ — just so he wouldn’t sound that proud of himself.
He felt like he was like a little puppy waiting at home after his owner had left for work, wanting to show off everything he’d done to his owner. If a little puppy could send messages, then it was highly likely to excitedly type out something along the lines of ‘I ran around in circles three times today with a toy in my mouth’ while wagging its tail.
Song Yu was a good owner. He replied to Yue Zhishi very quickly, praising him for being so amazing.
It was clearly only two words, and yet Yue Zhishi was giddy from happiness. While his face was still warm, he sent over a ‘missing you’ sticker of a sad little doggy curled outside a window.
[Le Le: Can you send me a photo of you?]
He knew Song Yu didn’t like to take photos of his face, so Yue Zhishi quickly and deliberately added an extra sentence.
[Le Le: It’s fine too even if it’s not a picture of your face. Anything is fine, I just really miss you and want to see you.]
After sending that message off, Yue Zhishi put his phone down onto the table, screen down, and started to feel a bit excited. He belatedly realised a girl at a table not too far away seemed to looking at him, so he lowered his head awkwardly and had another spoonful of porridge.
His phone vibrated just as he was swallowing. Yue Zhishi eagerly turned on his phone — Song Yu really did send him a photo.
Song Yu truly didn’t take a photo of his face. Instead of the face Yue Zhishi longed to see, the photo sent over was of Song Yu’s hand.
In the photo, Song Yu’s thumb was covered by a fair amount of dirt and was unclean. His long, well-defined fingers were resting on a fixed leg of some kind of instrument, his veins faintly sticking out and wrist bones prominent. It obviously was a static photo, but Yue Zhishi felt like he could almost see those muscles and bones rising and falling along with the tugging of his joints underneath that thin layer of skin.
The one thing that wasn’t quite the same as usual was that Song Yu’s fingers were slightly wet, not too dry, and were covered by a layer of something shimmering, smooth and greasy looking. Yue Zhishi didn’t know why, but as he stared and stared, a peculiar feeling surged in his heart.
Song Yu sent through another message, explaining the instrument.
[Gege: This is a surveyor’s level.]
Yue Zhishi thought for a moment.
[Le Le: What’s on your hand?]
[Gege: I just applied some lubricant on a few instruments.]
[Gege: Hand’s a bit dirty. Do I still have time to delete the photo?]
Very quickly, Yue Zhishi typed [Don’t delete it], his face slightly flushing.
He felt like he was truly being really strange, sitting by himself at the cafeteria and having certain kinds of thoughts about a dirty hand. Having realised this, Yue Zhishi grabbed his unfinished porridge and left — downloading and saving that photo before doing so.
The campus fell bit by bit into the dark fog of night, where people and their thoughts could slowly, gradually become hidden. After returning back to his dorm, Yue Zhishi took his drawing pens and the two sketchbooks Song Yu had previously bought for him and placed them into his schoolbag. And then, just in case, he also brought that diary he’d yet to finish reading.
“Where are you going so late?” Jiang Yufan pushed open the door to their dorm, and just so happened to bump into Yue Zhishi as he was leaving. “Overnight at an internet cafe again?”
“Mn
 something like that.”
Song Yu had given Yue Zhishi the access card to the apartment very early on, telling him he could visit whenever he wanted, but Yue Zhishi had never gone by himself before. The road to the place had always felt quite short every time he sat in the passenger seat since he always arrived very quickly — but as he walked over, he realised: the journey was actually quite long, and the paths were somewhat winding and confusing. Yue Zhishi walked for almost twenty minutes with his GPS before he finally found the small neighbourhood and arrived at the apartment building.
Alone, he swiped the card and entered the elevator. After opening the door to the apartment, Yue Zhishi had the slight misconception that Song Yu would suddenly appear and embrace him in the entrance hallway.
There was always a very pleasant smell on Song Yu’s body. It was like a warm cover that completely surrounded Yue Zhishi.
So when Song Yu wasn’t around, it was as though one of Yue Zhishi’s outer layers had been peeled off — he felt alone, and very cold.
He turned on the lights and went upstairs to take a hot shower. When he came out, dressed in a robe, Yue Zhishi opened the closet and saw his and Song Yu’s two sets of pyjamas. He hesitated, and then took out Song Yu’s set of black silk, facing the mirror as he pulled it onto his body.
The silk was a bit chilly as it touched his skin; it was just like Song Yu’s forever cold fingertips, and it loosely draped down his body. His and Song Yu’s differently sized bodies meant the pyjamas looked strangely unsuited on him — it no longer looked like a set of pyjamas, but rather more like a large, black cloth used to shroud things. It moved by itself, restlessly sliding down and exposing most of Yue Zhishi’s shoulders before he tugged it back up.
The buttonholes on these pyjamas were tiny, Yue Zhishi realised, and they made it very hard for him to fasten the buttons. So with his snow-white chest uncovered, he stood in front of the mirror and one by one, slowly, pushed the buttons into those holes — his fingers shifted downwards inch by inch, until the fastened up shirt completely veiled his lower belly.
He suddenly had a thought — it could be very hard to undo this set of pyjamas if Song Yu was wearing them.
His cellphone abruptly vibrated on the desk, the noise echoing, and interrupted Yue Zhishi’s imagination. He walked over to look at it; it was Song Yu.
Song Yu had actually sent a message an hour earlier, asking Yue Zhishi to also send him a photo, but Yue Zhishi had been busy packing up and hadn’t replied.
So Song Yu sent him another message.
[Gege: You’re being very unfair.]
Yue Zhishi found Song Yu’s serious side particularly adorable, and it made him think of feeding Orange and Cotton Candy. If he gave Cotton Candy just a tiny bit more food, then Orange would be unhappy. He’d use a paw and bat at Yue Zhishi’s wrist as he was pouring out the dog food.
But he didn’t want Song Yu to know he was currently wearing his pyjamas; it was something very weird to do. His thoughts circled around, wondering what he should take a photo of, and Yue Zhishi’s gaze finally settled on the legs he’d yet to cover — or more precisely, his knee.
He’d only lightly bumped into the extinguisher, and it hadn’t particularly hurt — but he only now realised his knee was already covered by a small bruise, a vague purple colour sweeping over his skin. His shower had also been too hot, so the water had flushed his skin pink.
He sat down on the bed, his two pale and long legs bare, and in order to bring his knee closer to the camera, he brought up that specific leg until it was on tiptoes. His flexed calf muscles and pointed toes showed up in the photo as well.
After sending off the photo, he didn’t receive a reply for a very long time. Yue Zhishi put on his pyjamas pants and realised it was too long by an entire chunk; he kept stepping on them as he walked.
Since Song Yu wasn’t there, Yue Zhishi decided to secretly draw in his bed — that cleanliness obsessed person wouldn’t know anyway. Yue Zhishi took out his sketchbooks and a pencil from his bag, squirrelling into Song Yu’s blanket, and started to draw as he lay on his stomach.
He roughly sketched out a few designs, but without much inspiration, he started to procrastinate. As he dithered around, he ended up flipping open an old sketchbook and looked over each page, the sketchbook filled with Song Yu. He’d never earnestly considered it before, but now that he looked at it, he’d truly drawn Song Yu’s hands many times: his hand as it held a pen, his hands as he rode his bike — and even his hand carelessly dangling off the edge of his desk as he slept on crossed arms.
Yue Zhishi found himself truly like a small dog. If Song Yu really did stretch out a hand to him, his first reaction might be to docilely give him his own.
His second reaction would most likely be to lick his palm.
He belatedly discovered that he was breathing a bit too hard. He remained cocooned in the blanket, but he pushed his face onto the drawing, his dry lips unconsciously rubbing against the cold paper.
The cotton blanket was like a sponge swollen from water, saturated with Song Yu’s scent; it was the familiar fragrance of his skin, as well as some indescribable hormones. Yue Zhishi lay inside, dressed in Song Yu’s pyjamas, and it was as though Song Yu was pressing him down from behind, wrapping him up entirely.
An invisible hand seemed to be clenched around his airways — it became incomparably hard to drag in his usual flow of oxygen. As Song Yu’s face sharpened and became clearer in his mind, Yue Zhishi’s breathing came faster and faster.
He couldn’t control his body’s reaction.
But Yue Zhishi firmly believed he currently wasn’t hyperventilating from an attack — it was only his longing for Song Yu. Or perhaps both reasons applied: his yearning made him unable to control both his emotions and his breathing.
Song Yu was like a robot with delayed responses. He sent over his reply to the photo of Yue Zhishi’s bruised knee just as it wasn’t convenient for Yue Zhishi to reach out a hand to check his notifications.
[Gege: What happened?]
[Gege: Did you take this kind of photo on purpose?]
Yue Zhishi was panting, and after he stretched a hand out of the blanket to look at the messages, he gave up and didn’t reply. He didn’t understand what ‘this kind of photo’ meant.
It was only two, three seconds, and then Song Yu called. Yue Zhishi would never reject it, even though he knew it currently wasn’t an appropriate time.
The call had just connected when Song Yu used a relatively calm tone of voice to repeat the question he’d just asked. But Yue Zhishi realised the sound of his breathing was too loud, too urgent, and it almost completely overwhelmed Song Yu’s voice.
It was very hot inside the blanket, and he tried to control his breathing a bit, burying his head into the pillow Song Yu had previously slept on — except it backfired, and a layer of sticky sweat grew on his forehead. Breathy noises came out of Yue Zhishi’s throat, and they were like the whimpering and panting noises of a small animal when sick.
At first Song Yu thought something had happened — but those noises didn’t sound like the noises he was familiar with when Yue Zhishi was sick.
And so his voice subtly changed; it deepened, lowered, and it still sounded incredibly domineering despite being separated by space and radio waves.
“Yue Zhishi, what are you doing?”
The author has something to say:
Both the dirty hand and bruised knee are so ( )~ sigh, this long-distance couple
Not sick