WHI – Chapter 31

Chapter 31

Of course not.

It wasn’t unbearable, but…

He wouldn’t be able to control himself.

Seeing that he remained silent for a long time, Wen Lan raised his hand, opened the door, and walked out. “I was just teasing. There are so many rooms here. I’m leaving.”

He then disappeared behind the door.

Lin Ting turned off all the lights in the room and pulled open the heavy floor-to-ceiling curtains. In the darkness, relying on the faint light from the high-rise night view, he leaned against the bed and sat on the carpet.

It was high up, and it was prosperous.

And this was not the Wen family’s only asset.

He was not Wen Lan’s only friend either.

But he only had Wen Lan left.

His own point, which could not be opened or connected to anything else, was forcefully broken by the infinitely long line of ‘Wen Lan’, but only for this half a year.

After half a year, the ‘line’ would extend into the more distant future, and the ‘point’ could only repeat this segment of the past back and forth, until the square inch of Xuan paper became tattered from bleeding ink.

This was the first time he had finished an entire cigarette completely.

.

After closing the door, Wen Lan did not leave immediately. Instead, he leaned against the door and finished smoking two cigarettes before taking a taxi home.

By the time he got home, it was almost 10 PM.

He lowered his head and pushed open the door, walking up the stairs to the second floor as usual.

“You’re home this late?”

Wen Lan’s footsteps stopped, and he turned to look back—

His father had moved a chair and was sitting in front of his mother and older brother’s memorial altar. The incense in the censer was still long, indicating it had just been lit.

“Were you at your birthday party?” Wen’s father said this with an unruffled tone, but only Wen Lan knew what kind of undercurrents were hidden beneath it.

“Yes.” He didn’t hide it, nor could he.

Crack—!

The censer was abruptly swept to the floor, making a crisp symphony on the marble. The ashes hung in the air, lingering before falling, making the air feel thick.

“You did it on purpose, didn’t you?” Wen’s father’s arms turned purple-red with rage, and the veins on his neck were clearly visible. He tried his best to maintain a calm tone as he spoke.

“How many times have I told you! You are not allowed to go anywhere on your brother’s冥寿 (ming shou – posthumous birthday)! When I got home on Friday night, you were nowhere to be found! And you, before you were just going out with classmates to sing and eat, and this time you went on a trip? Do you have any conscience at all? Come here!”

Wen’s father rushed up the stairs a few steps, grabbed Wen Lan’s clothes, and dragged him to the altar.

“Kneel! Look at yourself, always eating, drinking, and having fun, not even a bit comparable to your brother!” Wen’s father forcefully shoved Wen Lan’s shoulder to the ground. He lost his balance and knelt before the altar as if he had no bones.

“Mmm.” Wen Lan could say nothing but this word, his gaze blankly fixed on the ‘himself’ in the black and white photograph.

“Kneel here and reflect tonight.” Wen’s father dropped this sentence and left the house.

The argument just now was very loud, but it wasn’t until Wen’s father left that the aunt dared to come downstairs and went to Wen Lan’s side to clean up the scattered ashes.

“I’ll clean this up. You go upstairs and rest,” the aunt said as she picked up the broken pieces of the censer from the floor. She turned to get a rag.

Wen Lan followed the aunt, picking up the remaining fragments. The white ashes stuck to his fingers, blocking the small wounds cut by the shards. Only when he took the rag and carefully wiped the photo on the altar did he wash his hands under the pretext of washing the rag.

With the white ash gone, the wounds began to bleed under the tap water, drop by drop. Just when he thought it had stopped, it would unexpectedly well up again.

Wen Lan persuaded the aunt to go upstairs and sat alone before the altar for the entire night.

.

The next morning, before the sparrows outside the window had even woken up, Wen Lan left home. He didn’t ride his bicycle but walked to school step by step.

He couldn’t clearly remember when he slept last night, but he woke up very early this morning. It felt as if in the blink of an eye, the morning light was reflected on the glass of the photo frame.

He got up from the chair, took a shower, tidied himself up, and then went to school.

Wen Lan thought he would be the first one to arrive at the classroom.

The morning air was a shade of blue. The winter morning air was covered with a light layer of white mist from exhaled breath on this blue hue.

Lin Ting’s profile was enveloped in this cold white mist.

“Why are you here so early?” Wen Lan put down his backpack and sat down.

Lin Ting was startled by the voice, shifted his gaze from the sparrows outside the window, and forced a smile. “Final exams are coming soon, studying.”

“Then you continue. I won’t disturb your looking at the sky—your studying.” Wen Lan returned Lin Ting’s previous words to him.

Lin Ting glanced at him sideways. “Are you looking for a beating?”

They looked at each other and smiled.

“Seriously, teach me how to get into the top 50. The tutoring still needs to continue.” Wen Lan took out his notebook from his bag—it contained the notes he had taken during Lin Ting’s tutoring sessions every weekend.

Lin Ting looked at Wen Lan without a word, opened his notebook, and then opened his book. The person in front of him seemed like someone he had never seen before.

“What are you looking at me for? Aren’t we studying?” Wen Lan’s gaze remained on the desk.

“Looking at your shamelessness. You’re not paying for tutoring.” Lin Ting continued to stare at Wen Lan’s profile.

Wen Lan felt uncomfortable being stared at like that and clicked his tongue. “Didn’t I provide you with accommodation? Isn’t that enough? What else do you want?”

Lin Ting was stunned for a moment, then seemed to remember. “Oh, right. I forgot. Then I can’t be perfunctory.”

“You mean you were being perfunctory before?” Wen Lan reached out and ruffled Lin Ting’s hair, then abruptly stopped his hand.

Even though they had had more intimate contact before; even though Lin Ting often saw Song Mi and his friends doing this when they were messing around.

But at this moment, neither of them should have done this. The thin bubble between them, which could be broken with a single prick, was being carefully maintained by both of them.

Lin Ting dared not, and Lin Ting knew that Wen Lan was misunderstanding.

Misunderstanding that he thought it was ‘disgusting’, the ‘disgusting’ he had said that day, driven by emotion.

Lin Ting also knew that with just a text message, an explanation, that whisper would return.

But he was a coward. Rather than the fleeting brilliance of fireworks exploding in the sky, he preferred to hold onto the damp firework box and fantasize for a lifetime.

The fingers on his head curled up slightly and were eventually retracted.

As the sky grew brighter, more people entered the classroom. Wen Lan continued to look at his book diligently, occasionally taking notes, and asked Lin Ting a question.

“Your grades can get you into a 985 university. Have you thought about which city you want to go to?”

“The Capital City… I guess.” Lin Ting replied. “Actually, I’m not too sure, but I’ve never been there, and I want to see it.”

“I want to go to a new place,” Lin Ting added.

Wen Lan’s pen tip paused. “After that, will you come back?”

Lin Ting knew what answer he wanted. He shook his head. “Here, I might run into Gu Jiang and… Su Li at any time. I don’t want to come back. Just like you can’t leave.”

Yes, Wen Lan couldn’t leave. He would be like his father, appearing on television, in the news, on the top floors of various high-rise buildings in S City.

“You can leave,” Wen Lan’s voice was a little soft, but Lin Ting caught it.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Wen Lan avoided the topic. “Have you decided on a major?”

Lin Ting smiled. “Any major is just to make a living. What I’m thinking about now is getting a scholarship, and then I won’t starve to death after graduation.”

Wen Lan was about to retort, but the conversation from the front row drifted over at the right time:

“My dad didn’t agree to let me go to Japan yesterday, so I have to go to America.”

“Ugh… Private school is so disgusting. Your dad knows exactly what kind of person you are.”

“Are you going to the UK with your girlfriend?”

“Yeah, I’ll come back after a year and get married. My dad is waiting to retire.”

“Looking at you, I think he’ll have to wait another ten years…”

“Who are you looking down on? Tsk.”

Then followed some idle chatter unrelated to studies.

High school seniors had only about half a year left, but the students here were still living in an ivory tower. Most of them were not like Gu Jiang and Gu Yi, who had to rely on their own efforts to establish themselves. Instead, they had generations of accumulation, and their lives were always easy. Even those who were as diligent as Fang Ran—Lin Ting had seen her name on the top 100 list—never had to fear losing their support from behind.

The world was just that unfair.

Time slowly pushed forward. The teachers were not in a hurry, the students were not in a hurry, and even Lin Ting, who should have been in a hurry, was not in a hurry. Only Wen Lan, unlike his usual self, arrived at the classroom almost at the same time as Lin Ting every morning and started asking Lin Ting questions. Every day after school, he would pester Lin Ting until the school gates were about to close.

On weekends, he would pick Lin Ting up from Wanye Club early in the morning and send him back in the evening.

Lin Ting didn’t know how he had turned over a new leaf. But the relationship between him and Wen Lan was like a layer of edible rice paper. Apart from necessary communication, neither dared to say anything more, for fear that a sneeze would melt the hard-won peace on the surface.

Lin Ting didn’t study much when he was at the Gu family’s, but recently, by helping Wen Lan with tutoring, he had passively absorbed a lot of knowledge.

Wen Lan was also a bit stubborn, often asking him questions that he didn’t know how to answer by analogy.

“You can just use this formula.”

“According to logic, this formula shouldn’t work the same way?”

“It can, but this will result in two answers, and you’ll have to prove the other one is false…” Every time Lin Ting was almost dizzy from these questions, he would repeatedly tell himself.

He is the Sugar Daddy. He gave me accommodation.

Although he still had some money from Su Li at the beginning, Lin Ting calculated that he would have to spend it sparingly until the scholarship money came through.

After that, Su Li never contacted him again.

It made sense. The child of a ‘murderer’, a homosexual who proved her judgment wrong, who flowed with half of her blood, and who had once again disrupted her peaceful new family.

Not contacting him was normal.

Until the day the final exam results were announced.

S City was extremely cold in January, with snowflakes falling from the sky. As soon as the class bell rang, before Wen Lan came out of the restroom, Lin Ting, wrapped in a scarf, hurried to the announcement board.

“Quite impressive.” Lin Ting looked at Wen Lan’s name, which appeared in the 35th position for the entire school.

“How come I can never catch up to you? What’s going on?” Wen Lan’s voice, carried by the falling snow, landed on Lin Ting’s ear.

Lin Ting turned his head. Wen Lan’s back was straight, and his black coat had some snowflakes on the shoulders. He was standing at the top of the list, looking up. Wen Lan’s eyelashes were very long, and from this angle, he could see the tips of his eyelashes dusted with white. His exposed neck was red from the cold.

He took off the scarf around his neck, loosely wrapped it around Wen Lan’s neck a few times, and then looked up along his gaze—second place in the entire school.

It seemed he had been studying too hard recently.