A Broken Mirror Never Mends - Chapter 26

The pronunciations of “Ten days” and “Shi Tian” are exactly the same, but only when it came from Zhou Sifu’s mouth could he hear the difference.

When calling him “Ten days,” Zhou Sifu would always keep the “Ten” very short and then lift the tone of “days” slightly, making it sound a bit like the “er” coloration common in Northern accents—”Tian’er.”

Inside the car, as if realizing that calling him this was a bit too intimate, the person in the driver’s seat shifted his gaze right after speaking. He turned the steering wheel and began to back out.

On the way to Kangle Pier, no one spoke again. The atmosphere turned stagnant once more in their shared silence.

It wasn’t that Shi Tian didn’t want to speak; he just didn’t know what was appropriate for him and Zhou Sifu to talk about in this private setting.

He knew in his heart that Zhou Sifu was thinking the same thing.

As the gentle female voice of the navigation system echoed in his ears, Shi Tian turned his head to look at the night scenery outside. Suddenly, Zhou Sifu’s tone from just now flashed through his mind.

In his memory, it wasn’t the first time Zhou Sifu had said something like that to him.

“…Ten days, is your head full of nothing but smut?”

Zhou Sifu crossed his arms and slowly leaned back against his seat. “Look at you. Your mind is dirty, so everything you see looks dirty.”

Shi Tian reached his hand out toward the boy in front of him and said coldly, “I’m telling you for the last time: this kind of stuff isn’t allowed in school. Give it to me.”

Zhou Sifu let out a soft grunt from his chest, as if he were amused and frustrated at the same time.

“Then I’ll tell you for the last time,” Zhou Sifu pushed the open magazine on the desk forward. He toyed with a lollipop in his mouth and raised an eyebrow. “Shi, if you dare give this magazine to the homeroom teacher, I’ll dare to beat you up tomorrow. Do you believe me?”

Just as Zhou Sifu finished his threat, the bell for evening self-study rang in the hallway. Students began trickling into the classroom to start the session.

Shi Tian ignored Zhou Sifu. He simply took the magazine, turned around, and went back to his own seat.

The physics teacher had a last-minute matter and notified the class monitor, Yan Xu, to have the students study on their own. Since the teacher wasn’t there, students began whispering to those around them, and some even started openly passing notes.

Shi Tian remained at his desk, focused on grading assignments. As the class study representative, the teachers were used to giving him the daily after-school exercises to grade.

He was looking down, marking the exercise books with a red pen, when someone from the back row poked his spine with a finger.

He heard Zhou Sifu whisper behind him, “Hey, Ten days.”

Shi Tian didn’t look back. “Spit it out.”

“That magazine from earlier—one page has some really intense content,” Zhou Sifu said. “Trust me, it’ll be an eye-opener for you.”

Shi Tian tapped his pen on the desk, meaning he was busy and telling Zhou Sifu not to bother him.

A few minutes later, a crumpled ball of white paper was tossed from behind, landing right in front of him. Shi Tian opened it and found a page number written in Zhou Sifu’s messy, “dog-crawl” handwriting: p. 24.

After finishing the grading for the entire class, Shi Tian looked down. Just as he was about to take out his physics workbook, the adult magazine he had confiscated from Zhou Sifu slid out from his desk.

Seeing the provocative, sensual images on the cover, Shi Tian’s expression became extremely complicated.

The room was filled with the sound of students whispering. He used his peripheral vision to check his surroundings, and after confirming no one was watching, he lowered his eyes and slowly flipped open the magazine resting on his knees.

The content at the beginning was fairly normal—just some scantily clad models posing for the camera. When he flipped to page 24 like Zhou Sifu said, Shi Tian’s pupils suddenly contracted, and his lips pressed into a tight, unnatural line.

The images on this page were large-scale photos of two male foreign models. They were embracing tightly on a white velvet rug, foreheads touching, fingers interlaced, kissing passionately.

In the photo, the fireplace in the living room was burning brightly, with orange flames licking the walls of the hearth. As his gaze drifted down, he saw the sweat glistening on their backs and their damp hair.

He had already entered puberty; he naturally knew what these two were doing.

His breathing gradually became unsteady. Shi Tian stiffened his back, trying to slow his breath, but found that his palms holding the magazine were also sweating.

Why did Zhou Sifu want him to see this?

He—

“Class, stand up!”

The class monitor Yan Xu’s voice suddenly rang out. Everyone stopped what they were doing and hurriedly stood up from their seats.

Led by the monitor, the whole class bowed slightly toward the physics teacher who had just walked in. “Hello, Teacher!”

Scanning the room, Mr. Ji noticed only one person was dazed at his seat and hadn’t stood up: Shi Tian, the study representative sitting in the second-to-last row.

After being a teacher for so many years, Mr. Ji had developed “fiery eyes.” He peered toward Shi Tian and realized he hadn’t stood up because he was looking down and hurriedly stuffing something into his desk drawer.

Mr. Ji frowned and slammed a ruler onto the podium.

Startled by the sound, Shi Tian seemed to snap out of it and stood up abruptly. “Hello, Teacher!”

Mr. Ji said with a dark face, “Shi Tian, what are you hiding in your drawer?”

Instinctively clutching the sleeve of his uniform, Shi Tian shook his head, his face looking distressed. “Noth… nothing.”

Hearing the exchange, the students turned their heads to look at the second-to-last row.

As Mr. Ji walked down from the podium, Shi Tian froze at his desk. Before he could react, Mr. Ji reached him, bent over, and pulled the magazine out of the drawer.

After staring at the cover for a moment, Mr. Ji’s face turned livid. “…”

Rolling up the magazine, he slapped it onto Shi Tian’s desk. “Confiscated. Go stand outside. Come to my office after class!”

Under the gaze of the entire class, Shi Tian’s face turned beet red. He put his hands behind his back and was about to take his textbook and walk out when he heard a noise from the back row as someone moved their chair.

Zhou Sifu also stood up. “Teacher!”

Hearing Zhou Sifu speak, Mr. Ji felt his eyelid twitch. “What now?”

The teachers usually had a headache dealing with this troublemaker from Class 5 and often turned a blind eye to him. They didn’t expect him to jump out now.

Zhou Sifu raised his hand seriously. “Mr. Ji, that’s my book. Shi Tian was just curious and took a look. He didn’t mean anything by it.”

Shi Tian: “…”

For a moment, he really wanted to kill Zhou Sifu.

It would have been fine if the guy had just kept his mouth shut. With that explanation, wasn’t he even more “socially dead” now?!

After standing face-to-face in the hallway for the entire evening study session and finally handing in a thousand-word self-reflection, the two dragged their tired feet back to the dormitory.

As soon as they opened the door, they saw Tianjie Cai lying on the edge of the top bunk, waving a magazine at them. “You guys want to see more? I’ve got a Japanese one hidden here.”

Zhou Sifu picked up a pillow and threw it at him. “—Get lost!”

After washing up at the sink, it was soon time for lights out.

Once the lights were off, the dorm went dark, filled with the sound of Tianjie Cai’s deafening snoring.

Watching the figure across from him tossing and turning on the bottom bunk, Zhou Sifu spoke softly in the dark, “Ten days, are you asleep?”

Shi Tian pulled the quilt over his head, wrapping himself into a round ball, and ignored him.

Since returning to the dorm, he hadn’t spoken to Zhou Sifu all night. He was okay with others, but he held a serious grudge against the guy with the surname Zhou.

Snore—zz—

Zhou Sifu picked up a backscratcher and poked the bedboard above his head.

Tianjie Cai smacked his lips and started talking in his sleep, “Yeah, Brother Zhou… baby, what’s wrong?”

“Keep the snoring down,” Zhou Sifu threatened in a low, eerie voice. “If you disturb anyone else’s sleep again, I’m packing you up and throwing you out tonight.”

Tianjie Cai grumbled a few words in his sleep, turned over, and went silent.

The room fell back into a dead silence. After sitting on his bed for a while, Zhou Sifu finally lifted his blanket and walked quietly over to Shi Tian’s bunk.

Sitting on the edge of the bed and staring at the back of Shi Tian’s head for a moment, he reached out and carefully ruffled the person’s soft hair.

“Ten days,” he asked in a low voice, “still mad at me?”

Shi Tian wrapped the quilt tighter and said muffledly, “No.”

Zhou Sifu rubbed the bridge of his nose with the back of his hand, his expression looking a bit unnatural. “Then tell me, why can’t you sleep?”

After lying stiffly for a moment and seeing that Zhou Sifu was refusing to leave the bedside, Shi Tian finally turned his head slowly, revealing a pair of eyes from the covers.

He had originally wanted to give Zhou the cold shoulder for a while, but his mind was full of messy thoughts, and his heart felt stifled.

At times like this, Zhou Sifu was the only one who would listen to him ramble.

After weighing his words for a long time, Shi Tian blinked and spoke hesitantly, “Do you think it hurts when you do that?”

Zhou Sifu’s hand on the edge of the bed paused. “…Which ‘that’?”

Shi Tian’s face suddenly became uncomfortable. After a long pause, he leaned against his pillow and continued, “The thing from the magazine today. They were in front of the fireplace, and their bodies were covered in sweat—”

After describing it in detail to Zhou Sifu, he paused and concluded, “…It looks very difficult.”

He noticed that while he was talking, Zhou Sifu seemed to be dazing off, not even noticing when the school uniform draped over his shoulders fell to the floor.

Zhou Sifu bit his lip and remained silent for a moment before leaning down to pull up the edge of the blanket for him.

“It doesn’t hurt if you do it with someone you like,” he heard Zhou Sifu say. “If you do it with someone you don’t like, someone as sensitive to pain as you would definitely cry.”

Having voiced the question that had been lingering in his mind, Shi Tian felt much lighter and gradually became sleepy.

Yawning, he pointed to the bottom bunk across from him, telling Zhou Sifu to get back to his own territory.

Just then, he heard Zhou Sifu turn back and speak unnaturally: “Ten days…”

“Actually, I’ve had dreams about it before. With you—”

Halfway through, Zhou Sifu was interrupted.

A mess of footsteps came from outside the dorm. Then, a bright flashlight beam cut through the window, illuminating the entire room.

The teacher for the lights-out check had arrived.

The circle of light from the flashlight moved slowly from the front to the back of the dorm walls. The teacher outside was checking to see if anyone was still awake.

To avoid being caught red-handed, Zhou Sifu acted quickly. He bent down, preparing to crawl under Shi Tian’s bed.

He didn’t expect that as he stood up from the bedside, Shi Tian would reach out and grab his wrist.

Shi Tian lay flat on the bed, eyes closed without looking at him, but shifted his body slightly toward the inner wall. “Don’t hide. Get up here, hurry.”

Seeing the flashlight beam about to reach his position, Zhou Sifu froze for a moment. He kicked off his flip-flops, lifted Shi Tian’s blanket, and crawled in.

The light from outside flickered across the bed twice and then went dark.

The dorm was plunged into darkness once more, and Zhou Sifu finally couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief. He slowly stretched out his curled legs, preparing to sit up, but when he turned his head, he saw Shi Tian lying on his side, propping his head with an elbow, looking at him thoughtfully.

The hallway light seeped through the window cracks, lighting up a spark in the eyes of the person on the bed.

At that moment, he and Shi Tian were so close that he could feel Shi Tian’s slow, steady heartbeat.

Swallowing his dry throat, Zhou Sifu’s palms were drenched in sweat.

“Zhou Sifu,” Shi Tian asked him in a calm voice while holding his wrist, “what did you dream about doing with me?”

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