The Long Night - Chapter 14

The new school was at the foot of a mountain.

They had been on the bumpy bus for who knows how long. Yan Liao’s questions had changed from “Can we get to the school before graduation?” to “Have we been kidnapped?”

The two of them had crossed the great mountain of the college entrance exam and traveled all the way here with great difficulty. When they saw the school gate, they realized it was connected to more mountains.

The dim sky spread out quickly like ink. The typhoon had also secretly followed them all the way here. It had been stormy ever since they arrived.

The military training, which was originally scheduled for early September, was postponed for a month. But the first week of classes was not delayed, and they went to school every day holding their umbrellas against the wind. There had been some protests on the school’s forums and confession walls, but they quickly disappeared like a stone thrown into the water, just a splash and then silence.

The dorm assignments were separated by major. The law school and the art school were separated by one building. Although the school was in the mountains, it was not poor. The dorms were spacious four-person rooms, with bunk beds and desks underneath, private bathrooms, and large closets that could fit clothes for all four seasons.

After Yan Liao became familiar with Tang Shaocheng’s dorm, he learned the names of his roommates. Li Qiao-hai was the one who always stayed in the library until very late. Zhang Yuan was the one who knew all the gossip first. And there was one who lived in the city and would go home on days he didn’t have classes. Yan Liao hadn’t interacted with him and didn’t remember his name.

The roommates all had good personalities. Tang Shaocheng would always let them copy his homework. At the beginning of the semester, he also treated them to a meal. He had also given them a heads-up before Yan Liao came over, so the atmosphere was always harmonious whenever the kid came over.

A light rain fell in the evening, and the fog was so thick that you couldn’t see anything clearly. It was the kind of weather you’d expect for a parade of ghosts.

Yan Liao stayed in Tang Shaocheng’s dorm until ten o’clock without realizing it. The curfew was at 10:30. Just as he was about to leave, he suddenly heard a commotion outside. Li Qiao-hai ran in in a panic. “Quick, get into bed. They’re doing a dorm check!”

“Why are you guys still having dorm checks?”

Yan Liao froze in place. The dorm he lived in was the only co-ed dorm in the school. The janitors, whether they were men or women, would usually avoid suspicion, so they never had dorm checks.

“It’s a surprise check. It’s probably the only one this semester.”

Li Qiao-hai moved quickly as he spoke. Yan Liao only understood what he was doing when he saw him take a rice cooker, a hairdryer, a mini-fridge, a water heater, and a curling iron from under the desk. And he even had a buzz cut.

“…Dude,” Zhang Yuan was dumbfounded. He couldn’t stand it. “Why did you buy a curling iron?”

Li Qiao-hai, while throwing all the illegal appliances onto the bed with lightning speed, climbed up the ladder with the agility of a monkey from the Fruit and Flower Mountain. “That’s my girlfriend’s,” he said like a single father who had worked hard to raise his child. He lovingly hugged the appliances. “She’s temporarily storing them here.”

“Since when did you have a girlfriend?” Zhang Yuan looked at him as if he were looking at the first astronaut to land on the moon. “It’s only been half a month since school started!”

Li Qiao-hai shyly rolled his eyes. “Childhood sweethearts. What do you know?”

…

The fog outside the window was moving, looking like a connected mass of clouds under the blurry streetlights. There were no stars or moon to be seen. Yan Liao looked at the time. There were still fifteen minutes until curfew. He stood up. “I’ll go back now. Don’t get in trouble because of me. The rules are even stricter than in high school.”

“I’ll walk you. Put on your jacket. It’s cold outside.”

It was late and foggy. Just as Tang Shaocheng was about to take his jacket and put it on Yan Liao, he heard Zhang Yuan say, “The door downstairs is locked. You can’t get out.”

Yan Liao looked as if a “?” was slowly appearing above his head. After thinking for a moment, he lowered his voice and asked, “…Is it because there are zombies in this building?”

Zhang Yuan shook his head. “No. When they do a dorm check, they lock the door half an hour in advance. The notice is posted downstairs. You can only get in, not out.”

…Yan Liao was even more certain that there were zombies in this building.

“What do we do now?” He looked at Tang Shaocheng at a loss.

It wasn’t impossible to explain to the dorm supervisor, but that would be too much trouble. He didn’t even know if visiting another dorm would result in a deduction of points. There was a simpler and faster solution.

“Take off your clothes,” Tang Shaocheng said.

Yan Liao’s eyes widened. “Huh?”

Zhang Yuan also chimed in, “It’s fine. The bed is big enough. You can squeeze in and sleep. If not, you can just climb out the window after the check.”

“…This is the ninth floor.”

Zhang Yuan laughed. “I forgot. I thought we were still in high school.”

Li Qiao-hai, hugging a bunch of hungry illegal appliances, shrank into his quilt. He didn’t forget to remind the people below him, “Hurry up. The lights go out at 10:30.”

Now there was no way out. Yan Liao didn’t know if he was nervous or excited. He subconsciously bent his fingers and pinched his palm. “Should I go wash up?”

“Yeah. I’ll go look. I think I bought an extra toothbrush.”

Yan Liao walked into the bathroom as if he were still dreaming. On the sink, he saw that Tang Shaocheng had already squeezed toothpaste onto the toothbrush for him. The face wash, which was labeled “for men,” was placed next to it.

He chuckled. This guy was really into skincare.

…

Tang Shaocheng only brought one set of pajamas. He took out a loose shirt from his closet. “Just wear this for now. It’ll do for one night.”

Time was running out. It seemed like he could hear the sound of the dorm supervisor checking rooms outside. Yan Liao nodded reluctantly, changed into the clothes in a few seconds, and the short sleeves became three-quarter sleeves. The hem of the shirt covered his thighs, so it wasn’t awkward that he wasn’t wearing pants. He didn’t think too much and climbed onto the bed first.

The lights went out almost the moment Tang Shaocheng lay down. Darkness instantly fell from above. There was a rechargeable small desk lamp on the bedside table. He pressed the switch, and a warm, orange light spread out like water grass, landing on the two people’s faces.

Tang Shaocheng bent down in the light, like a gentle, concrete imprint.

Yan Liao squeezed toward the wall and asked in a low voice, “Is there enough room?”

“There is.”

Tang Shaocheng got into bed. They shared one pillow and one blanket. Their breathing brushed unevenly against their eardrums. He turned off the desk lamp. The dorm bed was already narrow. They also had to make it look like there was only one person on the bed when the dorm supervisor came in, so they were practically squeezed against each other.

Yan Liao unconsciously moved toward the wall again. Tang Shaocheng put his arm around him and pulled him into his arms. “Come here. If you keep moving, you’ll stick to the wall.”

“…Okay.”

Yan Liao’s breathing hitched. His forehead rested against Tang Shaocheng’s firm chest. He felt the other person’s gentle, warm breath on the top of his head, and his scalp felt a strange tingling sensation.

He cautiously looked up. “I…”

Before he could say the rest of his sentence, the dorm room door suddenly creaked open, and the unfinished words were left hanging in the air. The light from the hallway flowed in abruptly. Yan Liao immediately buried his face in the blanket. Tang Shaocheng’s chin rested on the top of his head. Neither of them dared to move and remained stiff in that position.

The dorm supervisor shone the flashlight around the room and then left. The moment the door closed, Yan Liao took a big breath as if he had been pulled out of a river. “I was suffocating.”

“What were you trying to say just now?” Tang Shaocheng asked him in a low voice.

Yan Liao immediately bit his lip.

Their breaths were tangled like crossed wires for a moment. He said indistinctly in a low voice, “This is the first time I’ve ever slept in the same bed as someone else.”

Even in the dark, you could imagine his face blushing.

After he said it, he still looked up, waiting for Tang Shaocheng’s answer, as if he was expecting to hear something.

Tang Shaocheng smiled silently with the corners of his mouth. His heart softened. “Me too.”

“Oh!” Yan Liao shrank back into the blanket and said quickly, “Good night!”

“Good night.”

His voice was low and gentle, like a fluffy light caressing his eyelids. Yan Liao closed his eyes, and the tension in his whole body slowly disappeared. A sense of dizziness rose to his nerves like a gentle wave on the beach. He fell asleep faster than he had expected.

The guys in the dorm were in a panic because of the dorm check, and they all forgot to close the window on the balcony. In the middle of the night, a wind suddenly blew in, and there was a faint sound of rain dripping.

The room was a little cold. Tang Shaocheng’s body was warm, and even though it was almost autumn, he was only covered with a thin summer blanket. Yan Liao was so cold in the middle of the night that he wrapped his arms and legs around Tang Shaocheng like an octopus. He also unconsciously nudged his head against the other person’s chest.

He usually had a habit of hugging a pillow when he slept, and now he was treating this person like a pillow.

Tang Shaocheng was in a daze from sleep. It was as if he was dreaming of the past again. He lay on his side and wrapped his arms around Yan Liao.

The narrow space was especially warm because of their close body temperatures. Before he fell asleep, Yan Liao was worried that his sleeping posture would be bad and that he would kick the blanket off. But he didn’t expect that sleeping together would be surprisingly comfortable and warm. He was uncharacteristically well-behaved and curled up in Tang Shaocheng’s arms. In a daze, he thought of a litter of rabbits huddling together for warmth that he had seen at his grandmother’s house when he was a child. He even unconsciously wrapped his legs around the other person’s legs, and his toes unconsciously rubbed against the other person’s skin.

Early the next morning, the faint sunlight poured into the room. Yan Liao’s arm was across the other person’s chest. Tang Shaocheng was in a deep sleep. He was used to this position and didn’t have trouble breathing from being pressed down.

Yan Liao was starting to wake up in a daze. Before he could even open his eyes, he felt a strong, firm arm around his shoulder. Tang Shaocheng wasn’t fully awake yet. He bent his elbow and pulled the person lying next to him into his arms, naturally giving him a kiss on the top of his head.

…Yan Liao was completely awake, as if he had been struck by lightning. He took a deep breath and thought blankly for a moment about what had just happened. It wasn’t a hallucination. He hadn’t even recovered yet when he suddenly realized that he had been sleeping on Tang Shaocheng’s arm all night.

He was afraid that he had put so much pressure on the other person that his arm was amputated, so he quickly scrambled to get up.

Tang Shaocheng frowned. His alarm hadn’t gone off yet, and he was a little grumpy. The hand that was now free habitually went down and touched Yan Liao’s butt. He pinched it and then patted it twice, not too lightly and not too heavily. “Stop it.”

…

Yan Liao was completely petrified, as if a Medusa was lying next to him.

On a bed that was less than two square meters, it seemed like something was holding him in this narrow space, unable to move.

Tang Shaocheng’s hand was still there. It was a warm, wide palm with long fingers, wrapped around a soft area.

Yan Liao’s heart was beating like a drum. In the corner of his eye, he couldn’t get rid of the profile of the person next to him. The other roommates hadn’t woken up yet, so he couldn’t make a sound.

He was holding it in like a balloon that was constantly being inflated. His face got redder and hotter, and his blood vessels seemed to be throbbing. He couldn’t help but look up at the other person and saw Tang Shaocheng’s eyebrows relaxed and the corners of his lips slightly turned up, as if he was having a good dream.

He wanted to wake him up but swallowed it back. He had to distract himself. Yan Liao tried to pull the blanket out from under him, but he was afraid that he would wake up the person next to him if he made too much movement, so he cautiously tried a few positions, but it didn’t work.

This blanket was staying here.

After about ten minutes, Tang Shaocheng slowly opened his eyes. He looked down and saw Yan Liao lying obediently in his arms. When he looked up, his throat was as if he had choked on water, and he had a lot to say but couldn’t. His eyelashes trembled, and he bit his lip with a complicated expression.

…Tang Shaocheng moved his hand away as if nothing had happened.

Yan Liao saw that he was fully awake and quickly got out of bed. When he was about to step over him, he thought of the scary urban legend that “if you step over someone, they won’t grow taller,” but he quickly changed his mind. This guy is almost 1.9 meters tall. Why would he need to grow taller? He resolutely climbed off the bed.

The other roommates hadn’t woken up yet. Yan Liao went into the bathroom as if he were a guilty thief—when he went in, he gritted his teeth and thought, The one who should be feeling guilty is someone else!

Tang Shaocheng rested on the bed for a while before letting out a sigh and slowly getting up.

They couldn’t sleep together like this anymore. It was too dangerous. It was easy to become a hooligan.

Yan Liao stayed in the bathroom for a long time without coming out. There was always a sound of gushing water. After a while, Tang Shaocheng suddenly heard two intermittent, cat-like knocks on the door.

It came from the bathroom.

He thought Yan Liao had locked himself in, but when he walked over and was about to ask, the door suddenly opened a crack.

Yan Liao was clinging to the side of the door. His fuzzy head and a pair of misty eyes peeked out. The tips of his ears were as red as a cooked shrimp. He asked in a low voice, “Do you have any new… underwear?”

Tang Shaocheng’s brain was frozen for a second. He quickly realized what was happening.

It’s fine. He’s a teenager. This kind of thing is normal.

He didn’t make a big fuss and was very considerate of the child’s feelings. “Yes. Wait a minute.”

Tang Shaocheng turned around and found a new, unopened pair of underwear in his closet. It was one size too big, but it would have to do for now.

Yan Liao stood there awkwardly, like he was unclaimed. He finally waited for Tang Shaocheng to come back. Just as he was about to close the door, his wrist was held, and he heard a voice. “Give it to me.”

“…Hmm?”

“The one you changed out of. I’ll go hang it on the balcony.”

Yan Liao closed his eyes, took a deep breath, thought, was silent, was confused, wanted to cry, wanted to hit his head against the wall, but couldn’t bring himself to do it.

In the end, he just gave up, handing it over as if he were handing over a deed of sale.

Yan Liao walked out of the bathroom with an expression that said, “Since ancient times, what hero has not died?” He saw that Tang Shaocheng had already folded his clothes and put them on the desk.

The other roommates also woke up one after another. He slowly shuffled over to change his clothes. He briefly forgot about the humiliation from earlier and hesitated for a moment between secretly taking Tang Shaocheng’s clothes and leaving them behind.

He still pretended to be nonchalant when the other person came over. “I’ll take your clothes back to wash.”

“You don’t have to. Just leave them there.”

Yan Liao’s expression was as if he had been offended for the second time today.

Tang Shaocheng stared at him for a while, pursed his lips, and smiled. He went along with it. “You can wash them. Thank you.”