The Long Night - Chapter 9

After the results came out, they were posted directly at the front of the classroom. As soon as the class bell rang, a crowd of people rushed over eagerly, forming a tight circle around it.

Tang Shaocheng stayed in his seat. Even if he didn’t go to see it, other students would tell him.

As expected, as soon as someone saw the report card, they yelled from the back of the class, “Tang Shaocheng, you’re back in first place! The number one in the entire school!”

His tone was as excited as if a martial arts alliance leader had returned. This was something that brought glory to the class, so it was understandable that the students would be excited.

He was ranked sixth in the city. Teacher Wang said happily, “There’s still room for improvement,” wishing that Tang Shaocheng would really get the highest score in the college entrance exam so he could add another line to his resume.

Soon, several students came over to congratulate him. Tang Shaocheng nodded politely. “Thank you.”

In the classroom on the other side of the hallway.

The report card was so crowded that you couldn’t even get close to it. Yan Liao used to look for his name from the bottom up. Usually, he could find himself within five names.

In his second year of high school, he was always the third from the bottom. The two at the very bottom were students who were in the athletics program. The three of them never broke the stereotype and never tried to prove themselves to anyone.

This time, Yan Liao slowly looked up from the bottom. He counted more than a dozen names before he saw his own. He raised his eyebrows in a little surprise and whistled to himself.

He really wanted to run out of the classroom right now.

The teacher was still on the podium, sternly criticizing the students who had fallen behind. Yan Liao returned to his seat, but before he could even sit still, several people surrounded him, chattering and asking him if he had a secret method to improve his grades so quickly.

“Did you take some tutoring classes?”

“What kind of books have you bought recently?”

Yan Liao was getting annoyed after just a few questions. He said, “I don’t know,” with a sour face. Not only did he not have a generous spirit of sharing, but he also couldn’t even pretend to be humble.

The students around him dispersed reluctantly. Someone whispered sarcastically, “…What’s he pretending for?”

Yan Liao didn’t hear it. He lowered his head and flicked the physics paper he had done the best on with his finger. He thought that Tang Shaocheng would praise him, and he couldn’t help but smile with pride.

He felt a strange gaze staring at him, but when he turned his head, he saw that the students around him were all doing their own things, as if it was just an illusion.

But the cold, slimy feeling didn’t go away. In fact, it got worse, and his back felt a little cold.

Yan Liao frowned and muttered to himself, “How strange.”

After the third class, Yan Liao took a stack of papers and ran to Tang Shaocheng’s classroom, placing them on his desk with a thump.

Tang Shaocheng was very cooperative. “You’re amazing,” “You’re so impressive”… and so on, praising the child until his proud expression was as if he had a tail that would wag to the sky.

Yan Liao was very satisfied. Before he left, Tang Shaocheng gave him a chocolate bar, which happened to be his favorite: hazelnut dark chocolate.

How could he always guess what he liked?

After he left, Lu Xiao returned to his seat from the bathroom. He looked at the stack of Yan Liao’s papers on Tang Shaocheng’s desk and asked strangely, “Why did he give you his test papers?”

“For his parents’ signature.”

Lu Xiao’s brain suddenly became slow. He actually believed that the teacher in the other class was so twisted. “…You’re going to sign it?”

Tang Shaocheng nodded seriously. “Yes, I’ll sign it.”

During the break, he patiently looked through them from beginning to end. His science scores improved quickly because of the many practice problems he had done, but his Chinese language skills still had some foundational issues. He didn’t manage his time well, and his essay clearly looked like it had been finished in the last few minutes. The last two lines of his handwriting were so messy they were almost illegible. His English score was unstable. He hadn’t memorized enough vocabulary, and he had almost no feel for the language, so he was relying entirely on luck.

Tang Shaocheng patiently circled all the problems he found and planned to go over them with Yan Liao that night and have him do some more of those types of problems.

The azure sky hung low, the sunlight was dim, and large clumps of white, sheep-like clouds floated slowly.

Every day, there were students in blue and white school uniforms running and playing on the field, like a special set for a youth movie. During the lunch break, the two of them sat on the long bench under the shade of a tree to recite their lessons. Yan Liao had already recited to the part that said, “Looking up, the universe is vast.” He looked up, and a green leaf was blown down by the wind. He blew it away with a breath before it could land on his face.

Yan Liao’s gaze was focused on the leaf. A blurred figure with heavy footsteps walked up behind him. Lu Xiao, panting, sat down to Tang Shaocheng’s left with a basketball. “That son of a b*tch from class three kept stealing my ball again today.”

“…” Yan Liao looked away.

Tang Shaocheng sat between the two of them and adjusted his posture again. The book on his knee happened to be on the last page. He raised his hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. He turned to his right and asked, “Want to go to the bookstore tomorrow?”

“Okay…”

Before Yan Liao could finish, Lu Xiao, who was drinking from a bottle of water with his head tilted back, hastily swallowed the last sip. He put down the bottle and said with a careless attitude, “Are you guys going? I’ll come, too. I was just about to go.”

Yan Liao pursed his lips and suddenly felt inexplicably annoyed. The eager expression he had a moment ago turned cold and a little aggressive.

“What a coincidence. I’m not going. I don’t have time.”

Tang Shaocheng’s eyes held a half-smile, and he didn’t look surprised at all. It was as if he was sure that Yan Liao would react this way.

He wasn’t surprised to find that Yan Liao’s personality was actually very easy to manipulate. The way he was at seventeen seemed very different from ten years later, but he was still the same person.

The adult Yan Liao had reined in the eccentric parts of his personality, but he still had many moments of being awkward and saying the opposite of what he meant. Tang Shaocheng remembered one time when he was about to go out to meet a good friend. Yan Liao sat on the sofa with his back to him in a huff, only showing his round back of his head. “Go ahead. It’s not like I’m that petty. They’re just friends.” But when Tang Shaocheng was about to leave, he would pounce on him, hug him, and not let go, yelling, “Don’t leave, honey.”

Tang Shaocheng hid his smile and patted Lu Xiao’s back, saying meaningfully, “Don’t you have something to do tomorrow?”

“What…” Lu Xiao paused. His eyes moved between the two of them. He suddenly laughed with a forced smile. “Oh yeah, I almost forgot I was planning on being sick and going to the hospital tomorrow. See what a mess this is.”

Whenever they went out together, Yan Liao would dress up like a superhero. He wore a beautiful silver stud on his ear cartilage, with a thin chain dangling from it.

Tang Shaocheng still decided not to suppress the child’s personality and let him grow freely. He was just a little annoyed by his fashion sense. When he wasn’t wearing his school uniform, he looked like he had snuck out of a nightclub.

They arrived at a nearby mall. It was hard for brick-and-mortar bookstores to stay in business, so this one had been converted into a place that combined a library, a bookstore, a cafe, and a study hall. It went from being a place with few customers to the most popular spot in the entire mall.

At the entrance of the store, they were also selling merchandise. A few girls were gathered in a circle. When they saw Tang Shaocheng and Yan Liao walk in, they suddenly bumped each other’s arms, secretly glanced over, and whispered something before laughing.

The atmosphere was a little strange. Yan Liao subconsciously thought they were comparing who was more handsome, so he deliberately stood on his tiptoes next to Tang Shaocheng, ambitiously trying to add a few centimeters to his height. Tang Shaocheng gave him a puzzled side glance and casually ruffled his fluffy hair.

The stares around them instantly became more intense, and he even heard a few sharp intakes of breath, as if they had a toothache.

Yan Liao thought, Sure enough, I’m the more handsome one.

Yan Liao had originally planned to go to the textbook section to buy some study materials, but when he got to the comic book section, his legs couldn’t move, and he took a turn as if his soul had been captured.

He took a book and hid it behind his sleeve. His black grape-like eyes darted around. Tang Shao-cheng’s lips curved. “Read it if you want.”

“Just for a little while.” Yan Liao promised, holding up a finger.

He lowered his head and flipped through the pages. When he saw something funny, he laughed and tugged on the sleeve of the person next to him. “Look at this. It’s so funny.”

“Hmm?”

Tang Shaocheng lowered his head and was about to lean in when two children suddenly ran out of nowhere and onto the stairs, yelling, “Pa!” and turned off the lights.

The lights went out, and everything was plunged into darkness.

No one moved for the first second.

The next second, Yan Liao’s body swayed slightly. He suddenly felt a pair of warm hands on either side of his waist, and as he spoke, his lips gently brushed against his ear. “Careful.”

His voice was low and warm, like the sound of a plucked string. It was the kind of voice you would only hear in a dream, hazy and distant yet within reach.

The chaotic exclamations and complaints of the people around them seemed to disappear. The figures moving frantically at the edges of his vision were like a blurry forest.

His other senses were instantly magnified infinitely. The heavy, woody scent of the bookshelves, the warm breath gently blowing on his skin. It seemed like every pore let down its guard and opened slightly. The deafening heartbeat was so clear in the darkness, as if it was knocking against something.

Time briefly solidified into transparent amber.

The lights came back on after only a few seconds. The sudden bright light slightly stung his retina. The two troublemaking children were quickly taken away by their parents, one on each arm. One of them was still kicking his short legs and shouting, “I’m not saying sorry! I’ll be back!”

“What are you looking at?”

Yan Liao’s heart had not yet calmed down. He suddenly looked up like a puppy whose tail had been stepped on. “…Hmm?”

His breathing was slow, as if he were out of breath. The other person’s hands had already let go, but the warm sensation seemed to linger on his waist.

Tang Shaocheng said helplessly, “Didn’t you have something you wanted to show me just now?”

“Ah.”

Yan Liao lowered his eyelids. Only then did he realize that he had clenched the pages of the book in his hands at some point. He quickly let go of his fingers. The corner of the page was left with a telling crease, like a cloud that had been crumpled by a storm.

“…Never mind. The drawing is actually pretty average.” He calmly closed the book.

In the end, he bought the “average” comic book, along with two study guides.

In May, summer began. The weather was hot and dry. Outside the window, birds and cicadas chattered incessantly, as if they were taking a class in a zoo.

There was no air conditioning in the classroom. The three ceiling fans on the top turned with a whooshing sound, stirring up the air, making the already hot, stuffy air even hotter.

When Yan Liao’s mind used to wander in class, he would often fantasize about a fan suddenly falling down. Because of inertia, it would still be spinning and would cut off something… and then something would splash out like a fountain.

But now, his mind wouldn’t wander. He listened very carefully. If it was an open class and there were leaders and teachers around, they would take a picture of his straight back for the cover of a school newsletter.

The countdown on the blackboard had become a very urgent two-digit number. If it were in “weeks,” it would be an even scarier single-digit number.

Yan Liao listened with great concentration. He wanted to improve so badly that the teacher on the podium felt nervous being stared at. When he occasionally spoke too quickly, he could feel a murderous look in Yan Liao’s eyes. At that moment, he would know that the child didn’t understand again and would find an excuse to explain it again with great professional ethics.

At this age, many children have all kinds of strange self-esteem issues. For example, they don’t want others to see them working hard, and they are probably afraid of being laughed at if they work hard but don’t get better grades. But Yan Liao was the type of person who didn’t care about “what others think” no matter what he did.

“I don’t have time to go to the arcade,” “I have to study tonight,” “I have to memorize and study. Don’t bother me while I’m in class”—he would always say these things naturally and directly.

There was only one person he truly cared about. Everything else was a trivial matter that wouldn’t affect his mood.

The weather was hot. Outside the window was the bustling life of a residential area. In the summer, the restaurants on the street would set up their woks outside, and the aroma of stir-fried dishes would float far away.

Yan Liao was doing problems with his head down. His soft black hair was messed up, and a small tuft was sticking up. Tang Shaocheng was a little sleepy. He stretched and saw it, and he naturally reached out to help him smooth his hair down.

Outside the window was the scorching sun. Heat waves rolled in. The sound of clinking beer bottles from the popular street food stalls could be heard from seven floors up.

Yan Liao was immersed in his calculations and didn’t cover his head and complain, “What are you doing?” like he used to. He had accepted and gotten used to this kind of physical contact.

Time was like a slowly crawling snail. Ten minutes felt as long as a century.

The small fan on the study table worked hard, and Yan Liao also tried his best to concentrate on the three-dimensional geometry problem he was working on. A few minutes later, he put down his pen and flipped to the answers. When he saw that the proof process and the result were identical, his spirits lifted.

“I solved it!”

He excitedly shook Tang Shaocheng’s arm, which was resting on the table. “Am I amazing? Am I amazing?”

Tang Shaocheng had stayed up all night to memorize his lessons the night before, and he didn’t have the habit of taking a nap at noon. Now, his body was finally giving out. His eyelids felt like they were covered with a thick paste, and he couldn’t open them.

He was so tired that his mind was in a daze. He seemed to hear a familiar voice, familiar words. Suddenly, it was as if he was back in his old study. When he was writing documents, Yan Liao would be drawing next to him, and he would often put down his palette and hold up his drawing board and ask, “Am I amazing?”

“You’re amazing,” Tang Shaocheng propped his head up with one hand, his eyes swaying slightly. The last two words were so quiet they were almost inaudible. “…Good boy.”

It was the dialect they used to call a child in their area.

Yan Liao’s eyes widened. He pulled his hand back as if he had been burned, and his head felt as if an atomic bomb had exploded.