A tingling sensation shot through Tang Yu’s waist. He slapped Ji Qian’ang’s hand away at once and muttered, “Am I really that much shorter than you?”
“Then why were you standing on tiptoe?”
Tang Yu answered with perfect confidence, “Because I felt like it.”
He spread ointment over his fingertips and raised his hand again, gently brushing the cut at the corner of Ji Qian’ang’s eye before smoothing the medicine around it.
Ji Qian’ang fell silent. Watching the person in front of him bandage the wound with such concentration, he wondered how someone with such a nasty temper had learned to dress injuries so well.
Tang Yu laid gauze over the cut and secured it with tape. As if mentioning it in passing, he said in Cantonese, “He was talking nonsense. Don’t listen to him.”
Ji Qian’ang naturally knew he meant Tian Qianxing’s earlier “translation.” The corner of his mouth lifted, amusement glinting in his eye. “Really? I had no idea I looked better undressed than dressed.”
Tang Yu stared at him.
At last, he shot Ji Qian’ang an exasperated look and hurled the roll of gauze at him. “You’re seriously annoying.”
Back in the classroom, Tang Yu walked to Ji Qian’ang’s desk and dragged it into its old place.
Tian Qianxing asked in surprise, “What, are you two friends again?”
Tang Yu already had his answer prepared. He raised the corner of his mouth and replied without a flaw, “The sun went down.”
Uncle Chen was waiting at Gate Three to drive them to Jardine House. Tang Yu and Ji Qian’ang walked side by side, neither mentioning anything that had happened during swimming class.
“Hey,” Tang Yu said. “Your eye—do you want to go to the hospital?”
Ji Qian’ang stopped and adjusted Tang Yu’s schoolbag where it hung from his shoulder. “It was already ruined. There’s no point making a fuss over it.”
The moment Ji Qian’ang said it, Tang Yu was left speechless. He looked away and quickened his pace.
Was this guy blaming him? Tang Yu brooded. What, should he repay an eye with an eye and dig his own out as compensation?
Halfway there, Ji Qian’ang asked Uncle Chen to stop. He said he wanted to buy a magazine and that they did not need to wait; he would arrive later by himself.
Tang Yu was already tired of looking at his gloomy face, so he waved him off and let him go.
Tang Yu spent the next two hours in an interpreting booth, practicing simultaneous interpretation with his grandmother. Midway through the session, Ji Qian’ang sent him a message saying he had gone to the hospital to have his eye examined and would not be coming to keep him company.
Tang Yu restrained himself from asking whether the injury had worsened. He turned his phone facedown on the desk and did not reply.
He gripped his copy of A Course in English-Chinese Simultaneous Interpretation and stared at Chapter Three’s strategies for handling long, complex sentences. After a long while, he had not absorbed a single word.
He finally shut the book and returned to the old Repulse Bay residence with Uncle Chen.
Lin Juefei had come back from overseas. Tang Yu’s mother had instructed the staff in advance that Lin Juefei’s old room was rather damp, so he would be moved to the second floor of the main house, into the room beside Tang Yu’s bedroom.
That room had once been Tang Yifeng’s study. Everything belonging to Tang Yifeng had been cleared out, apart from the posters Tang Yu and Tang Yifeng had pasted on the walls together and the doodles they had drawn there.
Tang Yu still went inside sometimes and sat staring at those slowly fading scribbles.
His mother had not discussed the change with him at all. When Tang Yu returned, he found workers renovating the room. The drawings on the wall had already been scraped beyond recognition.
If he had not insisted on preserving them, those drawings should have vanished the instant Tang Yifeng stopped breathing.
Tang Yu’s breathing grew ragged. He wanted to argue with someone, yet knew it would be pointless. He remembered Ji Qian’ang’s answer that night: the person lived in his heart, and that itself was proof he had existed. That mark would never disappear.
He did not need any physical object to prove Tang Yifeng had once been here.
Clenching the hem of his uniform, Tang Yu turned his face away and walked toward his bedroom.
A weight pressed against his chest. He had no appetite and collapsed wearily onto the bed. He did not know when Ji Qian’ang returned; Butler Lin only said that his eye seemed to be in rather serious condition.
A member of staff knocked partway through the evening to call him to dinner, but Tang Yu refused. The worker sighed helplessly, then placed a snow globe on the middle shelf.
“Young Master, we found this in the storeroom while cleaning today. It resembles the one you used to keep on your desk. Young Ji told us the old one broke, so we’ve put out a new one for you.”
Tang Yu did not answer. He had no interest in such trivialities and pulled the blanket over his head.
But whenever he closed his eyes, all he could think about was Ji Qian’ang’s injured eye. He tossed and turned, unable to sleep.
At three in the morning, Ji Qian’ang lay in bed in the side wing when a rustling sound woke him.
He opened his eye blearily.
A small, ghostlike figure stood beside the bed, face dark and gaze fixed directly on him.
“Hey,” Tang Yu said. “Pick one.”
He turned toward a table that had appeared from nowhere. Ji Qian’ang followed his gaze and found it crowded with dessert boxes: cheesecake from The Peninsula, macarons from Paul Lafayet, mille crêpe cake from Lady M, Godiva chocolate-coated ice cream, and almost everything else imaginable.
Some had been bought by the staff during the day. Tang Yu had picked up others on his way back from Jardine House that afternoon, only to be too proud to give them away. Once he heard that someone’s injury was serious, however, sleep had become impossible.
Ji Qian’ang sat up. Merely looking at the row of desserts made his teeth ache. “You…”
Tang Yu walked to the bedside and tugged his arm. “Stop talking. Come pick one.”
Ji Qian’ang moved to the table and surveyed the mountain of sweets. Then he glanced at the clock on the wall. Its hands pointed to four. “This is what you eat for a midnight snack?”
“It’s your midnight snack.”
The truth was that Tang Yu had no idea what Ji Qian’ang liked—food, clothes, anything. He had once overheard the staff saying that Ji Qian’ang had quietly finished all the tiramisu they brought home from domestic science class. That was why Tang Yu had decided on desserts.
The guilt he could not put into words had been packed into seven or eight cake boxes instead.
“I don’t like sweets.”
Ji Qian’ang gave a cold laugh and teased, “My left eye is already gone. Does Young Master want to take my teeth too?”
Hearing him bring up his eye again, Tang Yu retorted indignantly, “Auntie Liu said you ate all that tiramisu in the middle of the night.”
Ji Qian’ang hesitated. “You had no appetite. I couldn’t let it spoil.”
With that, he turned back toward the bed.
Tang Yu, looking prepared to fight him to the bitter end, blocked his way. “Choose anything. Just take one bite.”
Ji Qian’ang gave him a meaningful look. Then he nodded, turned, and picked up a slice of Black Forest cake. He opened the box, cut off one corner with a fork, and put it into his mouth.
After he chewed and swallowed, Tang Yu asked with barely concealed expectation, “How is it?”
“Too sweet.”
“Then stop eating.”
Once Ji Qian’ang had taken that bite, one of the great burdens on Tang Yu’s mind finally settled.
How could he have known that the debt for ruining Ji Qian’ang’s eye alone would take a lifetime to repay? Yet Ji Qian’ang kept seeing him at his most embarrassing, tangling their lives so tightly that the balance between them would never be cleared.
Tang Yu turned away to organize the dessert boxes, stacking them one by one. He had only placed the second on top when a dull thud sounded behind him.
He turned. The Black Forest cake had flipped over onto the bedsheet. Chocolate cream smeared across the white fabric in a glaring stain.
The fork hit the floor, bounced once, and rolled into a corner.
Tang Yu frowned at the mess. “What are you doing?”
“It slipped.”
Unhurriedly, Ji Qian’ang used the box to scoop up the larger pieces of cake. As he passed Tang Yu, the shapeless mass suddenly slid sideways and brushed Tang Yu’s upper arm.
The strange, sticky sensation made Tang Yu step back at once, his features twisting in disgust.
A flash of counterfeit apology crossed Ji Qian’ang’s eye. He opened his mouth and said, “I didn’t hold it steady. I’ll clean up here. Go wash that off.”
Tang Yu did not know what to say. Ji Qian’ang seemed less coordinated than usual. Was it because Tang Yu had dragged him awake in the middle of the night?
He pulled his short sleeve all the way up over his shoulder, went into the bathroom, and turned on the tap. Cold water rushed out. He twisted the faucet to the other side and waited, but the water remained cold—bitingly so.
Tang Yu pulled his hand away and tried every position, left and right, up and down. The water was still icy.
He knitted his brows as realization began to dawn.
No one had lived in the old house’s side wing for years. Although workers came regularly to perform inspections and repairs, they focused mostly on the areas in active use.
The side wing had fallen into disrepair. Its equipment might have been faulty even before Ji Qian’ang moved in.
At that moment, an even worse possibility occurred to Tang Yu.