The midnight sun looked like a scene played at a hundred times slower speed. The thin clouds along the horizon had dispersed, and the ground reflected a pale golden light.
They had just left a restaurant with terrible food, but fortunately, Lake Tjörnin wasn’t far. Zhu Lianzhen had been fixated on seeing the swans, and within minutes, he’d forgotten all about being hungry. Large numbers of swans and ducks had gathered by the lake, along with a few scattered grey geese. Zhu Lianzhen had specifically bought a bag of bread to feed them.
Quite a few swans flew up onto the shore, gathering near him. Zhu Lianzhen kept muttering, “Don’t rush, don’t rush,” as he quickly tore off pieces of bread and threw them on the ground. Some of them weren’t satisfied with being fed in turn and stretched their necks out to peck at the bread in his hand. Zhu Lianzhen pulled back faster, laughing at the swans’ antics.
Tan Qing stood nearby adjusting his camera settings. He took a few photos of Zhu Lianzhen with the swans, then turned the lens toward the orange-red sky and clicked the shutter. When he heard more noise by the shore, he turned and reminded Zhu Lianzhen, “Careful not to fall.”
Zhu Lianzhen took a few steps back toward him and glanced at the camera in his hands. “Let’s switch.”
As soon as the bag of bread was handed to Tan Qing, all the birds and swans around surged toward him. Zhu Lianzhen held up the camera and snapped away. After a while, he noticed Tan Qing had stopped moving and was looking closely at the bread in his hand.
“There’s a bug,” Tan Qing said.
“Huh? Just our luck.” Zhu Lianzhen leaned over to take a look, immediately grimacing in disgust. “Wait, we’re not eating it. The birds probably think it’s a treat.”
Tan Qing nodded and was about to tear off that piece when, for some reason, Zhu Lianzhen’s brain glitched and he opened his mouth, imitating a swan, “Ahhh—”
“…”
Faced with this baffling move, Tan Qing went silent for two seconds, then reached out to feed the bug-infested bread into Zhu Lianzhen’s mouth.
Zhu Lianzhen yelped, snapped his mouth shut, and quickly backed away, instantly regretting his moment of madness.
Tan Qing couldn’t help laughing and threw the bread to the birds.
Zhu Lianzhen kept fiddling with the camera, actually trying to use the lens as a cover to observe the other man. But his clumsy pretense was easily seen through by Tan Qing, who played along for a while before saying, “The bread’s long gone. Still want to feed them?”
Zhu Lianzhen looked at the empty bag in his hand and realized his hands were feeling a bit cold. “Nah, let’s head back.”
The guesthouse had an outdoor hot spring, but Zhu Lianzhen thought it was too small to enjoy properly, so he just took a hot shower in the bathroom. Night had already fallen. He pulled the blackout curtains tightly shut, trying to avoid the midnight sun from disturbing his sleep.
Tan Qing was reviewing the photos on the camera. Zhu Lianzhen climbed into bed and stayed beside him, then suddenly remarked, “I can tell you’re in a good mood today.”
Tan Qing removed the battery and set it aside to charge, replying casually, “Is that the result of a whole day of you observing me?”
“I wasn’t observing you all day! Don’t make it sound like I was spying on you,” Zhu Lianzhen corrected his wording, then explained, “You’re not the kind of person who smiles easily. Of course, the fake smiles you put on for appearances don’t count. So if I see you actively enjoying something, like how you took so many photos today, I just assume you’re in a good mood… That’s a reasonable guess, right?”
Tan Qing thought about it for a moment, then told him, “I don’t know.”
But to satisfy Zhu Lianzhen’s curiosity, he still made an effort to expand on the thought, continuing, “To me, being in a good or bad mood isn’t a necessary metric in life. Even if nothing makes me happy for a while, it doesn’t really matter. There are always more important things I have to do, and I don’t have time to think about that stuff.”
“However.” Tan Qing turned his head to look at Zhu Lianzhen. “Traveling with you is one of the few things that brings me joy. It always has been.”
While feeling relieved that this last-minute trip had turned out to be the right move, Zhu Lianzhen muttered, “I knew that even without you saying it.”
“And you? Do you feel relaxed so far?” Tan Qing asked. “You were still unhappy with parts of the choreography for the new song, and right before the flight, you were going over the backup plans for the concert. So now that you’ve dropped all of that, can just a few days really let you enjoy yourself?”
Zhu Lianzhen realized that now it was Tan Qing’s turn to observe him.
Unlike Tan Qing, Zhu Lianzhen’s emotions really did influence his actions. And right now, with nothing weighing him down, he said whatever came to mind, “Urgent matters aren’t just those. Being with you is just as important. Even if we don’t get to fully enjoy ourselves, at least we saw snow, didn’t we? And it’s summer.”
After speaking, Zhu Lianzhen reached toward Tan Qing, hooked a finger around the frame on his nose, and took off his glasses, setting them down on the table. Tan Qing’s gaze dropped as he leaned forward and kissed Zhu Lianzhen gently. His hand slid to the back of Zhu Lianzhen’s neck, leaving a warm trace.
Their kiss moved slowly, with repeated touches and entanglements, skin pressing intimately together as they lay down, as if sinking into a warm sea together.
The overhead light in the room made Zhu Lianzhen squint. He turned his head to avoid the brightness and calmed his breath at the same time. Tan Qing’s nose brushed along his cheek as he asked in a low voice, “Are you uncomfortable?”
Just as Zhu Lianzhen was about to say they should turn off the light, he opened his eyes and their gazes met. All the emotion and desire in Tan Qing’s eyes were laid bare for him to see, and he, too, was completely exposed. Zhu Lianzhen forgot what he was going to say. He stared at Tan Qing for a moment, then reached up to cover his eyes with his hand.
Even so, through the palm of his hand, he could feel the faint fluttering of Tan Qing’s eyelashes, and still had the illusion that Tan Qing was seeing right through him.
“Why does it feel like you can still see me even with your eyes closed?” Zhu Lianzhen asked.
Tan Qing replied, “I can feel you.”
His kiss landed slowly but without hesitation, from Zhu Lianzhen’s eyelid to the bridge of his nose, then along the perfect jawline down to the prominent Adam’s apple. When their lips were just centimeters apart, Tan Qing stopped, as if he could accurately perceive Zhu Lianzhen’s expression by feeling alone. With a hand still between them, it was as if they were locking eyes again.
What Zhu Lianzhen didn’t know was that every subtle shift between them reached Tan Qing’s ears. When his breathing became rapid, when a low moan needed to be soothed by a gentle kiss. These were actually easier to hear than see directly with the eyes.
Ambiguity circled them again and again, winding around their bodies. Zhu Lianzhen’s hand had long since fallen down. He found just the right angle, with the glaring light above his head just blocked by Tan Qing’s shoulder. Zhu Lianzhen started to feel hot, yet still wanted to let his body temperature continue to rise. For a split second, he deeply felt how precious that moment was.
It felt like even the separation of their past had been a step they had to take to reach this moment.
The sky over Reykjavik stayed bright. Zhu Lianzhen had no idea how late into the night he’d fallen asleep. When he woke up, the view outside the window was exactly the same. He checked his phone to calculate how long he had slept.
Tan Qing wasn’t in the bed, nor was he downstairs. Zhu Lianzhen took a quick shower, bundled himself in his coat, and stepped outside. The air still carried that cool, minty crispness. After walking just a few dozen steps, he spotted Tan Qing’s figure in the distance.
A spruce tree stood alone in the snow, surrounded by blank whiteness. Tan Qing had seen it that morning from the window, like making eye contact with a lonely traveler across a vast distance. He’d come out to take a closer look and found the tree was wrapped in multiple loops of iron chains, taut and anchored into the ground to keep it upright.
When he heard footsteps approaching behind him, Tan Qing knew it was Zhu Lianzhen. He turned around and noticed that Zhu Lianzhen had sensibly worn a scarf and gloves, and even remembered to cover his ears for warmth.
“So much open space, and only one tree.” Zhu Lianzhen glanced around. “But it actually looks pretty photogenic. Do you want to take one?”
Tan Qing shook his head and said, “Looking at it just now reminded me of the one tree outside my childhood home. If we forgot to shut the windows when it was windy, all the leaves would blow into the house.”
Zhu Lianzhen thought this was going to be a bad memory about cleaning, but Tan Qing continued, “I’d pick up the ones with a regular shape and dry them. They were perfect for making specimens. I never knew what variety it was, just remember the leaf colors changed very consistently throughout the year.”
The residential complex they lived in had been built before the millennium, and the residents didn’t yet have much expectation for landscaped greenery. That tree outside the window was the only thing between the two buildings that could barely be considered a view. Tan Qing would stare outside almost every day after finishing his homework, counting how many times the wind passed through and trying to predict the weather for the following days. If he got it right, he would feel a small, insignificant sense of joy when going out that day.
“If I had trouble sleeping at night, I’d pull the curtain open a little so I could see the tree outside. Counting its branches would put me to sleep quickly,” Tan Qing said. “Around the time I was about to start middle school, I came home from school one day and saw it had already been cut down to only seven or eight branches.”
Zhu Lianzhen: “Huh? Why?”
“It probably grew too lush and blocked the sunlight. So my mom asked the property management to trim it.”
“Cutting it down to the point where there weren’t even leaves left sounds against regulations. I mean, it’d grow back in a few years…” Zhu Lianzhen said. “Did your mom know it’d make you sad?”
“Why would I be sad?” Tan Qing replied with a question of his own.
“From how you described it just now, I thought you were pretty fond of that tree.”
“I was just used to it being there. When the environment changed, I just adapted again.”
Zhu Lianzhen rarely heard Tan Qing mention anything from before they met. In Tan Qing’s own words, there was “nothing interesting worth sharing.” After knowing him for a while, Zhu Lianzhen had come to believe that was probably true. You could roughly trace someone’s upbringing from their personality, and Tan Qing’s temperament was clearly something shaped from a young age.
“If it had been you, you would’ve at least complained a little,” Tan Qing said.
Zhu Lianzhen gave a straightforward “Mm,” then thought for a moment before adding, “That’s because I knew my parents would try to cheer me up. But if I never expected any comfort from anyone… then maybe, if something similar happened again, I’d probably learn to ‘adapt,’ too.”
Tan Qing paused and didn’t respond. He might not have understood his past self, but it felt like Zhu Lianzhen, through all that time, was trying to reach out and empathize with his younger self. So in this moment, all those past disappointments didn’t seem to matter anymore.
The snowy ground was silent. Tan Qing turned around and looked at Zhu Lianzhen.
“Xiao Zhu, I’ve always been searching for an answer.”
