A cold front hit, and the temperature in Haicheng dropped several degrees overnight.
Ruan Yadong followed Zhou Yan into the rented apartment, rubbing his hands together from the cold. “Whoa, I’m freezing! Do you have slippers?” He opened the shoe cabinet as he spoke and casually pulled out a pair of bunny-head slippers. “What are these?”
Zhou Yan quickly grabbed another pair for him. “Wear these.”
“Why do you even have shoes like that?” Ruan Yadong looked at the confiscated bunny-head slippers with disdain, as if questioning Zhou Yan’s taste.
A flicker of awkwardness crossed Zhou Yan’s face. He casually put on the bunny-head slippers himself and went into the bedroom. “Have a seat first. Let me look for something.”
Ruan Yadong’s attention shifted as he surveyed the rented apartment, then he followed Zhou Yan to the bedroom door.
“Why are there so many boxes under your bed?” Ruan Yadong wondered.
“…Those are old things.” Zhou Yan quickly found the one with his work documents, pulled out a stack, and stood up. “Let’s go out. All my project files from Yintian are here.”
The two returned to the living room. Zhou Yan picked out the case files Ruan Yadong wanted and handed them to him.
“What’s that smell?” Ruan Yadong sniffed closer.
“It’s the detergent…” Zhou Yan answered vaguely, and Ruan Yadong didn’t question it further.
Zhou Yan stood up and asked, “Want some tea?”
“I planned to just grab the files and leave, but since you’re being so polite… just one cup maybe?” Ruan Yadong said with a laugh.
Zhou Yan scoffed and went into the kitchen to boil water. He took out a glass, roughly tossed in a pinch of green tea, and poured hot water over it.
“Phew… so hot!” Ruan Yadong touched the glass and pulled his hand back. “How am I supposed to drink this?”
“Let it cool down.”
Ruan Yadong helplessly rested his hands on his knees, forced to make small talk to pass the time. “Why did you rent such a small place?”
“It’s big enough for one person.” Zhou Yan said.
“One person?” Ruan Yadong looked at him. “You’re not planning on finding a partner?”
“No plans.”
“Is it that you genuinely haven’t thought about it, or you don’t have the energy to look?”
“Genuinely haven’t thought about it.”
Ruan Yadong tentatively asked, “You haven’t forgotten about that person from F University, have you…?”
Zhou Yan didn’t say anything. He had met Ruan Yadong once after graduating and returning to Nanshi. That day, they had a few drinks, and when Ruan Yadong gossiped about his romantic history, he inadvertently brought up the person he had secretly liked for years.
Ruan Yadong read his expression and understood. “Is he in Haicheng now?”
“Yes.”
“Do you two keep in touch?”
“No.”
“Why not?” Ruan Yadong wondered. “Did you confess to him, and things got awkward?”
“I never told him.”
“Ah? You weren’t…”
Ruan Yadong’s mouth opened and closed. At that time, Zhou Yan indeed had the impulse to confess to Liang Ruixi, and he held a glimmer of hope, but saying this now meant things hadn’t gone smoothly.
Ruan Yadong didn’t feel comfortable asking directly. He blew on his tea, cautiously took a sip, but got burned again. Sucking on his tongue, he expressed his frustration for Zhou Yan, “Why didn’t you tell him?”
Zhou Yan seemed to recall some unpleasant past events, his brows slightly furrowed. “There was no opportunity to speak.”
“Then if you’re not going to say anything, but you can’t let go, what’s the point? Doesn’t it hurt?” Ruan Yadong tried to persuade him.
“Some things can’t be forced. Let fate decide.”
“What do you mean, ‘let fate decide’? You don’t even contact him. Are you expecting him to come looking for you?”
“He said in university that he wanted to be a lawyer.”
“You plan to meet him in the workplace someday?” Ruan Yadong said, both amused and exasperated. “Do you know how many lawyers there are in Haicheng? I’d estimate the probability of you two running into each other is lower than a death row inmate seeing daylight again!”
“He’s not a lawyer yet.”
“Wait,” Ruan Yadong was a bit lost. “What do you mean by that?”
“He ran into some difficulties back then and decided not to take the exam anymore. I couldn’t help him much, and I felt quite regretful,” Zhou Yan lowered his eyes slightly. “But now with Yayan…”
They still had classmates and common friends, so information would always circulate, and Liang Ruixi would know that he had his own law firm.
“Later, if he ever gets the idea to become a lawyer again, I can have him come over.”
“So you want to pave the way for him?” Ruan Yadong felt a pang in his heart, then asked, “But what if he already has a partner by then, or is married? Wouldn’t you two just end up working together?”
“Is that not enough?” Zhou Yan glanced at him, stating matter-of-factly, “He’s straight anyway.”
The implication was that having a partner or being married was normal, and what Zhou Yan ultimately sought was merely to work with Liang Ruixi.
“I…” F*ck.
Ruan Yadong didn’t know what else to say. He looked at Zhou Yan like a rare animal for two seconds, then picked up the glass, took two big gulps, and stood up. “I’m leaving.”
Zhou Yan didn’t try to stop him and saw him off to the door.
As he left, Ruan Yadong caught sight of the bunny-head slippers on Zhou Yan’s feet again, his expression strange. “I seriously wonder if this emotional suppression is going to give you some psychological issues.”
Zhou Yan: “……”
Closing the door, Zhou Yan also stared blankly at the slippers on his feet for a while.
These were a birthday gift from Liang Ruixi in their freshman year. Liang Ruixi had said he bought the wrong ones, intending to buy tiger-head slippers instead.
Was a tiger head really suitable for him? At the time, he’d wanted nothing more than to kick Liang Ruixi in the knee. His roommates’ laughter still echoed in his ears, and Liang Ruixi’s awkwardness, hugging the slippers, felt almost tangible. He might have complained, but he’d worn these slippers for so many years, taking them back to Nanshi after graduation and then even bringing them back to Haicheng six months later.
When he moved here from Century Road in August, he’d originally thought about throwing them away because they were so old, the bunny fur was almost completely gone, and they weren’t as warm as they used to be…
But the thought of throwing them away brought back Liang Ruixi’s nervous yet hopeful gaze seven years ago when he’d hidden the slippers in his arms.
He was nervous he’d be angry, yet hopeful he’d be pleased.
Once, Liang Ruixi saw him washing the slippers and was especially touched, eagerly saying by his side, “Why are you still washing them?” “How about I buy you another pair?”…
His expression, his tone, all made Zhou Yan feel genuinely cared for by him.
If he threw them away, it felt as though all these memories and feelings would be discarded along with them.
Zhou Yan returned to the bedroom, looking at the bed board he hadn’t managed to close after finding the documents. Besides the slippers, the large boxes under the bed held many other memories related to that guy.
Opening one of the boxes, the very top item was a loose-leaf notebook filled with short poems he had written based on his feelings.
Flipping casually to a page, Zhou Yan’s emotions immediately fluctuated with the lines written there.
In the late autumn three years ago, after the bar exam results were released, he learned from Wei Ran that Liang Ruixi hadn’t passed. He immediately called him.
“Are you going to take it again?” Zhou Yan asked.
“Probably, but I need to find a job first, otherwise I’ll be broke,” Liang Ruixi’s tone was a bit dejected, yet he still forced himself to sound cheerful. “What about you? You definitely passed, right?”
Zhou Yan hummed in affirmation, encouraging him, “Go for it, you can definitely do it next year.”
Liang Ruixi sighed softly, instinctively calling his name, “Zhou Yan…”
“En?”
There was a moment of silence on the other end before he said, “We haven’t seen each other in four months already. Hearing your voice on the phone makes it feel like you’re still right here with me.”
Zhou Yan’s heart suddenly pounded at these words. He pretended to be calm and asked, “Are you missing me?”
“A little, haha,” Liang Ruixi chuckled. “Ai, I used to just go to your dorm if I wanted to see you. I just suddenly remembered you’ve already gone back to Nanshi, and it’s really hard to get used to…”
“Then should I come to Haicheng to see you this weekend?” Zhou Yan asked.
“Don’t,” Liang Ruixi quickly stopped him. “A round trip on the high-speed rail takes half a day. Even if you don’t find it tiring, I’d feel tired for you too… oh, I didn’t even ask you, are you doing well at the procuratorate?”
Zhou Yan hesitated before saying, “It’s alright.”
“That’s great,” Liang Ruixi exclaimed, then joked, “Future Prosecutor Zhou, if I ever do anything wrong, please go easy on me.”
“What are you talking about?” Zhou Yan chuckled.
Zhou Yan didn’t tell Liang Ruixi that he wasn’t happy there at all.
Although he had joined the procuratorate, his current work had no challenge. The real difficulty lay in the daily bureaucratic charades, navigating relationships with people at different levels within the system.
His superiors and colleagues all knew he was Judge Luo’s son, and they also knew he might be promoted faster than others, leading to their rather ambiguous attitudes toward him.
Even though he had mentally prepared himself before returning, Zhou Yan still found it unbearable, feeling as if every step forward reminded him of the connections that had brought him to his current situation.
His personal learning, thoughts, and passion for law were all but obliterated. He had long since regretted compromising with his mother before graduation. After that call with Liang Ruixi, his resolve grew even stronger; it seemed that besides his inner ideals, there was another reason for him to leave, and that was Liang Ruixi — a voice in his heart reminding him: Liang Ruixi is lonely, you need to be by his side, don’t let him be alone.
The night he made his decision, Zhou Yan submitted his resume to the Haicheng branch of Yintian Law Firm. What followed was another argument, rupture, and parting with his mother. It was a familiar scenario, but his mood was entirely different from when he left at nineteen.
The day he returned to Haicheng, there was an autumn rain, just like now, and the temperature dropped several degrees overnight. Zhou Yan bought a first-class ticket. The train car was almost empty, and the low temperature outside caused a thin mist to form on the window. He thoughtfully traced his fingers on the windowpane, writing, “LRX, I like you.”
A similarly secret confession had happened in the winter of his senior year, that time Zhou Yan had written it with a mechanical pencil in his notebook. But later, because Liang Ruixi and Xu Yan started dating, he erased it.
Zhou Yan felt that this time, it wouldn’t be easy to say either, because Liang Ruixi was still with Xu Yan.
Perhaps he had to wait longer.
However, fate didn’t seem to want them to reunite.
……
Two years apart, they really hadn’t seen each other for too long. So long that just looking at such a short poem, Zhou Yan could ravenously savor it for half a day.
He silently let out a breath, closed the notebook, and locked everything back under the bed.
In fact, what Ruan Yadong had just said was entirely possible. Zhou Yan had even considered that Liang Ruixi might never want to be a lawyer again and that they would never meet.
And the spring he longed for would never arrive.
Just like the title he gave to that poem.
“Frost coats the fallen leaves, rain mist blurs the windowpane, the tale remains unfinished, the verse cuts off mid-line. Pencil traces vanish beneath an eraser’s sweep, words left unsaid linger in silence, hoping for spring to arrive, for snow-hidden beans to sprout through the earth.”
—”Extravagance.” December 11, 2015 (Zhou Yan)
(Volume 1 – Grain Rain – End)
