Part 1- Return Journey
Aside from always getting low scores in composition because I either go wildly off-topic or, as mentioned above, use expressions that are considered improper or unrefined, my grades in all other subjects are basically excellent. Simply put, I was more or less a top student. So before the midterm exam rankings came out, I made a bet with Xiaopang and the others that I could get into the top fifteen in the grade. This was still a conservative estimate; even if my composition barely passed, top five would be no problem.
The result came out—I ranked sixteenth.
Silently, I treated Xiaopang and the others to the student cafeteria’s special fried noodles, each person eating two big bowls that cost me half a week’s living expenses (at that time my dad and mom gave me and my younger brother allowance on a weekly basis). Even though my composition miraculously didn’t fail this time, I still didn’t make it into the top fifteen. I felt like I couldn’t die in peace. I pulled out all seven subjects’ exam papers and checked them one by one. Chinese 87 out of 100, Math 90, English 92, Physics 89, Politics 86, History 69. Dropping below the 70 line in history—no wonder it dragged me down.
Still unwilling, I grabbed the answer sheet and carefully checked it again, trying to find even one or two scoring mistakes. The fifteenth place, Lu Feng, was from our class, and he only had one more point than me. If I could recover one question, I could tie with him. This wasn’t about vanity, but about whether I would spend this week drinking northwest wind or something else entirely.
This check made my veins bulge, my blood boil, and my mood swing from rage to sudden joy. I got all the multiple-choice questions right. The teacher only marked a big red check and didn’t add even one of the twenty points.
Twenty… twenty points…
Even half a point can kill someone in the top fifteen, let alone forty half-points.
I had been lying half-dead on the upper bunk of the eight-person dorm, pretending to sleep and waiting for death. I immediately became spirited, climbed down from the bed, put on my shoes, and prepared to first go demand my fried noodles back from Xiaopang and the others, then go to the office to reclaim my points.
Just as I looked up, I saw Lu Feng on the lower bunk walking in excitedly from outside the door, holding a colorful cardboard box in his hands.
“Cheng Yichen, come see my CD player.”
That was 1996. In our small town, many kids could only enjoy bulky cassette recorders. Owning an AIWA Walkman already counted as fashionable and high status—far more impressive than today’s MD players. I couldn’t help but feel curious and envious as I walked over to look at that dark black device, accidentally forgetting my own usual distance from Lu Feng.
Since the start of school, only half a semester had passed, and boys had already formed fixed cliques. Lu Feng and I were two completely incompatible types of people.
As for me—as you can see—a good student, a well-behaved kid. My younger brother, one year below me, was still in junior high while I was already in a top class in high school. Aside from academics, I was somewhat useless in all other aspects. My family situation was very ordinary (two working-class parents raising two sons in an elite school with high tuition and no financial sense). From childhood I was taught that books were a golden house of freedom, that everything else was inferior, only studying mattered, and if I couldn’t get into university I would go back to the countryside to farm the family’s dozen acres of orchard. So I never compared clothes or food, always wearing blue or black pants, white shirts, white sneakers, and even my junior high uniform still barely fit. I kept the most ordinary student haircut and wore the ugliest black-rim glasses, always burying myself at my desk studying.
Lu Feng was different. He… uh… speaking badly about others is wrong, so I’ll just be simple and objective and repeat what others said.
Appearance: reportedly he was the most stylish and good-looking boy in the entire grade. Compared to him, even figures like Andy Lau or Aaron Kwok would be like a great river flowing endlessly away (really? Why does no one think a Chinese person with a high nose bridge, deep eyes, and amber-colored pupils is a bit strange?).
Family background: hmm… I heard his father was either an American-Chinese or an overseas Chinese who lived in the US. In short, Lu Feng was half American. Also, since junior high, the Lu family donated large sums of money to the school every year to build this and that.
Grades: well… him making it into the top fifteen is as unreasonable as me failing to.
Character: cough, this topic is sensitive and hard to judge. Anyway, a large portion of the money his father donated was probably to compensate for his record of fighting and causing trouble. One year in junior high he miraculously avoided being disciplined for fighting; it was said the finance department was depressed for a long time because of that.
Simple conclusion: neither of us held the other in high regard.
Today, however, this strange machine clearly made us forget that. We gathered around to listen to CDs from rock-era famous singers I didn’t even recognize.
“Sound quality’s pretty good, right?” Lu Feng said excitedly. “My dad keeps his word. Getting into the top fifteen this time was all luck.”
I realized—this was a reward he got from his father.
I looked at my history exam paper in my hand and hesitated. I didn’t like Lu Feng, but I also couldn’t bear to pour cold water on him at a time like this.
“You like it? I’m going to play soccer this afternoon. Want to borrow it and listen first?”
Uh… I hated him, but he was quite generous.
I crumpled up my paper behind my back. Forget it—those bowls of fried noodles couldn’t even buy half a CD player’s earphones.
Lu Feng picked up the football he had placed under the desk and called out loudly to boys from neighboring dorms before leaving. The machine stayed on my desk. I sighed and pointed at it.
“You, you—you made me not even have enough money to eat for two days.”
I tossed the exam paper aside and picked up an English reference book, leaning on Lu Feng’s bed. After reading for a while, I drifted off to sleep.
Sleep, sleep—if I fall asleep I won’t be hungry anymore. 5555.
When I woke up, Lu Feng had already returned. He was standing by the bed drying his hair, holding a paper and studying it seriously. I was groggy for a while before realizing it was my history exam paper.
“You miscalculated your score.” Seeing me open my eyes, Lu Feng raised the paper. His tone was calm but unfriendly.
I responded vaguely with an “oh.”
“Why didn’t you go fix it? If you added those points, you might be first.”
“If I go fix it, then you wouldn’t—” I had just woken up and, as expected, shouldn’t have spoken. Everything I said was wrong. Everyone knew Lu Feng was proud, and as expected his face changed.
“I know you look down on me. I can still rank ahead of you in the final exams. I don’t need your fake kindness.”
What a good deed repaid with thunder.
“I didn’t mean anything else. That machine is fine if you like it or not—it has nothing to do with me. I don’t need to flatter you, and I don’t look down on anyone. Don’t be so suspicious.” I didn’t bother continuing, grabbed my paper back, and glared at him.
The room was silent for a while before he said, “How about this. I don’t owe favors. I’ll treat you to a meal.”
This guy was really ridiculous—after insulting me, he still wanted to treat me.
Birds die for food. I thought about it and realized I’d really be hungry soon, so I nodded. “Okay.”
Later I often thought: if it weren’t for this ordinary encounter, if Lu Feng and I had always remained strangers passing each other by, maybe our lives—mine and his—would have turned out differently.
I didn’t expect that the meal he mentioned would be so troublesome.
To repeat again, it was 1996. KFC and McDonald’s were nowhere near as widespread as they are now. To eat KFC, you had to take a broken bus for over an hour to the so-called county town—it felt like a pilgrimage. Honestly, my understanding of these famous American fast foods only came from hearing about them or seeing them in books and TV, so when Lu Feng said I was rustic, it was because I actually had a reverent, almost sacred expression while carefully dipping fries into ketchup, more focused than solving chemistry problems.
Even though he mocked me mercilessly, it still became one of the most unforgettable meals of my life. Later, when I ate burgers and chicken nuggets at the KFC in Xiamen university district, I could never find that same feeling again.
Maybe it really is because first times are always memorable.
That explains why, many years later, I still couldn’t forget Lu Feng.
Because the “firsts” he gave me were just as many as what he took from me.
After that, Lu Feng and I naturally became familiar with each other. After fully realizing the other person wasn’t as annoying as we had imagined—and in fact sometimes quite cute—a deep friendship formed quickly. I think we first attracted each other due to opposite personalities, then gradually became similar; reflected in Lu Feng having fewer absences and me swearing more often.
Not long after our friendship stabilized, Lu Feng began criticizing and bossing me around.
“Those glasses look so ugly on you. Like a mushroom.”
Damn it, give him a little color and he opens a dye shop.
“None of your business.”
“They really are ugly.”
“If you keep talking, write your own essay.” At that time I was helping this lazy idiot write his essay in exchange for three famous braised chicken legs from the first cafeteria. The topic was “My View on Cheating.” It was a school essay contest with quotas assigned to each class because they couldn’t collect enough entries—quality didn’t matter, it was basically conscription.
Lu Feng and I were both selected. When his name was called, he grinned widely; when mine was called next, I also smiled smugly. Lu Feng was decent in math and science, but his Chinese and English were so bad it made people want to cry. It was hard to believe he was Chinese at all, and even harder to believe he was half American.
His middle school essays were said to be stream-of-consciousness, meaning he wrote whatever came to mind—like birds outside the window or the short skirts of girls in the front row—barely forming something like impressionist poetry. For exam essays, though…
The fact he still got decent scores was probably because teachers were shocked by his bizarre opening and ending, plus his handwriting, which looked like it had been cut out one by one from copybooks, gave him extra points.
But miracles don’t repeat themselves, so his essays were usually disastrous, barely at elementary school level. Even passing him felt generous. Compared to him, my own scores weren’t great either, but mine were due to unfulfilled talent, not incompetence. Lu Feng knew this too, so he had already bought chicken legs and placed them in front of me as motivation, fanning me like a servant while I wrote.
My own essay was a standard model of a good socialist student, painfully proper, reporting and criticizing cheating in a heartfelt way, ending with a sincere appeal:
“Students, in order to supervise socialism and build a strong learning foundation, we must never cheat!”
If I wrote for Lu Feng, I would suddenly turn sharp, passionately attacking the education system.
“Existence is rational. When cheating has shifted from individual behavior to widespread habit, we should consider its rationality…”
“‘A gentleman makes use of tools,’ ‘With the help of the wind, I rise to the clouds.’ When personal ability is limited, appropriately borrowing external help to achieve goals cannot be said to be wrong…”
“Furthermore, just as public insecurity reflects not only a decline in people’s quality but also political instability, the spread of cheating cannot be fully blamed on students’ lack of awareness. The real responsibility lies in the flawed education system…”
All of it was reckless nonsense that made me feel incredibly satisfied. Lu Feng watched me write like a machine, eyes wide, not knowing I was framing him.
After finishing, I gnawed on a chicken leg and smiled slyly while Lu Feng signed his name without even reading and prepared to submit it the next day.
“Xiaochen, don’t wear those glasses anymore. They’re ugly.”
“…If my eyes are ugly, the glasses at least cover them.”
“Take them off. It won’t look worse than now.”
“… ” I turned away.
“Right, Xiaochen, we don’t even know what you look like without glasses. Take them off and let us see.”
“No… it’s ugly, it’ll scare you.”
Suddenly my vision went dark—Lu Feng had taken off my glasses. Without them, my eyesight of 375 left eye and 425 right eye (which stayed about the same for seven or eight years later), plus astigmatism, left everything blurred. I stared blankly, mouth slightly open.
The dorm went silent. After a while, Xiao Shang from the upper bunk chuckled awkwardly and said, “Xiaochen… you’re actually kind of cute.”
Lu Feng put my glasses back on: “Forget it. You should just keep wearing them.”
“I told you it’s ugly.” I laughed awkwardly. For some reason, I felt a little sad hearing his evaluation.
I couldn’t deny Lu Feng was the most handsome boy in the grade—his mixed blood gave him more defined features, making him look sharp and striking. It was only natural he would be picky about others’ looks—I told myself that.
But I still secretly hoped Lu Feng wouldn’t think I was ugly.
Lu Feng smiled. After others gradually left for evening study, he leaned closer and whispered in my ear:
“I mean, just now—you looked like I wanted to kiss you.”
“You—you’re crazy!” I froze for a long time before exploding in embarrassment.
Lu Feng laughed.
I turned away, not looking at his annoying smile, and packed my books for evening study.
“Huh? Where are my socks?” Lu Feng looked around.
“I washed them.”
This man looked polished on the outside, but inside he was extremely messy. He never washed his socks—he would wear a pair and then shove them under his pillow, and when they all piled up, he would pick a relatively less smelly pair to reuse. I had never seen him wash socks in over half a semester. I bet any random pair could stand upright on the floor. I slept on the upper bunk and still couldn’t stand the smell. That afternoon after class, while he went to buy chicken legs, I searched everything under his pillow and washed all of them. There were more than a dozen pairs.
“You washed them?” Lu Feng stared at me strangely.
“What… what’s wrong?”
“Xiaochen, you washed my socks?”
“Yes…” I was confused.
“I think I love you to death!” Lu Feng lunged at me. Before I could dodge, he hugged me tightly and kissed my cheek.
“You’re insane!” I felt like my heart was going to stop.
“I am insane.” Lu Feng smiled. “Come on, one more kiss.”
“Dream on.” I smashed a thick chemistry workbook into his face. He grabbed me and pinned me on the bed, acting like a pervert and tickling me.
“Hey, stop it! It’s itchy…” Before I finished speaking, he tickled my waist and I burst out laughing.
“You’re ticklish?” Lu Feng laughed too. “Then here? Here? Here?”
Every place his fingers touched felt like electricity. I curled up, laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe.
“Xiaochen, you’re very sensitive.”
“Being ticklish is being ticklish. Why use such a dramatic word.” I sat up and saw him biting his lip, his expression complicated, amber eyes shining.
“What’s with that strange look? Did you bump your head?”
“No.” He smiled, put on his Nike shoes barefoot, picked up his bag. “Let’s go to evening study together.”
Lu Feng going to evening study could be used as an idiom, meaning a phenomenon that almost never happens.
Most of the time he was out causing trouble and fighting.
Not long ago, he had broken the arm of a nearby high school gang leader with a chair at an arcade, making his name well known among local students. It was an era of campus violence, and people who watched too many gangster movies started treating him like a hero because he fought fast and ruthlessly, smashing beer bottles over people’s heads without hesitation.
As the so-called “trusted follower” beside this “boss,” I often had to hide behind him, and only I understood the feeling of trying desperately not to be dragged down by this guy who had just come out of the dean’s office after cursing the principal’s ancestors loud enough for the whole administration building to hear.
“Xiaochen, let’s go skating, I’ll treat you.”
“No, I don’t accept favors without reason.”
This kind of exchange was common between us. Lu Feng had money and was generous to friends, but I never accepted favors for no reason. My father had taught us strictly since childhood: “Don’t steal, don’t covet.” Coveting included taking small advantages. So Lu Feng and I kept accounts very clearly—even the cost of a bottle of water during hikes had to be paid back precisely. I thought I was very upright, but he was furious.
As expected, he glared at me again. After a long stare, seeing I didn’t react, he changed his tone:
“You’ve contributed a lot, okay? Come skate a couple rounds as thanks.”
“Huh?”
“That essay you wrote for me last time in the contest—it got first prize. My dad’s reward was pretty generous.”
I froze.
WHATTTTTTTTT—how did that happen? That piece full of profanity actually got first prize?
555555555—why is this happening? I’ve never won an essay award in my life, and he got first prize just for three chicken legs…
Skating was very popular among middle school students at the time because the atmosphere there was perfect for ambiguous, unclear relationships. Boys would bring girls they liked, use teaching as an excuse to hold hands or support their waists, and even planned for the girls to fall into their arms. Usually, after leaving the rink, the relationship would have made a breakthrough—sometimes even going all the way.
While changing skates, people kept greeting Lu Feng:
“Ah Feng, didn’t bring a pretty girl today?”
“Ah Feng, came alone?”
Damn it, does being a man mean I don’t count as a person?
Having never even held a girl’s hand, I felt annoyed: “Hey, sounds like you have a very chaotic private life. How many girls have you brought skating?”
“Let me count…”
He actually started counting on his fingers. I spat and stood up, wobbling into the rink.
“Xiaochen, your skills are really bad,” he shouted.
“Shut up!”
You don’t need to advertise it—I already know I’m bad.
To be honest, this was my first time skating. Being able to stand was already impressive; I didn’t even have the level of “bad technique.”
Lu Feng had a great time in the rink, while I could only hold the railing and move like I was stepping onto the moon for the first time in human history.
“Xiaochen, let me help you,” Lu Feng came over after two laps. “You’ll never learn like this.”
“Go away.” I waved my right hand like I was swatting a fly. “Mind your own business, I’ll take it slow.”
That shameless guy suddenly grabbed my arm and yanked me away from the railing. I screamed like I was drowning and clung tightly to his shoulders.
“I knew it—you want to kill me!”
Lu Feng laughed: “You didn’t fall, did you? I’m better than that railing.”
Indeed, he was more stable than the railing, and the railing wouldn’t rescue me right before I crashed into a wall while screaming. My left hand clasped his fingers, my right arm stretched out for balance. His right hand supported my waist. We circled the rink edge in a tense formation. My palms were already sweaty.
“Another round.”
“You spare me, alright.” I took the initiative to admit defeat and begged miserably. “My balance isn’t good, I can’t learn this.”
“What are you saying? You can basically stand already, just practice a bit more…”
A man and a woman on the opposite side staggered and rushed toward us. It looked like a total beginner collision was about to happen. Lu Feng quickly pulled me aside with sharp reflexes, but I wasn’t as elegant as him. My foot slipped and I couldn’t recover, and I fell hard toward the ground while screaming like a ghost, clutching Lu Feng’s clothes desperately in a final struggle.
This time I fully realized Lu Feng’s unmatched superiority as a moving handrail. Under that kind of acceleration greater than g, he still didn’t shake at all and managed to catch me firmly in his arms.
“I think I shouldn’t play anymore.” I cried with a miserable face, sprawled against Lu Feng’s chest in an embarrassing position. Two men being this close felt a bit uncomfortable, but his arms were locked tight around me and I couldn’t break free.
“Try again,” he said casually, like it had nothing to do with him.
“Are you trying to make me crippled before you’re satisfied?”
“With me here, you won’t die from a fall.”
Even though Lu Feng made such bold claims, I still ended up honorably crippled anyway—someone rushed in from behind and crashed between us, and without Lu Feng’s steady support I immediately toppled in another direction without hesitation.
“….” I was in so much pain I couldn’t even make a sound.
“Damn it, do you have eyes or not!” Lu Feng cursed fiercely while quickly bending down to help me. “Are you okay?”
“How could I be okay… 5555555555.” Even though it was embarrassing, when he touched my ankle it hurt so much I almost cried out loud. “I twisted my foot!”
For the next two days I walked around in a single-leg hopping style, becoming a scenic view on campus. I would hop while cursing, and others who saw my serious expression and muttering thought that this top student was bravely enduring hardship and still memorizing textbooks despite injury.
“Xiaochen, is it better today?”
The main target of all my curses was waving a bottle of medicated oil in front of me.
“Better my foot. A sprain takes a hundred days to heal.”
“Oh, then there are still 98 days.”
I almost died from anger. He helped me apply the medicine on my ankle clumsily and asked, “Anywhere else hurting?”
I glared at him fiercely. “My butt!”
Obviously—after falling like that, with that kind of impact force!
“Oh?” He raised one eyebrow, smiling faintly. “Want me to massage it for you?”
“….” They were both boys, so I thought it shouldn’t matter, but his expression made me feel strangely uneasy. “N-no need… it doesn’t really hurt.”
Unexpectedly, the next day the injury got worse rapidly. The “not really painful” butt was probably hurt at the tailbone. Even lifting my waist was difficult, and my right foot also swelled up so badly I couldn’t even become a one-legged immortal anymore. I lay on the bed teary-eyed.
Just like in elementary school essays, at times like this there is usually a “Lei Feng-style” good student who takes the initiative to escort the disabled student to and from class, carrying them through wind and rain over eighteen li of mountain road and so on.
Of course, that model worker was Lu Feng.
At first I refused him firmly when he insisted on carrying me to class. Getting injured from skating wasn’t exactly glorious, and I didn’t have the face to ride on his back like some hero being displayed for everyone to see. Lu Feng was too tall anyway—being carried by him would make me extremely noticeable everywhere.
But it was near final exams, and lecture notes were extremely important. I had to crawl even if I had to crawl to class. So Lu Feng naturally became a porter, carrying me around like cargo every day.
The distance from the dormitory to the teaching building wasn’t far, just a few more stairs. Lu Feng, used to being a young master, wasn’t good at taking care of people. His way of carrying me was rather rough—sometimes he would throw me onto the bed hard enough to make me cry in pain, and sometimes he would bump me against the walls at stair corners.
“Damn it, do you think you’re carrying a sandbag?”
I counted the bruises that somehow appeared on my body and complained tearfully.
Lu Feng was basically already touching every part of me while applying medicine.
“The first person I ever carried was supposed to be a stunning beauty. You got it for free and you still complain.”
“Hey, don’t judge people by appearance. Even if I’m not a beauty, at least I have intellectual charm.”
“Open your mouth.” Lu Feng opened the lunchbox. He had been buying all my meals.
“….” I awkwardly turned my head away from the spoon he offered. “It’s just a sprain, not paralysis. Why are you feeding me?”
“Stop talking. Open your mouth.”
“No!”
But with his agile hands and forceful methods, I still got my chin firmly held and the spoon stuffed into my mouth.
I know my eating manners aren’t elegant, but you don’t need to stare at my mouth the whole time.
5555—on the verge of tears, I let him finish feeding me and even endured his “high-quality service” of wiping my mouth.
“…Have you finished wiping yet?” My lips were burning, like the skin was about to be rubbed off.
“There’s still a bit here.”
Just wipe it then—why are you leaning so close? You’re not even nearsighted.
Near the end of the term, Lu Feng’s desk was piled with love letters.
“Tch, I really don’t get their taste. They ignore such a pure and excellent guy like me and instead like someone like you,” I said with jealousy.
“You jealous?”
Hit right in the center. I looked at him gloomily.
“Have you ever been confessed to by a girl?”
“What’s so strange about that?” I said angrily. “I’m with you all the time, and you’re so tall you block all my light. How would they even notice me? No way, I’m going to keep distance from you in the future.”
I already didn’t stand out; walking next to Lu Feng was like being erased by his radiance, and girls treated me as invisible.
“You dare!” he suddenly said sharply. I quickly shook my head. “I don’t dare, I don’t dare.”
“Xiaochen.” Lu Feng sat beside me and habitually put his arm around my shoulder. “You want a girlfriend?”
“Well…” under his glare I quickly lowered my voice, “not really…”
I wasn’t at the age of burning passion yet; I didn’t have much longing for the opposite sex. Being liked by girls was just vanity satisfaction.
“Let’s make a promise. As long as I don’t get a girlfriend, you’re not allowed to like any girl either.”
It sounded like an unfair contract, and in reality it had no binding force at all. A guy like Lu Feng, who didn’t even bother to flirt but still had people throwing themselves at him, probably wouldn’t be single before I even managed to hold a girl’s finger.
I nodded casually.
Lu Feng smiled, crumpled all those letters without even reading them, and threw them into the trash.