They took the bus to Xiaguan City.

It had been a long time since Shi Ye had taken a bus. Before getting on the bus with Sheng Xia, he was a bit blindly confident, thinking that it had been so long, he shouldn’t feel nauseous anymore, it had been so many years.

But he overestimated himself. As the bus swayed forward, Shi Ye felt increasingly nauseous and dizzy, cold sweat broke out on his forehead and back, and his consciousness felt like it was being shaken back to when he was seventeen or eighteen.

That year, he had just dropped out of school. His mother remarried and had a daughter, his father went to a research institute in Austria, and no one cared about him. Even when he dropped out of school, no one cared. His mother was busy breastfeeding his sister and building a new family. As for his father, his phone was always unreachable.

That was when Shi Ye was most rebellious. There was a month when he didn’t go home at all, just slept in the bar owned by Xie Hong in Beijing, either minding the bar for Xie Hong or sleeping in front of the bar when he was tired, waking up to play guitar and sing songs, and drink.

Before his mother and her new family went abroad, they came to find him and gave him twenty thousand yuan, asking him to either find a cram school to attend and retake the college entrance examination, or go out and work, but not to waste his time like this.

Shi Ye didn’t take the twenty thousand yuan, just left a key to the old family house and said, “You go, don’t worry about me.”

After his mother left, Shi Ye stared at the key for a long time in the bar before finally leaving in a daze.

He didn’t know where he was going, and in the end, he inexplicably got on a bus. At first, he stood, pushed back and forth, then he sat down, but there were fewer and fewer people on the bus.

In fact, Shi Ye didn’t know how he ended up on a bus, but he just sat there dazedly all the way.

He remembered when he was a child, his mother would carry him to squeeze onto the bus, buy groceries, and wander around the market. During the waiting time on the bus, Shi Ye would always ask, “Mom, are you going to buy me canned food today?”

Back then, waiting on the bus was filled with anticipation.

When Shi Ye was happy as a child, he ate canned fruit. When he grew up, he only thought of canned fruit when he was sad.

When his mother left, she said to him, “No matter what, Mom loves you.”

Shi Ye’s family rarely said these lovey-dovey words, and saying such things at that time was extremely ironic. Although his mother’s face was gentle in Shi Ye’s eyes, her declaration of love was only a farewell.

After getting off at the terminal that day, Shi Ye called Gao Ce and said, “Ge, I want to record an album.”

Not long after, he wrote the hit song “Universe” for “Aviator.”

“Teacher Shi Ye—”

He snapped out of his thoughts, seeing Sheng Xia hesitantly tugging at his sleeve, “Teacher Shi Ye, are you not feeling well?”

As Sheng Xia’s face gradually came into focus in his sight, and he saw the slightly anxious expression on the other’s face, Shi Ye unexpectedly felt a sense of relief, as if he had survived a disaster.

Shi Ye felt a bit dizzy and nauseous.

“No, I’m just…”

He rarely paused, feeling somewhat tongue-tied, unsure of what to say.

Sheng Xia pondered for a moment, “are you prone to motion sickness? Actually, I used to get motion sickness when I was in middle school, on any type of vehicle, even elevators… But there was no choice back then, my family didn’t have time to take me to school, so I had to take the bus myself. I felt nauseous every day a few times, but gradually got used to it.”

Getting used to it was okay.

“Yes, getting used to it is okay,” Shi Ye repeated his words, “I just haven’t taken the bus in a long time, so I’m not used to it, that’s all.”

After hearing this, Sheng Xia took out a pack of preserved plums from his bag and handed it to Shi Ye, “My mom gave me these in the morning. Teacher Shi Ye, would you like to have some? It might make you feel better.”

Shi Ye originally wanted to refuse, but he glanced at Sheng Xia’s hands for a moment. By the time he realized it, he had already taken the package and opened it to eat one.

Because they had been talking closely, they were leaning against each other’s shoulders.

Sheng Xia had a scent.

It was also the scent of the attic where Shi Ye was staying. Every time he got closer to Sheng Xia, he could smell it. It was hard to describe. Shi Ye always felt that the scent was changing, becoming moist at night, and dry in the scorching sun… Shi Ye had thought of many descriptions for that scent, but after comparing, he found himself using things like sunshine and water, which had no scent, to describe it, because he couldn’t think of anything else.

The scent was elusive, impossible to capture, but it smelled clean, making him involuntarily relax.

Shi Ye held his breath slightly and moved a bit to the side. He thought, they were a bit too close.

But Sheng Xia was carefree, completely unaware that he had been leaning towards someone. He even leaned a bit closer, pointing outside the window and saying, “Teacher Shi Ye, look, that bridge… My family used to live nearby, and we had to pass by here to go home. When I was in a bad mood, I would come here to lean against the railing of the bridge and listen to music. When I was in middle school, I especially liked Paganini. Once, as I was walking on the bridge, I got so engrossed in the music that I almost got hit by a car.”

Shi Ye moved a bit further away, thinking that being absent-minded about life was really not a good thing.

But he didn’t judge anything; he just took out his earphones and asked Sheng Xia, “Do you want to listen to music?”

Sheng Xia hesitated for a moment before saying, “Okay.”

The earphones Shi Ye used were very cheap, probably only a few tens of yuan, just a fraction of the price of Sheng Xia’s earphones. But Sheng Xia carefully took the earphone and inserted the music into his left ear.

It was a song from Oasis, “Take Me.”

Sheng Xia whispered to himself, “This one.”

Take me when you feel I’ve gone

Take me if you think I’m sweet

Though my life feels incomplete

Take me when I wish to live

There were many unfamiliar people on the bus. There were elderly people carrying children, wearing clothes that seemed to belong to the local ethnic minority, with a way of carrying children that Shi Ye had never seen before: wrapping the child’s body in embroidered cloth and using a long narrow cloth to hold their butt in front of them.

There were several large bottles of mineral water at someone’s feet. Sheng Xia had explained before that many people would go to the ancient city to fetch spring water and bring it back to drink, treating the round trip as a form of exercise.

There were also a few young couples, arms entwined, whispering to each other affectionately.

These unfamiliar people kept getting on and off the bus, passing by, lingering, and then leaving. The bus moved forward, the road was straight, and there was a beginning and an end.

Shi Ye tilted his head slightly to look at the people next to him.

He thought Sheng Xia was probably lost in thought, listening to music, but when he looked over, he realized that Sheng Xia had been looking at him all along.

He fell into those eyes. Direct, sincere, clean, bright.

The gaze was calm, as calm as the air now, but a closer look would reveal that it was actually boiling, trembling, as if it were about to overflow and engulf everything.

The song was still playing.

Take me when I start to cry

Take me, take me, don’t ask why

Those eyes were so beautiful. If you looked closely, you would feel that all the beauty of the entire city seemed to have drowned in them. At this moment, with music in his ears, sunshine outside the window, memories in his mind, and a young, clean heart in front of him, how wonderful it was.

Shi Ye heard himself say, “I envy you a little.”

His voice was not loud, but Sheng Xia heard it very clearly; he had forgotten what was playing in his earphones.

“Really?”

“Yeah, I envy your life.”

To make sure the earphones didn’t fall off, Sheng Xia had been leaning towards Shi Ye the whole time. By now, he felt that half of his body was numb, and his heart was still beating fast, pounding in his chest. Could it be that he hit his ribs? Otherwise, why would it hurt so much, feel so strange?

“I envy you too, Teacher Shi Ye,” Sheng Xia said slowly, “It’s strange. I never thought about so many things before, I just felt like life was all the same, nothing special. But after meeting you, I feel that I have so many desires for life, and so many things I want.”

Shi Ye was stunned.

He smiled, “It seems that people always feel dissatisfied with their own lives and keep envying others.”

The bus stopped for a moment, and a couple got off while an elderly lady with a cane got on.

Sheng Xia dared not look at Shi Ye anymore. He just watched the old lady slowly board the bus, swiped her senior citizen card, and sat down shakily.

Time seemed to freeze, yet it swiftly passed through many light-years. In an instant, Sheng Xia seemed to suddenly understand something. That feeling, both real and illusory, flickered in and out, with hesitations and uncertainties, all about dreams and imaginations.

He took off his earphones and looked at Shi Ye, saying, “Teacher Shi Ye, I have liked you since I was thirteen years old, you probably can’t understand… But you are my dream, and you have enlightened me to love things. I really envy you a lot. If you ever feel unhappy in the future, just think that in this world, there is someone like me admiring you from a distant place, maybe it will make you feel a little better.”

Shi Ye thought, Is that so.

You are my dream.

This sentence sounded so light. It sounded like such an ordinary sentence, without consequences, without reasons. Human connections could be so simple, but you didn’t know that your dream was already beginning to decay. They knew nothing, still innocent, loving the self of that year, the self that even Shi Ye felt strange.

The bus started moving again.

Shi Ye avoided that gaze, he didn’t answer, he didn’t know why Sheng Xia seemed to sense that he was upset.

This shouldn’t be.

Or perhaps it had been a long time since anyone cared about his sadness.

The song was still playing in the earphones:

“Take me when I’m young and true”

Shi Ye slightly tightened his fingers and closed his eyes.

At that moment, he really wanted to eat canned fruit, an unprecedented desire.