Chapter 8

In a long narration, Ji Heyi closed his eyes and listened to the film’s soundtrack.

Halfway through the film, it was already clear that its narrative was appropriately paced and intricately structured. As expected, in terms of artistic quality, it should add luster to Chi Cong’s resume.

“Regret” should be the theme emotion that runs through the first ninety minutes of this romance film. The protagonist seems to be born unfortunate, always making decisions that hurt others and himself unknowingly at the crossroads of choice. If the occurrence of tragedy cannot be entirely blamed on fate, people who are caught in unfortunate circumstances are bound to bear more regret.

Separation by life or death, foreshadowed by the everyday life full of empathy, renders the atmosphere of the cinema particularly quiet.

Perhaps because he is familiar with the plot and the ending, or perhaps because he lacks a certain empathetic ability for the emotion of regret, compared to the story’s narrative, Ji Heyi is more focused on the aesthetic of the visuals and Chi Cong’s acting.

Excellent actors are truly incredible. Familiar with Chi Cong as Ji Heyi is, he has not seen him break character up to now.

His phone vibrated for the third time in his pocket. He glanced at it and saw it was work-related. As the tense conflict scene on the screen came to a close, he took his phone and left his seat.

When he left, it was inevitable that he would disturb a whole row of audience members, including Chi Yan, who was sound asleep with his head propped up.

Ji Heyi carefully avoided the sprawled legs of the sleeping person, his footsteps on the aisle were quiet and soundless. The person resting his forehead frowned, looking like he was about to wake up, but until Ji Heyi’s clothes brushed past the armrest and left, he just tilted his head and changed to a sleeping position.

The light in the safety corridor behind him flickered, and the sound of the door opening and closing was barely audible.

In the darkness, the eyes of the person with closed eyes opened, stared blankly at the movie screen for a while, and then slowly closed again.

People who use the same cologne all year round may not know that no matter how quietly they leave, the familiar scent has tamed the senses of those who were once intimate. Wrists, necks, corners of clothes, even a colorless and tasteless glance, even a brief lingering scent can be caught. Like tobacco that is clean before burning, it can cause an itch in people’s throats even before it enters the nose.

In the drowsiness, Chi Yan unconsciously touched his pocket, only to feel the cool metal exterior of the lighter.

On the big screen, the young protagonist was walking alone on the tree-lined path of the campus. Under the contrast of the school uniform and the sunlight, Chi Cong’s face looked young and rebellious. The magic of the movie is that in just a few tens of minutes of footage, it can provide an outlet for many people’s long memories and closed emotions. In the audience, some people are lost in the images of their youthful years, and some are quietly sobbing for the false sentimental story.

The light from the screen hit the eyelids of the person in light sleep, disturbing the clear dream as it brightened and dimmed.

Is it a dream? Is it a memory? Who knows, anyway, they are all scenes that disappear as soon as you open your eyes.

In a half-dream, half-awake state, the viewer, detached from the plot, seemed to see a tree-lined path overlapping with the screen image. He saw a teenager, about ten years old, standing in front of a signpost at an unfamiliar school, looking around without any expression.

A large group of high school students passed by him without looking back, and some people glanced sideways at the bruise on the teenager’s forehead and corner of his mouth.

The teenager didn’t like being stared at, and he saw a pair of lingering eyes.

“Chi Yan?” The owner of the eyes asked him.

The high school student was carrying a black shoulder bag, much taller than a junior high school boy.

“Do you know me?” He asked, raising his face, “How do you know my name?”

“Chi Cong mentioned you to me, you look quite like your brother.” He seemed to be the kind of person who is stingy with expressions, his gaze lingered for a long time, inexplicably giving people the illusion that they were being treated exceptionally well.

“Come with me? I’ll take you to find Chi Cong, he’s still at the administrative office, he can’t leave for a while.”

Should he go with him? Or wait here? Let’s go, his white shirt is about to disappear into the shadows of the trees.

He saw Chi Cong again, his face younger than the brief glimpse on the screen.

Weekend? Summer vacation? Or just another ordinary day after school, it’s unclear, but there must be great sunshine outside. The seventeen or eighteen-year-old elder brother was stepping on the lawn at home, taking a shortcut, walking away quickly while answering a friend’s phone: “Wait for me, about half an hour.”

He leaned out of the second-floor window and called out to his brother.

“What?” His brother, eager to meet his appointment, looked back impatiently.

“Are you going swimming? Take me with you.”

“What are you joking about, what’s the point of a landlubber like you joining in?” He turned and walked away.

He picked a grape from his fruit plate, threw it out of the window, and hit the hurried figure of the person leaving.

“Damn! My new clothes, do you want to get beaten up, Chi Yan!”

“Take me with you.” He shook another grape in his hand, smiled at the person who was hopping mad, “Your magazines hidden under the bed, your game console under the TV cabinet in the living room, the pocket money you took from uncle last month and didn’t hand in………”

“Enough, shut up!” A shout cut off his words, “Are you annoyed, are you annoyed! Can’t you go play with your own classmates when you’re bored? Do you understand the generation gap of three years, we have nothing to talk about, even as a mascot you’re too noisy—if you go, you’d better behave, come down! I’ll give you one minute.”

He walked down the stairs three steps at a time.

Friends of his brother, friends of his brother. Is there nothing to say, will it be considered noisy? Indeed, there’s a three-year generation gap.

Chi Cong went out again, was he alone? With friends? Ah, this time he brought someone home. What to say? Will searching for words be scrutinized by puzzled eyes?

He also saw his young self carrying a golden retriever puppy that he had obtained through cheating with beef jerky, walking back and forth in the alley he had planned early. The setting sun glow filled the secluded road, and the puppy struggled again. He held its mouth and said, “Shh, don’t bark.”

Finally, the man approached quickly, and his furrowed brow relaxed: “Mao Mao, come here.”

He let go, allowing the puppy to break free and pounce into the owner’s arms, seeing the owner raise his head, “I’ve been looking for it for a long time—” he called his name, “Thank you, Chi Yan.”

“You’re welcome, the fur is quite handy, I was wondering why it looked so familiar, turns out it’s yours.”

He walked a few steps and looked back, the alley in the dream was empty.

He saw quite a few people and images, even the wet eyes of the golden retriever were vivid, but the disordered dreamland always refused to give that person a clear shot.

But memories are always vivid.

What did he say, what did he do, what was he looking at? He cut his hair short, he seemed to have grown taller again, Chi Cong wouldn’t grow taller anymore, how could he still be growing. He changed his watch, it was black. He looked at him, what was he looking at? He stopped him and asked if Chi Cong was at home. The love letter he received was taken home by Chi Cong, who counted for a long time and reluctantly said he had lost. He went to the lakeside park to walk the dog, and the golden retriever licked his chin. He wore a white T-shirt today, and he got a girlfriend.

………Ah.

………Of course, he would have a girlfriend.

The cinema’s lights gently set the stage for the upcoming scene. On the big screen, the protagonist accidentally knocked over a glass of wine.

It was a confession, a man confessing to the protagonist who was also a man.

“I like you—surprised? I didn’t plan to say it, but I thought of your habit of sharing everything with me when you fall in love. For my own feelings, let me say it again, I like you—not the kind of like from a friend to a friend, but the kind of like from a boyfriend to a girlfriend. Okay, if you’re not happy, then from a girlfriend to a boyfriend, it can be said in any way. I don’t think this liking needs to be clearly defined, needs to be questioned by others whether it’s male-female or male-male.”

………..No, that’s not right.

Words entered his ears, the person in light sleep hadn’t opened his eyes yet, but had already refuted in his dream. It’s not this voice, not this tone.

It should be a bit deeper, a bit more soothing. That’s a voice and way of speaking he’s all too familiar with. He’s heard that voice discuss business, describe daily life, call his name… and he’s heard it speak calmly and softly about his deeply buried affection.

“How long have we been accompanying each other? Ten years, it’s rare for two strangers like us to have the fortune to spend so much time confirming each other. I understand all about you, your strengths and weaknesses, the good and the bad, like how you’re now forcibly holding back and not interrupting my consideration, and like how you’ll wake up tomorrow pretending to be drunk and not having heard anything with your poor acting skills. Shush—you don’t need to say anything, I don’t have any expectations for the answer you can give now.

I will wait for you—don’t feel burdened, just wait casually, there are more important things than confessions tomorrow, cultivating flowers and plants, busying with work, maybe even having one or two relationships over time. Your luck is indeed not very good, or perhaps your taste has never been that great, I’ll wait for you to hit all the walls outside, finish the lessons you should take, I’ll wait for you to finish being curious about how other men and women talk to you about their love, I’ll wait for the day when you start to miss involuntarily the glass of wine I poured for you today… When the time comes—how long will it take? Five years? Ten years? When the time comes, if you say a word of regret, I will forgive you for wasting so much of our time.”

The same lines, it’s as if that night on the snowy mountain is reappearing, every piece of white that falls in the snowy night seems to become a sentence of love words. He saw the young man again, leaning against the wall, listening to the confession from the other side of the door, staring unblinkingly at the warm wine cup in his hand. Outside the door is years later, a glance over the shoulder of his elder brother, a nod to him after a little recollection, his elder brother’s friend.

The wooden gate could be opened with a gentle push, but his fingers stopped in the cold wind blowing through the crack of the door for a while, slowly returning to his pocket.

When the warm wine in his hand had completely cooled, the door opened and closed, and after walking through several long corridors, he stood in front of a corner he didn’t know, clutching his empty wine glass. It was as if he was squatting in front of a pile of hay that had been burned to the end, and picking out a dying spark from the large pile of ashes. It was weak, but faintly hot, borrowing a bit of warmth could ignite a raging fire:

He likes Chi Cong, he likes a man—he can like men.

It turns out he can also like men.

So—so, before Chi Cong “regrets”, could there be… someone else who could become that “one or two romances”?

At least “taking advantage of the situation” is a starting method that is hard to come by, at least “Chi Cong’s younger brother” can also be considered as having an advantage, at least… at least more than one person has said that the two brothers of the Chi family look alike.

Perhaps, when he looks over, his eyes might be momentarily confused by the similarity.

The first judgment in his youth was accurate, he is really a person who is stingy with emotions and words, there is no way, what should he do… if he leads him to talk more with “my brother” at the beginning, if he tries Chi Cong’s preferences and habitual smile again.

Would a thief committing his first crime be nervous about the coins he stole? Yes.

But people are always so greedy, those who are desperate for food plot for every grain of rice and water droplet, and once they have filled their stomachs, they start to be dissatisfied with always having a white steamed bun, fantasizing about having fish and meat on their plate.

After getting the hang of it, the thief would also regret that he could only hide a coin in his pocket instead of a box of gold. So, countless times… he felt that the coin he was clutching in his hand was so embarrassing. Countless times… when he was responded to for the first time three days after Chi Cong’s new romance began, when the quiet gaze lingered on his face for a long time, when the kiss fell on his eyes and eyebrows… when he knew that three years had passed, the owner was still as stingy as before, even this coin had to be returned.

In the dim cinema, only the big screen had the sound rising and falling, the audience either yawned or was moved, either in the midst of a beautiful dream or shedding tears of sadness, everything was silent.

Someone bent over and walked past the seat, a strange voice gently puzzled in his ear:

“Chi Cong?”

He responded to the call with a vague “Hmm”.

“Why are you sitting in—” The movie screen turned, half of the audience was lit up, “Ah… sorry, I mistook you for someone else.”

The person in a dream suddenly woke up, opened his eyes, and collided with the end of a confession on the screen.