PL | Chapter 12

The Coffee Shop Has Closed

As he watched Qi Yue come running in through the broken doorway, Gu Zhong struggled wildly, trying to break free of the rope around his hands. But it had been tied too tightly.

He had already twisted and fought against it for ages without loosening it at all, and now it felt like the skin on his wrists had been torn open, yet it still had not budged.

He was not worried at all about Qi Yue taking this cripple on one-on-one. There was no way the cripple could be Qi Yue’s match. But after all this chaos, even if Qi Yue had never shown the kind of panic the cripple wanted to see, it was impossible for him to still be calm as still water inside.

The instant he entered, the cripple seized the advantage with a sneak attack.

Gu Zhong did not see where Qi Yue had been hit, but from those few stumbling steps after he ran in, it was obvious the blow had landed hard.

And the cripple who appeared right behind him had an arm-thick club in his right hand and a watermelon cleaver in his left.

“Watch out!” Gu Zhong shouted again.

He did not know what else he could do now. His whole body hurt so much he could not use any strength.

With his butt stuck out and a chair tied to his back, he could not even roll himself along the floor. He could only watch helplessly as the cripple lunged forward again, swinging the club.

Qi Yue braced a hand on the ground and tipped his body toward Gu Zhong, narrowly avoiding that attack. But the cripple’s arm whipped out again at once, slashing viciously close against his leg.

Gu Zhong saw a long gash split open in Qi Yue’s pants. There was no need to think to know how deep that cut had gone. Gu Zhong could not describe what he felt. Even when he himself had been beaten with the club, it had not hurt him this much.

In the few tenths of a second he spent staring at the torn leg of Qi Yue’s pants, Qi Yue suddenly took a step toward him and threw himself over him.

At a time like this, don’t save me first, okay? Beat up the cripple first, big bro!

Gu Zhong felt like his eyes, swollen until they were reduced to slits, were going to pop wide open from anxiety.

But it was not until the club in the cripple’s hand smashed into Qi Yue’s shoulder, and Qi Yue let out a low muffled grunt by his ear, that he realized the cripple had suddenly swung that blow at him. If Qi Yue had not thrown himself over, that hit would have landed solidly on Gu Zhong.

It was Qi Yue’s right shoulder that got smashed. It was definitely serious. His right arm, which had been supporting him against the ground, abruptly gave out, and the cripple did not hesitate for even a second before bringing the next blow down on Qi Yue’s leg.

It’s over.

Gu Zhong’s whole body jerked upward. He heard a sharp, unmistakable cracking sound.

“Fuck, you shameless bastard!” Gu Zhong roared. He felt awful for himself, but he felt even worse for Qi Yue. The fury that exploded out of him in that instant seemed to cure his eyes. He felt like he was glaring so hard they were about to spit fire. “Coward! If you didn’t play dirty, you’d be worthless! All you can do is hide behind other people and stab from the shadows! Cowardly trash!”

“You little brat!” the cripple also bellowed, swinging the knife straight at Gu Zhong’s face.

Gu Zhong was ready to go all out too. The back of the chair was right beside his head. If the cripple brought that blade down, there was an eighty percent chance it would hit the chair back first.

As long as he was not unleashing one attack after another on Qi Yue.

But that slash never came down. Qi Yue grabbed the cripple’s wrist with his left hand, and then took another club strike to his back head-on.

Gu Zhong had no idea how Qi Yue could still stand up, or how he could still throw that punch at the cripple’s face with his right hand.

The cripple got smashed backward by that punch, and from that point on he lost the initiative. Qi Yue let go of the wrist he had been gripping, then drove his elbow up hard into the cripple’s chin. The cripple was knocked backward and fell to the ground.

Qi Yue followed right after him and slammed a heavy kick into his ribs.

The cripple cried out and curled up.

Qi Yue did not stop. He followed with another vicious kick, and the cripple’s voice cut off as if someone had strangled it.

Qi Yue paused for two seconds before pouncing forward and hauling him up by the collar with one hand. “Listen carefully to what I’m saying right now.”

The cripple clenched his teeth and said nothing.

“I’m not putting up with you because I’m scared of you. It’s because of Da Qi. He treats you like a brother, so I’ve been tolerating you this whole time,” Qi Yue said. His voice was not loud, but it was cold enough to make people shiver. “You’ve vented your anger now. If you want me gone, I can leave.”

The cripple turned his head, seeming a little surprised, but he only kept wheezing for breath without speaking.

“But this ends here. If you insist on making my life miserable,” Qi Yue stared at him, “then the only thing I can do is make sure you don’t get to live out the rest of yours.”

“Don’t let me see you again,” the cripple said.

“Get out.” Qi Yue released him. “If I haven’t made a phone call within ten minutes, someone will call the police.”

The cripple struggled to his feet, glanced in Gu Zhong’s direction, and suddenly laughed. “Call the police? This kid can actually make you fight this hard. You wouldn’t even go this far for Da Qi, would you?”

“Ten minutes,” Qi Yue said.

“You don’t deserve to hear Da Qi call you ge,” the cripple said, one hand pressed over his ribs.

Qi Yue said nothing. The cripple turned around and limped out, dragging one bad leg behind him.

Gu Zhong watched his swaying figure disappear. This burst of lunatic, cathartic violence had finally ended, and he let out a breath.

He could not keep his eyes open anymore. The pain all over his body felt like he was being beaten all over again, slowly spreading bit by bit. He could barely breathe, and it felt like his whole body had been pasted over with a layer of corn porridge.

“Gu Zhong.” Qi Yue called him. “Gu Zhong?”

“I’m okay,” Gu Zhong answered.

His mind was a little blurry. He did not even know when Qi Yue had untied the ropes on him. He only knew that the moment his body left the chair, pain hit him like he was being split apart.

“I’m sorry.” Qi Yue carefully laid him flat on the ground. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”

Qi Yue’s movements were laborious. Gu Zhong frowned. “Did you break a bone?”

“Probably,” Qi Yue said softly. “Someone will be here soon. I’ll take you to the hospital.”

“Don’t tell my family,” Gu Zhong said. “Don’t notify my family or the school.”

Qi Yue touched his face and said nothing.

“If you have to say something, just say I got mugged,” Gu Zhong said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Qi Yue said. “I’ll handle it.”

Gu Zhong still wanted to say something more, but Qi Yue’s voice was like it came with some kind of built-in hypnosis, or maybe it was simply that Qi Yue himself made him relax. Before he could speak again, he lost consciousness.

He was probably not fully unconscious either. Gu Zhong could keep sensing people talking by his ear, his body being moved, and shifting patches of light and shadow, bright and dim by turns. He could not tell how much time had passed.

Several times he wanted to ask about Qi Yue, his shoulder, his leg, his back. He wanted to ask exactly how Qi Yue had still managed to stand up and go head-to-head with the cripple.

But all along he could not open his mouth.

Every inch of his body felt like it was being pressed down by something. He could not move. Forget opening his mouth, even moving a finger seemed to fail every time.

Gu Zhong could not even tell whether these sensations were real or whether he was dreaming. The only thing he was sure of was that whenever he thought of Qi Yue, his heart would start racing in panic.

He still remembered Qi Yue charging into the warehouse at a run. He remembered him throwing himself over him. He remembered his right arm abruptly losing all strength. He remembered the cracking sound when that club smashed into his leg.

Of course, he also remembered the scene of Qi Yue taking the cripple down to the ground in just two or three seconds.

It had been cool. Really damn stylish.

His face seemed to hurt a little. Probably because he had smiled.

By the time Gu Zhong truly woke up, quite a long time had probably already passed.

Because when he opened his eyes and saw his mom’s face, her expression was full of anxiety, and the moment she saw him open his eyes, she actually started crying.

“Zhongzhong,” his mom said, stroking his face. “You’re awake? How do you feel?”

His mouth was so dry it was awful, and his throat felt like it had just been through a fire. He worked his mouth for a long while before finally forcing out a single word. “Water.”

“Just a tiny bit.” His mom took a cotton swab, dabbed it with water, squeezed a little into his mouth, then moistened his lips with it too. “You still can’t drink directly yet… Son, how do you feel?”

“Pretty good.” Gu Zhong moved his mouth a little and rolled his eyes around. They were much more flexible than before, though he was still a little sleepy.

“That’s good, that’s good. Don’t talk for now. Get some proper rest. You just had surgery.” His mom wiped her tears.

Surgery.

Right, surgery. Of course there had to be surgery.

Gu Zhong wanted to move his head and look down at himself, but he had no strength. All he could do was angle his eyes downward, and even then he could not really make anything out.

“My… dad?” he asked.

“He went out to buy food,” his mom said. “He’ll be back in a bit…”

“Where’s Qi Yue?” he asked, gathering his courage.

Why did he need courage? Of course he needed courage.

Qi Yue had not listened to him. Qi Yue had notified his family. Even if he did not know exactly what Qi Yue had said, his mom and dad definitely already knew this whole thing had something to do with Qi Yue. Asking about Qi Yue at a time like this would probably make his mom explode.

“Qi Yue?” After blanking for a second, his mom’s face filled with anger exactly as expected. “Why are you still worrying about him? If not for him, would you have suffered this much? You’re still asking about him? Are you stupid?”

Gu Zhong hesitated, then did not ask anything else. He closed his eyes.

When his dad came back, he heard him, but he did not open his eyes. He was just too sleepy, and he had no strength.

“He’s awake?” his dad asked his mom.

“He woke up, but he’s still kind of muddled. Let him rest,” his mom said. “The second he opened his eyes he asked about that Qi Yue. Is this kid’s brain full of dumpling soup or what?”

“Don’t start scolding him at a time like this. His injuries haven’t healed yet,” his dad said. “Besides, no matter what we think, that’s still his friend.”

“What friend? He met that lousy coffee shop owner while working part-time. He even lied to me before, said he was the boss’s wife, even the girlfriend, and then in the end…” his mom said furiously, but she cut off halfway through, probably because his dad stopped her.

Gu Zhong let out a breath of relief.

He had guessed his mom would react like that, but he had not expected his dad to say something like this.

His relationship with his dad had always been a little tense. He had never thought his dad would be this understanding.

He remembered complaining to Qi Yue before about always fighting with his dad, and Qi Yue had said, “That’s nice.”

But how was Qi Yue now…

After sleeping again, Gu Zhong finally got fully clear-headed. He could drink water, and he could eat too.

He also found out the extent of his injuries.

A mild concussion, two broken ribs, a fractured wrist bone, plus some other injuries that had not damaged bone or tendon. The only thing he could not figure out was how his ankle had somehow ended up with a strained ligament. After all, he had been tied to a chair the whole time and never even had the chance to walk, yet somehow he had still injured his ankle.

Then again, maybe it had happened when the cripple had kicked him and sent him rolling on the floor.

In any case, no matter which injury it was, he had never suffered anything this serious in his entire life, much less several serious injuries at once. In just a few days, his mom had visibly lost weight.

Gu Zhong did not ask any more questions related to Qi Yue, but in his heart he still could not stop thinking about him.

He had been in the hospital for a week already. His phone had been smashed by the cripple, and now he had no idea where the phone even was. But even so, the fact that Qi Yue had not sent even a single message at all was not normal.

With the way Qi Yue treated him, even if he could not get out of bed, he would have found some way to let Gu Zhong know he was okay. But now it was as if he had vanished, and Gu Zhong could not help feeling restless.

Only when his classmates came to visit did his mood ease a little.

His homeroom teacher came first, and after he had recovered a bit more, he brought the classmates over one after another.

A whole bunch of them crammed into the hospital room like they had finally found an excuse to hold a gathering, chatting away happily. If this had not been a single room, the nurses probably would have come in to chase them out.

But the homeroom teacher kept a decent handle on the time. Before even half an hour had passed, he had everyone leave.

His dorm leader did not move. He stood by the bedside, and only after the other classmates had all gone did he lower his voice and ask, “Gu Zhong, you…”

“Have you been by our café lately?” Gu Zhong asked.

“I haven’t gone in, but I passed by it. I actually wanted to ask you about that,” the dorm leader said, glancing outside. “The café’s closed. Even the sign’s been taken down…”

“What?” Gu Zhong froze. “That… fast?”

“What do you mean, that fast?” the dorm leader said quietly. “I wanted to ask you, this isn’t connected to that place, is it? The day after something happened to you, that shop shut down. Then when I passed by the day before yesterday, even the sign had been removed, and all the tables and chairs inside had been cleared out.”

Gu Zhong said nothing. His mood plunged past rock bottom and kept sinking, like it could go straight down to the center of the earth.

He knew Qi Yue had already decided to shut down Paolou. Qi Yue had also told the cripple that day that he would leave. But no matter what, Gu Zhong had never imagined it would happen like this.

While he knew nothing about it, Paolou had simply closed, just like that, and from the looks of it even everything inside had already been sold off.

Then what about Qi Yue? Qi Yue’s injuries had not been light. There was no way he had already been discharged, and there was no way he could have gone personally to handle Paolou either…

“Laoda.” Gu Zhong tried to sit up, but the support brace on his chest kept him from moving. “Laoda, can you help me make a call? The number is… it’s…”

The dorm leader pulled out his phone and waited for him to give the number, but after forcing his brain for half a day, Gu Zhong realized he had never memorized Qi Yue’s number at all.

A little panicked, he looked at Dorm leader. “Can you help me look for it? My phone got smashed, but the SIM card might still be around. See if it was put somewhere.”

“I’ll take a look.” The dorm leader hurriedly checked around the bedside cabinet, then opened the drawer and rummaged around for a long time. “No… I’ll keep looking…”

In that kind of situation, how could anyone possibly have thought to pick up his SIM card? He had really gone crazy from worry.

Gu Zhong said nothing. All of a sudden, he had a strong urge to cry. His expression must have changed a little too obviously, because the dorm leader got flustered too and turned toward the hospital room door. “Could your mom have put it away for you?”

“No, no, Laoda.” Gu Zhong quickly stopped him. “Don’t ask my mom.”

“Oh.” The dorm leader halted. “Is it… because you’re afraid she’ll worry?”

“Yeah.” Gu Zhong answered with a frown.

“Then…” the dorm leader looked at him.

“Help me with something,” Gu Zhong said, looking back at him too.

“Tell me.” the dorm leader nodded.

“Can you go out… and ask at the nurses’ station,” Gu Zhong said in a lowered voice, “where the person who came to the hospital with me is staying, what room?”

“I’ll go ask.” the dorm leader reached out as if to pat his arm, but in the end only patted his pillow.

Gu Zhong sighed.

He was still wearing that alarming brace. Even though he felt like he was getting much better day by day, at least it was no longer this place hurting one moment and that place hurting the next, he probably still looked like a clearly labeled fragile item, handle with care.

So the past two days he had said several times to his mom that he was already much better, but she still had never mentioned anything about his phone. And he could tell too that even after he got better, his mom still did not want him having any further contact with Qi Yue. Right now, no matter how anxious he was, the only thing he could do was use the most discreet and clumsy method possible.

The dorm leader did not come back until quite a while later. Gu Zhong stared at him so hard that if he had been able to move, he would have wanted to sit straight up.

“Well?” he asked.

“The nurse checked for me,” the dorm leader said quietly. “That day they only brought one person in, just you. No companion.”

“What?” Gu Zhong froze again.

Qi Yue suddenly shutting the place down without warning him and emptying it out was one thing, but after being injured that badly he had not even been hospitalized? Or else he had not stayed in the same hospital as Gu Zhong.

Why not here? Why?

Gu Zhong practically wanted to shout out loud. It took him ages to suppress this feeling that was half panic, half bewilderment, half anger.

After closing his eyes and calming himself a little, he looked at the dorm leader again.

“Say it,” the dorm leader said first, solid as ever.

“So… could you go to the café again…” Gu Zhong said hesitantly. The request sounded a little strange. “It just shut down, so they probably haven’t cleaned the place up yet, right?”

“Probably not. It’s just been emptied out. The door’s locked, and it looks pretty messy,” the dorm leader said.

“Then help me make a trip over there. There used to be a beat-up cardboard hiring sign hanging on the door. I don’t know if it can still be found,” Gu Zhong said quietly. “There’s a phone number on it…”

“Okay, I’ll go take a look for you.” the dorm leader nodded. “Then I’ll come back and tell you.”

“His name is Qi Yue. Call that number first for me and tell him I’m okay now,” Gu Zhong said. “If it’s not convenient for him to contact me, then tell him to wait until I call him.”

“Okay.” the dorm leader agreed very straightforwardly. “I’ll go check after I get back to school.”

“Laoda, thanks,” Gu Zhong said. “Once I get discharged, I’ll definitely thank you properly. I’ll treat you to a huge meal, buy you gear…”

“Don’t worry, I won’t be polite with you,” the dorm leader said with a laugh. “Then I’ll head back to school first.”

“Mm.” Gu Zhong answered.

Watching the dorm leader leave the room, he almost wanted to fling himself over and hug the dorm leader’s leg and make him drag him out of the hospital.

Every minute lying in the hospital was agony. Being unable to move and only being able to lie there watching TV with just five channels was painful enough. On top of that, there were still so many things weighing on his mind.

And he could not even sleep.

If he could fall asleep, at least that would count as some relief, and time would pass faster. But instead, every day he would wake up before dawn, bright-eyed and wide awake, and could not even manage a nap all day.

Gu Zhong let out a long sigh.

His mom walked in. He looked at her. “I’m really fine. Go back and get some rest. Don’t you have a job? Stop staying here and wearing yourself out.”

“That boss of yours,” his mom said, sitting down by the bed. “That friend.”

“Hm?” Gu Zhong looked at her. The sudden turn in topic almost made him fail to react.

“Honestly, I really don’t understand how you could become friends with someone like that. He has that bandit air all over him. Just looking at him is frightening,” his mom said with a sigh.

Gu Zhong opened his mouth, but he truly did not know what he should say.

He did not know what kind of person Qi Yue looked like in other people’s eyes. He only knew that the first time he saw Qi Yue, he had felt he was very different. That lazy absent-mindedness, that careless, slightly roguish air, it had felt very distinct.

After a while, he pulled himself back from his thoughts and cautiously asked, “Was it him… who notified you?”

“He notified the school, and the school notified us,” his mom said. “When your dad and I got to the hospital, he was there too.”

“He…” Gu Zhong looked at her. “How was he?”

“How would I know?” His mom frowned. “I was so worried about you I could barely think straight. How would I have had time to see how he was doing?”

Gu Zhong said nothing. He only felt his heart twisting with pain.

“He should’ve been fine, I guess.” His mom comforted him very perfunctorily, then after thinking about it added, “When your dad asked him what had happened, he sat there in the car like some big lord and would not even get out. If his friend hadn’t stopped your dad, your dad would’ve gone over and beaten him up!”

Gu Zhong closed his eyes.

It was not that Qi Yue would not get out of the car. He probably had been unable to get out of the car.

“Did he contact you again after that?” he asked after a while, with some difficulty.

“He asked for your dad’s phone number, and the next day he had someone deliver money,” his mom said.

“Our family isn’t short on that little bit of money of his. With people like that, you stay as far away as possible. Zhongzhong, maybe you’ll think Mom’s being unreasonable, but you’re still too simple. If you keep mixing with that kind of person, sooner or later something will happen. This time you already got hurt this badly for no reason. In the future…”

“Being unreasonable?” Gu Zhong very sharply caught the meaning buried in her words.

“Mm.” His mom glanced at him. “I told him not to contact you again, to stay away from you.”

Gu Zhong looked at her. Nearly a full minute passed before he closed his eyes and said softly, “Oh. Did he agree?”

“He agreed. And even if he hadn’t, we still wouldn’t have let him off. It’s true he didn’t directly cause you to be this badly hurt, but this whole thing happened because of him too. The fact that we didn’t pursue responsibility is already being extremely, extremely magnanimous. Your dad’s thought was just that he didn’t want to make things hard on you. You’re an adult now, so we have to give you some face…”

Gu Zhong could not hear clearly whatever his mom said after that. He only felt overwhelmingly sleepy and wanted to sleep.

And then he did.

He slept deeply this time, and for a long time. In the afternoon, the dorm leader came and sat by his bed for nearly twenty minutes before he finally woke up because he heard the dorm leader and his mom talking.

“Laoda, you went…” The instant Gu Zhong saw the dorm leader’s face, he woke up completely. But halfway through the sentence, he caught sight of his mom in the corner of his eye and stopped.

“Mm, I went to take care of something, and I came by to see you too. Didn’t want you getting bored,” the dorm leader said quickly enough.

The two of them chatted aimlessly for a bit. Then his mom went out for a walk, and Gu Zhong immediately fixed his eyes on the dorm leader. “Well?”

“I didn’t find that hiring cardboard,” the dorm leader said while opening his backpack. “I looked all around. The back door wasn’t locked, so I went in too, but I still couldn’t find it…”

“Ah.” Gu Zhong was deeply disappointed. He really could not understand it. The place had obviously not been cleaned, and all kinds of other trash were still there, so how was it that this one piece of cardboard had disappeared?

“But I found a business card.” the dorm leader pulled out several cards from his backpack. “This.”

The moment Gu Zhong saw it, his eyes lit up. It was one of the ones from the counter, and it had Qi Yue’s phone number on it. “This works too. This works too. Did you call?”

“I did.” the dorm leader hesitated. “The phone’s powered off.”

“What?” Gu Zhong looked at him.

“Powered off. I called four or five times. Every time it was powered off,” the dorm leader said. “Do you have any other way to contact him?”

No other way.

Everything he knew about Qi Yue existed only within Paolou.

He was Paolou’s owner. He had a stretch of memories he could not walk out of, a home he could not go back to, no especially close friends, and a goddaughter he had also not seen in a long time.

Every connection Gu Zhong had with him, apart from face-to-face at Paolou, was just that one phone number.

No, that was not right. There was WeChat too.

“Only WeChat,” Gu Zhong said softly. “But I don’t even know where my SIM card is…”

“Should I help you get a replacement SIM, then you can use my phone…” the dorm leader offered a suggestion.

At first Gu Zhong felt a burst of excitement, but a few seconds later he gave it up again. These ups and downs in emotion were a little too much for him to handle.

“Forget it. No more fussing around,” he said with a soft sigh. “Thanks.”

Qi Yue had turned his phone off.

The reason was simple. He did not want to answer calls anymore.

If Gu Zhong could not reach him by phone, then WeChat would probably be the same. Maybe he had already been deleted on WeChat too.

Heh.

Gu Zhong was depressed, and very… angry.

But no matter which emotion it was, he could not find a clear source for it.

He had been badly injured. His parents wanted to protect him, so they asked Qi Yue to stay away from him. And because all of this had started because of Qi Yue, Qi Yue had agreed.

None of the people involved, none of the steps in all this, were actually wrong. Every person’s choice was understandable. Everything was reasonable. But nobody knew how he felt.

He lay here, having lain here for who knew how long, and only after slowly getting some strength back did he realize that while he knew nothing, everything had already happened and changed.

And besides passively accepting it, he had no other choice.

That suffocating feeling, with no place to vent, crushing down inside his chest, a feeling he could not even tell was irritability or grievance or anger, it was enough to make a person collapse.

It takes a hundred days to recover from broken bones and torn tendons.

He had not stayed in the hospital for a hundred days, of course, but by the time he was discharged, he had no idea at all how many days had actually passed.

He only knew that the snow had melted, and the tender green leaves had already started little by little to deepen in color.

Spring was racing headlong toward summer.

“Spring’s here. The radish tops are sprouting in the fields,” Qi Yue had once said.

Gu Zhong looked at himself in the mirror.

The big radish looked pretty ugly. His complexion was slightly yellowish, his eyes did not have enough spirit, and his expression was a little too serious, like he was dissatisfied about something.

He really was dissatisfied.

But the big radish did not want to say it. There was no one he could say it to anyway.

The day before he returned to school, his mom gave him a new phone along with his SIM card.

“The card is the old one. That Qi Yue picked it up and gave it to me. I’ve been keeping it for you,” his mom said. “The phone is one your dad bought for you.”

“Thanks.” Gu Zhong took the phone and SIM card. The fingers holding the card trembled a little.

Qi Yue had actually gone to the trouble of digging his SIM card out of the phone after it had been stomped into total scrap on the ground.

“Your dad said we should go out and have fun over the May Day holiday,” his mom said. “Help calm your nerves.”

“That line wasn’t something my dad said, was it?” Gu Zhong smiled. “If I’m still scared by May Day, just how easy to scare do you think I am?”

“I said it.” His mom came over and lightly patted his chest twice. “You’re still not fully healed. Don’t make any big movements.”

“Mm.” Gu Zhong nodded.

Actually, he did not feel much anymore. More than anything, after lying down for so long, all the muscles in his body seemed to have gone on vacation. His whole body felt slack and heavy, like his energy kept sinking and could not be lifted.

His mom would not let him ride a bike, so today he had to take the bus to school. The bus route was not the same as the one he usually took by bike. The bus would pass by Paolou.

When they were still three stops away from Pao Lou, Gu Zhong had already fixed his eyes out the window.

Paolou and the school, the old streets and old storefronts, all of it was familiar to him. But before this, he had never thought that one day the overwhelming familiarity of it all would stir up in his heart a feeling that was a little sour, a little damp, and a little blank.

He tried hard to control himself. Since Qi Yue had already cut off contact with him so crisply and cleanly, then naturally he ought to answer in the same clean-cut way. Who wasn’t a real man, after all?

But when the bus stopped at the station closest to Paolou, Gu Zhong still got off without the slightest hesitation.

He even rented a yellow shared bike from the roadside and got on it. Walking there would take at least three minutes, and that was too slow.

A real man? Real men had their sissy moments too.

Actually, since he had no classes first and second period this morning, the moment he left the house early today, it had already been decided that he was not going to manage any real-man act.

He just wanted to go look at Paolou. He wanted to see whether Paolou had really just closed like that. He wanted to see whether all the traces in his memory had really vanished just like that.

He stopped the bike in front of Paolou, one leg braced on the ground, and stared at the café that no longer had its sign.

The imprint left by the character “炮” was still there. He could still make out the route each strip of lighting had once traced.

The door really was locked, but Gu Zhong recognized that lock. He did not know whether Qi Yue had left the key to the landlord and the landlord simply had not changed the lock.

The glass had gone unwiped for so long that it was completely covered in dust. In the bright sunlight now, looking in from outside, he actually could not see a thing.

Gu Zhong parked the bike and slowly walked over, stopping in front of the door.

Now he could see inside. Sure enough, it was a complete mess. The tables and chairs were gone, the cabinets were gone. Other than the counter, there was nothing left inside. There was dust on the floor and quite a lot of paper scraps. A mop and rags had been tossed carelessly on the counter.

The counter was still there. That was pretty miraculous.

Gu Zhong slowly fished around in his pocket, took out a key, unlocked the padlock on the door, and went in.

A wave of dusty air hit him in the face. He lowered his head and looked around the floor. Sure enough, he still could not find that cardboard hiring sign. The family heirloom.

Could it be that Qi Yue really had taken that cardboard away with him?

From the first floor to the third, Gu Zhong stayed inside nearly an hour, looking through every single corner.

He wanted to find some message Qi Yue had left behind, but found nothing at all.

Even in the tiny room on the third floor and on the balcony, those two spaces that had been Qi Yue’s most private places, there was nothing related to him as a person.

The door to the little room and the door leading to the balcony had both been removed. Looking at that made Gu Zhong feel awful, as if the place where Qi Yue had sheltered himself had just been crudely erased away.

He found nothing.

When Gu Zhong left Paolou, he locked the door back up the way it had been.

He probably would not come here again.

If Paolou is gone, will you still remember me? Will you miss me?

Yes. Yes, I will.

Gu Zhong frowned, turned, swung onto the little yellow bike, and rode toward school.

Today’s class was boring. Actually all classes were boring. It mostly depended on how well the teacher lectured, and today’s teacher was the kind who was not good at lecturing.

Sometimes Gu Zhong seriously suspected that their department and the vocational department shared teachers.

Around him, some classmates were sleeping, some were staring into space, some were looking at the teacher, though it was impossible to tell whether they were really listening or just pretending to.

He lowered his head, took out his phone, inserted the SIM card, and turned it on.

Before he even had time to get WeChat set up and check whether Qi Yue had tried contacting him, a whole string of text messages came flooding in.

He put the phone on silent, then quickly skimmed through them.

Disappointing. They were basically all the usual system messages in fancy packaging, reminders to top up his phone bill, data package recommendations, then ads, or email notices, and then… hold on.

The last bill reminder message looked a little…

Gu Zhong quickly tapped open the successful top-up message.

He discovered that after the system notification telling him your phone balance is gone, top up soon, someone had recharged his number. His current balance was over five hundred yuan.

Over five hundred. A fortune.

With the way he always recharged exactly according to his monthly plan and counted every bit of it, there was no way his balance would ever have more than a hundred yuan in it.

Someone had recharged his account.

Who was it?

It could not be his dad. Ever since he started working part-time, his dad practically did not even want to give him pocket money anymore. It could not be his mom either. If his mom had recharged it, she definitely would have said so.

Could it have been Qi Yue? Had Qi Yue topped up his account?

Really? Why?

Qi Yue’s own phone was powered off, so why was he still topping up Gu Zhong’s phone?

Without even waiting for class to end, Gu Zhong slipped out the back door, took out the Paolou business card the dorm leader had picked up for him that day, and dialed Qi Yue’s number.

There was a stretch of silence in the receiver, and just as the first sound was about to come through, he hung up.

Still powered off.

Gu Zhong frowned, quickly logged back into WeChat, tapped Qi Yue’s name, and sent a period over as fast as he could.

You are no longer this user’s friend. Would you like to send a friend request?

“You bastard!” he could not help cursing.

Qi Yue really had deleted him.

To be honest, right now, other than depression, disappointment, and a kind of anger that would not quite rise all the way, Gu Zhong also had a much stronger feeling.

The painful ache of missing him, and the worry of what on earth had happened to him.

When the cripple had beaten Gu Zhong, Qi Yue had not shown the emotional response the cripple had wanted to see. But the fact that Gu Zhong had been beaten unconscious right in front of him would definitely have left Qi Yue with a crushing sense of guilt.

Gu Zhong still remembered that string of apologies Qi Yue had spoken in a trembling voice.

He had never heard Qi Yue sound so out of control.

Thinking about it now, maybe even without the demand from his parents, Qi Yue would still have chosen not to contact him again, in order to avoid any more unpredictable trouble in the future.

This time, that trouble was probably something Qi Yue had never imagined would happen.

Gu Zhong crouched against the wall and let out a long, vicious sigh.

He did not know what was wrong with him. The moment he thought that if things went on like this, Qi Yue might really end up becoming nothing more than a memory of his, he felt afraid. And that memory even ended, like some melodramatic cliché, with an incident like this.

It could not possibly be more depressing.

Gu Zhong took out a cigarette and lit it. Some part of his body was uncomfortable, and after squatting there for less than a minute, he was already finding it hard to bear, so he sat down on the step beside him.

After staring at the ground and finishing one cigarette, the bell for the end of class rang. He stubbed out the cigarette and tossed it into the trash, then stood up.

He took out his phone, opened Qi Yue’s name in WeChat once more, and sent over a message.

You just wait. You’d better hope I don’t find you.