PLT | Chapter 14

Taking Him Home

When Yan Chao opened his eyes again, it was already broad daylight. Autumn sunlight filtered through the thin gauze curtains into the room, casting a warm wash of gold.

His sleep in the latter half of the night had been surprisingly steady. He had not even had another dream.

Seeing that he was awake, Zhou Chenyu took breakfast out of the microwave and called him over to eat.

Yan Chao’s head was still a little muddled. Without saying a word, he sat down at the table and glanced at the buns and rice porridge on it, then could not help giving a little laugh. “Old Beijing, no doujiang and youtiao today?”

Zhou Chenyu said, “It’s already polite enough of me not to make you drink douzhi.”

Yan Chao, however, did not hurry to eat. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and offered one to Zhou Chenyu. Zhou Chenyu shook his head with a look of distaste. “I don’t smoke.”

So Yan Chao pulled one out for himself. Just as he was about to light it, Zhou Chenyu said, “You’re not allowed to smoke either. Stop wrecking my throat with secondhand smoke.”

Yan Chao got up to go outside and smoke, but Zhou Chenyu lifted his eyes and glanced at him. “Forget it, forget it. I can’t stop you anyway, so don’t bother.”

Yan Chao held the cigarette between his lips. “Sorry. Just this once.”

Actually, he did not have much of a smoking habit either. It was just that in the past, whenever his condition flared up all of a sudden, for some reason, smoking made him feel a little better. This was probably only a kind of psychological comfort, but over time, it became a habit.

Both of them were unusually quiet that morning. After taking two drags, Yan Chao finally said, “Why aren’t you asking me anything?”

Zhou Chenyu glanced at him. “Do I dare? What if I ask and you start twitching again?”

Yan Chao blew out a smoke ring and smiled. “You should feel honored. Right now, you’re the only person in this world who’s ever seen me twitch.”

Zhou Chenyu let out a mocking laugh. “If it weren’t for me last night, you might’ve strangled yourself to death. If you don’t offer yourself up to repay me, it’d be hard to justify.”

Yan Chao shot him a helpless glance and stubbed out the cigarette.

A minute later, he suddenly remembered something. “I forgot to tell you before. This afternoon, you guys are all leaving on the same flight, but I’m not going back yet. We’ll see each other next week when we record again.”

The filming for The Ends of the Earth in Xinjiang had already wrapped. That afternoon, the production team and all the guests would be returning to Beijing together.

Zhou Chenyu asked in surprise, “What are you going to do?”

Yan Chao said, “What nonsense. I came all the way out here, of course I have to go home for a trip.”

Only then did Zhou Chenyu remember that Yan Chao’s home was in Xinjiang. So without thinking, he said, “Then I’m going with you.”

Yan Chao looked at him. “What are you going to do?”

Zhou Chenyu looked completely matter-of-fact. “Meet the parents.”

Yan Chao instinctively cursed, “Meet your sister.”

Zhou Chenyu said, “You just met my sister yesterday.”

Yan Chao: “……”

After their usual round of sniping at each other, Yan Chao finally said lightly, “Even if you really wanted to meet them, there aren’t any parents at my home.”

Zhou Chenyu had not expected him to suddenly say that, and could not help freezing for a moment before lifting his eyes to look at him.

Yan Chao’s handsome brows and eyes still held the same calm expression as always. He continued, “I was raised by my grandmother from the time I was little. She passed away when I was eighteen.”

Zhou Chenyu looked at him, too startled for a moment to say anything. Only after a while did he say awkwardly, “I’m sorry. I didn’t think…”

Yan Chao, however, shook his head and smiled. “It’s okay. It’s been so many years already. I made peace with it a long time ago.”

Zhou Chenyu said again, “Then why are you still… going home?”

Yan Chao said, “I don’t get many chances to come back, so I want to go sweep the grave.”

Yan Chao had never told anyone around him anything about his family before. But ever since last night, when he had exposed his biggest secret in front of Zhou Chenyu, he suddenly no longer felt like hiding these things from him either.

He could not quite explain why. Zhou Chenyu clearly looked like such an unreliable person, yet Yan Chao could never forget the long-missed warmth and peace of mind he had felt last night while tightly holding those hands.

Maybe worries that had piled up for too long always needed some outlet in the end.

Yan Chao had thought that after explaining everything to him so frankly, Zhou Chenyu would stop clamoring to go home with him. Unexpectedly, after thinking for a moment, Zhou Chenyu instead said even more firmly, “Then I have even more reason to go with you. How can I just leave you here by yourself?”

Yan Chao did not know whether to laugh or cry. “I’ve spent all these years getting by on my own. Do I really need you to keep me company now?”

Zhou Chenyu said, “That’s because you didn’t know me before. Otherwise, I would’ve been keeping you company from back then.”

Listening to all his nonsense, Yan Chao could not help laughing. He only felt that this person was childish to an absurd degree, but for some reason, that earnest look on his face still made Yan Chao’s heart stir faintly.

Then Zhou Chenyu suddenly looked at him from under his brows and added, “Besides, I’m not close with the other people in your production team anyway. If I go back with them, I’ll die of boredom. Just take me with you, Xiao Yan-gege…”

Yan Chao: “…Stop right there.”

Zhou Chenyu broke into a smile. “So Xiao Yan-gege agrees?”

Yan Chao said, “You call someone younger than you gege all day long. Don’t you feel even a little ashamed inside?”

Zhou Chenyu said, “Calling you didi won’t do, calling you gege won’t do, so what exactly do you want me to call you?”

Yan Chao gave him a flat look. “So I don’t have a name, is that it?”

Zhou Chenyu nodded. “Okay then, wife.”

Yan Chao: “…You can go back to Beijing by yourself.”

That afternoon, the production group headed for the airport, and only Yan Chao and Zhou Chenyu stayed behind.

As Yan Chao drove, he still glanced uneasily at Zhou Chenyu in the passenger seat. “Have you really thought this through? I’m going to a public cemetery. Don’t tell me you think it’s unlucky.”

Zhou Chenyu curled his lip. “If I let you go by yourself, what if Nie Xiaoqian gets attached to you?”

Yan Chao said, “As long as it isn’t you, Black Mountain Demon.”

Zhou Chenyu said, “Ah, so you accidentally discovered my true form. I actually came here specifically to suck the vital essence out of handsome guys like you.”

Yan Chao said, “…The kind that seduces me into dual cultivation with you?”

Zhou Chenyu threw him a flirtatious look. “Since you already figured it out, then the sooner the better. How about tonight?”

Yan Chao: “……”

He was wrong. He never should have responded to anything Zhou Chenyu said.

This city was very small. After driving for a little over half an hour, they arrived at the cemetery on the outskirts.

Zhou Chenyu was a very strange kind of person. Sometimes he looked both idiotic and childish, but at other times, he seemed to have a very good sense of boundaries. Like now, after Yan Chao parked at the cemetery entrance, Zhou Chenyu very tactfully stayed in the car and did not insist on going with him to sweep his family’s graves.

Even when Yan Chao took two bouquets of lilies out of the back seat, Zhou Chenyu did not raise a single question about the number of bouquets.

Even half an hour later, after Yan Chao got back into the car, Zhou Chenyu still showed no intention whatsoever of prying into his privacy.

Yan Chao drove all the way back, and the scenery outside the window gradually shifted from the barren outskirts into the city.

His hometown was a fourth- or fifth-tier small city, far from the capital’s prosperous scene of skyscrapers and ceaseless streams of traffic. But lying at the foot of the Tianshan Mountains, with its blue skies, white clouds, clear waters, green hills, and slow pace of life, it had a different kind of quiet, gentle beauty.

Zhou Chenyu had kept his gaze on the scenery outside the window the whole time. Only now did he suddenly say, “So this is the place where you grew up.”

This kind of life in a frontier town of the far northwest was something a young Beijing master like Zhou Chenyu, who had grown up in the hutongs, had never experienced and could hardly imagine.

Yan Chao nodded. “Other than being a little more underdeveloped, it’s actually not that different from Beijing.”

Zhou Chenyu turned to look at him. After quite a while, he still could not help asking, “So after you turned eighteen… you’ve been alone this whole time?”

Yan Chao said lightly, “Why else do you think I’ve mastered so many domestic skills?”

That year, in the blazing heat of summer, after Yan Chao had gone through Black June together with countless other graduates, he had finally lived up to his grandmother’s hopes and gotten into a top-tier elite university as the top scorer.

And yet, before he could even receive his admission letter, he was caught completely off guard by the passing of the only family member he had by his side.

That incomparably bleak summer had seemed like a coming-of-age gift from heaven itself.

And yet after going through that immense grief, Yan Chao still had no choice but to pull himself together and walk the road ahead alone.

Zhou Chenyu stayed silent for a long while. In the end, however, he still did not ask anything. He only let out a quiet sigh.

Yan Chao could not help asking, “Why don’t you ask where my parents went?”

Zhou Chenyu shook his head. “If you want to tell me, then naturally you’ll tell me.”

Yan Chao still wore a calm expression as he said, “I don’t have parents.”

Zhou Chenyu lifted his eyes and looked at his sharply defined profile. After a while, he offered comfort. “It’s okay. I haven’t seen my parents in more than twenty years either. I don’t even remember what they look like anymore. Having them is worse than not having them.”

Yan Chao was left not knowing whether to laugh or cry by those words. He only felt that the somewhat oppressive mood from before had suddenly been broken apart by Zhou Chenyu. He smiled helplessly. “Is that really how you comfort people?”

Zhou Chenyu sighed. “The two of us are both little cabbages that neither father loves nor mother cherishes. From now on, I’ll treat you as well as I would my own blood brother.”

Even though something difficult to describe stirred in his heart, Yan Chao still could not stand Zhou Chenyu’s mushy tone, especially the way he was completely unaware of it, and said with disdain, “That line is way too corny. Seriously.”

Zhou Chenyu smoothly changed his wording. “From now on, I’ll treat you as well as I’d treat my own dear wife.”

Yan Chao: “……”