TSIBAMS Chapter 121
by VolareThis person had been like this, completely drained, since he was picked up from the station.
Qi Guang still had his eyes closed, “Drive properly and watch the road.”
“Are you that sleepy?” Brother Xu asked.
“You try taking a night train and a bus, you might just die of sleep right now.”
Brother Xu sighed, turned the steering wheel, and gave up on the idea of taking him back to school, heading towards his home instead.
Qi Guang adjusted his seat a bit lower, changed to a more comfortable position to continue sleeping, and then Brother Xu’s voice came again.
“Looks like you two have resolved your issues, it’s just a pity that Qi Guang didn’t bring your kid back.”
Qi Guang was startled, abruptly raising his head to look over, and Brother Xu was indeed sending a voice message on his phone.
Brother Xu looked at his stunned expression, smiled smugly, and continued to say into the phone’s microphone, “After you finish your exams, I’ll treat…”
Before he could finish speaking, Qi Guang snatched his phone, glared at him, “He’s taking a nap right now!”
Brother Xu pretended to be innocent and nodded, pointing to the green voice message bar on the phone that had already been sent successfully. Looking at the helpless expression on Qi Guang’s face, he suddenly became somewhat smug, and finally couldn’t help but burst into laughter.
It’s said that staring at someone for fifteen seconds will make them feel ashamed. Qi Guang just watched him perform, but unfortunately, he didn’t last long and was defeated by the other party’s thick skin. He shook his head and laughed along with him.
He didn’t know what he was laughing at; maybe what was funny wasn’t the thing itself, but rather the heavy and hidden feelings that everyone had been carrying, which all dissipated, tacitly and silently, on this afternoon.
Starting from New Year’s Eve, from that ordinary night, just like in the movie “Coherence”, after being separated from a certain space, everyone inexplicably scattered, falling into different timelines, and life was completely turned upside down.
And now they realized that all of this was just a joke played by fate. After all the obstacles were overcome one by one, looking back on the past, they were just some insignificant ups and downs.
From a results-oriented point of view, as long as there is no loss, the process doesn’t matter.
At this moment, they felt relieved. Everything ordinary and bland felt light and was worth treating with an unreasonable good mood.
It was like making up for lost time.
At this moment, Qi Guang’s phone rang. The smile on his face hadn’t faded, and after glancing at the name on the screen, he quickly pressed the answer button: “Hello.”
“How come you didn’t tell me when you arrived?” Ye Xing’s voice from the earpiece wasn’t loud; even his words of reproach sounded very gentle.
“I saw that it was still your nap time, I was afraid of disturbing you,” Qi Guang explained.
“I’ve been waiting for your news!”
“I was wrong, keep your voice down, don’t bring the teacher over.”
“Don’t worry, I’m in the bathroom. Are you in Brother Xu’s car? Turn on the speakerphone, I’ll say hi to Brother Xu.”
“He’s driving, don’t you…”
Don’t disturb him.
The last three words were snatched up by Brother Xu before they could be spoken.
“Hey, hey, hey, I heard everything! Little Ye Xing is looking for me, don’t interrupt, quickly turn on the speakerphone!” Brother Xu held the steering wheel, driving while giving him a wink.
Qi Guang scoffed at the words “Little Ye Xing” in his mouth, resisting the urge to roll his eyes and pressed the speakerphone button.
“Brother Xu, I haven’t even had time to congratulate you and Bai Shu!” Ye Xing’s voice was full of excitement, “After our exams are over, I want to get the whole story from you! We’ll drink until we drop then!”
Qi Guang “tsk”ed, muttering in a low voice, “Drink until we drop, with your one-drink capacity, we’ll end before we even start.”
Surprisingly, Ye Xing didn’t jump at him this time.
This familiar atmosphere felt like it was back to the time when everyone was closest last year.
Brother Xu patted the steering wheel, shouting, “I’ll treat when the time comes!”
The long street was empty, the afternoon was peaceful, and the car drove steadily along. In a short while, they arrived downstairs at Qi Guang’s home. He hurriedly said goodbye to Brother Xu and went upstairs without looking back amidst a chorus of “little white-eyed wolf” complaints.
It’s said that a ten-minute nap is equivalent to two hours of sleep at night. Qi Guang originally thought he would fall asleep the moment he touched the sofa at home, but now he was actually much more awake than he was when he arrived at the station.
This meant he had the energy to take a shower, change into his pajamas, and then have a full sleep.
But before taking a shower, there was something else he could take the time to do.
He opened the door to the study, rummaged in the cabinet under the desk for a while, and found an old… old phone from a pile of old radios and old tapes.
To be precise, it was an old-fashioned phone.
Under the burgundy shell seemed to be hidden an uninhibited soul, even if it was an old-fashioned phone, it was a disco-style one.
He wiped away the dust with a tissue, removed the battery, put it in a charger that matched its model, clamped it down, plugged it into the charging base, and the charger’s light immediately flashed with colorful lights.
It could actually still be used.
Half an hour later, he entered the study again with wet hair, inserted the charged battery into the phone, then took out the SIM card from his phone and inserted it into the old phone, and pressed the power button.
The pixel animation on the black and white screen was accompanied by a music sound with an astonishingly loud decibel, ushering in the second spring of this phone.
The phone had probably been restored to its factory settings, empty, except that it looked a bit old on the outside, everything else was almost like a new phone.
Being used to smartphones and then touching this three-dimensional mechanical keyboard was somewhat novel, especially since each button would make a different sound when pressed. He pressed a series of numbers, then pressed a button with an envelope symbol, and an editing text message page appeared. He typed a line of words and clicked send.
-Ye Xing, give me a goal.
It was already sunset when he received a reply.
Woken up by the text message notification sound, Qi Guang vaguely opened his eyes, fumbled for his phone from the bedside table and glanced at the time, it was exactly when Ye Xing got out of school in the afternoon.
He had actually slept like this for the whole afternoon.
The black and white screen of the phone showed an envelope symbol at the top, followed by the number “1”, indicating that there was one unread message in the inbox.
He pressed the keyboard and jumped to the page containing the text message.
-What goal?
He almost forgot what he was doing before this nap, and was stunned for a while.
What goal?
What were they talking about before going to sleep?
Qi Guang patted his brain, which had become a little dull due to being overly excited these past two days, checked the sent message box, and then sighed and smiled as he typed a line of words and sent it.
-For example, to get first place in the whole school next time.
-What? I thought you were already first place in the whole school.
-Looks like classmate Ye Xing has never even inquired about me… How cruel.
Probably because there was no emoticon support, Qi Guang felt that his expression of emotion wasn’t quite reaching the point, so he seriously typed out an old-fashioned combination of a colon and a left bracket and sent it.
Ye Xing looked at the sad expression made up of punctuation marks in his inbox and couldn’t help but chuckle.
Seemingly blaming him, it was essentially just a way of acting coy. Thinking that the once all-around ace student, a flower on a high mountain, would now let go of his reservedness and might go further and further down the shameless road of acting coy in the future, he instantly felt that life had become much more interesting.
Ye Xing signaled his classmates to go to the cafeteria first, then slowed down, and called him: “The fact that you weren’t first in the whole school was quite surprising to me.”
“Hehe…” Qi Guang faked a laugh, his voice, which had just woken up, sounded more magnetic than usual, “Before the college entrance examination, I might not contact you very often.”
“Okay, I won’t bother you too much,” Ye Xing said.
“I thought you’d at least pretend to feel a bit sorry,” Qi Guang clicked his tongue.
Ye Xing was stunned.
If it were the most clingy period of the past, he might have really reacted as Qi Guang expected, but now, it wasn’t so much that he wasn’t as clingy as before, but rather that he had become much more open-minded.
Even if they maintained this kind of distance, it was the kind of open-mindedness that unconditionally trusted the other party.
Having things to do, having hope, being able to love.
It wasn’t that the other party was waiting for him at the finish line, but rather that everyone was striving forward for the sake of being able to gather at the same finish line.
When he thought of this, he realized that these few months weren’t completely empty; at least, he had settled down and had unconsciously become more detached and mature in his feelings.
He smiled and said in a serious tone: “It’s such a pity, not seeing you for a day makes me miss you like crazy, let alone this long period of over a month… Sigh, but you can’t have both the fish and the bear’s paw, in order for you to achieve the great cause of getting first place in the whole school, in order to have the school put up a banner at the entrance for you after the college entrance examination, therefore, I can only sacrifice the small me to make you great…”
Qi Guang quickly interrupted him: “Okay, that’s enough.”
Ye Xing laughed on the other end of the phone, causing the classmates passing by him to look back at him with confusion. He then realized what he had just said so oblivious to those around him, and immediately restrained himself, lowering his voice and said, “That’s too embarrassing, don’t call me later.”
“Dude! It was you who called me.”
“Who told you to send me a text message, the number is right up there, I accidentally clicked it.”
“If I don’t send a text message, I can only send a message by carrier pigeon, I just changed to my old-fashioned phone at home, which can be used for a week on a single charge, to use as an alarm clock and watch. If you miss me, then call me.”
“Why did you suddenly change phones? Does a top student also need to isolate themselves from the temptations of the outside world through physical means? It’s truly hurtful, I thought I was the only temptation…” Ye Xing lowered his voice, imitating his tone to finish the second half of the sentence, and suddenly seemed to remember something and shouted, “No! Why isn’t it that you miss me and you call me?”
Qi Guang laughed on the other end of the phone: “Because you live with your mom, and she doesn’t want you to date early, does she?”
“You have so many reasons,” Ye Xing walked slower and slower, gradually separating himself from the crowd heading towards the cafeteria, “I’ll put the blame on me for now, but if you don’t carry yourself over to me on a sedan chair after the college entrance examination, then you’re a grandson!”
“No, it’s carrying you over to me on a sedan chair,” Qi Guang said.
“Pah! Shameless creature!”