Su Qing woke very early in the morning. However tired he was, he would still open his eyes around 4 AM. He had slept unusually deeply this time. He was still a little confused when he woke up, having nearly forgotten where he was. Beside his ear was the sound of someone else’s breathing. Su Qing was startled at first. Before he could wake up fully, he was on the alert, as if a bucket of cold water had been poured into his paste-like brain.

He opened his eyes at once and saw the arm laying over him. He stared for a moment, then slightly let out a breath, remembering that this was Hu Bugui’s tent. 

Su Qing carefully turned over, wanting to remove Hu Bugui’s arm from his body. He tossed around quietly for a moment without success, so he lay there face up, looking at the ceiling of the tent, and somehow, sleepiness snuck up on him again. 

Su Qing blinked hard twice, feeling as though someone had given him a sleeping pill. How many years had it been since he had felt like dozing back off after waking up?

Then he turned his head and looked at Hu Bugui, extremely close to him. He began to feel perplexed once more. He thought, why had he relaxed when he had realized that the person next to him was Hu Bugui? Su Qing raised his hand and lightly moved aside a lock of hair on Hu Bugui’s forehead. He found that Hu Bugui seemed to have a trace of dark circles under his eyes. 

Su Qing had always thought that “love” was an extremely potent word. Even if you felt it, there were many circumstances in which you couldn’t say it aloud, or else it was like a hedgehog rolling over and exposing its soft belly, like a wild wolf raising its head and putting its throat into another’s hands. It was a word so heavy that it was frightening. 

But Hu Bugui had said it into his ear without reservation, as if…as if adding a safety bolt to his floating body. 

Su Qing turned it over in his mind for a while and suddenly thought that it was miraculous. He had thought that he had never left any marks on this world, like a bird flying through the sky, with only himself to know about it—the little whelp Tu Tutu didn’t count, the little thing’s circumstances were special, he still relied on him for support—but now, he had suddenly been notified that there was a certain singular link between himself and another person, invisible and untouchable; traces of it could only be made out with careful observation. 

“Su Qing…” He silently pronounced this name in his mind. “My name is Su Qing. I’m a person named Su Qing. My home is in B City. I’m temporarily residing with the RZ Unit.” 

He slowly extended a hand and found Hu Bugui’s hand laying over him. He cautiously used his fingertips to touch his skin, feeling the body heat coming from it. Like a curious little animal, he touched and poked. 

Suddenly, Hu Bugui’s hand, obediently lying there letting him fiddle, opened and seized Su Qing’s fingers. Su Qing stared and found that at some point he had poked Hu Bugui awake. He was was watching him with open pitch-black eyes. 

Neither of them spoke. After a moment, Hu Bugui seemed to feel something. He went rigid, then let go of Su Qing’s fingers, turned over, and put a bit of distance between himself and Su Qing. He quietly said, “Go back to sleep.” Then he closed his eyes and wouldn’t look at him. 

Su Qing sensed that there was something off about Hu Bugui—Captain Hu’s eyelids were still trembling faintly, and his facial muscles looked tensed. This wasn’t the appearance of someone who wanted to get some more sleep. His eyes made a circle of Hu Bugui’s face. Then, as if he had suddenly thought of something, his fundamental nature was revealed in a leer. He reached out a hand at lightning speed to grope downward along Hu Bugui’s chest and abdomen. Hu Bugui nearly bounced up. He grabbed Su Qing’s wrist and stopped pretending to be asleep. His breathing became noticeably rapid. He half sat up. “Su Qing!” 

The temperature of Hu Bugui’s palm was scalding. Su Qing winked at him, looking like a ruffian. “Hey, I’m a man, I understand.” 

Hu Bugui fumed. He was tongue-tied, unable to say a word. 

Su Qing sighed, bent his knees, and lightly rubbed Hu Bugui’s calf with the tips of his feet. “Captain Hu, holding this back is like holding back piss. It’s bad for your health.” 

Hu Bugui looked at him silently for a while, his somewhat rapid breathing slowly calming. He let go of Su Qing’s wrist. “You haven’t made up your mind yet, so don’t pester me.” 

Su Qing stared. “It’s not like we haven’t…” 

Hu Bugui sat up, wanting to climb past him out of the tent, quietly saying, “I didn’t know you yet back then. When you’ve…thought it over, if you really do decide that you want to be with me…” 

The last few words were practically forced down into his throat. Su Qing was silent for a moment. Then, the instant that Hu Bugui was about to pass him and squeeze out, he suddenly grabbed Hu Bugui’s arm, deftly turned over, and knocked his shoulder into his chest, knocking Hu Bugui backwards. His fingers nimbly dug into Hu Bugui’s pants. 

Hu Bugui groaned. He wanted to push him away, but Su Qing was half kneeling in front of him, his head slightly lowered, his slightly messy hair covering his whole forehead so that only a pair of eyes that shone in the dark showed, staring at his face without blinking. 

Hu Bugui looked into those eyes, and it was as if some thread in his mind collapsed. He was actually a little bewildered. He thought that in those eyes was a sea of stars that he could never hope to reach but would pursue until the end of his life. But it was so far away that when he thought back, he would have the feeling that he was covered in rags after walking that road for a whole lifetime; a backwards look, and it turned out that it had been hundreds of millions of years. 

He was nearly dizzy. His spine straightened unnaturally. Hu Bugui even felt that he was floating up. His hands, which had been pushing away, tightly gripped Su Qing’s shoulders. 

Su Qing gave a mischievous laugh and stroked the sheets. “I told you that my technique is good…” 

Hu Bugui suddenly held him down, one hand pressed beside his ear. The confusion in his eyes dispersed, and the look in them seemed to become a little dangerous. Enunciating precisely from between his teeth, he asked, “Where did you learn all these things?” 

Su Qing blinked. “I’m naturally gifted.” 

The look in Hu Bugui’s eyes deepened a little more. He grasped the nape of Su Qing’s neck. This kiss bore down menacingly, not like the almost restrained gentleness before; it was nearly biting. Su Qing, however, thought that this was scratching the itch, so he caught Hu Bugui around the neck and cooperated entirely—anyway, he was a scoundrel by habit; he wasn’t afraid at all of a minor incident sparking a war. 

Only when there was a sudden rustling in the quiet morning, followed by someone giving an enormous yawn, did Hu Bugui finally come around. Panting, he straightened up and looked a little awkwardly at Su Qing’s shirt, which he had torn two buttons off of, and his exposed collarbones. 

Su Qing, rather unsatisfied, quietly cursed: “Shit, what bastard is getting up so early?” 

Hu Bugui turned his face away and seemed to laugh lightly. Only when he smiled did he seem not so stern. His face with its suddenly softened edges seemed particular warm. Then he reached out to gather up Su Qing’s shirt and rummaged among the rolled up covers, finding the two buttons from Su Qing’s shirt in the nooks and crannies. Under Su Qing’s stupefied gaze, he picked up his jacket from beside him and pulled out a little bag. Inside, it had everything—tweezers, little mini pliers, scissors, an awl, and—most unbelievable of all—there were also a spool of thread and a needle. 

Hu Bugui quietly said, “Don’t move, I’ll sew them on for you.” 

Su Qing didn’t move—not from obedience, but because he was still in complete disarray. 

After a long time, when Hu Bugui had sewn one button on, he finally shakily said, “You…you’re sewing my buttons on for me?” 

“Yeah, don’t fidget. Look out so I don’t prick you.” 

“You…you sew buttons?” Su Qing felt that his brain had turned into a broken sound recorder. It could only repeat these three words. “You can sew buttons? No…you…” 

“Shut up,” Hu Bugui said. 

Su Qing really did shut up. He felt that he was a little short on oxygen. 

When the two of them came out of the same tent one after another, Chang Dou, standing outside stretching, turned to stone. With his mouth open, he looked at them foolishly—Su Qing’s lips were so gaudily colored they were a little swollen, and his shirt, with one button undone at the collar, faintly revealed a shallow mark. 

Su Qing shouldered the heavy burden himself. He very naturally went to start morning exercises according to habit. When he passed by Chang Dou, he calmly said, “Morning, Engineer Chang.” 

Chang Dou, his mouth open, watched as his receding figure went far away. 

Hu Bugui said heavily behind him, “If you open it a little more, even the bedbugs will be able to fly in.” 

Chang Dou kept his mouth open, watching him also pass by him and go far away. Then he stood where he was for a while and tossed his head hard. Feeling that he wasn’t especially awake yet, he crawled back into his tent looking sickly, planning to go back to sleep. 

The ST Training Course’s events were oddities of all kinds. Apart from the mystical little dark room and the mirror image projector, they also became acquainted with quite a few other strange objects emerging in an endless stream. There was a large-scale emulator that could emulate all kinds of scenes, from Roman coliseums to the Trojan War up to classic World War II battles; its data was all extremely accurate. There was a sensory deprivation device that, when you put it on, only left one sense out of vision, taste, hearing, smell, and touch. Barely able to communicate, you had to cooperate with your partner to struggle to accomplish an assignment, “one without eyes, one without ears.” If it was too much, you took off the sensory deprivation device, then found that the background music really was “Two Tigers¹.” 

There were also some unexpected trainings and exercises. On the fourth day, they were even scooped up and taken to the border to provide aid to special forces dealing with drug traffickers. 

When they were starting to get used to the ST Training Course and even feeling faintly expectant about what training events it would turn up next, Hu Bugui’s long-silent communicator suddenly gave a sharp sound. 

Headquarters had sent an urgent notice: enormous concentration of energy detected, return at once. 

This time they couldn’t ride in the old man’s oxcart again. A helicopter landed directly at the training base and picked them up. Just before their departure, Kou Tong at last reappeared with the results of the mirror image projection tests. He came trotting over and distributed the results by name. 

No one blindfolded them this time. Amid a huge roaring, the helicopter left this most mysterious base.