When Su Qing got out of bed the next day, his walking posture, owing to certain reasons everyone has a tacit understanding of, was…just slightly awkward. 

Hu Bugui watched him in silence for a while. When he stuck his arms into his shirtsleeves and frowned slightly as he twisted around, Hu Bugui, feeling boundless guilt, got up and carefully gathered together the front of his shirt. Focusing his attention on the clothing as much as possible, he did up his buttons for him with no indecent assault. 

Su Qing sat there obediently with his arms open, letting him fiddle as he liked. 

Hu Bugui actually very much wanted to control himself every time. He didn’t want to put a great burden on Su Qing’s body. But every time he was teased into losing control by a certain bastard who didn’t appreciate the kindness. 

In fact, Su Qing was very well-behaved the majority of the time. After all this time, Hu Bugui felt that Su Qing had been “domesticated.” Only when there were important matters during work would he put forward some views. As for ordinary trivialities, he would basically go with whatever Hu Bugui said. 

Tell him not to smoke, and he would do his best to resist. When he really couldn’t resist, he would only smoke furtively. Even when to go to sleep and when to wake up, not staying up late, not eating only capsules and not food, how much to eat at each meal—if you only said something to him, however unwilling he was, he would still wrinkle his nose in exasperation and comply without another word. 

Apart from not being very obedient in bed—he didn’t seem to especially like Hu Bugui’s constant, almost masochistic self-control. 

A person who had been so good at agreeing to your face then disobeying in private had suddenly become so well-behaved. Sometimes when he thought of it, Hu Bugui felt very unused to it. He was always apprehensive, thinking that this was the calm before the storm, afraid that he was so well-behaved because he was brewing a big piece of troublemaking for some day in the future. 

After buttoning his shirt for him, Hu Bugui found that his expression still seemed to be a little confused. So he put his arms around Su Qing’s neck and gently kissed him on the forehead. He gave his shoulder a shove. “Go wash your face.”—Hu Bugui had also found that if you kissed him on the forehead, Su Qing would automatically close his eyes. If the atmosphere was good, he would agree to basically anything you said to him at this time. 

Su Qing obediently went to wash his face. Hu Bugui considered, then directly left the room and went downstairs. 

It was still early. Only Ji Pengcheng was sitting alone downstairs, holding a bowl of soy milk and slowly drinking it. Hu Bugui sat down across from him. Ji Pengcheng gave him a slightly scrutinizing look. He asked, “Where’s that little whelp Su Qing?” 

“He’ll be down in a while.” Hu Bugui approximately knew Ji Pengcheng’s relationship to Su Qing and was also looking with faint curiosity at this old fellow who could turn trickery into an art.

Ji Pengcheng heard him and narrowed his eyes. He smiled meaningfully. “Strange. Since I’ve known that little whelp, he’s always gotten up earlier than the chickens to go out and cause chaos before daybreak every day.” 

Hu Bugui thought that there seemed to be some subtext in his words. He answered, “He doesn’t sleep very well, so normally I let him get some more sleep when he can.” 

Then he frowned and stared blankly with his eyes fixed on a corner of the table for a moment. He seemed like he wanted to say something but was holding himself back. Ji Pengcheng looked at him intelligently. “What is it? What do you want to say?” 

Hu Bugui wasn’t very good at talking to start with, and he thought that he might be worried over nothing. When Ji Pengcheng asked him, he stared, then had even less of an idea of what to say. 

Ji Pengcheng raised the soy milk to cover his mouth, but he couldn’t cover the laugh lines at the corners of his curving eyes. This made his eyes seem especially bright, flashing like gloss. 

“That little whelp. He really is a rabbit. Cowardly,” Ji Pengcheng said. 

Hu Bugui stared, looking at him a little uncomprehendingly. He thought, how could Su Qing be cowardly? 

Ji Pengcheng paused, then continued: “He’s the sort of person that each time he meets a disaster, he gets more cautious. He’s seen the worst of things, suffered things others haven’t, so he thinks about everything more than others. That what-do-you-call-it…Utopia, didn’t they make him a carrier for absorbing others’ emotions? He lived through that, and now he’s neither insane nor an idiot. He seems to be doing fine. But it’s left him with this bad habit of needing to get to the bottom of everything.” 

Hu Bugui didn’t let a word of this go by. “What do you mean…get to the bottom of everything?” 

“When others encounter something, they mostly take it on its own merits. But he can’t. He can only relax if he works everything about the thing out from start to finish.” Ji Pengcheng picked up a youtiao. He was missing a front tooth, so there was a bit of a gap. When he ate, he unconsciously shifted the food sideways to avoid his front teeth, seeming to do most of the work with his cheeks. He slowly chewed two mouthfuls, then finally continued: “But there are some things that, even though they don’t happen out of nowhere, even though they have their reasons, they aren’t something that you can understand by relying only on your own thinking. He can’t see that.” 

Hu Bugui frowned, considering these words. 

Ji Pengcheng looked at him at and said, “Let’s say for instance—you’ve gotten close to that silly boy, haven’t you? Just because of that, he’s all muddled.” 

Hu Bugui’s heart moved. “What is he muddled about?” 

“The better you are to him, the more muddled he gets,” Ji Pengcheng said, hitting the nail on the head. “You like someone, you want to be with him, you want to treat him well, why is that? No one can explain these things clearly. But as long as you’re sure that everyone is in earnest, no one would keep picking at it for no reason. Each vegetable suits someone’s tastes. I like potatoes—there’s no law against it. If this were some years ago, he also wouldn’t have thought about it. He would have been as matter-of-fact as an ordinary person. But now he’s cowardly. He doesn’t dare to.

“You’re good to him, and he can’t think of why, so he stubbornly keeps thinking he owes you a favor, but he doesn’t know what to pay you back with. So he feels at a loss, and also like he has nothing to give you in return. He’s afraid that there will be a day when you won’t care for him anymore, so he must be a little fearful.” Ji Pengcheng smiled. “You can see he’s gotten complicated over the last few years. He doesn’t show anything on his face. Not a word of truth comes out of his mouth. But actually, it’s very simple. When he thinks of anything, there’s a line in his mind.

“This, therefore that.” Finally, Ji Pengcheng, rather moved, and also extremely succinct, summed up the whole course of Su Qing’s life with these words. 

Then footsteps came from upstairs. Hu Bugui raised his head and found that Su Qing had “gotten rid of” one of his legs using some arts. One of his pant legs looked empty, with a small piece of wood showing under it. He limped downstairs, perfectly covering up that bit of awkwardness in his walking posture that morning. 

As he limped down, he held a little chest in one hand, filled with all his assorted little props. In his other hand, he held a wig and false whiskers. When he noticed Hu Bugui’s gaze, he immediately explained, as though delivering a report: “Oh, I’m going to take a turn outside in a while, buy some newspapers, get up to date with the current situation—we made a mess in the old base, and we still haven’t found out what Zheng Qinghua’s reaction is.” 

Ji Pengcheng furtively winked at Hu Bugui, clearly saying “You see? What did I say?” 

Hu Bugui felt as though his heart was immersed in salt water, crashing and heaving, and also unspeakably sad. 

Ji Pengcheng pretended to suddenly remember something. He gave an “ah” and insincerely said, “Oh, right, that boy in glasses must have been up all night staring at that corpse. I’ll go have a look and get that young man something to eat. You two chat, haha, you two chat.” 

Su Qing looked at him suspiciously. Though he had always thought that the old swindler was very vulgar, for some reason, he thought he seemed to have become even more vulgar. 

When he sat down and found that Hu Bugui was still staring at him without blinking, he couldn’t resist feeling his face. Finding that there was nothing stuck to it, he asked in some bewilderment, “What?” 

Hu Bugui hesitated for a moment. Then he suddenly gripped Su Qing’s hand lying on the table. He held it very tightly—a little too tightly. Su Qing couldn’t resist struggling. Hu Bugui said, “I don’t know how to say this to you.” 

Su Qing still looked completely at a loss. Hu Bugui felt that the emotions were sticking in his chest, but he had no ability to turn them into language that humans could understand and communicate. 

He had been taught since he was little to “say little and do much.” When he had grown up, he had gone into the military. He had gotten used to excelling. As time went on, he had thought that it was all right if he wasn’t very good at talking. But now he suddenly began to envy Su Qing for his glib tongue that could talk the dead back to life. 

He thought for ages but still didn’t know how he should express himself. He seemed like a child who had been called on by a teacher and didn’t know how to answer the question. The more he thought, the more anxious he became. So, without explanation, he pressed Su Qing’s hand to his own chest. 

Su Qing was startled and opened his already large eyes wide to look at him. His fingers pressed to Hu Bugui’s chest felt a slightly rapid heartbeat that made you feel there was some unspeakable worry and emotion hidden there. 

Su Qing’s eyes slowly fell on their entwined fingers. After a long time, Hu Bugui quietly said, “Do you hear that?” 

Su Qing nodded. 

Hu Bugui looked straight into his eyes. “Then…do you understand?” 

This time Su Qing hesitated. 

Hu Bugui slowly removed his hand from his chest, brought his own his hands together, and held Su Qing’s hand in his palms. The slightly high temperature of his hands came through the skin. 

“Don’t be scared,” he said gently, so soft that it was almost stiff but unspeakably tender. After a moment, he almost piously lowered his head and kissed the back of Su Qing’s hand. He repeated, “Don’t be scared.” 

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