Chapter 3: 3
“No,” Chu Yi replied.
When someone else knows your secret, it isn’t a secret anymore.
Yan Hang saw the tree hole, so the secrets in the tree hole weren’t secrets anymore.
Even if he didn’t actually remember what secrets he’d kept in there.
No doubt they were just trifles, as trifling as he was in the eyes of others.
“Do I have to say it out loud?” Yan Hang held the trunk and peered inside.
Chu Yi felt a bit displeased that Yan Hang was hogging his special tree hole, but nodded anyway. “I d-do.”
Yan Hang probably had no desire to take his ugly tree hole away. He’d get bored after a while. Only dense idiots like himself would come here and vent when they had nothing else to do.
“I’m sooooo bored,” Yan Hang called into the tree.
The tree hole was a bit low even for Chu Yi. For Yan Hang to speak into the hole, he had to bend down in a sumo squat. The pose was pretty funny.
But Chu Yi smothered his laughter. If he laughed, Yan Hang might not be happy, and he didn’t want to make anyone unhappy.
Yan Hang stroked the side of the hole and looked at his hand. He must have been checking if the hole was dirty.
This made Chu Yi slightly embarrassed, as if a guest had come to his home and wiped down the seats before sitting down.
He had never asked himself whether the hole in the tree was dirty.
Quietly, he raised a hand and felt his face. He’d really never thought about it before.
Yan Hang swept a gaze over him. “Your face isn’t dirty.”
“Oh.” Chu Yi smiled.
“Are you done ranting?” asked Yan Hang.
“Lots of t-time for that,” said Chu Yi.
“Well aren’t you a deep one.” Yan Hang smiled back. “Hey, if I follow this road, will it lead to the main street?”
“Yeah,” said Chu Yi.
“Dunno.” Chu Yi thought about it. “A f-five minute run.”
“Run?” Yan Hang sighed. “Alright, how fast are we running?”
“Like you’re,” Chu Yi said, “r-running for your life.”
Yan Hang said nothing. He just stared.
Chu Yi didn’t speak either. Yan Hang was good at fighting; he was so fast that Chu Yi could barely make out how exactly he had handled Li Zihao and Co. A guy like Yan Hang probably couldn’t comprehend what “running for your life” meant.
“You should save my number and add me as a friend.” Yan Hang thought for a moment and drew out his phone. “Then you can call me if anything happens.”
Chu Yi kept quiet. He found Yan Hang a bit strange.
He couldn’t remember ever meeting any stranger who was so proactively… nice to him, and seemingly without the intent of further humiliating him.
“What’s wrong?” Yan Hang looked at him. “Don’t have a phone?”
“I do.” Chu Yi hesitated.
“Is this some trauma from being picked on?” Yan Hang squinted at him with a hint of impatience. “If I wanted to steal your phone, you think I would ask you to take it out? It’d take less than three minutes for me to grab your phone and your clothes and your smokes.”
Yan Hang’s attitude made him somewhat nervous. He quickly retrieved his phone.
“I’ll scan yours.” Yan Hang tapped his phone [1].
[1] They’re adding each other on the Chinese social media platform Wechat. QR Codes are really big in China for everything from payments to adding friends on SNS, so he’s scanning his friend QR Code.
“Mm.” Chu Yi pressed a button on his phone.
Then the two of them stared at the pitch-black screen in silence.
After five seconds, Yan Hang couldn’t help but speak. “I normally wouldn’t ask, but…”
Do you have some mental disabilities?
“Wait.” Chu Yi rubbed his nose.
“For what?” said Yan Hang. “For you to technopathically link with your phone?”
“C-cool, right?” Chu Yi raised his head and looked at him.
Yan Hang didn’t speak.
Chu Yi pressed the Wechat logo on the display.
Yan Hang raised his phone, prepared to scan the QR code, only to be met with another long wait.
Five seconds later, the Wechat symbol emerged. After another ten seconds, Yan Hang put away his phone, folding his arms as he watched Chu Yi and his telepathic phone.
The screen changed again. Chu Yi pressed and then waited, and the QR code finally appeared.
Yan Hang sighed. He unlocked his phone again and scanned the code. “You should get a new phone.”
“Still w-works.” Chu Yi smiled and looked at his phone. “X-x-xing…”
“Xingtian,” Yan Hang completed [2].
[2] Xingtian, pronounced hseeng tee-ihn is a Chinese deity. See pic:
“Nice,” said Chu Yi.
Yan Hang glanced at Chu Yi’s display name. It read simply: “1”. Had he not been focusing on the screen, he might have missed it. Yan Hang wasn’t sure how to repay the compliment.
“How about we both run for our lives, and I’ll see how fast that is.” Yan Hang returned his phone to his pocket.
“I’m g-going home,” Chu Yi said, waving the bag in his hand.
The suggestion made him think that Yan Hang must’ve been telling the truth when he spoke into the tree – he really was bored.
Yan Hang looked at his bag and tsk-ed. “Do mine eyes deceive me? A little kid smoking — and buying a whole strip of smokes at once, too.”
“Errand,” said Chu Yi.
“For your grandmother?” asked Yan Hang. He paused and raised his thumb. “Your grandmother’s quite a character.”
Chu Yi didn’t reply. He wasn’t too happy.
“Go on then,” Yan Hang said, waving his hand. “I’m gonna run for my life.”
Chu Yi shook his head. “No.”
“Why not? It seems like a…” Yan Hang had turned his head back to look at Chu Yi while running forward, but before he could finish the sentence, his body lurched wildly. He must have stepped into a pothole and stumbled.
“The fuck?”
“Because,” Chu Yi met his gaze, “they trip.”
Because there were no working street lamps, the water was dirty, the road was uneven, and it was rumoured to be haunted.
There were so many reasons, but Chu Yi couldn’t express them the way he wanted to, so he opted for conciseness.
“Fine. Go home, you.” Sounding quite morose, Yan Hang limped as he half-walked, half-ran.
As was his habit, Chu Yi lowered his head and walked along the wall again. When he reached the bottom of the staircase, a car horn blared behind him.
Though certain that he could not possibly be in anyone’s way, he nevertheless stood aside, shoulder to the wall.
“Hey, Pup!” Someone called his nickname.
Chu Yi turned and saw a small white car behind him. The window rolled down on the passenger’s side, revealing a round, smiling face.
“Auntie.” He walked over.
Auntie was Er Ping. She wasn’t actually his aunt, but his first cousin once removed — Nana was Auntie’s aunt [3].
[3] 二萍 (erping) is pronounced are-peeng.
The two families didn’t get on. Nana and her sister couldn’t stand the sight of each other, and Auntie and Mum were no different. On the other hand, Chu Yi quite liked Auntie.
“I was just about to call.” Auntie got out of the car. “Where were you?”
Chu Yi raised the bag in his hand.
“Buying cigarettes for your grandmother again?” said Auntie.
“Come on, get in.” Auntie opened the rear door and clapped his shoulder.
Chu Yi hopped into the car and greeted his aunt’s husband in the driver’s seat.
“Hey Pup, you getting a growth spurt? You look taller than you were at the beginning of the year,” said Uncle.
“You are a bit taller. You’ll be in third year next semester. Lots of boys get their growth spurts around that time.” Auntie got in and handed him a box from her bag. “Here, it’s from me.”
Chu Yi didn’t need to open the box. He knew it was a phone.
At New Year’s, Auntie said that she wanted to give him a phone, which turned into a huge fight with his mum on the fourth day of the new year. Mum felt that Auntie was insulting her, while Auntie thought Mum was mad.
“Use it,” said Auntie. “If your mum asks, tell her I gave it to you. If she takes it away, let me know, and I’ll get you a new one.”
“Thanks, A-auntie,” said Chu Yi.
“You’re welcome. I just want you to have what other kids have.” She looked at him and sighed. “It’s such a shame.”
Chu Yi looked out the car window. Normally, they would sit and chat for a while, but since he had only gone out to buy cigarettes, the visit to the tree hole, along with his conversation with Yan Hang had him exceeding his normal time by a fair bit. If he didn’t go back now, Nana would go berserk.
But Auntie had only just arrived. If he were to leave, she might be unhappy.
He helplessly lowered his head, fingers digging into the phone box.
“You can go back,” said Auntie. “Since you’re just out for cigarettes, your grandmother would probably be mad if you’re late.”
“Mm.” Chu Yi nodded.
Returning to the stairs, he stood next to the bin and opened the box. He jammed the phone and accessories into his trouser pockets, climbing the stairs only after he’d thrown the box away.
The moment he opened the door, Nana’s voice burst through the door cracks: “You’re slower than a foot-bound ol’ hag running to the crematorium!”
“You d-don’t know that,” murmured Chu Yi.
“What’d you say?!” Nana came over, holding the dog.
“Nothing.” Chu Yi hastily covered his head with one hand and passed the bag of cigarettes over with the other.
Nana took the cigarettes. She turned and walked away, then stopped and turned back. “What ‘bout the change! You tryin’ to steal from me?!”
Chu Yi pointed at the bag. “Inside.”
Nana seemed impatient to smoke. She stopped her tirade, and simply threw the dog to the floor before leaving.
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Chu Yi went over, picked it up, and put it back onto the dog bed. He massaged its paws lightly.
“Get me some water,” said Mum from behind him.
Chu Yi got up. He washed his hand and poured Mum a glass of water.
“Do your homework.” Mum gave him a side-eye. “If you get another 20% during the mid-terms, I’ll hang you up on the wall.”
Chu Yi silently sat at his desk and turned the desk lamp on.
He relaxed.
Though he disliked school and homework, his favourite place in the house was right here. It was the only place that was truly his.
When the light came on, all the sadness and anxiety and fear around him completely disappeared.
He didn’t have a fixed bedtime. He’d always wait until his grandparents’ snoring stopped before entering the room to sleep.
Today, Pops had gone to his (real) aunt’s place, so Nana’s snores sounded weaker, without their usual vigour.
Chu Yi took the new phone out. It was incredibly generous of Auntie, but there was no way he’d dare to use this phone.
If he did, his mum would spot it in an instant.
Whenever Mum met anyone, she would first look at their phones and ask, is it an iPhone?
To Mum, only Apple made real phones — any other pears or bananas or sugarcanes were rubbish.
Chu Yi retrieved his own old phone. He plucked out the SIM card and put it into the new phone.
Only when he switched it on did he suddenly remember, leaping up and running to the toilet with the phone buried in his abdomen. After a long while, he finally realised that there was no start-up music.
He wasn’t too used to it, but the phone was really good. Chu Yi squatted in the toilet fiddling with the phone.
His old phone was his dad’s hand-me-down after three years of use. He’d been using it for a year himself. Though he’d treated it as reverently as his own ancestors, there was no way to prevent it from deteriorating to its current telepathic phase.
Chu Yi got tired of squatting and sat directly on the floor. After much hesitation, he opened Wechat.
He checked his Friends feed. The latest posts were all from his classmates. He never commented himself – the classmates had probably long forgotten that he was even on their friends list.
He didn’t usually look at his Friends feed, but today he kept scrolling.
Maybe the speed of the new phone made it hard for him to stop.
He saw something Mum posted in the afternoon.
A few photos of handbags in a shop display. They were so clear that even an unsophisticated hick like him could tell it was LV.
And a line of text.
[Guess how much these bags cost?]
Chu Yi sighed. She must have set her Friend groups to hide this from the detestable Er Ping alone.
He felt awkward.
So he continued to scroll.
Xingtian.
He paused, finally realising that it wasn’t the phone speed that made him scroll so earnestly.
[time is slipping away but I could not even seize a second.]
In the middle of his feed, Yan Hang’s post felt like something from another world. Chu Yi stared at this single English post, stunned.
He tapped on Yan Hang’s feed.
Yan Hang posted about once a day, but he only read the second post.
[my solitude pervades the sky when the night falls]
He gave the rest just a cursory glance.
Then he closed the app and held his phone with some bemusement.
How classy.
So much more classy than Li Zihao and Co.
After he was done messing around with his phone, Chu Yi put the SIM card back into his old phone and hid the new one in the furthest recesses of his desk drawer.
Yan Hang ran halfway down the road by the river, then turned into an alley.
There were no street lights earlier, so he hadn’t seen the pothole he stepped into. Now it was well-lit enough for him to see the rubbish heap by the banks quickly reclaiming the river.
It became clear why nobody ran here. Once the weather heated up over the next two months, he couldn’t imagine the smell.
Chu Yi picking a tree hole here was a stroke of genius.
A long-term victim of bullying would feel the safest in a place nobody goes.
When he ran out the alleyway, he was lost.
He stood in the middle of the unfamiliar street. Fortunately, he hadn’t been running for too long — even if he was lost, it couldn’t be too far from where he was staying.
He opened the navigation app on his phone and checked the map.
In a glance he found the road back.
He’d been told that he could read maps since the age of five. Following his dad to innumerable strange cities and towns and villages, he’d get lost even when it seemed impossible to lose oneself.
Maybe this was why.
Often he would move away before he could even recognise the landmarks of the new place. Over time, he stopped bothering to try.
Since he was moving away anyway, he didn’t mind losing his way. Even if he forgot, there wasn’t much point in remembering.
The lights were on when he got home. It was probably Dad.
But out of habit, he opened the door cautiously and asked, “Lao Yan?” [4]
[4] Lao = “old”. Affectionate way to refer to an older person – although it would normally be rude for a child to refer to their parent like this. Yan Hang just has a very informal relationship with his dad.
“Mwah,” came his father’s voice.
Yan Hang pushed the door open. Dad was on the couch watching TV.
“Have you eaten?” he asked; then, at the familiar scent of rubbing alcohol, he added, “You’re hurt?”
“Mhm.” Dad raised his arm. “I haven’t eaten, can you make something? Maybe a steak or something like that.”
“A bold request.” Yan Hang removed his jacket and opened the fridge. “I’ll give the 154 bucks card back, you can go and order it yourself.”
“What could I get with that chump change?” Dad stretched and flopped on the couch.
“Noodles?” said Yan Hang. “I bought some pasta. How about beef ribs and spaghetti?”
“Sure.” Dad nodded. “Our prince is so talented he even makes boiled water taste nice. Clearly a future master chef of Western cuisine.”
“You sound sarcastic.” Yan Hang grabbed the ingredients and went into the kitchen.
Yan Hang did have a knack for cooking. Even if his dad didn’t say it, he knew it well.
Dad once told him that he had to boldly accept his own talents. True talent didn’t need external validation, so long as one could be proud of themself.
Yan Hang switched on the gas stove and prepared the pasta.
Dad was full of crazy talk, but when he said something worth remembering, Yan Hang remembered every word.
He was a most obedient prince.
Yan Hang let out a soft sigh.
The landlord had left a full set of cooking utensils in the kitchen. They would have been more trouble than convenient for most, but Yan Hang was so accustomed to having this inconvenience that he had no basis for comparison.
When he returned to the living room, Dad was asleep on the sofa.
He walked over with the freshly made pasta. After a moment’s pause, he snapped his fingers by his father’s ear.
“Snap!”
Then he quickly retreated.
But too late. Dad didn’t even blink – he caught his wrist and twisted it before Yan Hang had the chance to break free.
The aching, numbing pain seared up to his shoulder. He could only drop down to protect the pasta in his other hand, getting on one knee and yelping, “It’s me!”
Dad opened his eyes and let go. He said with a grin, “You have to be faster than that to sneak up on your old man, Xiao Hanghang.”
Dad got up and sniffed the food. He ate slowly, his face full of pleasure.
Yan Hang lowered his head over his phone. He opened Wechat. Too lazy to look at the whole load of messages, he simply tapped on Chu Yi’s picture.
Chu Yi’s profile picture was the same as his name: minimalist to the extreme. It was just a black “1” on a white background.
Entering his feed rendered Yan Hang speechless once again.
This child probably exhausted all his words talking into that tree hole.
There wasn’t a single photo or word on his feed.
Just single emojis. And one at a time.
A streak of emojis passed as he scrolled down.
It gave him a sense of careful, solemn loneliness.
“Oh right. We’ll be staying here a while, so if you’re going to work,” Dad said as he retrieved a card-like object from his pocket and handed it over, “use this.”
Yan Hang barely peeled his eyes from the screen, grabbing the card in his peripheral vision.
It was an identity card.
Every time they stayed a little longer in one place, Yan Hang would work. His dad would make him a fake ID and get one for himself as well.
Perhaps to make it feel like they were starting afresh each time, the names on the cards would always change.
This time was no different. Yan Hang looked at the card in his hand.
The photo was of him.
NAME: YAN JIDAO
???
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