When Xie Lan returned home from the supermarket, as soon as he entered the door, he saw a woman in a bathrobe with a face mask on, leaning on the sofa and painting her nails.

The woman turned her head, spread her five fingers, and waved at him. “Hi.”

Xie Lan stopped dead in his tracks.

Who??

Dou Sheng shouted, “Mom!”

Xie Lan suddenly realized who it was and waved back in a bit of a daze. “Auntie Zhao.”

“You don’t recognize me with a mask on? Why are you so cute?” Zhao Wenying held her mask in place with her hand, tilted her neck back, and giggled towards the ceiling.

Xie Lan felt a mix of speechlessness and amusement, standing at the door at a loss.

“Go in,” Dou Sheng urged from behind. “You don’t need to pay attention to her.”

“Lan Lan seems to be adapting quite well. I heard you and Douzi were assigned to the same class.” Zhao Wenying blew on her fingers. “By the way, I brought you guys small gifts.”

Dou Sheng grunted an acknowledgment and walked upstairs.

Xie Lan watched Zhao Wenying go into the bathroom. After a while, she washed off the mask and came out. He asked in a low voice, “Auntie Zhao… have you contacted my dad?”

Zhao Wenying gently patted her face with her fingers. “I contacted him. About school enrollment and stuff.”

Xie Lan acknowledged with a hum. “Did he say anything else?”

“Does asking me to persuade you to go back count?” Zhao Wenying laughed. “Just kidding. Your dad is also angry right now and didn’t mention it for the time being. When he mentions it, I’ll tell you.”

Xie Lan finally relaxed.

This trip back to China, the resistance from Xie Jingming was smaller than imagined. From the moment he booked the ticket, Xie Jingming had a look of helplessness. He felt that it was impossible for Xie Lan to pass the domestic college entrance examination (Gaokao) and that he would return to the UK sooner or later after tossing and turning.

A large cream-colored box was placed on the table in the room.

Dou Sheng leaned against Xie Lan’s door lazily. “See what you got in yours.”

“It’s the same, right?”

Dou Sheng snorted. “That’s not necessarily true.”

Inside the box were Chinese pastries called “Qingtuan” (green sticky rice balls with filling), peanut brittle, and butter cookies. Dou Sheng glanced at it and said, “You got a few more Qingtuan than me. It’s okay, not too biased.”

Xie Lan was about to close the box when he suddenly realized there was something else flat at the bottom of the box.

He pulled it out and looked at it, falling into confusion.

“Are these clothes?” Xie Lan frowned in puzzlement, touching it through the plastic packaging. “T-shirt? Why is it packaged like this?”

Dou Sheng walked to the door, glanced back, and laughed on the spot.

Xie Lan: “?”

“You’ll know when you look. This is proof of Ms. Zhao Wenying’s love for you.” Dou Sheng’s voice drifted from this room to that room. “Long johns (Qiuku). To wear inside jeans.”

Long johns?

Xie Lan hesitantly tore open the packaging and shook out the pants.

Cotton, gray, tight-fitting.

Limp and soft.

“……”

Handsome guys can’t wear this.

Saturday was a bit tiring after a whole day of tutoring classes.

Chinese in the morning covered essay writing for the Gaokao, from how to analyze the topic and establish a theme, to several types of argumentative structures, selecting examples, organizing logic… The teacher explained very clearly, and Xie Lan could keep up reasonably well. What was depressing was biology in the afternoon. A large amount of unfamiliar vocabulary made both listening and reading very difficult. Later, Xie Lan gave up listening to the lecture and buried his head in the dictionary and materials directly.

As soon as he got home, he heard noises in the kitchen, and a familiar smell permeated the air.

Xie Lan was startled, changed his slippers, and walked to the kitchen door.

Dou Sheng was simmering sauce.

Bubbling over low heat, the smell of tomato meat sauce was sweet, rich, and very tempting.

Xie Lan instantly perked up. “Didn’t we agree to make it together?”

Dou Sheng glanced at him. “Afraid you’d blow up the kitchen.”

Xie Lan: “……”

“Just Italian meat sauce, right?” Dou Sheng tapped the recipe displayed on the tablet on the wall. “I just added your two little tricks. It’s almost ready to serve.”

Hearing this, Xie Lan glanced at the yogurt container on the side. There were still two-thirds left inside.

“You have to put it all in.” He sighed. “Putting just this little bit won’t have any taste.”

“No need, right?” Dou Sheng said weakly. “This big box is 250 grams. I think you just want to poison me to death.”

Xie Lan couldn’t be bothered to waste words with him. He turned the yogurt upside down directly over the pot, dumped it all in, scraped it with a spoon, and stirred gently.

Silky smooth.

“It will definitely be delicious. You have to trust me.”

“……”

Dou Sheng’s face began to look weathered.

Xie Lan scooped a little to taste. “The taste is about right. Do you have steak pie or fried fish at home?”

Dou Sheng looked at him gloomily. “Are you going to make Stargazy Pie?”

“What pie?” Xie Lan didn’t understand. “If you have any, eat it with the meat sauce; otherwise, it will be a bit salty.”

“…No need.” Dou Sheng sighed and said in a low voice, “He can’t take any more.”

Xie Lan tasted a second mouthful and said in confusion, “He?”

“Nothing.”

Dou Sheng turned off the heat and took the pot off the stove. “I’ll quickly go back to my room to record it. Don’t knock on my door tonight, okay.”

Xie Lan watched him plate it. “Can I watch you record?”

“No.” Dou Sheng refused decisively. “ASMR requires noise reduction. It’s inconvenient to have another person in the room.”

True.

Xie Lan was about to say something when Dou Sheng suddenly said, “Oh right, I found something for you to do.”

“Hm?”

“Slip of the tongue. Bought you some things.” Dou Sheng put down the bowl. “On the sofa.”

Xie Lan went out with him, only to find a large cardboard box on the sofa. He reached out to lift it, but it didn’t budge at all.

“What is this?”

Dou Sheng casually slit the cardboard box open with a box cutter. “Some little wonderful things to enrich your extracurricular life and prevent you from having excess energy. Ordered overnight yesterday, arrived today. Tsk.”

A box full of books.

Xie Lan pulled out the top few books in a daze.

How to Teach Foreigners Chinese

Chinese for Foreigners: Usage Comparison of 1700 Pairs of Synonyms

Study on Chinese Grammar Errors

Must-Read Chinese Grammar for Foreigners

Follow Me to Learn Chinese Comprehensive Textbook

Tips for Learning Chinese

This was just the tip of the iceberg of this large box.

Xie Lan’s pupils began to dilate.

Dou Sheng smiled kindly. “Here, actually the story is like this…”

He chose his words slowly. “In the middle of the night yesterday, I had a nightmare. I dreamed of a little friend, IQ 180, Gauss reborn, disciple of Euclid. After some hard work, he won the Nobel Prize in Mathematics, and at the same time, finally scored three hundred points in the Gaokao.”

Xie Lan froze.

Dou Sheng asked him, “Do you know who this little friend is?”

Xie Lan: “……”

Dou Sheng patted the box and said happily, “Study hard. I’m going back to my room to record the video.”

Xie Lan stood there numb for five minutes before recovering.

The first floor was empty. Dou Sheng had returned to his room with that basin of red meat sauce. In the empty house, only Xie Lan remained, along with these heavy fruits of culture accumulated over five thousand years.

After a long time, Xie Lan hesitantly took out the book Usage Comparison of 1700 Pairs of Synonyms and slowly stepped onto the stairs.

His mind was a bit blank. Walking to Dou Sheng’s door, he subconsciously lightened his steps.

Faint hissing sounds came from the room. The meat sauce was probably too hot and had to be eaten spoonful by spoonful.

It wasn’t even seven o’clock in the evening yet. That big basin would probably take two hours to eat.

Xie Lan sighed and tiptoed back to his own room with the book.

The book on 1700 pairs of synonyms was terrifying.

Xie Lan flipped through it casually, and the first pair he saw was confusing:

[Caozong (Manipulate/Control)] vs [Caozuo (Operate/Manipulation)].

The former means controlling mechanical instruments; the latter means controlling certain procedures to operate according to requirements.

The exercise was to check word collocations: ~machine, ~market, ~army, behind the scenes~, ~by bad guys.

Seeing the last one “by bad guys,” Xie Lan’s first reaction was Dou Sheng.

Intuition told him it should be “manipulated by Dou Sheng (Caozong),” but after carefully studying the definitions, he felt it should be “operated by Dou Sheng (Caozuo).”

What is all this?

He read the book in a daze all night, and finally fell asleep in bed listening to the news broadcast through his earphones.

Unknown if he was cursed by Dou Sheng, Xie Lan really had a nightmare that night.

In the dream, it was before his mother passed away, in the hospital ward, holding his hand.

Organ failure came very suddenly. Xie Jingming was blocked by London’s damn traffic, and only her son accompanied her to the end.

Xie Lan remembered that his mother gave many detailed instructions, but her voice was as fragmented as her consciousness. Only the last sentence, a very low and light murmur, he heard clearly.

“Actually, I miss home a little.”

“Haven’t been back for a long time.”

Xie Lan woke with a start. The room was pitch black. He was lying on the bed without a blanket, his body chilled by the air conditioning.

Sitting up, he felt a drop of cold water slide down his cheek into his neck. He raised his hand blankly to wipe it away, and then realized he had been crying in his dream.

His phone had run out of battery and shut down, so he didn’t know the time.

After a long time, Xie Lan sighed softly, fumbled to plug in his phone to charge, and wanted to go out for some air.

The clock on the wall of the second-floor corridor pointed to 2:15. It was already past midnight.

Xie Lan stared at the hour hand for a while before realizing that a somewhat old floor lamp in the corridor was on. It was that dim light illuminating the dial.

Then, he heard footsteps at the bottom of the stairs.

Dou Sheng, holding a water cup in one hand and constantly rubbing his chest with the other, walked to the top of the stairs, looked up, and saw Xie Lan, and froze.

“Not sleeping?”

“Woke up?”

They spoke at the same time.

Then Dou Sheng took a sip of water and said speechlessly, “Ate a big bowl of meat sauce, heartburn. You?”

“Had a bad dream.” Xie Lan’s mind was still a bit blank from the nightmare. After a long time, he murmured and asked, “What does heartburn mean?”

Dou Sheng said “Ah”. “Had a nightmare?”

He stood two steps away, looking at him. The dim, yellowish light cast a shadow on Dou Sheng’s face. Half of his body stood in shadow, half in the light. Perhaps due to the play of light and shadow, those black eyes, usually cold or teasing, looked somewhat gentle.

Dou Sheng walked over, switched the cup from his right hand to his left, and raised his hand over Xie Lan’s head.

Xie Lan looked up in confusion. Before he could see the palm, he felt a gentle pressure on his head.

“Pat the fur, fear no more.” Dou Sheng said in a voice like coaxing a child, repeating it three times, then withdrew his hand and muttered in a low voice, “You’re so big, yet still having nightmares.”

“Can’t have nightmares when big?” Xie Lan asked.

Dou Sheng muttered, “True enough,” put down the cup, and said, “Wait.”

Xie Lan stood there, watching him push open the bedroom door, take out a tin box from the bedside table, and pry it open.

After a moment, Dou Sheng came over and handed him a plane tree leaf.

This time it wasn’t a withered leaf. It should be a fresh leaf picked and treated with some preservative. Although it had turned a bit yellow from storage, it was soft to the touch.

“Put this under your pillow,” Dou Sheng muttered. “Wards off evil.”

Xie Lan was a bit surprised. He had heard of some folk customs, but he didn’t expect plane tree leaves to have this effect.

“Of course not,” Dou Sheng said. “I made that up.”

Xie Lan: “……?”

“But as long as you believe it, you can sleep a bit better.” Dou Sheng muttered a couple of times. “Hurry back to sleep.”

Xie Lan walked back to his room door in a daze, confused, before remembering.

“What does heartburn mean?” he asked. “Was that meat sauce not good?”

Dou Sheng’s steps paused at his door, seemingly hesitating.

After a long time, he said, “It was quite delicious. Heartburn means, after eating, feeling warm in the heart, like there is a small flame.” (Note: Dou Sheng is lying/redefining the medical term to spare Xie Lan’s feelings).

“Oh.” Xie Lan breathed a sigh of relief and hooked the corner of his lips. “That’s good then. Afraid you weren’t used to eating it.”

Back in the room, closing the door, the noise from next door soon stopped.

But probably because he met someone and exchanged a few words, Xie Lan felt the bedroom wasn’t as empty and dead silent as before. The phone charged and lit up; the dream just now seemed to have gone far away.

He tapped open the Pink TV App (Bilibili). A small ‘1’ lit up in the dynamics section.

@Food-Loving MR.X uploaded a video.

The time was five minutes ago.

Editing the video was quite fast.

Xie Lan put on his earphones and clicked play. The sound of chewing meat sauce soon came through the earphones.

Viscous, rich, and somewhat juicy. That sound went from the left ear to the right ear, then became stereo, seeming to penetrate the entire head.

Dou Sheng’s ASMR was filmed very professionally, worthy of 1.5 million fans. Xie Lan had seen ASMR creators with four or five million followers on YouTube, and actually, their level wasn’t much higher than Dou Sheng’s.

He watched for a while and was lulled a bit sleepy by the chewing sounds. Just as he was about to turn off his phone, the image in the video flashed.

It was an unclean edit. Previous videos would edit out the shot of reaching for food; the view would always only contain the food on the table and elbows propped on the table.

But in this shot, the Uploader revealed a hand.

Xie Lan’s fingertips paused. He pressed pause and slowly sat up.

It was a pair of long, slender, fair hands with distinct knuckles.

Very similar to Dou Sheng’s hands.

But, they were not Dou Sheng’s hands.