Sleeping together was not a good idea.

When Xie Lan came over hugging his pillow, he thought the awkwardness of falling on top of each other had already dissipated, but he hadn’t expected to fall into a new kind of awkwardness so quickly.

Actually, last night at Chen Ge’s house, he and Dou Sheng had also shared a bed. But that was different; back then, they were wearing their day clothes, each with their own quilt, staying in their own lanes.

But now, Dou Sheng’s room only had one duvet. The two of them were huddled in the same nest, sharing not just warmth, but sound—whenever Dou Sheng moved, Xie Lan could hear the friction of skin against the covers. The mattress vibrated, and he could almost imagine Dou Sheng’s posture under the quilt: long legs slightly bent, one hand resting casually at his waist, the other pillowed under his head. Maybe he was sleeping lightly with his eyes closed, or maybe he was secretly staring at the back of Xie Lan’s head.

When Xie Lan’s leg fell asleep and he wanted to move, he fell into the dilemma of whether or not to move.

“Cough.” Dou Sheng coughed quietly behind him. “You came to sleep with me, so why did you bring a pillow instead of a duvet?”

Xie Lan immediately said, “How was I supposed to know you have two pillows?”

Dou Sheng paused. “Fun fact: our bedding sets are identical.”

“……Oh.”

The quilt behind Xie Lan was suddenly lifted; Dou Sheng got up.

“It’s a bit hot, I can’t sleep,” he said. “I’ve decided to listen to you and edit the video.”

Xie Lan felt an unconscious sense of relief in his heart. “Then I’ll join you.”

“No need.” Dou Sheng waved his hand. “You sleep. I won’t make any noise.”

Outside, the sky was already faintly brightening. Dou Sheng went to rinse his hair, then, bringing with him a head full of dampness and the scent of mint, sat in front of the computer. Using an external trackpad instead of a mouse, he began to skillfully edit the video.

Xie Lan wasn’t actually that sleepy either. He lay on the bed, watching the giant curved screen in front of Dou Sheng.

The timeline slid by, frames of vivid, lively expressions intercutting rapidly. Sometimes, when it paused right on a ferocious expression of his own, Dou Sheng would let out a low, breathy laugh.

Looking at the person himself, and looking at his work, it was hard to imagine what he had been through.

Lying on the bed watching the back of Dou Sheng’s head, Xie Lan suddenly remembered what Dou Sheng had said at Che Ziming’s grandmother’s house: that everyone would encounter their own light. So, was the thing that pulled him out of that dark past and put him back on the right track his “light”?

As dawn approached, Dou Sheng’s editing was coming to an end. He stretched in his chair, the backrest tilting back with his movement, his neck pressing hard against the neck pillow to extend backward. Xie Lan’s consciousness was a bit fuzzy; in his daze, he felt Dou Sheng looked like a lazy and elegant big cat.

Dou Sheng’s half of the duvet had somehow ended up bundled in Xie Lan’s arms. He had seemingly become the owner of the bed, hugging the corner of the quilt as he mumbled sleepily, “You should add that blooper egg. You recorded it, you edited it.”

“Hm? You’re still awake?” Dou Sheng turned his chair around. “Actually, not to compete with anyone, but purely from the perspective of video quality, having a reversal skit really is better. But it really depends on what you want. Don’t force it.”

Xie Lan was incredibly sleepy. “Add it. If I tell you to add it, just add it.”

Dou Sheng smiled and snapped his fingers. “Yes, sir.”

He turned the chair back around and began importing the edited footage from the iPad. Xie Lan looked at his back and suddenly said, “I’m letting you add this footage in exchange for a secret.”

Dou Sheng’s finger on the trackpad paused. He looked back. “What secret?”

Xie Lan pondered for a good while before whispering, “The ‘light’ you mentioned before, and the person you like… are they the same person?”

The room was quiet for a moment.

Dou Sheng didn’t answer immediately. Xie Lan thought he had touched on a sore subject and was about to say forget it, when Dou Sheng whispered, “Yes.”

Yes.

Although he had a vague premonition, hearing the answer still made Xie Lan feel a complex emotion in his heart.

Dou Sheng had already dragged the blooper into the original video sequence. While the software loaded, he casually started fiddling with a small round mirror on the desk. It was palm-sized with a small stand. Dou Sheng’s slender fingers played with the stand, setting it down after a moment.

Xie Lan looked up and saw himself in the mirror, and then saw Dou Sheng in the mirror.

After they made eye contact in the mirror for several seconds, Dou Sheng curled his lips into a smile, casually pushed the mirror aside, and continued working on the video.

This time, the small round mirror faced only Xie Lan. In the reflection, Xie Lan’s hair was sticking up a bit.

Dou Sheng spoke in his usual nonchalant tone, “Next time you do me a huge favor, I can tell you who that person is.”

“Okay,” Xie Lan said instinctively.

But he stared at himself in the mirror, zoned out for a moment, and then said, “Actually, never mind. I don’t want to know that badly.”

---

The weekend passed in a chaotic blur. It wasn’t until Little Ma came to pick them up to return to school that Xie Lan realized Dou Sheng’s ankle sprain wasn’t as simple as it seemed.

It hadn’t looked too bad when he first twisted it, but after they slept through the day and woke up in the afternoon, Dou Sheng’s foot had swollen up. From the ankle bone to the lower shin, it was red and swollen, and the skin felt hot to the touch.

Little Ma sprayed medicine on it, looking worriedly at Dou Sheng, who was hopping around the room on one leg.

“How about we ask for leave today? For Lan Lan too. We’ll both accompany you to the hospital to get an X-ray.”

Dou Sheng waved his hand. “No need. I know this kind of injury better than you. I just twisted it hard, didn’t apply medicine in time, and then messed around a bunch, so it flared up. It’ll be fine after resting for a week.”

Just watching him hop around the room dragging a red, swollen foot gave Xie Lan a headache. “Let’s go to the hospital and see what the doctor says.”

“The doctor will say the same thing I did.” Dou Sheng finally hopped to the fridge, opened his empty schoolbag as wide as possible, and said while stuffing food inside, “I had all sorts of bumps and bruises when I was a kid. I have experience. Don’t worry.”

Little Ma asked again, “Then should I get you a cane?”

“No need.” Dou Sheng hopped toward Xie Lan on one leg, raised his arm, and skillfully found Xie Lan’s shoulder.

Dou Sheng smiled. “I trust Student Xie Lan won’t leave a disabled child unattended.”

Xie Lan: “……”

From outside the school’s West Gate to the teaching building, Dou Sheng hung onto him the entire way, like an inseparable pendant. His right hand rested on Xie Lan’s left shoulder, limping slowly along, attracting a very high rate of turning heads.

Climbing stairs was even more strenuous. Not only did he have to lean on his shoulder, but he also had to hold his hand. Xie Lan would go up a step, turn back to pull him up, then go up another step, repeating the cycle.

From entering the campus to entering the classroom, the journey took a full twenty minutes. Everyone in the grade soon knew that the top student of the year was heavily disabled, relying on his returnee deskmate to barely maintain the semblance of a functioning human being.

But Xie Lan couldn’t complain, because he could feel that Dou Sheng was genuinely in pain, especially when climbing stairs.

Sometimes when he held Dou Sheng’s hand, he could feel a slight tremor, and when standing one step above him, he could occasionally see his eyelashes trembling.

“How did you twist it this badly yesterday?” Xie Lan sat back in his seat, unable to help worrying.

Che Ziming turned around in surprise. “What actually happened? You didn’t get into a fight with someone, did you?”

Dou Sheng glanced at him, then looked away gloomily.

Xie Lan’s scalp tingled. “Well, although a certain someone deserves to die ten times over, I won’t abandon him.”

“Pfft—” Dai You, who had just walked over, spat a mouthful of coffee all over Che Ziming’s head. Panic-stricken, he grabbed tissues to wipe Che Ziming’s head under the latter’s shocked gaze, saying, “Deserves to die ten times over (Si You Yu Gu)… that’s a harsh term.”

Dou Sheng smiled. “You should say ‘died a worthy death’ (Si De Qi Suo).”

“What kind of riddle are you two speaking in?” Che Ziming reacted after a long while, staring blankly at Xie Lan. “He got hurt because of you?”

He immediately rolled his Chinese textbook into a tube and put it to his ear. “Young hero, so ruthless! How did Bean offend you? I wish to hear the details.”

Xie Lan’s face was numb. “Unbearable to recall.”

“Right.” Dou Sheng laughed, tapping on the back of Xie Lan’s hand as if playing the piano. “That idiom was used correctly.”

Xie Lan didn’t laugh. He just glanced at him, and when his gaze returned, he “inadvertently” swept over the back of his own hand.

He didn’t know if it was an illusion, but after that fall last night, he was becoming increasingly conscious of physical contact with Dou Sheng. So much so that when Dou Sheng hung onto him, although he was willingly serving as a human crutch, every second was spent trying to make peace with the urge to flee.

It was… quite torturous.

During the break, Dou Sheng patted Xie Lan’s desk. “Bathroom. Come with me.”

Xie Lan put down his pen with a numb expression. “Didn’t we just go last break?”

Dou Sheng sighed. “Drank too much water.”

Che Ziming shook his head back and forth in front of them. “Frequent urination, urgency, incomplete voiding… the child is mostly ruined!”

As soon as the words fell, Dou Sheng reached out his good-looking claw and grabbed Che Ziming’s hat. Che Ziming immediately said, “I’m talking about myself! I always wake up at night and can’t finish peeing. I have poison in my body!”

Hearing this, Yu Fei, who was sleeping on his desk, moved away with a look of disgust.

One thing was one thing, but Xie Lan still had to take Dou Sheng to the bathroom.

Actually, every time Dou Sheng called him to go to the bathroom, Xie Lan didn’t really have to do anything. He seemingly only needed to fulfill the duty of a crutch: escort the owner to the bathroom door. The owner, caring about his dignity, would usually ask the crutch to wait at the door while he supported himself against the wall to limp inside. When he came out, he would trouble the crutch to escort him back. Back and forth, just like that, never getting tired of it.

He knew Dou Sheng wasn’t deliberately making things difficult for him. For instance, asking for the bathroom three or four times a day was a very reasonable frequency. Rather than saying he was Dou Sheng’s human crutch, it was more like Dou Sheng had forcibly turned himself into Xie Lan’s permanent accessory.

—The specific manifestation was one word: follow. Wherever he went, Dou Sheng stubbornly followed. Before the leg injury, that arm seemed to grow on his shoulder. In the days that followed, when his foot regained a little mobility, Dou Sheng would still grab his arm wherever he went, wearing a pathetic expression like Bilibili was going bankrupt tomorrow.

Dou Sheng gave it a fancy name: “Following you isn’t for the sake of following you, it’s so that whenever I want to go to the bathroom, you’re always there.”

Listen to that. Is that human language?

There were three PE classes a week. This week’s PE classes were a bit strange. After Dou Sheng injured his foot, Xie Lan sat with him on the concrete slope at the entrance of the cafeteria to watch ball games, or took slow strolls around the area. After walking around a lot, he noticed a girl who would run into them from time to time, glance at Dou Sheng beside him, and then leave. At first, he didn’t pay attention, but it happened so often that her face became forcibly familiar.

Until the last PE class on Friday. He was accompanying Dou Sheng for a slow walk around the cafeteria to exercise his leg, and within three laps, they bumped into that girl six times.

Xie Lan couldn’t take it anymore. When the girl appeared for the seventh time, he didn’t turn and walk away. Instead, he stood firmly in place.

The girl stopped pretending to leave casually and walked straight toward him.

Judging by her clothes, she should be from Class 12, who had PE at the same time. She had a high ponytail, very fair skin, and her hair had a subtle crimp that made it look very thick. She had a small, oval face.

She came up and smiled at Dou Sheng first. “God of Learning, I’ve been observing you two for several days.”

Dou Sheng lazily lifted his eyelids. “Hm?”

The girl said, “It’s been a week, and I haven’t seen you two apart once. Can you please walk two laps by yourself and let Student Xie Lan have two laps of personal space? I have something I want to say to him.”

Xie Lan’s back suddenly stiffened.

This scenario was too obvious. It was a scene he tried to avoid like the plague, whether in the UK or in China.

He subconsciously glanced at the girl’s pocket. Sure enough, a faint rectangular outline was sticking out, looking like a card or a letter.

Xie Lan tugged at Dou Sheng’s shirt from underneath, his face expressionless.

Dou Sheng smiled brightly. “No can do.”

The girl immediately asked, “Why?”

Dou Sheng didn’t say a word. He skillfully raised his arm. Xie Lan caught the movement in his peripheral vision and, like a conditioned reflex, leaned his shoulder in Dou Sheng’s direction.

Then he realized his own reflex and froze.

The weather was lovely. Standing under the shade of the plane trees, Dou Sheng smiled at the girl and said:

“Sorry about that. He’s already taken. That person sent me to help keep an eye on things, to make sure no one else gets any ideas about Xie Lan. So, I have to perform my role well.”

---

Author’s Note:

Dou Egg collapses onto Lazy Egg every day, whining and grumbling.

So much so that when chicks from other nests come to pass notes to Lazy Egg, they are all dissuaded by him.

The keyboard-typer hides behind a rock to eavesdrop.

Only hearing Dou Egg say to Lazy Egg: Next time, you need to get even closer to me.

Lazy Egg is stunned: Why? We’re already very close.

Even closer, by just a pinch. Dou Egg says profoundly: To prevent other eggs from always trying to find a crack to stick themselves in!