Coming out of the police station, Uncle Lü returned to the martial arts hall alone, saying he was going to inform all the neighbors to help look for Sun Xulei.

Sun Laowu also swaggered off as if nothing had happened. It seemed that regarding his son’s disappearance, he was only annoyed, not anxious. Just like when his wife had suddenly run away back then—annoyed, but not anxious.

Fan Jun didn’t know where Sun Xulei would go.

Sun Xulei wasn’t a very smart kid, nor was he considered well-behaved. He skipped school, got into fights, spent all his time in arcades, and occasionally stole things from supermarkets.

For such a kid to fall into a life without anyone to rely on or any way out… Fan Jun simply didn’t dare to think about it.

But it seemed there was nothing else he could do besides wait.

“You drive,” Zou Yang took out the scooter key and gave it to him. “Let’s first take a spin around the places he used to hide from his dad, or places he often goes to where he feels safe.”

Fan Jun looked at him, not grasping his meaning for a moment.

“Even though you feel it’s impossible for him to still be in Nanzhouping,” Zou Yang said, “if we don’t look around, you won’t be able to sleep tonight.”

Fan Jun continued to look at him, even somewhat regretting that he hadn’t studied harder in the past… The moment Zou Yang said those words, his feelings were indescribable.

Even though it sounded like such an ordinary, everyday sentence.

“But I need to eat something first,” Zou Yang said. “I’m hungry.”

“What…” Fan Jun’s throat felt a bit tight when he opened his mouth, so he cleared it. “…do you want to eat?”

“Those big meat steamed dumplings,” Zou Yang said.

“…Do you really not get tired of eating them?” Fan Jun helped Zou Yang sit properly on the back seat, then straddled the scooter. “Is there anything else you want to eat?”

“No, I just want to eat those steamed dumplings.” Zou Yang smiled.

“Okay.” Fan Jun nodded.

This steamed dumpling shop didn’t have dine-in seating, so the two of them could only take one box each and slowly eat them by the side of the road.

Fan Jun stood, while Zou Yang sat on the scooter.

“Do you have to buy a wheelchair tomorrow? Or crutches or something?” Fan Jun looked at his leg. “Are you feeling any discomfort right now? You haven’t truly rested since noon.”

“Not buying one, and no discomfort,” Zou Yang said as he ate. “It’s just a little itchy.”

“How long until you can take the cast off?” Fan Jun asked.

“Four weeks at the fastest, I guess. I’ll get an X-ray then, and if there are no problems, it comes off.” Zou Yang looked at the cast.

“For this coming month…” Fan Jun asked with some hesitation, “Showering… how will you shower?”

“Do a handstand, I guess.” Zou Yang answered without even thinking.

Fan Jun paused, then turned his head and started laughing.

“It’s fine,” Zou Yang said with a smile. “There are three other guys in the dorm. They’ve been eating and drinking on my dime for two years; it’s time for them to show some filial piety.”

After finishing the steamed dumplings, the two of them rode the scooter and began weaving through the big and small streets of Nanzhouping.

The sky had grown dark, and the night breeze picked up, beginning to blow away the dry heat of the day bit by bit.

Neither of them said much anymore. Fan Jun followed the roads, hitting up every single place he knew Sun Xulei might go.

Besides normal places like supermarkets, arcades, lottery stations, and milk stations, there were also spots hidden between narrow alleys and residential areas.

Storage rooms, scrap yards, vacant run-down houses, behind a large tree at the end of a dead-end alley, and even a gap in a perimeter wall…

These bizarre hiding spots had witnessed Sun Xulei’s life over these years, and they also witnessed Fan Jun’s repeated efforts to pull him out of the darkness.

“Do you really not need me to drop you off?” Fan Jun accompanied Zou Yang as they waited for a car at the intersection.

“No need. Anyway, I grabbed clothes from you, so I can just head straight back to school,” Zou Yang said. “Liu Wenrui and the others will be waiting for me at the school gate in a bit.”

“Mm,” Fan Jun replied. “You… will be going to classes and reviewing normally tomorrow, right?”

“I won’t be able to review for many days before the exams,” Zou Yang frowned. “I feel like I haven’t learned anything and now it’s time for exams. I’m almost too embarrassed to go take them.”

“How could that be?” Fan Jun smiled.

“After the exams, I need to book some classes,” Zou Yang said.

“…What classes?” Fan Jun scanned him from head to toe. “Even for rehab, you have to wait until the cast is off. Isn’t there still a month left?”

“Is it really that bad that I need rehab?” Zou Yang said.

“After a month, this leg of yours will be a full circle thinner than the other one due to muscle atrophy,” Fan Jun said. “Training it back up is rehab.”

“I want to refund my classes!” Zou Yang said. “No, I want to file a complaint.”

“Complain away,” Fan Jun said. “We’re about to go out of business and run away anyway.”

Zou Yang looked at him and couldn’t hold back a laugh. “You’re crazy.”

Just as they were joking, a car drove over.

It was Zou Yang’s smoothest experience hailing a cab in Nanzhouping; he even felt like this car had been lying in ambush nearby, waiting to take the order.

Fan Jun pulled the car door open and half-supported, half-lifted Zou Yang into the car.

“This… young man, will you be able to get out of the car by yourself later?” The driver turned around to look at the two of them. “My lower back isn’t good. With such a big frame, I might not be able to carry you.”

“It’s fine,” Zou Yang said. “I have people waiting to carry me. Let’s go.”

Through the rearview mirror, he could see that after the car drove off, Fan Jun still stood by the side of the road for a while before straddling his scooter.

Zou Yang rarely paid attention to whether the person seeing him off had left after he got into a car.

Maybe because this kind of scene rarely happened in the past. Occasionally when it did, the person standing there was mostly just a classmate or friend, which really couldn’t pique his interest to pay attention.

Today, he finally realized that this feeling of watching someone get further and further away was quite… inexplicably somewhat melancholy.

His three roommates had gone to the campus clinic to borrow a wheelchair. As agreed, they dragged him out of the car at the school gate and pushed him back to the dorm.

“I’m going to take a shower in a bit.” Zou Yang looked down, searching for something on his phone.

“What do you mean by that?” Zhang Chuanlong asked.

“It means someone needs to come help me hold my leg up.” Zou Yang found what he was looking for and clicked buy.

Liu Wenrui carried an A-frame stepladder into the dorm.

Zou Yang looked at him in silence.

“How about this!” Liu Wenrui placed the stepladder in front of him and lifted a leg onto it to demonstrate. “Isn’t it very scientific? High, medium, and low levels at your choice. Prop it higher if you want, lower if you want. It’s waterproof and has no time limit…”

“Fuck you.” Zou Yang truly admired this guy and couldn’t help giving him a round of applause.

Honestly, before this stepladder appeared, he genuinely hadn’t thought about how he was going to shower. He had said he’d get someone to lift his leg, but if someone was actually standing next to him holding his leg while he showered…

The scene would be a bit too hard to describe. It’d be better not to wash at all.

Having showered relatively smoothly, he changed into Fan Jun’s clothes.

It was a bit late today, and he didn’t want to go back home to get clothes, so Fan Jun had brought him two sets of spare clothes he kept in the new martial arts hall’s locker room.

They fit pretty well.

But…

“Hm?” Li Zhiyue looked at him. “Isn’t this Fan Jun’s shirt? You didn’t go home to get clothes?”

“…No way, you can actually recognize it?” Zou Yang was shocked. He looked down at the clothes he was wearing. It was just a black t-shirt with a few words on the back. He hadn’t looked closely, and it didn’t have any obvious features.

“The day we took those art photos…” Zhang Chuanlong said.

“Don’t mention those three words.” Zou Yang said.

“The day we took photos,” Li Zhiyue said, “Fan Jun was wearing this exact shirt when he gave you your class. The one with ‘No Traces of Training Whatsoever’ printed on the back. He only changed out of it later to take the pictures.”

Was he?

Zou Yang was a bit puzzled. How had he not noticed it himself?

“Then I’ll change into a different one,” Zou Yang said. “I can’t be matching the description too perfectly.”

“You’re fine, you actually have muscles,” Liu Wenrui said. “If Li Zhiyue wore it, it would be a true self-introduction.”

“I’ll go get one made, it’ll just say…” Li Zhiyue laid down on his bed, “‘Even though I have no pecs, at least my lumbar muscles are strained.'”

Zou Yang smiled, laid down on his bed, and took out his phone.

Fan Jun had sent a message a few minutes ago.

[Fan] Did you get to school?
[Zou yang] Got here. Why does that shirt of yours have words on it
[Fan] Brother Bang gifted it. Lü Ze has one too. The three of us each have one
[Zou yang] Do theirs have the same words?
[Fan] Brother Bang’s is: “I will fight randomly when necessary”
[Fan] Lü Ze’s is: “Never train legs”

Zou Yang held his phone and laughed for quite a while.

[Zou yang] Hahahahaha Tie Bang looks pretty serious, why is he so unserious
[Fan] Smiley_face.jpg
[Fan] You should rest early. You have to start reviewing again tomorrow. Prop your leg up a bit to help blood circulation
[Zou yang] Oh

Zou Yang had originally wanted to chat a bit more, but he didn’t expect Fan Jun to directly snuff out the little spark of conversation.

He held his phone, not putting it down for a long time. He felt a bit displeased, and a bit stifled.

But it wasn’t impossible to understand.

The matter of Sun Xulei’s disappearance definitely had a huge impact on Fan Jun, something that bystanders probably couldn’t sense.

To Zou Yang, this kid was practically a stranger. The only deeper memories he had were of the kid fleeing into the old martial arts hall to ask for help, and waiting outside the old hall’s courtyard that day to explain things to Zou Yang.

Zou Yang felt quite sympathetic, but he probably wouldn’t remember this matter forever.

But for Fan Jun, it was completely different.

This kid, whose childhood experiences somewhat overlapped with his own, would constantly tug at a certain nerve at the bottom of his heart…

He was pretty tired today, having been hit by a car, after all.

He lay in bed wanting to scroll on his phone for a bit longer, but his mind was a mess, entirely filled with Fan Jun. It wasn’t about anything specific; he was just pondering over random things, and before long, he became so sleepy he couldn’t hold on anymore.

It was just that even after falling asleep, he didn’t rest very well.

Dreams all night long.

It was still very chaotic. The scenes constantly shifted, the cast of characters was numerous and messy. Countless dreams, each consisting of only a few very brief fragments.

When he woke up in the morning, it felt like he had been running all night.

His brain felt as if it had been stuffed with a down jacket. Out of so many dreams, surprisingly, there wasn’t a single one he could remember.

The only thing he could vaguely remember was that it seemed Fan Jun was in every dream.

It really was a case of “what you think about by day, you dream about by night”…

Waking up, aside from being pushed out of the dorm in a wheelchair by someone, everything was as usual. Life seemed to have returned to the anxiety of the impending final exams.

But it only “seemed.” Perhaps because he had more or less gone through some things yesterday, Zou Yang could feel that some emotions were not quite the same anymore.

---

Fan Jun looked at the photo Zou Yang sent over. This guy had bought an electric scooter the second day he was back at school.

He didn’t know if it was bought with his dad’s condolence money, but it looked very high-end, much better-looking than the one He Chuan rode to class every time.

It was just that considering Zou Yang’s mental state, which seemed almost like ADHD, he doubted whether this cast could actually be taken off after a month.

However, over the next few days in Zou Yang’s WeChat Moments, the chances of him standing on this electric scooter himself weren’t many.

This group of guys would rather spare one person to push the wheelchair just so they could take turns riding that electric scooter to class.

Usually, Zou Yang didn’t post many photos in his Moments, and rarely any of his school. It was only because of the scooter these past few days that Fan Jun managed to catch a few glimpses of his university from the photos and videos.

It was quite large, very much… like a university.

In reality, the only thing Fan Jun could use for reference—or rather, to compare unfavorably against—was Lü Ze’s school… and there was simply no comparison.

Fan Jun looked down at his phone, while Xiaobai sniffed around left and right in front of him.

“Have you still not found a spot to poop?” He glanced ahead. “We’re heading back right away, if you don’t poop now you’ll have to hold it.”

Xiaobai whimpered twice, went over to the wall, spun around in place about eight times, and finally resolved the matter.

After Fan Jun cleaned it up, he brought Xiaobai back to the old martial arts hall.

The moment he entered the courtyard, he heard Sister Shan speaking in the kitchen, her voice carrying a tearful tone.

He froze.

“Such a big deal!” Sister Shan’s voice wasn’t too loud, so he had some trouble hearing it. “He didn’t even tell me… His dad came to question me… What right does he have to blame me…”

Fan Jun unclipped Xiaobai’s leash and quietly walked toward the kitchen.

Uncle Lü was also in the kitchen, currently comforting Sister Shan.

Seeing him come over, he immediately shot him a series of glances telling him to leave.

Fan Jun quickly retreated outward, but Sister Shan had already sensed it. Turning her head and seeing it was him, she immediately pointed at him: “Jun’er! Come here!”

“Sister Shan.” Fan Jun had no choice but to walk over again.

“Did you know too?” Sister Shan wiped her eyes. “You definitely knew.”

“Did I…” Fan Jun looked at Uncle Lü, “…know?”

“Is Little Yang hurt seriously or not?” Sister Shan frowned. “Your Uncle Lü said it’s not serious. If it’s not serious, why are his head and leg both in casts!”

“Sister Shan, his head is not in a cast,” Fan Jun sat down beside her. “It’s precisely because… it’s not serious, that he didn’t want to tell you.”

“But he told his biological dad,” Sister Shan’s eyes grew a bit red again. “I don’t even deserve to know…”

“It’s not that,” Fan Jun cleared his throat and said softly. “He did it for… wasn’t it to… get some money?”

Sister Shan glanced at him.

“Really,” Fan Jun said. “His dad went to the hospital, stayed for ten minutes, and then left.”

“Cold-blooded piece of work!” Sister Shan cursed through gritted teeth. “His own son’s head is in a cast, and he goes over just to stay for ten minutes! Even putting on a show isn’t this perfunctory! How much that must have broken Little Yang’s heart!”

“It’s better that he stayed for a short time,” Uncle Lü said. “I see that Little Yang doesn’t have much affection for his dad. I figure if he stayed longer, it would just be awkward for him.”

“That’s not the same thing!” Sister Shan frowned. “His head and leg are all bandaged up! In ten minutes, you can’t even clearly ask how he got hurt! He just… Ah, what time is it now? I’m going to make a call.”

“Sister Shan, Sister Shan,” Fan Jun quickly stopped her. “Let me call, I’ll do it.”

“Are you two going to get your stories straight?” Sister Shan looked at him.

“No, we’re not,” Fan Jun pulled out his phone, dialing Zou Yang’s number first. “If he sees you calling, he’ll definitely panic. What if he falls again? Let’s leave him a bit of a buffer…”

---

“I’m doomed,” Zou Yang sat in the wheelchair, staring at Fan Jun’s name displayed on his phone. “Doomed, doomed, doomed…”

“What?” Liu Wenrui leaned over to take a look. “You can’t hide the fact that you betrayed me anymore?”

“Get lost,” Zou Yang frowned. “My mom definitely knows.”

“How would she know?” Liu Wenrui was also startled. “Did Fan Jun betray you?”

“What a complicated love triangle,” Zhang Chuanlong said.

Zou Yang answered the phone. He didn’t speak at first, listening to the movement on the other end.

“It’s me, Fan Jun.” Fan Jun’s voice came through.

“Damn,” Zou Yang finally dared to make a sound. “Did my mom find out?”

“Mm.” Fan Jun’s voice was very low.

“How did she find out? Did Uncle Lü tell her?” Zou Yang kept his voice down. Judging by Fan Jun’s tone, he figured his mom was right next to him.

“Your dad told her,” Fan Jun said.

“Fuck his whole family!” Zou Yang burned with rage in an instant. “Is he sick in the head! If he has too much free time, he should go buy cars for his wife and daughter! Why is he harassing my mom!”

“You…” Judging by the sound, it seemed Fan Jun was walking to the side.

“Tell him I’m going to the school to see him!” His mom yelled from the side.

“No, no, no,” Zou Yang quickly said in rapid succession. “I’ll go over, I’ll go over, don’t let her run all the way here.”

“I’ll talk to her again in a bit,” Fan Jun said.

“Is she really angry?” Zou Yang asked.

“Angry, definitely, but also very worried,” Fan Jun said.

“Tell her I’m fine, just had a little fall…” As Zou Yang spoke, his anger flared up again. “My dad definitely exaggerated it. He just seizes every opportunity to…”

“Zou Yang,” Fan Jun called his name.

“I’ll call you back in a bit, I need to find my dad first…” Zou Yang felt so angry that his leg was itching.

“Zou Yang,” Fan Jun interrupted him. “Zou Yang.”

“What!” Zou Yang asked.

“Don’t be angry,” Fan Jun’s voice was very calm. “It’s not worth it.”

The fire in Zou Yang’s belly was like firewood suddenly being pulled away; the momentum suddenly vanished, and he fell silent instantly.

“I’ll discuss it with Sister Shan a bit more,” Fan Jun said. “You have class in a bit, right?”

“Mm,” Zou Yang replied.

“Call me after class,” Fan Jun said.

“Oh,” Zou Yang replied again.

Hanging up the phone, Fan Jun turned around and went back to the kitchen. Sister Shan looked like her emotions had stabilized quite a bit.

“Zou Yang said…” Fan Jun had just started to speak when he was interrupted.

“He doesn’t need to say anything. Old Lu and I will go over at noon,” Sister Shan said. “He’s definitely saying he wants to come over here. With his cast on, traveling all this way back and forth is too much of an ordeal.”

“Ah?” Fan Jun looked at Uncle Lü.

“If she wants to go, let her go,” Uncle Lü said. “She won’t be at ease unless she sees him with her own eyes.”

“…Oh,” Fan Jun nodded.