FF CH45
Fan Jun closed the door after entering his room, but a few seconds later, the door clicked again.
Zou Yang lay there without moving, nor did he look over.
He waited for a while, but Fan Jun didn’t come out. Turning his head and relying on the faint light from the nightlight, he realized the door wasn’t completely shut; rather, it had been left cracked open.
Last time he slept on the sofa here, Fan Jun had closed the door immediately upon entering and didn’t leave it cracked.
Zou Yang felt this was just like Fan Jun’s hyper-alert state during dinner—he was probably doing it so he could react instantly in case anything happened.
He closed his eyes and sighed inwardly.
Originally, he had thought that even if he skipped a shower, he’d at least go brush his teeth and wash his face in a bit. But now he decided to abandon that plan, afraid that any noise he made out here would make Fan Jun tense.
Besides, when Fan Jun hurriedly went into his room earlier, he was just like Zou Yang—he hadn’t washed up at all, and he hadn’t come back out since. They had just drunk a glass of water each earlier… they could just treat that as having rinsed their mouths.
Zou Yang lay perfectly straight on the sofa. Ever since his leg was put in a cast, he had been sleeping very stiffly, basically not moving at all. As long as a person doesn’t toss and turn, normally they can fall asleep very quickly.
Perhaps he had overused his brain today; before he could even finish articulating this thought in his head, he lost consciousness.
He originally thought he would at least have some dreams. With so much on his mind during the day, he figured there’d be no shortage of dreams at night.
But there were none.
When the phone rang, it was already bright all around him.
He kept his eyes closed and, filled with the fiery indignation of feeling like he hadn’t slept at all despite sleeping the entire night, answered the phone: “Hello!”
“We’re heading out now,” Liu Wenrui’s voice came through. “We’ll be there in about half an hour. Are you awake yet?”
“…Awake.” Zou Yang remembered they had plans today and snapped his eyes open.
“You literally just woke up this second, didn’t you?” Liu Wenrui said. “Sleep well?”
Zou Yang didn’t speak. He turned his head to look around the room and noticed the curtains had already been drawn back, but he didn’t see Fan Jun.
“Fan Jun!” he called out.
“Hey!” Liu Wenrui also yelled. “Do you realize the phone isn’t hung up yet?”
“Drive safely later,” Zou Yang said, then hung up the phone.
There was a message on his phone, sent by Fan Jun ten minutes ago.
[Fan]: I’m buying breakfast.
Zou Yang immediately stood up, quickly calculated the approximate time needed, made a decision, and swiftly hopped toward the bathroom.
He needed to take a shower before Fan Jun got back.
As for why he had to do it while Fan Jun wasn’t around, it was simply to avoid embarrassment. While he was showering in whatever bizarre, contorted posture he’d have to use, if there was another person just standing around outside, he couldn’t even imagine how awkward that would be.
There were still water droplets on the bathroom walls, looking quite fresh. Fan Jun probably took a shower right when he got up.
Zou Yang scanned the bathroom. He could prop his cast leg on the faucet of the shower rack, then just take down the showerhead to rinse off.
Perfect.
He pulled the shower curtain shut, took off his shirt, then leaned against the wall to take off his pants too, draping everything over the shower curtain rod.
Just as he lifted his leg, propped it onto the faucet, and was still adjusting his position, he suddenly heard a noise outside.
He felt like his ears shot straight up to the top of his head.
The front door clicked.
Before he could carefully identify the sound, the bathroom door was pushed open, and Fan Jun’s voice came from the other side of the shower curtain: “Zou Yang?”
“…Ah?” Zou Yang was utterly shocked. “How are you… back so fast? Didn’t you just leave ten minutes ago?”
“I was already getting the food packed up when I sent you that message,” Fan Jun said, seemingly preparing to step back out, but then he stopped. “Your leg… how are you taking a shower?”
“I just propped it on the faucet, it’s fine, don’t worry about me, don’t worry about me,” Zou Yang quickly said.
“Do you…” Fan Jun hesitated, “want me to get you a tool? I have a TRX suspension strap here…”
“No, no, no,” Zou Yang stood on one leg. “I already have it propped up.”
“Alright then, you… wait a second.” After saying that, Fan Jun left the bathroom.
Wait for what?
Zou Yang stood in the bathroom with his leg propped up, one hand supporting himself against the wall, feeling a bit helpless.
Fortunately, Fan Jun returned very quickly, snatching away the clothes he had draped over the curtain rod and throwing a bath towel over it instead.
“Hey?” Zou Yang froze. Among those clothes was his underwear…
“I brought a set of clean clothes and put them on this rack over here, the underwear is new,” Fan Jun said.
“Can you get a wholesale price for buying underwear now or something…” Zou Yang couldn’t help but ask.
“No, they come three to a box, I bought five boxes.” Fan Jun said that and went out, closing the bathroom door.
Zou Yang peeked out from behind the shower curtain. He had no idea where his dirty clothes had been put, but on the rack were Fan Jun’s clothes.
He still hadn’t returned that “zero signs of training” shirt to Fan Jun from last time, and now he was going to wear another set of his?
However, he didn’t have much time left. Liu Wenrui would be here soon. Seeing him wearing Fan Jun’s clothes might not make him overthink too much, but if he saw him stepping fresh out of the shower, his imagination would definitely run wild.
He turned on the showerhead. While figuring out which bottle next to him was shampoo and which was body wash, he rinsed himself off from head to toe.
In less than ten minutes, he was done showering. A haphazard wipe down with the towel and he called it good.
Fan Jun had gotten him a very casual pair of floral beach shorts and a white T-shirt that had no text but did have a graphic printed on it. It wasn’t until he was blow-drying his hair that he realized it was actually a photo of Xiao Bai.
“Done showering?” Fan Jun poked his head in to check.
“Yeah,” Zou Yang nodded. “Is this custom-made? Is this Xiao Bai?”
“Yes,” Fan Jun smiled. “He has a shirt too, printed with my boxing gloves.”
“You’re really…” Zou Yang started laughing.
Taking a quick shower had been a very wise decision. Before they even finished eating breakfast, Liu Wenrui’s call came in: “Put Fan Jun on the phone.”
“…What do you want?” Zou Yang asked through gritted teeth.
“To get to his place, do you turn left at the Cainiao package station?” Liu Wenrui said. “Li Zhiyue insists we need to go one more intersection! How could I not know the way?”
“Listen to your Brother Zhiyue,” Zou Yang said.
“Fuck, did I remember wrong?” Liu Wenrui was very unconvinced.
“Yeah,” Zou Yang replied.
“We won’t call, we’ll just come straight up,” Liu Wenrui said.
This sounded normal enough, but actually, it didn’t sound normal at all—it was loaded with implications.
“Mm,” Zou Yang responded again. Without waiting for him to say more, he hung up the phone directly.
Twenty-four now.
Fan Jun stood by the window, looking outside. There was no real scenery, just old buildings upon old buildings, various broken flower pots, and clothes hung haphazardly on lines. It looked no different than usual.
But his mood today was not the same calm as usual.
Today he felt somewhat excited.
Growing up all these years, this was the first time he had a real sense of and anticipation for his own birthday.
Even before the door was pounded on, he had already heard the ruckus outside. It was quite a feat for three people to create enough noise that even a hearing-impaired person found it loud.
“Coming!” Zou Yang, with the last steamed dumpling dangling from his mouth, got up and went to open the door.
As soon as the door opened, Zhang Chuanlong essentially split his way into the room: “Brother Fan! Happy birthday!”
Da Hei shot like a bolt of white light right under the bedroom bed.
Before Fan Jun could speak, Liu Wenrui and Li Zhiyue pushed past him and squeezed in: “Happy birthday, Brother Fan—”
“Thank…” Fan Jun was interrupted halfway through by Li Zhiyue.
“This cake needs to go in the fridge first,” Li Zhiyue was carrying an enormous box. “You’ll have to take out a shelf in your fridge to make it fit.”
“Oh.” Fan Jun quickly went over, opened the fridge, and started taking drinks out.
“Do you have disposable tableware? If not, we’ll have to find a supermarket on the way,” Liu Wenrui followed over to help him grab things. “When I drove over just now, I couldn’t parallel park on the side of the road…”
“It’s not just parallel parking you can’t do, you can’t front-park or reverse-park either, you can’t park any way at all,” Zhang Chuanlong said.
“You can drive the car later then,” Liu Wenrui said.
“I don’t know how, I haven’t driven since I got my license,” Zhang Chuanlong said.
“You know how! How could you not know!” Liu Wenrui glared at him. “You could race F1 with that mouth of yours!”
“First use your mouths to put the cake away properly!” Li Zhiyue said.
To be honest, Fan Jun rarely found things noisy, but right now these guys were being so loud it was making his head spin.
“My brains hurt… hey, Fan Jun.” Zou Yang’s voice precisely pierced through the clamor of the others and entered his ears.
Before he could turn his head, his arm was pulled, and Zou Yang yanked him out from amongst the group.
“Is the cake really that big?” he asked in a low voice.
“Two-tiered. But we can’t let you see it right now, it’s for the afternoon,” Zou Yang smiled, holding his phone up in front of Fan Jun’s eyes. “We’re going here later, do you know the way?”
Fan Jun took a look. It was a campsite in the suburban area at the northernmost corner of Nanzhouping, already crossing into the neighboring county’s territory.
“Haven’t been there, but I know where it is,” he said, though his heart suddenly felt a bit uneasy. “Are we going there… to camp?”
“Not camping,” Zou Yang quickly said. “Birthday BBQ party.”
“Mm.” Fan Jun nodded.
Uncle Lu and the others would occasionally barbecue in the courtyard of the old gym, which was quite fun, but he had never gone to a campsite to barbecue with a group of friends before.
“If you’re not used to it, we can change venues,” Zou Yang leaned in close to his right ear and whispered.
“No need, it’s fine,” Fan Jun said. “I’ve never hung out like this before.”
“I knew it,” Zou Yang raised an eyebrow with a smile.
Fan Jun smiled too. Before they could say more, Zhang Chuanlong clapped his hands over there: “Done! Fits perfectly.”
“Let’s go,” Liu Wenrui walked over. “If we head out now, we’ll make it just in time for lunch.”
While waiting for Fan Jun to add food to Da Hei’s automatic feeder, Liu Wenrui kept staring at Zou Yang.
“Keep looking and I’ll kiss you,” Zou Yang said, keeping his voice down.
“Come on, come on,” Liu Wenrui pointed at his own cheek, also lowering his voice. “Do it.”
“Scram,” Zou Yang sighed.
“Don’t pretend you forgot what you promised me last night,” Liu Wenrui slung an arm over his shoulder and whispered.
“Mm,” Zou Yang responded.
Liu Wenrui’s interest in this matter far exceeded his interest in going to the barbecue. While Fan Jun parked the car by the road to wait for Li Zhiyue and Zhang Chuanlong to buy tableware at the supermarket, Liu Wenrui sat in the back seat, staring intensely at Zou Yang.
Zou Yang could feel his burning gaze even without turning around, so he absolutely didn’t dare to look back.
“Brother Fan,” Liu Wenrui suddenly called out to Fan Jun.
“What do you want!” Zou Yang whipped his head around fiercely.
“Hm?” Fan Jun was just about to turn around but was startled by Zou Yang’s sudden shout.
“Have you been to that campsite before?” Liu Wenrui asked, then looked at Zou Yang. “What are you doing, you scared me!”
Zou Yang didn’t say anything, just glared at him.
“Haven’t been there. It’s quite far, usually don’t have the time,” Fan Jun smiled.
“Oh,” Liu Wenrui leaned back into his seat. “Then it’s perfect, we’ll have a blast today and eat well. We specifically went to the market to find someone to prepare this meat, it smells super good.”
“Mm,” Fan Jun replied with a smile. “I can smell it.”
After turning back to the front, he tilted his face slightly towards Zou Yang and mouthed a question.
What’s wrong?
Nothing.
Zou Yang smiled.
According to the GPS, the campsite was a little over forty kilometers away, about an hour’s drive.
Music was playing in the car, and the guys sang along the whole way. When they weren’t singing, they were chatting, or eating; their mouths never stopped.
Zou Yang had initially been worried that Fan Jun wouldn’t adapt to this kind of rowdiness, but every time he turned his head to look, he could see the corners of Fan Jun’s mouth slightly turned up.
It wasn’t the weekend today, and summer vacation hadn’t started yet, so there weren’t many people at the campsite. There was a large expanse of grass by the lake, as well as a patch of woods. They could choose their barbecue spot freely.
The group got out of the car, opened the trunk, and started grabbing things. A canopy tent that Liu Wenrui brought from home, a set of barbecue tools that Liu Wenrui brought from home, a set of camping tables and chairs that Liu Wenrui brought from home…
Besides the camping cart used to haul everything—which they had chipped in to buy when moving dorms—everything else was brought from Liu Wenrui’s house.
It was very touching.
“You brought all of this from home?” Fan Jun was also shocked.
“My family loves going out to play, so we have a lot of this stuff,” Liu Wenrui said. “I just went home for a quick trip and grabbed it all.”
“…Thanks,” Fan Jun said.
“Hey, don’t mention it,” Liu Wenrui immediately waved his hand. “Zou Yang’s…”
Zou Yang immediately glared at him. Although Liu Wenrui probably wouldn’t actually spill the beans, he still wasn’t the most reliable person. Back in the day, the time he was chased and beaten by his mom for suspected puppy love was because Liu Wenrui let it slip himself.
“…birthdays, we also celebrate them like this. Everyone’s birthday is celebrated like this,” Liu Wenrui glared back at him. “We’re all friends.”
As the group dragged the camping cart and carried a pile of stuff toward their chosen spot, Zou Yang slowed down his pace, leaning on a cane, and fell to the back of the line.
Liu Wenrui tacitly sidled over to him.
“Watch what you say,” Zou Yang said rapidly.
“Is it what I guessed?” Liu Wenrui also spoke rapidly. “If you don’t explain it clearly to me, how do I know which direction to watch out for?”
“Damn you, just talk to him the exact same way you used to,” Zou Yang said.
“Just tell me if it’s what I guessed hurry up he’s not an idiot if we keep whispering like this a couple more times he’ll definitely get suspicious,” Liu Wenrui rattled off without taking a breath.
“Now you’re playing the considerate best buddy I think it probably is,” Zou Yang said, and right after the words left his mouth, he felt like his heart stopped, his footsteps almost stumbling.
“Holy fuck,” Liu Wenrui hissed through his teeth. Still carrying things in his hands, he could only violently shake his head to show his shock. “Holy fuck… have you told him?”
“No,” Zou Yang looked at Fan Jun’s back.
“Got it,” Liu Wenrui gritted his teeth. “You…”
“Just digest it for a bit,” Zou Yang said, then sped up and hopped forward.
“Holy fuck…” Liu Wenrui was still gritting his teeth. “Then if you haven’t told him it’s one-sided… holy fuck then aren’t you a bit pathetic…”
The camping spot they picked was on the edge of the woods, where it could block some of the sun. It wasn’t far from the lake, and a few minutes’ walk away was a lonely coffee cart with no business.
“Who’s setting up this canopy,” Li Zhiyue threw the canopy onto the grass. “I’m too delicate for this kind of thing.”
“I’ll do it,” Fan Jun walked over and picked up the canopy.
“How can we let the birthday boy do this?” Zhang Chuanlong said.
“Then you do it,” Zou Yang said.
“I’ll be the assistant,” Zhang Chuanlong immediately backtracked without any hesitation.
“No need.” Fan Jun picked up the ground pegs and examined them. “This is easier to set up than a tent.”
“Long Long! We don’t need you for that, come over and deal with this meat! It’s a huge bag of it!” Liu Wenrui yelled.
“You’ve set up a tent before?” Zou Yang asked.
“In high school we went to Nanzhouping Park for a spring field trip,” Fan Jun shook open the canopy. “A classmate brought a small tent… wanted to have some private time with his girlfriend.”
“Your high school actually had spring field trips?” Zou Yang said.
“There was one in freshman year, but none after that,” Fan Jun smiled.
“Was it fun?” Zou Yang asked. Suddenly, he felt an indescribable twinge of sourness, which even he found a bit inexplicable. “I thought you… didn’t participate in school activities.”
“It wasn’t fun,” Fan Jun looked at him. “I went because I could skip class, and I could sneak away halfway through.”
“Damn,” Zou Yang laughed.
“Zou Yang,” Fan Jun glanced over in Liu Wenrui’s direction. “You and Liu Wenrui…”
“There really is nothing going on between us…” Zou Yang stopped halfway. With someone as sensitive as Fan Jun, he had probably already sensed something.
“Oh.” Fan Jun didn’t ask further, lowering his head to start setting up the canopy.
Zou Yang sat on the grass without moving. If he forcefully claimed nothing was wrong, Fan Jun definitely wouldn’t bring it up again, but he also felt a bit guilty toward Fan Jun, as if he were excluding him outside of a certain boundary.
“It’s just…” he started with difficulty.
“Hm?” Fan Jun stopped what he was doing.
“Liu Wenrui originally wanted to introduce you to his cousin,” Zou Yang blurted out quickly.
“What?” Fan Jun instinctively leaned his right ear toward him.
“I turned it down,” Zou Yang looked at him.
Fan Jun looked at him too, still holding a corner of the canopy in his hand. After a while, he simply responded: “…Oh.”