Naturally, that dinner never happened.

Jiang Shi and Cheng Ye also missed the ride home. Stepping into the first fine rain of Qingming, they turned down the alley to the left of the school and ducked into a barbecue stall belching smoke.

There were lots of people eating at this hour. The boss was swamped and didn’t even look up when two half-grown boys came in. “Plates up front. Grab what you want and line up to grill.”

Hands tucked into the pockets of his school jacket, Jiang Shi stared down at a potato slice someone had dropped, wrinkled his nose, and sidled behind Cheng Ye, peeking out like a sneaky cat. “Cheng Ye, I want corn.”

Cheng Ye took corn.

“Potato.”

“Enoki mushrooms.”

“String beans.”

“…”

“Young Master,” Cheng Ye turned, looking down at him, “no meat?”

The young master glanced at the meat, then looked away. “No. Too expensive.”

Hard-won progress—he finally knew how to save.

Cheng Ye grabbed a chicken leg, then some beef.

“Hey…” Jiang Shi muttered.

“I’m paying,” Cheng Ye said.

Suspicious, Jiang Shi eyed him. “Where’d you get money?”

Unblinking, Cheng Ye said, “Cleaned the place two days ago. Fished it out from under Cheng Jianbin’s bed.”

“You could—” Jiang Shi started.

Cheng Ye knew what he was going to say and added calmly, “Not much. Just enough for one barbecue meal.”

“…”

Something felt off.

But since Cheng Ye was spending his money on him, Jiang Shi couldn’t figure out what exactly was wrong. It’s not like Cheng Ye was actually dumb enough to blow money on him for nothing… right?

Once they’d picked their skewers, they found a place to sit.

The boss was too busy to clear the previous diners’ mess.

Cheng Ye cleaned it up. When he turned around, Jiang Shi still had both hands in his pockets. The boy tipped his chin up when their eyes met. “There’s the chair too. Wipe it.”

Righteous. Bossy.

Cheng Ye suddenly smiled.

He pulled out napkins and wiped Jiang Shi’s chair. “Young Master sure is good at giving orders.”

The barbecue smoke had tinted Jiang Shi’s face with a faint pink that set off his pale skin; under the lights, he practically glowed. Eyes kept darting their way.

“You’re my bodyguard, aren’t you? Isn’t this normal for a bodyguard to do?” he said.

Cheng Ye glanced to the right. The little girl sneaking looks flinched at the chill of his gaze and snapped her eyes away.

“Very normal. Want me to wipe the table too?”

Jiang Shi huffed.

The dutiful bodyguard wiped twice before the young master deigned to sit.

Perched on the edge of his chair, Jiang Shi studied the slightly spicy skewers in front of him and finally pulled his hands out of his pockets. He took a bite of beef, decided he could barely tolerate the spice, and kept eating.

After one skewer, he couldn’t help asking Cheng Ye, “Do you think Huo Ji will really make trouble for Song Jian’an?”

In the time it took Jiang Shi to eat two chunks of beef, Cheng Ye had already demolished half a cob of corn. He answered, “No.”

“Huh? Why?”

Cheng Ye slid the food off the bamboo stick into a bowl and set it before Jiang Shi. “Just a hunch.”

Because compared to Song Jian’an, Huo Ji was currently more inclined to make trouble for him.

Words of wisdom that sounded like the opposite.

Under Jiang Shi’s speechless stare, Cheng Ye finished the corn. “You’ve left already—don’t overthink it. Thinking won’t change what’s set.”

“But…”

Cheng Ye tapped the box in front of Jiang Shi with his chopsticks. “No buts. Eat before it gets cold. I said he won’t bother Song Jian’an, so he won’t.”

As if he were all-powerful. Jiang Shi couldn’t help an eye roll.

Cheng Ye thought,
Even rolling his eyes is cute.

—

It rained all through Qingming. Jiang Shi went home and slept like the dead, only to be hauled up the next day by Jiang Xue to go sweep tombs.

He finally learned the meaning of “tomb-sweeping as land-clearing.”

Fine drizzle pricked his face. Wrapped in a raincoat, shoes caked in mud, he trudged along overgrown paths that weren’t really paths at all. One mountain after another loomed ahead.

Jiang Xue hacked a way forward with a sickle. “Your grandparents are on the mountain up ahead. When we get there, kowtow and ask them to bless you to get into a good university.”

Wiping his face, Jiang Shi felt despair. Maybe skipping university wasn’t tragic after all.

There were no cemeteries in Xiliu Village. His great-grandparents lay in the deep mountains and forests; there wasn’t even a road. Jiang Xue found the graves purely by memory.

They climbed ridge after ridge until he was a mud doll, eyes glazing over—by the end, he was kneeling by sheer reflex whenever he saw a mound.

The last one was his father’s.

The grave sat in a plot near the house, a willow at its back and a shallow vale before it.

A breeze set the willow branches swaying.

Jiang Xue carefully cleared the weeds with her sickle. Jiang Shi took the white paper from the bag.

“Shiba,” Jiang Xue said softly, “I brought our real son to see you. He looks a lot like you. Good thing he doesn’t look like me, or what a disgrace that’d be.”

Mist spread. The wind puffed at a tear in the back of Jiang Shi’s raincoat, ballooning it. The boy’s silhouette was thin and silent.

Kneeling before the grave, Jiang Shi burned paper.

He’d never met the man; to say he felt something would be false. Yet blood ties are strange—near this mound, a softness welled up regardless.

He could almost feel a middle-aged man, five or six tenths like him, watching him with gentle eyes.

He had never known fatherly love.

Song Bo was a textbook businessman—profit above all. There had been no love in his union with Sun Wanyun.

Their marriage was a transaction—vast wealth traded for a lifetime bond. They needed a child; Jiang Shi arrived right on schedule, a product born of a deal.

No one develops feelings for a product. Value was the only metric by which they measured a child.

But Jiang Xue was different.

Crude, clumsy, poor, powerless—yet overflowing with love.

She gave him so much that even without ever meeting his father, he could imagine how they’d have been together.

Nothing like Song Bo and Sun Wanyun.

“Quick, kowtow to your dad,” Jiang Xue urged. “Ask him to bless you into college. He can hear you down there.”

Jiang Shi solemnly bowed three times, then said in his heart: Bless Jiang Xue with safety, health, and happiness.

—

By the time they returned, it was already dark.

His raincoat had ripped; he was half-soaked, freezing stiff, lips pale.

A black figure stood at the black doorway.

Jiang Xue jumped, then peered closer—it was Cheng Ye.

“Xiao Ye? It’s late and pitch-black—why’d you come?”

Cheng Ye’s gaze swept over Jiang Shi; his brows drew tight. “Brought you some food. Auntie Jiang, you were out this whole time?”

“Had to cross several ridges,” Jiang Xue said, bone-tired. “You can’t even find the path. Who knows if the feng shui was good when they buried them—but they sure left us descendants to suffer.”

She opened the door and waved Cheng Ye in, then eyed the tightly lidded pot in his hands, curious. “Why’d you bring food? We’ve got food at home. Keep it for yourself.”

Cheng Ye set the pot on the table and lifted the lid—inside, pork ribs simmered to tenderness. “Jiang Shi likes these. For him.”

Sniffling at his reddened nose, Jiang Shi peeled off his raincoat.

His head felt faint, and it took a while to process what Cheng Ye had said. “Oh… for me?”

He sniffed; whether his nose had quit or what, he smelled nothing. The ribs were cold, fat congealed on top and looking greasy. “All greasy. I don’t want it.”

“…”

This damned child.

Cheng Ye didn’t get angry. He covered the pot again. “They’re like that when cold. They’re good hot.”

“Auntie Jiang…” he said, “could you boil some water for him to bathe, and make ginger tea? He doesn’t look right.”

As if to prove the point, Jiang Shi let out a resounding sneeze.

Panicking, Jiang Xue rushed to heat water.

A towel on his head, Jiang Shi sat by the stove with Cheng Ye, warming themselves.

“You don’t know how hard those mountains are to climb,” he grumbled. “There aren’t even paths. The trees—my arms don’t go around them. Dark as pitch in the woods, raining too—if someone killed you, they’d never find the body…”

“I’ll go with you next time,” Cheng Ye said.

Jiang Shi sneezed again.

Once the water was hot, Jiang Xue shooed him to bathe.

When he came out, Cheng Ye was still there, head lowered over a pot of ginger tea. Jiang Shi had barely sat before a steaming, pungent bowl landed in his hands.

He held it, frowning. “I’m not drinking that.”

Cheng Ye lifted his eyes. “Shot and pills or ginger tea. Pick one.”

“…”

“Given my excellent constitution,” Jiang Shi ventured weakly, “I might just get better on my own by tomorrow?”

“You mean the constitution that leaves you panting after two steps?” Cheng Ye said.

Jiang Shi kicked him.

Cheng Ye brushed dirt from his pants. “Drink.”

“I won’t…”

Cheng Ye lowered his eyes again, and that unanswerable look returned.

Jiang Shi really hated ginger tea. He refused to bow to tyranny, meeting the gaze with unexpected backbone.

Cheng Ye paused, then crouched, fished a milk candy from his pocket, and spoke low. “Young Master, drink it and I’ll give you candy.”

Am I three? Jiang Shi thought.

“Think of it as me begging you—okay?” Cheng Ye added.

Like a large dog crouched at his feet, the handsome face blank of expression, yet his voice softened and stretched—and bizarrely, Jiang Shi heard a hint of coaxing.

He took an involuntary sip.

Heat and spice made his brows knot; he opened his mouth to complain when a short laugh sounded at his ear.

“You’re amazing, Young Master.”

“…”

His jade-white ears flushed fast. Jiang Shi scooted the bench away with his hips.

Cheng Ye really is not normal.