Winding Echo Part 2

“I'm very busy and rarely come home. If I were to teach anyone, it would definitely be my own family's kid. Don't you think?”

Putting on his trench coat, Song Yu left the classroom. He didn't see any sign of Yue Zhishi, so he gave him a call, but no one answered. Yue Zhishi's phone was always on silent or turned off at school. Song Yu guessed he hadn't seen the call and decided to go look for him himself.

In fact, Yue Zhishi hadn't even taken out his phone. Surrounded by many classmates, he was currently in the cafeteria, facing a very awkward situation alone—a female classmate he had never imagined would like him had suddenly confessed to him, and had even prepared a small birthday surprise. Yue Zhishi was being held down in a seat by some rowdy boys, unable to even stand up.

“I went out specially to pick up this cake at noon today.” The girl sitting opposite him pushed the cake in front of him, her expression shy. “Their cakes are delicious. I had to order it a week in advance to get it.”

The cake did look very beautiful. It was rose lychee flavored, and written on top were the words 'Happy Birthday Yue Zhishi.'

Everyone was jeering playfully from the side. Most of them didn't know his allergen was wheat. The only one who knew, Jiang Yufan, was in the science stream. They were goading Yue Zhishi to cut the cake and have a taste. Yue Zhishi couldn't refuse, thinking to himself that just a little bit of cream should be fine.

So he picked up a fork, intending to symbolically scrape off a bit of cream, while mentally calculating how to politely extricate himself from the situation.

But before his plan could be put into action, in the next second, his wrist was grabbed by a familiar hand.

He looked up and met Song Yu's cold, sharp eyes.

“He has allergies, he can't just eat any cake from outside,” Song Yu said in a cold tone, pulling Yue Zhishi straight to his feet.

The girl sitting opposite him looked a bit awkward. Giving the object of her affection food he might be allergic to right after confessing was indeed not a good situation. But Yue Zhishi was still good-natured. “It's okay, don't worry about it. Thank you for specially buying it for me.”

Before he could say much more, Song Yu pulled him out.

The wind was blowing outside, and the rain had started to fall. Large raindrops pattered on the ground. Judging by the speed, Yue Zhishi guessed it was a shower. He shrank his neck into his collar and kept up with Song Yu's steps.

“You eat whatever people give you? How many times have I told you?” Song Yu's expression was unfriendly. “Wasn't the lesson from your childhood enough?”

Yue Zhishi felt a little wronged. “No, I wasn't going to eat it. Just now, she...”

Song Yu stopped walking and looked at Yue Zhishi. “So you can eat it just because she confessed to you?”

'How did he know it was a confession...'

Yue Zhishi stood there bewildered, pouting for a brief moment before schooling his expression again. “I wasn't. I just wanted to taste a little cream to make her feel better.”

Song Yu stood there for a moment. The rain began to fall harder. He said, “I know,” then walked ahead to the parking spot, took out his car keys and pressed a button, then walked around to the passenger side and opened the door for Yue Zhishi.

Yue Zhishi obediently got into the car and sat next to Song Yu. He noticed that Song Yu's hair had been cut shorter. It was truly black, the kind that didn't look like it would be nice to touch. This difference in hair color was possibly the biggest difference in their physical appearance.

He suddenly thought, 'Maybe I should dye my hair black too. Would that make us look more alike?'

He really wanted a unique relationship, one that couldn't be severed at any moment.

His mind was in chaos. Outside, thunder suddenly rumbled. Yue Zhishi reflexively raised his hands, but Song Yu pressed down on the back of his hand. Song Yu didn't speak, but used his other hand to turn on the car stereo, playing a relaxing and soothing classical piano piece.

The hand holding Yue Zhishi's never let go.

Song Yu was the person in the world who understood him best—what he could eat, what he couldn't; what he hated, what he liked. He even knew all the little fidgets Yue Zhishi made in class like the back of his hand. All these minute details were accumulated over so many years.

Yue Zhishi watched him turn around, take a simple and beautiful white box from the back seat, and place it on Yue Zhishi's lap.

“What's this?”

“Open it and see for yourself.”

He opened it. Inside was a chocolate cake. A rich aroma washed over him. The cake's smooth glaze reflected a beautiful luster like a mirror—very much in Song Yu's personal style.

“We ran out of gluten-free flour at home. I had to go to several stores to buy almond flour, so it was made in a bit of a rush.” Song Yu's perfectionism made him downplay his own efforts, but Yue Zhishi loved it. He hadn't expected Song Yu to remember his birthday and go to so much trouble to make him a cake.

“It looks so delicious.”

Yue Zhishi had thought he would have to wait until the weekend to properly celebrate his birthday. He had thought Song Yu wouldn't come back, and wouldn't celebrate with him.

The white flash of lightning was fleeting. Before Yue Zhishi could react, Song Yu had already raised his hands and covered his ears. The sound of thunder arrived at the same time as his voice, overlapping with the beat of his heart.

“Happy birthday.”

Yue Zhishi remembered sitting in the car, eating a large slice of cake. A small smudge of chocolate ganache was on his nose, but Song Yu was very devious and didn't tell him, so Yue Zhishi only discovered it after he got home.

He also remembered that Lin Rong and Song Jin didn't come home that day. He pestered Song Yu into talking for a long time, doing his homework in Song Yu's room until past midnight.

At the time, Song Yu had also asked him if he had been properly working on the supplementary workbooks he'd bought.

Back then, Yue Zhishi had thought it was just a casual question from Song Yu, speaking from a parent's perspective—an after-effect of the conference. Thinking about it now, he realized Song Yu had been hinting at something.

The subway seemed to move much faster than usual. Yue Zhishi swiped his card and left the station, his curiosity driving him to rush home at top speed, searching for the answer that had been lying in wait for so long.

Lin Rong had also just gotten home from the airport not long ago. Seeing Yue Zhishi dive into his room the moment he returned, she found it a bit strange and brought a bowl of red bean double-skin milk pudding upstairs. Seeing Yue Zhishi struggling to reach a cardboard box on top of his bookshelf, she knocked on the open bedroom door. “Honey, what are you doing? Here, have some milk pudding.”

Yue Zhishi glanced towards the door, his arm still stretched out and struggling. “Auntie Rong, the books I brought back last semester are in this box, right?”

Lin Rong put down the milk pudding and stood there thinking. “Eh, no, that's not right. I think I put them away for you in that low white cabinet.”

“Really? I'll look.”

Guessing that Yue Zhishi might have been stimulated by something at W University and had come back ready to work hard, Lin Rong didn't dare to disturb him. “Remember to eat it, okay? Tell Auntie Rong if you need anything. Don't work too hard.”

“Mm, okay.” Yue Zhishi crouched in front of the low cabinet, searching through the books one by one without looking up. Lin Rong closed the door behind her. He searched for more than ten minutes and finally pulled out a few math workbooks he had bought before. The scope had narrowed. Yue Zhishi didn't give up. He carried all the books to his desk and looked through them one by one.

It wasn't until he saw the one he had drawn comics in—the one he used most to kill time—that a six-month-delayed sense of shame surfaced, and Yue Zhishi faintly felt he had found the right one.

'What could it be.'

His hand, flipping through the book, suddenly paused, and Yue Zhishi's gaze came to a stop along with it.

It was a function application problem. The question was very long, and the first part asked to calculate the visitor traffic of a certain park. Yue Zhishi still had an impression of this problem because the prompt was incredibly verbose and felt like it wasn't written in a human language, making it difficult to even extract the conditions. At that time, he was in a period of study burnout. After reading the problem, his mind was filled only with keywords like 'park,' 'tourists,' and 'holiday,' and he had no desire to calculate anything.

So at that time, he had very rebelliously written a sentence.

[Solution: Don't want to solve the problem, just want to go have fun. With so many visitors, one more person like me won't make a difference.]

But looking back at it now, there was an extra line of text below it, in a completely different, sharp handwriting.

[Persevere for a while longer. I'll take you wherever you want to go after the Gaokao is over.]

'Was this the encouragement he was talking about.'

Yue Zhishi's heart began to pound. He suddenly had an illusion, feeling as if he and Song Yu were like people from two different spacetimes in a sci-fi movie who had suddenly synced up on the same frequency at some wonderful moment, and everything began to intersect.

The words he had once written, which no one knew of, had received a response.

His fingertips tingled, and his heart felt full to bursting, like overflowing rainwater. Yue Zhishi reached out and lightly touched the line of words Song Yu had written, unconsciously reciting it to himself several times in his mind.

He felt there had to be more, believing that Song Yu wouldn't have left just this one trace. Having tasted a bit of sweetness, Yue Zhishi continued to flip through the book, looking through it carefully many times. But he didn't slack off like that very often; most of the time, he was diligently solving problems and studying hard.

There didn't seem to be many places for Song Yu to leave his mark.

Yue Zhishi was a little dejected, but he was already very satisfied with just this.

Closing the workbook, he stared at the cover in a daze for a while. Something flashed through his mind, and his ears began to burn.

He seemed to have done something very stupid once when he wasn't paying attention in class.

At this thought, Yue Zhishi rapidly flipped through the workbook, finally finding the page of his own dark history.

Back then, out of sheer boredom, he had practiced writing Song Yu's name over and over on this page, as if practicing his characters. Looking at these names he had written again, Yue Zhishi could feel his heart speed up. He couldn't tell if it was embarrassment or some other feeling. As he read them, his own voice filled his mind, calling his brother's name again and again, not expecting an echo in return.

Suddenly, he froze, staring fixedly at the last name he had written. It was still the same two characters, twenty strokes.

[Song Yu]

And below it, there was one more character, like an echo.

[Hm?]