First Meeting

Prologue

"Hey, how about being my boyfriend?"

When Ling Ke heard the person in front of him ask that question in a low voice, he could hardly believe his ears.

This was the person he had secretly had a crush on for years. Right now, the corners of his lips were tipped up slightly, his smile carrying an elusive hint of something more, his deep-set eyes fixed unwaveringly on Ling Ke.

......

001. First Meeting

Ling Ke first met Qi Feng during the summer after he graduated from elementary school.

He still remembered how unusually hot that summer had been, the sun blazing like fire. He took the subway alone to the music conservatory for his amateur Grade Eight piano exam, and by the time he arrived, he was drenched in sweat.

Once inside the waiting room, Ling Ke found a seat off to one side and leafed through his sheet music, reviewing the techniques the examiners would focus on, especially those in Cramer's Etude No. 21.

The piece was fast-paced, primarily intended to develop strength in the third, fourth, and fifth fingers of the right hand. Those three fingers happened to be Ling Ke's weakest point, and he often hit wrong notes during finger-alternation exercises. He tried practicing with small movements, tapping his fingers lightly on the table.

Just then, there was a soft rustle beside him, and a boy about his age sat down.

The boy wore an elegant black performance outfit, his close-fitting vest nipped in at the waist. His black hair was neatly combed, setting off skin like fine porcelain. Though he was still young and his palm-sized face had yet to mature, his fine features already showed the makings of a handsome young man. With those naturally smiling eyes, he would surely have everyone gravitating toward him in just a few years.

Ling Ke stared blankly at him for two seconds. He had never seen anyone so beautiful before, and for some reason, he felt a little nervous.

"Hey." The boy looked at him with a smile and asked, "What's your name?"

There was a lovely scent about him, a faint fragrance that might have come from his clothes or his hair.

Remembering his own nearly sweat-soaked T-shirt, Ling Ke instinctively leaned away a little, afraid of making the other boy uncomfortable.

Instead, the boy moved a little closer and introduced himself. "My name's Qi Feng."

"My name's Ling Ke," he answered quietly.

A brilliant smile spread across Qi Feng's face. Craning his neck forward, he asked, "How old are you?"

His beautiful, catlike eyes swept around the waiting room before returning to Ling Ke. "You look like the only person here my age. Have you graduated from elementary school yet?"

Ling Ke was somewhat shy around other people. He hadn't expected this boy to be so instantly familiar, acting like an old friend from the very first meeting. It was impossible to resist!

"I... yes. I just graduated this year," Ling Ke said.

"Wow, me too!" Qi Feng said happily. "What elementary school did you go to? Where are you going for middle school? How many years have you been learning piano?"

The questions came rolling out one after another, leaving Ling Ke unsure which to answer first.

Gathering his thoughts, he named his elementary school and its designated middle school, then added, "I started learning piano in second grade. It's been five years."

Second grade wasn't an early start for piano. Plenty of children began basic training in kindergarten and could pass Grade Ten before finishing elementary school.

Qi Feng volunteered the name of his school, too. Ling Ke had never heard of it and asked, "What kind of place is that? Is it any good?"

Qi Feng scratched his head. "It's private, so not that many people go there. I don't really know if it's good. I've never gone anywhere else, but my mom says it's the best school we can go to in our city. She doesn't want to send me abroad this early, either."

Ling Ke was taken aback. At his age, "going abroad" still seemed impossibly far out of reach. He suddenly felt the gap between himself and Qi Feng.

Qi Feng went on, animatedly recounting funny stories from school: the foreign teacher who loved to brag, the wide range of extracurricular activities, the occasional outdoor lessons...

Ling Ke couldn't help feeling envious. That school sounded much more interesting than his elementary school.

After they had talked for a while, Qi Feng's attention was caught by his exam music, and he reached over and took it. "Wow, it's all worn out! You must play really well!"

"I'm just average," Ling Ke said awkwardly.

Qi Feng raised one eyebrow. "Oh, come on. Don't be so modest."

Ling Ke really wasn't being modest. He genuinely was average. His piano teacher was always saying his talent was unremarkable, but the teacher also knew why he was learning and didn't demand much of him.

"Which pieces did you pick?" Qi Feng asked, flipping straight through his exam book. The most worn pages had to be the pieces he practiced most, and Qi Feng soon worked out the answer himself. "Oh, the Schubert piece is the only one we have in common."

While Qi Feng looked through his music, Ling Ke was watching his hands.

Pianists always instinctively looked at other pianists' hands, especially someone like Ling Ke, whose pinkies were a little short. That natural disadvantage made him particularly conscious of the differences between himself and others.

Qi Feng's hands were beautiful. Though he was only in his early teens, they were already slender and finely formed. If Ling Ke's piano teacher had seen them, they would surely have exclaimed, as though discovering a treasure, "Born pianist's hands."

"Hey, do you want to apply to a music conservatory someday?" Qi Feng asked casually.

His thoughts interrupted, Ling Ke answered almost without hesitation, "No."

Apply to a music conservatory? He'd rather die!

Ling Ke hadn't had a relaxing summer vacation since second grade. Every July and August, he stayed home repeating those monotonous exam pieces over and over. Five years of tedious practice had drained away every last bit of his enthusiasm for piano. Now he just wanted to finish the exams as soon as possible, get the job done, and never touch a piano again for the rest of his life!

Qi Feng looked a little surprised. "Then why are you learning piano?" Before Ling Ke could speak, he answered his own question as though he'd figured it out. "I know. You're just learning for fun, right... Then you don't need to take the exams. The exam pieces are so boring."

"No," Ling Ke admitted helplessly. "It's for bonus points on the high school entrance exam."

Qi Feng looked even more puzzled. "Bonus points?"

Ling Ke gave a brief explanation, and Qi Feng said, "Huh? What's the fun in that?"

"Yeah, it's not much fun..." Ling Ke wasn't trying to show off, nor did he make any particular effort to hide his dislike of playing the piano. But somehow, looking at the carefully dressed Qi Feng, he felt ashamed for the first time of giving that reason for learning.

Dressed so formally, he was probably very different from Ling Ke...

Ling Ke glanced at Qi Feng, and the question hovering in his mind slipped out. "Aren't you hot dressed like that?"

Qi Feng looked down and tugged at his bow tie with a rueful smile. "I didn't want to wear this either, but my teacher says I should treat every time I play in front of people as a formal performance, so I have to take it seriously... Ah, nothing I can do about the heat."

Strangely enough, though Qi Feng complained about the heat, his face was perfectly fresh, without a trace of sweat.

"Candidate number seven, Li Xu," came a staff member's mechanical call from the doorway. "Next, candidate number eight, Ling Ke. Get ready."

Ling Ke immediately grew nervous. "It's almost my turn." With that, he was in no mood to keep chatting with Qi Feng.

Propping his chin on one hand, Qi Feng watched him and said casually, "You're about to go in anyway, so don't overthink it. Relax. The examiners aren't going to eat you."

None of it got through to Ling Ke. After sitting a while, he felt an urgent need to pee, so he asked Qi Feng to watch his things and hurried off to the restroom.

Ten-odd minutes passed in a flash. When Ling Ke returned, Qi Feng handed him his sheet music with a grin. "Good luck."

Ling Ke said, "Yeah, thanks."

Sure enough, he made two mistakes in Cramer's Etude No. 21, but the other two pieces went fairly smoothly, especially Schubert's Impromptu, the piece he had down best.

He should... pass, right?

Ling Ke let out a breath and left the exam room, debating whether to go sit with Qi Feng for a while longer. There weren't many candidates after him, and he didn't know what number Qi Feng was.

But as he headed toward the waiting room, a staff member stopped him and asked quietly, "You've already finished your exam, haven't you?"

Ling Ke pointed toward the waiting room and stammered, "I'm... waiting for someone."

The staff member said mercilessly, "Then wait outside."

Ling Ke could only resign himself to leaving the exam site with his sheet music in his arms.

The sun outside was merciless. He sheltered in the shade for half an hour, but Qi Feng still didn't come out.

Ling Ke's eyes drifted to the black sedan parked across the street, its paint gleaming in the sunlight.

In a daze, he recalled what had happened two hours earlier. He had just arrived at the conservatory, where exam candidates streamed in and out of the entrance. Clutching his nearly crumpled-to-pieces sheet music, he had crowded around a sign to find his exam room when a black sedan suddenly pulled up.

There had been a lot of people. Ling Ke had only glanced that way, seen a boy in concert attire, and thought nothing of it.

Only now, after meeting Qi Feng in the waiting room, having Qi Feng strike up a conversation with him, and seeing that sedan again, did Ling Ke connect the dots.

The person who had stepped out of that car seemed to have been Qi Feng.

After all, there wasn't a second person in the crowd who had come to the exam in concert attire in this heat.

"Wow, a Bentley!" An exclamation nearby suddenly interrupted Ling Ke's thoughts.

Several parents were walking past together with their children after the exam. One adult pointed at the sedan across the street and marveled, "That car brought someone here for the exam, didn't it?"

Another parent agreed. "Yes, I just saw them. Ah, even rich families put so much emphasis on their children's education. All the more reason we can't let our kids fall behind at the starting line."

The child tilted their head up and asked innocently, "Mom, don't we have money?"

The parent said, "Even if we didn't, we'd sell everything we owned to pay for your lessons. Doing well in your studies is how you repay us, understand?"

The child murmured assent, lowering their head slightly and casting an envious glance at the sedan.

The blistering heat soon wore out Ling Ke's patience, leaving him inexplicably dejected.

Oh, what would it matter even if he waited until Qi Feng came out? At most, they would ask each other how the exam had gone. Qi Feng was from a rich family. Once they parted today, they might never see each other again.

At that thought, Ling Ke shook his head, turned, and left.

Over dinner, Ling Ke told his parents how his piano grading exam had gone, then asked curiously, "Dad, Mom, what's a Bentley?"

Ling Ke's mother placed a piece of meat in his bowl with her chopsticks. "It's a luxury car brand... Where did you hear about it?"

Ling Ke shoveled a mouthful of rice into his mouth. "At the exam today, a boy about my age came in a Bentley."

Ling Ke's father adjusted his glasses and said calmly, "Oh, then his family must be very wealthy. A Bentley isn't something ordinary people can afford."

"Oh," Ling Ke said, then added, "He goes to Deyin International. Have you heard of that school?"

Ling Ke's mother and Ling Ke's father exchanged a glance. Deyin International was a well-known local private school that regularly made the newspapers and television because its students were admitted to prestigious universities overseas. Naturally, they had heard of it.

Ling Ke's mother looked at him and spoke first. "I hear tuition there is over a hundred thousand yuan a year. That's more than half a year's income for our family. Even if you wanted to go, it would be too much of a financial burden."

Ling Ke: "..." He hadn't said he wanted to go.

Then Ling Ke's father said, "Ke, resources in this society aren't distributed equally to begin with. Some people are born into better circumstances, others into worse ones. We may have less than some, but we have more than plenty of others. You get excellent grades, and your mother and I have given you piano lessons. You're already better off than a lot of people, so there's no need to feel inferior..."

The more Ling Ke listened, the more bewildered he became. What did any of this have to do with anything? Who felt inferior?

But Ling Ke's father kept going, droning on and on like Tripitaka chanting sutras.

Eventually, Ling Ke couldn't stand listening anymore. He hurriedly finished his meal, set down his bowl and chopsticks, and said, "I'm going to my room."

After shutting his bedroom door, Ling Ke lay back on his bed and slowly calmed down. Once again, Qi Feng's image rose before his eyes.

He remembered the smiling face leaning close to his, the raised eyebrow and mischievous grin when Qi Feng said, "Oh, quit being modest," the long, naturally curled lashes lowered as he leafed through the sheet music, and those beautiful hands.

He also remembered the faint fragrance on him and that air of proud refinement that was so hard to put into words. It inexplicably made him feel a notch beneath Qi Feng—yet he longed for it all the same.

Because in all his life, he had never met anyone like Qi Feng, anyone so, so...

His vocabulary had no fancier adjectives to offer, so he would stick with "cool."

Compared with him, Ling Ke and his friends were just a pile of coal briquettes.

Now he knew where that gulf came from.

From the attitudes of the passersby outside the conservatory, from the tone of Ling Ke's father's muttering.

He was only thirteen. He shouldn't have had to ponder anything as profound as social class yet, but the adults had given him a harshly practical lesson, forcing him to accept that he and Qi Feng were fundamentally people from two different worlds.

Ling Ke blinked, feeling miserable and a little defiant.

Just because his family didn't own a car and couldn't afford private school, he and Qi Feng couldn't be friends?

Who said so?

With the cold air-conditioning blowing over him, Ling Ke felt as though a heavy boulder were weighing on his heart.

Ling Ke's mom came in with a small plate of fruit. Seeing her son sprawled on the bed, she assumed he was still sulking.

She sighed softly, set the fruit plate on his desk, and said gently, "Ke, don't overthink things. Now that your piano exam is over, take a couple of days off. When you have time, look through your new textbooks and try to keep your grades up once you start middle school. Believe in yourself. Someday, you'll be every bit as good as the children from families like that."

Ling Ke didn't quite understand. Something about his mother's words seemed wrong, but they also sounded as though they made some sense.

He murmured an acknowledgment and sat up on the bed. Glancing at the sheet music he hadn't put away yet, he got up and tucked it beneath the piano bench.

To be honest, he had been regretting not waiting a little longer for Qi Feng that evening, not saying goodbye.

But now it seemed there was nothing to regret at all. Leaving first had been the right thing to do.

He didn't realize that, little by little, his desire to make a friend had been forcibly twisted into a desire to compete.

A few months later, Ling Ke received his Grade Eight certificate, and he never took out that exam music book to play from again.

It wasn't until a year later, after successfully completing his Grade Ten amateur piano exam, that he unearthed the crumpled Grade Eight exam book while sorting through his sheet music.

Idly leafing through it, he happened upon the last page of Schubert's Impromptu. To his surprise, Ling Ke discovered a faint line of pencil written there at some point—

"My QQ number: 6868XXX. Add me when you get home! —Qi Feng"

[A Little Interlude]

Qi Feng: "I waited a whole year, and he still didn't add me on QQ. I'm so mad!"