After so many days of training, this was the first time Yue Zhishi heard Song Yu's voice, and he was very happy. They had agreed to talk for only a minute, but when they hung up, the call duration showed twelve minutes and three seconds.

Ever since he was young, Yue Zhishi would feel immense anxiety whenever he was separated from Song Yu. He cried a lot because of this as a child. In kindergarten, he knew Song Yu was at a different school, so crying was useless. But things were different once he started elementary school. Yue Zhishi knew Song Yu was on the fourth-grade floor, but he couldn't just go find him. School-aged children aren't very good at following rules, and Yue Zhishi was a late bloomer, so he often cried in class because he missed his brother.

Because Song Yu had told him not to cry loudly outside, the newly-enrolled elementary schooler Yue Zhishi would often learn in class while silently shedding big, fat tears. To this day, his first-grade textbooks are still wrinkled.

The teachers would be giving a lesson, and upon looking up, they would occasionally see Yue Zhishi crying. He didn't dare make a sound when he cried and, just like the other students, kept his arms obediently crossed on his desk, but his face would be covered in tears. One time, his homeroom teacher found him so pitiful that she allowed him to go sit in on a class. He moved a small stool upstairs to the classroom of Class 8, Year 4, and sat in the aisle next to Song Yu's seat.

He stopped crying and was very well-behaved for the whole class. When the English teacher taught the fourth-graders to pronounce words, Yue Zhishi, with his hands behind his back, obediently repeated after them.

However, Song Yu lectured him when he got home that evening.

"You're not allowed to come over again. What is there to cry about? You're an elementary school student now."

Yue Zhishi felt very wronged. "It's because I miss you so much that I cry."

Song Yu was at a loss when he heard that. He was only in the fourth grade himself and couldn't come up with any profound principles. Besides, he believed Yue Zhishi couldn't listen to normal reasoning anyway; he was just a stubborn kid.

"Well... well, if you miss me, then focus on your studies. I'm studying hard too."

"And then...?" Yue Zhishi was puzzled.

"Then I'll know you're thinking of me, because we're doing the same thing, understand?" Song Yu left his room, awkwardly leaving behind a final sentence. "If you run over, you'll disrupt me. Then I won't be able to receive your signal."

This spiel fooled Yue Zhishi for at least a year and a half, successfully helping him develop the habit of attending class independently.

He was like this at three, and still like this at seven. So for Yue Zhishi, expressing his longing was not an embarrassing thing; he had done it enough since he was little.

Before hanging up the phone with Song Yu, he repeated it again: he missed him a lot.

Song Yu didn't respond. He just paused for a few seconds before saying he would bring Yue Zhishi some specialty pastries from Beijing.

But he quickly changed his tune, saying Yue Zhishi might be allergic to all of them and wouldn't be able to eat them, so he'd better forget it.

He rarely forgot about Yue Zhishi's allergies. This kind of mistake seemed particularly elementary and flustered, but Yue Zhishi didn't mind, happily planning to pick Song Yu up and go home on the day the training ended.

For the next two or three days, they talked on the phone every night, usually for no more than fifteen minutes. Xia Zhixu would joke with Song Yu about it at first, but he got used to it later. Besides, he was the one who would squat in the hallway and talk on the phone until the wee hours. One day, he came in particularly early. Song Yu teased him, asking why he had nothing to say today, but Xia Zhixu just shrugged and said that Xu Qichen had fallen asleep in the middle of their call.

Glancing at the phone on the bedside table, Song Yu saw that the call hadn't ended. Xia Zhixu tiptoed all the way, and after coming back from his shower, he picked up the phone again and listened for a good while, not saying a word, just listening.

Song Yu woke up once in the middle of the night, sensing a faint light in the room, and got up to look.

Xia Zhixu was sound asleep, but his phone was surprisingly still on the call screen.

Song Yu had planned to tease him about this when they were on the phone that night, but when Xia Zhixu came back that day, his phone had been stolen. He hurriedly borrowed Song Yu's phone to call his parents and then tried to contact Xu Qichen.

But Xu Qichen didn't answer the phone.

"He doesn't have my number saved," Song Yu said. "He probably doesn't answer calls from strangers."

Xia Zhixu then logged into WeChat and sent Xu Qichen many messages, but he didn't get a reply right away. It wasn't until the next day that Xu Qichen replied with a simple, "I know."

Without a phone, contacting each other became troublesome. Although Song Yu offered to let him use his phone, Xia Zhixu didn't want to trouble him. He would occasionally log into WeChat, but he rarely received messages from Xu Qichen.

"We'll be back in a few days anyway. If it's really a problem, I'll sneak out and buy one tomorrow."

His plan couldn't be realized. The training camp entered its most high-pressure stage, and he had no way to get out, nor did he have time to use a phone. There were several mock competitions in the camp, and everyone performed well. The teacher specially took the students out for a good meal and, for the first time ever, let the sleep-deprived students return to the dormitory early to rest.

Xia Zhixu bought two bottles of orange-flavored Arctic Ocean Soda downstairs from the dormitory. Coincidentally, just as the two were about to go up, the power in the dormitory building suddenly went out. It was stuffy inside, so everyone ran out. Song Yu and Xia Zhixu decided to stay outside as well, sitting by the flower bed downstairs.

It was hard to see the stars in this city. Xia Zhixu looked up for a while, then lowered his head. "Time flies. Three days left."

Song Yu didn't speak. He took a sip of the soda and found it a bit too sweet.

"The college entrance exams are soon." Xia Zhixu bumped his shoulder. "Nervous?"

Song Yu shook his head. "It's alright."

"True." Xia Zhixu stretched his legs out, very relaxed. "I feel like you're never nervous about anything. You always handle things with ease."

Song Yu glanced at him. "Aren't you?"

Xia Zhixu shook his head. "I'm faking it, most of the time." After speaking, he bent his right leg and wrapped his arms around it. "Isn't it weird? I seem to be very positive about everything, but actually, I'm escaping reality every day. Sometimes when I'm standing in a crowd, laughing and chatting with people, what I'm thinking is, 'So tired, so boring, I want to go home.' But I still keep up the act because it avoids a lot of trouble."

Even if Xia Zhixu hadn't said it, Song Yu had felt this way too.

He thought of something and hesitated about whether to speak, watching the bubbles in the glass bottle pop one after another.

"You're so afraid of trouble. What do you plan to do... in the future?"

Xia Zhixu turned his head and asked, puzzled, "The future?"

Song Yu stared into his eyes. "Don't pretend at a time like this."

"I've already figured it out," he added.

Xia Zhixu understood.

He buried his head in his knees and sighed a long sigh. After a long silence, he placed the glass bottle in his hand by the flower bed. "I just want to get by." He stared at the ground. "Don't you have times like that? When you're doing something you're not particularly confident about, you just want to maintain the status quo."

These words were clearly spoken by Xia Zhixu, yet Song Yu felt as if they had been cut out from his own heart.

Not getting an answer from Song Yu, Xia Zhixu raised his head, sniffled, and as if thinking of something else, asked with a smile, "Hey, did you ever go to Zhongshan Park when you were a kid?"

"Of course," Song Yu said.

"Have you fed the pigeons?"

Song Yu stared at him, speechless.

Xia Zhixu started to laugh, revealing his canines. "You have, right? I loved feeding pigeons when I was little. I'd buy a small bag of grain, pour a little into my palm, and squat there, and they would come over on their own. You could say they're scared of people, but they're quite docile when they come close, eating very happily. But if you say they're not scared... the moment I reached out to touch one, it would flap its wings and fly away. And once it flew away, it would never come back."

"That's the kind of mood I'm in right now, you know?" Xia Zhixu asked with a smile.

Song Yu's hand, chilled by the soda bottle, felt a little cold.

Of course he understood this feeling, but it was a little different compared to Xia Zhixu's situation. His pigeon might follow him around forever, impossible to shoo away. But to prevent danger from occurring, he had no choice but to pull his hand back, and even shoo him away.

After a moment of silence, Song Yu spoke, "So you're just going to maintain the status quo forever?"

"I don't know..." Xia Zhixu gazed at the lights in the distance. "Sometimes I imagine it. We go to the same university, take the same elective courses, he watches my basketball games, we join the same club, go to dinners together, maybe even rent a place together as roommates during an internship. I think that would be wonderful."

Song Yu chuckled lightly. "Your standards are really low."

Xia Zhixu shook his head self-deprecatingly. "Expectations correspond to probability. The world is so big. Meeting someone you really like, who happens to be the same sex, and who also likes you back, is definitely a low-probability event."

What he said wasn't without reason. Song Yu subconsciously calculated his own probability; it was probably even lower.

A coincidence like that would never happen again. Not even movies would dare to script it that way.

"It's already great to be friends and hang out every day." Xia Zhixu paused for a moment, then slapped his thigh in a seemingly magnanimous way. "As for whether he'll have a girlfriend or something in the future... as long as I don't imagine it, it won't exist."

This kind of self-deceiving spirit only made Xia Zhixu himself laugh; Song Yu couldn't.

The power in the dormitory came back on. The training camp teacher told them all to go upstairs. Xia Zhixu stood up and stretched lazily. "Let's go."

"Yeah."

He thought, perhaps it was because although he and Song Yu had a good relationship, they didn't see each other that often. Or perhaps it was because Song Yu was reserved enough that he could say these absurd things without feeling burdened.

He could just treat it as sharing secrets with an unresponsive tree hollow.

After all, a tree hollow wouldn't have secrets of its own.

Song Yu stood up too. He didn't have a penchant for comforting people, and he knew it was ineffective. But during his conversation with Xia Zhixu, he kept recalling the scene from the rainy day dinner, and Xu Qichen's reddened ears.

Their hands, which had briefly touched before separating again.

His mind went blank for a moment, as if an example problem, in the middle of being solved, was laid out before him, an answer soon to be found. He wasn't the one grading it, just a student looking on, not knowing if it was right or wrong, but wanting to use it as a reference.

In comparison, Xia Zhixu clearly had a chance of keeping that pigeon.

"Just try it once."

Xia Zhixu was stunned for a moment. He hadn't expected this tree hollow to actually give a response, and one like this.

Song Yu's tone was calm and certain. "After you go back this time, just try it once. The result might be much better than you imagine."

He didn't know how this problem would be graded.

But he really hoped the answer was correct.

The month of high-pressure training finally came to an end. The flight to leave the camp and return to school was scheduled for noon. Early in the morning, Xia Zhixu dragged Song Yu out of the training dormitory, saying he had something to buy, but he was actually picking out a gift.

They went to a very famous local bookstore, where Xia Zhixu picked up a book he had pre-ordered long ago. Song Yu stood to the side listening, and only then did he learn that this book was very hard to get. It was a limited-edition English original with the author's signature, only available for purchase because the author had once held a signing at this bookstore and they had a partnership.