By the time Luo Yang started wiping his glasses for the third time, Qiu Shubai finally couldn't take it anymore.
“What exactly are you looking at?”
“Nothing, nothing much.” He slid the glasses back onto the bridge of his nose, his movements a beat slower than usual. “The lenses were just dirty.”
“You’ve been wiping them for nearly two minutes.”
“That just proves my glasses were indeed very dirty.”
Qiu Shubai turned sideways, the sleeve of her hospital pajamas brushing against the edge of the concrete guardrail. A few strands of her grayish-white hair were lifted by the airflow from the exhaust fan before falling back onto her shoulders.
“You didn't ask that question just because you suddenly took an interest in my avatar, did you?” she said. “Though you’re the type of person who always acts on a whim and is capable of anything.”
Luo Yang’s hand paused in the middle of adjusting his glasses, but he remained silent.
Qiu Shubai waited for a few seconds. The only sounds on the rooftop were the roar of the exhaust fan and the occasional noise of a car passing on the distant viaduct.
She suddenly realized that his silence was lasting a few beats longer than usual.
Something wasn't right.
“Luo Yang.” She called his name in a very formal tone, her voice tinged with a hint of inquiry. “What exactly are you trying to say?”
“I’m saying—” Luo Yang drew out his words, twirling the wire between his fingers. “Have you ever considered that the artist might be a very, very handsome man?”
Qiu Shubai paused for a moment.
“Whether he’s handsome or not has nothing to do with me.”
“What if?”
“There is no ‘what if.’”
“How do you know there isn't?”
“Because, to me, that person is now just a blurry impression.”
Qiu Shubai tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. Her movements were slow, and as her knuckles brushed against her ear, her sleeve slid down slightly, revealing the stitches on her wrist that hadn't been removed yet.
“I don’t know what he looks like, and I don’t know how he’s doing now. In my memory, he’s really just a few lines of text that occasionally popped up in a chat box.”
She paused.
“At most, he was just a place to vent.”
“A place to vent.” Luo Yang rolled the words around in his mouth, his cheek puffing out for a second before flattening again.
“Are you always that generous with your listeners? Pouring everything out to them?”
Qiu Shubai’s fingers froze on her knee.
That sense of wrongness surged again, stronger than before.
She turned her head, her gaze sweeping over Luo Yang’s face—from the plain glass lenses to the scratch with the dried blood scab on his jaw, and then to his hand gripping his glasses.
“You’re being very strange today,” she said.
“I’m always strange.”
“Stranger than usual.” Qiu Shubai’s voice deepened, losing the faint softness it had held while she was reminiscing. “You’ve never asked about things like this before, things that seem completely unrelated to you.”
The wind blew between them, flipping a corner of the collar on Luo Yang’s hospital pajamas.
He fell silent again, longer than any time before.
“Talk to me,” she urged.
“...Tsk.”
Luo Yang tossed the wire by his feet, took off his glasses, and pinched the bridge of his nose twice with his thumb and forefinger.
After finishing the motion, he rested his hand back on his knee and turned to look at her, his expression subtle.
“If I said,” he began, speaking slowly, “that I know that artist, would you believe me?”
Qiu Shubai was stunned.
She froze for a brief instant, like a hand pausing in mid-air while turning a page, before finally letting the page flip over.
“You... know him?” she repeated each word slowly. The inquiry in her eyes diminished, replaced by a layer of something unidentifiable. “How do you know him?”
“Well...” Luo Yang gestured vaguely in the air, unsure himself where he was pointing. “We met by chance.”
“Did you commission him for a piece too?”
“Something like that.”
“When was this?”
“A long time ago.”
Qiu Shubai fell silent. The siren of an ambulance below grew louder as it approached, then faded as it turned a street corner and vanished completely.
She lowered her head, her fingers unconsciously rubbing the loose thread on her pajama leg again.
The movement was identical to the one she had made earlier, but the frequency was much faster.
All those complaints, rants, and grievances she had poured out to a person she had never met when she was a teenager—even a few things that were embarrassing to even mention.
The tearful venting she had typed out word by word on that phone with the pink case while sitting alone on the back porch steps after an argument with her mother.
The long string of discouraged words and the three or four crying emojis she had sent while curled up under her blankets after failing an exam.
She had even mentioned one specific thing to him.
That day, her father had rarely come home for dinner, but she hadn't gone downstairs because she was sulking.
Only later did she find out that it was the last time her father would ever come home.
She had written it all in the chat box, hesitating several times before finally hitting send, and then burying her face in her pillow.
She had forgotten what the other person replied; she only remembered that it was probably the quietest page in all their chat logs.
And now, all of it was piled up in the corner of her memory that she was most reluctant to revisit. Every fragment held warmth, and every complaint was ridiculously clear.
These memories were supposed to be buried, but now they were all being unearthed, piling up messily in that invisible corner and pushing aside all the calm, rational thoughts in her head.
Qiu Shubai felt her toes curl inside her slippers.
“So... that’s how it is.” When she spoke, her voice was half a pitch higher than usual, the end of the sentence tight—a forced attempt at maintaining composure that didn't quite hold up. “That really is... quite a coincidence.”
Luo Yang glanced at her.
“Yeah, quite a coincidence.”
“If there’s a chance in the future,” Qiu Shubai’s speaking speed suddenly accelerated to a rate that was absolutely impossible for her under normal circumstances, “please introduce me.”
“Huh?”
“Since it’s someone you know, there’s no harm in meeting.” Her gaze remained fixed on the signal light of the building opposite, the red dot flashing at a rhythm that didn't match her breathing at all. “After all, we talked a lot in the past. Saying thank you in person would count as...”
She didn't finish.
Because she noticed Luo Yang was looking at her with a very peculiar expression.
There were several unidentifiable things in that look—it was as if he wanted to laugh but didn't dare to, and the words he wanted to say were queuing up in his throat, but he didn't know which one to let out first.
“Why... are you looking at me like that?” Qiu Shubai asked.
Luo Yang raised his hand, pointing his index finger at the bridge of his own nose, stopping right in the center of his plain glass lenses.
“Because that person is right here in front of you.”
Qiu Shubai stared at him for a moment.
She stood up abruptly. The movement was so decisive that even the concrete guardrail seemed to vibrate slightly.
Her slippers stepped onto the concrete floor; her heels didn't land firmly, and the edge scraped off a thin piece of plaster.
She looked down at Luo Yang, and Luo Yang looked up at her.
One man and one woman, one sitting and one standing. The only sound on the rooftop was the roar of the exhaust fan. A searchlight from the distant hospital swept upward, tracing a bright arc across Luo Yang’s glasses before moving away and vanishing into the darkness on the other side of the building.
“It’s you,” Qiu Shubai said.
“...It’s me.”
“You’re that artist.”
“I’m that artist.”
“Since I was ten years old,” Qiu Shubai’s voice was extremely low, so low that the external noise almost swallowed her last words, “the person who kept listening to me complain about my family, complain about exams, rant, and say stupid things—”
She paused.
“Was you.”
Luo Yang looked up at her, unable to see the specific emotions in her eyes.
The searchlight had long since moved on. The only light on the rooftop now was the faint orange glow reflected from the neon lights onto the bottom of the clouds, and the cold white outline of her jaw traced by the streetlights.
He gave a single nod.
Qiu Shubai didn't speak again. She just stood there, her left hand clutching the hem of her hospital pajamas. The wind had tousled her hair, but she didn't reach out to smooth it; the grayish-white strands lay across her face.
She didn't speak, and she didn't move. Luo Yang didn't speak either, because he really didn't know what to say right now.
Time on the rooftop seemed to be churned into a thick paste by the blades of the exhaust fan, flowing forward sluggishly. At one moment, it was the sound of an ambulance siren; at another, it was the voice of a duty nurse leaning out of a window below to make a phone call; at another, it was the dull thud of tires crossing an expansion joint on the distant viaduct.
When Qiu Shubai spoke again, her voice had stabilized. It was as steady as when she was giving a report to a clerk in the Mission Hall, only her speaking speed was slightly faster.
“You said before that we are friends.”
“...Yes.”
“Between friends,” she said, “isn't this the kind of thing that should have been said sooner?”
Luo Yang took off his glasses and looked down at a dusty smudge that had appeared on the lens at some point. His movements were slow, as if he were studying the swirl of that fingerprint.
“Probably because,” he finally looked up, his lips curled in something he couldn't quite identify as a bitter smile or self-deprecation, “I really wasn't sure what you’d think now. I was afraid you’d forgotten, and I was afraid of making a fool of myself.”
“I’m quite afraid of awkwardness, you know.”
Qiu Shubai’s fingers released the hem of her pajamas, leaving behind a patch of fine wrinkles in the fabric.
The rooftop remained quiet for a long while. Then she reached out her hand—not to pat his shoulder, nor to shake hands. She simply held her hand a few inches in front of him, palm up, as if waiting for something.
“Give them back,” she said.
Luo Yang was stunned.
“Give what back?”
“Those chat logs.” The corner of Qiu Shubai’s mouth twitched. The curve was so small it could hardly be called a smile, but it was definitely no longer her trademark indifference.
“You saved them, didn't you? All those stupid things, all those rants. Give them all back to me.”
Luo Yang looked at her palm held out before him. Her fingers were slender, and her fingertips were trembling slightly in the night wind, though he couldn't tell if it was from the cold or something else.
He put his hand into his pajama pocket, his fingertips touching the piece of wire he had thrown in earlier.
“I deleted them long ago,” he said.
“...Liar.”
“I really did. I forgot to migrate the data when I switched phones, and it’s all gone. You couldn't find them even if you wanted to.”
“Then what about that old account?”
“I forgot the password.”
“Why didn't you recover it?”
“I don’t know what phone number was linked to it back then, so I can't get it back.”
In truth, with Luo Yang’s memory, that string of characters for the password was still perfectly clear in his mind.
It was just that drawing was a thing of the past for him now, something he even considered a part of his 'dark history.' Thus, he had completely sealed that account, effectively deleting his persona and retiring from the scene, no longer accepting any commissions.
Qiu Shubai withdrew her hand. The motion was slow; her hand paused in mid-air before dropping back to her side. She sat back down on the edge of the concrete guardrail beside him, the distance between them the same as before, save for the small difference in their heights.
“I thought that after all these years, hearing about this again would feel especially embarrassing,” she said.
“And?”
“Actually... it’s okay.” Qiu Shubai tucked the strand of hair by her face behind her ear, her movements much more brisk than before. “At least you never used those things to make fun of me.”
“Do I look like the type of person who would make fun of a young girl?”
“You’re laughing right now.”
“I am not.”
“The corners of your mouth are already turning up.”
Luo Yang raised his hand to press down the corners of his mouth.
He managed to press them down, but he couldn't suppress the crinkle at the corners of his eyes no matter what.
Qiu Shubai turned her head to look at him, watching that smiling face that couldn't be flattened no matter how hard he tried. The sounding board she had hidden in her heart for so many years was now actually sitting right in front of her.
She would bicker with him, share secrets hidden in her heart with him, and had even placed her life in his hands during battle.
This person didn't seem to have changed much. Once those blurry things from the 'tree hole' were attached to a specific person, they became something tangible.
After an unknown amount of time, she stood up again and took two steps toward the fire door, her slippers making a pitter-patter sound on the concrete. After a few steps, she turned her head, her grayish-white hair sweeping over her shoulder.
A very thin azure light emerged on the distant horizon, burning the bottom of the clouds into a cool shade of purple. The exhaust fan was still spinning, its shadow having rotated across the rooftop floor all night. Now, illuminated by that azure light, its outline grew faint and the edges blurred, as if rubbed over by an eraser.
Dawn was coming.
“Luo Yang.”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
The fire door was pushed by the wind, the hinges making a dull creak. The cold light of the hallway's fluorescent lamps leaked through the crack, stretching her shadow long—from the doorframe all the way to the dark expansion joint on the rooftop floor.
She had already stepped inside, her grayish-white hair being the last thing swallowed by that light.
The door closed.
The rooftop was left with only the roar of the exhaust fan and the short, sharp calls of an early-rising bird in a tree below.
END
Rate on N.U.
