A Certain Someone ( The On1y One ) Chapter 098 – Breaking the Silence

Ge, I Just Drank.

Calling a cab to Guangdong would truly be insane.
Jiang Tian switched to a different app subconsciously, and his fingers flew as he tapped on the screen. Until his fellow PhD tapped him, and said hushedly, his hand covering his mouth, “I thought there would be a chance to rest, get look around for a bit for a couple of days before we begin and stuff. Great, now that’s ruined.”
Jiang Tian then came back to himself. He looked through the arrangement for the next few days projected onto the screen, and looked at the flight information he was checking on his phone again. He pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking, I’m not too far off from insanity too.

He closed the app and switched the screen off. Just as he was about to keep his phone, he received Zhao Xi’s phone call.
“I need to receive a call,” he informed the professor, and left the discussion room.

“Xi-ge.”
“Oh, I was getting worried after you didn’t reply for so long,” Zhao Xi said languidly. He had been on a break for the past few days, and drove to the mountain to enjoy the hot springs. He was living quite a relaxed life, whatever he said to Sheng Wang was purely made up — he even received a few glares and finger pointing from Boss Zhao, who was listening at the side. “I thought you really are taking a cab there.”
“No way.”
“That’s great then, there’s at least some rationality left, you’re not at the point that you’ll recklessly go there without even finding out the hotel name yet,” Zhao Xi said.
“……”
Jiang Tian, who was this close to doing exactly that, strategically opted for a few seconds of silence.

Zhao Xi then continued, “Speaking of this, I’m a little puzzled.”
“What?”
“Why do you have to go all the way to me to get me to prod at him? Why don’t you ask him yourself,” Zhao Xi, as someone who had been through that, could relate oddly well enough; on the other hand, he wanted to just smush the two of them together already. “Just say give an address, I’ll go look for you. Does he have any other choice?”
Before Jiang Tian could even speak, Zhao Xi arrived at the conclusion all by himself. “Oh yeah, I forgot. You’re the secretly shameless type.”
Jiang Tian: “……”

“It’s not that.” He was silent for a moment, and his voice took on the tone of a headache, “He’ll run.”
Zhao Xi: “Huh?”
“Give him additional time and he’d overthink, and if he couldn’t come around to it, he’d run away.”

Jiang Tian could totally imagine that scenario — just like how someone wrapped himself up and mailed himself away to another class without saying a single word.
His cat inherited that point nearly perfectly; it was it who reached its paws out to claw at the edge of his pants, but it was also it who slipped away faster than an arrow after teasing like that.
Back then, Jiang Tian could compile a notebook to capture him back; but what does he have now?

“What to do then? Catch him off guard and ambush him? Not give him the chance to overthink and run away?”
“When he’s back from the business trip, I’ll wait for him after work,” Jiang Tian said. He did not know other addresses, but he did know the location of the company at the very least.
Zhao Xi imagined it, and found it a little amusing. He teased, “Why do I feel like you’re trying to catch a sparrow.”
Jiang Tian did not want to be the source of amusement for him, and said stiffly, “I’m hanging up.”
“Eh—” Zhao Xi stopped him.
“There’s still something else?” Jiang Tian stopped his climb up the stairs.

This time round, Zhao Xi stopped joking, He deliberated before asking, “About your mom……”
“She’s in a better state recently.” Otherwise, he wouldn’t have come back here on impulse. After he said that, his brows quickly furrowed for a split second, and added, “Maybe because she heard how Ji Huanyu’s health is failing him.”

“You would tell her this sort of thing?” Zhao Xi was the one who informed Jiang Tian of Ji Huanyu’s ailing health after hearing about it. He thought Jiang Tian wouldn’t bring it up even after he knew, seeing that this name should be the biggest landmine for Jiang Ou.
“I didn’t tell her, she found out from other people,” Jiang Tian said.

This surprised him for quite a while, because Jiang Ou’s reaction upon hearing Ji Huanyu’s name was much milder than he expected; she was only a little down for those few days, and by the time he flew back here, she was back to her normal state. In comparison, she had a more visceral reaction towards “Sheng Wang”.

Zhao Xi’s voice snapped him out of it. “Your mom hasn’t completely recovered, you sure you want to woo him back?”
It wasn’t that he was trying to discourage Jiang Tian, it was just that he had seen too many repeated reunions and separations; he was scared that the two little brothers would end things on a messy note again.
Jiang Tian was quiet for a fair while. “I’ve said it a long time ago — I don’t owe anyone anything.”
His decision had never been made in lieu of how Jiang Ou would react, but rather, it was Sheng Wang. Before them, there had always been only two paths: separate, or continue together. They’ve tried one of them, and were ruined beyond belief……
This was already the worst it could get.

Jiang Tian recalled the way Sheng Wang was taciturn and reserved that night. Silence, and then he said, “Either way, it can’t be worse than right now.”
Zhao Xi was at a loss of words. He laughed, both conflicted and rueful, “Sure, then Lin-zi and I will be waiting for the meal invitation from the two of you.”

He had watched them for many years as a bystander. He did want to help them very much, and sometimes, he desperately wanted to tell Jiang Tian and Sheng Wang of the things he experienced, the issues he was conflicted about, so that the two of them wouldn’t suffer. Ultimately, they weren’t Lin Beiting and him, and different people have different paths to walk on.
So he might as well give some practical advice.

Before Zhao Xi hung up, he asked jokingly, “Do you want Ge to tell you how to woo someone back after you broke up?”
Jiang Tian: “Go on.”
Zhao Xi did not expect for this secretly shameless guy to seriously intend on listening, and his mind jammed on the spot. Serenely, he spoke, “Based on past experience, a fire would easily spark after you see each other a few more times. If you can’t extinguish it, then argue. If you can’t get anything out of arguing, then fight. And as you fight……hold on, you’re an adult already, right?”
“……”
Jiang Tian removed his earpiece, and hung up immediately.

*
Sheng Wang may be hiding in Guangdong, but his days were not peaceful.

First, it was Gao Tianyang — that idiot — who made a ghostly phone call at five in the morning, yelling at the top of his voice as he was removed from the shelter of his quilt. “TIAN-GE’S BACK, DO YOU KNOW?!”
Ever since Sheng Wang started working, he couldn’t be exposed to his phone’s vibration — he would be instantly awake upon hearing that, and all and any other drowsiness would vanish. As he held his phone, he sat on his bed vacantly for a while, his brain enacting 108 torture methods on Gao Tianyang. He went out of his bed, drank a half glassful of water before saying, “I know.”

Gao Tianyang’s voice abruptly softened. “Oh, you knew? How did you know? Tian-ge contacted you after coming back here?”
“What are you even thinking,” Sheng Wang said, “we met at a dinner.”
Gao Tianyang was speechless for a good while. “Fuck, that’s possible too?”

Actually, when Jiang Tian had just left, Gao Tianyang was very displeased for a while, he was even a little angry. He wanted to say, we’re friends for so many years, how could you just end things without a second thought? Later, he put himself in his shoes and was no longer angry. He only felt bitter.
It was also that period of time when he suddenly came to his senses, and rejected the independent recruitment in order to go to Beijing. With that, Jiang Tian and Sheng Wang could be considered half a matchmaker for him……just that the matchmaker himself was still single.

Gao Tianyang cleared his throat, and cautiously asked, “And um about that, Chili got me to ask the two of you: do you plan to get back together?”
Sheng Wang: “…..”
You are so good at picking the conversation topic.

“Why are you asking this?” he asked, exasperated.
Gao Tianyang explained, “So this is what’s happening: Old Song will be on a business trip to Beijing on the 3rd, 4th and 5th. We plan to ask Carp and the rest if they have time, and come together for a gathering and stuff. You and Tian-ge, the two of you….y’know?”

Sheng Wang was currently in a chickened out state. He imagined that scenario — everyone there was an old classmate, they knew everything. What if he and Jiang Tian weren’t on the same channel, and act awkwardly around each other……it was no different from being paraded on the streets, naked. The thought of it alone was enough to stop him from breathing.

Therefore, he hesitated a bit, saying, “How unfortunate, I’m on a business trip in Guangdong. You should call them anyways, it’s been a while since everyone met. Don’t need to include me for the headcount.”
Gao Tianyang was a little disappointed, and hung up after an “okay”.

He may have managed to send Gao Tianyang away, but there was still a Zhang Chao waiting behind.
This frontliner for gossip was possibly damaged from all the back to back meetings, and came to get a rise out of Sheng Wang out of boredom. He had stayed in the university for the past two days, and maybe it was coincidence or fate, but he ran into Jiang Tian quite a few times. Meeting alone wasn’t enough, he even took pictures.

Sheng Wang spent his day wrangling a client, and received an entire chain of messages from him after he returned to the hotel at night. His WeChat vibrated a few times, and all of them were large images.
Sheng Wang opened them up and stilled — he went straight to the couch by the window and sat down, flipping through them piece by piece. He did have Jiang Tian’s pictures in his phone, sealed away in a private album. It was either pictures secretly taken while he was asleep, or their shadows when they were shoulder to shoulder. Due to the obscurity of their relationship, there were rarely full frontal shots. The ones that Zhang Chao sent were uncommon in comparison.

He saved all of them, one by one, and stopped for a moment when he was saving the last one; there were a few girls looking at Jiang Tian in that one.
Dazedly, he flashbacked to the days in Fuzhong. There were also oftentimes when girls would smile and giggle as they pass by, constantly turning back to look at him. Whereas Jiang Tian had always been cold and aloof, and turned a deaf ear to all the attention he was receiving.

Zhang Chao said: Wow, you have good taste, just a few minutes and there were already two waves of girls who went to talk to him.
Zhang Chao: There’s even some who asked for his number, I saw them eagerly digging out their phone already
Zhang Chao: University girls these days are so vivacious and chatty, it’s pretty lively here
?: ……
?: aren’t you supposed to go for a meeting, and yet you’re doing this?
?: reported

Sheng Wang initially planned to ignore him, but seeing the things he said, he changed his mind for some reason. Maybe he was stabbed by the picture, or he was stabbed by the adjective “lively”.

After snarking Zhang Chao, he closed his WeChat. He showered, changed into fresh clothing, and replied to quite a few messages for work. And then he quietly sat on the sofa for a long time, and sent a message to Gao Tianyang for some mysterious reason.
He said: I’ll be back in Beijing on the 3rd, I can probably make it if you put the gathering on the 4th.
Gao Tianyang: ???

*
Yet, man proposes, God disposes. Sheng Wang’s business trip ended in advance.
The client he had to deal with was infamous for being troublesome. It was estimated that a week was needed to deal with him, but the client just so happened to have a happy occasion happen to him, and with Sheng Wang’s glib tongue, he had managed to settle all the business plans they had to discuss. After buying the fastest flight back to Beijing, he even succeeded to make it back at the very end of the year.

Regretfully, although he managed to make it for the new year, he didn’t manage to meet Zhao Xi and Lin Beiting. His team received the news and immediately snatched a booking at a restaurant, and made use of crossing over into the new year to hold a gathering slash celebratory dinner. He’s the main character, so there’s no running from this.

In this sort of scenario, the main character was the one who had to receive all the egging on, and Sheng Wang was completely reluctant to be that. He actually did learn a couple of techniques from Zhang Chao — he clearly was a “down in five glasses”, but he could manage to deal with most business dinners. But a company meal gathering was different; everyone knew the techniques he knew, so he couldn’t use them at all.

Therefore, tonight, he really did drink a little too much. To the point that when everyone dispersed, he couldn’t tell what day it was a little as he stared at the remnants of the beer in the glass, beneath the dizzying lights.

Perhaps the furnishing in this private room was a little similar to the “In Those Years” BBQ store, or maybe he was making use of the intoxication of the alcohol to submerge himself within old memories with reckless abandon.
He sat for a long, long time, constantly feeling like there ought to be someone who would be there to claim him back. Until someone tapped on his shoulder, asking, “Got a car for you. Can you walk?”

He looked up, and seeing that it’s Zhang Chao who was asking, his eyes sank again in disappointment.
“What’s happening? Are you still okay?” Zhang Chao asked him.
Even his questions seemed to be soaked in beer foam, indistinct and vague. Sheng Wang nodded heavily, and stopped moving again. After a very long time, he finally stood up with the aid of the back of the chair, and said a few lines of nonsense to Zhang Chao.

The drunkenness was too overwhelming, he forgot whatever he said the moment he turned around. Funnily, he was standing up pretty straight, and didn’t look like a drunkard at all. He notified Zhang Chao, and entered the booked car.

The city was a strange place sometimes; it may be apart from each other by hundreds and thousands of miles in the day, but they are all the same at night. Sheng Wang leaned against the car window, watching the illuminated city, and suddenly recalled the road from Fuzhong to White Horse Alley.
He liked to be like this back then too — reclining against the backseats behind Uncle Xiao-Chen, Jiang Tian’s phone would brighten and dim out of the corner of his eyes, and he would nap away amidst the city lights.

Sheng Wang had a fitful sleep due to the intoxication, it was to the point that he couldn’t tell if he slept in the first place. He only knew he opened his eyes reflexively the moment his phone vibrated.
The driver saw him sit up straight, and laughed with a grimace as he explained, “This traffic is truly terrible, it wasn’t this bad yesterday. Today is really quite the day for this.”

Sheng Wang halfheartedly nodded at him, and unlocked his phone with lowered eyes, and found himself added into yet another WeChat group chat.

The group chat was formed two-three minutes ago, Zhang Chao was the one behind it. The group name was changed into Cooperation Team for XXX Project. He made a bit of simple small talk, wishing them a happy new year in advance, and quite a few people popped up to continue.

Sheng Wang’s reaction was a little lagging for the time being, and had to stare at the name of the group chat for a while before realising that it’s the project Jiang Tian was participating in too. The people who popped up in the chat were those who he had a meal with: Jiang Tian’s professor, fellow doctors, as well as the assistant.

His mind was vacant for a moment, and finally dug out the details from his dulled memory. When he left the restaurant, he was pulling at Zhang Chao, saying that he wanted to get back together, but he didn’t know where to start — he couldn’t even find the right time to say it.

Therefore Zhang Chao made a group chat, and took the lead by saying happy new year.

Sheng Wang held his phone, hesitating. He followed along with a happy new year too. Soon after, a few more people appeared too, replying to his well wishing. But he didn’t manage to see Jiang Tian despite waiting for ages.
Instead, it was the first person who replied who was very strange. Other people all had nicknames, only his alone was empty.

Sheng Wang stared at that WeChat with a frown for quite a while, and suddenly realised something. He opened up the list of members in the group chat, checking all of them. Everyone present for the dinner that day was there, save for Jiang Tian, with an addition of this.

Only at this time, he realised that there was also a cat in this person’s profile picture — just that one was kept away in a photo frame, settled on the table. Another one was lying next to the photo frame. Due to the fact that the picture was compressed, it wasn’t as obvious.

Sheng Wang’s heartbeat suddenly quickened, with every pound like a sledgehammer. He tapped into the profile via the profile picture, and discovered that he had added the other perons a long time ago. He tapped into the chat again, and saw that it wasn’t completely blank — there was a neat row of similar lines.

This person had been messaging him from a long long time ago, from the start of the year to the end, for every single holiday, not missing even once.
The most recent message was sent more than 20 days ago; midnight of December 4th, not a single second late.
He said: Happy birthday.

Sheng Wang stared at the screen, not daring to look up or to even blink, just like the time he received a notebook on the balcony.
He told Zhang Chao: he didn’t know where to start getting back together, he couldn’t even find the right time to say it at all.
It was only now that he discovered: the person he wanted to make up with had already spoken up a long while ago, he had been saying it by himself for a long time now.

*
When Jiang Tian received the phone call, he had just showered. He switched into a loose white hooded shirt and a pair of grey cotton long pants. The heating here was very sufficient, his hair dried rather quickly.

He stilled when he saw the identity person calling him, and instantly tapped to answer the call.
Before he could speak, Sheng Wang’s voice had already appeared. “Are you in school?”
“Yes,” Jiang Tian’s brain blanked out for a second, and replied on instinct.

The next second, he heard the sound of wind howling from the other side of the phone. He was starting to realise something, and asked, “Where are you?”
“I’m walking towards the area you live, but I don’t know where you stay.”

By the time he realised, Jiang Tian had already changed his shoes and was heading downstairs.
It had been ages since Jiang Tian ran like this — this school was stupidly huge, with some places well lit, the others quiet and silent.

There wasn’t anyone on this particular road, with only occasional hushed murmurs coming from passing by couples. He shot past the eyes of a sparse bit of people, and found the person he wanted to find at the corner.

He bent over, panting as he caught his breath, and then looked up at Sheng Wang. That instant, it seemed that he was back to a certain day in high school. Also an abrupt phone call like this, he also cut through the campus like this. He came to a halt at the youth he liked, saying, “I’m here now.”

This time, before Jiang Tian could speak, the now grown-up youth spoke up first. There was a thin layer of mist over his eyes, still glistening like stars in the sky from the streetlight in the distance.
With a heavily nasal voice, he croaked, “Ge, I just drank. Do you still need to claim your lost item?”

Jiang Tian pursed his lips, evening out his breathing, his chest rising and falling. He raised his hand, caressing the corner of Sheng Wang’s eyes, and grabbed his chin and kissed him.

TO BE CONTINUED.