A Certain Someone ( The On1y One ) Chapter 064 – Father and Son

Ji Huanyu Said, “Xiao-Tian, Do You Know? Some Things…Can Be Inherited.”

They walked to the west gate together. Zhao Xi was heading to Xi Le, Sheng Wang and Jiang Tian were heading to Wu Tong Wai.
The three of them could chat normally when they were together, but for some reason, the moment Zhao Xi left and Sheng Wang and Jiang Tian were left travelling side by side, the mood took a turn for the quiet.

Evening at the west school gate was a constant stream of people. The school banned car horns around the school premise, and the items dangling from street food carts were jingling and chiming. The sky was slowly overtaken by the night, the lights in the distance were sparse and scattered, yet to form a single straight line.
Sheng Wang’s head was full of the scene upon leaving the classroom, he didn’t know what to say. As for Jiang Tian, he wasn’t the chatty type. Usually, it was hard to tell if there was something weighing on his mind or if he was simply too lazy to speak.
Still, this moment was overly quiet.

For an instant, a vague thought formed in Sheng Wang’s mind. Maybe he did know why Jiang Tian was so silent, or maybe he didn’t know anything at all.
It was already said that the troubles of youth were the hardest to tell, his Ge happened to take the cake. Personally, he actually wasn’t outdone either.

The old lady at the entrance to the alley was walking her grandson around, stooping and teasing the child with an imitation of how the child spoke. Sheng Wang side-stepped to give way, and his shoulder accidentally bumped against Jiang Tian’s chest. Jiang Tian supported him a bit.
Jiang Tian’s palms were huge, but they weren’t particularly thick either. Sheng Wang could feel the long and slender fingers pressing down against his shoulder, and then backing away after a while.

He tugged at his school bag, slung across a single shoulder, and continued walking only after the old lady left. Perhaps it was because he bumped into him, he wanted to say something to break this ineffable deadlock. However, before he opened his mouth, he heard Jiang Tian say, “I’ve caught a bit from outside the classroom.”

This topic was brought up so jarringly, Sheng Wang stilled.
Jiang Tian looked at the narrow and long alley before them. A short while later, his gaze finally turned to him, like a casual glance. “You have a girl you like?”
“No,” the word left Sheng Wang’s mouth almost immediately.
Maybe it was because he was too quick to answer, but Jiang Tian paused too.

It was like Sheng Wang finally saw the chance and grabbed it. He said, “I was just chit-chatting with Xi-ge earlier. He casually asked me, so I casually replied too. I didn’t mean anything else.”
He thought, and added, “I don’t like any particular girl. There are only so many in our class anyways.”

Jiang Tian’s eyes were on him. A while later, he finally shifted his gaze and nodded, not saying anything else. Like he was simply casually asking too.
Now that he finally explained what he had been holding back, Sheng Wang’s heart slowly sunk back onto the ground. He only cared about finally getting that sigh of relief, only when they went around the corner of the last alley and heard the sound of human voice from the near distance, a question then suddenly flashed by in his mind.
Why……did Jiang Tian ask that?

The moment that thought materialised in his head, he peered at Jiang Tian, only to see Jiang Tian looking straight ahead, his expression turning ugly for some reason, seemingly both irritated and disgusted.
The last time he saw him turn that way, it was because of Ji Huanyu.
Sheng Wang looked in front on instinct, and just as expected, he saw a man who had just exited Old Man Ding’s courtyard. The other person was still immaculately dressed, his expression was the only thing filled with unkempt.

Old Man Ding’s raspy voice came from the door, “Look at the way you are, do you have no shame? Doesn’t it look bad for you to keep going on about this everytime you come here? Take a listen at yourself, are those reasonable words at all? Oh, you can just say yes when you feel like it and no when you don’t? Does the world revolve around you? Xiao-Tian is a human! You’re a complete monster! Don’t you come looking for me, and don’t you dare look for Xiao-Tian either, the both of us aren’t acknowledging you! Scram, and stay as far away from us as possible!”
This was the first time Sheng Wang witnessed the old man truly lose his temper, and not lovingly act harsh. The old man’s physique may not be as good as his younger days, but he was part of the military before, he still had plenty of strength. He pushed the person out of the door without any mercy, and Ji Huanyu stumbled a few steps backwards with the force too.

The old man stuck his head out, wanting to shut the door. However, he spotted the people at this side of the alley. He paused, and hurriedly motioned at Sheng Wang, indicating for them to hurry up, don’t just watch the show here.
However, Ji Huanyu already saw them. He had lost his face before the younger people like that, and anger born from humiliation was evident in his awkward expression.

He tugged at his shoulders, and tidied up his clothes before walking towards Jiang Tian.
“You! Don’t go tell him about whatever nonsense you have, ain’t nobody want to hear them! If he wants to hear, he would have heard you a long time ago, no need to wait until now.” The old man still wanted to go pull him back.
Ji Huanyu kept a lid on his temper, and pushed the old man back into the yard without any further arguments, and closed the door for him too. “I’ve said it before, I only wanted to have a chat with him. Can you go back inside and rest? No matter what, this is between Xiao-Tian and I, it has nothing to do with other people.”

The old man cursed and yelled inside, Ji Huanyu latched the door shut from the outside. He said in Jiang Tian’s direction, “I didn’t lock, I’m just blocking for a bit. I’ll let go after I’ve said my piece.”

Sheng Wang suddenly felt that he had to somewhat give it to him: he could still maintain the way he was now even under this circumstance. Despite his voice evidently being on the verge of irritation, he still sounded calm as for now.
If the person was younger by around 20 years, he should be quite eye-catching in school. He recalled what Old Man Ding said before, that he met Jiang Ou in high school, and were together ever since. After university, they naturally got married too. It seemed perfectly reasonable for Jiang Ou to have fallen for someone like him too.

He was father and son with Jiang Tian, and in Old Man Ding’s old photos, they did look a little alike. But when the man himself stood before him, Sheng Wang felt that they weren’t the same.
He couldn’t put it into words as to what the difference was, but they were simply just different.

“Let’s find a spot.” Ji Huanyu took out his phone and checked the time, “Is that corner over there—”
“You can do it right here,” Jiang Tian cut him off impatiently, “you can say whatever here.”
Ji Huanyu sighed as he looked at him, and put down his phone. “Sure.”
He swept a look around. This alley was secluded enough, there wouldn’t be anyone coming here. It was even more secluded than a restaurant or a cafe or some other place.
A spot hidden away under broad daylight.

“Sure, then—” he nodded, and turned to look at Sheng Wang.
Jiang Tian coldly scoffed.
He thought that Ji Huanyu was an absolute joke: he was the one who said that he wanted to have a chat, but every time he had to act like this was a conversation privy to no one else. Why bother? Isn’t that just contradictory?

The mockery on his face was overly obvious, and after feeling as though he had been burned by that expression, Ji Huanyu suddenly could not go on anymore. The peaceful facade he tried oh so hard to keep up finally revealed a crack.
He walked two steps towards Jiang Tian, and stopped halfway through. He couldn’t bear it anymore and said, “Xiao-Tian, it has been years. Your mom has found a suitable partner for her too. I heard that she’s doing quite well these days, better than with me. Why do you keep harping on those issues?”

Jiang Tian looked aside, as though a single second longer would cause him endless vexation. “You think you’re qualified to even mention my mom?”
“No.” Ji Huanyu did admit it really quickly. His eyes were lowered, and did not speak for a long while. He stared at a spot on the ground, thinking of god knows what. A good while later, he said, “I don’t have the rights to mention her, that’s why I’ve never visited her up even up till now—”
“You dare to?” Jiang Tian moved a step.
Ji Huanyu hurriedly said, “No, I’ve never gone to find her. I’ve been avoiding her ever since I came back from overseas. But, Xiao-Tian, that really happened for so long ago. Yes, I was indeed somewhat muddling along, nothing was going well for me at all, it was such a long way off from what I envisioned in my youth. I was a little……crazed. Back then, I’d already lived separately from your mom for quite a while, you were young, you didn’t really know, but there I really didn’t……”

He deliberated on his phrasing, either out of the need to justify himself, or perhaps he was just scared of pissing Jiang Tian off. He hesitated before he continued, “I already don’t have much feelings towards her. I’m going to be honest, Xiao-Ou—your mom had already been looking at information related to divorce proceedings, I was thinking the same thing too. I just thought that we could still wait, and still go on together. After all, we met each other in high school, and were together for such a long time too.”

He looked at Jiang Tian as he said, “You probably think that I am a scumbag, from top to bottom. I also understand why you didn’t want to let your mom know. You don’t want her to think that she wasted more than ten years on a dog, right?”
Jiang Tian did not rebuke him.
He bitterly laughed for some vague reason, “It doesn’t matter whether you believe me, I suppose. I was truly head over heels for her when I was with her at the start, I wasn’t thinking of anything else. But, living our lives together wasn’t the same as dating, there were too many troublesome issues. It was part of the reason why I fought with her too. Anyway, there were too many this and that and what not, I was a little dispirited. I don’t know if you have experienced the same situation before too. Sometimes, when the stress gets to you, some crazy thoughts come up in your head, just like that, you’ll think, whatever, I give up. And then you want to do some things that would really take it too far. That’s why……”

That’s why you were messing around with some strange man in the room of that old house?
Jiang Tian often thought that some people were truly hilarious, that the person himself was too ashamed to even speak of what he had done, every time he brought it up, he had to do it away from other people, or just cut himself off. As though if he didn’t say it out loud, those things would gradually be drowned out by people, and fade away in memories. As long as he wanted to move past that issue, other people had to follow along and forget too.
As though what other people’s feelings didn’t matter, other people’s memories could be erased at will. Are other people……not human too?

Ji Huanyu would emphasise every time: you were still young.
Yeah, he was indeed quite young at that age, so young that every time he recalled something from that period of time, there were only disconnected parts. Just like the memory of that day, all that appeared was the clouds of cigarette smoke wafting in the room, stinging him to the point that he nearly couldn’t keep his eyes open. Cigarette butts lay strewn all over the floor; they were burnt through, with tiny red embers still lit up. Ji Huanyu was entangled with another man in that coiling cloud of smoke.
He was already sick that day, his head heavy. He might still have a fever. Those images even seemed surreal, like graffiti or threatening arms and legs and bodies that came out of a B-grade film.
He might have said something, thus startling the people entangled with each other. And then there was chaos. He seemed to have been tossed aside. Or maybe someone crashed against him. He fell onto the floor. Perhaps he landed on the cigarette butt, yet to completely extinguish. A searing burn at the back of his neck.

Originally, in that year, he kept having similar nightmares. They weren’t terrifying, but he could only suppress that feeling of disgust after waking up and chugging down half a glass of water.
Eventually, the images became blurry as the years passed by, and all he could recall was the smell of cigarettes and the feeling of utter disgust.

Zhao Xi said he was a little precocious, and perhaps that was true. It was true in the way that he knew Ji Huanyu was someone who clung onto his dignity tighter than his life at a tender age, and loved to act like everything was alright.
It was said that Jiang Ou and Ji Huanyu were not that different from each other, both did not know how to take care of him. However, he could clearly tell who did it out of resignation, and who had it written in his blood.

The care he received was limited, therefore the type hidden away in the heart was counted too, therefore his protectiveness over Jiang Ou. When he was brought away, Jiang Ou hugged him and sobbed for a long time, saying that she seemed to keep making mistakes, saying that she was a little useless.
Because of him, Jiang Ou had negated a few years of her life. He did not want her to disregard more than ten years of her life just because of Ji Huanyu, as such he kept hiding it from her.
As long as he hid it from her, Ji Huanyu would never say a word either.

That was why, for a long period of time after that, he kept feeling disgusted, and still had to suppress that disgust before Jiang Ou. Gradually, he no longer had the urge to lash out.
Even a tin can would rust after staying sealed up for so long.

For quite the while, he rejected any sort of touch that was overly intimate in nature. Rationally, he knew that he was taking it too far, but it was honestly too difficult to correct what he did on instinct.
Fortunately, there were Zhao Xi and Lin Beiting.
He saw things that weren’t the norm from the two friends who were older than him, and then he forced himself to gradually make peace with it, slowly get used to it. Until a certain day, he could finally sever Ji Huanyu apart from all the other people, and thus also himself from those things too.

Just like what the two friends said, not all sorts of intimacy represent a certain feeling, and there was no need to be unnecessarily paranoid too. That would only easily backfire.
That did make quite a lot of sense. See, there was Zhao Xi, Lin Beiting, Gao Tianyang…….and many friends of various degrees of closeness, there weren’t anyone who caused any absurd thoughts to manifest in his mind.
He wasn’t the same as Ji Huanyu.

……
The sky grew darker and darker, and the outlines of their figures finally became indistinct.
Ji Huanyu explained for a long time, and finally started getting impatient. He felt that he didn’t really say anything wrong, but no matter what he did, he could not change a single iota of Jiang Tian’s mind. He couldn’t help but recall what Old Man Ding said: he was the one locked outside the door back then, and now it’s your turn.
He didn’t do anything, but he felt tired to the bones. Therefore, he gradually turned silent. And no matter how agitated, composed, impatient, or remorseful he was, Jiang Tian was only cold and aloof from the start to the end.

Sheng Wang watched Ji Huanyu; in the increasingly agitated words, he finally got a whiff of what happened. He thought of what Zhao Xi said, and recalled the so-called “trauma”. Even though Ji Huanyu didn’t say anything particularly concrete, he guessed it all.
He then couldn’t help but turn to look at Jiang Tian. In that instant, he had the illusion that Jiang Tian’s despise and vexation floated about in the air around him, as though he wasn’t the victim, more like a witness.
It was just like he spent many, many years, and forcibly removed himself from the messy bygone affairs, and became some irrelevant passerby. And then, in the today culminated from those years ago, he helped to convey a message from the him who had to lodge all over the place.
He said to Ji Huanyu, “I think you are disgusting.”

There weren’t any bright streetlights around them, but Sheng Wang could tell that that man’s face turned deathly white. He really was burned by that line.
He stood rooted to the ground. Old Man Ding’s curses, Jiang Tian’s icy gaze……all sorts of pressure and feelings surged up within him, and he had the impulse he had at the start, wanting to do something or say something.

Sheng Wang saw him move, and he proceeded to stand in front of Jiang Tian, like he was afraid he might do something. Unexpectedly, the other person’s gaze swept across the two of them, and then he said a line to Jiang Tian.
Ji Huanyu said, “Xiao-Tian, do you know? Some things…can be inherited.”

TO BE CONTINUED.