A Certain Someone ( The On1y One ) Chapter 070 – Wild Grass

With a Caress of the Breeze, the Wild Grass Scrapes the Sky.

Jiang Tian’s hand loosened instinctively; his body heat dropped just like how his fingers slipped out of Sheng Wang’s. Sheng Wang, with a turn of his hand, clung back on again.

I heard your happy birthday, I also know that you reached out in the darkness of the night. Sheng Wang’s voice was hoarse, “I caught you.”
I already caught you; therefore, you cannot pretend nothing happened.

The wooden staircase creaked, the footsteps were a little hurried. The final two steps were crossed over in nearly a single step. By the time Sheng Wang realised, he had already rushed down from the upper bunk.
Before he could figure out what he wanted to ask—what he wanted to say—he was already standing before that person.

Jiang Tian’s back was no longer leaning against the bed railing. Instead, he sat on the bed, his right arm propped on his folded knee, slightly crouched over. The moonlight was casted upon the bed from the side, shedding a brilliant silver glow as it brushed past him. Yet, he sat in the shadows.
The hand that held Sheng Wang’s dangled by his side, his long digits half crooked. His eyes were downcasted, his gaze resting on that empty space above his palms. His mind wandered in silence.
Only when Sheng Wang’s misshapen shadow landed on the sheets did he look up.

Sheng Wang was suddenly unable to speak. He looked into Jiang Tian’s eyes, his heart palpitated; his chest was so full with emotions that it was threatening to burst, but there was nothing but a blank in his head.

They both fell into a silence, the intimacy that came from the entanglement of their fingers grew madly; unreasonable and silent, instantly filling the entire room.
Nobody else could see them, they were the only ones who knew it deep down.

They knew it better than anyone else in their hearts.

Jiang Tian’s deep voice was a little unclear in the darkness. “When did you wake up?”
Sheng Wang’s chest heaved. All he did was to go down five-six steps on the stairs, going from the upper bunk to the bottom, yet he felt like he had travelled 3000 kilometres.
He said, “At the start.”
The moment you grabbed me, I woke up.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Jiang Tian said.
Sheng Wang said, “What do you think?”
Jiang Tian’s gaze flickered; as light as breathing, or the tremor that came from the beating of the heart.

Sheng Wang watched him, and for some reason, could not really stand that sudden silence. His voice was hoarse as he said, “I thought your ‘going out for a bit’ referred to a couple of minutes or ten, so I kept walking around, waiting for you. However, after waiting for so so long, you still weren’t back, so I climbed up, wanting to play on my phone for a while.”
He chuckled in a bout of self-mockery, and said, “Who knew the alcohol really kicked in that strongly, so I accidentally fell asleep.”
He was momentarily quiet. “To be honest, it was a fitful sleep.”

When he said that, it seemed like he was simply finding a casual conversation topic. It was only afterwards then he realised he sounded like he was whining, like he did it on purpose to melt Jiang Tian’s heart. As though as if he didn’t say anything, this night would come to an abrupt end just like that.

His rationality told him: it would be even better if you don’t mention this at all, the events of this night should come to an abrupt end just like that.
Still, he couldn’t help himself, he asked again, “Didn’t you say you’re gonna take something? Why did it take you so long?”

Jiang Tian eyed the paper bag on his thigh, and said, “Because this should’ve come tomorrow.”
Sheng Wang stilled. “A gift? Didn’t you say that there’s nothing?”
“I lied,” Jiang Tian said, “how could there be nothing.”

He pinched the corner of that paper packaged, and his brows knitted infinitesimally. “But…I’m not very good at this.”
“What?”
“Not very good at preparing gifts for people.”

“You don’t need to be,” Sheng Wang said. He received that package with lowered eyes, and as he tore the packaging open, he said, “Odds are, I’ll be ecstatic with whatever you gift me.”
The paper packaging was thick, probably out of fear that the corners will be creased, or it might get caught in the rain and become damp. Sheng Wang unwrapped two layers, and finally got a peek at a corner of the gift from the opening he unwrapped from.
It seemed to be a leather cover.

He almost thought that it was yet another notebook. He only discovered upon unwrapping the entire thing that it was in fact, a photo album. Nowadays, photos in the phone were all stored in the cloud drive backed up on his phone. Personally, he had never used something like this before.
However, he recalled what he said to Jiang Tian before in a random passing conversation. He seemed to have said: he really likes to flip through Old Man Ding’s old photo albums.

The phone would spoil eventually, there were too many disorganized things in his cloud drive. Those pictures that recorded certain places in times were drowned in the extensive sea of data. If he didn’t need to look for something, he would never recall to flip through them at all.
As such, he would occasionally feel like the past 16 years of his life was a giant blur. He could not really recall where he’d been to, or where he’d lived before.

Moonlight was the only illumination in the dorm currently. Jiang Tian got up, and went to switch on the table lamp. Sheng Wang managed to get a full view of the photo album with the aid of that light.
This album was slightly special, the cover was a piece of quick sketch. The sketch was of the red can he often used for his profile pictures, like it was customised for him.

A corner of his lips quirked as he smiled, and flipped open to the first page.
He never actually guessed what photos would be inside that album, but it was still enough to stun him when he saw the first photo.

That was an old picture. Perhaps it was due to the restrictions of technology back then, the picture wasn’t quite clear as today’s. However, the trees by the side of the street as well as the passersby were outlined in light.
That’s right, there wasn’t a specific subject in the photo. It was a busy street.

Sheng Wang was a little lost, but he soon noticed the road sign at the corner: it was the street outside White Horse Alley, the entrance to his house.
At the upper right corner, someone wrote down the year.

A vague idea was starting to form in Sheng Wang’s mind, and he flipped to the second page. That was a shopping mall, sitting at the intersection of the crossroads, the flow of traffic criss-crossed each other at that spot. The sunlight shone on the glass window, forming a dazzling patch of brightness.
Similarly, a number was also written at the upper right corner. It was the year following the first photo.

He suddenly recalled a morning where they waited for the bus, an evening when they walked to the administration office, and words he exchanged with Jiang Tian in certain conversations—
“I was an especially fussy kid back then, I would often cause a ruckus and wake everyone up early in the morning.”
“And then?”
“Then I would come to this street, and survey the circumstances of the common people. I had to walk from that end of the street to this end, and when I saw that everyone was living a safe and peaceful life, I could go back to sleep without any worries.”
“Why this street.”
“It’s lively.”

“See that crossroad yet? Wasn’t there a shopping mall here before? When I was young, I heard my mom say that before my grandpa passed away, I kept kicking up a fuss, whining about wanting to go shopping.”
“Did you know what you were doing?”
“I was two, of course I had no idea what I was doing. So I was just mingling with the common people, I was born to be an emperor, can’t help it. However, the mall’s already gone. Who knows when they demolished it.”
“They did it last year.”
“I’ve picked such an unfortunate timing to transfer back then. If I were a year earlier, I could still go back to reminisce.”
……

Sheng Wang kept flipping behind, page by page, one after another. The number at the upper right kept changing, year by tear. He saw many roads in the photos; roads near his house, near his primary school, outside his middle school. And then he was in another province; he saw the school gate he often snuck out to eat at in middle school year three and high school year one, that Flower Street.

The last photo was taken this year, featuring the west gate of Fuzhong. He could see the giant characters of the school name on the arch above the school gate. Through the door was a horizontal street, and by the street was a narrow passage. A cart selling jianbing was parked there year round; that was the entrance to the long alleys in Wu Tong Wai.
On the other side of the photo was the convenience store he went to most often, two giant characters written on it: Xi Le.
The most special places to him this year were all in this photo.

There was a silhouette of a boy wearing his bag on a shoulder on the road to Xi Le, his right hand raised, like he was beckoning someone behind him.
That was Sheng Wang himself.

From the first year he was born to his sixteenth, all the roads he ever travelled were all recorded in this photo album. He could no longer keep all of them straight by himself, but unexpectedly, someone stealthily helped him to complete them, sealing them up in here.
Every road here is bustling with life, filled with the hubbub of people. Every year here is a brilliant sunny day.

Sheng Wang’s eyes were lowered as he looked at the last photo; he did not look up for a long time.
His hand moved behind him to switch off the table lamp, and the entire dorm was filled with darkness once more. The photo blurred before his eyes, and he rapidly blinked several times.

After yet another long while, he then turned to ask Jiang Tian, “Where did you get these pictures?”
His voice was hoarser than before, the nasalness so slight to the point of being unnoticeable.

Jiang Tian rested against the table. He was next to Sheng Wang, his shoulder touched his. His eyes were the colour of the moon, clear and bright. However, the moment he lowered his eyes, they all were all buried in its depths. “I looked for them, Xi-ge helped me out a little.”
Sheng Wang then asked again, “When did you take the last one?”
Jiang Tian said, “I don’t recall, it’s quite a while ago.”
Sheng Wang nodded.

A while later, he said, “Why did you take a picture of me from behind?”
Jiang Tian did not say anything.

Sheng Wang: “Why are you so nice to me?”
Jiang Tian was silent for a long time, his brows briefly furrowed before relaxing. “I’m your Ge.”
Sheng Wang then nodded again. This time round, he was quiet for a long time, so long that Jiang Tian’s hand, propped against the edge of the table, started to tighten instead. His knuckles turned white. Sheng Wang finally spoke, “Then, was it also because you are my Ge that you grabbed my hand just now?”
Jiang Tian no longer came up with a new explanation. Instead, he remained silent for a prolonged while.

Sheng Wang was emotional from looking through the photo album just now, and the alcohol started kicking in again. He thought that he was being perfectly composed, but every word he said was more impulsive than the last.
Every time Jiang Tian was rendered speechless by his questions, his heart pounded a little faster.

Perhaps it was the way they were too close to each other as their shoulders touched—or maybe it was simply an illusion—he felt that Jiang Tian’s heart was racing too, completely contradictory to his silent exterior; like the riptide beneath the peaceful surface of the ocean.

He listened to his heartbeat, and turned to look at Jiang Tian. “Ge, your heartbeat is as fast as mine.”
Jiang Tian blinked ever so lightly, like he wanted to block out that something and his impulse. However, when he opened them once more, the emotions in his eyes only deepened.

“Don’t call me that,” he turned to face Sheng Wang.
Due to the way they were making eye contact, the distance between them was ever so infinitesimal. Sheng Wang’s breathing was sent into a chaotic rhythm, all and any semblance to regularity was lost.
He saw Jiang Tian’s gaze dart below— beneath the tip of his nose—for a split second. Still, his gaze was kept back in an act of self control.

Sheng Wang blinked lightly too. “You said it yourself earlier, you did all of this because you are my Ge. Why aren’t you letting me call you that now?”
Jiang Tian managed to turn his eyes back in the end. He looked at Sheng Wang, his slightly lowered gaze was conflicted; his conflicted emotions threatened to burst at the seams.
After who knows how long, he then spoke. “Because I’ll think that I’ve gone insane.”
He tilted his head and leaned in.

The moonlight passed through the window pane, taking over the corner of the table and the floor, like a geometry diagram taken apart.

Someone from a random dorm was still awake,; maybe they were having a chat in the dark, or perhaps they were playing around. Muffled laughter echoed in the night.
The two boys inside were leaning against the table, shoulder to shoulder. Their fingers gripped the edge. Their breaths mingled, quivering and tentative. They kissed each other; inexperienced and messy, both fervid and quiet.

Youths fall in love like a wasteland on a midsummer’s night; ceaseless, unhurt by flames and scythes.
With a caress of the breeze, the wild grass scrapes the sky.

TO BE CONTINUED.