Wait For Me After School

At noon the next day, Yu Fan was woken up by the sunlight hitting his eyes. Only then did he realise that he hadn’t drawn the curtains before going to bed.It was almost the hottest time of the year. The air seemed to be coated with a layer of heat.Yu Fan turned his head away to avoid the sun, closed the curtains with some struggle and turned on the fan beside his bed along the way.He rested in the cool breeze for a while before lying down again.He stared at the aged ceiling in daze and then reached under his pillow, pulled out the doberman plushie and stared at it in silence.Then, for no reason, he threw a punch at the plushie’s face -----That was what he should’ve done to Chen Jingshen at the hospital last night.Yu Fan expressionlessly reasoned with himself in his mind.It was all because Chen Jingshen had kissed him too suddenly and moved away too quickly. If Chen Jingshen stuck out his tongue or even reached out to touch him at the time, he would’ve definitely had the chance to throw out that punch……After seriously thinking it over, Yu Fan’s ears turned an unnatural red colour. He closed his eyes, forced himself to stop thinking and rubbed his face forcefully before turning the fan speed up another notch.Stupid weather. It’s too fucking hot.Yu Fan placed the plushie next to his bed and took out his phone and opened WeChat. He subconsciously glanced at the chat interface with Chen Jingshen.Chen Jingshen had texted him ‘I’m home’ at around three in the morning but he hadn’t replied and Chen Jingshen didn’t say anything else.The familiar group chat had reached 99+ in notifications and new notifications constantly appeared. Seeing his name being mentioned, Yu Fan rested his hand behind his head and lazily scrolled through the messages.Zhang Xianjing had posted the photos taken at the amusement park yesterday in the group chat. It was unknown how many were taken but Yu Fan had to scroll through it for a while.The first few were all Zhang Xianjing and Ke Ting’s selfies.Yu Fan lingered on Ke Ting’s photos a little longer. He and Ke Ting hadn’t actually spoken more than a few words all this time. Ke Ting was introverted and usually had her head lowered all year round so even despite being in the same class until now and her sitting right in front of him, he still didn’t know what she looked like.In the photo, Zhang Xianjing had her head resting on Ke Ting’s head while Ke Ting was smiling shyly and secretly looking over at Zhang Xianjing with her round eyes.Yu Fan swiped down for a long time. Apart from selfies, the rest were all selfies.Just as his patience was about to run out, he saw himself in the next photo.To be more precise, it was the backs of all six of them. Under the warm golden light coming from the night market, Zuo Kuan and Wang Lu’an had their arms around each other’s shoulder while Zhang Xianjing was holding Ke Ting’s hand and looking at a cotton candy store nearby.He himself had his hands tucked in his pockets as he walked with Chen Jingshen at the back. Because it was quite crowded at the time, they were forced to walk shoulder to shoulder for a while.Yu Fan stared at the photo for a while and couldn’t help but zoom in and narrow his eyes in annoyance.Why was Chen Jingshen’s shoulders so much wider than his??[Zuo Kuan: Who took this picture of us from behind? What kind of skill is this? How could they make me look shorter than Wang Lu’an?][Wang Lu’an: Aren’t you originally short? Are you over 175?][Zhang Xianjing: I asked someone passing by to help take it. It looks pretty good. If you don’t like it, you can just blur yourself out.][Zuo Kuan: …..Wang Lu’an, just wait till school starts.][Wang Lu’an: Huh? Are you going to vomit on me?][Zuo Kuan: Fuck you!][Wang Lu’an: Hey, but I have to say. Those photos of the night market are pretty good. I saved one to use as my phone wallpaper.][Zhang Xianjing: En, they were all taken by Yu Fan. I also didn’t expect him to be able to take such good photos. @- Congratulations on becoming Nancheng Seventh High’s school flower’s personal photographer.][Zhang Xianjing: [Photo] Except for this one. Was it accidentally taken?]The photo Zhang Xianjing sent was another photo of the night market but in it was a fuzzy white figure that was standing very close.It was the photo he had accidentally taken when Chen Jingshen gave him the plushie.By the time he was done reading the previous messages, ten full minutes had passed. As Yu Fan stood in front of the washstand brushing his teeth, he stared at this worthless photo for a while before exiting and picking out a few photos to save.[-: En, it was an accident. You can delete it.]As soon as he sent that out, his phone also buzzed.[S: Are you awake?]No I’m not. The message in the group chat was sent out by a ghost.Yu Fan internally muttered this and raised his head and continued to brush his teeth. He glanced at his reflection in the mirror. His right cheek was still bruised and there was a bandaid on his left cheek where Yu Kaiming had left a bloody wound last night. It was a little itchy when he opened his mouth to brush his teeth but, perhaps it was because the nurse had applied too much, when he accidentally got some in his mouth last night while sleeping, it tasted very strange.Did Chen Jingshen also taste it when he kissed him last night?“……”Yu Fan quickly finished brushing his teeth and then picked up his phone and sent back a short and blunt message.[-: No.][S: En. Can you open the door when you’re awake?]Less than a few seconds after Chen Jingshen sent that out, he heard hurried footsteps inside and following that was the door opening with a low creak.Yu Fan who still had a toothbrush in his mouth, a head of messy hair and a face covered in injuries was looking at him blankly.“Why are you here?” A moment later, Yu Fan somewhat incoherently spoke up. The toothbrush in his mouth moved as he asked, “When did you get here?”Chen Jingshen lowered his phone, “I just arrived. What do you want for breakfast?”Yu Fan was left confused by that question, “I don’t know.”Chen Jingshen raised the insulated lunch box he was holding, “Then have some congee.”“…..”Two sets of footsteps suddenly sounded in the stairwell. Accompanying it were a few suppressed voices----“Did you hear the sound downstairs last night?”“I heard it, it was so scary….Hey, do you think anyone died? I almost called the police yesterday.”“Don’t. We’ve already tried that and it has done nothing. Moreover, both the father and son don’t seem like good people. If we call the police, they may think that we’re being too nosy. Just ignore them….”Those words were things Yu Fan often heard since he was a child. He had always just brushed them off.But for some reason, he didn’t want Chen Jingshen to hear it and he also didn’t want the others to see that Chen Jingshen was here.So he grabbed Chen Jingshen’s bag strap and roughly dragged him in.“Why did you come here with your bag?” He asked with a frown after realising what he had grabbed.“Brought homework.” Chen Jingshen said, “Taking advantage of the two day break, why don’t you finish the advanced papers?”Yu Fan’s hand was still holding Chen Jingshen’s bag strap. He had an urge to push the other person back out of his place.Chen Jingshen looked around. The things that had fallen over had been put back upright but what was broken was still broken so it still looked very messy.“Did that person come back?” Chen Jingshen asked.Yu Fan didn’t actually say who he fought with last night but Chen Jingshen had a vague guess. What the neighbours upstairs said also confirmed his thoughts.“No, he wouldn’t dare come back.”Yu Fan had roughly cleaned up the place last night, putting all the unusable items into garbage bags and throwing them all into Yu Kaiming’s room.In fact, if it was one of those usual fights, he would’ve probably already smashed Yu Kaiming’s room up but his mind was in a complete mess after returning home last night so he didn’t have the energy to do it.“Stop looking. Get in my room.” Yu Fan let go of him and returned to the bathroom to finish brushing his teeth.“En.” Chen Jingshen adjusted his bag strap and commented just before he went in, “Brush softly. The inside of your mouth is injured.”The sound of brushing suddenly came to a stop.A few seconds later, there was the sound of hurried gargling coming from the bathroom and following that was a clear and aggrieved curse, “Fuck you Chen Jingshen, I….I just like to brush hard! Don’t fucking order me around!!”Yu Fan dawdled around in the bathroom for another ten minutes before coming back out.His hair was dripping wet. He sat down in the chair with a stony face, the poor chair scraping against the floor from the force.He crossed his legs and stared coldly at the insulated lunch box on the table. Just as he was about to tell Chen Jingshen to take it with him and get lost------“Maybe you should just order takeaway.” Chen Jingshen suddenly spoke up.“?” Not expecting the other person to strike first, Yu Fan looked over at him, his cold expression containing a hint of bewilderment.“It might not be to your liking.” Chen Jingshen said lightly, “Although I got up very early, spent a very long time reading recipes and even spoiled a pot of it, it might not taste that good.”“……….”-Having downed an entire bowl of congee, Yu Fan’s stomach was still very full when afternoon arrived.As third year of high school approached, the teachers were assigning them with more and more homework and the difficulty of the questions also got harder and harder. Yu Fan worked hard all afternoon before he was finally able to finish the two so-called advanced papers Zhang Fangqin had given out. After finishing it, he went through it again and saw that there were more empty spaces than filled spaces.So even until the sky had turned dark, Chen Jingshen wasn’t done with explaining to him the problems.After explaining how to calculate a problem twice, Chen Jingshen asked, “Do you understand?”Yu Fan stared at the paper for a long time with one hand supporting his head, his expression slowly changing from a bored expression to a look of annoyance.Do people actually need to learn this?A hand unexpectedly pressed down onto his head. Chen Jingshen said, “This problem does cover topics we haven’t covered yet so not understanding it is normal. We can continue after taking a break.”Yu Fan was in a dazed state because of the problems so it took him a while for him to realise that his head was once again touched by the other party.He turned around to curse at him but just happened to see Chen Jingshen unscrew his bottle of water and take a sip. With his head raised, the jut in Chen Jingshen’s throat bobbed a few times and the fingers holding the bottle of water curled slightly.Chen Jingshen’s fingers were long and slender. It was such that it gave off a causal air of dominance no matter what he was holding.Yu Fan’s body slightly stiffened. He suddenly felt a little numb in his neck.Sensing his gaze, Chen Jingshen put down his bottle and lightly glanced over at him.Yu Fan’s desk was very small. It was fine for him alone but when there were two boys, it was a little crowded.Their arms were pressed together and their legs would also occasionally bump into each other under the desk. It wasn’t a big deal when they were working on the problems but now that it had quietened down, Chen Jingshen’s body temperature was particularly apparent.The moon hung high in the sky. The old complex was just as quiet as when they kissed yesterday.Chen Jingshen very frankly looked back at him. The reflection of the desk lamp in his eyes looked like a silent hook that hooked onto him.Yu Fan felt that the small fan he had used for almost seven years should be changed. That piece of crap had conversely made him even hotter. His grip around his pen tightened. He forced himself to look away. He seemed to have bumped against Chen Jingshen’s nose last night. Although it looked tall, it actually didn’t hurt much when it poked him.His gaze travelled down and stopped on Chen Jingshen’s lips. He used to think that Chen Jingshen’s lips looked too cold and too thin and that it probably wouldn’t feel like anything when kissed but in fact------He felt very hot. His heart pounded in his ears. Yu Fan finally couldn’t endure the hot silence and little by little moved closer to Chen Jingshen.Chen Jingshen sat there motionlessly, allowing him to approach. Both their chaotic breaths soon intermingled. As long as either of them moved just a little more, they would touch.As Chen Jingshen’s breath reached Yu Fan’s lips, Yu Fan’s scalp went numb. He felt like he had one foot off a cliff.“…...Chen Jingshen.” A long time later, Yu Fan spoke up.Chen Jingshen looked at him with lowered eyes and let out a lazy hum.“You should apply some medicine on your lips.”“………..”Yu Fan moved back and took out a tube of ointment from the drawer and threw it over to Chen Jingshen. He mumbled vaguely, “Go to the bathroom and put some on. There’s a mirror. I….I’m going for a smoke.”While Chen Jingshen went to the bathroom with the ointment, Yu Fan sat on the balcony. Afraid that someone would see his current situation, he sat cross legged with his back facing his room, looking a little awkward.He rammed his forehead against the anti-theft screen a few times. Both his face and ears were so hot, it felt like it could boil eggs. His heart was beating wildly. He couldn’t even breathe smoothly anymore.What the fucking hell.What the fuck is wrong with him? He didn’t drink or fight tonight but why was he like this??Why….did he want to kiss Chen Jingshen so much?