Shen Yu and Qi Fang finished touring the academic buildings, then circled the sports field and gymnasium twice. They visited their old student cafeteria and even checked out the dormitory buildings, though unfortunately non-resident students weren’t allowed inside. They wondered how the interior might have changed.
By the time they finished exploring the entire campus, it was only four in the afternoon. Qi Fang was about to suggest calling Qin Xiaosa and Li Congming to find a place to hang out when he suddenly noticed Shen Yu standing near the school gate, looking pensive.
“What’s wrong?” Qi Fang asked. “Where else do you want to go?”
Shen Yu lifted his long lashes and said softly, “I want to go… home.”
Qi Fang paused for a moment, then replied, “Alright, we should pay a visit.”
After they started university, Qi Fang’s parents sold their small house in Q City. However, Shen Yu’s mother, Shen Wenxun, perhaps due to her busy work schedule or for some other reason, never dealt with the property here.
But after more than a decade, the yard must have grown quite overgrown.
Qi Fang sent messages to Qin Xiaosa and Li Congming, then drove Shen Yu back to the once-familiar little street.
After parking, Qi Fang looked around and couldn’t help but sigh, “So much has changed… Shen Yuyu, do you remember when I first saw you? I chased you down this street and made you chip your baby tooth.”
“…I remember,” Shen Yu said.
“You made me the laughingstock of my classmates for a long time,” he added.
Qi Fang awkwardly adjusted his collar. “Well, as soon as I saw you, I knew we’d definitely become good friends… You were so tiny back then, anyone who saw you would want to pinch your cheeks. How could you have managed without my protection?”
Shen Yu: “…”
He recalled the day he first met Qi Fang.
A boy as round as a stone stool, wearing an Ultraman backpack, clutching bread in his left hand and a roasted chicken wing in his right, strutted down the middle of the road. A few other equally intimidating-looking children followed behind him.
When Qi Fang suddenly tossed away his bread and chicken wing, even flinging off his backpack, and charged towards him, Shen Yu was startled. He thought this chubby boy hadn’t eaten his fill and was about to pounce on him to devour him whole.
Five-year-old Shen Yu instinctively turned and ran.
“Hey! Hey!” He heard the chubby boy calling out in a thunderous voice, “Didi! Baobao! Xiaobao! Don’t run…”
Shen Yu had only run a few steps before Qi Fang caught up with him. A great force from behind knocked him face-first onto the ground, chipping one of his teeth in the process.
Shen Yu held the tooth in his hand, stunned. Before he could cry, Qi Fang took one look and burst into tears like a broken dam, wailing:
“I’m sorry, I broke your tooth… Take me to your house, I’ll be your little pony to make amends…”
Shen Yu: “…”
Returning from his thoughts, Shen Yu followed the path to the doorstep of his childhood home.
The small building where Qi Fang’s family once lived had been rebuilt, but Shen Yu’s home remained as unassuming as he remembered – a three-story structure with blue-gray brick walls. After years of vacancy, the crevices between the bricks had darkened.
As expected, the yard was overgrown with waist-high weeds. Shen Yu surveyed the scene from outside, then pulled out a set of keys from his pocket.
Qi Fang exclaimed in surprise, “Shen Yuyu, you still have the keys!”
Shen Yu nodded, using the keys to unlock the gate. He explained, “I want to retrieve something from my room.”
“What is it?” Qi Fang asked, puzzled. After more than a decade, most of the belongings in the house had been moved out. What could possibly remain here?
Shen Yu pushed open the gate and walked forward. Hearing the question, he turned back and said, “It’s for you.”
Intrigued, Qi Fang asked, “You’ve had a gift hidden here all this time?”
They navigated through the tall weeds, with Qi Fang reaching the front door first. He turned back to take Shen Yu’s hand. As they stood side by side on the doorstep, Shen Yu lowered his eyes and ran his fingers over the dust-covered doorknob.
“It’s dirty,” Qi Fang said quickly. “Let me do it.”
He took Shen Yu’s keys and struggled to open the door. Surprisingly, the interior was clean, unlike the weathered exterior.
Shen Wenxun was a woman who did things in a rigorous manner. Before she left that year, perhaps she had anticipated that she would be gone for a long time. She had dust-proofed all the windows and had the house thoroughly cleaned. The furniture was covered with clear plastic sheets. The air held the scent of bygone years, and looking around, it felt like stepping back into childhood.
At half past four, the sunlight was perfect, illuminating the house even without artificial lighting.
Shen Yu stepped forward, his gaze falling on the large dining table in the living room.
In his memory, the now-fading figure of Chen Ziqiu seemed to stand by the table, busy serving dishes. Shen Wenxun would surely be seated nearby, pen in hand, poring over research materials while helping her husband.
Qi Fang, who often came for meals, was always the most restless – one moment pestering Chen Ziqiu with questions in the kitchen, the next joining Shen Yu on the sofa to watch TV.
The heavy Qi Xiaopang’s footsteps resonated loudly, but Shen Yu never saw his parents scold him.
Chen Ziqiu would say, “Thanks to Qi Fang, my dishes are always eaten clean.”
“You’re like your mother,” he’d tell Shen Yu. “You eat little and don’t gain weight, so you’re not as healthy.”
After touring the living room and kitchen, Shen Yu led Qi Fang to the second floor.
This floor housed Shen Yu’s parents’ bedroom. He rarely lingered here in the past, perhaps due to lack of interest.
As a child, Shen Yu had shown little interest in most things.
However, today, Shen Yu paused on this floor.
Reflecting on it now, Chen Ziqiu and Shen Wenxun had indeed been living separately for some time before signing the divorce agreement.
Back then, Shen Yu didn’t understand, thinking it was perfectly normal for a married couple to occupy separate rooms.
Shen Wenxun’s bedroom was bare, with the most prominent feature being the bookshelf against the wall. But now even the bookshelf had been emptied, leaving only a few pieces of everyday furniture.
Chen Ziqiu’s bedroom, however, surprised Shen Yu.
It… seemed to have been preserved as it was over a decade ago.
Light blue bedsheets and quilt, a wooden desk lamp, pen holder, a bottle of ink, several stacks of yellowed blank notepaper, and a palm-sized photo frame on the desk.
Even the coat rack by the door still held a few jackets Chen Ziqiu used to wear.
All items in the room were carefully covered with transparent dust covers. Shen Yu stepped in for a closer look, lifting the plastic cover from the desk to take out the photo frame.
The photograph inside showed Chen Ziqiu, Shen Wenxun, and a baby Shen Yu by a riverside, all smiling with crinkled eyes.
“Do you want to take it with you?” Qi Fang asked.
Shen Yu shook his head, placing the frame back on the desk. “Dad would want to see it.”
After a pause, he added, “Mom has other photos at her place.”
Having finished examining the two rooms on the second floor, Shen Yu and Qi Fang climbed to the third.
“Shen Yuyu,” Qi Fang suddenly said, “I’m a bit nervous.”
Shen Yu turned to look at him, puzzled. “Nervous about what?”
“I can’t quite explain it,” Qi Fang replied, holding his hand and taking a deep breath. He sighed, “I’m just afraid you’ll give me some kind of shock.”
“…” Shen Yu walked onto the third floor, opened the door to his room, and went straight to the bookshelf, taking out a metal box.
“It’s not a shock,” Shen Yu explained. “These things were always yours.”
Qi Fang: “Huh?!”
After a moment’s thought, Shen Yu added, “There are also… some of my things. Things I wrote for you.”
Shen Yu’s room was also sparsely furnished, having been mostly cleared out. Only a three-tiered bookshelf remained, holding some extracurricular books from his primary and middle school days.
Shen Yu held the metal box and took a few steps towards the center of the room, then turned to look at Qi Fang, seemingly inviting him over.
When Qi Fang approached, he handed over the box.
Qi Fang curiously opened it to find two neatly arranged stacks of envelopes inside. One stack was colorful and varied, with a considerable number of envelopes.
The other stack consisted of simple brown envelopes, only about a dozen in total.
“This is…” Qi Fang paused in surprise.
“These are from you,” Shen Yu pointed to the thicker stack of envelopes. “The letters you wrote.”
“And these are my replies,” Shen Yu indicated the other stack.
Qi Fang was completely stunned.
He actually remembered those fancy envelopes – after Chen Ziqiu’s death, Qi Fang had learned from some children’s book that writing letters to Shen Yu could show him someone cared, potentially easing his sorrow.
So on every holiday, school event, or simply when Little Fatty Qi felt like writing, he would pen a letter to Shen Yu and secretly slip it into Shen Yu’s desk drawer.
From childhood to adulthood, Qi Fang had stuffed countless miscellaneous letters into Shen Yu’s desk. In high school, he even had to remove others’ letters to make room for his own.
But Shen Yu had never seemed to react, leading Qi Fang to believe that Shen Yu might have been throwing them away after seeing them.
Yet today, after more than a decade, Shen Yu told him that he had written replies back then.
“How did they never reach me?” Qi Fang asked, his eyes wide with disbelief.
Shen Yu turned his face slightly, silent for a moment before softly saying, “I didn’t really want to give them out at the time.”
As a child, Shen Yu was often called “the strange kid” by many.
He possessed an unusual intellect, as well as an unusual aloofness and coldness.
While other children were throwing mud and brawling, Shen Yu’s most common activity was sitting in his family’s yard, silently digging up earthworms and insects, burying them, then digging them up again.
Before five-year-old Qi Fang discovered him, Shen Yu had no familiar “friends” to speak of, at most only remembering the names of his kindergarten classmates.
He didn’t talk to other children, and they didn’t bother him either.
Shen Yu often felt that he was like the big glass fish tank in the kindergarten, silently placed in a corner, like a voiceless exhibit.
He most enjoyed staring at the fish in that tank.
“Shen Yuyu,” a kindergarten teacher once asked him, “why are you like this little goldfish, just blowing bubbles and not speaking?”
Then Qi Fang came along, at the cost of chipping one of Shen Yu’s teeth.
He found that chubby boy particularly noisy, able to talk endlessly without pause, along with another surnamed Qin and one surnamed Li, who were also very loud.
Not to mention when all of them crowded around him.
Shen Yu was very uncomfortable at first and even weakly “rebelled,” but to little effect. Most importantly, Shen Yu found himself gradually beginning to anticipate the days when Qi Fang was by his side.
When there’s someone who tirelessly keeps you company, tries hard to make you happy, willing to climb walls and trees to bring you whatever you want just because you speak up, and constantly says “I really like you.”
Shen Yu thought that even a goldfish would be involuntarily attracted and draw closer.
And young Shen Yu’s rare expressions of emotion were all hidden in this plain metal box.
He had never done anything like this before. Even though he had earnestly written a few reply letters, he had withdrawn his hand in hesitation and simply tucked the envelopes away in his bookcase.
“I’m giving them to you now,” Shen Yu spoke slowly. “I want to give them to you.”
Hearing his words, Qi Fang fell silent for a moment. He covered the metal box with one hand and suddenly pulled Shen Yu into an embrace with the other.
“Shen Yuyu…” he tenderly kissed Shen Yu’s forehead, his voice slightly hoarse. “No matter when you give me your replies, it’s never too late. I’ll always love them.”
“I’ve always been waiting for you.” Qi Fang’s kisses moved downward, landing on Shen Yu’s lips as he said softly, “I also knew that I would definitely be able to wait until the day… you were willing to reply.”
From their chance meeting on the way home, to their childhood friendship, their inseparable days in middle school, and Qi Fang’s persistent companionship and protection in university.
Graduation, work, proposal, marriage, and finally one day, that emotionally slow Shen Yuyu suddenly had the idea to turn around and “take care of” Qi Fang.
The little snowman by the warm fireplace finally melted, revealing its soft, white, wool-knitted body inside.
Qi Fang discovered this change with surprise, and when he reached out to touch it, he felt the snowman’s round, soft belly.
It turned out that the snow was just a shell. As long as he held it in his palm long enough, it would become a fluffy little wool person again.
“I’m glad I finally waited for this day,” Qi Fang said softly. “I’m glad this day… didn’t come too late.”
Fortunately, they still had a long life ahead to slowly sweep away the melted snow, becoming two warm, woolen figures, nestled under the same roof, finally leaning on each other.
How wonderful.
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