Back then, He Yu had still been in junior high— a time when young men and women seemed to undergo new changes every day, shooting up vigorously like green sprouts.
He Yu grew taller with each passing day, his youthful figure becoming very sturdy and upright as his voice suddenly deepened. His newly tailored uniforms were beginning to look too short after only half a semester, so he often left two buttons on his white shirt open and bought shoes several sizes up.
Aside from the physical changes, the tone of his social interactions also began to change.
There were suddenly way more tittering girls around him, girls who would immediately fall quiet when he drew closer and then burst into giggles again after he walked away.
In his desk drawer, aside from his neatly placed textbooks, sealed envelopes of varying colors began to appear. They contained sheets of paper spritzed with perfume and covered in insipid words of love that gave him goosebumps.
Even worse, sometimes he would be stopped in the stairwell of one of the school buildings by a girl whose face he couldn't even remember, one who would hand him a gift with hopeful anticipation, and he would have to smile politely, give her appropriate assurance and comfort, and try his hardest to reject her without hurting her feelings.
He invariably found this so troublesome it made his head ache.
He could admit that he put on more of a pretense than Wei Dongheng, the popular, good-looking boy several years older than him. Whenever this happened to Wei Dongheng, he'd roll his eyes while giving a rejection, the words "I'm expensive, you can't afford me" written clearly on his face. Meanwhile, He Yu needed to show utmost consideration for his reputation.
Wei Dongheng was handsome, but he had nothing else going for him. Everyone knew he was a worthless slacker. He Yu, however, was a xueba, an outstanding model student who never made the teachers worry. As such, He Yu could only repeat the same dull rejections over and over again—he even had to comfort the girls after he rejected them. His patience soon wore thin, waiting for a love letter from Xie Xue that never came while countless other girls showered him with unwanted affection.
Indeed, by the beginning of his adolescence, He Yu had already confirmed his feelings for Xie Xue. Though he appeared unaffected on the outside, he paid special attention to Xie Xue's every move with detached eyes, patiently listening to her prattle on about all her favorite male celebrities and trying to figure out common traits in the people she liked.
In the end, using an IQ that could solve math Olympiad problems in seconds, He Yu came to a conclusion that was hard for even him to accept.
Xie Xue was a brocon. The men she approved of, whether they were actors, singers, or fictional characters, always had something in common with Xie Qingcheng: they were all unbridled, or arrogant, or cold, or unyielding, just like him.
That wasn't to say that she actually wanted to date her brother, of course. It was just that although her brother was afflicted with straight man cancer and had a ton of annoying shortcomings, Xie Xue never-the less admired him from the bottom of her heart. Back then, her taste in men had been undoubtedly influenced by Xie Qingcheng, and she felt that men like her brother were the most reliable.
The influence was so subtle that Xie Xue didn't even realize it.
"Ah, this actor is so warm. He looks like my brother when he's cooking," she would say without thinking. Or "Ah, this actor is so handsome. My brother plays basketball like this too." Or "Ah, why does this actor have such long hair… My brother says men should look like men and be more masculine…"
He Yu was quite conceited; he had always thought that he was good looking and had decent taste. He didn't understand what was so great about an old man like Xie Qingcheng, who had already been battered by the tides of time. At first, he was unwilling to compromise and wanted to drag Xie Xue's sense of aesthetics over to his side instead.
But regardless of whether he was gentle and respectful or arrogant and depraved, if Xie Xue didn't sense anything about him that reminded her of Xie Qingcheng, she would remain completely uninterested in him.
"Don't loosen your buttons. Students should look like students," she would chide him. Or she would comment, "You should wear your cool weather slacks. Your school's gym shorts are too casual. They don't suit you."
Later, after a bit of thought, Xie Xue actually dug out an old class photograph of her brother in high school. Perfectly earnest, she pointed at the tall boy in the corner and said, "See, you'd look better like this."
The Xie Qingcheng in the photograph was very young and very handsome, but to He Yu, he looked massively old-fashioned and stuffy. What kind of person would wear their full uniform so stiffly and clean himself up so meticulously that it looked like he had disinfected his whole body and was about to walk into the ICU? Even the age of the photograph couldn't hide the glaring whiteness of his T-shirt.
And his legs—it was truly a waste to hide such a long pair of legs under those slacks. Everyone else in the group photo was wearing summer shorts; only Xie Qingcheng was bundled up in cool-weather attire, an indifferent expression on his face as if the calmness of his heart could keep him from feeling the heat.
Was Xie Qingcheng crazy?
How could this be called good-looking?
But Xie Xue said, "It is! And look at the hairstyle he had, the clothes he was wearing. Aiya, even though their faces don't look alike, his steady temperament is just like Francis Ng's character in Infernal Affairs II, the family head da-ge from the Ni family. So handsome, so strong, so elegant, so much more handsome than all you schoolboys now!" She paused for a moment before clarifying to He Yu, "I'm not talking about you, of course. You're all right, but your temperament is more like that young Officer Lau. He's a villain, and he looks a bit roguish sometimes when he smiles."
Xie Xue had been really into Infernal Affairs II around that time. She watched that movie repeatedly, and everything that popped out of her mouth involved the characters' names. Then, she sighed, "My family's genes are just too powerful. My brother's just too handsome."
He Yu looked at the elegant, refined, and proper-looking youth in the photo and flipped the picture frame face down with an apathetic expression on his face. "How is he handsome?" As if that wasn't enough, he flipped the photo back up a moment later and took another look at it, then said coldly, "Ugly."
This time, he didn't have the chance to turn it face down again before Xie Xue snatched the photo away and began to rant. "Pah! You're just jealous of my beauty! Jealous of my brother's good looks!"
He had nothing to say to this woman. Never mind her saying that he was jealous of Xie Qingcheng's good looks, but what the hell did she mean that he was jealous of her beauty… Wait, no, there was absolutely no way he would be jealous of Xie Qingcheng's good looks either. He Yu was so handsome that half the girls in his school had given him chocolates or love letters by now. Why would he be jealous of a boring, outdated old man?
As if he cared what Xie Qingcheng looked like.
But He Yu had truly been dealt a heavy blow that day. After sending Xie Xue home, he sat at his desk playing with his phone, turning the display on and off over and over again. Flashes of shadow and light weaved through his eyes—when it brightened, he saw only the glow from the phone, but when it darkened, the screen reflected his face, which had already begun to show hints of his future handsome demeanor.
He Yu stared at his reflection for a while. Then, after rolling his eyes and muttering a curse, he unlocked his phone again and sulkily typed out "Infernal Affairs II Francis Ng" and pressed "Search."
On that hot and muggy afternoon, the boy sat at his desk, kicking his fair, toned, long legs in his school gym shorts underneath the table. He stared indifferently at all the stills from Infernal Affairs II on his phone screen, looking at that stern underworld triad boss. His face turned gloomy as he stared, as though the actor owed him a hundred million yuan. "What's so great about this prim and proper vibe… What's so great about him? Is he handsome? He's not handsome at all."
Early the next morning, when Xie Qingcheng walked out of the He residence guest room where he was staying with a yawn, he nearly ran straight into He Yu's nose.
Startled, Xie Qingcheng shot him a glare that was still heavy with morning grumpiness. "Little devil, what are you doing?"
Truthfully speaking, it was no longer fitting for Xie Qingcheng to call He Yu "little devil" by then. After He Yu hit puberty, his height shot up suddenly. Xie Qingcheng had always been accustomed to lowering his head to look at He Yu, but in the blink of an eye, he had to get used to looking straight on at this boy who was more than a decade his junior. The boy was still growing too, so perhaps it wouldn't be too long before Xie Qingcheng would need to learn how to look up at him…
This was probably why he had been rather unfriendly toward He Yu during that time.
Whenever he spoke to He Yu, Xie Qingcheng would subconsciously lower his head and look down. As a result, he would find himself looking at either He Yu's school uniform shorts and long legs or his feet in his size 9 sneakers.
But that day proved to be an exception.
That day, when Xie Qingcheng glanced over, what he saw wasn't He Yu's school uniform shorts but an ironed pair of tailored cool-weather dress pants.
Briefly dumbfounded, Xie Qingcheng shifted his line of sight upward.
Good lord. He didn't know if He Yu had gotten his medication mixed up or what, but he had changed into an exceedingly clean polo shirt that was so white it practically glowed, with the collar buttoned all the way up. He had even changed his hairstyle; his face was usually covered by his bangs, but now, he had gotten a fresh cut that exposed his brows and forehead.
He Yu's appearance looked rather familiar…but Xie Qingcheng couldn't quite put his finger on what this style reminded him of.
"You changed your style?"
He Yu curled his lip and scowled without answering. Then, after stewing in silence for a long while, he asked with a face so ashen it looked like he had inhaled poison gas, "What do you think?"
Xie Qingcheng was baffled, but he carefully looked him over from head to toe. "It's all right. Better than before."
"Hmph."
"It's just that it seems kind of familiar."
"Hmph!" He Yu rolled his eyes and walked away with a bounce in his step and an air of secrecy.
Xie Qingcheng was left standing there, still slightly out of it, stroking his chin and muttering, "What's gotten into that little devil…"
Naturally, He Yu's outfit that day was met with Xie Xue's enthusiastic approval.
"Wow!" she exclaimed. "Hey, handsome, you look amazing today! You're so cool!"
He Yu's heart swelled with delight even as he acted like her praise didn't mean anything to him. He said mildly, "I don't know about that. My hair got a bit too long, so I just told the barber to cut it however he wanted."
"You really look sooo good!"
He Yu was overjoyed, but the expression on his face only became more inscrutable and cooler. From that day on, he started to carefully study how that old man Xie Qingcheng dressed and carried himself, clicking his tongue in disdain even as he strived to emulate him.
As a result, there came a day when He Yu was watching Xie Qingcheng wash his hands with his sleeves rolled up. Suddenly, he noticed the tattoo just above Xie Qingcheng's left wrist, which was like a bracelet of tiny, slanting English words. At the time, He Yu had found it rather odd that Xie Qingcheng had a tattoo—had even he once been cavalier and rebellious in his youth?