Back Then, I Was Still a Student

'Yesterday was already his seventh day!!!'

.

The keyboard fell silent. He Yu pushed back from the desk in the faculty dormitory and stood.

A flat under sixty square meters. In the living room on the other side of the wall, an old television was still running some interminable poetry variety show, its signal fraying at the edges into soft static snow.

The sofa was the same sofa from his story. The tea things, the cookie tin — all still there.

But the clock on the wall read eight-oh-nine. Streetlamps burned outside. It wasn't the dead of night. High summer, the air thick and close; moths circled the light below, mosquitoes hung low, and the rain hadn't come yet.

The young man left the small study and pushed through the door into the living room. Light slanted in through the grimy windowpane at an angle, giving the whole space a quality of unreality — more unreal, somehow, than the story he had just finished writing.

A young woman lay on the sofa. The air conditioning was set very low; she'd pulled a coral fleece blanket over herself and fallen asleep, a few crumpled tissues on the cushion in front of her.

He Yu said: 'Wake up.'

'Mm…'

'Get up.'

'Don't make noise… I'm barely even asleep…' The young woman groaned drowsily, smacking her lips twice. 'Just a little longer…'

He Yu was about to say something else when the variety program on television cut to an introduction for an old film.

'Everyone carries a Brokeback Mountain in their heart…'

He put down the wake-up campaign and reached for the remote.

He Yu had a deep dislike of gay men.

'Welcome, viewers, to our health and wellness program—'

He changed the channel again. He Yu also disliked doctors and hospitals.

'Once upon a time, Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly, vivid and alive as a butterfly could be…'

This one he'd leave. By his standards, it would just barely pass as background noise.

He Yu set down the remote, cast a glance at the woman still snoring on her back, and turned toward the kitchen. He pulled open the greasy refrigerator door; the interior light caught his face.

He scanned the shelves a few times, took out two eggs and a block of ham, and found a bowl of leftover rice from the night before. Then he raised his voice to reach the woman still sleeping in the living room: 'Xie Xue, do you have any scallions? I can't find any.'

No response from the other room.

'I'm making you Yangzhou fried rice.'

A brief quiet outside, and then He Yu glanced back to find the young woman had somehow already come off the sofa and was hovering at the kitchen doorway: '…That needs two eggs. And a big chunk of luncheon meat.'

A pause, then, tentatively: 'Do you actually know how?'

He Yu rolled up his sleeves and turned back with a mild, well-mannered smile. 'Go sit outside. It won't take long.'

The woman called Xie Xue drifted off to wander around the other rooms.

She saw the open laptop in the study, sat down, and scrolled through the Word document. 'He Yu! Am I your inspiration for this?'

The range hood was loud. He Yu called back: 'What?'

'I said—!' Xie Xue came out carrying his laptop. 'Am I — your — inspiration?? This — Teacher Xie in the ghost story!'

'Oh.' The young man paused, cracked an egg against the bowl, and smiled. 'Yeah. You're the person I imagined up.'

'Art draws from life, Teacher Xie.'

'But you wrote that you have a secret crush on me?'

'…Art differs from life, Teacher Xie.'

That last line was a lie.

He really did have a crush on her.

He Yu and Xie Xue had known each other for over ten years.

Xie Xue was five years his senior — this was her first year teaching directing at Huzhou University's School of Arts, and He Yu had ended up in her class.

When Xie Xue had seen the incoming class roster, she'd pinged He Yu on WeChat in disbelief: 'What the actual hell — you can't make this up! Out of the two directing cohorts I'm teaching, there's a guy with literally the exact same name as you!'

At the time, He Yu had been sitting by the window, elbow on the armrest, watching the lights blink on and off beyond the tarmac. His phone buzzed — that familiar avatar. He was reading her message, about to reply, when the cabin announcement came on asking passengers to switch off their devices.

He Yu tilted his head, considered for a moment, and didn't write back. He turned the phone off.

Coincidence? There's no such thing.

Idiot.

Of course he'd arranged it himself.

— Nothing like the story he'd invented.

This particular young man was not poor. Nor was he ugly. He was, in fact, strikingly good-looking — the son of a pharmaceutical magnate, born with a silver spoon. He'd done his secondary school abroad, but when he learned that Xie Xue had graduated, obtained her teaching certificate, and taken up a lectureship at Huzhou University, He Yu spent less than half an hour thinking it over, then pulled up the admissions page for Huzhou University Art College.

A few months later, Huzhou University Art College began its new term.

But newly-minted Teacher Xie Xue was, after all, still too young, and knew nothing of the hazards of institutional life.

Jiang Liping [she/her], the counselor assigned to the incoming directing cohorts — classes one, two, and three — was the department's resident oddity. Word had it she had no particular learning, no particular manners, and had secured her sinecure entirely by sleeping with a board member. She was strikingly attractive and made no attempt to be ashamed of it, carrying on her flirtation with the board member openly and in broad daylight; she also bore an unmistakable hostility toward any reasonably pretty female student or female teacher who crossed her path.

When Xie Xue came rushing in with her notebook to start class, she found Jiang Liping already there in a Red Dress that swept the floor, occupying her lectern and going through the orientation checklist with the incoming students.

'Sorry, Jiang Liping — the first class has already started…' Xie Xue tried to catch her attention.

Jiang Liping waved her off without turning around. 'One moment. Morning homeroom was too short — I still have two more things to cover.'

Whether it was deliberate provocation or not, those 'two more things' took fifteen or sixteen minutes to conclude. 'Right, that's everything I needed to say. Won't keep you from your lesson any longer. Oh, and — sorry, I haven't quite caught the new teacher's name yet. Work hard, don't be nervous.'

Jiang Liping walked out on her five-or-six-inch crimson Red High Heels, click-click-clicking, her long Hong Kong-retro qipao sweeping an imperious red arc behind her, leaving Xie Xue to trudge up to the lectern looking thoroughly deflated, laptop clutched to her chest.

For the love of god.

She'd have been fine if Jiang Liping hadn't said anything. But now that she had, Xie Xue actually did swallow nervously.

Students at top universities tended to be capable and not easily impressed. Their baseline trust in young instructors was already lower than in senior professors — and Jiang Liping had delivered one last poisoned parting shot on her way out.

The room read it immediately: oh, so their teacher was an intern so new the counselor didn't even know her name yet.

Not good. Even with three fires burning in her chest, Xie Xue was no match for a lecture hall full of students collectively sharpening their teeth. Within ten short minutes, Teacher Xie went from confident to stumbling, and by the end of it she was dizzy and weak at the knees.

So she didn't notice him at all — the tall male student slouched in the very back row, lazily spinning his pen, watching her from beneath half-lidded eyes.

'Hello everyone, I'm your screenwriting and directing teacher. My surname is Xie — Xie Xue. So, um…'

The students were unimpressed. 'Miss, how old are you exactly?'

'Sis, want to grab a bubble tea with us?'

'Teacher, you look younger than me…'

Seeing the situation slipping out of control, Xie Xue panicked and tried to sound fierce, like a paper tiger: 'Quiet! I'm not here to mess around with you. University years are the best years of your life — don't waste them. Study hard. And to be practical about it: I run a tight ship, I don't give leniency, and my rate of failing students far exceeds my colleagues'. Keep that in mind, and don't make the mistake of thinking I'm not serious.'

He Yu couldn't help it — he ducked his head and laughed, a smile settling at the corner of his mouth, easy and loose—

What a dummy.

The other students went quiet and stared at her like they were watching something at the zoo. One male student sighed out loud, packed up his bag, and simply walked out.

'Hey! You—'

'Teacher, threatening to fail me won't actually make me fail. I have a date. See you.'

'Interesting — Huzhou University is actually recruiting interns who threaten students into paying attention. We fought our way through a gauntlet to get into this school; we're not here to be practice material for a new teacher. Why is it our class that got you while the class next door has Professor Shen? I'm writing a complaint to the dean. I'm done here.'

Xie Xue was mortified.

She managed to keep a stiff face and ask for those students' names, marking them down on her clipboard, but the damage was obvious — she was rattled, badly, and couldn't pull herself together for a long time. The prepared slides came out in fragments and disorder, and she rambled for ages going nowhere. When she finally limped to the interactive segment she'd planned to be the highlight of the class, not a single person volunteered to come up.

'I'll come up, Teacher.'

Just as she was on the verge of tears and nearly ready to bolt from the room, a male student's voice came from the very back of the lecture hall.

Xie Xue was too beaten down to register how familiar that voice sounded. She looked up toward the source, grateful enough to cry.

And then she saw him — the boy she hadn't seen in three years — and her jaw dropped with such complete, unself-conscious shock that all composure went out the window: 'He — He Yu?!'

The student sat at his desk: clean-lined brows and eyes, a smile caught at the corner of his mouth, lips notably thin and sharp — a little dangerous, a little wicked. He looked exactly like the young Liu Jianming in Infernal Affairs, in that one moment he raises his head to look at a drunk Mary — the particular expression of a young man who has just spotted his prey and is entirely satisfied about it.

He raised an eyebrow. 'Long time no see, Teacher Xie.'

—

That's how it happened.

Back in the dormitory afterward, Xie Xue couldn't hold it together anymore and started crying in earnest — the cathartic, furious kind. He Yu liked her, but he had a mouth on him and was not especially gifted at comfort; he actually said to her: 'Go ahead and cry, I'll be in your study writing for a bit. When you're done, come get me and I'll take you out for dinner.'

'He Yu, do you even know how to comfort someone?!'

'Should I be doing the homework you assigned instead?'

'…Go.'

But by the time He Yu finished his story and came out, Xie Xue had cried herself to sleep.

He called her name. She didn't stir. He wasn't in any rush.

Xie Xue's first love was food; her second was sleep. As long as you fed her something good, she'd haul herself out of bed without a second thought. That hadn't changed even now that she was a university professor.

Fifteen minutes later.

'…What is this?'

He looked down at the glutinous, catastrophic 'ham-and-egg rice clump' he'd produced, felt his pride quietly wince, and told his teacher with great dignity: 'Can't you see? Yangzhou fried rice.'

'You're calling this Yangzhou fried rice?'

'…Fine, don't eat it, I'll order takeout.' The young man kept a straight face, picked up his phone, searched for the highest-rated restaurant nearby, and was in the middle of entering the delivery address when the doorbell rang.

He Yu glanced up, his apricot-shaped eyes going to the door. 'What. A colleague coming for you?'

'No, I haven't even gotten to know them yet.' Xie Xue set down her chopsticks and looked at the clock. 'At this hour, who could it be…'

She was still talking as she shuffled toward the entryway in her slippers.

A few seconds later—

'Gege!' Xie Xue's delighted voice carried from the door. 'What are you doing here? No overtime tonight?'

'…!!'

One word — gege — hit like a thunderclap. He Yu's expression, which had been carrying a certain lazy, vaguely rakish nonchalance, shattered in an instant. A flood of dark memories raced the full length of his nervous system in the time it takes a spark to jump.

He was on his feet immediately, snatching up the humiliating disaster of fried rice from the table and making straight for the kitchen bin.

Too late. Xie Xue was already leading her older brother inside.

'Gege, I didn't get a chance to tell you — He Yu is back in the country, and he's actually in my class now of all things, and he's here right now, you two haven't seen each other in ages, have you — hey, He Yu!' Xie Xue called out to him. 'Where are you taking that plate?'

'…'

Fine.

He'd come back to the country, after all. A meeting was always going to happen eventually.

He Yu stood with his back to them and swept every honest feeling from his face — all of it, clean. Then he turned around slowly, his bearing unhurried, perfectly composed.

For someone standing opposite a man thirteen years his senior, the weight of his presence held its own without any apparent effort.

He looked at the man whose brows and eyes carried a three-part resemblance to Xie Xue — the head of The Xie Family.

Then the young man reached back and pressed his fingers briefly to the nape of his own neck, eyes narrowing slightly, a small pause: 'Long time no see, Doctor Xie. You look…'

He studied him.

The man looked the same as before: brow and jaw cut sharp and cold, features with a particular aggressive quality to them. His eyes were beautiful — the same peach-blossom eyes as Xie Xue — the kind of eyes that would make anyone else look seductive, but he was something else; he had single-handedly demonstrated what it means when a face reflects its soul. A thousand miles of peach blossoms in full bloom, and he could freeze every petal into black ice. Brother and sister had the exact same eyes, but where Xie Xue could be soft and coquettish, he was not remotely coy — his gaze was cool water, radiating the quality of someone who keeps the world at arm's length. He held himself straight and unyielding, and the whole of him was hard and cold.

Domineering, in a way that veered toward autocratic. Like the patriarch of some old feudal clan — the picture would only be complete if you gave his pale face a voluminous black sable coat, the kind whose sheer gravity fills a room, and hung two warlord-era silver watch chains at his lapel.

He Yu smiled at last — the mild, well-mannered kind — but there was nothing like warmth behind his eyes:

'You look the same as ever. Still quite young. You haven't aged at all.'