Who's Having Milk

Another week slipped by.

This weekend, Xie Qingcheng wasn't staying at the Medical University — he was going back to check on the old place in Huzhou Downtown.

Once the two of them had started university, nobody really lived at the old house anymore. However you looked at it, a brother and sister sharing less than forty square meters got awkward fast.

But they'd always been close with the neighbors, and Li Miaoqing in particular doted on them like a second mother, so the two siblings came back every now and then — shared a meal with her, stayed a couple of nights.

Xie Qingcheng had been swamped lately and hadn't made it home in a long time. This week he finally had a gap, so he called Xie Xue.

'Come to Li Miaoqing's with me this weekend. I'll drive over and pick you up.'

Xie Xue's answer surprised him: 'I was passing by the other night, so I already went to see her.'

'...Why didn't you tell me.'

'I — ' Xie Xue's words stumbled, then pivoted. 'I was just out wandering, that's all.'

'It takes three transfers to get from Huzhou University to Moyu Lane, and there's nothing near there — no big shopping centers, nothing. You wandered there on your own?'

'Y-yeah.'

'Xie Xue, don't lie to me.' Xie Qingcheng's voice went cold. 'Have you been hiding something from me lately?'

Xie Xue hmmed and hedged for a long time without producing a single sentence, and in the end just let out a panicked little 'ah.'

'Gege, my phone's dying.'

'Xie Xue!'

'It really is dying, I have to go — you go on your own, gege, I've got stuff to do this weekend. Remember to say hi to Li Miaoqing for me! Bye!'

Xie Qingcheng opened his mouth to say something more. What answered him was a flat, repeating dial tone.

...

Xie Qingcheng ended the call. He threw his phone onto the desk with a dark expression, walked out to the dormitory balcony, and smoked an entire cigarette down to the filter, restless and irritated.

Xie Xue wasn't going. He still had to.

Not just to see Li Miaoqing — the place needed tidying too. Nobody lived there much anymore, but it was still, when it came down to it, the only real home he and Xie Xue had.

So on Friday evening, after his last class, Xie Qingcheng packed a few personal things and took the subway back to Moyu Lane.

It was one of the few old longtang left in the city that hadn't been demolished — built back when the district was a foreign concession, dark-red brick with white-powder trim. The government funded cosmetic repairs every year to keep the façade presentable, but no amount of upkeep could change the fate of a beauty past her prime. The clotheslines strung in every direction were wrinkles no powder could conceal; the peeling paint in the corners was lipstick gone dull. These squat little buildings stood wedged between the grand sweep of modern high-rises, and they brought to mind, quite readily, a great-grandmother photographed in the middle of the young — a thing of unmistakable era.

Xie Qingcheng turned into the alley. Some of the aunties and uncles were out taking in their laundry, and when they spotted him they called out greetings —

'Professor Xie, you're back?'

'Doctor Xie, have you eaten? Ye Shu cooked more corn than he can finish — I'll send some over to you in a bit.'

Xie Qingcheng answered them, then turned sideways into the building entrance — jammed with battered old bicycles — and pushed open his own courtyard door.

The neighbors had all called him Little Xie at first. Then Xie Xue grew up, and she had a much sweeter way with people and talked to everyone far more than he ever did, so the affectionate 'Little Xie' migrated to his sister, and he was addressed, for the most part, with the polite distance of Professor Xie or Doctor Xie.

The one elder who never called Xie Qingcheng by his professional title was Li Miaoqing.

They shared an entryway. He went in, dropped the change of clothes he'd brought back, and went to knock on Li Miaoqing's door.

'Knock knock knock, are you trying to give someone a heart attack — banging like that in the middle of the night —'

He knocked for a good while without Li Miaoqing's small red battered door opening at all. What opened instead was the attic window above — Ye Shu, craning a sparse-haired head out at an awkward angle — but he caught sight of who was standing below halfway through his scolding and swallowed the rest.

'Oh, it's Doctor Xie. You're back.'

'Ye Shu, where's Li Miaoqing?'

'Ah, ah, ah — she saw Little Xue a few days ago, right, so she figured you wouldn't be coming back so soon on top of that. She went to her friend's place today.'

'Her friend's place?' Xie Qingcheng's brow creased slightly.

'That's right. Aiyo, you know what your Li Miaoqing's like — she goes absolutely wild the moment there's company. All her years on this earth and she still wants to run off and do some qipao show with her girlfriends. Having the time of her life. She probably won't be back for a couple of days.'

Xie Qingcheng: '...'

Ye Shu finished his rambling and called down to him: 'Doctor Xie, have you eaten? Haven't eaten? Come up and eat with me.'

Xie Qingcheng had never stood on ceremony with the neighbors: 'What are you eating?'

'Mango.' Ye Shu thrust a bark-rough old hand out through the narrow window, cradling a fat golden mango, already peeled.

Xie Qingcheng: '...'

The old man caught his expression and burst out laughing, the few sparse strands of hair on his head trembling in the breeze. 'Look at you, look at you — solemn face, locked brow — hahahaha, lighten up a little.'

Xie Qingcheng: '...Never mind. Eat it yourself. I'm going home.'

He turned and went inside, door swinging shut behind him.

The room was divided in two by a simple blue curtain. The half near the window, where you could see outside, belonged to Xie Xue. Small as it was, the windowsill held several pots of cheerful little succulents and a rose bush in full bloom. The bed was the princess-style one Xie Qingcheng had bought her when she started middle school — piled with stuffed animals and cushions in every color, and along the wall beside the bed frame, faded pop-idol posters she'd never taken down.

Xie Qingcheng tossed his jacket onto his own bed and worked his long fingers under his tie knot, pulling it loose, letting himself breathe.

His own bed was against the wall by the door, screened by a gauze curtain. He wasn't particular about these things. The old wooden bed had come down from his parents' generation and was still going — more than thirty years of faithful, weathered service, still solid and dependable.

He'd been running all week. Xie Qingcheng was bone-tired. He poured a little water, took his pills, and lay down on the bed, and when he woke it was fully dark outside.

Li Miaoqing wasn't in. He had no real desire to sit down to a proper meal, so he fished out his phone and ordered something at random.

He hadn't even closed the app when a WeChat notification popped up.

He Yu: 'Where are you?'

Xie Qingcheng couldn't be bothered to reply.

A second message followed: 'I came to the Medical University to find you. You're not here.'

'...'

Too tired to type more than he had to, Xie Qingcheng replied with the bare minimum: 'Home.'

He Yu, apparently unaware that words cost money: 'You're home? You went home? Is Xie Xue with you?'

A person who has been tightly wound for too long — once they return to somewhere that feels safe and let themselves fully unwind — cannot easily reel themselves back in.

That was exactly where Xie Qingcheng was. Flat on his back on the old wooden bed, tie loosened, the top two buttons of his shirt undone, the whole of him slack and soft, too lazy even to move his fingers — he just held down the voice-message button and spoke, his voice carrying the rough, drowsy edge of exhaustion: 'Will you stop. She's not with me. It's the weekend — what are you coming to find me for? No milk here for you either. Can't order your own delivery, need someone to hold your hand?'

He didn't usually talk to He Yu quite this sharply.

Mostly it was because He Yu had caught him cheating, and he'd lost face over it — and he still hadn't worked out how to win it back — so he'd gone the whole week without seeking out the little menace once.

Now He Yu had prodded him first, and he was annoyed. He wanted to rest. He did not want to manage a neurotic.

The neurotic was, in fact, silent for quite a while.

Then a text message came through.

'I'm a bit bored.'

Xie Qingcheng, still unmoved, sent another voice message: 'Go hang out with your classmates.'

Text message: 'I want to come find you.'

'Do you not understand me, He Yu? It's the weekend. I want to rest. And I'm at my own home — you only came here a few times when you were a kid, you don't remember the way.' Xie Qingcheng turned him down, irritable — but lying flat on the edge of the bed, tired as he was, the refusal came out with an unavoidable softness at the edges, a lazy resonance through his nose.

He Yu's reply was a text: 'Don't worry, I remember it very clearly.'

Xie Qingcheng: '...'

Well. That's why he's the top student.

'Don't come. I have no time for you. Unless you're sick again. Are you sick?'

Text message: 'Not sick.'

'Then don't come.'

Then a text: 'You lost our bet — I still haven't made my demand yet, have I?'

Xie Qingcheng stared at the ceiling with vacant eyes, his phone screen casting his face in pale blue light, making him look even more drained and inert: '...He Yu. What exactly do you want.'

This time the reply didn't come immediately, as though he was thinking it over.

Just as Xie Qingcheng was losing patience and about to fling his phone aside and go back to sleep, He Yu sent another message — a voice note, this time. The young man had a fine voice: deep and warm, each word measured and restrained.

What he actually said, though, was thoroughly shameless.

'I'm not having an episode, but my mood isn't great. I've been putting on a front for everyone else and it's exhausting — but I don't have to do that with you. So I'm coming to clear my head.'

'...Am I a jogging track? You just drop by whenever you want to clear your head?' Xie Qingcheng fired back at that pleasant voice. 'He Yu — what is wrong with you. Before, you used to avoid me like I was contagious. Then I give you a little something to feel good about last time, and now you're chasing me down yourself. What, developed a taste for it?'

He Yu didn't entirely know what was going on with himself, either.

It was probably that his eyes had been following Xie Xue for so long, always carrying that small thread of expectation.

Now the expectation was gone, and he no longer wanted to be seen by Xie Xue — so he had no choice but to look away.

In that aimless, at-a-loss stretch, he'd finally come to see that Xie Qingcheng was the best possible outlet for what knotted inside him — Xie Qingcheng understood him, and besides...

Besides, Xie Qingcheng's eyes were, at least, the same as Xie Xue's.

Looking at them — even knowing it was a poor substitute — was some small comfort. And on top of that, the feeling of making Xie Qingcheng lose to him was genuinely entertaining in a way he hadn't anticipated, hadn't even imagined before.

Xie Qingcheng was probably right. He had developed something of a taste for it.

What he hadn't expected, however, was that he'd waited and waited for Xie Qingcheng to summon him again, and the summons never came. A week went by and his frustration quietly mounted — which was what had finally driven him, tonight, to lower himself to sending those messages, and then, as Xie Qingcheng kept refusing him, to switch from typing to voice notes with a cold face, hoping the displeasure in his voice would come through.

'I'm coming over now.'

Xie Qingcheng was so fed up he threw his phone straight at the wall. He Yu's insufferable voice note played on by itself in the cramped old room —

'You haven't sent for me in a week. Don't tell me you're scared.'

Xie Qingcheng let out a breath. 'Scared of you? Like hell.'

He Yu was a man of action — he said he was coming, so he came. Xie Qingcheng had been hoping he'd misremember the address and knock on the wrong door, but when the old battered security door was rapped with a calm, unhurried knock, Xie Qingcheng knew: counting on He Yu's intelligence to fail him was considerably less likely than counting on He Yu to step into an open manhole on his way here.

Knock knock knock.

'...' The Xie Qingcheng lying on his bed, too exhausted to function, twitched a finger. Still had no desire to get up.

He Yu, demonstrating the fine civic virtues of today's university student — respectful of elders, courteous and well-mannered — neither pressed nor left. Xie Qingcheng didn't get up; He Yu simply stood there and, at steady intervals, curled his index finger and knocked the door a few times. Not hard. Not soft. Just there.

He wasn't even in a hurry.

He Yu wasn't in a hurry — but Ye Shu upstairs, vigorous as ever and with the hearing to prove it, absolutely was. Ye Shu shoved his attic window open: 'Knock knock knock! Knock that long and you can't think to ask if anyone's home? Hmm? Young man, I don't recognize you — who are you looking for? Are you here for the community volunteer program? Visiting the lonely elderly?'

...

Christ, the embarrassment.

The lonely elderly in question — Xie Qingcheng, playing dead on his bed — was forced to get up. He yanked the security door open and shouted upstairs: 'It's fine, Ye Shu. I know him.'

Then he grabbed the young man standing outside by the collar and hauled him bodily through the half-open door.

'Get in.' The battered security door banged shut behind them both. The paper 'fu' character stuck on it shuddered with the force of it and tilted a few inches to the side.

Xie Qingcheng's expression was black. He shoved He Yu against the wall.

'What do you think you're doing.'

He Yu stood with his back to the wall. There was a faint clean scent on him — laundry soap — and beneath it the warmth of a young man who'd been out in the sun, something lush and full-bloodedly alive.

That scent moved in and made itself at home, threading into the stale, cold tobacco that hung in Xie Qingcheng's room.

He Yu raised an eyebrow and pointed upward. 'Didn't someone just say? I'm here to visit the lonely elderly.'

Then he slipped past Xie Qingcheng, who was still blocking his path, slapped the main light on, and took in the room with easy, unhurried curiosity — the whole sequence fluid and self-possessed, not a trace of a volunteer's modesty. He moved through the place like he owned it.

What made it truly infuriating was that after he'd made a full circuit of the room, this particular volunteer turned back around and addressed the 'lonely elder' he'd come to visit with impeccable politeness.

'Xie-ge, I'm a bit hungry. Could I have something to eat?'

Xie Qingcheng, irritation at full volume, raked the hair off his forehead: 'Go drink milk, why don't you.'

'Do you have milk for me?'

'...' With poor grace, Xie Qingcheng rummaged through a cardboard box and threw him a carton of Shu Hua milk.

He Yu glanced at it. 'This isn't pure enough. I never drink this brand.'

'...'

Xie Qingcheng's gaze was blade-sharp, his mouth a thin cold line: 'Then what does the young master want? Should I find someone to make you a fresh batch on the spot?'