Chapter 30

After eating, Wen Fu drifted off again, like he was mulling something over.

Fei Bolin remembered the class group chat discussion about the sports meet last week. Later, when Xie Yining came back to school and spotted Wen Fu arriving at class, she pulled him out to the balcony for a huddle. Fei Bolin had been sitting at his seat then, only catching a side view of Wen Fu — face turned, eyes locked on Xie Yining's nonstop mouth, not blinking once, terrified of missing a single word. Just nodding, nodding, nodding again.

Once Xie Yining released Wen Fu and came back to her own group, she sat down and said, all pleased, "This Do-Re-Mi looks hard to get along with, but he's actually pretty easy to talk to."

Su Haoran twisted around at that. "What'd he say?"

"He didn't say anything," Xie Yining said, hearing the warning bell. She pulled out her pencil case — stuffed with a rainbow of highlighters for note-taking. "I just got him to sign up for sports meet events. I was worried he'd say no at first, so I sweet-talked him up one side and down the other, but whatever event I suggested, he agreed to."

Su Haoran asked, "So which ones'd you sign him up for?"

"Fifty meters and the thousand," Xie Yining said. "Skinny kid, runs fast."

That's what she said, but Wen Fu looked like he couldn't carry anything heavier than a feather — pale, clean-cut, the bookish type. Nobody expected him to actually be fast. Signing him up was just to fill a slot.

After breakfast, Fei Bolin had to go open the shop. There was no Space Heater at home, and staying too long would mean catching cold. He hesitated, then asked Wen Fu, "Wanna come to the shop with me?"

Wen Fu looked up, clearly missing the point again, and asked him straight, "Do you want me to go?"

Fei Bolin: "..."

Fei Bolin was losing it.

It wasn't that he "wanted" him to come!

He just thought the house was freezing, and staying too long would make him catch cold!

...Forget it.

Looking at Wen Fu's blank stare, he said coolly, "So are you going or not?"

Wen Fu asked, "Is there milk?"

Fei Bolin laughed coldly inside.

Now he's negotiating terms. As if Fei Bolin was dying to have him there.

So he said:

"Yeah."

Wen Fu immediately got up and followed him.

The stairway was narrow — two guys couldn't walk side by side. Fei Bolin had the keys and was in front, and they first ran into Aunt Wu, who was coming back from buying buns at the corner.

"Fei Bolin, off to open up again?"

Fei Bolin smiled warmly. "Yes, Aunt Wu."

Aunt Wu stopped in front of him. "Here, have a bun."

"No need, Aunt Wu," Fei Bolin refused. "I already had breakfast."

"Have one, it won't fill you up."

"Really, no need."

"Have one."

Aunt Wu held onto the bag, and when Fei Bolin wouldn't take one, her eyes shifted to Wen Fu.

Wen Fu was wearing Fei Bolin's old black padded jacket and a pair of jeans. The pants were a bit long, so Fei Bolin had rolled them up twice — both pant legs loose and baggy.

The jacket's collar was pulled up high. Wen Fu kept his eyes lowered, watching the stairs underfoot, the lower half of his face almost buried in the collar. He didn't say a word, keeping his presence as low as possible.

Aunt Wu noticed Wen Fu wouldn't meet her eyes, and asked Fei Bolin with a smile, "Classmate?"

Fei Bolin nodded.

Aunt Wu quickly pushed the bun bag toward Wen Fu. "Here here here, have a bun."

Fei Bolin raised a hand to stop her. "Really no need, Aunt Wu, we've already eaten."

Him refusing Aunt Wu's buns was politeness, but Fei Bolin knew perfectly well — if he didn't stop Wen Fu, the kid would very likely actually eat all of Aunt Wu's buns.

Wen Fu didn't make a sound, didn't look up, standing in Fei Bolin's shadow like a withdrawn little kid.

Aunt Wu smiled and said goodbye, heading upstairs. They kept going down.

At the landing, Wen Fu quietly looked up at Aunt Wu's buns above.

Lin's Convenience Store was right under their building. Fei Bolin unlocked the door and went in, turned on the Space Heater first, then went to the shelf to grab milk for Wen Fu.

Wen Fu got his milk and stood by the wall, slurping away.

Fei Bolin dragged over a plastic stool and pulled out the Space Heater. "Come sit over here."

Wen Fu glanced at the Space Heater, sat down next to Fei Bolin, and tried putting his hands on it.

"If you're cold, sit closer." Fei Bolin noticed he was sitting too far, and tilted the Space Heater toward Wen Fu. "The button on the bottom — left is cooler, right is warmer. Got it?"

Wen Fu nodded with the straw in his mouth.

Once he'd said what needed saying, Fei Bolin stopped paying attention to him and pulled out a copy of the Five-Thirds to grind physics problems.

Wen Fu's workbook wasn't here. He kept all his textbooks in the classroom — to prevent accidents, he never brought any books back to wherever he was staying, in case something happened and he couldn't get back, like last night.

Watching Fei Bolin do problems, he wanted to do them too. Beyond the workbooks the School handed out, he rarely bought books with his own money — he had to save every yuan for living expenses. Books like Five-Thirds or Hengshui mock papers had great problems, but they were expensive, and Wen Fu basically never bought them.

It was only the week he first transferred here — he'd been looking at a set of Jiangsu mock papers at the bookstore by the School Gate, dawdling over them for ages. When the owner was about to close and he still hadn't finished the problems, he just gritted his teeth and bought one.

Wen Fu quietly scooted his stool over to Fei Bolin's right side, rested his arm against the side of the register counter, chin on his hand, and quietly watched Fei Bolin do problems.

After watching for a while, Wen Fu started doing them himself.

He had no pen, no scratch paper. All he could do was calculate in his head, his fingertips tracing unconsciously on the counter, doing silent pen-work for him.

Before he'd done a few problems, Wen Fu's mental math started making sound, catching Fei Bolin's attention.

Fei Bolin stopped his pen. The moment he turned to look at Wen Fu, the other kid immediately sat up straight, face blank, like he had no idea what had just happened.

Fei Bolin was baffled, and turned back to keep working.

The second he looked down, Wen Fu leaned in again.

Fei Bolin looked up — Wen Fu immediately sat up straight.

Looked down again — Wen Fu's head was right there again.

Fei Bolin put his pen down. "Do you wanna do them together?"

Wen Fu, hands braced on the stool, blinked. Didn't say yes, didn't say no.

— That meant yes.

Fei Bolin marveled at how just one night had been enough to read Wen Fu that clearly, while tearing off a few pages of scratch paper, pulling out a textbook to slide under the paper, and finally fishing out a gel pen to hand to Wen Fu. "Come sit over."

The Space Heater got moved to Fei Bolin's feet. Wen Fu pressed up against him, the two of them sitting side by side behind the register, working through problems all morning. Customers came and went; during the times Fei Bolin was ringing people up, Wen Fu slowly caught up to his progress from the start.

Comparing answers at the end, Wen Fu got the multiple-choice finale right, Fei Bolin nailed the big-problem finale. After reading through the explanations, Fei Bolin thought of something and asked Wen Fu, "What'd you get on the midterms?"

Wen Fu said, "Dunno."

"Dunno?"

This midterm was the City-wide Joint Exam — grading was slow, the paper report cards wouldn't come out until after the sports meet next week, but actually you could already check scores online this Friday.

Fei Bolin realized — Wen Fu didn't have a phone, didn't seem to be in the class group chat on Q/Q either, so of course he didn't know scores were up.

He pulled out his phone and logged into the School website. "What's your student number?"

"201202412519."

Fei Bolin typed in Wen Fu's student number and logged in with the default password "123456." Sure enough, Wen Fu had never once logged into the site — hadn't even changed the password.

He clicked over to the score inquiry tab, selected "Second Year, First Semester," the page refreshed, and Wen Fu's grade table came into view.

This test was hard — the School's self-set science first-tier cutoff barely scraped five hundred. Hanyang Class averaged 580, and across the whole School you could count on one hand the people who broke six hundred.

Wen Fu's scores were all over the place.

Science composite: 255; Math: 143; English: 122; Chinese: 67; Total: 587; Class rank: 2; School rank: 145.

Fei Bolin: "..."

What kind of cliff-dive subject-skewed king is this.

He compared it to his own — Fei Bolin's Chinese was nearly 60 points higher than Wen Fu's, and his total was only 45 points above Wen Fu's.

If Wen Fu weren't so lopsided, his score would be solidly upper-tier even in Hanyang Class.

And the man himself, Wen Fu, looked perfectly calm — apparently long used to his own subject imbalance.

He'd long since emptied the milk carton, but Wen Fu couldn't bear to throw it out. While checking scores, he kept absently chewing the straw, occasionally sucking in air, making the empty carton rattle.

Fei Bolin asked, "You done looking?"

Wen Fu nodded.

"Then I'll log out."

Wen Fu had just agreed when Fei Bolin, about to log out of the site, suddenly paused on the screen for a second. "Wanna change your password?"

"Password?"

"Default password's 123456. Most people change it so nobody else logs in." Fei Bolin said, "You should change it."

Wen Fu asked, "How do I change it?"

Fei Bolin opened his mouth, then decided on the most convenient option for Wen Fu: "I'll do it."

"What do you wanna change it to?" he asked.

Wen Fu didn't know, so he asked back, "What's yours?"

Fei Bolin went silent.

Who just straight-up asks someone for their password?!

He sighed and patiently explained again, "It's called a password because it's something you're not supposed to just tell people."

Wen Fu thought about it, then challenged, "But you asked for mine."

Fei Bolin: "..."

This little bit of logic couldn't stump the kitten at all!

Even though the premise behind each of them asking the other was completely different, Fei Bolin couldn't actually argue back.

"960819, my birthday." Fei Bolin caved and confessed. "Got yours figured out?"

Wen Fu copied the formula: "971026."

Fei Bolin changed it for him, and only after finishing did he realize, "That's your birthday?"

Wen Fu didn't deny it.

1026...

Wasn't that the day Wen Fu first came into Lin's Convenience Store to buy instant noodles and sausages, and knocked him down in the alley?

Fei Bolin asked, "That day was your birthday?"

So that's why he'd splurged on coming to Lin's Convenience Store, buying instant noodles and sausages — things he normally thought were expensive — to celebrate his own birthday?

Wen Fu neither confirmed nor denied.

Fei Bolin took the milk carton from his hands and tossed it in the trash. "If you want more, go grab another one."

Wen Fu immediately got up and went to get one.

While Wen Fu was getting his milk, Fei Bolin pulled fifty yuan from the drawer and instructed him, "I'm going to the market next door to buy groceries. You stay here. If someone comes in to buy something, use the scanner to scan the barcode, and the change is in the drawer. Got it?"

Wen Fu's voice was small and dazed, but probably because he got to drink another milk, he was in a decent mood — he even deliberately dragged out his reply: "Okaaay—"

The market near noon was still pretty lively. The freshest stuff was mostly picked over, but Fei Bolin could still find some good picks if he looked.

He wasn't really sure how much Wen Fu ate, so he deliberately bought double the meat. On the way home, passing the bun shop Aunt Wu usually went to, he queued up and bought six buns and four sugar-oil rolls — figuring whatever wasn't eaten could be saved for breakfast tomorrow.

Back at Lin's Convenience Store, he put the buns and rolls on the counter and told Wen Fu, "I'm going home to cook, I'll bring it over later. If you're hungry, eat the buns first — but don't stuff yourself, or you won't be able to eat the meal."

Wen Fu's nose twitched. He sniffed the buns and immediately recognized them as the ones he'd wanted this morning but didn't get to eat.

Fei Bolin had already caught that glance at Aunt Wu's buns when they were going down the stairs. While shopping, he'd kept an eye on whether the bun shop was still open — saw they hadn't closed up yet, so he bought some for him.

The piping-hot xiaolongbao were still steaming. Wen Fu reached straight for one, about to stuff the whole thing in his mouth, when he suddenly felt two pairs of scrutinizing eyes on him from above.

He glanced at Fei Bolin's expression, lowered his head, and only bit off half the bun in one go.

Then his eyes went wide again.

The buns were filled with pickled mustard greens and half-fat, half-lean pork, steamed till they glistened. One bite and the braised juices came running out.

Fei Bolin couldn't help laughing. He'd been eating from this bun shop for almost ten years — it was famous around here. He knew it was good, but Wen Fu was acting like it was the best thing ever.

After reminding him one more time not to eat too much, Fei Bolin took the groceries home to cook.

The moment he left, Wen Fu went at it with both hands, one bite per bun, and polished off five in five minutes.

The last one sat in front of him. Wen Fu stared at it for a long time, struggled internally, and finally decided to leave it for Fei Bolin.

Then he turned to the four sugar-oil rolls.

This shop's rolls were palm-sized each, packed with ingredients, layered three deep. Under each layer was a thin sheet of sweet crystalline oil, the sugar just right, the bread part fluffy and soft — wrapped in sugar oil, it melted the moment it hit your mouth.

It was Wen Fu's first time eating a sweet thing like this. One moment of inattention, and all the rolls were gone.

Finally, he stared at the one remaining bun and fell into deep thought.

Without meaning to, he'd left Fei Bolin only one. Even someone as slow as Wen Fu belatedly felt that wasn't great.

He didn't know Fei Bolin had bought all of this specifically for him — Fei Bolin didn't actually like eating these flour-based foods outside of breakfast.

So when Fei Bolin came back carrying two boxed-up meals, what he saw was Wen Fu facing a single bun like it was a formidable enemy.

Fei Bolin was pleased: told him not to eat too much, and he still knew to leave one. Seems like he listens pretty well.

Then Wen Fu sensed him approaching. The moment his gaze landed on Fei Bolin, he pinpointed the lunch boxes in his hands within a second.

...Fei Bolin suddenly felt like a cat out hunting — every time he showed up in front of Wen Fu, he was bringing a fresh supply of food.