60

It was a private cake shop with a 'Private Bakery' sign. Tucked away in a quiet corner, but the place was clean. Two women in their twenties or thirties ran it — at his age, Wen Fu still had to call them jiejie.

He walked in hugging his backpack, stood silently in front of the cake sample display. After a moment, an employee came over and asked if he wanted to order a cake.

"Do you have any bird-shaped ones?" Wen Fu asked.

The employee blinked, smiled apologetically. "No models, but we can paint one on with buttercream."

She pointed at the "happy birthday" design on one of the sample cakes. "Like this."

Wen Fu reached for the letters. His fingertip was about to brush the model when he remembered Fei Bolin teaching him not to touch other people's things without permission. He stopped and asked, "Can I touch it?"

The employee's smile deepened. "Of course."

Wen Fu's fingertip traced those letters, like he was only now believing a cake this realistic was really just a model.

He pulled his hand back and asked seriously, "Can you paint the sky on too?"

"The sky?" The server tried to understand. "Blue buttercream, would that work?"

Wen Fu nodded.

The employee went with it. "What color for the bird, then?"

That one, Wen Fu hadn't thought about.

He thought for a second. "Is gray okay?"

"Gray?" The employee hesitated. "It can be done... just might not look that great."

A gray bird on a blue sky — no matter how you looked at it, it wouldn't look good.

"Doesn't matter," Wen Fu said.

He wasn't a pretty bird to begin with.

Before he met Fei Bolin's sky, he'd been dusty, dirty, wandering in the dark. His feathers had grown out messy and he didn't know how, and no one had ever looked after him.

After they settled on the cake size, the shop asked, "What kind of cream?"

Wen Fu had no idea. "What kinds do you have?"

The employee introduced the regular cream they used most often, plus two kinds of animal cream.

Wen Fu almost asked which tasted better, but then thought — taste is different for everyone. Once he'd brought Fei Bolin's steamed egg cake to Qi Yichuan, and Qi Yichuan said it wasn't good. But Wen Fu thought it was great, and pestered Fei Bolin to make it for a whole week straight, wanted to eat it three meals a day. By the end Fei Bolin couldn't take it anymore and refused to touch another egg, and that was that for the time being.

He asked, "Can I try some?"

Normally the animal cream had to be freshly whipped after a customer ordered. But today, when the last order was done, there was a little left in the bowl — just enough for Wen Fu to taste. Plant-based cream was always on hand, so the employee brought both kinds out with two spoons.

Wen Fu took a small taste from each spoon. His eyes lit up both times.

He couldn't tell which was better. Fresh cream in his mouth, and he found both sweetly, wonderfully delicious.

Someone who's been soaking in bitter water too long — get them to shore, hand them two candies. One yuan and a thousand yuan taste the same sweet.

Wen Fu savored the aftertaste on his tongue, wavering between the two creams.

The employee could see his hesitation. Maybe she read it wrong — she lifted the plant cream bowl a little higher. "This one's more affordable. Lots of customers pick it when they order. Same cake, this cream's half the price of the other. If you're eating with classmates, students who come in to order usually just go with this."

Honestly, no matter which cream they recommended, the pitch was the same. Just the customers' situations were different. Most of the time they could only guess what the customer was thinking based on what they saw. Worse off — "affordable is better," give them a graceful way out.

Better-off kids, you could tell at least from how they dressed — even the low-key ones were rare. Naturally they'd recommend the nicer cream.

Wen Fu was clean and neat from head to toe. Clearly a kid from a household that cared. But no matter how clean and cared-for, the clothes and shoes were old. Dressing like that even for a birthday — it wasn't hard to see money was tight.

After she said that, Wen Fu didn't just happily accept. He thought for a few seconds, head down, then asked seriously, "Why?"

"Hmm?"

"Why..." Wen Fu pointed at the other cream. "Why is this one more expensive?"

The employee's smile froze on her face for a second. Not for any other reason — the question just came so suddenly she didn't know how to answer. So she told the truth: "This one tastes better."

"Do YOU think it tastes better, or do a lot of people think so?"

The employee was completely stumped. "I guess... a lot of people think so."

"Then I want this one," Wen Fu said.

After saying that he asked, "Is there anything even better?"

"...There is." The employee set down the cream bowl and walked to the freezer. "There's another higher-quality animal cream, but the price is higher..."

Because of the price, this cream rarely got ordered. Maybe one or two orders a month, so they didn't keep much stock to avoid it expiring.

Today only one box was left, pressed at the very bottom. The employee bent over, digging through the freezer.

"How much?" Wen Fu asked.

He knew without being told — unopened cream just taken out, if you weren't sure you wanted to buy it, you couldn't ask to taste.

"For a six-inch, two hundred fifty-eight yuan."

The price made Wen Fu — buying a cake for the first time — skip a beat in his chest.

He pressed his lips together, glanced at the other, slightly better cream in the bowl. Now he was really hesitating.

Two fifty-eight...

Enough for a hundred and seventy xiaolongbao. Two hundred wholesale boxes of Jule Milk. Enough for Fei Bolin to cook for half a month.

Wen Fu weighed it, still undecided.

— The money in the piggy bank, Fei Bolin had always told him to keep for himself. Never let him shoulder anything for the household.

But he figured — his money, if he didn't spend it on Fei Bolin, had nowhere else to go.

Fei Bolin's birthday came only once a year.

Three hundred and sixty-five days a year, two fifty-eight yuan — averaged out, less than a yuan a day...

Wen Fu pointed at the cream in the employee's hand. "I'll take this cream."

When it came time to pay, Wen Fu hesitated again — how was he going to pay?

He reached into his backpack and pulled out the pink little pig piggy bank. "This..."

The employee turned at the sound, saw him holding out a jar.

They were professionally trained. They quickly took the jar and played along. "So cute! Is this your little sister's at home?"

"It's mine," Wen Fu said.

"..." The employee caught on fast. "Is there money inside?"

Wen Fu nodded. "Do you have a way to get the money out?"

He added, "Don't break it."

In the end, the two employees and Wen Fu worked together. They flipped the piggy bank upside down, used the smallest thin hairpin, reached into the coin slot, and pulled out three hundred-yuan bills.

Wen Fu thought they were amazing.

And very dependable.

So before he left, he asked the amazing and dependable employees, "Do you know how much it costs to get glasses at a hospital?"

The employee told him the frames could be picked out at any glasses shop, any price range, but the lenses had to be matched at the hospital after the prescription was determined.

Since Fei Bolin currently showed zero willingness to go to the hospital, this matter was shelved for now on Wen Fu's end.

Just outside the door, Wen Fu got a call from Fei Bolin.

"Not back yet?"

"Coming... coming back!"

A cat immediately launched off the spot.

Before dinner that afternoon, Wen Fu had grabbed the cake on his last delivery run. He'd planned to sneak it back to his room, but passing through the kitchen, Fei Bolin's voice drifted faintly to his ears: "Went to get the cake?"

Wen Fu's sneaky figure froze in the living room.

He gave up hiding, set the cake on the table, peeked in through the kitchen doorway. "Bo-ge?"

Fei Bolin didn't turn his head. "Hm?"

"How'd you know?" Wen Fu asked.

"From the window at home you can see the cake shop on the corner." Fei Bolin cooked with no expression, his tone calm as still water under the range hood's hum. "Next time you come home, don't run so fast."

"...Oh."

Wen Fu turned to leave, muttering as he went. "I thought you forgot."

After all, the whole day, Fei Bolin hadn't shown a single sign of remembering his own birthday.

He got up, cooked, watched the shop, came home — same as always. Twenty-four hours, not one minute of extra gesture.

Right then, Fei Bolin's hand plating the dish paused, silent.

Wen Fu didn't know if it was his imagination, but he thought he heard Fei Bolin quietly say, "I thought so too."

"What?" He turned to ask.

"Nothing." Fei Bolin carried the dish out. Passing Wen Fu, he'd meant to pat his head, but remembered he'd just come out of the kitchen, so he dropped it. Just said, "Come eat."

When he set the dish down he glanced at the cake box.

Transparent — you could see the cake inside at a glance.

A second later, he turned his gaze back to the table. Wen Fu shot up from his stool, grabbed the cake box, reached to open it.

"What are you doing?" Fei Bolin stopped him. "Eat dinner first."

"But you want to eat it now," Wen Fu said.

"I don't."

Wen Fu blinked again.

His gaze roamed Fei Bolin's face for a moment, then he decided: "Bo-ge wants to eat it."

"Bo-ge doesn't want to."

"Bo-ge does want to."

"Bo-ge doesn't... forget it."

Fei Bolin seemed to have made himself mad with his own words. He let go of Wen Fu's hand, slowly sat down, looked away. "If you want to eat it, open it."

Wen Fu looked at him, puzzled — clearly Fei Bolin was the one who wanted to eat it.

But he was a kitten who didn't hold grudges against grown-ups. He bent his head and started unpacking the cake.

Meanwhile, dinner on hold, Fei Bolin suddenly felt at a loss. Hands on his knees, slightly clenched. Deliberately not looking at Wen Fu or his cake.

Too long without a birthday. Now that one had suddenly come along, he felt like a stranger who'd wandered into this celebration by mistake — at a loss, as if celebrating a birthday was doing something wrong. As if he owed an apology to the news of his mother's death that had traveled a thousand miles two years ago, and to that gray, hazy self from that summer.

He'd planned, like the past two years, to force himself not to think about anything. Go through the day step by step, same as always. No surprises this year either — he could perform it well enough to even convince himself he'd really forgotten today was his birthday. But no one's a saint. No eighteen-year-old boy forgets a time point that meaningful.

He told Wen Fu to open it if he wanted to eat. Wen Fu couldn't be bothered to expose him again and again, so he played along and opened the cake box.

"I dreamed about Mom yesterday." Wen Fu glanced at him while opening it.

Fei Bolin let his gaze drift casually over the slowly opening cake box. "Whose mom?"

"Both of them." Wen Fu stuck in the candles, pushed the cake in front of him. "They said today we should celebrate your birthday together."

"Really?" Fei Bolin asked.

Wen Fu nodded. "I don't lie."

Once in a while was fine.

He pointed at the gray bird on the cake. "So this is me."

Then pointed at the sky behind it. "This is you."

"The bird's in the sky." Wen Fu leaned too close to the cake, the cream scent hit his nose, he swallowed, then went on, "We're always together."

Wind blew outside the window again, falling leaves rustling loud.

The cake with the "18" candle turned toward Fei Bolin. The two locked eyes, stared at each other.

Wen Fu had no experience with birthday procedures.

He asked, "What do we do next?"

Fei Bolin answered, "Make a wish."

Wen Fu pointed at himself. "I make the wish?"

Fei Bolin: "..."

Fei Bolin was silent for a moment. "Do you have a wish you want to make?"

"A wish...?"

"Something you want to do but haven't done yet."

Wen Fu thought about it. He did have one.

"I want to go sing in places with more people, farther away," he said. "That's what Mom wanted me to do."

Let more people hear him sing. Never go back to that hometown.

Fei Bolin smiled. He opened the colored matchbox that came with the cake, struck a match, slowly lit two candles. "What else?"

Wen Fu propped his chin, sinking into deep thought.

Until the top of the number candle was about to melt, he finally thought of one.

"I'm by your side..." he murmured, "until I grow old and die."

He really didn't know how to say nice things — bringing up death on a day this happy.

But this was Wen Fu racking his brain to confide to the wish-granting bodhisattva.

Wen Fu basically used his lifetime language skills — in just nine words, he wanted Fei Bolin, longevity, and the two of them to die healthy.

"What about you, Bo-ge?" Wen Fu asked. "Got a wish you want me to make for you?"

Fei Bolin lowered his eyes to the flame swaying on the candle. A touch of real smile finally surfaced in his gaze.

"Starting today, I'll look forward to growing old."