TAM 12

Si Yuan went to bed.

Mo Yao kept his eyes open and stared at the mosquito net above his head without moving. He didn’t close his eyes because he was afraid he would fall asleep if he did.

Chen Xinyong and Zhang Ziyu were already asleep, but there was no sound at all from Si Yuan’s bed above.

Mo Yao grew sleepy. He turned his body, sat up carefully, and slipped down from the bed. It was too dark to find his slippers, so he walked barefoot to the door. He held the handle, turned it slowly, and the clicking sound echoed clearly in the silence, but not loud enough to wake anyone.

Light came through the crack of the door. Mo Yao didn’t open it wider. That small gap was enough. He wanted to leave himself a way back later when he came in at night to eat.

“Who’s there?” Si Yuan’s voice came from the top bunk. It was soft, but it startled Mo Yao.

He turned around and saw Si Yuan lift the mosquito net and look at him. Si Yuan said, “What are you doing?”

“I…” Mo Yao said, “I heard someone knocking.”

Si Yuan was silent for a moment. “Who would knock at this hour?”

Mo Yao couldn’t answer, so he said vaguely, “Yeah, who would knock in the middle of the night?” He turned to go back toward his bed. His heart was still pounding because Si Yuan had really scared him.

“The door’s open,” Si Yuan said.

Mo Yao stopped and looked at the door. The light coming through the crack was too bright to ignore. He had no way to cover it up, so he walked back to the door and locked it again with a bit of frustration.

Then he went back to his bed and glared up at Si Yuan. “Why aren’t you asleep?”

Si Yuan rested one arm on the safety rail, and his head leaned against it. His voice was calm. “I can’t sleep.”

Mo Yao said, “What a coincidence, I can’t either.”

The room’s dim light blurred their faces. Only their outlines could be seen faintly.

Si Yuan seemed to be looking at Mo Yao. He said nothing.

Mo Yao didn’t have anything to say either. He lifted the mosquito net and crawled inside.

He lay down roughly. He heard movements from above. Si Yuan must have lain back down.

After all that, Mo Yao really couldn’t sleep anymore. He rolled around in bed, and after what he guessed was about half an hour, the dorm was completely quiet. Everyone else had fallen asleep.

Mo Yao lifted the mosquito net again and got down.

When he stood by his bed, he suddenly thought to check. He turned to look at Si Yuan’s bunk to see if he was asleep. But the mosquito net made it impossible to see anything.

He raised his hand and pinched the edge of the net, lifting it slightly. Before he lifted it high enough, a hand reached out from inside and grabbed his wrist tightly.

“What are you doing?” Si Yuan’s voice sounded low and muffled.

Mo Yao’s heart skipped a beat. He almost made a sound. His lips parted slightly, and he breathed a few times. He released the net and said, “I wanted to see you.”

They were separated by the net, and in the dark, neither could see the other clearly. Mo Yao could only see Si Yuan’s hand reaching through the gap. In the faint light coming through the window, he noticed Si Yuan’s fingers were clean, long and beautiful. He felt strange that he could notice such a thing at that moment.

Si Yuan stayed silent for a while, then asked, “Why do you want to look at me?”

There was no reasonable way to explain, so Mo Yao tried to sound confident. “I can’t sleep. You can’t either, right?”

Si Yuan still didn’t let go of his hand. “You can’t sleep, so you want to look at me?”

The tone of the exchange turned oddly suggestive. But between boys, such things could pass as jokes, and acting embarrassed would seem suspicious. So Mo Yao said, “Why not? Looking at you won’t make you lose anything.”

Si Yuan rarely joked like this. In fact, he usually didn’t joke at all.

Mo Yao guessed Si Yuan probably didn’t like this kind of talk. He thought they would exchange a few lines and stop. But Si Yuan sat up instead. He lifted the mosquito net with his hand and asked, “Would you see better like this?”

It was clearer, yet still covered in darkness. The light wasn’t enough to break the dark, but it spread gold along outlines on their faces.

Si Yuan wasn’t wearing a shirt. He sat facing Mo Yao openly.

It wasn’t the first time Mo Yao had seen him like that, but it was the first time someone had invited him to look in such a serious tone. So even though he couldn’t see clearly, he noticed details he hadn’t before. Si Yuan’s chest had muscle, not thick but not thin either, showing a young man’s strength. His waist and abdomen were slim and tight, and the lines went down until the blanket covered them from view.

Si Yuan’s scent mixed into Mo Yao’s breath. It wasn’t perfume or sweat. It was simply the smell of another person, Si Yuan’s scent, the scent of his bed, of his space.

Si Yuan said, “Can you see clearly? If not, you can come up here to look.” His voice was calm, without teasing or warmth.

Mo Yao came back to his senses. His mind worked very quickly, searching for a way to respond without sounding weak.

He almost said “Then I’ll come up”, but he stopped himself just in time. He pulled his hand free from Si Yuan’s grasp and stepped back. His leg bumped the chair by the bed, and the wooden leg scraped against the floor.

Both of them went quiet, listening to make sure they hadn’t woken the others.

After a while, Mo Yao cleared his throat and said, “I can see fine. Not bad, keep it up.” Then he realized he was also wearing only underwear. He puffed his chest out to show his own body was good too and said, “Alright, you can sleep now.”

Si Yuan looked at him without speaking.

Mo Yao yawned and crawled into his bed, pretending to be unconcerned. He felt he hadn’t handled it too badly.

This time he really grew sleepy. After lying down, he soon fell asleep.

His plan to leave the door open had failed, and it was all Si Yuan’s fault.

Fortunately, the black cat that hadn’t appeared for two days came that night. It even carried a plastic bag in its mouth, and inside the bag was half a portion of fried rice.

Mo Yao lay on the ground and used his tongue to roll the rice into his mouth. He was already used to eating like a cat.

While he ate, the black cat stood nearby and watched him.

Halfway through the meal, Mo Yao suddenly felt greedy. The food was something the black cat had brought, but the cat hadn’t eaten anything itself. He stopped, looked at the black cat, hesitated, and moved closer.

He couldn’t talk, so he nudged the black cat with his head to tell it to eat some too.

The black cat didn’t move.

Mo Yao nudged again.

The black cat sat down.

Mo Yao went back to the fried rice and lowered his head to eat again.

There was wind that night. Along with it came other sounds.

Mo Yao lifted his head and saw three cats in the distance staring at him. They were the strays from the campus.

When the black cat hadn’t been around, Mo Yao had done his best to avoid them. But now that the black cat was here, he wasn’t as worried. At worst, it was two against three.

He stopped eating and looked at the black cat. Then he realized something was strange. The black cat was unnaturally quiet. Its eyes were half-closed, hiding its pupils, and it almost seemed to vanish into the grass.

The three strays seemed not to notice it, and they slowly started closing in on Mo Yao.