TVDC 22: Conflict

Qiu Xuning was still a little embarrassed. He sniffled, his voice carrying a faint nasal sound that made him seem even softer. “I wasn’t crying.”

His eyes were still red, but the tears had indeed stopped. Not wanting to let He Zhiyuan see him like this, he pretended nothing had happened and got up from the floor. One hand patted his backside, and lowering his head, he noticed the scraps of paper at his feet. Circling around like an ant, he finally found a broom and dustpan and swept the pieces clean.

“I’ll fold another one for you,” Qiu Xuning said.

After washing his hands and drying them carefully, he took out the stack of sticky notes He Zhiyuan had given him from his pocket. Sitting properly at the dining table, he began folding paper cranes for He Zhiyuan.

He Zhiyuan sat down beside him at the table as well.

Qiu Xuning folded for a while but messed up several steps. His little face gradually turned red. Lifting his eyes toward He Zhiyuan, he muttered, “D-Don’t watch me. When you stare at me like that, I forget how to fold.”

Hearing that, He Zhiyuan turned his head away.

Qiu Xuning let out a sigh of relief, crumpled the sticky note in his hand into a small ball, and picked up a fresh sheet to start again.

After a while, Qiu Xuning broke into a smile. He lightly tapped the table, signaling He Zhiyuan to look over. “See? I finished it.”

Pinching the little tail at the back of the paper crane, he pretended it could fly, making soft “woo woo” sounds as he guided it toward He Zhiyuan’s face. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

This one looked much better than the one Qiu Shuohai had torn apart. Thinking back to how the old one looked, Qiu Xuning actually felt that maybe it being ripped up wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

He Zhiyuan looked at the paper crane, a faint smile tugging at his lips. “That sounds like a train, not a crane.”

Qiu Xuning froze, confusion spreading across his face. “Then… then how does a crane sound?”

Holding the delicate paper crane in his hand, He Zhiyuan replied, “I don’t know.”

Qiu Xuning pressed his lips together and said, “If you don’t even know, then how can you be sure cranes don’t sound like that?”

He Zhiyuan replied, “First of all, crows are black.”

Qiu Xuning stared at him blankly. Seeing that dazed look on his face, He Zhiyuan’s lips curved upward, and he started to laugh.

Seeing him smile, Qiu Xuning’s face instantly burned. He Zhiyuan was undeniably handsome, with sharp brows, striking eyes, a tall nose bridge, and thin lips. His features carry a kind of cold, cutting aloofness but that smile softened the chill around him, and suddenly he seemed so dazzling it made Qiu Xuning’s heart thump wildly.

“W-What are you laughing at?” Qiu Xuning stammered, his eyes darting around as if to look away. Yet catching such a rare smile, he couldn’t quite bear to turn from it, and before long, his gaze secretly drifted back.

Unfortunately, the smile at He Zhiyuan’s lips had already faded by then. His tone grew steady as he said, “You wouldn’t understand.”

Wouldn’t understand the joke? Qiu Xuning asked earnestly, “Then what did you mean just now?”

He Zhiyuan replied, “The Raven Paradox.” After a pause, he added, “You don’t need to understand.”

Seeing the “too much trouble to explain” look on He Zhiyuan’s face, Qiu Xuning didn’t press further. Later, when he asked someone else, he learned that He Zhiyuan had just been joking back then but at the time, muddleheaded as he was, he hadn’t understood at all.

Qiu Xuning lowered his head again and folded another paper crane for He Zhiyuan. Strangely enough, the ones he had folded so earnestly at school looked clumsy and awkward, but the ones he was folding now turned out much more beautiful. Even though they were all folded within the very same day.

He slid the folded paper crane over to He Zhiyuan, the corners of his lips lifting into a smile. This time, he tried hard not to press his lips together as he usually did and since he wasn’t used to smiling so openly, the expression carried an unexpected trace of shyness. “I’ll give you another one, and then, will you listen to me say something?”

As he spoke, his clear eyes rested on He Zhiyuan. At some point, he had somehow grown brave enough to meet He Zhiyuan’s gaze directly.

He Zhiyuan looked at him and gave a soft “mm” in reply.

Qiu Xuning cleared his throat with a light cough, then said seriously, “Well… I wanted to tell you, I found you an easy part-time job.”

He instinctively pressed his lips together, but then remembered what He Zhiyuan had told him before. Relaxing, he opened his mouth again and said in a low voice, “It’s helping people with their homework, thirty yuan per assignment.”

Seeing He Zhiyuan remain silent, Qiu Xuning hurried to explain, “I just thought if you go to those kinds of jobs, it’ll be exhausting. The pay might not be much, and you could even get treated unfairly but if writing homework can make money too, then why not? We could do that. It even helps review the material, learning it over again. There are benefits all around.”

He paused, then added, “If I didn’t already have so much homework myself, I would’ve taken this job to earn the money.”

That last line was clearly some kind of sales pitch he had picked up from who-knows-where. The tone was stiff and a little ridiculous. As soon as he finished, he looked sheepish, admitting to He Zhiyuan, “Yang Siyue told me to add that part, and then you would agree right away. Honestly, I think it’s kind of silly. Who would complain about making more money?”

At the mention of that name, He Zhiyuan’s eyes darkened slightly. “The girl from this morning?”

Qiu Xuning nodded. “Yeah, that’s her. She’s our class’s chemistry representative. On the last chemistry test, she even scored a perfect 100 points.”

As he spoke, a trace of regret crept onto his face. He muttered, “I almost got a perfect score too, but I was careless and left out one step in an equation. They docked me two points, so I only got a 98. Such a shame.”

When he finished and glanced at He Zhiyuan, he finally noticed something off in his expression. Pausing, he looked at him cautiously. “What’s wrong?”

He Zhiyuan said, “She’s very pretty.”

Qiu Xuning blinked, realizing he was talking about Yang Siyue. Lowering his gaze, he picked at the soft skin of his finger and said quietly, “She’s also our class flower. She’s really popular, I heard half the boys in class like her.”

He Zhiyuan’s eyes flickered slightly, his voice dropping lower. “Do you like her too?”

“Me?” Qiu Xuning looked up at him, stayed silent for a moment, then finally said, “I don’t like her. Besides… I don’t want to date early. Early romance gets in the way of studying, and if the teachers find out, they’ll tell our parents. Then it would be a disaster.”

He Zhiyuan wasn’t surprised by that answer. Ever since being discharged from the hospital, Qiu Xuning had become especially well-behaved. At first glance, anyone would think he was the type of good student who rigidly followed whatever parents and teachers said.

After finishing, Qiu Xuning couldn’t help but glance at him again. “Why didn’t you talk to her this morning? Luckily Yang Siyue didn’t take it to heart, she even joked that she wanted to be my sister-in-law.”

He Zhiyuan didn’t respond for a moment.

Qiu Xuning looked at him and secretly broke into a smile. He Zhiyuan turned to him. “What are you laughing at?”

Still smiling, Qiu Xuning’s clear eyes seemed especially bright. Tilting his head slightly, his tone light and a little playful, his whole face lit up. “I feel like your expression just now was you trying to come up with some excuse to brush me off.”

He Zhiyuan gave a small smile but didn’t deny it. If he were to say out loud what he was really thinking, it would probably scare Qiu Xuning.

“Forget it, just pretend I never asked you, that way you don’t have to come up with excuses to brush me off,” Qiu Xuning said in a low voice.

After a pause, he asked, “So, do you want to take this part-time job? A lot of people in our class don’t like doing homework, and you’re smart so you would finish it quickly.”

He Zhiyuan began to think it over. Watching him, Qiu Xuning grew anxious that he might refuse and hurried to add, “You’re going to get a part-time job anyway, so why not choose something easy that won’t interfere with studying? In this cold weather, your hands already have frostbite.”

The skin on He Zhiyuan’s hands was actually delicate and smooth to the touch. It was clearly the kind of hands belonging to someone who had never done hard labor or suffered rough treatment. Yet now, those beautiful hands were marked with several bluish-purple frostbite, looking quite unsightly.

When Qiu Xuning mentioned this, something else came to mind. He pulled his schoolbag onto his lap, unzipped it, and rummaged around. After a while, he pulled out a pair of plush gloves and a tube of hand cream. Handing them over to He Zhiyuan, he said softly, “I saw you got frostbite, so I bought these for you.”

He Zhiyuan stared at the gloves and hand cream Qiu Xuning handed him, and for a long while, he didn’t say anything. When he finally looked up at Qiu Xuning, he saw him eagerly staring back, his eyes clear and almost shimmering with hope. “Please accept it, okay? It’s my sincere gesture.”

He Zhiyuan reached out and slowly put on the gloves. Inside, there was a layer of soft fleece, and the outer part was made of leather, leaving only the five fingers exposed for ease of movement. They weren’t particularly stylish, but they were practical.

A faint smile appeared on Qiu Xuning’s face. “Now that you’ve accepted my gloves, will you consider the homework writing job?”

He Zhiyuan glanced at him and said, “Do I have a choice?”

Qiu Xuning’s eyes lit up, and he pressed his lips into a smile. “Then it’s settled. I’ll bring you the homework.”

Then he remembered that He Zhiyuan was about to live in the dorms, and a troubled look appeared on Qiu Xuning’s face again.

He Zhiyuan fiddled with the gloves, noticing that the smile at Qiu Xuning’s lips had vanished again. He let out a quiet breath and took the gloves off. “What now?”

Qiu Xuning met his gaze carefully. “It’s just… if it’s like this, you might not be able to stay in the dorms anymore.”

“Then I won’t,” He Zhiyuan said. He had no expectations for dorm life with a bunch of boys anyway.

Just as he had no expectations for life in the Qiu household.

Before, the two were the same in his eyes but now, with Qiu Xuning as an unexpected factor, living in the dorms seemed meaningless. It was unnecessary.

Qiu Xuning stole a glance at He Zhiyuan, then quietly lowered his head again, staring at his pale, slender fingers without saying a word.

His temperament really wasn’t very likable. The way Mrs. Qiu Yanru once scolded him and felt as if it were happening all over again. He was shrinking back at the first sign of trouble, swayed easily by the slightest kindness.

With Zhou Mingmei, he tried to soften their attitude toward He Zhiyuan, but the moment they pushed back, he lost his courage.

With He Zhiyuan, just a little kindness from him was enough to make his heart leap, and he would want to return it twofold.

One way of being good to He Zhiyuan was to make Zhou Mingmei and the others treat him better. That brought everything back to the starting point.

Next time… he would try again next time. He wanted He Zhiyuan to know that the things he said on his behalf weren’t just empty words. He had truly made an effort.