WARM Chapter 1

The October wind was bitingly cold.

I stood on the street corner, wearing only a short-sleeved shirt.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t afraid of the cold, but the person who had suddenly called me out made me rush out without even grabbing a jacket, fearing I’d keep him waiting.

When I saw him, he was dressed in a black hoodie, his hair styled deliberately, holding a bouquet of roses in his hand.

I guessed he was planning to confess to someone.

I didn’t rush to greet him. Instead, I watched him from a distance, waiting for someone. His straight back almost overlapped with the image in my mind, but just as it was about to, he looked up and saw me.

He walked over, giving my T-shirt a glance with an indescribable expression.

“Why are you so slow?”

He had never been particularly nice to me, probably because I was a guy who always followed him around, claiming to chase after him.

Though, to be honest, I never actually said I was chasing him. It was just that people saw me always hanging around him, staring at him, and they started spreading rumors.

The rumors spread so much that even he seemed to believe them.

I didn’t plan to explain.

“I came by bike,” I said.

He probably didn’t care about my reasons. He ran a hand through his hair and asked, “So, how do I look?”

He looked good.

Of course, he looked good. His eyes and lips were the best.

“Are you dumbstruck?” He impatiently kicked the heel of my shoe. “I heard you’re good at writing. Help me write a love letter. I’m meeting Zhou Xuran later.”

A confession. I guessed right.

But I didn’t have any paper or a pen on me.

He pointed to a convenience store across the street. “Go there and write.”

I followed him across the street, bought some paper and a pen, and wrote a 300-word love letter at a table in the store.

He read it for a while, then smiled at me. “Seems like you’re not completely useless.”

I didn’t respond.

Half an hour later, a group of people gathered around a stunning girl across the street, right in front of the shop where we had been standing.

The wind was strong, and she was wearing a white dress, her face pale from the cold. But even from a distance, every strand of her hair seemed perfect.

“She’s beautiful, right?” he asked.

I nodded.

Then I watched as he walked across the street with the bouquet, took off his jacket, and draped it over her shoulders.

He was smiling, his lips moving as he said something.

The next second, the girl shyly accepted the roses and the love letter, then threw herself into his arms.

Everyone around them started cheering, urging them to kiss right there on the street.

He didn’t hesitate. He lifted her chin and kissed her. Their kiss was passionate, and rose petals fell to the ground, crushed underfoot.

I took the remaining paper and pen and returned to my dorm.

My roommate, who I usually got along with, asked where I had been.

I held up the paper and pen, using them as an excuse to say I had gone out to buy them.

They didn’t suspect anything and were soon distracted by the flood of messages on their phones.

It was news about those two getting together.

In the video taken by someone on the street, you could clearly see the expressions on their faces as they kissed. One of my roommates, after watching it, asked me if I was okay.

I shook my head.

What could possibly be wrong with me?

I looked up and saw the gloomy sky outside. It seemed like it would rain later, so I wanted to close the window to keep my desk dry. But I accidentally cut my wrist on a sharp edge of the window frame.

Blood dripped onto my desk.

I saw my roommate’s shocked expression and I guessed that tomorrow there would be more gossip about me at school.

But I couldn’t explain.

To outsiders, it seemed like I was deeply in love with Gao Xuyan, the heartthrob of our department. Even if I was always at his beck and call, I never complained. Maybe I really had no shame.

Whatever.

I bandaged my wound haphazardly, climbed into bed, and closed my eyes.

The next day, I was woken up by a call from Gao Xuyan.

He was furious, yelling at me over the phone, demanding to know why I had done it.

“What the hell is wrong with you? How could you even think of pulling a stunt like suicide?”

I tried to explain about the window incident last night, but he didn’t believe me. He said it hadn’t rained at all.

I took a photo of the sharp edge on the window frame to prove I wasn’t lying.

But he still didn’t believe me and insisted on meeting me.

He wanted to see me, so of course, I agreed.

Because I wanted to see him too. I even had his photos saved on my phone, and when I couldn’t see him, I’d look at them.

But a still photo could never compare to the real person. If I could, I’d follow him around 24 hours a day.

But I couldn’t.

After washing up, I left the dorm.

He had arranged to meet at his off-campus apartment.

When I arrived, I entered using the password he had given me.

Inside, I saw clothes scattered all over the living room, and I could hear the sounds of a girl coming from the bedroom.

I don’t know why, but I called out his name. He didn’t respond, and all I heard were the increasingly wild sounds of their play.

I wasn’t curious anymore. I sat quietly on the couch and waited.

The sounds of the man and woman started off suppressed and frantic, but soon they let loose, becoming unrestrained, until finally, there was only heavy breathing.

I sat through it all.

Calmly, I waited for Gao Xuyan to get dressed and come out to see me.

He had a cigarette dangling from his lips, his bare chest covered in hickeys. “I only like women. I don’t do backdoors.”

His words were harsh, but they made sense.

I nodded to show I understood.

He seemed particularly dissatisfied with my reaction.

He roughly grabbed my arm and dragged me into the bedroom, making me stand to the side as he casually kissed the girl on the bed—who was clearly not Zhou Xuran.

The girl’s voice was shrill, and several times I wanted to turn and leave.

But I was too curious about what his face looked like when he was kissing, when he was lost in passion, when he was completely consumed.

This stubborn curiosity kept me there until the end.

After he got dressed, he pulled me back to the living room.

I took the opportunity to explain the cut on my wrist and pulled up the weather forecast on my phone to show him that it had indeed rained last night.

Maybe it was because I looked so serious, but he smiled and leaned in closer, trapping me in the corner of the couch.

The way he smiled almost made me mistake him for someone else. Luckily, I turned my head just before he could kiss me.

His lips landed on my cheek.

I was shocked.

He had clearly said he didn’t like guys, yet here he was, trying to kiss me.

Was there something wrong with him?

“Why are you dodging? Don’t you like me?” he asked, pressing down on me.

The heat of his breath made me frown.

“I accept your warning that you don’t like guys,” I said, my tone probably a bit cold.

Truthfully, whether he liked guys or not didn’t matter much to me.

But he wasn’t satisfied with my answer. He roughly grabbed my wrist, exposing the bloodstained bandage. “Is this what you call acceptance?”

I tried to push him away, but I accidentally hit his eye, and my untrimmed nail scratched the corner of his eye.

At that moment, I was jolted awake.

I frantically cupped his face, my eyes reddening involuntarily. I apologized over and over, wiping the blood from the corner of his eye, asking if it hurt.

He casually wiped it away and said it was nothing, laughing at me for overreacting.

But I was scared.

I was scared his face would be ruined.

Blood seeped from the cut again, and I finally broke down, shedding a couple of tears, one hand stubbornly pressing on his wound.

I didn’t understand why a guy’s skin could be so easily broken.

“It’s fine, I don’t blame you,” he said, grabbing my trembling fingers and inexplicably kissing my fingertips.

I turned and fled, rummaging through the living room for the first aid kit as he had described.

The cut wasn’t big, but his skin was pale, making the redness around the wound stand out.

I tried to reassure myself that it was nothing, but the more I looked, the stranger his face seemed.

He didn’t look the same as before.

I didn’t want to look at him anymore and was about to turn away, but he grabbed my hand.

“Do you like me that much?”

This question, paired with the wound on the corner of his eye, was so different from the scene in my memory that I suddenly felt like I didn’t know him anymore.

I felt sick.

“Gao Xuyan.”

I pulled my hand away and called his name, taking two steps back as I coldly stared at him.

He seemed startled but didn’t want to ruin the mood, so he got up and tried to pull me closer.

I avoided his hand. “I don’t like you.”

After saying that, I didn’t look at his expression again. I turned and left.

Once I was out of the apartment complex, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. A heavy sense of loss pressed down on me from head to toe, making my limbs go numb. Frantically, I pulled out my phone and looked at the photos I had saved, only to realize that the two people who had once looked so similar now looked nothing alike.

The Gao Xuyan in my photo album had become a stranger.

I deleted all his photos.

I thought back to the image of that person in my mind.

Wen Yu.

His name was Wen Yu.

He always had black bangs covering his eyebrows and wore a cheeky smile as he followed me around.

He’d tug on the back of my hoodie and say:

“Xiao Pei, I ran into you again.”

“Xiao Pei, you’re so smart.”

“Xiao Pei, why are you upset?”

“Xiao Pei, wanna date?”

Back then, I said no.

That night, I dreamt of him for the first time in a long while.

He asked me again, “Xiao Pei, wanna date?”

I said yes.

He held my hand and kissed my forehead.

When I woke up, I got a call from Gao Xuyan.

At first, he sounded impatient, but when he heard the heavy nasal tone in my voice from crying, his tone softened.

He asked if I wanted to meet.

I said no.

After hanging up, I blocked his number and dialed Wen Yu’s familiar number.

A mechanical female voice told me the number was no longer in service.

I laughed bitterly and asked the phone, “Wen Yu, where are you?”

The voice on the other end stubbornly repeated, “The number you have dialed is no longer in service.”

I was annoyed and, like an idiot, asked again.

But the voice in my memory, the one that used to say, “Wen Yu’s here, Wen Yu’s right here,” didn’t appear.

I felt sad.

Well, more than just a little sad.

Wen Yu was a bastard. He had deceived me, both in my dreams and in reality.

But I still missed him so much.

I wanted to cry, but I had already cried myself dry last night. I couldn’t shed any more tears. I pulled the blanket over my head, and my roommate knocked on my bed frame.

Gao Xuyan had realized I had blocked him and came to my dorm.

I got out of bed, threw on a jacket, and went out.

When I saw him, I was nervous.

I was afraid he would start to look like Wen Yu again, and I was also afraid he wouldn’t look like Wen Yu at all.

When I realized he didn’t look like either of them, I calmed down.

I asked him what he wanted.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he grabbed me and dragged me into a public restroom stall, locking the door and pinning me against it.

I didn’t understand what he was trying to do.

Even though I had supposedly been chasing him for so long, I never really understood him.

“I broke up with Zhou Xuran,” he said.

I thought, well, that’s normal. After all, he had been fooling around with other people. How could he still have the nerve to date the school beauty?

“Oh,” I responded.

“Are you still chasing me?” he asked.

I shook my head.

I didn’t plan to explain that I had never been chasing him in the first place. I thought it was good that he had never accepted my homosexuality.

At least it saved me the trouble.

But I had been too naive. He looked hurt, trying to kiss me, but when I refused, he leaned his head on my shoulder.

I pushed him away and repeated, “I don’t like you.”

He was stunned. He apologized and tried to find my lips again, but I dodged.

He said he had always had feelings for me, that he had never accepted me because he was afraid of his own sexuality, that he would treat me well from now on, that he would only like me—

Suddenly, I missed Wen Yu so much.

Wen Yu was a natural-born homosexual. He never hid his unconventional preferences. The first time we met, he made his intentions clear, like a peacock showing off its feathers.

Back then, I thought he was sick.

So much so that when I discovered my own sexuality, I thought I was sick too.

But Wen Yu said, “Homosexuality isn’t a sickness. In this lifetime, I only have enough love for one person.”

I thought he was brave, braver than anyone who discriminated against minority sexual orientations.

I also asked him why he liked me.

He said he didn’t know. There were so many people in the world, but he had met me. Maybe it was fate. I told him he was crazy.

Now, I asked Gao Xuyan why he liked me.

He also said he didn’t know, that there was no reason. Maybe it was just love at first sight one day that made him fall for me.

But I didn’t like him. I never had.

I tried to explain, but he wouldn’t listen. He was so emotional that he rolled up my jacket and his warm fingers slipped under my clothes.

In the chaos, I slapped him and took the opportunity to push him away. I opened the stall door and bolted.

I fled back to my dorm like I was escaping a beast.

My roommate asked me what was wrong. I told them I wasn’t chasing Gao Xuyan, never had, and never would.

They laughed like it was a joke.

I wasn’t surprised. I sat down at my desk expressionlessly, opened the high school math notebook Wen Yu had left me, and took out some paper and a pen.

One of my roommates asked what I was looking at.

I said it was a love letter from my boyfriend.

It really was a love letter. Wen Yu had said so himself.

I had opened this notebook countless times before, but this was the first time someone had asked about it.

He was surprised by how I referred to it. “Boyfriend?”

The other roommates also looked over.

I nodded and introduced, “His name is Wen Yu.”

“A warm islet, the harbor of your lifelong happiness.”

Eighteen-year-old Wen Yu smiled brilliantly.

He leaned on my shoulder from behind, yawning like a cat after a nap.

I pushed his head away and used his perfect test paper to smack his face. He wasn’t happy with my actions and fiercely stole a kiss from my lips, saying he would take off my school uniform and solve problems on my body when we got home.

I called him a pervert, and he admitted it without shame.

I was so angry that I chased him down the street to beat him up, but he stood straight and apologized.

I thought he was crazy.

Really.

But I couldn’t be bothered to argue with him, so I still held his hand and walked home with him.

I remember how the setting sun painted the sky every day, its orange light falling on Wen Yu’s back, dyeing his hair red. He was like a fiery maple leaf floating toward me, surrounding me with the gentlest gaze I had ever encountered, watching me willingly fall into his jar of honey, sinking deeper and deeper until I never wanted to get up again.

He said he wanted to marry me.

I corrected him, saying men couldn’t marry each other.

But he refused to change his wording, biting my lips to make me accept his twisted logic. I couldn’t win against him, so I just went along with it.

He was so proud of it, constantly talking about marrying me during that time.

I suspected he just liked the sound of it.

Now, at 22, I had reached the legal age for marriage, but he still hadn’t come to marry me.

I resented him a little.

If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have spent so much time chasing after people who resembled him, deceiving myself. I wouldn’t have gotten involved with Gao Xuyan, and I wouldn’t be holding onto an empty promise someone made to marry me at this age.

But deep down, I wanted him to marry me.

I couldn’t deny it.

But I still resented him.

Maybe he knew he had wronged me, because after that, he never appeared in my dreams again.

The rumors about me chasing Gao Xuyan finally changed after a while.

After that, I rarely saw him.

Occasionally, I’d run into him, and he was always with some girl.

I noticed he looked less and less like Wen Yu, and my feelings for him gradually faded into indifference.

I admit I wasn’t being fair, but I hadn’t done anything wrong.

I just missed Wen Yu so much that whenever I saw someone who looked a bit like him, I wanted to be nice to them. From start to finish, it was all just kindness. Except for rejecting Gao Xuyan’s feelings, I hadn’t done anything bad to him.

I knew I was thinking about Wen Yu more and more, and my resentment toward him was reaching its limit—

But I really… missed him.

Before winter break, I packed up some things from my dorm to send home. While at the school’s delivery station, I ran into Gao Xuyan again.

He had lost a lot of weight, and his expression when he looked at me was still complicated. But he didn’t pretend not to know me. He greeted me and then walked away.

I thought he was probably starting to move on.

During winter break, I went back to my hometown. The first thing I did was buy a bouquet of flowers that Wen Yu used to hate, planning to visit him.

But in the end, I couldn’t bear it and also bought a bouquet of roses, his favorite.

He didn’t actually like flowers. But after meeting me, he started saying he was the little prince from planet B612, and I was his only rose.

From then on, he loved roses like crazy.

On the day I went to visit him, I dressed up a bit and brought the two bouquets to the cemetery.

There were quite a few people visiting before the New Year, so I sat with him for half the afternoon before I got a chance to talk to him alone.

The roses had wilted under the sun, but the white forget-me-nots were still holding on. I moved the roses to my lap and apologized to his photo.

I should have come earlier, knowing so many people would be here these days.

But he wouldn’t blame me. After all, he had been dead for several years.

I angrily placed the roses in front of his tombstone and stared at his photo for a long time. The more I looked, the more I wanted to punch him.

I called him an idiot, but no one responded.

If it were before, he would have answered.

I started resenting him again.

I lit a cigarette and put it in my mouth. The bitter, spicy smoke made my eyes water.

I asked him if he remembered promising to marry me.

Only his photo on the tombstone smiled back.

I asked him if I could marry him instead.

He didn’t answer, just smiled like an idiot, making me even angrier.

I stood up and kicked his favorite roses, crushing the red petals under my feet. Then I turned and left, not daring to look back…

I thought he deserved it.