On the first Friday of June, Xia Xiqing suddenly asked Zhou Ziheng to take him on a trip abroad. At that time, Zhou Ziheng was peeling an apple for him, and the long red curly peel broke, which made him feel a little sorry.
"Where are we going?" Zhou Ziheng took a bite of the apple. The crisp and juicy sound moved Xia Xiqing's heart. She took the apple from him and took a bite as well. She mumbled, "firenze."
He was speaking Italian. This was the first time Zhou Ziheng heard him speak Italian. He found it fresh and charming. The familiar syllables made him react immediately, "Florence?"
Xia Xiqing nodded, "Haven't you always wanted us to go traveling together? I just want to go back and see my teacher, and I need to trouble him with something."
Since learning about this plan, Zhou Ziheng has been extremely excited every day. He is a person who must spend a lot of time planning in advance no matter what he does, such as acting or writing papers. He follows the typical rules of a rigorous science man. But Xia Xiqing is just the opposite. He is free and disorderly, and he goes wherever he goes. Seeing the information collected by Zhou Ziheng, Xia Xiqing felt funny and helpless.
"Hey, you're going with me to my alma mater, not on your own." Xia Xiqing poked Zhou Ziheng's forehead with his finger, "Why do you act like a tour guide? Don't I know the way, Master Zhou?"
Zhou Ziheng grabbed his index finger, pulled it to his lips and kissed it, like a hummingbird kissing a delicate flower stamen. "I know, but I also want to know about the city where you go to school, so that I won't be too ignorant."
"It's okay." Xia Xiqing sat cross-legged opposite him and teased him deliberately, "I don't like your inner qualities anyway."
As soon as he finished speaking, Zhou Ziheng threw himself on Xia Xiqing, rested his head on his shoulder, tilted his head and gently kissed the side of his neck. The kiss was not enough, he opened his mouth and bit his skin, and bit the faintly throbbing blood vessels under the skin.
"Are you a dog?" Xia Xiqing said this, but his arms automatically wrapped around Zhou Ziheng's back.
"Does it hurt?"
"Okay."
So he bit it again, causing Xia Xiqing to gasp in pain. He pinched his face with both hands and pulled him up, rubbing and kneading that handsome face, then kissed him again for no apparent reason.
He likes Zhou Ziheng too much. Xia Xiqing thought so as he was having difficulty breathing from the kiss.
On the first working day, the two of them flew to Italy in a low-key manner. After more than ten hours of flight, it was already early morning when they arrived in Florence. Due to the special nature of his work, Zhou Ziheng had never traveled alone. Every time, he was accompanied by Xiao Luo and other staff members, and there were many people wherever he went. But Xia Xiqing was not like that. He always went alone, especially when he was abroad.
"Where is our hotel?" After putting the suitcase in the trunk of the taxi, Zhou Ziheng got in the car and sat next to Xia Xiqing. "Is it close?"
Xia Xiqing naturally leaned on Zhou Ziheng's shoulder and said, "I didn't book a hotel."
"You didn't book a hotel?" Zhou Ziheng didn't believe it. "Then where are we staying?"
"Let's sleep on the street." Xia Xiqing's voice was full of laughter. The driver was an Italian man in his fifties. His fat body was squeezed by the small seat, but his laughter was very hearty. When he saw the two young men with Asian faces, his first reaction was to speak to them in his poor English with a strong Italian accent, but Xia Xiqing directly answered in Italian, "You can speak Italian."
The uncle couldn't help but be a little surprised, "Your pronunciation is really authentic."
"I used to be a student of Fomei University." Xia Xiqing smiled, raised his head, and told the driver the address they were going to. Coincidentally, this enthusiastic uncle lived nearby. The two chatted for a while before he stepped on the accelerator and drove towards their home late at night.
Zhou Ziheng sat aside, looking at Xia Xiqing. The way he spoke Italian was completely different from the way he spoke Mandarin. There were many lively little expressions on his face. When he pronounced the words, he always pursed his lips inadvertently, quickly and lightly, and the little tongue hidden inside collided with the gums, making a playful trill. Sometimes he would make some gestures, with smiles in the corners of his eyes and eyebrows.
"The houses here are very beautiful, and you have good taste." The uncle praised very sincerely before getting off the car.
"I think so too." Xia Xiqing smiled at him.
"Do you rent a car?" The uncle put his arm on the car window, worried about him.
"No." Xia Xiqing shook his head, "But I will consider renting a car tomorrow." Zhou Ziheng stood beside him and stared blankly. He thought Xia Xiqing was so cute when he said this no. It was not like a straightforward negative sentence in English, but with a heavy nasal tone. The initial pronunciation place was not the mouth, nor the vocal cords, but the nasal cavity.
His nose wrinkled slightly, and a sticky resonance similar to "em" came from his nasal cavity. His shoulders shrank a little, and he shook his head gently. Finally, his soft tongue touched the upper palate and quickly left. All the little details made up such a small "no".
So cute, like a kitten refusing to be petted.
"Have fun then, pretty oriental boys."
The driver drove away and dropped them off in a quiet alley, with beautiful Italian-style houses on both sides. A pointed crescent moon hung in the narrow sky at the entrance of the alley, emitting a bright grayish-white light.
Zhou Ziheng spoke, imitating Xia Xiqing's tone just now, "Were you saying no just now?"
Xia Xiqing raised his right eyebrow and showed a surprised smile on his face. He was indeed an excellent student, but he just wanted to tease Zhou Ziheng, so he shrugged his shoulders, "boh~"
Another lovely interjection. Zhou Ziheng's heart skipped a beat again. The strange interjection that came out of Xia Xiqing's mouth was as endearing as a small pansy on the roadside.
"What does this mean?"
What Zhou Ziheng didn't know was that compared to a simple negative sentence, the modal particle boh is more playful, meaning "I don't know" and can be said at any time. Xia Xiqing also particularly likes to use this word when expressing himself verbally.
“boh.”
"What do you mean?" Zhou Ziheng followed him with his suitcase. The two of them walked up the green iron staircase outside a beige house. The zigzag staircase went back and forth twice and finally reached the top floor. Xia Xiqing stopped in front of the foreign blue door, turned around, and said to Zhou Ziheng for the last time, "boh~"
After saying that, he stuck out his tongue. This malicious cuteness was a fatal blow to Zhou Ziheng. Before Xia Xiqing could feel proud, Zhou Ziheng pressed him against the blue door, wrapped his arms around his waist and tightened them, and through the thin cotton shirts, the two bodies pressed together with their warm body temperatures.
The cold white moonlight passed by Zhou Ziheng's ears, illuminating Xia Xiqing's face, and softening the sly smile on his face. Zhou Ziheng lowered his head, and his straight nose slowly rubbed against Xia Xiqing's nose. His voice was deep, and mellowed by the night.
"Aren't you a bit too mean?"
Xia Xiqing tilted her head back, her full lips slightly parted, her soft eyes looking at Zhou Ziheng's lowered eyes, her hands loosely resting on his hips, letting him rub her in this ambiguous way.
It was not until Zhou Ziheng raised his eyes to look at him again that Xia Xiqing spoke, saying tempting words to him with that face that looked the kindest and cleanest.
"If you don't kiss me now, I'll become even worse."
There were too many soft whispers in these words, which dampened Zhou Ziheng's heart. Just when he lowered his head to kiss Xia Xiqing, he was dodged by Xia Xiqing with a smile, "It's too late."
He took out the key from his jeans pocket, lowered his head and opened the door that had not been opened for more than a year, and reached in to turn on the light inside. The warm yellow light instantly filled the small suite, and the beige walls were reflected in a warm and beautiful way.
"What does boh mean?"
Xia Xiqing expressed helplessness about his diligent research hobby, picked up his luggage and walked into the room, "I don't know."
"How could you not know?" Zhou Ziheng brought in another larger suitcase and placed it next to his in the corner, then took Xia Xiqing's hand.
"Boh means 'I don't know.'" Xia Xiqing grabbed Zhou Ziheng's hand and pulled him to sit on the small sofa in the living room. The moment his tired body sank into the soft sofa, he let out a comfortable sigh from the bottom of his heart and looked up at the ceiling.
The decoration of this small house is very interesting. The furniture in the living room is all in beautiful Italian classical style. Even the coffee cups are so delicate that they look like carved works of art. The brick-red ceiling looks like red wood boards pieced together, but if you look closely, it seems to be painted. The crystal lamp on the ceiling reflects colorful glass light, forming large and small circles of light on each small pendant. But this house is full of fireworks. There are many paintings on the off-white walls. Some are colorful oil paintings, but most are casual line drawings, which are a bit messy. There are also pages of books torn from somewhere, nailed to the wall with small silver thumbtacks together with the paintings.
These little details of life are completely Xia Xiqing's style.
“Is this the house you lived in when you were in school?”
"That's right." Xia Xiqing leaned his head against Zhou Ziheng's neck, "I was still living here at the end of February last year."
Zhou Ziheng actually thought that Xia Xiqing should live outside the school, but he didn't expect it to be such a small one-bedroom apartment. But he changed his mind and felt that this was a place where Xia Xiqing should live.
"Didn't the landlord rent the house to someone else during the year you were gone?"
Xia Xiqing shook his head. "The landlord is a very nice old lady. I specifically asked her to keep the house for me, and I would pay her rent regularly. Because at that time I didn't think I could stay in the country for too long, I would always have to come back." As he spoke, Xia Xiqing began to daydream. "The grandma is seventy years old. She lives on the first and second floors with her husband, and they have a very cute granddaughter. Every morning, the old lady would sit on a small stool at the door on the first floor to comb her granddaughter's hair. When she saw me coming downstairs, she would raise her hand enthusiastically, ciao~" He imitated the landlord's grandmother's way of greeting and smiled again.
Zhou Ziheng liked to hear him say this. His poor imagination suddenly came into play at this time. He imagined Xia Xiqing running down the stairs with his bag on his back and greeting the old lady.
"His wife used to be a shoemaker who repaired leather shoes. He had great skills and many people came to him for help, so he often went around with his small tool box. When he came back, he would always bring a small flower for grandma, sometimes an iris, sometimes a rose."
"Every time I see him arranging flowers for his grandmother, I think, how great it is to be alive." Xia Xiqing sighed with a smile, then lay down on her side with her head resting on Zhou Ziheng's thigh, her eyes looking up to the ceiling, and then from the ceiling to Zhou Ziheng's deep eyes.
He stretched out his fingers and gently stroked along his tall nose bridge, moving all the way down to the peak of Zhou Ziheng's lips, carefully outlining the shape of his lips like the most gentle brush.
"As long as you live long enough, you will always meet someone who can fall in love with you." Xia Xiqing murmured to himself.
Zhou Ziheng's heart beat violently, as if it was gently poked by the slender fingers. He lowered his head and kissed Xia Xiqing's thin eyelids.
After resting in the living room for a while, Xia Xiqing took him into his former bedroom. The bathroom was quite large. After taking a shower, the two of them changed into loose T-shirts. Xia Xiqing sat cross-legged on the bed and fell into silence. Zhou Ziheng stood by the bed and helped him blow his hair. His fingers gently played with the hair and gently brushed across his scalp.
"Luckily, the landlady always hires someone to help me clean the room, so I can go to bed straight away. Otherwise, it would take me a whole night just to clean the room." Xia Xiqing looked at the wall, "But these are too messy."
He was talking about the paintings on the bedroom walls. Those paintings could not be considered Xia Xiqing's works. They were half-finished works to vent his emotions. Some were not even half-finished works, but just a mess of lines. Hearing him say this, Zhou Ziheng also focused on the paintings on the wall. To be honest, most of these paintings were very abstract, even dark. Since he met Xia Xiqing, he rarely saw him paint in this style. Most of them were exquisite and elegant classical paintings.
There is a large oil painting in the middle facing the bed, which is much more complete than the others. The face in the painting looks like a human face, but it is divided into many pieces by lines, like a face in a broken mirror, with red eyes, black cheeks, pale lips, and each piece is painted in a different color, which gives a weird feeling.
Under his thin face, there is a black heart, which is the most realistic part of the whole painting. The blood vessels connected to the heart are flowing with black blood, watering the heart like poison.
Xia Xiqing stared at the painting quietly without saying a word.
Zhou Ziheng could feel his emotional changes, but he himself didn't even understand the principle behind it. It was as if their hearts were tied together by a thin red thread. As long as Xia Xiqing's heart moved the slightest bit, the thread would be pulled, tugging at his heart.
It seems to be saying, hey, the person you like is sad.
Zhou Ziheng turned off the hair dryer, ruffled Xia Xiqing's hair, and kissed the top of his head twice. "What's wrong?" He could see that Xia Xiqing's eyes were fixed on the painting, so he tried to ask, "What is that painting?"
Xia Xiqing's voice was emotionless, as if he was answering how the weather was today. "My self-portrait." He added, "My past self-portrait." It seemed that adding this sentence would make Zhou Ziheng feel less distressed. However, even he felt that this was completely useless, so he turned around and crawled into Xia's cool quilt, lying on his side and closing his eyes.
"I'm so tired." Xia Xiqing's voice was very light, "Let's go to sleep."
Zhou Ziheng lay down beside him and patted his shoulders gently, trying to coax him to sleep.
But after a long time, Xia Xiqing still didn't fall asleep. His eyelashes cast a trembling shadow under the light of the bedside lamp. Zhou Ziheng held him in his arms, giving him enough sense of security.
"Do you know why I rented this house?" Xia Xiqing still had his eyes closed. He was always inexplicably stubborn in some way.
“Because it’s small, a small house won’t be too empty.”
"Yeah." Xia Xiqing continued, "I came to Italy almost to escape the past, but I found that after coming here, I became a different person. I was the only Chinese student in the class, and my Italian was not very good at that time. Many times when people cursed me behind my back, I could only rely on their eyes to distinguish."
Zhou Ziheng frowned, "What are you scolding me for?"
"Freak, looks like a woman, and so on..." Xia Xiqing sighed, "But I don't mind it that much. Compared with the things that happened when I was a child, it's nothing. And later I became the social center of this circle, which is quite ironic."
"But at that time, my teacher was very worried about me. He thought I had serious psychological problems. If I kept using painting to express my twisted heart, it would only put me in a more dangerous situation." Xia Xiqing twitched his lips, "He once stopped me from painting and asked me to travel around and study in Europe."
Zhou Ziheng thought of the painting, "So, this painting was drawn by you at that time."
"Yeah." Xia Xiqing suddenly raised his eyes, "That's how I was at that time. I'm not lying to you."
Of course I don't want you to see my dark side, of course I want to hide those scars, those ugly and dilapidated areas, and all the lonely times when I was weak and decayed. But how can I say that these are not me
I have so many hypocritical moments, but at least in front of you, I don't want to pretend anymore.
Because you showed up and gave me the love I never had. You told me that I was beautiful.
Then I will... just believe it for now.
Xia Xiqing's consciousness gradually fell into a soft place, like clouds, but deeper than clouds. He vaguely felt that the person next to him had left, but he didn't know whether it was a dream or reality. He felt panic, but couldn't reach out and hug him. His consciousness just disintegrated and faded away bit by bit.
When he woke up the next day, the sun had already filled the small bedroom, and sprinkled on the light blue summer quilt they had covered themselves with. The summer breeze ruffled the curtains, and knocked on the glass window with the fragrance of a double-petaled rose. Xia Xi woke up, raised his hand to block the sun, and waited until his consciousness gradually returned to his soft body before he opened his eyes.
Zhou Ziheng was still sleeping, and his sleeping face was very beautiful. In the past, when he was at home, he always got up in a hurry, and Xia Xiqing rarely saw his sleeping face, so he lay on his side and watched for a long time. When he was asleep, every corner became soft, like a distant mountain covered with fog.
Xia Xiqing wondered if he should buy him some local specialties for breakfast, so he sat up, turned his neck, and prepared to get out of bed to wash up. Strangely, he found a box of colored pencils scattered all over the table beside the bed, and several pieces of waste paper.
He didn't take it too seriously at first, but when he looked directly at the wall opposite him, he couldn't help but stand there in a daze.
The self-portrait was gone, and in the center of the wall covered with paintings, there was a crudely done and even somewhat funny painting of a boy with a bright smile. The colors of the colored pencils were soft, like a child's painting drawn by a child.
He walked over with a puzzled look and took a closer look. It turned out that there was another line of words written at the bottom, and the beautiful handwriting made the painting look even more childish.
[Portrait of Xia Xiqing. —by: Zhou Ziheng]
The author has something to say: I saw a comment in the comment section yesterday. It was so well written that I wanted to share it with you.
[Xia Xiqing's love for me is just that I love everyone in my house.]