Evening Stars Chapter 29
Translated by Q the Panda (ko-fi)
Chapter 29
Dr. Fang used two pots to cook the noodles, one to boil water and the other to heat the oil. While the oil warmed over low heat, he pulled out the cutting board and knife. Under Xu Nanheng's gaze, he skillfully sliced the large chunk of beef into thin, even pieces. His knife work was steady and precise.
Fang Shiyou: “Do you eat scallions?”
“Yes.”
He chopped the scallions and ginger, then asked, “What about minced garlic?”
“That's fine.”
The scallions, ginger, garlic, and beef went into the pot together. The oil was already sizzling. Dr. Fang raised his hand and turned on the range hood. It seemed he didn't have a spatula, so he held the pot handle with one hand, tilting the pan to keep the ingredients moving and heated evenly.
Then……
“Whoa.” Xu Nanheng watched as he flipped the pan. “Is that also a mandatory course in med school?”
This time, Fang Shiyou didn't joke. “Last month, the faucet broke. To fix it, I had to shut off the main valve, but the latch on the door to this building's water meter room was jammed. I used a spatula to pry it open. The spatula got bent and couldn't be used anymore.”
Xu Nanheng: “You really can do anything, huh.”
“Hm?” Fang Shiyou flipped the pan again, turned the flame down, and dropped two handfuls of noodles into the pot of boiling water, covering it with the lid.
Xu Nanheng: “You can cook, fix faucets, and you're a doctor.”
Fang Shiyou smiled. “It's not that impressive, just basic life skills.”
Then he added, “Probably because…… I've lived alone for more than twenty years.”
This addition wasn't really necessary, but he was reminded of the conversation he had with Yang Gao in the early morning. He didn't know if Xu Nanheng was single, but he needed Xu Nanheng to know that he was.
After saying that, Fang Shiyou turned off the stove, tossed the greens into the noodle pot, and took oyster sauce, soy sauce, and a bit of vinegar from the fridge to mix in a bowl. It was almost ready to serve.
“Do you eat cilantro?” Fang Shiyou asked.
“Ah.” Xu Nanheng just snapped back to attention. “Do I just pick it?”
“Mm.”
Two seconds later.
“Dr. Fang……”
“Yeah?” Fang Shiyou looked over at him, then fell silent.
Teacher Xu had pulled one whole coriander plant out of the small pot, roots and all. Only after pulling it out did Xu Nanheng realize that, perhaps, the reason the coriander was planted there was so that it could keep growing even after the leaves were picked.
“Can this situation still be surgically fixed, doctor?” Xu Nanheng looked at the entire plant in his hand, then looked at him.
Fang Shiyou fished the noodles from the pot with chopsticks. “No saving it. Just pronounce the time of death.”
Xu Nanheng raised his wrist. “My watch's dead.”
Fang Shiyou glanced at his own wrist. “I'm not wearing mine.”
“Then let's just remember this day,” Xu Nanheng said, handing him the coriander.
Fang Shiyou sighed helplessly. “There's still dirt on the roots, Teacher Xu.”
After a brief moment of silence, Xu Nanheng rinsed the cilantro clean and passed it back to him. The noodles Dr. Fang cooked were delicious. After eating, he had to head to the hospital.
“Will you get bored at home this afternoon?” Fang Shiyou asked, looking up at him.
Xu Nanheng had actually planned to spend the afternoon reading the papers he'd downloaded, but at that question, he nearly dropped his chopsticks. “No.”
After answering, the teacher, who couldn't hide anything to save his life, glanced at the laptop sitting on the dining table. Dr. Fang followed his gaze and looked at it too.
“No,” Xu Nanheng repeated.
“Alright.”
“I was reading some…… articles earlier,” Xu Nanheng said.
Fang Shiyou had already finished eating. He pulled a napkin and wiped his mouth. “Oh, okay.”
“Academic articles.”
“Alright.” Fang Shiyou nodded.
“I mean it.”
“……” Fang Shiyou met his eyes and said, “I know.”
The more he tried to explain, the worse it sounded. Xu Nanheng's expression went blank for a moment before he stood up and took Fang Shiyou's bowl. “Go on, I'll wash these.”
Fang Shiyou didn't say anything and stood up as well.
The kitchen wasn't large. One might even call it cramped, and the space was quite tight with two adult men over six feet tall standing in it. The young master's idea of ‘doing the dishes’ meant literally only the dishes. Fang Shiyou probably expected that, so he followed in to help. While Xu Nanheng washed the bowls, Fang Shiyou cleaned the stovetop. After Xu Nanheng finished the two bowls, Fang Shiyou took over to scrub the pots and finally took out the trash.
“I'm heading out then.” Fang Shiyou put on his coat and his watch. “Tonight, I……”
Xu Nanheng, with his hand resting on his laptop, looked up at him.
Fang Shiyou: “Tonight, can I…… come back?”
Xu Nanheng almost didn't catch what he said. “Huh?”
Xu Nanheng: “Of course you can. You're the one who took me in.”
“I was just worried you might not be used to sharing a bed,” Fang Shiyou said as he changed his shoes by the door.
Xu Nanheng shook his head. “With you, it's fine.”
Fang Shiyou paused for a moment, forcing his tone and expression to stay even. “Alright, then I'll come back.”
All afternoon, Xu Nanheng went from ‘The Gay Representations on Screen’ to ‘Infectious Diseases’ to ‘Male Characters in BL Novels.’ By the time he closed his laptop, his eyes were sore. He pressed a hot towel over them to ease the strain.
When Fang Shiyou came back that evening, Xu Nanheng felt incredibly confident. He'd absorbed plenty of theoretical knowledge. He fully understood the essence of homosexuality, knew the case studies, and grasped the characteristics.
But once they lay down again side by side, all that theory and data became nothing more than skins in a game, serving only an aesthetic purpose.
Xu Nanheng had read those papers hoping to understand the issue first. That was a math teacher's logic: you had to understand the question before figuring out the answer. But this kind of thing wasn't a matter of logic. He lay straight on his back, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.
He'd also hoped those academic articles could help him analyze Fang Shiyou, to figure out whether he had any inclination that way. But he was completely at a loss.
Fang Shiyou was lying on his side, scrolling through his phone. He was looking at the imaging reports of the patient scheduled for surgery the next day, but the internet was too slow. The images took forever to load. He gave up. He was used to the poor connection here anyway. Locking his screen, he decided he'd just look at the scans in person tomorrow.
As soon as he set the phone down and turned to lie on his back, he glanced sideways and asked, “Can you really sleep that stiffly?”
Xu Nanheng's mind was a battlefield of swords and spears. The sudden sound of Fang Shiyou's voice startled him, and his hand clenched the edge of the blanket. “Huh?”
“……Oh, I-I'm fine,” Xu Nanheng said. “I'm thinking.”
Fang Shiyou: “Thinking about the papers you read this afternoon?”
Xu Nanheng's gaze tightened. “They were all academic papers.”
“You don't have to keep stressing that. I believe you.”
“Do you?” Xu Nanheng glanced at him, swallowed, and asked, “Dr. Fang, do you think emotions matter more, or rationality?”
Fang Shiyou tilted his head to the side. The room was dim, and outside, the wind rustled through the leaves and branches. There were no stars tonight.
Because there was no light, Xu Nanheng was blurred in his vision. Fang Shiyou asked “Did you…… run into some kind of problem?”
“Sort of.” Xu Nanheng stared at the ceiling, avoiding his gaze. “It's just…… I have no experience with this. I studied some examples, but I haven't figured out a suitable method for me to solve the problem. I told myself that even without experience, I should at least have courage. But it turns out, I don't have that either.”
He was speaking illogically and without context, yet somehow Fang Shiyou felt like he understood it all.
Because he was in the same state himself, though he knew they were probably on completely different wavelengths.
“Can I……” Fang Shiyou swallowed. “Can I ask for a few more details about your problem?”
“You probably……” Xu Nanheng swallowed too, “can't.”
He added, “It's not that I don't trust you. It's just…… too personal.”
Lying that stiffly wasn't comfortable, so Xu Nanheng relaxed a little and reached for his phone. But as soon as he moved, his hand brushed against the back of Fang Shiyou's hand under the blanket.
The instant skin met skin, both of them froze.
It was just a touch of hands, yet their bodies stiffened as if they'd brushed against something far more sensitive. In the still night of the small county town, both of their breaths seemed to stop at once.
The two lay perfectly still in the palpable silence, the small patch of skin remained in contact, their breath caught in their chests.
Then Fang Shiyou's phone chimed. He hadn't put it on silent, so the WeChat notification sounded unusually loud. As if they had been rescued, the two separated, and Fang Shiyou reached for the phone beside his pillow.
As a doctor, getting a message at that hour was rarely good news. Sure enough, it was from his mentor. Without even opening the chat, Fang Shiyou sat up immediately.
Only then did he let out a breath of relief.
“Something wrong?” Xu Nanheng asked.
Fang Shiyou: “No, it's fine. My mentor was just asking what time I'll arrive tomorrow.”
“Damn.” Xu Nanheng didn't know whether to laugh or cry. “You made such a big fuss.”
Fang Shiyou chuckled softly, lay back down, and said, “Because for so many years, whenever he contacts me in the middle of the night, it's always an emergency. Once, when I was in Beijing, he messaged me late at night saying the ER was short-staffed because dozens of car crash victims had been brought in, and he needed me to come help.”
“And then?” Xu Nanheng asked.
“But we only had one car, and he'd already taken it…… Oh, my mentor's actually my father. He had taken the car, so I had no ride. It was snowing heavily, and I couldn't get a taxi or a ride-share. I had no choice but to call the police,” Fang Shiyou said.
That was quite a lot of information. So his mentor was his father. Xu Nanheng thought about it and figured it was probably to avoid suspicion of favoritism. After all, calling someone ‘Dad’ in a hospital could easily make people assume he'd gotten in through nepotism.
Xu Nanheng: “It's such a pity you didn't know me back then.”
“Yeah,” Fang Shiyou said.
Xu Nanheng frowned slightly. “Wait, since you and your dad are both doing aid work here in Tibet, why aren't you living together?”
“Because aside from a few people in management, no one knows we're father and son. I took my mother's surname, and I've always called him Professor Gu. For the Tibet aid program, everyone gets a single-room apartment,” Fang Shiyou explained. “But the assignment itself was just a coincidence. My dad didn't tell me to sign up. I saw the posting and applied on my own.”
Xu Nanheng knew he probably shouldn't pry, but in the dim, quiet room, under the blanket, conversation came easily. “Is your relationship with him strained?”
“No, not at all,” Fang Shiyou said. “It's just that my mother passed away from postpartum complications. When he named me, he used her surname.”
“Oh, I'm sorry,” Xu Nanheng said, his tone softening. “So you studied medicine because of Professor Gu?”
“It's fine, you don't have to apologize.” Fang Shiyou lay back, his voice more relaxed. “As for studying medicine, when I was filling out my college preferences, he said I could choose whatever I wanted, that there was no need to study medicine. Said it's too exhausting.”
“It does look exhausting,” Xu Nanheng said.
He really liked hearing Fang Shiyou talk about himself. He also realized that he was even more curious about him than he'd thought.
“So you and Professor Gu work at the same hospital?”
“Yeah.” Fang Shiyou chuckled softly. “That was really just a coincidence too. He's busy, I'm busy, we barely talk. Once, we ran into each other at the hospital while both wearing white coats. He stared at me for a few seconds in surprise.”
Xu Nanheng pictured the scene and couldn't help laughing.
“So your relationship's actually okay?”
“Pretty much. It's just that we're both too busy to really connect,” Fang Shiyou said, clearing his throat with a small cough. “He was always busy when I was a kid, though he'd occasionally find time to help me with my homework. Sometimes he'd get mixed up. When I was in junior high, he once spent an entire afternoon teaching me advanced algebra. Then he blurted out without thinking, ‘Oh dear, it really is a bit too early to cover this in senior high.’”
“Pfft.” Xu Nanheng tried to hold it in but failed and burst out laughing.
Fang Shiyou laughed along with him.
Gu Changze, Professor Gu, had experienced the highs and lows of life early on, losing his wife shortly after the birth of his son. He held the infant Fang Shiyou and went through a very dark period.
For twenty-nine years, Gu Changze never remarried and never sought another relationship. He buried himself in work, numbing everything else. What he gave Fang Shiyou was nearly all he had — his wealth, his connections, and his knowledge.
There wasn't much of a rift between father and son, nor any taboos left unspoken. On Fang Shiyou's birthdays, Professor Gu would clumsily cook him a bowl of unpalatable noodles. There were photos of Fang Shiyou's mother in the house, and Professor Gu would occasionally tell him stories about Fang Minshu's youth.
“So, no melodramatic story, no history of tragic, world-shattering heartbreaks,” Fang Shiyou said, lifting a hand to touch the folded Doraemon blanket he was using as a pillow. “I'm just an ordinary person.”
“What about you?” Fang Shiyou asked. “The G-Wagon owner.”
By asking this, Fang Shiyou was openly expressing his desire to know everything about Xu Nanheng.
Xu Nanheng said, “Uh, things are good with my family. And…… ahem, well, the Xu family lives in a siheyuan in Dongcheng.”
“Oh.” Fang Shiyou feigned surprise. “And how did Young Master Xu end up suffering out here?”
“Volunteer teaching, obviously.” Xu Nanheng lifted his tone playfully. “To devote myself.”
“So why did Teacher Xu drive here alone?”
“Ah, well……” Xu Nanheng shifted the topic. “Wasn't it to rescue you on National Highway 109, Dr. Fang?”
“Oh, come on.” Fang Shiyou laughed. “Don't start with that.”
It really did sound too exaggerated. After saying it, Xu Nanheng laughed too, and the wooden bed in the small county apartment creaked in rhythm with the synchronized laughter of two grown men.
This was a little bit……
The laughter died down.
Someone coughed, and the air turned awkward again. So, when two people share a blanket, they should just go to sleep. ‘Drink more hot water and don't stay up late,’ how could that advice ever be wrong?
“Ah.” Xu Nanheng finally found a way to break the tension.
After that, he briefly told Fang Shiyou about his experience with the volunteer teaching program at the main school in Beijing. He spoke about it lightly, because now that he was out of that situation, it had become a very, very minor thing.
He thought Fang Shiyou would comfort him with something like ‘don't take it to heart.’
But after listening, Fang Shiyou said seriously, “You don't need to please anyone. You're already a very good person. You are kind, you understand balance, you are polite, and gentle. You are willing to accept the present situation, you have the courage to compromise, and you fight within the small gap of that compromise. Whether you live in a siheyuan in Dongcheng or a water curtain cave in hutong, Teacher Xu, you are…… a truly good person.”
(T/N: hutong refers to the alley or narrow street between rows of siheyuan.)
Fang Shiyou hadn't really slept these past few days. He hadn't had a full night's rest in a long time.
He managed to finish that last sentence, then drifted off almost immediately. He was too sleepy and too exhausted. After introducing his situation to Xu Nanheng, he felt as peaceful and composed as if he had submitted a thesis. He was a simple person from a simple family. After that, he couldn't fight off the exhaustion anymore.
Xu Nanheng raised a hand to his chest, trying to calm the pounding in his heart, but it was useless. Even with a cardiothoracic surgeon lying beside him, it was no use. Was he supposed to use that as an excuse to act recklessly?