Evening Stars Chapter 34
Translated by Q the Panda (ko-fi)
Chapter 34
After the call ended, Teacher Xu felt much better. He turned around to face the side of the car, shielding himself from the wind, cupped his hands around the lighter to light a cigarette, and exhaled a comfortable puff of white smoke.
Teacher Xu lowered his gaze and looked at his phone again. Fang Shiyou had just stopped for a break, and now he was back on the road. Before setting off, Fang Shiyou had sent him a WeChat message.
[I've saved up quite a few days off. After this rescue, I'll have a few more. I'm thinking of taking them all together. If you'd like, we could go see Namcha Barwa over the New Year. It's a long drive, over ten hours. Or we could just stay home and rest. What do you think?]
Teacher Xu glanced up at the transient clear sky after the snowfall, wanting to take in a little more of it before looking down again. He couldn't help but laugh to himself. Dr. Fang was almost thirty, yet when it came to romance, he was less adept than those students back at the main school in Beijing. The love notes and confession letters he'd confiscated back then were full of flowery prose and poetic flair, overflowing with ‘moonlight and blossoms.’
But despite thinking this way, he ended up rereading the message several times. No wonder they said sincerity was a killer move. Dr. Fang's message was clearly just a straightforward discussion about taking leave, yet when seen through the lens of someone in love, everything sounded like a love confession. He spent the length of a cigarette rereading the message over and over. By the end, he thought helplessly, ‘Well, that's it, I've turned into a lovestruck fool.’
As for being a love-struck fool, Xu Nanheng immediately self-diagnosed, but Fang Zhiyou was the one beyond cure.
When their rescue team returned to the county hospital, everyone unloaded the equipment, then went to the pharmacy to register and collect medicines for the next outreach mission. They had three or four hours to rest in between. Most people just showered quickly at the hospital and grabbed a nap in the lounge.
Beds there were limited. Some found empty hospital beds to lie on, and others made do on the narrow examination bed in someone else's consultation room.
Fang Shiyou took a quick hot shower, thinking he'd been fast enough, but when he came out, all the beds in the lounge were already taken. Even the hospital beds were full. He had no choice but to head for Professor Gu's office.
“I'm back.” Fang Shiyou closed the door, glanced at the curtain behind the desk, and said, “I'll crash here for a bit, Dad.”
Professor Gu let out an absentminded “Ah,” then took off his glasses and turned to look at him.
Fang Shiyou had just taken off his coat. Seeing his father looking over, he paused mid-movement, silently asking what was wrong.
Professor Gu was in his sixties. He was wearing a round-neck sweater under his white coat, and a white shirt under the sweater. He looked proper and meticulous as always. “You've lost quite a bit of weight.”
“Oh.” Fang smiled. “Rescue work, you know. We just had to make do with food and drink.”
“I've got some Choco Pies in that bag. Take them with you later.”
“Okay.” Fang Shiyou continued taking off his coat, then went to grab his father's pillow and blanket from the narrow cabinet. He had just lain down and was about to pull the curtain closed when he glanced at his father's back.
The old wooden chair was chipped at the edges, its straight back stiff and uncomfortable. Fang Shiyou sat up again, handed the pillow to his father, and said, “Use this for your back. I'll use my coat.”
“Hm?” Professor Gu turned. “No need, I'm fine.”
Fang Shiyou didn't insist. He was only planning to nap for a bit anyway. He lay back down, using his coat as a pillow. His father wasn't seeing patients today. He was on the night shift, currently reviewing a surgical patient's report.
Fang Shiyou lay there for a while, unable to fall asleep. Staring at the ceiling of the office, he noticed how cramped the space was. The edge of the bed nearly touched the curtain. After a moment, he lifted the curtain slightly and said, “Dad.”
“Mm.” Professor Gu didn't look back.
Fang Shiyou wet his lips and said, “Uh, I need to tell you something. I'm seeing someone.”
Professor Gu was fully focused at the moment. Father and son were alike that way. When concentrating, they shut out everything else. So although he gave an absentminded hum, he wasn't actually listening.
And lately, Fang Shiyou's aunt, Professor Gu's older sister, had been trying to set his father up with a companion. So when Fang Shiyou said he was in a relationship, Professor Gu first heard it as, ‘You should be seeing someone.’
His brow furrowed. He put on his glasses, pushed them up the bridge of his nose, and said sternly, “Which someone should I see? I'll work a few more years until I retire, and then I'm going fishing at Jishuitan with your uncle.”
“……” Fang Shiyou realized his father had misheard. He'd brought it up on impulse, not knowing how much his father could handle this kind of topic.
Since Professor Gu had misheard, it gave him an opportunity to pivot, and the topic could have been dropped right there.
Still, after a brief pause, Fang Shiyou cleared his throat and said again, “It's me. I'm the one in a relationship. I wasn't advising you to find someone.”
Professor Gu was looking at a consultation report on the computer. Hearing that, he swiveled around with his chair.
He took off his glasses again and stared at his son. “You?”
“Yeah.” Fang Shiyou kept his eyes on the ceiling, not daring to meet his father's gaze. “Me.”
Fang Shiyou could almost be sure that his father's first reaction upon hearing that was to recall how old he was this year. Sure enough, after a moment of silence Professor Gu said, “Oh. Well, at your age, it's certainly time you could be dating someone. Go ahead and take it seriously.”
“Alright. I'm gonna nap for a bit,” Fang Shiyou replied.
Professor Gu reached out to pull the curtain closed, then took a sip of tea to calm himself. For parents, every stage of a child's growth came with clear signals. Starting school, entering university, becoming an adult, and graduating from college were all signals that the student life had ended. Next came falling in love and getting married, which meant their time of being single was over.
And the final signal of their growth was when the child had a child of their own.
Professor Gu was now witnessing that second stage. Understandably, the single father looked a little at a loss. He took a break from reviewing the consultation report. Anyway, the patient had gone out to eat.
Then he adjusted his glasses and opened his sister's chat on WeChat, asking her about the current locations and housing prices of the better school districts for primary and secondary schools in Beijing.
Naturally, the next step after dating was marriage, and once married, shouldn't they quickly prepare for a school district home?
The clumsy Professor Gu typed out a message to his sister: ‘How much do houses in good school districts in Beijing go for these days?’
His sister was stunned. She replied: ‘You're having a kid?!’
Before sleeping, Fang Shiyou had checked in with Teacher Xu. Xu Nanheng sent back a sleepy emoji and told him to sleep well.
And he really did, a very high-quality three-and-a-half hours of sleep, on a narrow and hard bed. Dating truly was a strange thing. Everything felt comfortable, and everything looked pleasant.
For the next week, the two didn't see each other at all.
Dr. Fang was busy with mwidcal services, and Teacher Xu had classes to teach. The whole week they relied on WeChat and phone calls. Xu Nanheng would grade papers while chatting through his earphones, and before long, their conversations would turn into rants.
“They can't even be bothered to write the word ‘Solution’ for me!”
Fang Shiyou: “……”
“Who is this, writing ‘C’ for every multiple-choice question? Figured they're bound to get a few right, huh…… Alright, fine, Serwa Dorje.”
Fang Shiyou could easily picture him at his desk, grinding his teeth as he marked papers. He found himself grinning like an idiot on the small guesthouse bed in the village where they were holding the outreach.
When Yang Gao, his roommate, came in and saw him, he thought Fang had lost it. “What are you so happy about?”
Fang Shiyou sat up when he came in. Then, the other two doctors who shared the room also returned, so Fang Shiyou simply went outside to make his call.
“Hm?” Xu Nanheng heard the sound of a door opening and closing. “You went outside?”
“Yes, I came out to have a cigarette.”
Right after he spoke, the sound of a lighter clicking reached the headphones. Xu Nanheng sighed. “Now you're making me want one too.”
He genuinely wanted a cigarette. Grading papers had left him irritable and restless. The solutions were one thing, but the handwriting was atrocious. Deciphering the characters was driving him crazy.
Fang Shiyou took a drag from his cigarette, then flicked off the ash. “Teacher Xu is too principled.”
“Of course. One of my few remaining virtues.”
“Hey now, if you put it like that, I'll have to start listing more for you.”
Xu Nanheng couldn't help but laugh. “Don't bother, Dr. Fang. You've had a long day.”
“I'm not tired. Talking to you takes it all away.”
Xu Nanheng thought to himself, ‘Great, another lovestruck fool.’ But he knew better. Out there doing medical outreach, conditions were tough. Forget the food and lodging, the dirt roads in those remote Tibetan mountains were rough and winding. A drive of twenty or thirty kilometers could easily take two or three hours. There was no way Dr. Fang wasn't exhausted. He wasn't made of iron.
Xu Nanheng adjusted his earphones a little deeper and asked, “How many of you are sharing a room?”
“Four.”
Thinking that the conditions must not be very good, Xu Nanheng felt a slight pang of sympathy. “Alright, don't stay out in the cold. Go back and get some rest.”
These two had no other choice but to be separated just when their relationship was starting. But there was no helping it. One was in a medical aid program, the other a volunteer teacher in the mountain. Their circumstances weren't built for romance.
With professional duties like these, everything else had to take a back seat.
Fang Shiyou also knew that Teacher Xu was working at this time, and a five or six-minute phone call should be satisfying enough.
So he said, “Alright, I'll be back the week after next.”
“Mm.” Xu Nanheng's tone was open and natural. “I'll remember that.”
They didn't get too sentimental about it. When they were face-to-face, they could kiss until they ran out of breath, but over the phone, they kept things proper. After hanging up, Xu Nanheng left his earphones in and played a music, ‘Stay Calm.’
He hoped he really could stay calm over the next two weeks. Taking a steady breath, he picked up the next paper and went back to grading.
Time slipped quickly into mid-to-late October. The temperature in Tibet was dropping as fast as the battery of his old electric scooter back in Beijing. That thing would lose three bars the moment he turned into the alley.
Xu Nanheng started wearing his long down coat that reached his calves. It stayed warm enough inside the classroom, but outside he had to wrap up tight.
The teachers' dormitory wasn't connected to the heating system, and there were occasional power outages. On nights he couldn't use his small electric heater, Xu Nanheng would go sleep in Fang Shiyou's on-call room at the hospital.
That Friday, Xu Nanheng felt a bit of a headache coming on. He let his students out early, around seven-thirty, instead of keeping them for self-study. Tsering Dolkar noticed he didn't look well, so she handed him a piece of milk candy from her pocket.
He popped it into his mouth and started walking toward the small hospital. Normally, it took five or six minutes, but today, it felt like half a lifetime. And why did it feel like the hospital was getting farther away the more he walked?
Xu Nanheng quickly realized he might be sick. Catching a cold and fever during a temperature drop and snowfall was nothing unusual. Thinking of this, he gave himself a bit of encouragement. At least the hospital was up ahead. If he was going to collapse, better to do it right at the entrance. His chances of survival would be much higher that way.
After several snowfalls, the accumulated snow on the ground had frozen solid. With every step, Xie Nanheng sank ankle-deep, stumbling unsteadily as he walked.
After a long moment, the sound of a car engine reached him on the plateau wind. In Xu Nanheng's already blurry and unfocused vision, the background seemed to waver between sharp and blurry, like a camera constantly adjusting its depth of field.
And then, he was embraced by someone.
At the same moment, a voice reached his ears. It was a voice he'd only heard through earphones for the past two weeks.
“Teacher Xu.”
Xu Nanheng managed a faint smile and answered, “Yeah, Dr. Fang.”
The next moment, under the scattered stars of a freezing night nearing eight o'clock, Fang Shiyou leaned in and kissed him.
Xu Nanheng tilted his chin slightly and kissed him back.
But a moment later, Fang Shiyou suddenly pulled away. “You have a fever.”
Even burning up, Xu Nanheng couldn't resist quipping. “Is this another private treatment method for measuring oral temperature?”
Fang Shiyou leaned in to kiss him again. “Yeah, exclusively for you.”
Then he took Xu Nanheng's arm, turned sideways, lifted him onto his back, and strode toward the hospital.