Chương 8: Catching Up

The neighbour's television sounds vibrated through the walls at a barely-audible level. Barely-audible, however, still means audible, and for an early-stage practicing cultivator, this was too much noise. Lin Che had been sitting cross-legged on the living room floor for some twenty minutes, eyes closed and breath controlled in an attempt to find that feeling — that current — again.

He'd managed to reproduce the results from last time, albeit with greater struggle than during the previous night, but could not get any further. He'd planned to ask Shen Yue for advice, but she had somewhere else to be. Probably wouldn't be back tonight. She'd presumably been living here long enough to have developed some level of managing the noise, or maybe subtle distractions of noise weren't much of an issue at her stage. He wasn't too sure. Either way, tonight was not a cultivation night.

He sat on the floor for another minute anyway, comfortable in the patch of carpet he'd warmed up with his body heat, and then got up and texted Xu Fang. you busy? The reply came in under a minute. was at lao chen's thing earlier. just got back. come over now? yeah give me 20 Forty five minutes later, Xu Fang arrived, which, for him, was basically on time. Lin Che buzzed him up and had the door open by the time he came down the hallway, jacket dripping with moisture.

"It's raining," Xu Fang said, by way of greeting.

"I can see that." Xu Fang let himself into the building and looked around as though he were window shopping at a Swedish furniture shop. He was taller than Lin Che by half a head, broader in the shoulders, and had a face which defaulted to a light smile that he often complained about. He took off his jacket and hung it on the hook by the door.

"Nice place," he said, running a hand along the wall.

"It's hers."

"Still nice." He barged through the hallway and made a sudden turn to the right, entering the kitchen.

"She's not here?"

"Out."

"On a Friday."

"She does things," Lin Che said. Xu Fang turned around and looked at him with great seriousness.

"Brother. Is your wife out on a Friday night without you, three weeks into your marriage?"

"She's not—" Lin Che paused.

"She had something to do."

"Right." Xu fang nodded and opened the fridge as though the apartment was already his. His eyes popped out for a split second as he studied the contents.

"What can I take?"

"Beer on the left." He took two, nudged the fridge shut with his elbow, and held one out to Lin Che. Just as Lin Che reached for the can, Xu Fang evaded the motion by raising the can slightly higher, then to the left, then to the right, went in a circular motion, before finally conceding the beverage to Lin Che.

"We should go out. I haven't been to Jincheng's in a while," he proposed, popping open the can with his now-free hand.

"The karaoke place?" questioned Lin Che.

"Do you know another Jincheng's?"

"Let me get my jacket."

Jincheng's was a ten minute walk, as most points of interest in the city happened to be, and two flights of stairs below street level. It was a former sewer turned karaoke bar, which, despite initially sounding offputting, gave it its own unique charm. The decor was the same as it had been since they were university students: low light, red upholstery, and small booths with screens and tambourines mounted on the walls for the musically or alcoholically talented.

They got a booth, and Xu Fang ordered a couple of beers and a large plate of fried chicken. Lin Che queued up a song without looking at what it was, and then looked at what it was.

"I'm not singing that," he said, upon seeing the title on the screen in front of him.

"You put it on."

"I misclicked." Xu Fang took the tablet from him before he could skip away from the song, and scrolled before adding something that Lin Che liked even less to the queue. He placed it on the seat beside him, and pulled out a microphone from the wall mounts, throwing it towards Lin Che. Then, he grabbed a tambourine and played to the beat. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

They went through nearly half of the beers before either of them said anything with some real weight to it. This was, as Lin Che had come to understand over many years, simply how Xu Fang operated. He needed about forty minutes to decompress in a new environment before he was actually present in it, though it was a bit faster tonight with the lack of new faces and presence of beer.

"How was Lao Chen's thing?" Lin Che asked.

"Loud. Too many people." Xu Fang pulled a bone out of his mouth and licked his thumb and index finger.

"You know how his place is. Every time I go I think it'll be a few of us, and then I arrive, and there's twenty people and someone's brought a speaker."

"Why do you keep going?"

"Because I like Lao Chen." He said this as if it were completely obvious, which it was.

"I just don't like everyone Lao Chen likes. The man has no standards for who he lets through the door." Lin Che drank his beer in agreement.

"So," Xu Fang started.

"So."

"Married life."

"What about it." Xu Fang pointed at him with a chicken wing.

"You know what about it. I get one phone call. One! Saying that you've registered, and then radio silence for three weeks. I had to hear about it from your mother before you even texted me."

"My mother texted you?"

"She was awfully excited." Xu Fang held his phone up to his face, unlocked it, and scrolled through his messages.

"She sent four photographs from the registration and a voice message."

"I didn't know she had your number."

"She's had it for years. Told me she got it from one of our high school consent forms. I think it was the trip to Beijing? When we put down each other's phone numbers and acted like they were our parents'."

"Yeah, I remember getting chewed out by her. She scolded me for being clever enough to do that and a fake signature, but too stupid to leave the slip out on my desk." Xu Fang made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. He picked up his beer and leaned back in the booth.

"So… how is it actually?" Lin Che thought about it for a moment.

"Strange," he admitted.

"But not bad. It's just strange in a way I'm adjusting to."

"Strange how?" he probed.

"It's just different, you know? It's not like having flatmates like uni, but I'm comfortable in it. That's the honest answer." Xu Fang looked at him for a moment.

"You're comfortable?"

"Yeah."

"Three weeks in."

"Is that surprising?"

"A little," Xu Fang said, sparing no hesitation.

"You're not the easiest person to live with, I imagine."

"Neither is she."

"Yeah, but you're all weird about your space."

"I am not weird about my space."

"In third year you had a motion-sensing camera pointed at your door to alert you whenever someone came near your room."

"It was a gift from my mother! I didn't know what else to do with it!"

"And I defended you for it. I said you had a reason, but people still found it strange." Lin Che drank his beer.

"We're still figuring things out." This seemed to satisfy Xu Fang, who nodded and looked at the screen before queueing a couple of songs before their names could escape his mind.

"I'll be honest. I thought it would take longer."

"For what?"

"For you to get married." He queued up a song about heartbreak.

"I remember you mentioning her years ago, like, 'there's someone my family wants me to meet eventually.' Like it was a footnote in your life."

"It was a footnote at the time."

"And now it's the whole book." Xu Fang glanced at him.

"That's not me being dramatic, mind you. You are, legally speaking, one entity now."

"I know," Lin Che said.

"I'm also," Xu Fang continued, his tone shifting back into its usual register, "completely furious with you."

"Are you?"

"I've known you for fifteen years. Fifteen. I introduced you to three separate women who were entirely willing to overlook your personality, and you couldn't be bothered for any of them." He gestured broadly in a defeated manner.

"And now you've gone and got cuffed before I even have a girlfriend. You of all people."

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" Xu Fang downed the last drops of his can and set it down.

"That's not the point. I want you to know that I'm happy for you, genuinely. But I'm also registering a formal complaint in that department." A brief moment of silence befell the two of them.

"She's good for you, though. I can tell already."

"You've never met her."

"I don't need to. You texted me to come over on a Friday night instead of sitting alone watching something. That's not normal Lin Che behaviour." He pointed at him. again.

"Normal Lin Che behaviour is to sit alone watching something and text me about it afterwards." Lin Che didn't say anything.

"So whatever's happening," Xu Fang said, "it's working." He picked up the microphone as the countdown started for his song: a pop-soul ballad with a romantic tune and lyrics about adultery.

They stayed until all the beers were finished and no meat remained on the bones of the fried chicken. On the way back, the rain had stopped, and the streets smelt of faint booze, smoke, and petrichor. There was that feeling of freedom they felt in their youths in the air. They walked back in the direction of the apartment. At the corner where their routes split, Xu Fang stopped.

"I want to meet her," he said.

"Properly. You know, both of you for dinner or something. Not a big thing."

"I'll ask her."

"Tell her I'm her brother-in-law. Lead with that." Xu Fang went in for a handshake and clapped him once on the shoulder in departure.

"Get home safe."

"Will do." Xu Fang gave him a look and turned and walked away, hands in his jacket pocket, pulling out a beanie to protect against the cold. Lin Che turned and walked home.

The apartment was dark when he got back. He checked his phone: just past three. He hadn't realised it had got that late. Lin Che locked the door behind him and went to take his shoes off and stopped. Shen Yue's coat was on the hook.

"Your location. Give it to me 24/7," called a voice from the kitchen.