Through The Strait Gates Chapter 17

Even though they went wild the previous night, Dou Xun still woke up early due to his biological clock. His body might've been awake, but his soul was still hanging by his senses. He drifted downstairs in a daze, walking headfirst into Grandma Xu's chiding.

Grandma Xu's chiding was far from bothering. She talked at a pleasant speed, her tone the narration of a traditional play; something out of this world. "Your mother called twice last night. Ai, she cried until she was a mess. I couldn't make out what she was trying to say. Look at yourself, how could you run off without telling your mom? Ai, Grandma doesn't even know what hour you two came back last night. It's so dangerous out there nowadays. You kids don't come home until midnight, what are you going to do if you're caught by bad people? And this Xiao Lin...Look at him, this is nonsense. He's going to be in twelfth grade next year, but he's still sleeping at this hour..."

Dou Xun mumbled a few replies. HIs wandering heart briefly lingered on Zhu Xiaocheng, and he asked, "Is my mom going to be here today?"

Grandma Xu was fl.u.s.tered for a second.

Dou Xun understood once he saw her expression. He nodded expressionlessly, "Oh, I understand."

With a thing like that last night, Zhu Xiaocheng was probably busy arguing with Dou Junliang about who was responsible. She could not spare time to talk to him about his college entrance exam problems.

Moreover, perhaps Zhu Xiaocheng even understood this: she had never paid attention to Dou Xun's issues before; she had no control over them now. This was why she lacked the guts to intervene.

Dou Xun finished his breakfast without tasting it. In Grandma Xu's worried gaze, he walked upstairs. "Whatever. She doesn't have to anyways. I'm going to wake Xu Xilin up."

He gently pushed Xu Xilin's bedroom door open by a seam. A creepy cold breeze wafted out. Dou Xun felt like he had opened a fridge instead--Xu Xilin was full of bad habits, and one of them was never knowing what saving energy was. The air conditioner in his room was always set to 16 degrees celsius in summer. While at it, he wore long sleeved spring-slash-autumn pajamas, curled up into a ball under blankets, only exposing a muss of messy hair. Maybe he wanted to cultivate himself into a penguin.

Dou Xun tiptoed into the room. He stood guard over Xu Xilin's bed, examining him for a moment, head lowered.

Half of Xu Xilin's face was hidden in the sheets. His face was radiating a red hue in sleep. Not even an earthquake could wake him up. Dou Xun rarely examined Xu Xilin like this, so focused. He found out that this human had a face that seemed like it was born to delight people, that his eyes brimmed with smiles even when they were shut. That his head of messy hair was spread over the pillowcase.

Dou Xun suddenly found the need to touch it.

He was one to put his thoughts into practice. He took action once the thought popped up, and he carefully threaded his fingers into Xu Xilin's hair.

After a night in the air conditioning, Xu Xilin's short hair had no trace of body warmth. Like cool sillk, it was weirdly nice to touch. Unfortunately it was short in length, and softly slipped out from between Dou Xun's fingers with the barest movement.

Tickled by his own hair, Xu Xilin buried his face into the pillow even further, the tip of his nose brus.h.i.+ng it lovingly.

For about half a minute, Dou Xun stared at the shadow of Xu Xilin's nose bridge. Then he realized that he had been s.p.a.cing out, panic showing on his face.

His fingers curled on his side several times, but he still didn't shake the sleeping person awake. Dou Xun walked around the foot of his bed for a while. Then he silently grabbed the air conditioner remote and set the indoor temperature to thirty degrees celsius. He then escaped, quiet and on guard, like when he came.

Twenty minutes later, Xu Xilin, who was sleeping in a ball of cotton, was woken up by the heat.

He climbed up, eyes bleary, head full of morning anger. So the first thing he did was to lose his temper with himself. He peeled off the upper garment of his pajamas, and tossed it onto the bed. Topless, he agitatedly ran his fingers over his hair twice.

Only after a while did he sense that the chief culprit for waking him up was the temperature. He grabbed the air conditioner remote, looked down, and lost his s.h.i.+t.

It was needless to say that no one except Dou Xun would do such an immoral thing.

Xu Xilin blindly grabbed the s.h.i.+rt he took off, and wiped the sweat on himself with it. He swung the s.h.i.+rt onto his shoulder, ready to dash out and settle this with him. But he stopped in his tracks just as his hand touched the door handle.

Memories from the previous night slowly came back. Xu Xilin slowly blinked.

Then he dry coughed uncomfortably, locked the door, silently brushed his teeth, took a shower and changed into presentable clothes. After he finished cleaning up everything, he left his room looking nonchalant.

A couple of unnamed pieces were being sung shrilly on Grandma Xu's old radio, all of them Kun Opera retired from the spotlight. They used to be high up, unwilling to humble themselves for a larger audience. Thought they did lower themselves to the public level afterwards, and changed their form again and again to the public's tastes, the efforts were useless. Now they could only show their true form on an old lady's dusty radio.

Torso drooping over the railing, Xu Xilin listened for a short while. He heard nothing in particular out of it. He went downstairs, hastily crammed something down his mouth, and then fed Dou-dou some dog food. If this was a normal weekend, Xu Xilin would've already grabbed his breakfast and headed upstairs--there was only Ms. Du, Grandma and the dog downstairs, and none of them could entertain him. But today, he hung around Grandma Xu, doing nothing. He was creeped out by the idea of facing Dou Xun, who was upstairs.

"It was just a kiss, right?" Xu Xilin mentally prepared himself silently, "It's not like he's a girl. There's nothing to freak out about."

As he put more thought into it, it made even more sense. But his feet betrayed his logic and wouldn't budge. Like people with stage fright. Even if they calmly explained to themselves that "there's nothing to freak out about" every time before going on stage, they would still curl into themselves on stage.

He's watched a ton of adult videos before, and he could say that he was pretty familiar with the process. But understanding it was only with his imagination, and he had never thought before that his first taste would be of Dou Xun.

Even though his limbs were st.u.r.dy, his heart was swinging like a pendulum. He squandered time marching around downstairs like a coward, but then he nervously started to dribble a basketball.

He was disturbing other people so much that he got yelled at by Grandma Xu. "Xiao Lin, if you wanna play, do it with Xiao Xun outside. It's not good to mess around indoors."

Half dead, Xu Xilin spun the basketball on a finger. He shouted back, mimicking Grandma Xu, "I know--"

Then he looked up, and his gaze slammed into Dou Xun upstairs.

Xu Xilin flinched, and ducked instinctively. He was instantly bewildered, thinking, "What am I trying to avoid?"

Dou Xun's throat was tight. He raised his hand, but couldn't cough it out. So he set it back down. He then said dryly, "Lend me the math practice book answers you guys edited this week. I need it."

"Oh," Xu Xilin replied. Head down, basketball hugged tight to his chest, he ran upstairs.

There was a small open s.p.a.ce similar to a living room between the two bedrooms on the second floor. A sofa was there, along with a couple of bookshelves. It eventually evolved into the public s.p.a.ce where the two did homework after school hours. Among the nooks and crannies was a sacred corner. Not only was there a small b.u.mp to set one's feet on, you could grab an iced drink from the small cooler under the bookshelves right where you were.

Normally, Xu XIlin had to fight Dou Xun for the "sacred corner." Whoever got to it first got the rights to it.

But whatever it was with Dou Xun today, he stood beside the sacred corner waiting, as if he had dementia. After he grabbed the answers Xu Xilin handed to him, he obediently stepped aside, leaving the corner open.

Xu XIlin never knew the word "yield," existed to Dou Xun before this. With Dou Xun's small display, he was too embarra.s.sed to sit in the corner, too.

So a few minutes later, the two of them left the lonely throne empty. The two of them occupied separate ends of the long sofa. No banter between them, and no trash talk, either. In an eerie silence, they quietly finished their homework.

The turn of events made them surprisingly efficient.

Curious at the rare silent atmosphere upstairs, Dou-dou sneaked upstairs, circled the room once, and curled up under the desk for a nap. It did have a tart face, but the longer you stared at it, the cuter you found it.

Xu Xilin looked up automatically, and found Dou Xun staring back. After some thought, Xu Xilin decided to toss back a pack of chocolate in return.

Then he finally said the words he had been trying to say all day. "Wu Tao was being extra douchey yesterday. Don't take it too seriously."

An unusually docile Dou Xun shook his head. Then for the first time, he reacted in time. He tried smiling at Xu Xilin.

In the six months he had known him, Xu Xilin rarely got even a neutral expression. He freaked out and bit his tongue when trying to chew on chocolate. The pain almost getting tears out of him.

Dou Xun knew that he should be miserable. He just gave up a chance on the uni entrance exam, which meant that he was going to face questioning from a bunch of teachers and his parents, plus Zhu Xiaocheng and Dou Junliang just demonstrated again how he was nothing to either of them.

He had great scores, but he did not know what they were for. Because he had no goals, and no expectations for any of his subjects from anyone.

But, magically, Dou Xun was not at all distressed. His thoughts briefly paused on the troubles and loneliness for a short second, but then slid away immediately. This was kind of like the feeling he had with his first cigarette--some unknown external force had pried him out of his negative emotions and  injected him with an illogical and unjustifiable expectation. Like something good was actually going to happen.

Expectation was a drug on the soul. Dou Xun floated around dreamily for the entire day. In the evening, Ms. Jin Xu lugged a giant suitcase back. After a short rest to catch her breath, she started clearing her schedule for her wards, who proved that one plus one could be bigger than two.

T/N: This is a surprisingly short chapter that took way too long for me to finish translating. I'm so sorry for dragging this on, but I just got into senior high school, and it was harder than I expected to get used to. I'll try my best to keep up regular updates from now on.

p.s. yes I am that young. I am younger/around the age of the two of them in this volume(where they are at their youngest[around 16]). Just to clarify, I am 15.