He pushed back his dinner plans and spent the evening calling Xiao Fengtai incessantly. After an eternity spent in a daze, the call finally connected.
"...What is it?" Xiao Fengtai sounded as if he had just finished some strenuous exercise, his words punctuated by heavy breathing.
His tone was so casual and cold that Gu Yu almost felt as if he were the one being unreasonable. Yet, the photo on Instagram was undeniable.
Gu Yu summoned his courage, trying to make his voice sound more justified. "What’s the deal with that photo?"
"What photo?"
"The one on Instagram!" Gu Yu snapped, his temper rising. "That... what was that all about!"
"Ah—I thought it was something urgent." Xiao Fengtai’s tone was as nonchalant as if they were discussing tomorrow's dinner. "I’m busy. I’m hanging up."
"Xiao Fengtai!" Gu Yu cried out in frustration.
Before he could say another word, a sharp *smack* echoed through the receiver. It was a loud, crisp sound—one that Gu Yu had only heard on very specific occasions since leaving childhood behind.
The image of the woman with the striking figure from the photo suddenly became vivid in his mind.
It wasn't over. A woman’s voice, raspy and smoke-tinged, drifted through the line, oozing a seductive charm, accompanied by the rustle of fabric. She seemed to lean closer to the phone; though Gu Yu couldn't understand the minor European language she spoke, he could tell from her tone that she was growing impatient.
"Professor Gu, I really am busy," Xiao Fengtai said, his voice actually carrying a hint of a smile. "I'm hanging up now."
Gu Yu caught the earliest flight back to Cambridge the next morning. He spent the entire journey rehearsing his confrontation, but the scene he imagined never took place.
Xiao Fengtai had vanished.
He hadn't truly disappeared; he simply refused to see Gu Yu. He didn't answer calls or reply to texts. In a fit of desperation, Gu Yu rushed to Xiao’s villa in the Cambridge suburbs, only to be stopped at the gate by security, who claimed the master was out.
It was only then that Gu Yu realized how incredibly fragile the connection between them was. Standing helplessly at the villa gates, he wanted to call a mutual friend, but as he scrolled through his contacts again and again, he couldn't find a single name.
In the January chill of Cambridge, Gu Yu broke into a cold sweat. Had Xiao Fengtai planned for this day all along?
Still, he refused to believe it, refused to give up. He decided to wait at the gates like a hunter at a burrow. He waited from dawn until dusk. At midnight, Xiao Fengtai finally returned.
He wasn't alone. The Aston Martin was packed with beautiful young men and women. The car's high-end sound system blasted electronic music so loud it could be heard clearly even from outside.
The villa gates began to slide open, but the Aston Martin remained stationary. Gu Yu had ignored the security guards and run to the center of the driveway, spreading his arms wide. "Kenneth! Get out of the car! we need to talk!"
The headlights flared, blinding him and forcing him to turn his head. The passenger window rolled down, and a blonde girl leaned out, flashing him a crude gesture. "Asshole! Get out of the way!"
Gu Yu didn't budge. Xiao Fengtai sat in the driver's seat, one hand resting on the steering wheel, his face expressionless. Gu Yu squinted against the piercing light, struggling to meet his gaze. The young man caught his eyes and curled one side of his mouth into a careless smirk.
Gu Yu saw his lips moving. Amidst the raucous noise, they shared a silent dialogue.
*Good job,* Xiao Fengtai mouthed with a smile.
The engine roared. Xiao Fengtai spun the wheel, and the Aston Martin nimbly swerved around Gu Yu, disappearing into the courtyard before he could react. He tried to give chase but was pinned down firmly by the security guards.
As he struggled, he watched the young men and women stumble out of the car, laughing and giggling as they staggered into the villa.
Xiao Fengtai never looked back, not even once.
There were no buses in the suburbs late at night. Gu Yu walked home from the villa step by step. His boots were soaked through with slush, freezing his feet to the bone. His heart felt as though it were soaking in that same filthy, cold water; after struggling time and again, the last faint spark of hope finally hissed and died.
By the time he reached home, the sky was beginning to pale. Gu Yu buried himself under his covers and slept for an entire day. When he woke, he deleted all of Xiao Fengtai’s contact information. Everything Xiao had ever given him was sorted: the disposables were tossed, and the reusable items were packed into a cardboard box, destined for the Salvation Army.
He would treat it as a vivid, chaotic dream. Now that he was awake, it was time to return to reality.
But the dream came looking for him. As Gu Yu carried the box downstairs to catch a bus, he saw Xiao Fengtai leaning against a Bugatti Veyron, smoking a cigarette.
Even with his heart shattered, Gu Yu had to admit the scene was breathtaking. The ancient European architecture was draped in white snow, looking like a little castle on a chocolate wrapper. The car’s extravagant colors and sleek lines clashed violently with the background, yet somehow achieved a strange harmony. The key to that harmony was the handsome young man standing leisurely in the snow.
"Where are you going?" Seeing him, Xiao Fengtai dropped his cigarette and crushed it under his heel. His smile was as innocent and frank as the day they first met. "Let me give you a lift."
Gu Yu got into the car, but they didn't go to the Salvation Army. Xiao Fengtai drove toward the desolate countryside until they reached a deserted ridge between fields.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" He opened the convertible top. The cold air rushed in, exposing them instantly to the sub-zero temperatures. Xiao Fengtai stepped out and looked around, taking a deep breath. "I love Cambridge winters the most."
He turned back to smile at Gu Yu. "You know, it never snows in Singapore."
Gu Yu remained in the car, unmoving. "What exactly do you want?"
He didn't believe Xiao Fengtai had driven him all this way just to freeze and look at snow.
"You still want to be with me, don't you?"
It wasn't a question, but a statement. Xiao Fengtai’s air of absolute certainty made Gu Yu bristle with shame and anger—angry at Xiao’s audacity, and even angrier that he had guessed correctly.
One can become addicted to alcohol and tobacco; how could love be any easier to quit? Even if Xiao Fengtai’s love was a hollow cake—nothing but tasteless air beneath a dazzling crust—the sugar-frosted strawberries used as decoration were sweet enough to ensure Gu Yu could never again settle for the mediocre or the normal.
"I’m a selfish and lazy person, and I especially hate trouble. If you want to be with me, you have to follow my rules."
"No jealousy, no stubbornness. Always put me first. When I need you, be there at a moment's notice; when I don't, withdraw quietly. Satisfy my demands and ask no unnecessary questions. And you must answer all of my questions honestly."
"Of course, you don't have to be loyal to me, and you can end this relationship at any time. We’ll part on good terms."
He asked almost tenderly, "Professor Gu, can you do that?"
How tyrannical. Gu Yu’s stomach cramped—a physical reaction he always had when he was extremely tense.
"Fine."
Gu Yu considered himself a person of sound values. He had agreed in a fit of pique, thinking he wouldn't be able to stand it for more than a few days. Yet, until Xiao Fengtai graduated, they maintained this distorted relationship that hovered somewhere between a carnal arrangement and love.
To outsiders, they perhaps looked more harmonious and natural than ordinary lovers.
There were moments of sweetness that were hard to forget. When Gu Yu was exhausted from lab work, Xiao Fengtai would occasionally drive over to pick him up without warning. Emerging from the lab building into the biting autumn wind, pulling his coat tight, Gu Yu would see the sports car crouching silently in the dark. Despite a thousand previous disappointments, a tiny sliver of hope would still rise in his heart, making him believe they might have a future.
"Why do you work so hard?" Xiao Fengtai asked casually one day as he drove him home, his eyes on the road. "You people from the mainland... every one of you seems ready to shed blood for your ideals at any moment."
Gu Yu was so tired his brain felt like mush. He leaned against the window and mumbled, "What ideals? It’s just the pressure of making a living."
"Nowadays, people are fighting tooth and nail for AP positions at average universities. If I don't have an SCI paper by my third year of grad school, I’m afraid I’ll end up scrubbing test tubes in some lab after graduation. Life is hard for a biological migrant worker."
Xiao Fengtai seemed amused by this. When they reached Gu Yu's place, Gu Yu invited him up for a glass of water, but Xiao just waved him off.
"Get some rest. You have bricks to move early tomorrow."
Then there was the Christmas when they had a Christmas Eve feast at a Michelin-starred Chinese restaurant in London. Xiao Fengtai was in unusually high spirits, which led Gu Yu to drink a few extra glasses of wine and become talkative.
"I’ve always wanted to say this—for a Southeast Asian Chinese, your Mandarin is too good."
"You don't have an accent at all! You Singaporeans... hehe, you know what I mean, I won't say it."
Xiao Fengtai leaned his head on his hand and smiled. "My Chinese was poor until high school, but I had a good teacher."
"I can still recite quite a bit of Tang poetry." His gaze grew distant, as if sinking into a nearly forgotten memory. "'You who come from my old village, / Should know the things that happen there. / On the day you left, by the silken window, / Had the cold plum bloomed with flowers yet?'"
Gu Yu clapped enthusiastically. "Impressive! You like Wang Wei?"
"He’s alright."
"The poetry is good, but I don't much like the man himself." Gu Yu must have been drunk, for he began to ramble and show off his knowledge based on Xiao’s words.
"Why?" Xiao Fengtai sat up straighter.
"He wanted to have his cake and eat it too. He was too fastidious, too fake. He rose to power through women, held high office, lived in a villa, and yet wrote poems about being a mountain hermit. How could he have all the good things for himself?"
"I love Du Fu. The Sage of Poetry! China’s great realist poet! A man of the people! Ah, 'Could I but get a mansion with a thousand, ten thousand rooms, / To provide great shelter for all the world’s poor scholars, and bring smiles to all their faces!'"
Xiao Fengtai said nothing at the table, merely watching him talk nonsense with a smile. But once they got home, he suddenly went wild, pinning Gu Yu directly onto the dining table.
Gu Yu’s eyes welled with tears from the pain, and he begged him to be gentler. Xiao Fengtai let out a mocking chuckle and bit down hard on his neck.
If Xiao Fengtai had been willing, they might have maintained that distorted relationship indefinitely.
Gu Yu didn't find out that Xiao Fengtai was graduating and leaving the UK until the final week.
"I’m going back to Singapore next week. I’ll be busy these next few days. If you have any requests, text me; I’ll try to fulfill them." They were eating at Xiao’s suburban villa. Xiao Fengtai didn't even look up as he spoke, focusing on the ribeye steak on his plate.
"I won't be using my UK number anymore. You can delete it."
In a flash of realization, Gu Yu understood that this was his final farewell.
It was a silent dinner. One was nonchalant, the other felt a lump in his throat. It wasn't until dessert was served that Gu Yu finally couldn't help but ask.
"When you go back to Singapore... can we still stay in touch?"
"Not like this... just as ordinary friends. The kind who send greetings once in a while during holidays."
Xiao Fengtai looked up and smiled, raising his wine glass to him.
"Gu Yu, I wish you a bright future and smooth sailing."
It was a clean, decisive break, exactly as he had promised.
Two years later, Gu Yu finally graduated. He didn't find a teaching position, so he returned to China and joined the finance world. His specialized knowledge wasn't enough to secure a podium at a university, but it was more than sufficient for evaluating the prospects of startup pharmaceutical companies. After several years of hard work, he successfully bought a car and an apartment, joining the ranks of the middle class.
He was decent-looking, had a respectable salary, and held a residency permit for a major city; naturally, matchmakers were never far away. Gu Yu dutifully participated in blind dates and actually found a partner who suited him well. She wasn't in a rush to marry, so they dated slowly and steadily. On weekends, they would drive to the outskirts of Beijing to eat reservoir fish; after work, they would watch movies or play badminton. It was a pleasant life.
His time with Xiao Fengtai—those dazzling, blurred memories—gradually became like a dream, their outlines fading.
It wasn't that he never saw Xiao Fengtai. After a few years of training in the family business, Xiao Fengtai had struck out on his own to establish a USD fund, specifically investing in China's "new economy." This "new economy" was nothing more than consumer tech and biomedicine. The finance circle was small; Gu Yu not only heard of Xiao’s exploits from others but also saw him from a distance at several investment forums.
After graduation, Xiao seemed to have mellowed significantly. Gu Yu never heard of his romantic escapades anymore; instead, he heard through the grapevine that Xiao was a master of social maneuvering and resource management. Not long after the fund was established, it had already snatched up several prime projects that industry veterans had been coveting.
If only they could meet one more time, have one more meal. Gu Yu rarely thought of Xiao Fengtai now, except on very rare occasions—like late nights after overtime, when he would pull his coat tight and step out of the office elevator, and the young man’s face would surface before his eyes.
Just one more meal, sitting across from him properly as a friend. He would calmly ask him if he had ever loved him.
Was he so nonchalant because he didn't love, or because he had been hurt and was afraid to commit again?
If they had met at a different time, in a different place—if he had met Xiao Fengtai before *that person* did—would they have had a different ending?
His girlfriend’s car was parked at the office entrance. Gu Yu waved to her and walked quickly into the boundless night of the Beijing autumn.
***
