Under Clear Skies Chapter 22: Noob

Chapter 22: Noob

Translated by Fefe of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: Addis

Tang Heng almost shot out of his seat. Calming himself, he finally asked, “How did you know it’s me?”

“I listened,” Li Yuechi said honestly. He sounded a little annoyed as if Tang Heng had asked a stupid question.

“You remember…my singing voice?”

“Of course.”

Li Yuechi closed his eyes after saying that and fell into deep sleep again. He still had a fever, so Tang Heng had to swallow all his questions. He reached over and stuck a fever patch on Li Yuechi’s forehead. The window was shut tightly—maybe to block out the smell of the trash outside—and the air in the room was stale. The overhead fan spun without a hurry and didn’t have much of an effect.

It was too hot, so hot that his cheeks and ears were burning. Tang Heng sat for a dazed moment. Then he ripped open a fever patch and stuck it onto his own forehead.

He couldn’t help but think back to the details of that night—had he sung really loudly? That couldn’t be. The bar owner had fixed the speaker’s volume beforehand. There were many residents here and the owner didn’t dare to piss them off, so he always made the volume very soft.

But Li Yuechi’s home was so far away from Long Love. Which meant that not only had this person heard his voice clearly but also remembered it clearly and matched to his speaking voice more than half a month later. Did he have a dog’s ears? As Tang Heng thought this, he looked toward Li Yuechi’s ears. His auricles were thin and, because of the fever, the edges were faint red. This person probably has extraordinary hearing, Tang Heng thought.

Then he felt a bit annoyed. Since Li Yuechi knew he was the singer, why did he ask that question? Tang Heng had a reason to suspect that people who were good at math probably didn’t have normal brains. Tang Heng changed Li Yuechi’s fever patch with a sullen face, thinking he should just keep burning. Even though this person still had that annoying get-away-from-me face when he had a fever, he was at least more honest.

Honesty was a value. Then, should he honestly tell Li Yuechi that he wanted to hire him for something? It wasn’t anything troublesome—just pretend to be his boyfriend and take a few pictures to send to Fu Liling. It was just an act. There was no need to actually kiss. Tang Heng came to ask him because he really couldn’t stomach doing it with Jiang Ya… But they didn’t need to actually kiss.

 

His t-shirt stuck to his back and his hair stuck to his neck. Tang Heng didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep on Li Yuechi’s bed until he was woken up by his phone.

Tang Heng walked into the bathroom with half-open eyes and answered the call. “Uncle?”

“Are you free this afternoon?” Professor Tang asked cheerily. “I have a meeting in Jingzhou tomorrow. Come over later.”

“Come over for what?”

“You rascal! Didn’t you promise to work on the project with me? I’ll have the grad students help you, so you should come over to meet them first.”

“Some other day. I’m busy today.” After all, there was another person sick out of his mind in the room.

“Just come over to say hi.”

“I’m seriously busy today.”

“Fine, you’re the busiest!” Professor Tang paused and then added, “Stop arguing with your mom. You’re already an adult. You should know better.”

“Got it,” Tang Heng said.

Tang Heng shook his numb arms and washed his face with cool water. When he walked out of the bathroom, he was met with two eyes. Li Yuechi had sat up in bed and was staring in his direction.

“You’re awake?” Tang Heng felt awkward, for some reason. “How’re you feeling?”

Li Yuechi nodded toward him. “Much better.”

“That’s good.”  

“Sorry for the trouble today.”

“It’s okay… It was my fault anyway.”

Li Yuechi chuckled—the polite kind. Tang Heng knew that it was a sign that he should go. As expected, Li Yuechi climbed out of bed, grabbed the t-shirt from the corner of the bed, and put it on.

Tang Heng frowned. “You still have to work?” he asked.

“No, my classmate told me to go to school.”

“You can’t go anywhere like this.”

“I have to.”

“Why?”

“Some noob is going to work on the project with us.” Li Yuechi stuffed his phone into his pocket and said offhandedly, “Gotta go meet him.”

Tang Heng: “…What noob?”

“My teacher’s relative. Never came to any meetings before.”

“He, probably, doesn’t want to go either.”

“That’ll be for the best.”

…

…

…

Do you know that the noob saved your fucking life just now?

More importantly, who the fuck is the noob?—Tang Heng’s grades had never fallen out of the top 5 range throughout his three years in uni. His research projects passed, he’d done provincial-level problems, and it’d been smooth sailing for him until now. The only bad thing was that he couldn’t get exempted from the grad school test—who the fuck was the noob?

 

Li Yuechi quickly got dressed, wearing his clothes neatly and flattening his hair. He didn’t look a bit like he’d just had a high fever. He lifted the paper bag from the plastic board and handed it to Tang Heng. “It’s yours, right?” 

“It’s the noob’s,” Tang Heng gritted out.

Li Yuechi furrowed his brows, looking confused with a tinge of impatience.

Tang Heng glanced at him and said coldly, “I’m leaving. You do you.” He tossed the cash from his pockets onto the table. The few pink bills scattered messily and one even floated to the ground. Tang Heng side-stepped Li Yuechi and sped out of the door.

He kept walking, even ignoring the blazing sun, and didn’t calm down a bit until he entered Hanyang Uni. Tang Heng dialed An Yun’s number. “Where are you?”

“Still at Jiang Ya’s.” An Yun found him strange. “Did I piss you off? You sound mad.”

“You didn’t tell Tian Xiaoqin and the others about me, right?”

“About you what?”

“My relationship with Teacher Tang.”

“They don’t need me to say it. They’ll find out sooner or later,” An Yun drawled. “But they shouldn’t know yet, right? After all, they didn’t do their undergrads here.”   

“Yeah, they don’t know.” But they’ll know soon.

“Did you hear something?” An Yun was already used to this and continued in an unbothered tone, “Did they say our families did some exchange again? I study under your uncle, you study under my dad… Psh, they can’t think of anything new.”

“I won’t be An-laoshi’s grad student,” Tang Heng said, word by word.

“I support that. Then my mom’ll stop comparing me with you.”

“What I mean is that I won’t do my master’s in China,” Tang Heng said with irritation. “No way.”

An Yun stopped speaking. A moment later, she finally asked, “You sure? You… How did you decide so suddenly?” Her tone was tentative.

Tang Heng had been preparing to go abroad for a while now—he’d taken his TOEFL, written all the essays—but he’d dragged out the decision. Of course, the reason was because his mother refused. She didn’t want her son to go through hardships abroad. When they talked about going abroad before, Tang Heng’s attitude had always been we’ll see, but now, he’d suddenly decided to not do his master’s in China.      

“No reason,” Tang Heng said nonchalantly. “Just bored of Wuhan.”

“Oh, yeah, it’s kinda boring… Can’t you go to another school?”

“All the schools here are the same.”   

“Then what about Auntie…”

“Let’s talk when we meet,” Tang Heng interrupted. “Don’t forget we have a performance tonight.”   

 

It was so humid that it was like droplets of water hung in the air. Hanyang Uni was also known for their foliage, so when you walk down the small paths, your breaths would be filled with the scent of moist moss. This scent was a bit like grass, but tinged with the smell of clean mold. Tang Heng was too familiar with it. In his memory, every summer spent in Wuhan was filled with this smell.

But he’d really had enough. To be specific, Wuhan wasn’t his home. Fu Liling was from Suzhou, his dad was from Shijiazhuang—the place that produced many rock bands. But he was neither familiar with Suzhou nor was he familiar with Shijiazhuang. His dad had taught at a school in Beijing before he’d passed away, so Tang Heng had spent the first 11 years of his life in Beijing. Then his dad had a car accident on a business trip and passed. Fu Liling’s business was already doing well at that time, so she brought Tang Heng from the sad place that was Beijing. They moved frequently those years—Zhengzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Wuxi… In the end, it was his uncle who said, The boy is going to high school now. Come here to me. I’ll take care of him. Thus, Tang Heng came to Wuhan in the first year of high school and stayed for six years.

Six years. He was tired of how those teachers always looked at him with benevolent pity. Their thoughts were always so obvious—This poor child, lost his father at such a young age and doesn’t have his mother by him. Because he was pitiful, because he was Professor Tang’s nephew, so he should be taken care of, so all of his grades and achievements were because he was taken care of—wasn’t it laughable?

Of course, he’d heard too many similar rumors, so he’d long stopped caring. But for some reason, when Li Yuechi said the word noob, it was like getting splashed in the face with a basin of boiling water. Tang Heng thought, maybe it was because it was Li Yuechi—someone who’d come from a rural village and struggled and persisted until today. It seemed that disdain from that kind of person always had more of a shock effect than others.

 

Tang Heng came to the sociology department, went up to the fourth floor by elevator, and entered the room with ease.

“Dabo, you’re still writing?” Tang Heng walked to the desk and saw Professor Tang holding a calligraphy brush. The snow-white paper on the table was half-filled with words.

“Hey, look at you.” Professor Tang shot him a look. “My masterpiece from last night. What do you think? I want to frame it and give it to Lao An.”

“Does he want it?”

“He’d have to take it even if he doesn’t!” Professor Tang was a bit aggravated. “I heard him say yesterday! His new house is almost furnished!”

Tang Heng was speechless. His uncle did sociology research, but he was extremely interested in these artsy things and had great confidence in his talents. He didn’t listen to anyone.

“Didn’t you say you’re busy this afternoon?” Professor Tang sipped some tea. “Since you’re here, help me decide if I should use ‘view’ or ‘gaze’ for this line? I’m so conflicted.”

“They’re all the same,” Tang Heng said. “Call your students over.”

“You said you’re not coming, so I had Tian Xiaoqin go home!”

“What about Li Yuechi?”

“Oh,” Professor Tang chuckled. “You’ve heard about that kid too?”

“Yeah.” Tang Heng was expressionless. “Number one of the math department, right?”

“That kid is very reliable. You can follow him and learn how to process data.”

Tang Heng’s expression turned cold and didn’t reply.

Professor Tang happily wrote his calligraphy, while Tang Heng sat in his chair, flipping through a random book from the shelf. After a short while, there was a knock on the office door. While writing, Professor Tang said, “Come in.”

Li Yuechi’s expression froze the instant he entered the office.

“Yuechi, you’re here.” Professor Tang set down his brush. “Let me make the introductions. This is Tang Heng, a senior of our department. Tang Heng, this is my new grad student this year. Your shixiong.”

Tang Heng said without moving and smiled tightly, responding, “Oh, hello.”

Li Yuechi paused for a few seconds. Then he lowered his eyes and murmured, “Hello.”