Decayed Vulgarian chapter 25
Avoidance
Although Liang Yan’s “Caught watching porn plan” had taken a few twists and turns, strangely, it had eventually yielded positive results. So, during his scarce free time, Shen Xun couldn’t resist reaching out to Liang Yan once again to exchange opinions. Of course, the main reason was that he had only this one friend he could truly confide in; he didn’t trust anyone else.
When Liang Yan received Shen Xun’s call and heard that he wanted to discuss matters of love again, he couldn’t be prouder. His tail was almost wagging in the air with satisfaction. “Go ahead, Xiao Shen. Your bro Liang here is experienced and knowledgeable. Bestowing upon me the title of love expert wouldn’t be unwarranted.”
Shen Xun responded, “It might as well be a ‘love bricklayer,’ laying bricks of love.”
Liang Yan burst into laughter.
Shen Xun briefly described the rainbow photo Meng Yuan Cen had inserted in the book, providing additional details about the related photos. For example, he mentioned that the picture was taken on his own balcony and that the font on the back of the photo was handwritten with colored ink and a pen.
Liang Yan said, “Can you send me a picture to see? If you’re not comfortable with it, then never mind.”
The English sentence that Shen Xun had pondered over was not particularly secretive or intimate in terms of wording or expression. So, he simply took a photo and sent it to Liang Yan.
Liang Yan enlarged the picture with his fingertips and observed, “Don’t you think the two lines of English are neatly written, almost parallel to the edges of the photo?”
Shen Xun, too, lowered his head to examine it and agreed, “Yes, they do.”
Liang Yan continued, “It’s quite challenging to write on a background like this without horizontal lines. It doesn’t look like something written casually but with deliberate thought. While I can’t see it clearly due to pixelation, could you check the photo you have? Did he perhaps draw and erase horizontal lines on the back of the photo?”
Shen Xun pinched the lower edge of the photo and held it up to the light. After a few seconds, he was surprised to say, “There does seem to be very faint, straight marks, right below these two lines of English.”
Liang Yan was excited. “I knew it!”
Curious, Shen Xun asked, “How did you guess that?”
Liang Yan responded smugly, “Back in the day, I used to personally write many handmade postcards, which were essentially photos. I took a lot of landscape photos abroad, and, if you round it up, it’s like she accompanied me to all those places. I wrote something I wanted to say on the back of every photo.”
“At first, I didn’t get it. I would start writing on a blank photo, and you know, my handwriting was already ugly, and I wrote all crooked and messy. I couldn’t bring myself to send them to her. But then I realized that drawing horizontal lines made it look much better.”
Shen Xun nodded. “I rarely write things for people because my handwriting is not presentable.”
Sharing the sentiment of having ugly handwriting, they sighed together.
After their sigh, Liang Yan continued with a piercing observation, “Moreover, this rainbow photo holds significant meaning between you two. Even the ink isn’t standard black; it’s purple. Don’t most gay people like purple?”
The last sentence felt a bit like doing a reading comprehension exercise from his student days, where the connections were somewhat far-fetched. Shen Xun retorted playfully, “Please don’t have stereotypes about us. I don’t agree with your statement about purple. The rest, I can acknowledge.”
Liang Yan laughed heartily at Shen Xun’s response and added, “What about the sentence he wrote for you? Don’t you find it ambiguous, especially that ‘love is love’ at the end? He even used ‘love’ for you. What more are you waiting for? Just confess your feelings directly!”
Shen Xun knew Liang Yan would misinterpret it. “That’s just an LGBTQ+ slogan.”
“LGBTQ+? What’s that?” Liang Yan asked.
Shen Xun explained, “LGBTQ+ stands for the first letter of four English words: Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and Transgender. There are seven objects listed in that sentence alongside ‘me,’ and except for ‘me,’ the remaining six each represent one of the meanings of the six colors in the rainbow flag.”
Shen Xun continued, “The rainbow flag is a symbol of the LGBTQ+ community. So, that sentence is his way of hinting at his sexual orientation. Although he mentioned ‘love,’ what he wants to convey is that love knows no boundaries. It emphasizes that even same-sex couples have the right to love and be loved. Do you understand? It’s not as ambiguous as you think.”
Liang Yan was half-convinced but stared at the last part, left and right, mumbling to himself, “Really, it’s not?”
Liang Yan remained silent for a while, unable to come to any conclusions. He decided to drop the subject. “Hey, hey, let’s not discuss this for now. Instead, let’s talk about your next steps – no, maybe I should be more straightforward. Are you planning to confess your feelings? If so, when do you intend to clarify your relationship?”
Shen Xun responded with confusion, “Huh?”
Liang Yan didn’t understand Shen Xun’s reaction. “Huh?”
Shen Xun said in bewilderment, “We’ve only known each other for a little over a month.”
Liang Yan replied, “I’ve seen people date after just two weeks.”
Shen Xun hesitated and argued, “But we’ve hardly had any physical contact. Aside from one time when I took the initiative to hold his wrist, we’ve only met in person twice.”
Liang Yan said, “You’ll have physical contact after you start dating.”
Shen Xun continued, “No, no… I still don’t know him well. Confessing your feelings just like that, isn’t it just like fast food love? Shouldn’t it be that the distance between us can’t be explained by the word ‘friends’ anymore, that we’re no longer satisfied with the status of ‘almost lovers,’ and only then should we change our relationship?”
Liang Yan chuckled, “You’re quite the idealist.”
Shen Xun replied, “I’ve always been idealistic about love.”
Liang Yan commented, “I think you say that because you haven’t dated anyone yet. Everyone has to buy houses, cars, pay loans, work hard to earn money, get squeezed by capital, exhaust themselves in their jobs, and return home just wanting to lay flat and relax. Never mind physical contact and meeting in person; sometimes I can’t even be bothered to respond to messages online.”
“In today’s fast-paced modern society, who has the time to engage in slow-paced romance? Is fast-food love necessarily bad? It depends on how we define fast food. Who hasn’t eaten fast food before?”
Shen Xun was always at a loss when discussing love with Liang Yan. Liang Yan posed several questions in a row, rendering him temporarily speechless. After a long silence, he finally managed to say, “You may be right. In that case, I might as well remain single.”
Liang Yan eased his tone, speaking gently, “Xiao Shen, neither you nor I are wrong. We simply have different perspectives. You sought my opinion, so I shared these thoughts, but my intention wasn’t to convince you. You can disagree with my viewpoint. My perspective might also be narrow and one-sided. We can agree to disagree. If you’ve made a decision, I won’t interfere with your choice.”
Shen Xun let out a sigh. “Let me think about it some more.”
“Alright,” Liang Yan suddenly thought of something and added, “I’d like to make one more point, but my words might come off a bit paternalistic.”
“That’s okay. Go ahead. We won’t get mad at each other,” Shen Xun assured.
“Okay, I’ll be straightforward then, even if it’s a bit harsh. Forgive me.”
“Go ahead.”
“If you truly desire a slow-paced romance, you must be prepared to take the risk of Meng Yuan Cen being pursued by someone with a fast-paced approach and winning him over first. Also, I have a feeling that you already have an answer in your heart. You asked me just to seek my approval, but clearly, my advice contradicts what you already feel.”
In his final words, Liang Yan hit the nail on the head, “is it possible that you’ve said all this simply because you’re too afraid to confess?”
After ending the call, Shen Xun gripped his phone and stared into space, lost in thought.
Perhaps when faced with someone’s denial, the initial reaction is always to argue because no one knows oneself better than one does. But this time, he thought for a long time, and finally had to admit—
Liang Yan was right, he was afraid.
In the absence of love, he used the excuse that he hadn’t found someone he liked, so he didn’t need to take the initiative. And when he finally encountered love, he found an excuse saying the other person might already be in a relationship, so it wasn’t that he didn’t want to take the initiative. Unexpectedly and luckily, he received hints from the other person, but he used the excuse that love should progress gradually, and it wasn’t the right time to take the initiative. Finally, fast-food love, lack of physical contact, and insufficient understanding all became excuses for his avoidance, and he even tried to convince himself that it was because he was an “idealist” when it came to love.
Perhaps his courage had been eroded in his solitary youth, just like skeletal muscle cells that, once damaged, can never regenerate. They are forever missing from his body.
He needed to meet someone who was so proactive that they couldn’t possibly be more so, someone patient, confident, and firm enough, willing to invest plenty of time and effort into playing the slow-paced game of love with him.
But how could such a person exist in the world?