Seventh Year Of Separation chapter 11

Brand New

In the summer of 2007, Pingcheng experienced a rare heavy rainstorm that occurred only once every thirty years.

Coincidentally, it happened on the first day of the senior year of high school.

The drainage system at Pingcheng High School was long overdue for maintenance, and there was nearly ten centimeters of rainwater accumulated at the entrance.

Gu Jiahe, wearing a white short-sleeved school uniform, had taken off his sneakers and was holding them in his hand as he walked barefoot through the water towards the gate.

He had left home in such a hurry in the morning that he had forgotten to bring an umbrella.

The polyester school uniform wasn’t breathable and soaked up water easily. Despite only being out of the classroom building for less than five minutes, Gu Jiahe was already drenched, feeling the chill from his back all the way down to his calves.

The rain showed no signs of letting up.

Gu Jiahe glanced at the road. It was at least two hundred meters from the school gate to the bus stop near his home, and he could only grit his teeth and continue forward.

“Hey!”

A voice came from behind the curtain of rain.

Gu Jiahe turned around and saw a boy he didn’t recognize standing not far away, waving at him.

Thinking that the boy had mistaken him for someone else, Gu Jiahe continued walking, holding onto his pants leg.

“Gu! Jia! He!”

The boy actually shouted his name accurately.

Gu Jiahe turned around again, and the person had already run up to him with an umbrella.

“Are you going home?” The boy had a bright smile on his face as he asked.

“Yeah, but who are you?” Gu Jiahe had no impression of this face, even though it seemed quite likable.

The likability was very intuitive. The boy had rare almond-shaped eyes for a guy, with clear facial features and short hair that looked very energetic.

“What? You don’t remember me? The teacher just introduced me in class earlier.”

Before the end of class, Gu Jiahe had been dozing off in the back row and had no idea what was happening in the classroom, let alone who the teacher had introduced.

“I just started today and sat next to you. My name is Li Zhao.” The boy explained patiently, not at all annoyed.

Amidst the sound of the pouring rain, his voice even had a bit of echo.

But Gu Jiahe didn’t have time to chat with him. He nodded and prepared to continue walking towards the bus stop.

“Hey. Where are you going? I’ll take you.” Li Zhao said, shaking the umbrella in his hand.

“To the bus stop.”

Before Gu Jiahe could react, Li Zhao reached out and patted his back, tilting the umbrella over his head. “Let’s go.”

He thought Li Zhao was just going to take him to the bus stop, but he didn’t expect that Li Zhao would get on the bus with him when the No. 15 bus arrived.

“Are you also taking this route?” Gu Jiahe shook his head before getting on the bus, shaking off the water from his hair.

“Yeah, what a coincidence.”

Bending over, the two of them boarded the bus. Gu Jiahe habitually went to sit in the last row by the window. Li Zhao also sat down boldly next to him.

Gu Jiahe felt a bit uncomfortable. He glanced at Li Zhao beside him. “Which stop are you getting off at?”

“Huwan City.”

“Oh.” Gu Jiahe nodded. He had heard of this community; it was a newly developed commercial housing area in the past two years. Because it was along the city’s internal lake, the scenery was good, and the prices were high.

“I used to go to school in Linqian City, but now I’m going back to my hometown for the college entrance examination.”

“Oh, I see.” Gu Jiahe didn’t ask further questions, but this new classmate of his voluntarily introduced himself clearly.

Gu Jiahe looked at the densely woven rain outside the window, sitting next to a completely unfamiliar new classmate, feeling a bit awkward for a moment.

“Wipe your hair.” Suddenly, a hand appeared next to him, handing him a clean thick towel.

“Huh?” Gu Jiahe was a bit puzzled. Why was this person bringing a towel to school?

“It’s a sweat-absorbing towel. Quickly wipe your hair.”

“How come you bring this to school?” Gu Jiahe couldn’t help but ask the question in his mind.

“I play soccer and always carry one.”

Gu Jiahe nodded in thanks and gently wiped his hair with the towel.

“But how did you know my name?” Gu Jiahe remembered how Li Zhao had called out to him in the rain earlier.

“Your name was written on your exam paper.”

Gu Jiahe suddenly realized that he might have been sleeping too deeply. He didn’t even know when someone came to his desk.

But the journey wasn’t too far, and the two of them chatted idly for more than ten minutes.

As Gu Jiahe gradually became familiar with the route outside the window, he felt a bit absent-minded. Then he stood up. Only after standing up did he realize that there was still one more stop before he got home.

The next moment, the bus slowed down and stopped at the station.

“Do you live here?” Li Zhao saw him stand up and pointed to the name of the community on the sign.

Chunhe West Garden, this station was a commercial housing area where locals gathered.

Gu Jiahe’s mind was in a daze, and he could only nod.

Later, he realized that his subconscious mind seemed to have made a decision for him at that moment.

Coincidentally, when he stood up, the rain outside the window stopped. It was as if someone had pressed the pause button.

“Thanks for the towel.” Gu Jiahe walked to the door of the bus and remembered that he was still holding Li Zhao’s towel, so he hurriedly turned around and handed it back to him. However, as soon as he took it out, he found that the towel was already soaked through. “How about I wash it clean and bring it to you tomorrow?”

“Sure.” Li Zhao smiled and nodded at him.

Gu Jiahe walked in the gloomy weather, feeling a slight chill in the late summer breeze, which crawled under his school uniform. He couldn’t help shivering.

It took him fifteen minutes to get home.

Here was the urban village of Pingcheng, with a chaotic mix of people. The low, uneven houses seemed more like pieces of broken pottery stuck in the city’s soil.

Gu Jiahe was soaked through, and before he even entered the house, he heard a shout not far away. “Gu Jiahe, you’re only coming back now?”

The voice belonged to Qian Liyun, his mother.

Gu Jiahe didn’t know whether she was scolding him or someone else with that sentence.

Gu Jiahe’s home was one of the houses in this row of low houses, but calling it a “house” was somewhat inaccurate. It felt more like a closed space made up of four walls of bricks.

This birdcage-like house had walls so thin they seemed like they could collapse at any moment, and the windows were single-layered green glass covered in cracks.

“Come over here and wash this yourself!” Qian Liyun picked up a pair of underwear from the sink and shook it vigorously.

That day, she had applied a bright red lipstick again, and the black hair growing out of her head, combined with the bottom half that had been cut halfway through, created a strange and discordant appearance.

Gu Jiahe was already used to these words.

Gu Jiahe had his first wet dream in junior high, and she shouted it out loud enough for almost everyone in the urban village to know.

Outside the birdcage-like corridor, there was a row of sinks where all the families in the alley washed their clothes.

“You can leave it there. I’ll wash it myself later since I rushed out this morning.” Gu Jiahe walked up behind her and said softly.

Qian Liyun scrutinized him with a glance. “Why didn’t you bring an umbrella on such a rainy day? What were you thinking?”

“I forgot.” Gu Jiahe didn’t argue with her. He just went back to his narrow room, put down his backpack, and took off his soaked school uniform.

His home barely qualified as a two-bedroom apartment. However, the living room lacked a sofa and a TV, with only a scarred old-fashioned Eight Immortals table. It was piled with the unsold goods from Qian Liyun’s failed small business and a heap of her medication.

Qian Liyun had a slight heart condition, and she claimed it was caused by Gu Jianmin’s temper every day.

Gu Jiahe had seen her medicine boxes, all for cardiovascular use. However, she hardly ever took them on time.

Gu Jiahe’s room was barely five or six square meters in size. After putting down a single bed that was only 1.2 meters wide, there was only a narrow aisle left, crammed with a small desk and chair.

The biggest flaw of the small room was its proximity to the master bedroom next door where his parents slept.

Every night, Gu Jianmin and Qian Liyun would quarrel, sometimes even resorting to violence. Gu Jiahe had been hearing it since he was five years old.

Because of this, he even called the police once. The local police came to mediate once, but after the reconciliation, the two continued their fights as usual.

It was getting late, and his clothes were still wet. Gu Jiahe opened his backpack and saw the damp white towel.

He quickly took a shower in the bathroom, dried himself off, changed into clean clothes, and then went to the sink in the hallway. He soaked his clothes and the white towel in a basin. The water was cold, and he didn’t bother to heat it up. He rubbed them with his hands, wrung them out, and hung them on the drying rack above the row of sinks.

“Where did this towel come from?” Qian Liyun saw him hanging up a strange white towel.

“A classmate gave it to me.” Gu Jiahe passed by her with drooping eyelids.

“It feels nice. Let it dry and put it in the bathroom.” Qian Liyun touched the surface of the towel with her thin fingers.

“No, I have to return it to him tomorrow.” Gu Jiahe suddenly raised his voice.

“What classmate? Why are you so stingy? Just a towel, and you still have to return it.”

Gu Jiahe didn’t reply. He turned around and went into his room, closing the door behind him.

Just a few minutes of peace passed before there was a knocking on the door from outside.

“Qian Liyun, why the hell did you close the door again!”

It was Gu Jianmin’s voice, followed by the crisp sound of a glass bottle shattering. Gu Jiahe’s pen shook, but he steadied himself the next second.

Over the years, Gu Jiahe had developed the ability to judge how much Gu Jianmin had been drinking just by listening to his tone of voice.

Hi’s home had never been quiet for a complete hour.

Since the first year of high school, boys and girls in the class had been passing around various youth novels.

Gu Jiahe had never read any of them. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested; he just couldn’t get through them. In his youth, he had never faced the romantic troubles depicted in those novels. He couldn’t empathize with the romantic dilemmas of the handsome male and beautiful female protagonists.

The biggest challenge in his life was how to filter out Qian Liyun’s curses and endure Gu Jianmin’s violence.

The only sanctuary for him was his grandmother’s house, several kilometers away. He had lived there for a while when he was young and had spent a relatively happy six months there. At least the food was warm, the clothes, though old, were always clean, and he could play with cats and dogs in the alley.

However, his grandmother’s health wasn’t good now. She had been living alone for many years and was not inclined to visit him frequently.

Gu Jiahe still managed to find time to go to his grandmother’s house, but every time he stayed there too long, Gu Jianmin would call him back with a phone call. And every time he returned home, there was nothing major happening.

Gu Jianmin was always strange like that. He didn’t like staying at home himself, but he hoped Gu Jiahe would understand that this was his house.

It was a strange sense of territorial awareness.

Today was the first day of school, and there was surprisingly no evening self-study session. Gu Jiahe took out the homework assigned by the teacher and looked at it for five minutes without reading a single word.

He lifted his head from the book and looked at the white towel hanging on the drying rack in the corridor through the green glass.

Suddenly, the eyes of the unfamiliar classmate from earlier flashed in his mind.

Beautiful almond-shaped eyes, clean hands, neatly trimmed fingernails, short hair.

The whole person looked… brand new.

Gu Jiahe searched for a long time and could only come up with one adjective.

Yes, he looked like… the most beautiful first page of a finely bound hardcover book.

Hiss—

Gu Jiahe flipped through his workbook, but his finger was cut by the edge of the paper.

A drop of blood seeped out from his fingertip, and he sucked it with his lips.

His name was Li Chao, or was it Li Zhao? He had to remember to ask tomorrow.

Pingcheng high School was a very strict public school, and the seniors had to arrive at school by 6:30 in the morning to start morning reading.

The first challenge Gu Jiahe faced every day was how to catch the early bus and squeeze onto it. If he missed one, he would definitely be late.

Gu Jianmin would also jump up to scold him for slamming the door too loudly.

At 5:30 in the morning, Gu Jiahe quietly pushed open the door with his backpack on his back. He had already walked more than ten meters away when he suddenly remembered something and ran back to the door.

He reached up and took down the white towel from the drying rack above the sink. The weather was humid, and the towel that had been hung overnight still hadn’t dried completely.

After some thought, he carefully folded it and put it deep into his backpack.

Glancing at his watch, he hurried forward.

The morning air was a bit chilly, and Gu Jiahe felt his lungs sting after running for five minutes.

Fortunately, he managed to squeeze onto the No. 15 bus at the last moment. As he boarded the bus, he looked around. He didn’t see the figure of that person.

Well, he lived in Huwan City, so it was impossible for him to take the bus to school.

But why did he choose to take the bus home with him in such heavy rain yesterday? Didn’t anyone come to pick him up?