Try Again

Try Again chapter 18

Don’t Go

Before receiving Jiang Lin’s WeChat message, Ji Minglun was stuck in traffic near the Wutong overpass with Deng Feng.

Staring at the seemingly endless line of cars ahead, he impatiently hit the steering wheel, setting off the horn. Deng Feng sighed, “Be patient. It’s rush hour. There’s no point in getting upset.”

Ji Minglun didn’t look pleased. He should have checked the traffic before setting out. Who would’ve thought a car accident would slow things down during a rainstorm, leaving him trapped with no way to change routes?

He rolled down the window a bit and lit a cigarette. Deng Feng asked for one, took a couple of puffs, and remarked, “This cigarette is really mild, tastes like chewing gum. Why don’t you smoke something stronger?”

Ji Minglun looked out the window, pressing his thumb to his brow as he held the cigarette. “Don’t want to get addicted.”

Deng Feng noticed that he had been smoking more frequently and seemed moodier lately. He asked, “What’s bothering you? Is my sister giving you trouble again?”

Ji Minglun glanced at Deng Feng. “Can you please talk to her? If she keeps this up, I really won’t be able to stay friends with her.”

Deng Feng chuckled, spreading his hands. “How am I supposed to convince her? She never listens to me. Unless you go find a guy to date just to show her.”

Deng Feng’s words reminded Ji Minglun of Jiang Lin, but only for a moment, as the thought was quickly cast aside.

“Are you her real brother?”

“Of course,” Deng Feng answered without hesitation. “Being her real brother, I know her very well. With me as an example, of course, she thinks you can have a girlfriend too.”

“And besides,” Deng Feng pinched Ji Minglun’s arm muscle and smiled mischievously, “you have too much of an advantage. Why don’t you just gain some weight and grow a big belly? Maybe then she won’t like you anymore.”

“Get lost,” Ji Minglun laughed, brushing Deng Feng’s hand away. He was about to toss his cigarette butt into his portable ashtray when his phone buzzed with a message from someone named “Lin.”

Unlocking his phone, Ji Minglun opened the message, then glanced at the stationary traffic in front of him and checked the three bags of cake in the backseat through the rearview mirror.

Locking his phone again, he said to Deng Feng, “A friend of mine is in a bit of trouble and wants me to go help.”

Deng Feng took Ji Minglun’s ashtray and tossed his cigarette butt inside. “Once the traffic clears, just drop me off somewhere. I’ll deliver the cakes to Jiang Lin.”

“No need to go through the hassle. In this weather, it’s hard to get a ride,” Ji Minglun said. “My friend lives near his place, so I’ll drop you off first and deliver the cakes myself.”

“Alright,” Deng Feng agreed, taking out his phone from his pocket. “I’ll send you Jiang Lin’s number via WeChat.”

After about another half-hour of being stuck, the cars in front of them finally began moving slowly. Once they were past Wuchang overpass, Ji Minglun made a U-turn and took a shortcut to the entrance of Deng Feng’s neighborhood.

As Deng Feng got out of the car, he reminded Ji Minglun to drive carefully. Ji Minglun acknowledged, but as soon as the door shut, he stepped on the gas and sped off. He wanted to stop by a hardware store to buy some fuses, but most of the shops along the street were already closed. By the time he arrived at Jiang Lin’s building, it had been two hours since the message was sent.

Since Deng Feng had been in the car, Ji Minglun couldn’t respond earlier, and Jiang Lin hadn’t sent another message since. Looking up at Jiang Lin’s darkened windows, Ji Minglun quickly walked to the building entrance, entered the code, and went inside.

He climbed from the first floor to the seventh. Every door he passed had a faint light seeping through the cracks, and even the motion-sensor lights in the stairwell flickered on with a dim glow. It gave him the illusion of being back in the past, when Jiang Lin’s house always had power outages, and whenever he got a call from Jiang Lin, he would rush over immediately.

Realizing this, he slowed down, pausing on the fifth floor before continuing upward.

Standing at the door of unit 701, he pressed the doorbell. The door quickly opened, and Jiang Lin, dressed in casual home clothes and holding a half-burned candle, softly said, “You’re here.”

Ji Minglun murmured an acknowledgment, lowering his head to take off his shoes. Jiang Lin took out a pair of slippers from the shoe cabinet and placed them at his feet, but just as Ji Minglun was about to step into them, he paused.

Though the candlelight was dim, it was enough for him to recognize the slippers as the pair he used to wear, and Jiang Lin’s slippers were also the same as before.

Surprised that Jiang Lin had kept his old slippers, Ji Minglun was momentarily distracted. Soon, a few tissues appeared before his eyes, and Jiang Lin said, “Wipe yourself off.”

He had run several dozen meters in the rain from his car to the stairs, and both his hair and shoulders were quite wet. Taking the tissues, he casually wiped himself down and asked, “Is it a circuit breaker issue or a blown fuse?”

“It’s probably not the breaker. I tried flipping the main switch, but it wouldn’t stay up,” Jiang Lin replied, following Ji Minglun as he checked the fuse box behind the kitchen. He raised the candle to help him see better.

The apartment complex was over thirty years old, and power outages were a common occurrence. Ji Minglun had watched electricians fix the problem a few times before and quickly identified the issue as a blown fuse.

He asked, “Do you still have any spare fuses left?”

“I looked in the toolbox, but couldn’t find any,” Jiang Lin replied with a distressed expression. “When you didn’t reply, I tried to fix it myself but had no luck.”

“They’re not in the toolbox,” Ji Minglun said, walking to the living room. He opened the cabinet under the TV and, sure enough, found some new fuses in their usual spot.

These fuses were ones he had bought as spares in the past. Though he had told Jiang Lin where they were kept, knowing his forgetful nature, he probably hadn’t remembered.

Closing the cabinet, Ji Minglun turned to head back to the kitchen but accidentally bumped into Jiang Lin, who had been standing right behind him. The candle in his hand wobbled, and he leaned back slightly.

With the dim lighting all around, Ji Minglun instinctively reached out to steady him. After Jiang Lin regained his balance, two drops of candle wax dripped down, scalding the back of Ji Minglun’s hand.

Ji Minglun pulled his hand back, but this time, Jiang Lin grabbed it. Seeing the still-soft wax on Ji Minglun’s hand in the candlelight, he tried to wipe it off, only to burn himself and flinch. Pinching his earlobe, he said, “Quick, rinse it under some water.”

Ji Minglun’s hand hurt a bit, but it wasn’t too bad. What amused him was the way Jiang Lin rubbed his own earlobe after burning himself. Stifling a smile, he went back to the kitchen to change the fuse.

This time, the main switch stayed up, and the lights in the apartment finally came on. Jiang Lin squinted, adjusting to the brightness, then blew out the candle and placed it aside. Taking Ji Minglun’s right hand, he led him to the sink, turned on the faucet, and started rinsing the back of his hand.

With their bodies so close, Ji Minglun tried to pull his hand away, but Jiang Lin stubbornly held onto it. Glancing back at him with a frown, Jiang Lin said nothing and continued washing his hand.

At that moment, Ji Minglun felt another inappropriate sense of déjà vu.

He hadn’t expected that after agreeing to just be friends again, they would end up interacting the way they used to. It seemed this was the kind of relationship Jiang Lin truly wanted.

Even though a part of him still felt uneasy, Ji Minglun didn’t pull his hand back. He let Jiang Lin hold his wrist, rinsing his hand under the cold water until it was thoroughly chilled, then Jiang Lin handed him some tissues to dry off.

“It’s still a bit red,” Jiang Lin said, walking towards the living room. “Come here, I’ll put some ointment on it for you.”

“No need, it doesn’t hurt anymore,” Ji Minglun followed out, glanced at the food and hotpot on the dining table, and headed straight for the other side of the hallway. “I’ll head out first.”

“Minglun,” Jiang Lin called out to him, and when he turned around, he said, “The rain outside is really heavy. It’s too dangerous for you to leave now. Why not stay and have a meal?”

During the two hours he waited for Ji Minglun, Jiang Lin kept checking his phone and glancing at the weather outside.

When he first sent the message, it was only moderate rain, but after over an hour of waiting, the rain had intensified, pouring down as if the sky had a leak. Watching the blurry, winding streaks of water on the glass window, he thought that Ji Minglun probably wouldn’t come. Although disappointed, he also felt relieved. To his surprise, Ji Minglun actually showed up.

The moment the doorbell rang, his heart skipped a beat. When he saw who it was through the peephole, he couldn’t contain his joy, and it took him a moment to calm down and open the door.

Ji Minglun had braved the storm to get there and knew how bad the road conditions were, yet he still insisted, “No, I have to leave, or the storm will get even worse if I wait any longer.”

“Then just don’t leave.” Jiang Lin blurted out.

Ji Minglun’s movement of changing shoes paused. His fingers tightened on the hallway cabinet, and he didn’t respond for a moment.

After saying this, Jiang Lin realized he was being too eager and quickly added, “You used to sleep at my place all the time. Your clothes, pajamas, all of that is still here.”

“And you said yesterday we can still be friends.”

“If we’re friends, why avoid each other so obviously?”

By the end of his explanation, Jiang Lin was at a loss for words.

There was a time when asking Ji Minglun to stay over didn’t require this much effort, needing so many seemingly reasonable excuses.

Ji Minglun remained with his back to him. Just as Jiang Lin was nervously tugging at his house pants, wondering what else he could say, Ji Minglun slipped his foot out of his sneakers and put on the slippers.

Bending down to place his sneakers in the shoe cabinet, Ji Minglun turned and looked at him. “Alright.”

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