through the strait gates(过门/Guomen)//work by priest(CN)//BL

Chapter 15: Coming-of-Age Party (vol. scallions)

Xu Xilin hung a bag of dried fillet chips on a monkey bar and pushed himself onto it in a sitting position.

"What were you doing in Qilixiang's office?"

Hesitant, Dou Xun still decided to explain his ridiculous decision after some thought.

"Why aren't you going to take it, then?"

Dou Xun's initial inner melodrama had mostly passed, so he kind of wanted to stuff the dried snack into Xu Xilin's mouth because he really wasn't patient enough to hear him repeat Qilixiang's words. But Qilixiang wouldn't scratch him easily and the same couldn't be said for Xu Xilin. Dou Xun was a bit lacking the energy to fight, so he didn't put his thoughts into action.

He pulled himself onto the adjacent bar, chewed on the overly MSG-flavored dried fillet snack, and answered a little too coldly, "I don't want to."

Xu Xilin's arms were supporting himself on both sides. The formal shirt was making him really uncomfortable. It gave him a restricted feeling, like it was disabling him. He thought, "Then why did you sign up for it?"

But Xu Xilin knew that Dou Xun must've already had an earful from his parents and the homeroom teacher. Right now, his ears didn't lack warnings and teachings. Dou Xun was quite stubborn. If he wasn't willing to take the exam, then even if they tied him up and abducted him to the examination hall, he was bold enough to hand in a blank paper. So Xu Xilin weighed the pros and cons, and half-comfortingly, half sincerely said, "That's normal. I don't want to take it, either."

Dou Xun: "......"

Xu Xilin realized he wanted to say more, so he naturally kept on complaining. "Actually, I don't want to be in third year yet. Third-years have evening study periods until eight something p.m. They even have to have dinner at school––I've heard that our school's cafeteria often has broom twigs mixed into the stir-fried vegetables. I'm genuinely concerned."

Dou Xun felt that Xu Xilin's worries were too shallow. He turned away and didn't want to acknowledge him anymore.

Who knew that Xu Xilin said next, "It's kind of nice that you're going to hang out with us for another year though."

After two sentences of nonsense, he finally tickled Dou Xun's unexplainable itch. Dou Xun's previously spiked-up  fur was smoothed back bit by bit.

"Yeah," he said almost inaudibly, his mood slowly brightening.

The sunset gradually faded. A cool breeze had snuck out of the cracks on the sun-tanned ground. The young man's two gangly legs dangled on the bars, swinging aimlessly. Watching the lights in the Educational Building's corner turn on, Dou Xun said to Xu Xilin, "Ms. Zhang asked me what I want to do in the future, but to be honest, I have no idea."

It took a while to Xu Xilin to realize that "Ms. Zhang" was Qilixiang. Thinking along Dou Xun's voice, he realized that he couldn't help. Because he didn't know what he wanted to do in the future, either––Xu Xilin was completely lost. In the past seventeen years of his life, the tiny waves in his emotions were mostly circled around irrelevant problems such as "where can I go today" or "the teacher's using break time again". He had no time to think about something as distant as the "future".

Xu Xilin had already came to this delicate age: on one hand, he had already begun to be embarrassed to take pocket money from his white-haired grandma's hands, and had started to imitate an adult's way of social interaction. Sometimes, when he looked at Xu Jin, who was more than a head shorter than him, he would even have a "I'm grown now and I can protect Mom" ego boost.

But on the other side, he hadn't learned an adult's way of thinking yet. He didn't had ambition in his heart, because in his subconscious, he was unafraid knowing that the all-powerful Xu Jin would always cover him.