Because it was the National Day holiday, there were even more people returning than when they had come.
Xu Suiran squeezed in with great difficulty and managed to grab a row of three seats in the back.
"Xiao Yu, come quick! I'm exhausted!"
The middle seat was actually the most uncomfortable one.
Not only was it cramped, but there was nowhere to lean.
Pu Yu glanced at Yuan Su, who was standing in the aisle, and proactively went over to sit in the middle: "I'll sit here."
Yuan Su didn't say anything, silently sitting down beside her.
The young man was tall, with long legs and arms. Even though he tried his best to rein in his movements, the room for maneuver left between them was minimal.
With every sway and jolt of the bus body.
The contour of his arm lightly brushed against her shoulder, now and then.
Xu Suiran had originally been a bit displeased, feeling that Pu Yu was wronging herself too much.
But when she turned her head and saw the two of them sitting pressed together.
That trace of displeasure instantly turned into a raging spirit of gossip.
Although Yuan Su was usually gloomy and aloof, with such a terrible family background that people dared not easily provoke him.
Yet at this moment-
Looking at the picture of them sitting side by side.
How did it look more and more... pleasing to the eye?
Her eyeballs rolled around. Daring not to tease them too blatantly, she could only stealthily rummage out a pack of soft candies from her bag.
"Xiao Yu, have some candy."
Pu Yu shook her head: "I don't eat things when riding in a car."
Xu Suiran puckered her lips toward Yuan Su's direction and lowered her voice: "Then ask him if he wants some?"
Pu Yu: "..."
The three of them were sitting this close, and he wasn't deaf.
Yet Yuan Su deliberately closed his eyes and leaned against the backrest, as if isolated from the world.
Xu Suiran was still persevering in handing over that pack of candy.
With no other choice, Pu Yu bit the bullet, took it, and gently poked Yuan Su's arm.
The young man's muscles were firm, the touch slightly hard.
Yuan Su slowly opened his eyes. That pair of deep eyes carried a trace of impatience at being disturbed, his voice low and slightly hoarse: "What?"
"Um..." Pu Yu spread her palm, revealing the cutely packaged soft candies. "Do you want some candy? Mango flavor."
Yuan Su lowered his gaze to glance at those few candies.
Then he looked at the shallow lines in her fair palm.
"Allergic."
He withdrew his gaze and closed his eyes again: "Not eating."
The atmosphere was awkward to the extreme.
"Ah? Sorry, sorry!" Xu Suiran hurriedly poked her head over. "My bad, Yuan Su, I think I have grape flavor in my bag too, do you want-"
"No."
This time he didn't even raise an eyelid, refusing clean and crisp.
Xu Suiran stuck out her tongue and shrunk back.
Pu Yu retracted her hand in some embarrassment, stuffing the candy back into Xu Suiran's bag.
Fortunately, Xu Suiran had worn herself out shopping all day, and before long she leaned against the car window and fell asleep, emitting even breathing.
Otherwise, she didn't know what else she would have made her hand over to Yuan Su.
The carriage gradually quieted down.
Only the deep roar of the coach engine remained.
Pu Yu was already prone to carsickness, and coupled with the poor ventilation inside the vehicle, soon her stomach was churning with a miserable turmoil.
She closed her eyes and forcefully endured, her head bobbing up and down with the jolts of the bus body.
Her consciousness gradually grew fuzzy.
At a sharp turn-
Her body uncontrollably tilted to the left.
When the adhering skin pressed over, it was almost scalding.
Yuan Su's entire body stiffened in an instant.
The young man jerked his eyes open, his pitch-black pupils contracting slightly as he lowered his head to look at the girl leaning against his shoulder.
The weight on his shoulder was very light, yet it pinned him in place, unable to move.
The girl's soft strands of hair brushed against the crook of his neck, carrying a faint, fresh fragrance like post-rain grass that drilled into his nasal cavity along with his breath.
Yuan Su subconsciously raised his hand, wanting to push this trouble away.
Yet in the next second.
His hand paused in mid-air, his gaze dropping.
Pu Yu's complexion was pale, her brows tightly furrowed even in sleep, and her slender eyelashes trembled uneasily, evidently feeling quite unwell.
That hand meant to push her away.
Anyhow, it couldn't come down.
He frowned, saying fiercely with a volume only the two of them could hear:
"If you dare throw up on me, you're dead."
Despite saying that, his body slowly relaxed.
Even, to let her lean more steadily, he subtly adjusted his sitting posture, making his shoulder a bit lower and flatter.
Just like this.
The bus traveled along the winding road.
The young man kept his spine straight, letting the girl beside him lean on him the entire way.
Until the vehicle drove into Whitebank Town.
The afterglow of the setting sun spilled in through the car window.
"Screech-"
The driver slammed hard on the brakes.
Pu Yu was startled awake by the forward momentum of inertia.
She opened her eyes somewhat dazedly. Before her consciousness had fully returned, she unawares collided into a pair of bottomless eyes.
The distance was too close.
Close enough that she could see the tiny reflections mapped in his pitch-black pupils, close enough to feel his warm breath spilling against her forehead one puff at a time.
At that moment.
The bustling human voices all around seemed to be ebbing away.
Her heartbeat pounded once, and again.
Beating out the panic and timidity known only to herself.
Yuan Su's Adam's apple rolled imperceptibly.
He looked at her, his gaze heavy, and didn't immediately move his gaze away.
After a moment, he spoke in a suppressed, hoarse vocal timbre: "Not getting up yet?"
Only then did Pu Yu snap out of it like waking from a dream.
Realizing that she was still maintaining the posture of resting on his shoulder.
She hurriedly sat up straight, her cheeks belatedly burning up: "S-sorry! Did I... did I lean on you for a long time?"
Yuan Su didn't speak, merely shifting his gaze away and stretching his already stiff and numb shoulder. After a long while, he spat out a single word:
"Yeah."
His voice was a bit hoarse.
"I get a bit carsick and accidentally fell asleep, I didn't mean to..."
Pu Yu's voice grew smaller and smaller, trying to explain, yet feeling it was too pale.
"I know." Yuan Su stood up, nimbly taking his bag down from the overhead luggage rack, his tone devoid of emotion: "Let's go."
Xu Suiran woke up at this time too, rubbing her eyes and letting out a huge yawn:
"We're here?"
"Hey, Xiao Yu, why is your face so red? Like you have a fever?"
Pu Yu hurriedly stood up as well, saying with some guilty conscience: "It's nothing, let's get off the bus."
The three of them disembarked with the flow of people.
The evening breeze blew in with a chill, scattering the stuffiness inside the carriage, but it couldn't blow away the lingering heat on Pu Yu's face.
Xu Suiran was headed in a different direction from them and split off at the disembarkation intersection.
Only Pu Yu and Yuan Su were left, walking one after the other toward the small alley.
Yuan Su walked in front, his slender and upright back drawn very long by the setting sun.
Pu Yu stepped in his shadow, a chaotic mess in her heart.
The two of them didn't speak the entire way.
Just when Pu Yu thought this silence would persist all the way to their front door, the person in front suddenly stopped walking.
Not paying attention, she almost crashed into his back.
Yuan Su didn't turn back, his voice sounding exceptionally clear in the quiet alley:
"What do you need a walkman for?"
Pu Yu was stunned, not expecting him to ask this.
She answered honestly: "To listen to English... My spoken pronunciation isn't very good."
He was silent for a few seconds before acknowledging:
"Oh."
The topic seemed to end right there.
The two returned to silence, with only footsteps echoing on the bluestone slabs.
That night, the small town's night scenery was tranquil.
Yuan Su pulled open the repair shop's rolling shutter door and bent over to walk inside.
The shop was piled high with various appliances waiting to be repaired or scrapped, the air permeated with the mixed scent of engine oil and metal.
He put down his schoolbag, walked to the innermost workbench against the wall, and turned on the light.
The young man's gaze wandered over the workbench for a moment.
Finally, it landed on a dust-covered cardboard box in the corner.
Inside were several old walkmans whose models were long outdated, a few of which were even "corpses" he had weighed and bought back by the kilo from the scrap yard.
Expressionless, he rummaged through them, finally picking out an old Sony model.
The outer shell had severe scratches, but the fuselage structure was still relatively intact.
A long time later.
He reinstalled the outer casing and tightened the last screw.
Then he plugged in the headphones and pressed the play button.
A faint rustling sound came through the headphones first, and subsequently, clear music flowed out.
He listened, expression unchanged.
It was fixed.
He had used the best belt he could find, cleaned every contact point that might affect sound quality, and even adjusted the magnetic head angle to make the sound cleaner.
Yet it was fixed, so what?
He stared at that walkman, which bore almost no traces of wear and tear after refurbishment, but his brows slowly furrowed.
Under the light, the young man's handsome brows and eyes were tainted with a trace of irritation and incomprehension.
He had no use for this thing at all.
Then why did he go to all this trouble to fix it?
Before you continue