Three Years and Three Years

Chapter 7: Peace of Mind

Zhou Mushi was like a cat, a lazy cat in winter that doesn’t want to move from its spot.

However, compared to laziness, he still couldn’t get over social phobia and fear of crowded places for a while, despite constantly persuading himself. He was still uncomfortable when he saw a few strangers walking around in his house, eating and drinking.

He began to doubt whether he had some mental problems. Recently, he had a strong repulsion to unfamiliar people and disliked any social activities involving more than two people. Even having one more person in the room would make him feel uneasy and he would sit restlessly.

But he clearly did not have this problem before.

He thought about it for a while and decided to go out. After all, he had to use the bathroom, eat, and make noise while in the room. Moreover, the voices of people talking in the living room probably wouldn’t make him feel comfortable.

Zhou Mushi left his house at three in the afternoon, when the sun was still shining brightly. However, after just a short while walking on the street, the sun began to set and the warm sunlight disappeared.

Feeling bored, he found a coffee shop and ordered an Americano.

At home, he told Jin Yang that he was going to a friend’s house to visit and catch up, but he really didn’t want to bother anyone today.

He could have gone back to school, but it was just the winter break and he couldn’t stay there.

He sat in the coffee shop for a while, but then decided to find a hotel to spend the night.

Luckily, it was not the tourist season, so the hotel rooms were not expensive. He got a single room, took the room key, went upstairs, and then collapsed onto the bed in the hotel.

…

On the evening of January 19th, 20XX, Zhou Mushi glanced at his phone and saw that it was 0:35. It was a night accompanied by slight hunger and severe insomnia. He played a soothing piece of music and read a short story on his phone.

The story was about a lost and regained love, not particularly sad, but for some reason it made this twenty-year-old boy shed a few tears, and then they flowed uncontrollably like a burst dam.

The city was very quiet at night. In such a harsh winter, the unsettlingly still atmosphere and insufficient heating in Q city made the rented room feel somewhat icy. He turned on the phone light, grabbed a roll of tissue paper, and put it on his pillow. The white tissues were just enough to catch the teardrops that fell from his eyes.

Zhou Mushi had never dared to tell his parents about his relationship with Jin Yang. In his parents’ eyes, being gay was absurd and would result in his legs being broken and him being tied up at home for “electroshock” therapy. However, such things were impossible to keep secret, and soon his family discovered his secret.

He was a bit stubborn but also very timid, perhaps because he was afraid that his parents would also break Jin Yang’s legs if he revealed his identity. So, he stubbornly refused to say who his partner was. In the 21st century, the Zhou family certainly couldn’t resort to illegal means.

In the end, they decisively cut off Zhou Mushi source of income, which was spending around a hundred thousand yuan a month on his extravagant lifestyle. They told him that they would support him when he correct his behavior.

Jin Yang knew about this matter, but not all of it. Zhou Mushi intentionally kept it from him, and he only thought that Zhou Mushi was a child from an ordinary family. He took over the responsibility of paying for Zhou Mushi’s education, which was not a bad deal for him.

It’s easy to go from frugality to luxury, but difficult to go from luxury to frugality. Fortunately, he has enough to live on and the students around him are from ordinary families. The school’s expenses are also low, so he can manage to get by.

Unfortunately, Zhou Mushi has an extremely insecure personality. After Jin Yang cut off the fixed funding he had been providing him, Zhou Mushi became even more panicked.

The more he couldn’t sleep, the more he loved to randomly browse his phone. He flipped through it and checked his bank card balance again, adding up everything including his Alipay and Jingdong loan1. He calculated how many days he could hold on with a frugal lifestyle.

He searched through all of his assets, and as a result, he found it even harder to sleep. He thought about the whole box of instant noodles and complete set of daily necessities he had stocked up on in the kitchen for emergencies, which gave him some peace of mind.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have been living off his savings like a parasite, and instead should have found a part-time job to earn some money.

End of Chapter 7

1 Jingdong loan is a loan service provided by JD Finance, a subsidiary of the Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com. ↵