Don’t Pick Up Boyfriends From the Trash Bin

translator: baumkuchen  editor: serefina, glitterypanda

Today, Chi Xiaochi changed into red and gold training clothes and went to the practice rink. 

The moment he put on his skates, an extremely strange feeling ignited in his heart.  

……As if he’d willingly put on that pair of cursed red dancing shoes from the fairy tale, preferring to burn to ash in raging flames, rather than become dust trampled beneath people’s feet.

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Chi Xiaochi slowly slid onto the ice, saying, “Now, there’s only one song that can describe my feelings.”

061’s mind was filled with Sailor, Zhang Zhihua, me and my last stubbornness, that kind of thing. 

Chi Xiaochi sang, “If you were a firebird, I would be those flames, surrounding you, surrounding you, burning you, burning you, yeah, yeah.”

061, “……” Please be reasonable, if you want to talk just talk, why do you have to sing.

Especially those last two “yeah”s, they could be said to be written by the hand of the gods. 061 was “yeah”-ed until his entire system didn’t feel too good.  

Being distracted by trivial matters, coupled with having to suffer through the devilish noise in his ears, 061 forgot about Chi Xiaochi’s strangeness at the breakfast table that morning.

Meanwhile, Chi Xiaochi followed his body’s instincts, and threw himself into training.

In the sports school, training and cultural lessons were intertwined. In consideration of the students’ bodies, the school rules dictated that their time on the ice could not exceed three hours a day.

However, driven by his instincts, Chi Xiaochi kept skating until a coach came to urge him off the ice.

During that time, he was repeating the same movement.

A 4T. 

The jump that had once crippled him.

In the corner of the ice rink, he mechanically repeated this movement over and over, jump, fall, jump again, fall again.

Small children’s bodies were flexible and light. When he fell, it didn’t really hurt, and fall injury prevention skills were something every skater knew well.

But every time he fell onto the hard surface of the rink, surrounded by the smell of powdery ice, Chi Xiaochi would feel an urge to cry. 

This longing and desperate desire stemmed from the person inside him.

Of course, his seemingly crazed behaviour became a joke in the eyes of others.

When a coach passed by, and saw that he was practicing a 4T, he shouted out in a particularly loud voice, “Who is that! If you can’t jump it, then don’t jump it! You haven’t even learned to walk and you already want to make big jumps?? If you fall to your death, whose fault will it be!?”

Chi Xiaochi remained silent. 

He drew back his right foot, the outer edge of his skates carving a white half-circle on the ice.

Following that, he sprung up into the air like a starling in the woods. The silver bracelet on his wrist drew a smooth line of silver light as he completed four perfect rotations.

When he landed steadily on the ice, the blades of his skates kicked up a spray of ice crystals like fragments of jade.

He slid over a few steps, turning to face the coach who had just mocked him. He drew a semicircle in the air with one hand, ending with his palm placed on his chest, and performed a graceful bow. 

The coach completely couldn’t react. Only when Chi Xiaochi had already skated off did he suck in a breath of cold air.

……Had he actually jumped a complete 4T, something that was difficult for anyone to achieve perfectly even in international competitions?

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Practically every child in the locker room had such a “magic breath escaping” appearance. 

He sat down, stripped off his sweat-soaked training clothes, and began to quietly talk to the Dong Ge in his body, “We did pretty well, didn’t we?”

Hearing his slightly satisfied yet gentle tone, 061 pursed his lips into a smile.

It was really hard to dislike this kind of Chi Xiaochi.

However, Chi Xiaochi still wasn’t used to such rigorous training. His physical exhaustion directly impacted his mental state.

Eventually, after an hour of English class, he slumped down onto the desk.

Even though he was asleep, his legs were still uncontrollably shifting as they simulated his movements on the ice. 

He had a dream, dreaming of something from when he was younger.

At that time, he often did his homework together with Lou Ying.

In many people’s eyes, Lou Ying didn’t count as a study tyrant, rather he was more like a study god. 

He always scored first place, and his first place score was always at least twenty points above second place. 

Many people liked to say that they wanted to crack open his head and see what was in it. After all, someone whose main job was picking up rubbish and side job was studying being able to score like this was truly the heavens being unfair.

However at that time, Chi Xiaochi hadn’t thought too deeply about it.

He was two years younger than Lou Ying. In his mind, Lou Ying wasn’t actually all that overtly outstanding, like rain, softly, silently, moistening all. When he explained questions to him, he rarely used unnecessarily fancy tricks, the solutions he gave were often very simple. 

Only twice did he show some clues.

The first time, was when Chi Xiaochi couldn’t understand his explanation, and asked him if he had any simpler solution.

Lou Ying said, “I already did a comparison, out of the six solutions, this is the simplest one.”

The second time, was when Chi Xiaochi’s school assigned them the task of compiling a wrong question booklet. Chi Xiaochi bitterly ran back and asked Lou Ying, “Do you guys also need to do this?” 

Lou Ying said, “We need to.”

Chi Xiaochi said, “Let me see how you format yours.”

A little apologetic, Lou Ying replied, “But I don’t have any wrong questions to compile.” 

Probably about two to three months later, Chi Xiaochi went to Lou Ying’s home to play. At the very top of a neat stack of books, he caught a glimpse of a notebook titled “Wrong Answer Booklet”.

Chi XIaochi immediately perked his little tail, picked up the booklet, and waved it at Lou Ying. “Lou-ge, you lied to me, you said that you didn’t have a wrong answer booklet.”

Lou Ying had been repairing a half-destroyed radio. He looked up and glanced over at him, then lowered his head again. In a gentle tone, he said, “That’s your wrong answer booklet.”

In his surprise, Chi Xiaochi opened it up and took a look. It really was. 

But the writing, those extremely precise lines, those strokes, clearly belonged to Lou Ying.

Chi Xiaochi was curious, “What did you compile mine for?”

Lou Ying replied with another question, “Would you have done it?”

The Chi Xiaochi who hadn’t compiled anything immediately tried to suck up to him, saying, “Lou-ge’s the best.” 

Lou Ying picked up a small screwdriver and removed a small screw. “Say it again.”

Chi Xiaochi, “Lou-ge’s the best.”

Lou Ying laughed, a mass of warm flowers blooming in his eyes.

Even a long, long time later, Chi Xiaochi still remembered those dusky evenings, when there was someone to share a lamp with, who would whisper guidance in his ear. “You can add a supplementary line here.”

Chi Xiaochi was awoken by the teacher’s chalk to the head.

This English teacher was a big burly man with a height of 180 and a weight of 180. He pointed at Chi Xiaochi’s nose and scolded, “Your little butt’s raised pretty high. You’ve learned everything already, have you? If you know it all already, why don’t you try translating this sentence?!” 

Chi Xiaochi obediently stood up, “Liu-laoshi. Liu-laoshi.”

The summoned Liu-laoshi, “Page 89, third line from the left. The meaning, when translated is, ‘to me, a long-time expatriate, I think that……’”

Chi Xiaochi recited it like drawing a tiger from a cat.  

This person who had been completely proficient at both Spanish and English in the last world, purposefully stammered through this elementary school level sentence. 

When he finished his translation, the English teacher was also a little surprised, “Really amazing, you could still hear what’s going on even though you were asleep, huh.”

Chi Xiaochi lowered his head, resisting the impulse to run his mouth.

The English teacher let him sit down.

After being smacked in the head with chalk, he also became a lot more well-behaved, beginning to doodle in hie textbook, expression extremely serious..

061 extended his head out and took a look. On an illustration of an unadorned young foreign woman, he had drawn a remarkably realistic heavy-duty motorcycle, then made it so that the woman was smoking a cigarette, thought for a moment, then added a banner behind the woman.

“Having a son isn’t like having a daughter, with a son finding a future partner for him will be a bother.” 

061, “……”

He was suddenly a little skeptical of how that year’s Chi Xiaochi had scored into that prestigious  high school and maintained the top in his level there for three years straight.

Dong Feihong would come to pick Chi Xiaochi up for a meal on Wednesdays, while local sports school students could return home on Saturdays and Sundays. 

In the afternoon two days later, Chi Xiaochi waited at the school gate.

Because he didn’t have a phone, he hadn’t been able to arrange a time with Dong Feihong. He just bought a shredded potato pancake from nearby and ate it as he waited.

061 advised him, “Find a small shop to wait in. It’ll be warm.”

Chi Xiaochi said ambiguously, “I want to see him.” 

061, “……” Hmm? What was this about?

But since Chi Xiaochi wanted it, then he would hurry it up.

Turning around, he could see several brightly-coloured heads harbouring malicious intent spying on the solitary Chi Xiaochi. 

Days in winter got dark especially early, and the parents who had come to pick up their children had gradually left, leaving only Chi Xiaochi, waiting alone anxiously in the light of a small shop.

Seeing that their chance had arrived, several frozen, shivering people exchanged glances.

The leader in front was Xue Yibo’s older brother. 

He confirmed the situation, “Get him?”

No response came from behind him, but he didn’t take it seriously and began striding towards Chi Xiaochi.

But just as he took the lead in slipping out of the alley, a hand reached out from behind him, directly covering his mouth and locking his throat in his grip.

A low, melodious whisper sounded by his ear, “Shh.” 

The brat’s hair bristled. “Wuwuwu!”

Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw his bros who had just been sneakily following along behind him already beaten unconscious, lying scattered all over the alley.

Two days ago, 061 hadn’t been able to confirm if they had just been talking big or were actually serious, so he hadn’t made a move. 

Now that he had caught them red-handed, he naturally didn’t need to be polite anymore.

He leaned in close to the ear of the person whose eyes were full of fear and whispered in a low, deliberating tone, “Don’t bully Dong Ge anymore, okay.”

The little good-for-nothing’s eyes filled with terror. Before he could think it over, he started nodding nonstop, planning on first escaping this threat before thinking more about it.

But in the next second, a muffled screech echoed in the alley. 

About ten minutes later, an old Buick pulled up in front of Chi Xiaochi who had already been waiting for a long time.

The window rolled down, revealing Dong Feihong’s gentle, amiable smile. “Did you wait long?”