Chapter 5: Silence

He prefers to turn into a stubborn fish, waiting alone in the bar to the end.

As Christmas approached, the streets of Paris were ablaze with fireworks.

The festive atmosphere was especially strong in the store windows on both sides of the Champs-Elysées. Exquisite dynamic models danced with the background music of jingling bells, staging a fairy-tale-like simple and happy stage play in the gorgeous and bright lights.

Not far from the fragrant street, the dead tree trunks on both sides of the road in the Châtelet shopping district and the fence in the alley of Little Jasmine Road were also wrapped with circles of small golden light bulbs, flickering, as if a stream had been stolen from the Milky Way.

Jiang Bai pushed open the door of the bar, with his first action was to look towards the innermost booth of the bar.

"He hasn't come back yet."

Chen Lijie said, who was behind the bar and handing Jiang Bai a bottle of beer.

Jiang Bai waved his hand: "Give me a Gibson."

Chen Lijie looked at Jiang Bai's expression, sighed inwardly, and went back behind the bar to make him a drink.

"If Fang Yuan knew you were still coming up here, he would nag me again." As he mixed the drinks, he said, "Didn't he say he was going to take you to Finland to see Santa Claus over Christmas break? You didn't go?"

Jiang Bai sat on a high chair at the bar, reached out to play with a gnome doll display placed in front of him, and indifferently said: "His mouth, what else does he say with that mouth of his? Besides… this place grew on me, I can come wherever I want."

Chen Lijie pushed a cup of three hundred milliliters of Gibson to Jiang Bai's hand.

Jiang Bai: ......

"You're planning to get me drunk?"

Chen Lijie: "In the future, if you come to my bar, the drinks will be free!"

Jiang Bai snorted and laughed, "Not so much! I'm not a little girl who still needs the comfort of love after being abducted to bed... everyone here’s a man, and I was willing."

Saying that, he fished out a few coins from his pocket, counted out the money for a cup of Gibson and dropped it on the bar.

"But I only need a cup, you give me this extra version, I will not give you more than a refund." Jiang Bai laughed.

Chen Lijie grinned and reached out to scratch the coin away, "Then, from now on all your drinks will be this size!"

Jiang Bai carried a large cocktail to the bar's innermost booth, sitting down in the newly replaced red sofa cover, tilting his head to look at the television hanging on the wall behind the stage.

The film, Jeux d’enfants, was playing.

Jiang Bai took a sip of wine, and the stinging liquid flowed from his throat into his heart.

That night in November was still fresh in his memory, and even his body remembered the sensations of that night vividly.

Ya Bu was a gentleman who knew how to be considerate in bed, the opposite of his seemingly debauched and wild appearance. His patience and tenderness made Jiang Bai's first experience not excessively painful, and even his initial feelings of embarrassment and shame were unconsciously dispelled into nothingness, and now all that remains in his memory are the soft words of love in his ears and the waves of pleasure in his body.

At that moment, Jiang Bai was in a trance and believed he had really seen heaven.

The next morning, before Ya Bu sent Jiang Bai to the subway station, he forcefully pinned him to the bar and kissed him for a long time.

Jiang Bai thought that even if he and Ya Bu couldn't be together all the time, they would at least become lovers who could occasionally hold hands, go to the movies together, and sit side by side on the banks of the Seine to blow the wind in this city full of romance.

He did not expect the subsequent drama to take a sharp turn for the worse.

Just two days after the affair, Ya Bu suddenly became very busy, his whereabouts were uncertain, and his text messages were hardly ever answered in time. Jiang Bai went to the bar to look for him, but the two were always on the wrong side of each other, never being able to meet.

One day in early December, Jiang Bai finally saw Ya Bu again at the bar.

What followed was just a night of partying and fooling around between the two.

The next morning, when Jiang Bai woke up in the small bedroom on the bar’s second floor, Ya Bu had already left and lost contact with him completely in the following days.

Even Chen Lijie was not able to tell Jiang Bai where Ya Bu had gone.

By the time Silvia learned from Ya Bu's friends that Ya Bu had followed his friends who played extreme sports to the Alps, it was already mid-December.

Fang Yuan almost smashed Chen Lijie's bar when he heard about it- but used it as an opportunity to get over the "my good friend is gay" hurdle in his heart and started to feel sorry for Jiang Bai.

Fang Yuan said: "He doesn't love you at all! He just wants to hook up with you! And you were foolish enough to let him have it! If it was really love between you two, he would have told you in advance even if he was going to run naked in the Alps, instead of leaving you alone in that little bedroom upstairs without a word, without even buying you breakfast!"

Even Silvia, who is Ya Bu's own sister, could not refute this statement.

"He did play around a bit, but I haven't seen him looking for a bed partner lately, so I thought he stopped." Silvia was a little helpless, trying to find a way to bring back her brother’s good image, "I think Bai is still different for him, at least he's willing to sing for Bai-- he hasn't been willing to pick up a microphone for many, many years. He hasn't been on stage since his band fell out and broke up."

Fang Yuan could quarrel with Chen Lijie, but he couldn't take it out on Silvia, so he had to badmouth Jiang Bai and warn him from coming to this bar again.

The result of this warning… was of little use.

As the party in question, Jiang Bai is actually not as hurt as people thought, just a little disappointed, disappointed in his own worst fears that still happened, which is perhaps an excellent evidence of Murphy's Law.

And that's just it.

What he really couldn't stand wasn’t Ya Bu’s disappearance, but the invisible brand that Ya Bu left on his body, making him very spiteful of himself every time he wakes up from a dream, yet he has to admit that he is indeed craving Ya Bu's body.

He would even masturbate uncontrollably thinking of Ya Bu's face.

The movie on the screen was nearing its end, and Jiang Bai drained the last sip of spirits from his glass.

He picked up the guitar that belonged to Ya Bu behind the booth, held it in his arms and tuned it, then called Chen Lijie to help him turn on the amp.

"Don't you always ask me if I'm willing to sing for the bar? Today, I'll give you a song." Jiang Bai laughed.

Chen Lijie couldn’t persuade him to do otherwise, but helped Jiang Bai open the speaker, turned around and sent a WeChat to Fang Yuan.

　　"Gorgeous marigolds bloom all over the place, strange people come and go. I felt so lonely for the first time, submerged in the endless sea. The sky is full of rain, I actually looked over and lost you ......"

Jiang Bai sang a song that has been adapted into French called "Silence".

The bewildered and vocally painful song immediately attracted the attention of all the customers as soon as it rang out in the bar. They stopped talking and looked at the bar's stage with almost identical awestruck eyes.

On the stage sat a dark-haired, dark-eyed Asian boy, like a dark little elf. He was somewhat slender, a contrast to the explosive power in his singing voice.

　　"The pain of love pierces into my heart, in your eyes, there is no more love. The vow lost its meaning, let it drift away in the wind, it's you ......"

　　"I have lost myself ...... I no longer love you ......"

A song was sung and replaced by applause and cheers all over the place.

The door of the bar was violently pushed open, and the loud sound made the originally crowded bar instantly quiet. Fang Yuan stood outside the door with a blackened face and said angrily, "Can you behave yourself!"

Jiang Bai grinned, swept the strings and started singing "Life of a Rose".

Fang Yuan: ...

After singing two songs, Jiang Bai walked off the stage to the applause of the bar patrons and sat down on the bar chair next to Fang Yuan before he felt the intoxication come rushing out.

"See, I can actually learn French songs by myself without Ya Bu's guidance." Jiang Bai smiled smugly.

Fang Yuan smiled and pushed him a banana milkshake: "You should learn that song 'No, I'm not sorry', also by Piaf, I think that song is more suitable for you."

Jiang Bai sniffed as he wrapped his arms around Fang Yuan's neck and hummed a few words in his ear, "No, it's nothing, I don't regret it at all. Because my life, my happiness, from today onwards, starts over with you!"

At the end, he emphasized, "Start anew with you, oh!"

Fang Yuan slapped Jiang Bai away and exaggeratedly held his arms and shook for half a day before saying, "You have to calm down. And you can't just stay out here, you can try other places, maybe you can meet a more handsome one? It is said that there are many bars in the third district and the fourth district, not far from here..."

Jiang Bai's eyes widened: "You go out to the gay bars in the Marais district?"

Fang Yuan said viciously, "It's for you! When I think of that kind of bar scene, my goose bumps are going to fall all over the place!"

"Actually, not all the gay bars in Paris are in the Marais, that bar in Châtelet is also very famous."

A male voice that sounded a bit clear sounded next to Jiang Bai.

Jiang Bai looked back and saw a baby-faced Chinese man holding a blood-red cocktail with a coy smile, cocking his head to look at Jiang Bai.

"Hello, my name is Liu Qianxing. Your song was very nice." The doll-faced boy introduced himself with a pair of big eyes blinking.

"Thanks." Jiang Bai accepted the praise without modesty.

"If you want to visit the Marais district, we can go together." Liu Qianxing smiled, "At this time of year, a whole street of bars behind Pompidou is bustling with activity. It's almost New Year's so there's a lot of 'activities' there."

He emphasized the word "activities" in French, clearly implying that such activities… play a bigger role.

Jiang Bai huffed: "Thank you. I'm not interested."

When he first arrived in Paris, he also went to the Marais district because he was curious, but perhaps it was bad timing or bad luck, he had just settled in a bar when he was molested by a tall gay man. The man's strong body odor mixed with pungent perfume, coupled with a straightforward to unattractive sexual invitation and overly direct hands and feet, so Jiang Bai fled and was left with a small psychological shadow.

Since then, Jiang Bai has never been to that bar street.

He doesn't think he's a very disciplined person-- otherwise he wouldn't have lost his temper so quickly in front of Ya Bu-- but he feels he's still very emotionally oriented. What he wanted was not a short-lived love affair rendered by the alcohol and lights, but a feeling of his own indefinable heartbeat.

Besides, he doesn't really need to resort to crazy behavior to heal his perhaps non-existent love related wounds.

He just misses Ya Bu a little.

But Jiang Bai firmly denied that he fell in love with Ya Bu.

Just a glance at the heart of the grass, listening to a song will be slightly moved, getting together for a few days will be amazed, experiencing a night of lingering will be mindful.

How can this be considered love? This is clearly just lust.

Jiang Bai took a sip of banana milkshake, which was too sweet, so he said disgustedly: "Lijie, give me a glass of aloe vera juice!"

The author has something to say:

《默》in French by Seb & ViVi

TL Note:

I couldn’t find the French version of Silence on Youtube, so I was only able to put the Chinese version on the TSWST Playlist. You can listen to the French version that Xiao Bai sang here, though.

Murphy’s Law states that anything that could go wrong will go wrong.

Jeux d’enfants, or 两小无猜 in Chinese, is a really good French film. I recommend everyone to watch it~