Ch34 - Holding Hands

Translation checker: Rin
Editor: Junyans

After having known Yu Ran for a long time, Chu Mian finally understood why people pursued “transcendence” in life. 

“Don’t argue with a fool.” Fang Zhao patted Chu Mian on the shoulder to comfort him.

Chu Mian sat down and drank water to moisten his throat. Then, he ignored whatever Yu Ran said, for fear that the other party would trick him again.

After successfully teasing him, Yu Ran was satisfied, and said with sincerity, “Chu Mian, I will kneel down and apologize to you.”

He stretched out his right index finger and middle finger, and simulated walking on two legs on Chu Mian’s desk, and then bent them down with a “dong”. 

Chu Mian sighed tiredly and helplessly, picked up his school bag and went away.

The snow was not too heavy now, it was just a little dense. Silver powder and jade shavings were scattered over the city, and the roads had been crowded since the afternoon. There was no sign of the destruction of the world at all. Compared with the end of the world in rumors, a more important event today was actually the winter solstice.

The cold night was brightly lit, and the light was accompanied by snowflakes.

Li Guirong cooked three large plates of cabbage and pork dumplings. When she brought them out of the kitchen, her two sons were knocking on the table with chopsticks, which was annoying as hell.

While pouring vinegar, Yu Ran asked, “Is Dad coming back today?”

Hearing this, Li Guirong disliked him even more for being noisy and kicked him. “No matter what he does, you seem to be quite filial, huh? Have you seen him care about you? Only asking nonsense.”

Yu Ran didn’t speak, just smiled.

Yu Jin didn’t seem to have any appetite today. He didn’t gobble like usual. After eating a bowl, he went back to the room on the pretext of doing his homework. Yu Ran saw that he was a little unusual, and went in after a while and asked him, “Yo, what’s the matter, brother? Don’t you have to eat three tons every day?” 

“Don’t bother me.” Yu Jin slumped listlessly on the bed.

Yu Ran leaned over beside him with a smile on his face and put his arms around his shoulders. “Who messed with you? Tell this brother of yours, and I’ll send him a ‘Doing justice on God’s behalf’ silk banner.”

“You’re so annoying, get lost…” Yu Jin distractedly muffled a few grunts, and pushed Yu Ran away.

But the little boy was sad in his heart, and now he wanted to express it quickly, so he still told Yu Ran, “I am wounded by love.” 

He used this young and tender face to say such serious and sad words, Yu Ran just wanted to laugh, but as a brother, he still had to endure it. He turned on KuGou music, played a song “It’s Not a Sin for a Man to Cry” for Yu Jin, and then patiently listened to Yu Jin pouring out his grievances.

The process of the matter was very simple. Today, there was an ‘End of the World Confession’ frenzy in QQ, and the atmosphere was sweet and warm. Yu Jin also wanted to participate. He had been expressing his true feelings since last night. He had written hundreds of love words to his current girlfriend in a memo, which he had planned to post at noon today.

But what happened was… his girlfriend broke up with him early in the morning on the grounds that “I don’t want to lie to myself when death is imminent” before she turned to confess to a senior.

Yu Jin had been depressed for a day because of this. 

Yu Ran couldn’t empathize with the other party’s sadness in this regard, so he could only comfort him in a formal manner: “Hey, bro, don’t be afraid. There is a saying… ‘There are plenty more fish in the sea’. If this one doesn’t work, then find another one.”

“I was originally planning to find the next one,” Yu Jin said. “I just can’t accept that she broke up with me first. Why should I be the one who got dumped?”

“Huh? Bro, you’re being a little too fussy about this…”

“Hmph, you don’t understand, go away, don’t play the song anymore!” Yu Jin pushed him away again. He turned off the music on his phone, lay on the bed, covered himself with the quilt, and slept to heal his wounded feelings. 

Yu Ran was in no hurry to wash and sleep. He leaned on the bedside to play with his mobile phone, waiting for the time to turn from “23:59” to zero.

December 21 passed smoothly, and the end of the world hypothesis collapsed of itself.

The class president was the first to send a message in the QQ group: “We survived!”

Other classmates followed suit: “It’s good to be alive.” “Huh? Are we in heaven now?” “Worse than the end of the world is that final exams are coming soon.” “How many people regret confessing yesterday?” 

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

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“Hee hee! I’m alive too!” 

Yu Ran actually wanted to hear Chu Mian’s voice, but Yu Jin was sleeping next to him, and he didn’t want to disturb him, so he continued to communicate by text message.

“Chu Mian, we’ve also experienced life and death together.”

Chu Mian didn’t have any feelings about “living together and dying together” under the premise of such rumors, but when Yu Ran said it, he really felt that the friendship between them had deepened, which was gratifying.

Holding his phone, he typed back, “Please continue to take care of me in the future.” 

The light of the screen reflected on his face, and the corner of Yu Ran’s mouth rose uncontrollably. Compared to “surviving a disaster”, it seemed that Chu Mian’s words made him more happy.

“Okay!!!” He hurriedly responded.

At night, the snow stopped.

Chu Mian repeatedly turned on his phone several times, and after confirming that Yu Ran would not send any new messages, he put down the phone and turned over to sleep. 

At the end of December, cold winds raged in the north, and the temperature in Ronggang hit a new low. Chengjun Middle School’s inter-class exercise simply stopped for a week to prevent the students from having accidents as the ground was too slippery due to ice.

Christmas Eve and Christmas were the busiest weekdays, and vendors wrapped ordinary apples in exquisite wrapping paper and sold them near elementary and middle schools, hoping to attract many simple teenagers to buy them and make a lot of profits.

Starting from these two days, letterheads were distributed one after another to all classes throughout the school. The first year of senior high did not know what was going on at first, but everyone soon discovered that there was a huge red mailbox at the entrance of the school building, with white characters printed on it: Principal’s Tree Hole.

As the name suggested, if students had anything they wanted to talk about secretly, they could write it down and post it in the remaining few days at the end of the year. The second and third year students understood that this was Chengjun’s annual tradition. The principal did this to let the children slowly learn to let go of this year’s regrets during the writing process, and then try to look forward to next year. 

After Yu Ran saw the mailbox, he stood there dumbfounded.

“‘The Principal’s Tree Hole’? Fuck, these people in our school are too wild!” Yu Ran pointed at the narrow post in astonishment and said casually, “Use this hole to con the principal? This, this is a rectangle, can it be stuffed in?!”

There happened to be a few classmates who were about to drop letters. After hearing Yu Ran’s words, they stopped and looked at him in a complicated manner.

Fang Zhao put the paper in and turned to Yu Ran to explain the meaning and origin of the word “tree hole”. After being enlightened, Yu Ran ran back to class immediately, wrote down his letter, and then took it out for delivery. 

Fang Zhao was curious: “Even you have a secret to tell? What did you write?”

Yu Ran pretended to be mysterious: “Heaven’s secrets must not be divulged.”

“You can’t write essays in it!” Fang Zhao was worried. “If the principal really sees it, he will definitely give us more Language classes next year.”

The mailbox was filled with more and more letters, and the joys and worries of adolescence mingled so heavily that everyone seemed to be able to hear the hustle and bustle inside when they passed by it. 

It was not until the last day of this year that the secret mailbox was removed, only to come back next year.

“Miēmiē, where are you going? It’s getting late.”

After dinner, Chu Heng saw Chu Mian put on his jacket, about to go out.

Chu Mian said calmly, “New Year’s Eve.” 

“It’s actually the 31st today…” Chu Heng had been working on the draft recently, regardless of day or night. “Then be careful on the road, don’t fall asleep. How many friends are going with you?”

“Four.” Chu Mian took the keys, went downstairs, and took a taxi to the place agreed with Yu Ran and the others.

Since they couldn’t book a restaurant, they had to go home to eat before going out to gather after school. Chu Mian had never celebrated New Year’s Eve before, and he seldom even went out at night. It was only two days ago that Yu Ran proposed it, and he agreed without hesitation.

Jiubao Street was expectedly crowded. Chu Mian arrived at the appointed place early, and smoothly joined Fang Zhao and Ye Xi. 

“No one answered Cui He’s phone. Maybe she didn’t hear it on the road.” Ye Xi gave up the calling from the time being and asked the other two boys, “Has Yu Ran contacted you?”

Fang Zhao looked down at Yu Ran’s latest text message: “He said he’ll be here soon… Damn, he said that half an hour ago!”

Ye Xi began to worry: “What should we do? The best position is under the Century Clock. If we go late, we won’t be able to squeeze into the front row.”

Chu Mian glanced at the time, and said to the two of them, “You guys go first, I’ll wait for him.” 

Fang Zhao: “Is that okay? I’m afraid you will fall asleep after waiting for a while.”

“I took medicine before I left home.”

“Okay.” Fang Zhao was relieved and went to the location of the New Year’s Eve fireworks with Ye Xi to occupy a few positions.

The crowd next to Chu Mian was noisy, and he couldn’t hear the sound on the phone, so he contacted Yu Ran by text message. Ten minutes later, Yu Ran’s taxi stopped by the side of the road. He quickly ran towards Chu Mian. In the end, he didn’t stop in time and almost knocked him down. 

The two subconsciously supported each other to keep their center of gravity steady.

After Chu Mian stood up, he said, “There are too many people here, let’s go through the parking lot.”

Yu Ran was panting, the tip of his nose was pink, and he nodded in agreement.

The underground parking lot on Jiubao Street spun four large shopping malls. If you went out and crossed the road, you could reach the vicinity of Century Clock. The two entered Parkson and waited for the elevator, and pressed the “B2” button. 

At this moment, Chu Mian received a text message from Fang Zhao, telling him that there were too many people at the New Year’s Eve location, so not only could they not be able to occupy a place for them, but they might not even be able to meet in person later.

“Then so be it.” Chu Mian replied casually.

He didn’t feel any regret, but still took this opportunity to blame Yu Ran: “It’s your fault for being too late.”

“There was a traffic jam, so there was no way.” 

The elevator began to sink slowly, Yu Ran closed his eyes and stretched out. He had just raised his arms halfway when he suddenly felt the floor under his feet become heavy.

Before Chu Mian could react, the lights above all went out.

Yu Ran opened his eyes and found his vision was pitch black. “Fuck! I’m blind! Chu, Chu—”

“You’re not blind.” Chu Mian leaned half a step towards him. “The elevator just stopped abruptly. It should be that the mall had a power outage.” 

A horror movie clip immediately appeared in Yu Ran’s mind. “The elevator won’t fall, right?”

Chu Mian hesitated. He just wanted to say “no”, after all, the elevator had a lot of steel ropes and it came with a buffer. But hearing Yu Ran’s flustered tone, he didn’t want the other party to feel at ease so quickly.

He calmly took out his phone in the dark and said, “Maybe, but we probably wouldn’t fall to death.”

“Huh?” Yu Ran froze. 

Chu Mian turned on the flashlight and pointed the beam of light at Yu Ran’s face, only to find that he looked terrified.

“Then when, when will someone come to save us? Could it be that no one found anyone in the elevator at all?” Yu Ran hurriedly took his mobile phone to call the police, but found that there was no signal in the elevator. “What does ’emergency call’ mean? Directly call the police?”

Chu Mian shone the flashlight forward to hide the smile on his lips. “It’s alright, just wait for a while.”

Yu Ran thought for a while, then quickly held Chu Mian’s arm and told him eagerly: “Chu Mian, don’t worry, if we are stuck here and can’t get out, I will find a way to keep you alive!” 

Chu Mian was startled.

He originally just wanted to take the opportunity to take advantage of Yu Ran and even the score; he had not expected that Yu Ran not only regarded the current situation as a crisis, but also took the initiative to comfort him.

Chu Mian felt relieved and asked softly, “What can you do?”

“I’ll pee for you to drink!” Yu Ran said sincerely and firmly. “I’ll give all of it for you to drink!” 

“…” Chu Mian’s Adam’s apple bobbed and he drew back his arm. “No need.”

“Don’t be polite to me. It’s a pity that I didn’t bring a cup. You can drink it only by having your mouth…”

Chu Mian quickly took two steps to the side, away from Yu Ran.

At this moment, the elevator button lit up again with a low orange light, and after half a second, the overhead light bulb was back to its original state. 

Yu Ran, who was in a false alarm, heaved a sigh of relief, and immediately pressed the button to go to the parking lot.

The two walked forward quickly, climbed the stairs to go out from another shopping mall, and saw that the opposite side of the road was already crowded with people. Yu Ran wanted to get as close as possible to Fang Zhao and the others, so he pushed forward decisively. Chu Mian didn’t want to be alone, so he could only follow.

Halfway through the walk, they were tired, and even if they could see where Fang Zhao was, there was no way to get there smoothly.

It was extremely crowded, and Yu Ran fell back half a step. He immediately turned around and grabbed Chu Mian’s hand and pulled the other party to his side. 

Both of their palms were cold, but when they touched each other, they gradually felt the heat flow.

Chu Mian leaned closer to Yu Ran’s ear and asked, “Did someone bump into you?”

“Well, it’s nothing!” Yu Ran smiled indifferently. “It’s just a painless stream of people.”

Chu Mian smacked his lips and unconsciously squeezed Yu Ran’s hand. “You’d better check your money and cell phone.” 

Yu Ran touched his pocket. “It’s all there.”

The two didn’t let go, just held each other’s hands for a while. After Chu Mian realized that Yu Ran’s fingers had become much warmer, he realized that there was no need for them to hold hands anymore.

But now it felt very natural to hold hands, and it seemed that there was no need to release them.

Chu Mian lowered his head in a daze, and the surrounding crowd loudly burst out with the countdown, which made him lean towards Yu Ran, but this did not help because Yu Ran’s voice was louder than anyone else. 

From “60” onwards up to “15”, people’s voices slowly overlapped in unison. Even if Chu Mian didn’t make a sound, he was infected by the lively atmosphere around him, which made him feel happy.

“Five!”

— He felt Yu Ran suddenly tighten his hand.

“Four!” 

— He heard Yu Ran’s voice become even louder.

“Three!”

— He saw the corners of Yu Ran’s mouth curl up with a deeper curve than the others.

“Two!” 

— The left side of his chest was heating up.

“One!”

— He saw the fireworks reflected on Yu Ran’s dark pupils.

Chu Mian’s thoughts gradually recovered, and then he sighed “unbelievably” slowly. He actually held hands with Yu Ran when 2012 came to an end.