Chapter 13 #3
At last, the others caught up to them. Chen Hong and Yan Jun appeared normal.
Yan Jun wore an outdoor jacket that was zipped up to his neck.
He wasn’t sweating much and looked to be in good spirits.
Chen Hong had taken off his own jacket and tied it around his waist, exposing his T-shirt that revealed the muscular lines of his shoulders and back.
Predictably, Zheng Weize was by far the most tired of the lot.
He held Chang Jinxing’s hand and kept stopping and looking up every three steps.
“How much further?” Zheng Weize asked.
“Almost there!” Zhang Yuwen said, perking up. “Twenty more minutes!”
“Lemme rest for a while,” Zheng Weize pleaded, seeing that Zhang Yuwen and Huo Sichen were ready to continue with their hike. “We just got here!”
“You guys go on ahead!” Chang Jinxing said. “We’ll catch up soon.”
“It’s okay. I was thinking about taking a break too,” Yan Jun said.
Zhang Yuwen felt sheepish; they had walked too fast and left his roommates behind. He adjusted his plans and walked with them.
Hiking was like the journey of life. While everyone set off together, some might speed up without realizing it, while others gradually fell behind until they dropped out of sight entirely. They met new people along the way, walked a distance together, and parted ways again soon after.
But this path was really, really long. They’d chosen the north peak, which rarely had many visitors. The plank road was not only narrow and precipitous, but also steep. By eleven in the morning, even Zhang Yuwen was feeling tired and had to stop for the occasional break.
Chang Jinxing had his DSLR hung around his neck. Carrying both his backpack and Zheng Weize’s, he stood high up on the horizontal steps to take photos of everyone—and especially to document his roommates at their most wretched moments.
“Enough already,” said Yan Jun.
Chang Jinxing laughed. He’d shown himself to be boyfriend material today, carrying the bags and even taking care of Zheng Weize, who could barely move.
Zheng Weize repeated the question he had asked the most today: “How much further?”
“Almost there,” Zhang Yuwen said. “Twenty more minutes.”
Zheng Weize realized he’d been had. “That’s what you said an hour ago!”
“It’s really twenty more minutes this time,” Zhang Yuwen said, serious as anything. People could rarely tell when he was lying with a straight face. All he had to do was look them directly in the eye with an innocent expression; it was impossible not to believe him.
“What if we don’t get there in twenty minutes?” Zheng Weize asked.
“Then the ball’s in your court,” Zhang Yuwen said with a smile.
“You’ll do anything I ask?”
“Sure, go wild. But you can’t dawdle on purpose.”
“Fine. Let’s go.” Not that Zheng Weize had anything to lose. This was a zero-cost deal.
Zhang Yuwen knew Zheng Weize wouldn’t make any unreasonable demands.
In fact, he remembered the day he went hiking with his ex.
They’d had the exact same conversation, right down to the punctuation.
His ex, like Zheng Weize, had also been too exhausted to move, and Zhang Yuwen had coaxed him all the way up.
Did all bottoms think the same? Even the flirtatious atmosphere was familiar.
They were indeed only twenty minutes from the lunch break rest stop. Zhang Yuwen was sure he would win this time, but after his ex made the same bet, he’d whined and dawdled for the rest of the journey, dragging it out to twenty-two minutes. Zhang Yuwen was forced to admit defeat.
Then his ex made his demand: I wanna top you once.
A bet was a bet, so Zhang Yuwen accepted.
Anyway, pleasure in the bedroom was all about spicing things up, and to Zhang Yuwen, who still loved him very much at that time, it was no big deal to let his partner top him occasionally.
As long as they were in love, he could go with anything.
Of course, when they finally reached the summit, the hotel was cold and damp, and his ex was half dead from exhaustion.
Zhang Yuwen promised him he could take a rain check, but they broke up not long thereafter, and his ex never did get to top him.
This left Zhang Yuwen with the sense that he owed it to someone to bottom at least once.
Now, hiking with his roommates, Zhang Yuwen found that he missed his ex a lot.
He never thought his ex had let him down, and anyway, it didn’t matter who let down whom; they were together for four years, and he still had feelings for him.
If only he were here. If his ex had been here, Zhang Yuwen thought, he’d act like Chang Jinxing. Zhang Yuwen would carry both their backpacks as they dawdled behind the rest of the group, listening to his ex gripe.
Indeed, having backpacks to carry and someone to boss you around was its own kind of happiness.
Huo Sichen’s voice dragged him back into reality. “Zhang Yuwen, you’re going to lose. How do you feel about that?”
Zhang Yuwen was speechless. They’d arrived at the waterfall to find a sign on the trail leading up the mountain:
Road ahead under maintenance.
Please take a detour.
Approx. 35 min walk to the lunch break rest stop.