Chapter Text
ACT ONE
I.
They had gotten mail. Jiang Cheng walked out of the front door of their house (“A semi-detached house would be perfect for your family, so that when your girl gets into the picture you will all be fine!” the real estate agent had cooed, when he’d seen that house for the first time eight years before. He’d lived there alone with his nephew for the rest of the time), opened the mailbox, picked up a couple of utilities — which he’d told the company to just send to his bank account — and a larger thing. He threw a glance at the Gold Lily , the school newspaper of the very same school he worked at, and then rolled his eyes. A large, bold, enormous title said: WE WANT YOU. New school year, new enrollments to all extracurriculars ever created.
He walked in again, threw off his shoes, tossed the mail on the kitchen table and poured two cups of coffee. “A-Ling!” he yelled, then, “are you ready? Just get a move on, we’ll be late.” He proceeded to scroll through Instagram with no real interest while he waited for the tell-tale stomping of foot on the stairs.
“It’s too fucking early,” Jin Ling muttered, but he was dressed already, and his hair looked okay. “Why do we always have to leave so early, anyway, there’s no one around when we get there and I have to wait an eternity until people start arriving.”
Jiang Cheng ignored him in favour of an apple he started to eat, and kept staring at his phone because he hated mornings and he hated having to be awake enough not only to bring himself to work but also Jin Ling to school. But he did this everyday nonetheless. Jin Ling had started going through the school newspaper with some interest. Maybe he’d seen something he cared about. Jiang Cheng knew the sports teams were having try-outs this week, so maybe that was what had caught his attention.
“A-Ling, wash the cups, I’ll be down in a second,” he told the boy, and then ran up the stairs to finish getting dressed. It was his third year as a vice-principal. His eighth as a teacher, already. A chill ran through his spine. It wasn’t that he disliked teaching history, he liked that, he even liked having to deal with teenagers, some way or another, the thing he did not enjoy was having to be the vice to his principal, Jin GuangYao, and how he himself had got to that position. He thought it wasn’t fair to be the vice-principal just because they were family. Not that principal Jin would ever admit to that reason in public, anyway.
He heard something falling in the sink and Jin Ling swearing. He sighed, and smiled to himself. “If you’ve broken another mug I’ll make you pay for the next set, I’m not joking,” he told him, yelling because he was on the upper floor and Jin Ling was in the kitchen.
“Everything is still in one piece!” his nephew yelled back, and then he added, “For now.” Jiang Cheng had to laugh at that, while going downstairs once again.
“If you’re ready, I’m ready,” he told Jin Ling, playing with the car keys, and putting shoes on again.
Jin Ling put the last spoon in the rack and fixed his sleeves, “Yeah,” he then wore his jeans jacket — Levi’s, a gift from principal Jin, of course, because Jiang Cheng would have never spent that kind of money on a jeans jacket for a fourteen year-old boy — and threw on a pair of shoes that were a bit battered but still wearable, “still too fucking early, anyway.”
Jiang Cheng flicked him on the back of his head, “Stop swearing like a sailor,” he said, and he bit back the for fuck’s sake that was already following. Consistency was key.
They drove in relative peace for a while. Relative, because Jin Ling had developed a passion for loud music over the summer, and this was why they were going through a residential area with Foo Fighters at an indecent volume playing on the radio. At seven in the morning. God help Jiang Cheng.
“Uncle?” said Jin Ling at a certain point, more than halfway to school, somehow louder than whatever Dave Grohl was singing.
“Yes?” answered Jiang Cheng, turning down the volume of the radio, because he was not going to have to yell over an American singer at seven in the morning, he had some dignity in his life and some rules to teach to the nephew that a court of law had given him full custody of.
Jin Ling was playing with the hem of his t-shirt. “I was thinking of trying a new extra-curricular this year,” he said, hesitant. Jiang Cheng nodded and said nothing, waiting for him to go on. “I mean, I’d still do track, I like that, I like running.”
“So what?” Jiang Cheng prodded, trying to get some information out of him. His nephew had always liked track, it was highly improbable he would abandon that, but who knew, he was young, he had a right to change ideas.
“I want to join the school newspaper’s board,” he breathed out without pausing in between words.
Jiang Cheng was lucky — luckier than ever in his life — the traffic light was green because he wouldn’t have hit the brake if it had been red. He had instead turned to face his nephew, on the passenger’s seat, scowling at him. “You what ?” he growled.
“I want to join the school newspaper’s board,” Jin Ling repeated, like the problem was that Jiang Cheng had not heard. He had heard the first time, thank you.
“You’re out of your mind,” he replied, curt. “We won’t talk about this again.” He then added, for good measure. Jin Ling started pouting, and Jiang Cheng felt something heavy drop into his stomach. But no, this was too much. He couldn’t be asking for this.
“I will join anyway, it’s not like you have to sign something for me to be allowed to,” Jin Ling soldiered on, something akin to arrogance seeping through his voice. They had fortunately reached the school’s parking lot when Jin Ling dared to add, “And if I had to turn in signed papers, I could still ask uncle A-Yao.”
The violence with which Jiang Cheng slammed his car door made the whole vehicle shake. He waited for Jin Ling to get out of the car to close it and then stalked, alone, to the main building.
“But why the fuck can’t I join?” he heard Jin Ling yell after him. He should know already, no use in answering him , Jiang Cheng thought before entering the school. He tried to stop the memories of thirteen years before from coming to his mind in a rush. He’d gotten good at blocking every thought of that goddamned year from coming back to him. Healthy? It wasn’t. Efficient? It was.
He took a deep breath to collect himself, because he was an adult — too young to be stuck with the thankless task of raising a teenager — and a vice-principal and he couldn’t start the second week of school with a meltdown in the school corridors. That was more something for the end of the semester.
“Bad morning?” a voice called from somewhere near. An adult voice. And not one he was familiar with. Jiang Cheng jerked his head in the direction of the voice and so much for not thinking about thirteen years ago .
“You?” he said, intelligently. Eloquently. And then, because he was somehow capable of making an even worse impression, “Here?”
The laughter that followed was one that was present in too many memories from a different time that felt like a different life, if a little bit more hollow. “Me,” was the answer, “here.” Fortunately, the laughter did not stop him from continuing, sounding even vaguely concerned, mockingly so, “Have you lost the ability to form coherent sentences? Do they keep you around school because they’re conducting a study on primitive speech? When we were in school you were quite goo-”
“No,” Jiang Cheng interrupted, “but the use of primitive is quite discriminatory, anthropologically speaking, I’ll have you know. They keep me around because I’m good at keeping this school’s bank account far from debts.”.
The man in front of him smiled and Jiang Cheng did not like in the least the sense of familiarity that smile started in him. “Ah, Jiang Cheng,” he said, “you get paid to hassle people about money reports, it’s like your dream come true, isn’t it?”
Jiang Cheng sighed and considered saying something along the lines of what fucking dream would include being the last one of my family left alive , but then he just hummed and walked past the other man, “I guess you’ll be a leading character in this new part of my dream, then, HuaiSang,” he muttered, loud enough for him to hear, “see you around.”
In his office, safe behind a door with his last name on a glass panel, he sighed and brought his head into his hands. Fuck . Seven thirty in the morning and he wanted to go to bed and never get out of it. First Jin Ling and his stupid, stupid idea of joining the school newspaper. Hadn’t it been the first step in the long path of ruin that had led Wei WuXian to get to the point of writing a fucking reportage on the Wens and their trafficking front of an academy? I’m good at what I do, I can do it, it will be fine, A-Cheng . Fine, his ass. And Jiang Cheng was left to pick up the pieces, sole survivor, with a one year-old kid to bring up. When he was nineteen. And he’d done it, they were both fine, more or less, if only they didn’t start it all over again with fucking school newspapers.
And then Nie HuaiSang shows up, after the same thirteen years since he last saw him — and Jiang Cheng was trying not to think that he last saw him at YanLi’s service, he was really trying not to think about that. He showed up, dressed to the nines, laughing at Jiang Cheng like they were still in high school. What a fucking hour and a half since he’d woken up. And what an awful way to start the school year with a new colleague, if the sheet that was sitting on top of his desk was something to go by.
But bad things come in threes. Jiang Cheng was exhausted already. He only wanted to go to his AP World History class, try to get his fifteen students understand the concept of ethnocentrism and eurocentrism in modern historiography and only think about answering questions about how to spell the names of European sociologists and historians.
He did not want to see Jin GuangYao open his office’s door without knocking and come in with a smiling Nie HuaiSang in tow.
“Ah, Jiang WanYin,” started the principal, a dimpled smile on his face, and Jiang Cheng felt downright murderous in that exact moment. “I want you to meet our new faculty member, though I gather you were schoolmates?” he turned to Nie HuaiSang, who nodded. Had HuaiSang not told Jin GuangYao of their tumultuous encounter of ten minutes earlier? Jiang Cheng frowned a bit.
“Vice-principal Jiang,” answered HuaiSang, cheerful as Jiang Cheng always remembered him, and extended his hand for him to shake.
“Mr. Nie, then,” Jiang Cheng replied, shaking that hand. His foster brother’s best friend’s hand. “You’ll be filling in for the vacancy in the art department, I see?” That fucking, untimely, vacancy. Because the art teacher had left from one day to the other, claiming family reasons, and moved half a continent away.
“Yes,” Nie HuaiSang answered, easily. “A-Yao, principal Jin , I mean- well he contacted me about this, and could I really say no?”
Yes, thought Jiang Cheng, he could have said no. Saying no was always an option in front of questions, they were meant to be answered with a yes or a no, that was the point of asking in comparison to demanding.
“We have extracurriculars to cover, also. You have to pick one,” he said instead, handing him a spreadsheet of the activities the school offered and the teachers in charge of supervising them.
Jin GuangYao was watching them, with a weird expression on his face. What did he expect? That he would jump in happiness at the sight of Nie HuaiSang? Of the very Nie HuaiSang that had been Wei WuXian’s best friend in high school and had done exactly nothing to stop him from ruining everything? Well, that was unfair. HuaiSang had been a teenager like all of them, he had no power whatsoever to stop Wei WuXian from publishing that reportage. Jiang Cheng was just tired all at once.
“ Mister Jiang,” said the HuaiSang that was thirty-three and an art teacher and an employee in his school, and was smiling in the most coy way Jiang Cheng had ever seen, “Might I be in charge of supervising the school newspaper?”
Jiang Cheng really thought that the world was out to get him. “Fine,” he growled. “The kids in the committee are meeting this afternoon. Good luck, they’re the worst.”
II.
Jin Ling did not make a habit of disobeying his uncle. At times, he did what he wanted to do, and that didn’t overlap with what his uncle wanted him to do. His other uncle, on the other hand, well he never said no to him, and managed to get uncle Jiang Cheng under control, too. Sue him for going to tell things to uncle A-Yao, then.
He’d waited the whole morning to go to the school newspaper’s board meeting. He was thrilled with the idea. If he was honest, he’d only thought about that that morning at breakfast, with the latest copy of the Gold Lily laying on the table, while his gloomy uncle scrolled on his phone, possibly thinking that it was stupid of other people to be happy. Because that’s what Jiang Cheng did, of course. Anyway, he’d seen their ad for new reporters, and he thought he could do it. He was decent enough at writing — and how not to be, with the way his uncle was a teacher and his other uncle talked like he was on national TV all the time — and he could use meeting new people. Not that he would say that out loud, but he couldn’t stand the people on the track team, and his classmates never talked to him because he was the principal’s nephew and they thought he would tell on them. Which he’d done. In the past. Twice.
“I frankly hope Mr. Jiang won’t be in charge of this newspaper again,” a girl with a loud voice was saying, and Jin Ling started to frown. His uncle had only been supervisor of the Gold Lily for two months last year because the English teacher who used to do that had had a baby or something and she had to stay at home. Why people had babies escaped Jin Ling, but that was it, anyway. Surely they would have found a replacement.
“He was okay,” said a tall boy, with a confident stance, “he was kinda cool, all brooding and focused on social issues and school traditions. I liked him.”
Jin Ling raised his eyebrows, because what the fuck . Did people talk about his uncle Jiang Cheng this way? Like he was, what, interesting? His uncle? Who only bought black boxer briefs because it saved time with the washing machine?
“Ah, ZiZhen, shut up ,” said the girl from before to the boy who must be ZiZhen, “you had this embarrassing big fat crush on Mr. Jiang.” What .
“Why are you using the past tense?” ZiZhen replied, smirking, “I still do have a crush on Mr. Jiang. Have you seen the way he dressed to school today? Straight out of Vogue, or something.”
“Yeah, or something ,” laughed the girl, shoving ZiZhen in the shoulder. Then she noticed Jin Ling standing in the doorway. “Oh, you’re- don’t mind ZiZhen, he’s not serious about Mr. Jiang. Are you here for the newspaper?”
Jin Ling nodded, while ZiZhen was protesting his seriousness and devotion to his uncle. Awkward. And shameless.
“Amazing,” said ZiZhen, putting an arm around Jin Ling’s shoulders, having joined him at the door, “you should reveal to all the school what Mr. Jiang is like at home. Our readers would die to know what he eats for breakfast,” butter biscuits, thought Jin Ling, boring, “what he watches on TV,” news channels, some sports, action movies, “what he looks like when he comes out of the shower,” what, “what people does he bring home,” the , “what he looks like getting out of bed in the morning” fuck.
Jin Ling was about to answer with some perplexed opinion about how he would not discuss these things to have them printed on paper and sent to families around the city, when a man he had never seen before walked past him - and a still-plastered-to-him ZiZhen - and entered the room.
This man was, well, interesting. His hair was long and braided. Like, girl-with-braid-that-starts-on-top-of-your-head braided, and somehow it suited him. For the rest, he had jeans on, tight, and a dark shirt. He wore combat boots. Like the Dr. Martens boots that teenagers at school wore, this man had a pair on.
“Hello, everyone,” started this man who was dressed like the male version of half of Jin Ling’s girl classmates. ZiZhen let go of Jin Ling and went to stand against the wall. “I’m Mr. Nie, I teach art, and,” he raised his eyebrows quickly, suggestive, “I’m new here.” Well, that explained both why Jin Ling had never seen him before and why he was wearing those boots.
“Are you our supervisor?” asked the same girl who seemed to never shut up.
Mr. Nie had a ghost of a smile on his face, “Yep,” he said, “your new supervisor! Now, I gather you were looking for new members, or so Mr. Jiang told me this morning,” the girl frowned a bit, ZiZhen got up from where he was and went closer to Mr. Nie.
“Hi, hello, I’m Ouyang ZiZhen, I used to be the editor-in-chief of this thing,” he said, and wow, Jin Ling thought, the editor-in-chief spent his days wondering if his uncle Jiang Cheng brought dates home? He was in for some disappointments.
Mr. Nie studied him for a bit, then smiled, and it looked like an honest smile, but it was not entirely sincere, to Jin Ling. “Welcome, my editor-in-chief. Let’s introduce ourselves, all.”
There were about fifteen people there, mostly older than Jin Ling, a couple younger kids. They all said who they were and what they did in their life and why they were there, and then it was Jin Ling’s turn and he felt lost. He stared at the floor, silent. What could he say, they all knew who he was, he was only the vice-principal’s kid, who cared what he did. He should just leave, it was a bad idea, his uncle had been right. As always .
“Jin Ling?” asked then Mr. Nie, a kind tone, but not condescending, “what about you? Why are you here? What would you like to write about?”.
He delved into that, not bothering saying his name, his grade, his hobbies, “I don’t know yet what I want to write, I just know that I want to. I- I like sports, I could write about that, I don’t know, or anything, really, except perhaps the Dear Lily section, I’d be the worst there.”
Mr. Nie looked at ZiZhen and said: “And the Dear Lily section would be?”
“Ah,” ZiZhen beamed, “my favourite thing to write, honestly. It’s an anonymous mail where people ask for advice on the matters of the heart, or just straight up confess to their crushes.”
Mr. Nie raised both his eyebrows and, well, he pouted. “That’s so 90s of you kids, and I was in elementary in the 90s.” The people in the room snickered. ZiZhen looked adoringly at the new teacher, Jin Ling noticed, finding himself smiling at the atmosphere that was settling in the room. It was a nice one, people were chattering and laughing and no one was actually minding his being there, after all. Perhaps he could do that.
“I want us to be the best school newspaper, like, ever ,” said at a certain point ZiZhen, interrupting all the other mini-conversations that had started in the meantime. Mr. Nie regarded him curiously, one eyebrow raised and a hand in front of his mouth.
“How are we going to be the best ever, then?” Mr. Nie asked, and the first girl that Jin Ling had seen in the room widened her eyes, mouthing we like her crush had just told her something special.
ZiZhen looked a bit lost, too, “I guess,” he started, “we should try and do something new, along with the traditional bits like Dear Lily , of course, that’s not up for discussion.”
“We could-” Jin Ling started saying while Mr. Nie said the same words, which made both of them shut up, until Mr. Nie graciously signaled for Jin Ling to go on, “I thought, perhaps, when I looked you up this morning, I mean, no offense, but-”
“Spit it out, Jin Ling,” urged ZiZhen, smiling.
“I mean, your Instagram page sucks ass,” Jin Ling said. And then, hearing Mr. Nie snort, he flushed red in the face, muttering, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to curse.” Perhaps his uncle wasn’t wrong about his use of words.
But Mr. Nie just waved his hand, dragging both of his feet on the table he was sitting on, cross-legged, like he was sitting on the floor. “I took a look at your Instagram page as well, before coming here,” he said, level, the most unconcerned voice Jin Ling had ever heard from a teacher, “it’s not wrong to say it sucks ass.”
The straight face he had while repeating Jin Ling’s words made everyone crack up. Yes, Jin Ling would fight with teeth and nails with his uncle to be able to attend these meetings. He pushed the worry for their upcoming fight to the back of his mind and threw himself in the brainstorming that was going on at the central table.
“You need a lift?” asked someone after the meeting, and Jin Ling had to take one earbud out, to look up from the step he was sitting on and find ZiZhen there, the same smiling eyes as before. Well, that was surprising in itself. No one ever asked him if he needed lifts, they all just assumed — correctly — that one of his two uncles would take him back home. Being asked, it felt good.
“Nah,” he shrugged, “waiting for the principal.”
“Ah, of course, somehow I’d forgotten you were also his relative,” the other boy replied, sitting down next to him, “I keep thinking that Jin Ling’s uncle is Mr. Jiang and my stupid brain can’t seem to understand people can have more than one uncle.”
Jin Ling smiled a bit. He had not said Mr. Jiang’s nephew , he’d said Jin Ling’s uncle . Cool. “Don’t you have to go?” he asked, because ZiZhen had been leaving before seeing him.
“Yeah, but who cares, my father can wait five minutes, he won’t die.”
Jin GuangYao was the one that usually brought him home after school on Tuesdays, the day when Jiang Cheng went home after lunch. Today was no different, Jin Ling hopped in the expensive car, all leather seats and cool accessories. Jiang Cheng’s car was, well, okay. It got the job of moving them from one place to the other done. It had a cool sound system, too. Jin Ling had vomited once in that car, he remembered. And Jiang Cheng — with the deadliest glare — had just googled “how to clean seats in car” before getting off the car, taking a sick Jin Ling home. Jin GuangYao’s car looked like he would be murdered if he vomited in there.
“I joined the school newspaper,” Jin Ling said, because he had to at least say something intelligent and stop thinking about vomit.
His uncle gave him a quick glance, “So you’ve met Mr. Nie,” he said, “did you like him?”
He sounded a bit distant, like he was thinking something else entirely. “Yeah, he’s cool,” Jin Ling replied, “he gave us his Instagram handle, he’s told us we can follow him. Can we, though?”
Jin GuangYao hummed, “Yes, I think so. If he said he is fine with that, perhaps it is not a super personal account.” Jin Ling thought it made sense, so he went and looked for him on the app.
It was not a super personal account, but it was still personal. The most recent photo was one of a pile of novels on a rather messy nightstand. Jin Ling spotted a vampire novel his classmates used to be obsessed with. Then some painting equipment, surely belonging to his art teacher. A photo in the second row, central, caught his attention. It looked like an old photo, printed, and it had been photographed again to be uploaded there. There was his teacher, younger, with shorter hair and an open smile, and a taller man. They were both sitting on plastic chairs in a garden. The taller man was laughing out loud. Jin Ling saw the caption only said, Found this in your things, bro.
“Say hi to your uncle,” said Jin GuangYao when he deposited him in front of his driveway. Jin Ling only nodded.
When he got inside, Jiang Cheng was not there. “Uncle?” Jin Ling called, “I’m back.”
He heard something from upstairs, so he threw off his shoes and climbed up the stairs with his backpack still on. Jiang Cheng was not in any of the bedrooms, and he ended up seeing the trapdoor to the attic open. He climbed up there as well, getting rid of the backpack.
“A-Ling,” his uncle greeted him, and he looked tired, his eyes a bit red.
“What the f-” he stopped in time but his uncle had already thrown him a death glare, “hell, what the hell are you doing up here?”
“I was looking for this, honestly,” he answered, and threw him a photo album. Jin Ling opened it, he knew it, he’d seen it many times, it used to live in their living room, though now it had been exiled along with other photo albums to make room for a PlayStation. It was a series of photos from when he was five or six years old, in the house they lived before. At Jin GuangYao’s house, then.
“Why?”
“Because we don’t live there anymore,” Jiang Cheng said, and Jin Ling watched him frown, and maybe understood that all this had to do with the fight they had that morning. “We don’t live there anymore and we solve our problems here. You and I. You don’t drag your uncle GuangYao in our fights, A-Ling.”. Jin Ling inhaled sharply. He didn’t want to fight now, he wanted to go lay on his bed and add ZiZhen on social media and hope that the other boy didn’t end up hating him in two days. But Jiang Cheng went on, “So, tell me what this newspaper thing is about.”
Jin Ling felt naked under the stare of his uncle, “I- I wanted to do something new. I needed to do something new,” he stammered, “I- I went today. The other kids are okay.”
“And Nie HuaiSang?” his uncle asked, again, unreadable.
“Who?”
His uncle rolled his eyes, “Mr. Nie, is he okay ?” He could feel the quotation marks around the word okay , because Jiang Cheng made a point of not speaking like teenagers.
Jin Ling almost smiled, while saying, “He’s the coolest,” his uncle sighed, “no, for real, he’s like the chillest.”
“Yeah, right,” said Jiang Cheng, but elbowed Jin Ling and made him laugh.
Jin Ling pushed him away and stared at the photo album again. “Does this mean I get to keep going?”
“Of course it does,” his uncle answered and Jin Ling laughed and went back to his room, his uncle yelling at him to go start on dinner instead.
III.
Jiang Cheng liked grading papers. He liked it especially when his students got the answers right or wrote decent essays, because that meant that he’d done a good job and he had a soft spot for the entire concept of “a job well done”. Not that it was a secret for anyone. That nightmare of a school newspaper kept crawling with “callouts” to his high standards as a teacher and vice-principal. Now, those menaces of the newspaper’s kids — among whom was his own nephew — had developed a significant online presence. He refused, ethically and professionally, to follow school people on social media, but he’d have to be blind not to notice that the once silent Instagram page from the Gold Lily was now invading his homepage constantly. Because he’d followed them at the beginning, yes, because he was sorry that they couldn’t get traction. He couldn’t just unfollow them now, could he? Not now, anyway, that they had started publishing as stories whatever “anonymous tips” they had from people from the school. Which was why he’d already read like ten posts about himself.
“Calling attention to the black turtleneck vice-principal Jiang had on today. He looked so hot,” was one. And it was kind of uncomfortable, too, because being looked at like that by school kids? Totally inappropriate, he should just go and complain a bit to the newspaper’s board. But that meant interacting with Nie HuaiSang, and no, he was not going to do that. He would just pretend the people he met in the corridors were not checking him out as a hobby and go on with his works.
“Can I sit here?” Jiang Cheng snapped his head up to find the very same Nie HuaiSang standing in front of him in the teacher’s break room. He looked, well, more sober than on the first day he’d come to school. No braid, for instance, just a bun in his hair, not unlike Jiang Cheng himself. And no tight jeans, too. Not that he’d noticed those, it was just that people had been talking about those.
“I guess,” he answered, moving some of the essays of his class away from the opposite part of the table. Nie HuaiSang had produced two cups of coffee, maybe he’d had them in his hands the whole time Jiang Cheng was studying his haircut, and not the trousers. “What’s that?”
Nie HuaiSang lifted an eyebrow, “Coffee,” he said, very obviously trying not to laugh, “I believe you’re familiar with the concept of coffee, perhaps even the very own history of how it came to be consumed in Arabia and then all the way to central Europe and then all around the world?”
Jiang Cheng rolled his eyes, Nie HuaiSang was going to make him ask. “Is that for me?” he caved in, because he had no time to waste in games.
“You’ve been correcting those for two hours,” HuaiSang said, in lieu of an answer, but handed him one of the cups.
“And have you stared at me consecutively for two hours?” he prodded. And he kind of hated that this entire exchange was so easy. Almost like the last thirteen years hadn’t happened and they were just school children themselves, walking together after class, with Wei WuXian in front of them jumping up and down the street.
“No, I haven’t,” HuaiSang said, sipping his own coffee. “I’ve passed here like five times in the meantime because I wanted to talk to you and you were always busy with this stuff, ugh. ”
Jiang Cheng bit back a caustic reply like some of us have to do our job , as that would be unfair and it would only help Nie HuaiSang’s game of messing with him. However this game worked right now. All those years ago, he knew the rules. Now, with no WuXian to play? Who knew anymore.
“You wanted to talk to me? About what?” he asked, then, and he wished he didn’t sound so surprised at the fact that a colleague wanted to talk to him.
“Well, you sent that email to the faculty, the one which asked to turn in expense reports for the current academic year? Like how much we think we would spend and on what so that you could distribute funds?” Ok, work. Jiang Cheng could talk about work, and money, without feeling sixteen years old again. Mainly because at sixteen he had no idea how money worked. He nodded, and HuaiSang went on, smiling a bit, “So, I had some doubts, to be honest, and instead of sending you the Excel file that I had made for the newspaper, I just thought I could go over it with you.”
When Jiang Cheng nodded again, nestling his coffee cup, Nie HuaiSang took a laptop off of a bag he must have had earlier. Jiang Cheng wondered when exactly he’d become so unobservant. He told himself he’d been preoccupied with the essay grading.
“Here it is,” said Nie HuaiSang then, biting his lower lip constantly — something irksome to him, who wanted to tell HuaiSang to please stop, he would end up bleeding — and turned the screen towards Jiang Cheng, who froze.
A normal person, so someone not at all similar to Jiang Cheng, would not have gaped to an Excel sheet. People did not do that. People enjoyed cat pictures, baby pictures, videos of funny puppies. But Jiang Cheng had seen the worst Excel sheets ever in his years as a vice-principal, he was used to people typing their money expenses on Word, and then being unable to replicate them in Excel and begging him to please add the sums himself. Like he taught Maths and not History. Anyway, Nie HuaiSang had just presented him the single best Excel sheet for an expense prospect that Jiang Cheng had ever seen. It was so fucking perfect. It was tidy, it was nice to look at, it was easy to read, the numbers added up, and everything was labelled properly. He could cry.
“Is it that bad?” Nie HuaiSang asked, and now he was biting his nails. What was this oral fixation of his. And when had he become so anxious and fidgety.
“No,” Jiang Cheng answered immediately, and Nie HuaiSang’s eyes became really round, “it’s quite good, actually,” HuaiSang’s smile was a bit wild, the kind of smile you get when the final you’ve pulled five consecutive all-nighters for is returned to you with an A, “it’s possibly the greatest Excel file I’ve ever seen?” Jiang Cheng felt his own voice grow uneasy at the end, but then Nie HuaiSang started laughing, and he started laughing too.
Before leaving — and how much time had passed? How long had Jiang Cheng spent re-reading some essays he’d already corrected while Nie HuaiSang kept typing something on his laptop? — Nie HuaiSang leaned over towards him and said, “Ok, it’s time for me to go and teach something, but I’d love for you to read the email I just sent you.”
Then he winked. He winked . And he left.
Jiang Cheng didn’t scramble to find his phone in his jacket’s pocket. He didn’t. Because no one saw him, so even if he did it didn’t matter. (But he did).
From: [email protected]
Subject: I’m pulling my censorship privileges on this
Hi, Mr. Jiang,
I’m copy-pasting something the kids have written (not telling you who) to be published in the Dear Lily section, which I’m totally not allowing. I thought you’d like it. Let me know.
>> Dear Lily, I’m a student at this school, I’m 16 and I think I will never find love. But this doesn’t ever stop me from wishing to find it and for other people to find it. So, logically, I was thinking (daydreaming?), would vice-principal Jiang ever fall in love with me? I’m not in his class (yet) but I’m a smart girl, and we all know he likes smart people. I may be too young now, but who knows when I’m older if I could shoot my shot with him. I think that seeing him everyday in those tight turtlenecks and in those slacks will send me out of my mind. What do I have to do?
Yours, L.
>> Dear L.,
What a relatable problem! Half of this academy seems to be lusting after Mr. Jiang. And I wish that this wasn’t justified! I cannot give you a distinct answer about Mr. Jiang falling in love with you, you definitely are too young right now. We don’t know what the future holds in store for you, though, so never lose your hope!
I’d love to raise a challenge to all our readers, anyway, because Mr. Jiang seems to be quite the favourite topic (though some new entries are getting some attention, wink wink, Mr. Nie ). We know so little about his tastes, his habits, his daily life. Is he single? Is he hiding a secret family somewhere? Has he been married all along? Is he perhaps in love with a childhood crush we know nothing of? Has his life been struck by romantic tragedy and perhaps the only person he’s ever loved has been ripped away from him and none of us will be able to fill the hole in his heart?
Who can find the most details? Can you gather some info on our favourite Hot Teacher™? Can you even speculate with the most accuracy? Let us know!
Lots of love, Lily.
Ok, back to me writing, this snippet is over. I’ve never read a wilder school newspaper’s column, but please Mister Hot Teacher™, don’t get angry with the kids. I won’t make them print this, it’s like three different degrees of privacy violation, but for all our sakes, start dressing worse, these kids are a pile of hormones on legs!
I’d love to have a piece of your mind on this anyways,
“Lots of love,”
NHS.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: I’m pulling my censorship privileges on this
wtf. i hate this. don’t ever send me something like this ever again i don’t want to be exposed to this kind of content omg it’s terrifying. i’m allowing you all censorship privileges ever, spanish inquisition levels, but please don’t make me see something of this kind ever again i want to tear my eyes out of my sockets.
So, Jiang Cheng was going to have to schedule a crisis about this whole morning. Not that he usually programmed his outbursts of emotions. He was more the kind of person that bottled everything up until he went off like a time-bomb, but since he’d got custody of Jin Ling he had really been trying to explode a little less. Which was why now he was into this weird routine of just postponing major crises, until he was home, then blast some real loud music in his headphones (he didn’t want to disturb the neighbors that had kept insisting for almost a decade to let them babysit Jin Ling so he could go out and have fun “like young people do”) and then, well, yes, he did yoga. People, including Jiang Cheng when he was seventeen, found yoga stupid and useless, but he’d discovered that controlled rhythmic breathing helped him clear his head, and that it was something that managed to have him let go of all the tension he somatized in his shoulders, back, neck, everywhere.
But he wasn’t sure yoga would help him process the fact that he, Jiang Cheng, was now apparently friendly emailing Nie HuaiSang. The abbreviation kind of friendly. The no-proper-punctuation kind of friendly. The ‘I didn’t bother to capitalize because that would have shown a too composed reaction to what you showed me and probably I even changed some capitalized letters to lowercase ones’ kind of friendly. Which was a whole lot of stuff to process, especially after he’d spent the last hour or so grading papers in the quietest, most comfortable company he’d ever experienced with a colleague. And it was quite troublesome that this colleague had to be Nie HuaiSang. They had history. And it wasn’t an easy one.
The history went like this. Jiang Cheng had a brother, a foster brother, whose name was Wei WuXian and who was one year older than Jiang Cheng. If Jiang Cheng was good at something, then Wei WuXian was the best at that. If Jiang Cheng was excellent at something, Wei WuXian was a genius at that. And they both hated it and they couldn’t change it: the hardest Jiang Cheng tried, the easiest it came to Wei WuXian.
It was like this, too, with friendships. Jiang Cheng had had friends at school, everyone does, but they weren’t the kind of friends you bring home after class to play videogames with. Wei WuXian, of course, had that kind of friends. But he usually was the one who was brought home to play games with. And he possibly took pity on his younger brother, and dragged him along. “Let’s go to HuaiSang’s,” was the most common sentence after school out of Wei WuXian’s mouth. They were almost always three, but not a trio, not to Jiang Cheng. He was a sort of third-wheel to his brother and his best friend’s afternoons. Sometimes he claimed he had to do homework — and he did have to, because, unlike his brother who studied half of the time in comparison to him and got higher marks, even if only an A+ compared to an A, and HuaiSang who just didn’t study altogether and magically passed his tests with Bs and Cs, Jiang Cheng put the effort in —, and then he got to stay home. And he hated that, too. Especially when, after a couple of hours, he began to furiously yearn for company. Sometimes they came to find him, Wei WuXian loudly blaming Nie HuaiSang for having complained all the time for his absence, and Nie HuaiSang stuttering that it wasn’t true, not at all, he had never complained, never in his existence. “Whatever,” was Jiang Cheng’s answer, every single time.
The story continued like this. When Wei WuXian graduated high school he didn’t start college, though he could have, he was good enough for college. No, he was too good for college. He decided that, since he’d won a goddamn prize for his newspaper articles at school, he would keep on writing. And write he did. Two whole years. Until it all went to shit in the span of four months and Jiang Cheng was the only one to emerge from the ashes of their family, with a newborn in his arms. Metaphorically, because he had gone to college. And he had to pry that newborn from Jin GuangYao’s claws. In this part of the story there was no Nie HuaiSang. He’d been the one to drag Wei WuXian to school newspaper’s activities, once, so Jiang Cheng had blamed him for a short while.
What had hurt most, though, had been the deafening silence after the second accident. When Jiang Cheng’s parents had died, and he, Wei WuXian and their sister had been left in pieces, HuaiSang had been there, still. He had come back from his campus, or something, to be close to Wei WuXian, or something.
And then someone that Wei WuXian had angered came out, and Jin Ling was only lucky that he’d been left at his uncle’s house for the night. Wei WuXian disappeared. Jiang Cheng came back home, got a degree, got a license to teach, got a job, got a house, got custody of his nephew. Nie HuaiSang stayed silent.
For thirteen years. Not a phone call. Not a text. They’d been friends, reluctantly so, but they had been. And now he had spirited himself back into Jiang Cheng’s life, and was making him feel broken, snapped into two halves. The half that had existed before , the one that begrudgingly accepted Nie HuaiSang’s friendly jabs and his subtle irony. And the half that Jiang Cheng had put back together himself, carefully, constantly working at it. The half that came after . And in this half, the one where most things were measured around Jin Ling, Jiang Cheng wasn’t sure there was space for Nie HuaiSang. And for the way Nie HuaiSang, without even trying, had managed to immediately drive him back to friendliness? That hurt.
Jiang Cheng, gathering the essays he’d finished grading, and going back to his office briefly before going to class, sighed deeply. He could feel another headache coming. Maybe he should just have moved half the country away from this place, started teaching elsewhere.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. Had HuaiSang emailed him back while he was in class? Was he using his phone in front of the students? He unlocked the screen to find a text from Jin Ling, who was in class as well. Jiang Cheng rolled his eyes, opening the message.
JL
> Can I go to ZiZhen’s after school?
> I mean, you’d have to pick me up later, cause he lives in Baling
> It’s like 15 min from home
> But can I?
jc
> You should be paying attention to your teacher.
JL
> Just say yes or no
> And mr Su is rambling about his old school again
> I don’t need to hear that
> again
jc
> Fine, you can go.
> I’ll pick you up at 6.45, send me the location.
> Now turn off your fucking phone or so help me God
IV.
“So we have to pair up with these preps?!”
Jin Ling turned to watch, already indignant, to his left, where a guy in the Lan Academy white uniform jacket was standing, next to another one of his kind.
“Are you Group C?” said the other one, much more nicely.
Apparently, there was such a thing as district projects for school newspapers, where different editorial staffs from different schools met up and worked together, partnered in groups. This would help them learn something, Jin Ling did not know exactly what. And it gave them school credits, so, there was that too.
“Yep,” answered ZiZhen, who very luckily for Jin Ling had stuck by his side when they’d been asked to form pairs from the same school groups. The first guy groaned and sat down, muttering something.
“I’m Lan SiZhui,” said the nicer one of the Lan Academy guys. “And he’s my cousin, Lan JingYi,” he added, gesturing subtly to the other guy, the one who’d called them preps. Like the Lan Academy wasn’t made of preps themselves.
“Ouyang ZiZhen,” his editor-in-chief introduced himself, shaking the hands of the other two like they were adults, and the kind of adults that shook hands.
“And does the bored diva have a name?” the rude Lan asked, staring at Jin Ling, with a raised eyebrow.
“Jin Ling,” said ZiZhen, at the same time that Jin Ling said “Jin RuLan,” because like hell those two would call him Ling. ZiZhen threw him a sideways glance but didn’t say anything.
In that exact moment a teacher brought over their assignment for the day. Lan SiZhui graciously took the envelope and with a calm expression on his face — what did he have to be so calm about anyway? — he opened it and read it. The other Lan, the rude one, JingYi, seeing that his cousin wasn’t going to read it aloud, snatched it from his hands, and clicked his tongue.
“So,” he said, “it says: after sharing your previous news-related experiences, discuss what are the best ways to engage with your public on paper, and then try and write an article about — what the fuck, do they take us for idiots, I’m not doing this,” he rolled his eyes and planted the sheet on the table of the nice convention center they were at.
Jin Ling stared at him for a second, totally confused by the clash between the attitude of this guy and the uniform he was wearing. That guy, loud, obnoxious, swearing, unapologetic and rude, that guy went to Lan Academy and was in the newspaper club?
“Write an article about how newspapers lost traction with social media and how to win back some attention,” read ZiZhen, and then sighed, “this sucks.”
“But I want to win,” Jin Ling said, “even if it sucks. I want to do it, and do it well. We can come up with something.”
“Oh, then I apologize,” the rude Lan guy said, full of sarcasm, “I didn’t know you wanted to win. That changes everything. Your wish is my command, my lady.”
What Jin Ling wanted now was just to punch him, because he couldn’t stand him, what the hell, he’d known him for what? Five minutes? And he’d already gotten on his nerves, he deserved to be punched. Before he got up to swing at him, Lan SiZhui took the assignment and opened a laptop.
“So, let’s get to work,” Lan SiZhui said, with a kind smile but a determined glare, “what are your experiences, to begin with? How do you keep readers interested in your newspaper?”
Lan JingYi started pouting and biting a pencil at the same time, which had to be a very skillful feat, while Jin Ling just turned to watch ZiZhen, waiting for him to explain.
“Ah, well,” he started, a blinding smile on his face, and Jin Ling, not for the first time, felt like frowning even more in front of that smile, “we’ve kept them hooked for years, as much as I’ve been told, with a gossip column about all kinds of stuff happening at school in the department of crushes, unrequited love and teachers’ love lives speculations,” he stopped, waiting for some kind of reaction that didn’t quite come, “and then lately with Jin Ling, here, we started tricking them into following us on Instagram with stupid stuff like “vote for our best-looking senior” and then they actually started reading the more serious articles too, because we linked them through Instagram? I still can’t believe it worked.”
Lan JingYi groaned. Jin Ling turned to look at him, worried for whatever could have caused such a sound. “See,” said the annoying Lan, “I did tell you that we needed to spice things up a bit. And yet you’re all so serious, newspapers are for important news and the mysterious man in the photo on Mr. Lan WangJi’s office table isn’t important . I hate you all, I could actually transfer schools, I’ll enroll with them so I can just be myself and spend my days gossiping about teachers.”
Jin Ling heard ZiZhen gasp in pure, utter, delight and saw his friend practically radiating happiness from every pore of his face. Somehow he felt like they wouldn’t get rid of the annoying Lan in the near future.
“So, we could start our contest article with, mhh,” started Lan SiZhui, still focused on the document on his laptop, admirably calm despite his cousin’s whole being . Jin Ling thought he must be used to it. “With maybe some thoughts about how we teenagers are more used to accessing news from visual sources?”
Jin Ling didn’t quite agree, starting like that felt very boring, and very Lan-like to his expert eyes, because he’s spent days researching what felt like his own personal opposition in this contest. “No.” he said, and the other three turned to look at him, “No, we won’t start with thoughts. We start with facts. Who gives a shit about thoughts. We start with facts,” he repeated, “like that we had only one hundred followers at the start of term, and how we made them grow very fast, and how that turned out in many more subscriptions from the newsletters and to physical copies. Numbers. Not speculations, because the others will surely-”
“And who the fuck is that?” Jin Ling was going to murder Lan JingYi, no matter how much of a crush ZiZhen was developing for him right now. Jin Ling didn’t even make out who Lan JingYi was talking about because the other two boys at the table had already understood and acted on it.
Lan SiZhui had shushed him very effectively, placing a hand on his mouth. From the look of it, it was an ordinary occurrence.
ZiZhen, smirking, was saying: “It’s Mr. Nie, our supervisor, he’s cool, isn’t he?” JingYi raised both eyebrows in answer and widened his eyes. He took his cousin’s hand away from his face, and proceeded to answer: “He doesn’t look like a teacher at all, come on. He wears combat boots. SiZhui ,” he whined, “can’t we change schools? They have no uniforms, they have hot teachers, come on let me be the outfit king I know I am deep inside, my true self is smothered at Lan’s.”
Jin Ling started shivering the moment ZiZhen opened his mouth again, “Ok, I shouldn’t be telling you this, because we’ve all been reprimanded on it. Formally. Like, Mr. Nie almost yelled at us and threatened to cut all money from us, but,” he raised one eyebrow, “you should see our vice-principal.”
“ Oh !” Lan JingYi exclaimed, “but I have seen him. Last year, final competition, he was there!”
Jin Ling would be killing first Lan JingYi. Then OuYang ZiZhen, who had betrayed him for this terrible Lan boy, and thirdly he would just kill himself if he had to hear one more person in his immediate proximity thirst on his fucking uncle.
“Can you just stop this,” he hissed.
“What, our lady the diva is too delicate to hear me saying I like something? Mh? What are you, a bigot?”
Jin Ling would make him suffer when he got to kill him, maybe he would ask for advice from his uncle Jiang Cheng because he looked like somebody who knew how to get vengeance, “Fuck off, Lan JingYi, I don’t care what or who you like. It’s my uncle you’re all making thirst tweets about, it’s just- well, stop it.”
“Your I don’t care blah blah speech would have been better and one hundred percent as ineffective if you had added the I hang with gay people part, but hey, at least the uncle part was a plot twist,” JingYi flashed him a smile, and damn him, Jin Ling had to force himself not to smile back.
Before Jin Ling could counteract, SiZhui interrupted them with a decisive: “Can we write first and bicker later?”
Lan JingYi, puzzle of a boy that he was, grimaced, muttered something like but bickering gives me the best ideas , took the laptop away from SiZhui and proceeded to write one of the best opening paragraphs Jin Ling had ever heard. Maybe they could win, after all.
At a certain point, Mr. Nie came to check on their work. He was quite happy about what they were doing, and he said as much to them. “I feel like this work-group is a bit of a cheat, though,” he said, conspiratorially, after checking the names at the top of the article, which was almost ready to be sent.
“Why?” asked Lan JingYi, not even pretending not to be staring at the outfit Mr. Nie was sporting, which was only a bit too casual to Jin Ling’s eye, but nothing out of the ordinary. The earrings were something else, though.
“Well, you two are the best names of The Cloud , don’t think I don’t read what you write. And these two… one was already the most poetic name in the business of school newspapers, the other is as good as his family makes them, analytical, creative, too. Hold on to each other, guys.”
Jin Ling felt his face burn. This was what Mr. Nie thought of him? Was it something he said to everyone? What family was he talking about? His mother’s? Jiang Cheng’s one? Because he knew who was creative in that family, but he’d never met him. He only existed in a photo of his uncle, his mother, and his other uncle, the creative one he guessed, on his uncle’s nightstand. Or maybe he was thinking of the Jins?
“Jin RuLan?” he heard SiZhui call him, “everything okay?”
“Yes. Peachy.” I just felt like that man had too much knowledge of us . But he couldn’t say that, so they just went on working.
Lan JingYi had not been paying attention to him, but had trailed after Mr. Nie with his eyes — and Jin Ling felt like his friends, not that the Lan boy was his friend, had to stop developing crushes on his teachers — and then, suddenly, he was nearly shouting: “I can’t believe it. That fucker , Mr. Su. SiZhui! You see him, look at him, all dressed nicely and sporty because he’s now at Jin Academy, that motherfucker. He-”
His cousin had, once again, put a hand on his mouth. But he wasn’t smiling, either.
“Mr. Su? You know him?” ZiZhen asked, curious.
“Well,” SiZhui started, “he used to work with us, but mainly we hate him because he slandered my father. Publicly. He didn’t say nice things about him.”
Uh , Jin Ling thought. SiZhui had said he hated someone. It didn’t feel like him. Maybe they could actually be friends, with Lan JingYi too if he must come with, if they could all bond over the shared hatred of Mr. Su.
Lan JY @ spill the tea
> so guys this is the group chat y’all begged me to create
> don’t you dare change the name
OYZZ @ spill the tea
> king shit
SiZhui @ spill the tea
> I’m glad there is this group chat so I won’t be the only one who has to endure JingYi all day long.
Lan JY @ spill the tea
> now this is hate speech and you’re being homophobic and i don’t deserve this
> someone back me up
JL @ spill the tea
> hating you is necessary and has nothing to do with anything else aside from the fact that you’re an asshole and therefore people hate you
> but thanks for the gc
OYZZ @ spill the tea
> Jin Ling! Stop hating my new friend! It’s not nice!
> But anyway, guys, I need like idk advice?
JL @ spill the tea
> ??
> spill
OYZZ @ spill the tea
> sooo
> a girl from your school (to the lans, of course) DMd me on IG
> she said “heyy” and then “saw you today” and then “wyd”
Lan JY @ spill the tea
> just tell her you don’t swing her way and be over with it
> is what i’ve done multiple times
> like two times
OYZZ @ spill the tea
> wait but i do swing her way
> i can’t just LIE about being gay that’d be idk it’s wrong
Lan JY @ spill the tea
> WAIT
> STOP
> you’re straight?
> ????
JL @ spill the tea
> I’m loving this drama
> now i’ll go get like popcorns
OYZZ @ spill the tea
> yes???
> i mean i never ever would have imagined i’d have to say this wow
> how the tables have turned
Lan JY @ spill the tea
> we’ve spent a WHOLE DAY
> talking about JL’s uncle’s outfits
> and his shoulders
> well that was me
> but still!!
OYZZ @ spill the tea
> idk what to say dude
> i have eyes
JL @ spill the tea
> eyes are what I wish I didn’t have right now
> like please I’m begging you
> stoppp
>lusting
> after
> my uncle
> you’re underage
> he’s MY UNCLE
> he’s thirtytwo
> he’s ugly
> well he’s not but he’s not that hot
> he gets angry about the stupidest shit
> like rn he’s yelling at some news reporter
> because they shouldn’t be giving space to politicians he doesn’t like
> and idk he’s wearing the ugliest sweater ever
> must be as old as him that sweater
> just stop i hate this
OYZZ @ spill the tea
> sorry JL
> will def stop doing this
Lan JY @ spill the tea
> why are all the best ones straight tho
> JL is your uncle straight too?
> if he is i’m drowning myself
> ah shit fuck yea i’ll stop doing this