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Chu Wanning frowned as he pulled his cream white turtleneck over his head. This was one of many cream white turtlenecks he had in his closet, in front of which he stood. Glancing at his closet mirror, he could see that it paired decently with his plain corduroy slacks, which he also had many of in his closet. Keeping many copies of the same outfit and wearing it every day was one habit from childhood he had never been able to shake. Huaizui had trained him to not think too much about what he wore—after all, it would only be a petty distraction from his more important business.
He was satisfied with his choice of a default outfit. A turtleneck with slacks looked upright and neat, clean and unsullied (if almost cold and untouchable). But was it the right choice for a date? He wasn’t opposed to trying out something new, but he liked what he was wearing. It was comfortable. He also had to consider what his date would like, though. This was his first time going out like this with someone, and he would especially have to make sure everything went well because this someone was Mo Ran. Mo Ran, who had a long, spotty, rocky history with him. Who dressed in leather jackets and black jeans and completed his outfits with a fiery purple gaze and charming white grin. Who, for some reason, decided to ask Chu Wanning out on an official date. Who somehow decided that he liked Chu Wanning.
Chu Wanning, with his too-severe phoenix eyes and too-sharp sword brows and habit of wearing the same turtleneck-and-slacks outfit day after day.
Banking on the fact that, perhaps, Mo Ran liked him just the way he was, Chu Wanning gathered the courage to break away from his closet mirror. Still dressed in his cream white turtleneck and corduroy slacks, he strode out from his disarrayed bedroom into the pristine common area of his apartment. After sweeping over his counter with his gaze and determining that he was all set, he prepared to head downstairs and out.
Mo Ran had texted him the address of the restaurant at which they would meet. Chu Wanning didn’t recognize it, so he had checked how long it would take to get there ahead of time and had planned accordingly. It would only be a train ride and a short walk before he could see Mo Ran again.
As he sat in the train and waited for his stop, Chu Wanning recalled the events that had led up to this moment.
Chu Wanning first met Mo Ran through a summer robotics program offered by their city’s local university. Confident in his experience and expertise, Chu Wanning had volunteered as a tutor for the program. Huaizui would have never approved of him doing such an activity. It was beneath Chu Wanning, he would have said, when what he really meant would have been that it was beneath himself. The individuals in Huaizui’s circle would only pursue the most prestigious, high-class, and “enlightening” opportunities. They would never consider volunteering for a free-of-cost community-centered program, subjecting themselves to interact with what the common people of society had to offer. Huaizui was above such things. And, Huaizui would say, as his adoptive son, so was Chu Wanning.
Now that he had broken free of Huaizui’s influence and control, Chu Wanning could choose what he wanted to do. And so he chose to provide an opportunity to learn for everyone who sought it.
The program paired Chu Wanning with a tutee group of three students. He was friends with Xue Meng’s father, Xue Zhengyong, having been classmates together in university. While Chu Wanning could see that Xue Meng shared his father’s self-assurance, perhaps to a bit-too-high degree, Xue Meng was intelligent and grasped his teachings quickly, and was always respectful and kind to (most of) the other students. Shi Mei had a more quiet disposition and was overall always pleasant and gentle-natured, although there was always something about his gaze that Chu Wanning could never quite put his finger on. The only student that Xue Meng was not always respectful and kind to was his cousin, Mo Ran. At the time, Mo Ran had only recently joined the Xue family, and Xue Zhengyong and Wang Chuqing were eager to provide the orphan with everything a family could have to offer, including the opportunity for extracurricular education.
When the summer began, Xue Zhengyong had pulled Chu Wanning aside to explain Mo Ran’s background. He had only found his nephew after over a decade of searching, which meant that Mo Ran, who lost both his parents by the age of five, had grown up in poverty and in a chaotic, unstable environment. Having to live each day to survive did not allow Mo Ran to pursue learning opportunities in the past, and could Chu Wanning please provide him with some extra care and understanding.
Of course Chu Wanning could.
During the first few program meetings, as he introduced the robot parts and materials they would be working with, Chu Wanning often noticed the steady, unyielding gaze of one of his three students piercing into him. Whenever he turned to meet that gaze, he never failed to be blinded with the sight of purple crinkled eyes and a vivacious smile, eager and beautiful in its youthfulness.
“Chu-laoshi, can you help me?”
“Chu-laoshi, I don’t understand this part. Can you explain it to me?”
“Chu-laoshi, Chu-laoshi, please pay attention to me.”
Xue Meng would roll his eyes and scoff at these comments (“Stop bothering Chu-laoshi, you dog—you’re not his only student!”) and Shi Mei would smile slightly and let out a soft chuckle, but Chu Wanning would silently and seriously re-explain the concept to Mo Ran, hoping none of his three students would notice the redness rising up his neck and ears.
One day, as he was heading back to the classroom at the end of the program’s daily lunch break, he noticed a puddle of spilled soy sauce on the table. Clucking his tongue at whichever student had made a mess while eating their lunch, Chu Wanning grabbed a roll of paper towels and started wiping up the sauce puddle. After he was satisfied with the liquid he had soaked up, he looked up and out the classroom window and caught one of his students staring at him with wide purple eyes.
The lunch break officially ended a few minutes later, and all three students returned to the classroom. At the start of the program, every student had been given a personal folder with a packet of handouts inside. That afternoon’s lesson pertained to one of the handouts, and so Chu Wanning asked his three students to please get out their folders.
One student didn’t have his.
“Where is your folder, Mo Weiyu?” he asked. “Did you forget to bring it today?”
Mo Ran only glared back at him.
Chu Wanning’s lively, cheery student had been frosty with him ever since.
In the next few years, Chu Wanning received updates on the journeys of his three previous students, even as they drifted apart. Xue Meng and Mo Ran had thrived through university, both pursuing mechanical engineering and robotics, and had steadily formed their own blossoming careers. Most of the updates about the two cousins came from Xue Zhengyong, who insisted on semi-regularly dragging Chu Wanning out for drinks or dinner outings. Shi Mei had left for another city to pursue a university program and career in medical devices.
(Chu Wanning still remembered the day Shi Mei had met with him to say goodbye. Shi Mei had reached out over text, asking if he’d be willing to share a meal at the cafe. Not one to reject a former student, Chu Wanning agreed. They had chatted lightly over Shi Mei’s work in the program and some of Chu Wanning’s personal projects—all academic talk.
Shi Mei concluded their outing by thanking Chu Wanning for all he’d taught him and explaining his future plans, revealing that this was meant to be a final farewell. He offered to treat Chu Wanning for his meal, as an expression of his gratitude. Chu Wanning didn’t let him—what teacher would let a student pay?—and insisted on paying for them both. Shi Mei dipped his head and conceded, a smile playing upon his face and an unidentifiable look in his eyes. After they exited the cafe, they found that they were heading in opposite directions, and amicably parted ways.
As he watched his silhouette ride away on the train, Chu Wanning had the feeling that Shi Mei had left some things unsaid.)
Chu Wanning had never really struggled for money. By the time he had fully broken free of Huaizui, he had a stable job and an established reputation. Despite teaching jobs never paying a great amount, he never had to worry about providing himself with the basic human comforts.
When he received notice that his adoptive father had passed away, it was a great surprise to Chu Wanning that he was asked to attend the reading of the will, as Huaizui had left him a substantial amount of inheritance money.
Huaizui must have put him back in. He wasn’t sure when or why.
Even with his convoluted feelings about Huaizui, this update meant that Chu Wanning moved out of his rented apartment and bought one with a spacious kitchen (although his cooking did not improve), a living room (although the only guests he had over other than Xue Zhengyong were his larger robots), and a spare office for his project work (although he tended to use his bedroom anyway—there wasn’t much else it was used for, anyway).
Most people would be ecstatic to exchange a smaller home for a larger one, finding freedom in the empty, open expanse. To Chu Wanning, however, the openness did not feel freeing, but lonely.
A few weeks ago, Chu Wanning started a new job at Xue Zhengyong’s academy.
Chu Wanning had bounced back and forth between different pedagogical adventures in the past few years, eventually bouncing his way to the one that Xue Zhengyong had to offer. After successfully running a tech company for a couple of decades, Xue Zhengyong sold his company to pursue developing a robotics academy. He aimed to provide an affordable, accessible opportunity to learn robotics for a wide range of experience levels. Xue Zhengyong wished to add a new program to his academy, which would specifically target students with absolutely zero prior coding experience. He had assigned its development to Chu Wanning and another coworker, hoping that they could collaborate to see it through.
The other coworker Chu Wanning would work with was Mo Ran.
“Ran’er has grown a lot since the last time you saw him!” Xue Zhengyong beamed. “He can’t wait to see you again.”
Chu Wanning couldn’t imagine why Mo Ran would feel that way about him. He still received the occasional text or email update from Xue Meng, who sometimes tagged along on visits Xue Zhengyong paid to him, but he hadn’t heard a word from Mo Ran since the robotics program many years ago.
“He’s excited to work with you,” Xue Zhengyong insisted. “He tells me he owes a lot of where he is today to you.”
When Chu Wanning saw Mo Ran again, he could see that Xue Zhengyong’s words were not inaccurate: the latter had grown a lot.
Where there was once a bright smile with soft, wide eyes, there was now a dazzling grin with a solid, piercing gaze. Youthful vivacity had folded over into sturdy vigor. Chu Wanning felt that he had last seen a sunny field of bright green saplings and grass, only to now face a brilliant, strong row of trees with broad rays of sunlight dappling the forest floor. (Both were beautiful sights.) What was more, Mo Ran was now a good deal taller, broader, and bigger than him, making his ears redden for many different unexplainable reasons.
Those same purple eyes from so many years ago followed him closely as he walked into the conference room that had been reserved for their meeting, sitting down across the table from Mo Ran.
“It’s so good to see you again, Chu-laoshi.” Mo Ran reached across the table.
Still unable to speak, Chu Wanning shook his hand. His hand tingled when he let go.
“I’m really looking forward to working with you,” continued Mo Ran. “But before we begin, I want to apologize to you and clear something up from years ago.”
“What do you…” Chu Wanning cut himself off and motioned for Mo Ran to go ahead, his eyebrows furrowed.
“I don’t know if you remember—”
Chu Wanning did. He remembered all of it.
“—but I didn’t have my folder one day when you were tutoring us at the program. During the lunch break, I’d found it in a puddle of soy sauce in the classroom. I took it away to try to salvage some of it, but it was completely ruined. When I came back, I saw you cleaning up the puddle, and I thought… and at the time, Shi Mei told me that he’d been out getting some food with Xue Meng—but that’s not important now. I’m sorry I misunderstood you back then. I really caused a lot of trouble for you throughout the program because of that. I just thought that… at the time, I just thought that you didn’t think that I belonged there, and would want me to see that, too.”
“I would never,” whispered Chu Wanning. “I would never,” he affirmed intently.
“I know,” said Mo Ran. “I know that now. But back then, I think I was always worried you’d look down on me. A poor orphan, pulled up from the dregs of society. You had always seemed so clean, so pure, and…” Mo Ran gulped, his gaze darkening with something that sent an unfamiliar, but not unpleasant, tingle up through Chu Wanning’s spine.
But more important matters first. “I never looked down on you,” insisted Chu Wanning. “I never have, and never will. You were a brilliant student from the start—enthusiastic, intelligent, and driven. It makes me very proud to see where you’ve gone with robotics and where you are today.”
Mo Ran tilted his head and smiled in a beautiful blaze. “Thank you, Chu-laoshi. That means the world to me. So, will you forgive me?”
“Of course. And you don’t have to call me that. I’m not your teacher anymore.”
“Okay, then. Wanning.”
Oh. Chu Wanning felt that he had made a mistake.
“I have many more things to tell you, Wanning. Many more things I know now, and you’ll know, too, throughout the coming weeks. But I want to get to know more, too. More about you. I look forward to working with you.”
Now, Chu Wanning did as well.
Throughout the next few weeks of working together, Mo Ran had revealed many more things he now knew, unraveling the web that was their history. And as this web was unraveled, so were the entwined feelings between them, feelings of resentment and confusion and something else. Something that led Mo Ran to ask Chu Wanning out on an official date.
Which was coming up very soon, Chu Wanning realized, as he stepped out of the train. He immediately snapped out of his trip down memory lane and checked his phone for directions. It would be a couple more minutes of walking before he would arrive at the restaurant’s address.
When he had asked Mo Ran where they were to meet for their date, Mo Ran suggested taking him out to eat at a restaurant.
“Where does Wanning want to go?” Mo Ran had asked, a sunny smile adorning his lips.
“Wherever you like,” Chu Wanning had replied honestly. “Your favorite restaurant.”
Mo Ran had seemed hesitant then. He stayed uncharacteristically silent, and Chu Wanning was worried before Mo Ran said, “I’ll take Wanning to my favorite restaurant. This one meant a lot to me when I was growing up. It’s not too far, don’t worry.”
He had sent Chu Wanning the address a while later.
Now, Chu Wanning stood before a long brick wall of many, many shops all bearing scuffed glass doors, decorated with brown-ish gray signs and flyers and old stickers. The sign upon the door he was in front of had also seen its share of wear and tear. Seeing that the address on the sign matched the one he had been given, Chu Wanning pulled open the glass door and walked in.
Immediately, he was hit with a blast of noise and color. The footsteps of servers clamored about as they flitted among the tables, which featured an assortment of different, inconsistent colors and styles. Their piercing voices, speckled with peels of good-natured laughter, filled the room as they called out to each other and their customers. The customers’ scuffed jacket sleeves and worn pant knees made Chu Wanning more conscious of his sleek turtleneck and slacks. The crooning of a well-known older Chinese singer wafted from a beat-up speaker in the back. An amalgamation of posters for various unrelated causes and flyers, old and new, and spackle shielded the original paint color of the walls.
In the midst of all this, Chu Wanning locked eyes with Mo Ran.
All the bustling background motion blurred together and Mo Ran’s outline exploded in his vision, like a camera focusing on the most important subject in the photograph. Before he knew it, Chu Wanning’s feet had begun carrying him to that subject, who was already seated at a table for two. It was only when he got closer that he realized that Mo Ran seemed nervous. His purple eyes gleamed with a spark of uncertainty, and his characteristically charismatic smile had a shakiness behind it.
Behind him, a waitress shuffled toward a young woman with her head in her hands sitting alone, bearing a plate of spicy beef rice noodles. The young woman looked up and thanked her, taking the plate off the waitress’ wrinkled hands; the sleeves of her thin shirt were frayed. As the waitress beamed and shuffled away, the young woman’s face softened, and she began to open her chopsticks and dig in.
It was this scene that Chu Wanning took in as he seated himself in front of Mo Ran, whose shoulders were still tense and who held two menus in his hands.
“Hi, Wanning.” Mo Ran cleared his throat. He handed one of the menus to Chu Wanning. “Shen a-yi—the waitress over there—already gave me the menus. Do you- do you want to order?”
Based on the lightning-quick skim Chu Wanning did over the menu as he received it, the prices at this restaurant were quite good—quite low. And based on the never-ending movement of the servers and the clusters of tired, resting customers and the steam rising up from the freshly-served dishes, he could see that this was a place of warmth and kindness. And, of course, those would have been what mattered to the child Mo Ran.
Chu Wanning did not have much practice smiling at people, but he gave the current Mo Ran the best smile he could. “Mn. I’d love to. Which dish is your favorite?”
Mo Ran laughed softly, posture loosening. “My favorite dish is spicy, Wanning wouldn’t like it. My favorite non-spicy dish, though…”
Many, many years ago, on a slightly cloudy morning, a youth and his adoptive father passed through the less well-off side of town. They were on their way to a robotics tournament the youth would compete in that day. The adoptive father, dressed in a dark navy suit and peering with narrowed eyes at every passerby, would not stay for the duration of the tournament.
Earlier that morning, the youth had stopped by a shop to buy himself breakfast and snacks. With his adoptive father’s money, which they never lacked, he bought a pork baozi and a red bean baozi, as well as two creamy, sweet egg tarts.
The pair exited the train and began the brief walk to the tournament location. They had almost arrived when the youth felt a weak tug on his velvety luxury-brand jacket.
He whipped around to see a grimy-faced, thin-fingered child loosening his grip on his jacket. The child’s face was scrunched, but his wide purple eyes held no tears, almost as if he didn’t have the strength left to cry.
The youth froze in shock, and then the child began to speak.
“Food… please, do you have any food?... please, gege, I’m so hungry, please…”
The child’s quiet keen fizzled out, and he plopped silently onto the concrete ground, head hung low.
The youth’s adoptive father frowned and opened his mouth to reply, but his adoptive son spoke up first.
“Of course,” said the youth, crouching down and patting the child’s shoulder. He fumbled through his bag. “Do you like pork baozi? Gege has one right here. Here, take it. Please eat, you must get your strength back…”
He pulled out the baozi, still wrapped in dainty paper, and held it out to the child. When he saw that the child’s fingers were still trembling, the smears on their fingertips shaking in the air, he held the bun to the child’s mouth instead. “Come on, take a bite.”
After the child took two small bites, lips wobbling as if they had forgotten the feeling of food between them, he seemed to have regained some vivacity, a spark returning to his dull eyes. He wrapped his fingers around the baozi, and the youth, sensing his shift in energy, let go.
It was at that moment that the adoptive father chose to make his view clear. “Chu Wanning, you get away from him this instant!”
The youth shot up swiftly to his feet, a furrow in his brow. His phoenix eyes narrowed. “Why? What do you mean? I… how could I see this and not-”
The child did not hear what the youth was going to say next. His adoptive father shot the child a chilling glare as he yanked his youth away. They’re below us, he was saying, just walk past and ignore it, he was saying, now we’ll have to buy you a new jacket, he was saying, his voice harsh and his fingers digging into the youth’s arm, promises of what was to come later.
As the youth was dragged away, the child’s gaze followed his retreating silhouette.
Many, many years later, that youth and that child sat across from each other in a busy, bustling restaurant, with their eyes shining and stomachs and hearts full.