Chapter 70.5

Tan Yiming cheered up and asked him, "Is your luggage packed? Can I help you?"

"I’d done it a long time ago." Xiang Cai subconsciously drew circles in his porridge with his chopsticks and said trivially, "I don't have anything to take, just a few changes of clothes."

"What time is the plane tomorrow? I'll take you to the airport?"

"No, there is a car to pick me up."

Tan Yiming paused and asked tentatively, "... Is it Cen Manchuan?"

"No." Xiang Cai was about to say that he had broken up with Cen Manchuan, but inexplicably swallowed it back.

When Xiang Cai heard Tan Yiming mention his relationship, he always felt an unspeakable embarrassment.

"It's a crew car, a bus that can pick up all us colleagues."

The two lived under the same roof, and Tan Yiming was a little worried that Xiang Cai would bring his boyfriend back for the night. He knew that some landlords would negotiate with the tenants in advance before renting the house, and they would not be allowed to bring the opposite sex back to stay. However, Cen Manchuan was not of the opposite sex, and Xiang Cai was not an ordinary tenant.

Tan Yiming was a bit masochistic. He prepared a first, second, and third emergency plan in advance. He worried that one day, he would open the door to find that Cen Manchuan was really standing in his living room / bathroom / kitchen. By then, he must not show any unnatural expression.

Fortunately, he and Xiang Cai had lived together for over half a month, and he had never met Cen Manchuan face-to-face.

Moreover, he vaguely noticed something wrong - why did Xiang Cai never contact Cen Manchuan?

He had seen many people fall in love. Three phone calls a day were absolutely necessary. Even if they didn’t make a call, they would have to talk on WeChat all the time, with happy expressions. As soon as they spoke, it would be "The day we met...", "My boyfriend said...", "My girlfriend asked me...".

But those signs did not appear in Xiang Cai.

Tan Yiming couldn't help but think, could it be that the two people had broken up?

But his idea only appeared for a few seconds before he shot it down. Xiang Cai was independent, and wasn’t sticky even when in love; Xiang Cai was busy at work, and could make calls during rehearsal; Xiang Cai paid attention to privacy and did not want to talk with others about emotional topics...

Tan Yiming prepared thousands of reasons, telling himself that Xiang Cai and Cen Manchuan had a stable relationship, and he could not intervene; However, at the same time, he was rather villainously hoping that they would break up and give him the opportunity to approach the boy.

The two played mind games with each other, and neither of them dared to take a step further.

...

After dinner, it was still early. Tan Yiming asked Xiang Cai if he wanted to watch a movie.

Although there was no TV in his living room, there was a curtain hidden in the ceiling that could be used with a projector when lowered.

Xiang Cai asked, "What are we watching?"

Tan Yiming: "Star Wars."

Tan Yiming was not a big fan of Star Wars, but he liked the magnificent and romantic story very much. There was also the Millennium Falcon in his transparent coffee table.

Who would have thought that Xiang Cai would unceremoniously refuse: "I don't like watching science fiction movies."

Tan Yiming: "!!!"

Xiang Cai slyly said: "You said, I have the right to express my dislike."

Tan Yiming: "..." He surrendered: "Well, what do you want to watch? I have memberships on streaming sites, which add up to nearly a hundred yuan a month, and it is a waste if we don’t watch it."

Xiang Cai thought for a while, "In fact, I rarely watch movies, so why don't we watch one that you dubbed?"

Tan Yiming: "..."

This requirement was not excessive. Tan Yiming couldn’t even count how many works he had dubbed over the past few years. He was in movies, in animations, and in games. After becoming a voice actor, his old classmates occasionally sent him messages saying that they heard his voice in a certain movie.

Tan Yiming was extremely proud of this - but all of this was before Xiang Cai said he would listen to his work.

It was really strange. He obviously had a lot of fans and rich experience, but now he had a feeling of looking bad in front of his sweetheart.

However, he couldn't back down from Xiang Cai’s request, Tan Yiming still played him a work of his own.

He was very clever and ‘met poison with poison’, choosing a work starring Chen Ziran. According to the drama, Chen Ziran was regarded as the second male lead and the early playboy. He didn’t love the heroine, who was angry and blackened him. The whole story required dog blood, dog blood, and more dog blood.

[T/N: dog blood = exaggerated drama and overused stereotypes in plots.]

Tan Yiming voiced Chen Ziran's dad, an overbearing old president, and his most frequently spoken line was ‘You rebellious son!’.

Tan Yiming’s trick worked well. Xiang Cai didn't insist on the role of Tan Yiming's voice and laughed.

This was Xiang Cai’s first time watching Chen Ziran act. In Xiang Cai’s memory, his impression of Chen Ziran still remained as his appearance of tearing up and howling when doing splits. However, it was such a funny role when he became the second male in the play, acting handsome, posing, crying, chasing the bus...When Xiang Cai saw Chen Ziran holding a bunch of flowers in the rainy weather in front of the heroine’s house, he finally couldn't stand it. He raised his hand to declare surrender.

Xiang Cai accused Tan Yiming: "You are too despicable!"

But he laughed as he talked, not looking angry at all.

Tan Yiming also held back a smile and asked him, "Are you still watching?"

"You're so insincere." Xiang Cai shed tears, "I don't want to watch."

Tan Yiming, who didn’t think that this would be self-defeating, hurriedly begged for mercy.

Xiang Cai dragged his voice: "You've seen my musicals, but you won’t allow me to watch your movie?"

In fact, Tan Yiming's works were everywhere on the Internet. Xiang Cai had seen a lot and heard a lot.

Tan Yiming quibbled: "I went into the theater by mistake ..."

Xiang Cai: "Okay! So it turns out you didn’t really want to watch my play."

Tan Yiming could only obediently admit that everything was wrong.

The two talked for a while, and it began to get late.

They were sitting on the same sofa, and at some point, their bodies got closer and closer. When Xiang Cai realized it, he could almost feel the heat from Tan Yiming’s body.

Soon, Xiang Cai felt that his body was feverish, but he was a little confused. Was it that his body temperature was gradually rising, or was it temperature passed from Tan Yiming?

He staggered a bit awkwardly, and it was like Tan Yiming woke up from a dream, quickly moving away a few centimeters.

The two looked away, one towards the left and one towards the right. One took a glass of water one took fruit. In short, they avoided each other.

Tan Yiming coughed twice, and found nothing to say: "That...by the way, I've always been curious. When you dance, you often have to spin in place, don't you get dizzy?"

Xiang Cai knew that he was deliberately shifting the topic, and also pretended to say easily: "We might feel faint at the beginning of practice, but not after some practice. In fact, if you pay careful attention, you will find that our bodies and heads rotate at different speeds. This is called ‘retaining the head’ and shaking the head."

This action was not easy to explain. Xiang Cai simply took the opportunity to jump from the sofa to the ground, away from Tan Yiming.

He didn't change into his dance shoes, just standing barefoot in front of the projection screen, scars criss-crossing across his feet.

The projection was very bright. Because it had entered the standby state, a random distorted colored light was projected. Those abstract rays of light projected onto the boy, turning him into a stream of consciousness painting.

And his eyebrows, his hands, and his feet, were part of the painting.

He stood still with his hands on his waist.

"Take this example of a flat rotation. When we first practiced this movement, my teacher would repeatedly emphasize that no matter how we rotate, our visual focus must fall on the audience. In short, we just keep turning back to the audience because we want to let them see us from our most beautiful angle." As he said this, his feet formed a T-shape and his whole body turned back diagonally.

However, while his body spun, his head did not turn with his shoulders, but twisted, maintaining his gaze towards Tan Yiming.

His body suddenly twisted again, and he took his second step. However, at this time, his body had returned to its original position! With a quick flick of his head, he simply finished the action of retaining and shaking his head.

"No ... wait, wait, slow down, how did you turn around?" Tan Yiming rubbed his eyes. "With those two steps, you turned 360°. What just happened with your head, did you take advantage of me not paying attention to just twist it?"

Xiang Cai was amused. He simply put it in slow motion and dismantled the pirouette.

"The first step is to turn-and-retain the head, the second step is to turn-and-spin the head. Then connect it-"

The boy was spinning barefoot, and obviously spun in the most basic manner, but he did it so pleasantly. His movements were neat and clean, without any redundancies, and his legs, waist, shoulders, neck, his stretched arms ... each and every muscle was so agile.

The projection changed scene by scene, and his spinning grew faster and faster.

He gradually increased his pirouette's difficulty, from a flat spin to a four-position turn, from an idle leg to a side-leg spin.

Retain head-spin.

Shake head-spin.

His body shattered the projection, and his feet, once crushed by fate, carried his weight.

...

A few years ago, Xiang Cai read such a post on the Internet: If you wrote a love sentence with your major, how would you write it?

A dance major left the message: "You are the point I seek every time I pirouette."

Xiang Cai smiled, but that sentence was always engraved in his mind.

He sometimes asked himself, could he really find that point?

And now, in this living room, right before the glare of the projection lights, Xiang Cai found it.

With each spin, his eyes were fixed in the direction of Tan Yiming.

Spinning again and again, eyes touching again and again, nostalgia time and time again.

From beginning to end, Xiang Cai did not look away.

—And Tan Yiming was the same.

***

Back    ToC    Next