Happens to be Zhang

chapter 4

Xiaochen's mother had hair that came past her arms. It brushed his cheek when she peered down his shoulder, checking his notebooks and the highlights of his textbooks on the pretext of serving him hot cocoa. 

His eyes scrunched shut, hopes and prayers dissipating into thin air, wondering if his mother would notice that the computer screen was not switched off and merely on sleep. His chats weren't logged off and the Facebook sound was kept on. He didn't have that much time to cover his tracks when his mother knocked. 

Caricatures of Donghan strewn under his mathematics workbook. His name and image would pop right up if the screen moved just an inch. His chats, the three dots of him typing his replies, their disagreements about how cats were far superior than dogs and if lobsters made a good aphrodisiac. Everything would fall apart. 

"How was the test?" His mother squeezed his shoulders. 

"I got one question wrong." Xiaochen prayed his tremble would not seep through the fabric of his shirt. 

"Your father would see your answers at night dear," she said, voice lovingly calm. "And what is your rank?"

"Second." 

"Who is the first?" 

Xiaochen's heart skipped a beat. "Ji Donghan," he answered truthfully. "We're seatmates." 

His father was home at night. Xiu LiCheng was a tall man with narrow set eyes and broad shoulders, face set in a permanent scowl. 

"Do you think life is easy?" He asked when Xiaochen had his spoon raised halfway between his bowl and his open mouth. The boy lowered it back into the rice. 

"No, Sir." 

"I worked so hard to give you everything you need, every comfort your puny brain could ever imagine and what you give me in return?" 

"I am sorry, Sir." 

"What are you sorry for?" The man threw his steel chopsticks down and they clattered on the floor, their ringing sounds blasting in the boy's ears for a long after they settled. "If you are truly sorry then give me the results, goddammit! I didn't raise a moron in my house!" 

The food lay before him, untouched, pristine. As if it wasn't meant for him. 

"What are you staring at? Go back to your room at once, and solve the entire paper within two hours. I will see it before you go to bed." 

Xiaochen couldn't solve that one question that time either. And it wasn't the first night that he went hungry to bed. 

//

"Hi. Hot americano, five shots of espresso." 

Yu HanZhang stands before the counter, exactly when the clock strikes half past seven. It takes three days for Xiaochen to notice his punctuality. Only one word screams in his mind at their interaction: odd. 

"What happened to your seven shots?"

"Five is my usual. I said seven that day to get noticed." 

The bitter truth stings. Xiaochen's mind is so immersed in finding anomalies that he lets the clockwork life fade into a dull background. His searches for colour, and  Yu HanZhang's wardrobe of black and grey easily mingles with his colorblind subconscious. 

"So…" HanZhang leans forward. "What's your name?" 

"You can read my tag." 

"But you haven't told me your name. How can I take it?"

"I am sure you call me Xiaochen in your thoughts." Xiaochen bites back, doing a terrible job of hiding his smile. 

"Busted."