SAYE [Run Freely]

Chapter 37

"Didn't you say that this slingshot was faulty and couldn't shoot accurately?!" Gu Fei jumped over the sofa, hiding the lower half of his body behind the backrest.

"That depends on who's shooting." Jiang Cheng took another button and squinted at him, "I can hit accurately even with two fingers and an elastic band."

"Don't..." Gu Fei hadn't finished speaking when Jiang Cheng released his hand yet again. The button hit his arm - now that really hurt. He vigorously rubbed his arm a few times, "Fuck!"

"The 'spectator' that you mentioned," Jiang Cheng pulled taut the slingshot and looked at him from between the fork of the wood, "Is that kind of 'spectator', right?"

"It was just an example!" Gu Fei had gotten hit three times in a row; it really was getting hard to bear, so he raised his voice, "Do you have any sense of reason?!"

"What sense of reason?!" Jiang Cheng bellowed, his hand was shaking incredibly hard, "What sense of reason?! You look on with cold eyes without a care, how at ease you must be ah![2] What reason?! The world never had any sense of reason! Is there any reason for me being adopted?! What reason could there be for me to be sent to this motherfucking place right after I had just learned that I wasn't a biological child?! What motherfucking reason?!"

"Cheng-ge." Gu Fei stepped out again from behind the sofa, "I really wasn't doing it on purp—"

He didn't finish speaking - Jiang Cheng's fourth button had hit his chest.

"Ah!" He jumped up and fell back onto the sofa when he retreated. He might as well not get up anymore. He directed a yell at Jiang Cheng, "Come on, come on, Master Marksman Jiang Cheng! Come on! Hit me till you're satisfied! If the buttons here aren't enough then there's more outside! There aren't just wooden ones, there's motherfucking stone ones and even metal and copper ones! How about you directly use the metal ones?!"

"You saw everything." Jiang Cheng glared at him for a while then dropped his hands and threw the slingshot and the buttons to the ground, "Right? You saw everything."

"I saw," Gu Fei answered.

"How much did you see?" Jiang Cheng asked.

"From when you were shooting holes in the ice, to Coach X, until you started crying," Gu Fei mumbled. "I saw everything. I left the moment you started crying."

"Oh." Jiang Cheng sounded, leaning back against the wall.

He saw everything - a brilliantly performed schizophrenic act with an added bonus of a grown guy weeping dejectedly.

Jiang Cheng didn't know what he felt at the moment.

From shock to embarrassment, to feeling that he had made a fool of himself, to being humiliated about his secrets being seen, to finally indignant.

And now, all those feelings had disappeared - leaving only the insufferable pain.

His back was against the wall as he slowly crouched down to the floor and held his sunken head with his arms.

This was the posture.

Ever since he was little, it was not only when he cried that he liked to use this posture but also when he was in pain, depressed, or unhappy - a posture where he strenuously made himself into a ball and shrank as much as possible as to not let any other see him...

... it made him feel secure.

It was the same as sticking your head in the sand - different in approach but equally satisfying in result.