To My Youth [BL]

[19] His Memory (2/6)

A photo was posted on our year's anonymous board. The teachers didn't know this board existed.

It was a secret place only known to the students where they posted their troubles, complaints, gossip or love letters. That sort of thing.

I can barely remember the caption. But I remembered there were photos of pages, sort of like a journal, and these pages were plastered all over the anonymous site.

Zhang Yongyin showed it to me instantly, and when I read through those journal pages, my entire mind became blank.

No one knew who was writing these sorrowful words of unrequited love until a comment said:

"That is Wu Fei's diary. I saw him carry it before, and he was writing in it during break. Who knew Wu Fei would have such a sad, unrequited love for his best friend? I wonder what Gu Xiao thinks. It must be so embarrassing. To think Gu Xiao was hanging out with his best friend, who is also a boy, and he was thinking of him in such a disgusting way, must be so shocking."

I hoped it was just my suspicions and that it wasn't true, but the moment I saw that handwriting, I knew it was Wu Fei too.

I remember this was in the evening.

I was with Zhang Yongyin at that time since we were eating dinner together, but I no longer had an appetite.

Not because I was disgusted in the same way the comments were implying, but because I was worried about Wu Fei.

Though, I was still shocked that Wu Fei thought of me in that way. But I was more frustrated about those who would ever invade someone's privacy in such a crude way.

When we returned to school, many people started giving Wu Fei strange looks since there still wasn't enough proof it was him. But of course, that didn't stop people from believing it was his diary.

They would whistle at him, make gestures, and pat him on the back, only to mock him again.

The people I considered my friends started teasing me too, though they weren't mocking me but pitying me.

I didn't mind their jokes since it was easy to drive it in another direction. This was something I had done a lot of times, after all, but this topic was a new one. This question was something that suddenly confronted me, yet it brought upon seemingly old familiar aches. It was long since this dread returned to me, and the question regarding why I decided to live this way and speak to such people had begun to grip and rend my heart.

Every time I tried to speak to Wu Fei, I think he thought I was going to address what he had written in his journal, but all I wanted to ask was whether he was alright.

So, every time I opened my mouth, he would always give an excuse to shut down the conversation.

Even during break, he would immediately leave the classroom, saying how the teacher needed him.

During this whole time, he was always smiling.

✎✎✎

After a week, another photo was posted on the anonymous board. This time, they were screenshots of messages between Wu Fei and another boy. Yet, the messages were rather intimate.

At first, people were shocked, and they were still suspicious. A few days later, the anonymous started posting more screenshots of messages between Wu Fei and his "boyfriend." That was when everything started.

At that time, or maybe just within my school, homosexuality wasn't very accepted amongst the majority of our classmates. It was something foreign.

Everyone started calling him names, especially after the letters that showed his feelings for me, but now, he was supposedly seeing another boy.

So, people started giving him new nicknames that were far more obnoxious than before.

"Why did you do that?" I asked He Rong.

"I didn't do it."

It was always those words. "I didn't do it." And every time I asked He Rong, he would laugh and start talking about Wu Fei.

He wanted me to join them, but all I did was listen because I tried to look at things from He Rong's perspective—how he could say all those promiscuous and vulgar words about someone with no care at all even though Wu Fei had given him so much.

I never mentioned those journal entries because I knew it wouldn't be right to talk about them.

The messages continued appearing from left and right.

Every time Wu Fei came to school, students would continue whistling, laughing, whispering at him. But he ignored it.

The blackboard in our classroom always had inappropriate drawings of him, but he ignored them. The words and laughter, he ignored it.

One day when I walked into the classroom, one of my friends, who I always played basketball with, slung his arm over my shoulder and eyed Wu Fei.

"Hey, Wu Fei. Your childhood crush is here. Why don't you confess your love now? It's better to say it in person, don't you think? Gu Xiao, you not only get all the girls, but now you're also sweeping the guys in. I feel so sorry for you that some dudes probably have these fantasies about you. I would cry if a boy wrote like that about me."

Wu Fei was sitting in his seat, his eyes glued to his book. From this distance, I saw the grip of his pen tightening.

"He's probably writing something crazy again," another person said.

I didn't say anything at that time except stare at the boy who still had his arm around me. He slowly backed away and eventually left me after saying a few more words.

✎✎✎

Throughout the following weeks, Wu Fei continued ignoring everything with a smile and avoiding me.

His table always had curses on it, but he ignored it. He would just silently clean the words off.

Silently.

Quietly.

But then, even his chair would have words on it. So even after scrubbing and cleaning, he couldn't even sit on his chair since it wouldn't be dry. I started noticing more and more of these things.