Shi Zhang felt that God’s arrangements were too much of a coincidence. He had just encountered Song Fuzhi this morning, then tonight he found that he would pay his mother a visit later.
Actually, if possible, Shi Zhang also wished to no longer run into Song Fuzhi in this lifetime, but after he really did run into him, he found himself having a hard time controlling himself to not want to approach him.
Back in high school, Shi Zhang had once stood in the school’s dilapidated forest as he practiced smoking.
Actually that place wasn’t really a forest, it was just a corner of a dirt slope, blocked by two dilapidated buildings. The few trees were balding and spread sparsely, piles of discarded building materials covered the ground. It was such a dry and hot place in the summer that no one would come, even teachers wouldn’t catch them here.
Shi Zhang took a puff of smoke and covered his mouth as he coughed for quite some time.
Smoking was hard, he hadn’t succeeded in his practice yet.
After done coughing, Shi Zhang straightened up his body and then suddenly found that a person had suddenly appeared, standing behind him. Silent, not a peep nor whisper.
It was a school junior with a thin and frail build, the school uniform was visibly loose on his body.
Shi Zhang’s impression of him was quite deep because he was the most handsome among the students-on-duty that week.
There was something bright red on the junior’s right arm.
Others usually directly pinned the red student-on-duty1It’s kind of a program(?) where some students in a class would clean the classroom, blackboard, and such for a period of time (usually a week), the next period there would be a rotation on who would be on duty
Shi Zhang squinted at him in askance, when he didn’t say anything, he lifted his hand and took a puff.
This time he didn’t choke.
This student-on-duty looked at him from his side, not doing anything. Shi Zhang himself smoked on his own, and thus the two of them stood without a word between them, just like that.
The cig was almost finished quickly, Shi Zhang put out the cig on the rock and then walked away along with the cigarette butt between his fingers.
When he was passing by the student-on-duty, Shi Zhang paused and asked him with a smile yet not a smile, “Why aren’t you asking me my name and class?”
The junior replied, “You obviously don’t like smoking, why do you still smoke?”
Such a fresh and clean voice of a teenager, still amidst the period of voice changing, making Shi Zhang feel a little being seen through.
Shi Zhang didn’t answer him, he casually threw the cigarette butt into the trash can and said, “Discipline Committee member, come here.”
The junior stood in place, asking him what he was doing.
“I’m telling you to come here, just come.”
Shi Zhang was a little impatient, “We are in the forest and the mosquitoes had a feast on your arms, what are you still doing standing there? Wait for me to carry you over?”
The junior subconsciously scratched his arm, his slender fingers bent over the sides of the red armband.
Shi Zhang retracted his gaze. He led him to the entrance of 3rd year’s class, rummaged his desk drawer to take out a small metal tin of White Cat’s Soothing Balm2It’s kinda similar to Vicks vaporub I suppose? It can also be used to relieve itching 
The junior scraped a little lump of the peppermint-smelling balm with his fingertip and silently applied it onto the red swollen bumps where the mosquitoes fed from. From the moment he started applying the balm, every little movement of his imprinted in Shi Zhang’s memory.
After he finished applying the ointment, the junior opened his mouth as if nothing happened, “What you just said about ‘Ventilator Committee member’3风纪委员 is actually a japanese word for discipline committee member (y’know from anime, they call it ‘Fuukiin’ if I’m not mistaken, also Chinese and Japanese old words share the same root so many of their ‘old’ words are written the same). There’s no organization or group called that in Chinese and so SFZ misheard the 风纪 (discipline) as 风机 (fan/ventilator), and thus ventilator commitee member, what kind of thing is that?”
Shi Zhang paused a little, and then suddenly laughed boisterously, even the water cup on the neighboring table was almost knocked over by him.
What an interesting handsome little guy, seems very keen on knowledge.
But Shi Zhang was too lazy to explain to him that it was an anime reference, he just didn’t take the ointment back when the other wanted to return it.
Shi Zhang said it’s for him, but the junior shook his head and put the tin back on Shi Zhang’s table.
“Don’t smoke if you don’t like to smoke, if I catch you again I will write down your name.”
The junior said and then walked away.
A lot of things in one’s teenage period happened without rhyme or reason——
Shi Zhang, from that day onwards, everywhere he went, was reminded of that junior’s looks from the forest, reminded of his voice, reminded of the swollen bumps on his body after being bitten by mosquitoes.
The red swollen bumps were small, slightly stuck out on the fair and white skin, sudden and abrupt.
Making one have the urge to nip and pinch at him, bite here and there, leaving similar traces on that body.
Wanting to make him turn red, wanting to be the one he cared for, wanting to hear that slightly mature voice of a young teen of his once again.
Shi Zhang, realizing where his thoughts had gone, unconsciously frowned.
He knew that he had an extreme side to himself, and it seemed to be far from the undisciplined and careless side on the surface.
Shi Zhang loved to go to the mountains and collect some novel plants. He would go back home and make them into plant sample herbariums and lock them up neatly in the cabinet.
The clothes he wore only once for cosplay had never once been sold to a second hand, they would all be ironed neatly and then hung in the wardrobe. He even attached labels of the date onto them.
When the Yellow-hair Shamate robbed the game coins in his hands, he would snatch every single one of them back and also beat that person up.
Shi Zhang didn’t have much possession he actually owned, but if he really wanted something, he would definitely contain and control them completely, entirely.
This time, he actually wanted to collect a living breathing person like he did when he collected plant specimens.
Shi Zhang effortlessly got the junior’s name by asking around, his name was Song Fuzhi.
The not so not-serious4The word for effortless and unserious here is the same: 轻松, thus this sentence and the previous one. news was that: his mother was actually Shi Zhang’s own homeroom teacher, Wang Huiling.
Shi Zhang often hid himself in some secretive place to look at him. Looking at his figure as he ran during the P.E class, looking at his earnest expression when he was on class duty, looking at him happily laughing and smiling with his classmates as the sunlight spilled over the teen’s collar.
The scope of the school was too small, Shi Zhang began to go home with him.
Though if one were to say it bluntly, they would call it tailing.
Although his mother was a teacher in his school, Song Fuzhi also usually walked home alone. Shi Zhang walked behind him not too far nor near, and had been following him for so many days.
He really did just follow him, not doing anything at all.
The one and only time Shi Zhang had done something was when he witnessed from afar, a thug trying to extort some pocket money out of Song Fuzhi. He had lifted the thug into a secluded alley and coldly demanded him to return the money.
Shi Zhang has fought so many times, but this one single event was the most brutal and ferocious one under his hands.
A mere thought of that little thug blocking Song Fuzhi into a corner made his eyes went red, it was hard for him to contain his extreme fury and wrath. By the end of it, he even almost sent that person to hospital.
If it wasn’t because that little thug himself had really done bad things and had no guts to report it to the police nor make a fuss, Shi Zhang might have to be detained a few days in jail.
This kind of stalking and spying became increasingly addictive as time went on, like a poison that pulls people into the swamps.
Shi Zhang envied those people who could stand beside Song Fuzhi.
Looking at the friends surrounding Song Fuzhi and openly laughing with him, Shi Zhang clearly felt a little suffocated. It felt as if someone was strangling his neck, his chest seemed ablaze with raging flame.
He wanted to pull them apart, wanted to make himself be the only one reflected in that junior’s eyes.
Shi Zhang wanted to intervene, wanted to control, wanted to make him the same as those plant specimens. Little by little flatten him in his palm, press him down, and lock him shut in the house.
But reason suppressed these crazy thoughts to death.
Song Fuzhi was a living, breathing, and whole person. Not some soft rush in the mountain that just anyone can pluck and trim.
Shi Zhang was like a criminal. He didn’t dare brazenly show himself under Song Fuzhi’s eyes, so much so that he very carefully went to smoke, not wanting to be caught by him.
Because if he were to be caught by him once again, Song Fuzhi would ask him for his name.
Shi Zhang was afraid that he couldn’t reply to him with a “Shi Zhang” and then, under extreme anxiety, looked at Song Fuzhi and said, “I want you.”
Both reasons and emotions told Shi Zhang, he knew that he shouldn’t take that path. He was lacking in so much compared to Song Fuzhi, from his nature, family, to upbringing, not one of them were on the same level.
After the college entrance examination, the universities Shi Zhang applied for were all from outside the province. Summer vacation hadn’t even passed when he himself went to a different environment by himself in advance.
Almost as if he was fleeing from something.
Escaping from his unbearable past, evading from his own madness.
These thoughts, Shi Zhang has never told anyone. Song Fuzhi was even more in the dark, not the slightest bit of awareness.
Such thoughts should rot in himself alone.
In a flash, ten years had gone by and Shi Zhang ran into him in a coffee shop by chance. He thought he had made a lot of progress on himself.
Although his subconscious reactions were unexpectedly still so deeply rooted, Shi Zhang believed that he could completely control himself.
He was now a steady and calm adult with a respectable job, he wouldn’t make those foolish actions as would when he was a teen.
Before paying a visit to the retiring Teacher Wang, Shi Zhang specially went to get his hair done and then bought a new set of clothes.
These old classmates hadn’t had a proper gathering in over ten years. When they met each other for the first time since so long, they were all trying to recognize each other.
Who and who has gotten fatter ah, who and who was still the same thin and tall as before, Ai yo, who is this ah, so beautiful they could no longer be recognized.
And Shi Zhang arrived a little late, the private room was already full of people standing. Ouyang Xi was amidst a pile of people as they joked around together, already chatting so familiarly with everyone.
Someone saw the just entering Shi Zhang and called out hesitantly, “Hey, this is….? Could he be going to the wrong room?”
Ouyang Xi who heard those words walked that way. When he walked halfway to Shi Zhang, his footsteps suddenly halted, his gaze locked on Shi Zhang’s body as he stood frozen for a pretty long time.
“Fuck….”
Ouyang Xi couldn’t help but burst out an expletive, “You are really something ah.”5He actually said “行啊你。” Which is kind of like a concession to Shi Zhang’s madness, like ‘Fine you do you’ but kinda subtle(?), an acknowledgement and just go along with Shi Zhang.
Shi Zhang normally wore either casual wear or lab coat, and except when he was cosplaying, he has always been a monotonous and forever simple kind of person.
But today, he was wearing a very stylish windbreaker, it was left open to reveal a meticulous, not-a-hair-out-of-place, black shirt underneath. His legs were long, and the Oxford shoes he was wearing were exquisitely worn, giving him both the gentlemanly and laid back aura.
“Professor Shi’s handsomeness is a little too excessive.” Ouyang Xi sized him up, “Did you dress up?”
Shi Zhang magnanimously “En”-ed.
Ouyang Xi seemed like he had more to say but was interrupted by the other classmates.
“Our Boss Shi6Reminder that the Boss here is actually 时爷 (Grandpa Shi), it can actually be translated as Master Shi but I think Boss fits better with his also somewhat ‘thug’ image. now…. Really can’t be recognized!”
“What Boss Shi, now people call him Professor Shi.”
“The fuck, Shi Zhang, you really became a professor ah, is it real or fake ah.”
So many people were astonished and amazed by Shi Zhang.
From when their Boss Shi conquered the region back then, he had looked lazy but was actually very loyal to his friends. When his classmates ran into some difficult trouble, he would go out and help “solve” them, and thus he was rewarded with the nickname “Boss Shi.” He was also the number 1 most problematic student that caused Teacher Wang a lot of headaches.
Who would have expected that that person was now a professor of a famous school, with several articles of his published in CNS journals7CNS here refers to the top three scientific journals “Cell”, “Nature”, and “Science”. Those of you who are in biological scientific field definitely knows them, they are extremely prestigious and very expensive for journal publishing hahaha, maybe one day I would have the opportunity to publish an article there who knows (amen) and sub journals, has won national awards, and also everyday working in the lab to contribute to the advancement of human civilization. That was a knowledgeable and learned person with both handsomeness and elegant bearing.
Wang Huiling arrived not long after and everyone hurriedly welcomed her, all those in front of and behind her greeted her.
The woman was approaching 60 but her back was still as straight as before, her hair that already has some graying white hair was neatly tucked behind her ear. Except for some faint wrinkles on her face, there’s almost no difference in her temperament and manners with her younger self.
The little seedlings8Actually instead of seedlings the RAW said green onions, likely because it’s somewhat stinky (also means naughty) of young boys and girls in the past had grown a lot into towering trees in an instant, now the Teacher has become the shortest one.
Wang Huiling looked at each of them one by one, smilingly called out each of their names.
She had especially turned over their past graduation photos beforehand, matching the face with the name one by one. Now when she looked at them again, the children had all grown so much, changed so much she no longer recognized them.
They were now working in all kinds of professions. There was someone who opened a Taobao shop and became a small boss, another became a senior executive in an internet-based company, there’s also another who became a self-employed person with personal media9Here refers to something like podcaster and such, basically influencers i suppose. Perhaps there might be some differences in their worldly definition of “success”, but everyone was living their own little life.
Wang Huiling’s eyes were a little red. Time sure flies really fast.
The student standing in front of her was very tall, Wang Huiling tilted her head up and joked, “Who is this ah, so tall I can’t see clearly.”
Shi Zhang gave way and went to the side a little, then bent down his waist and respectfully greeted her, “Hello, Teacher Wang.”
After a few seconds of pause, he added a sentence, “I have caused you a lot of trouble before.”
His tone of speech was 100% sincere, and the people in the room erupted in laughter, saying that our Boss Shi had grown up.
Wang Huiling really scrutinized him for a while before confirming that this was indeed Shi Zhang, his temperament has changed so much, as if shedding his mortal body and exchanging bones, making anew.
The past Shi Zhang would carelessly sleep on his stomach in her classroom, his school uniform haphazardly draped over his shoulders. The contours of his lower arm were prominent and conspicuous, a glance at his skin color and one would know he was often under open field outside, basking in the sun.
As for now, with a shirt, overcoat, and leather shoes, hair styled in a simple and neat style and glasses on his face, the aura and temperament of a scholar on his body couldn’t be disguised solely depending on clothes. It was a bubble that couldn’t be popped from everyday being in the laboratory and school.
When she learnt that Shi Zhang was now a Professor of Botany, Wang Huiling was a little pleasantly surprised and then proceeded to chat a little more with him.
Being together in the education field, Wang Huiling naturally could talk a lot with those children who have now become teachers.
There’s no shortage of students she had taught who now had become teachers, but those who became professors weren’t many. After all, scientific research was very hard and bitter, there were many who gave up halfway, progressing to become a professor was no easy task.
Undisguised praise and satisfaction could be seen in Wang Huiling’s eyes.
Shi Zhang could tell from Wang Huiling’s gaze that he had chosen the right outfit today. It seemed like Teacher Wang was very satisfied with the current him.
Although he wouldn’t be able to meet Song Fuzhi again, Shi Zhang thought it was still great that he was able to leave a good impression on his family.
Translator’s note:
The title was 怎么不算见家长呢？meaning ‘How could it not count as meeting elders?’. The Elders here refers to your partner’s family (or ‘future in-laws’), when couples are in a serious stage, they would introduce the other to the family like “this”.
Also, Shi Zhang does have a lot of self-deprecating thoughts along with dark ones, but I promise he is a good egg :”) Sad, tattered, and a little broken but good!!!
And Shi Zhang, Ge, don’t be so pessimistic!
wannaberecluse On SRTT Chapter 50.1