When they reached the dorm building, they saw Wang Zhuo and He Hao walking out.

“We’re playing basketball. Coming?” Wang Zhuo waved to them, smiling so widely his eyes almost disappeared, very radiant.

“Sure. Kaifeng and I will drop our bags off and then come find you.” Lin Feiran looked at Wang Zhuo and remembered Wang Zhuo’s desk in the classroom.

Not a single book was left intact. It looked like he had thoroughly vented his feelings.

Lin Feiran could understand Wang Zhuo’s feelings. He had been a bad student who had always scored among the last in class, but in the second half of his second year his grades had risen to be among the middle. Throughout third year his grades steadily rose until he ranked among the top. One did not need to think to know how hard he must have worked. But He Hao must have been the one to put in the most effort. He studied on his own and had to put high pressure on his bad student boyfriend, too.

In Wang Zhuo’s words, “He’s stricter than Old Zheng. I feel like I’m dating the discipline master. If it weren’t true love, we’d have already broken up.”

They put their things down, changed into gym clothes, put on their lovers’ sneakers, then went to the basketball court to look for Wang Zhuo and the others.

Their other close friends were also all there; a familiar battlefield and a familiar location, but this would be the last time they played basketball here. But in tacit agreement, no one mentioned this fact. Everyone played to their hearts’ content, two matches, until the sun set.

When they were about to leave, Wang Zhuo suggested that they buy some beer and drink it on the rooftop, and everyone supported him. So several of the guys went to the supermarket outside school and bought two big cases of beer. They took the cases apart and put the cans into plastic bags, then covered them with snacks, and each one took a bag, and successfully brought them back to the boys’ dorm. When they passed by dorm room 510, Wang Zhuo went in and retrieved a dusty guitar from beneath his bed. He took several tissues and dusted it off, saying excitedly, “Haven’t played in a long time. I’ll show you all... if I don’t play well, blame He Hao. He never lets me play it.”

They were not the only group who had thought about going out on the roof to see the stars. Two other groups of people were sitting nearby, laughing and talking. There was the scent of cigarettes and inexperienced coughing spreading through the air. The guys scrambled to distribute the beer and snacks, and the sound of cans opening was crisp in the air. One can must have been shaken very vigorously; white foam and the smell of wheat burst from the can, and the guy whose pants had gotten wet laughed uproariously. In the end, everyone raised their cans together toward the night sky and toasted each other in a mess. “To liberation!” “May everyone do well!” “May the couples among us stay together forever!”

.........

May our youth be without regrets.

Everyone tilted their heads back and gulped down the beer in their hands.

The drinks were chilly, so they could clearly feel the path the faintly bitter beer took as it trickled down their throats into their stomachs.

The guys drank beer and chatted, laughing, making a scene and bantering. Just then, the sound of a guitar string being plucked rang crisply through the air. Wang Zhuo folded his legs back up from where they were dangling from the railing. Cross-legged, he held his guitar, cleared his throat and asked, “I’ll play. Who’ll sing with me? Kai-ge, a song, shall we?”

He Hao quickly stopped him. “Let’s not.”

Gu Kaifeng narrowed his eyes slightly and watched these husbands perfectly in tune with each other. “......”

Wang Zhuo said brazenly, “True. The moment he opens his mouth I won’t be able to help pushing him down. Sis-in-law, you go.”

Lin Feiran waved the half-empty beer can in his hand dismissively. “All right. What can you play?”

“Anything you can sing, I can play,” Wang Zhuo said confidently.

They discussed it for a while, then Lin Feiran confidently started to sing. He sang ‘Those Flowers’, ‘The Song of Li’, ‘Those Years’... When they got to the songs that had been popular the past two years, everyone joined in singing.

“... Clumsily knotting his red tie, combing his hair to look like an adult, looking sharp in a suit...”

When they got to the end of the song, the tall boy from Class 3 they often played basketball with started tearing up. The 1.9m tall boy was built like a bear, and the sight of his despairing tan face was unbearably sorrowful. The defender from the same class, who was 1.7m tall, had to hold himself up straight to give him a shoulder to lean on, and the other boys seeing this started laughing uproariously. Perhaps it was the influence of the beer: the alcohol magnified everyone’s emotions, and in the end, everyone laughed and laughed and laughed until they cried.

Wang Zhuo rubbed his eyes and said seriously, “Fuck, beer is flowing from my eyes. Fake beer!”

Lin Feiran pulled at Gu Kaifeng’s gym clothes and wiped his face openly. He liked to cry, and now finally there were a lot of people crying along with him.

Gu Kaifeng looked up at the sky for a while, and quickly calmed down. He took Lin Feiran into his arms and caressed him comfortingly.

Lin Feiran contemplated the school buildings beneath the moonlight, looking at the roads he had walked more than several hundred times. He looked at every blade of grass, every tree, every stone and every brick, and whispered, “We’ll go our separate ways from now on.”

“We don’t have to go our separate ways.” Gu Kaifeng took a sip of beer and said gently, “If you tell me to go east, I’ll go east. If you tell me to go west, I’ll go west.”

Lin Feiran’s eyes curved in a smile and he leaned against Gu Kaifeng as he drank his beer.

The guys stayed on the rooftop until dawn. As they talked and laughed, they fell back onto the roof and lay there in a daze, bodies in every direction. When they opened their eyes again, the feeling that everything had ended now entered their heart, just as the first ray of morning light entered their eyes.

They tidied up the disaster zone that was the rooftop, then returned to their respective dorm rooms and changed into their school uniforms for their graduation ceremony.

At nine in the morning, all the third-year students and teachers assembled in the auditorium. Several girls had put together some money and bought Old Zheng a big bouquet of flowers, and he smiled radiantly as he held them. At the end, all the students bid each other farewell, forming groups of twos and threes to take photographs. Rumor had it that some people finally got up the courage to confess to their crushes. They had graduated now, and no longer worried about the eyes of others on them. Gu Kaifeng wrapped a generous arm around Lin Feiran’s shoulder, bending close to his ear to speak, his eyes nearly overflowing with gentleness and happiness. An air of sweetness wrapped the two of them, keeping other people away. There were many people who had a crush on one or the other of them, especially the well-acknowledged School Beau Gu, but no one approached them to confess at all. No one would do something so clearly fruitless. Some courageous girls came up to ask them for a photograph, saying they would brag to other people in the future about the handsome guys in their school whose coolness level reached the clouds.

The graduation ceremony ended and the students nearly all left. The parents had all come to help their children pick up their belongings from their dormitories, and Gu Kaifeng made four trips just for their shoes. By the end, both families’ cars were filled to bursting.

“Get in, children. You didn’t forget anything, did you?” Gu Kaifeng’s mother opened the passenger door and waved. She turned and said to Lin Feiran’s mother in the sedan behind them, “Let Feiran ride in our car, and our two families can have a meal together later.”

Lin Feiran’s mother nodded. They could not fit everything into their sedan car, and even the back seat was full of Lin Feiran’s things. If he wanted to ride in his family’s car he would have to squeeze in with the pots and pans.

So Lin Feiran got into the Gu family car.

When the car drove toward the school gate, Lin Feiran saw the old school principal standing in the center of the gateway, hands folded. He stood straight-backed, his majestic air carrying an unconcealable sense of pride. His mouth, which was always set in a straight line, now lifted slightly at the corners. He ignored the cars and the crowds of people passing through him, and stood watching this batch of students walk out of the school he had built himself.

The traffic was heavy at the school gates, and the car crawled forward at the speed of a turtle. Lin Feiran wound down the windows and waved at the old school principal. Gu Kaifeng’s parents, in the front seat, thought he was waving to his classmates and paid no attention.

The old principal saw Lin Feiran and nodded gravely, his eyes joyous and thankful.

Gu Kaifeng came up from behind, draping himself intimately over Lin Feiran’s back, then waved at the old principal in greeting.

“......” The old school principal’s expression changed. He was very angry!

These students would not do! They were too brazen! Even hugging and being affectionate in front of the school principal!

Lin Feiran wordlessly pushed Gu Kaifeng away, and Gu Kaifeng laughed as he backed off and stopped provoking the old school principal.