DU JIE

Belated

After more than twenty years of silence, my first love in high school has just sent me a text message. The last time we spoke was the day I handed him my love letter. He thanked me but never talked to me again. Until today.

“Hello, Kang Kang. It’s me, Ding Wen. Excuse me for the sudden message. I got your number from our English teacher. How have you been? I’m still in Chengdu, making films. Actually, next week, I’ll be in Beijing for a shoot. It would be great to catch up with you, if you’re there. It’s been years!”

Twenty-five years, to be exact, and no one has called me Kang Kang except him. My love letter, the only one I’ve written in my life, which I thought I had forgotten, suddenly rises from the dead, jeering—“Ding Wen, I’m in love with you! Disastrously, like a Tsunami; devastatingly, like a tornado; destructively, like a torpedo. I’m wrecked. I’ve lost my mind. I can’t stop thinking about you. Save me and say you love me. I’ll jump into your arms like a puppy!”

Did I really write this?

In the end, it takes me a sleepless night and a background check on him to reply: Yes, we can meet in Beijing next week.

What I don’t say but expect him to already know is that he must not bring up the letter. Because it’s irrelevant. Because it’s been so long. Because I’m now a husband. A father. And a somebody.

***

Ding Wen and I were high school classmates. On the first day at school, as the two tallest students in the class, we volunteered to sit in the last row, next to each other, and as soon as the teacher turned her back on us, we took out our Game Boys underneath the table, shooting each other a knowing smile. We became buddies in no time.

During the first semester, I had appendicitis, and the day after my surgery, Ding Wen came to the hospital to see me. He sat at my bedside, next to my drip stand, telling me about the school day. Upon departure, he whispered in my ear, “Kang Kang, get well soon. We already miss you “

“Kang, convalescence. I like it!” What I really wanted to ask was: Could you keep calling me by that name?

Somehow, my wish silently got across to him. He started to call me Kang Kang the next day when he came back. And he came every evening for a week. We went through the day’s schoolwork together, then lay side by side on my hospital bed, playing Metroid on our handhelds.

One time, I shouted in frustration after losing a boss fight, and he tapped me on the thigh to cheer me up. My heart almost rocketed out of my chest. I blushed. He never noticed.

After I was discharged from the hospital, every morning, regardless of the weather, Ding Wen, who lived a bit farther away, would cycle to my building and we would ride to school together. In the evening, I would accompany him till we reached his home, before turning back, just to spend a few more minutes together. Gradually, it felt as if my day only began after we met and ended as soon as we parted.

Our dynamics at school changed, too. I smiled foolishly just sitting beside him and stole glances at him from time to time. As if in response, he sometimes brushed the nape of my neck with his knuckle when he passed by from behind. That January, which I remember was particularly cold, at break between classes, if I were seated, he would come to stand behind me, burrowing his icy and swollen hand down beneath the back of my jacket for warmth—it was the only occasion when I found the unheated classroom bearable.

We continued to be inseparable throughout the spring, which helped me survive the increasingly arduous student life. Where nothing happened but examinations.

When the lotus flowers in the school’s fish pond began to bloom, I could no longer rein in my volcanic feelings. I wrote the letter during a sleepless night and handed it to him the next day with confidence. I imagined he would quickly say he felt the same about me, and we would spring up joyously and hug each other tearfully. Never would we separate.

Yet he avoided me altogether. Sitting in the same classroom became a torment. I cried. Every night. For a month. I swore to the sad moon that I’d never love again because it was too painful.

Still, I finished that semester, ranking number one. Then I moved to Beijing with my parents and gradually forgot about him.

***

Two cities. Two decades. Two paths of life. Yet the moment we finally see each other, our eyes sparkle with instant recognition.

“Kang Kang!” Ding Wen exclaims, “Is that you? My goodness! You’re getting bald!” He scurries to the table, almost tripping himself on the way. He’s wearing a baseball cap, a denim blazer, jeans, and sneakers. Unlike me, unlike everyone else in this members-only teahouse.

“Ding Wen,” I mumble his name as though to relearn the pronunciation. “It’s good to see you again.”

I stick out my hand, but he brushes it aside and wraps his arms around me. My mind goes blank. My hands dangle at my sides. Then, as if with an electric shock, I hug him back. Tightly. Enfolding the years that have gone by.

When we separate, we shake hands with formality and pat each other on the arm.

“You look fab in a suit, just like in the news,” he says. “But you have grey hair now!”

“Must be stress. With the trade war going on,” I say. “And you look smarter and freer than any of us here.”

“Well, I’m just an indie filmmaker,” he says with a chuckle.

As we settle into the seats, I notice he’s wearing a nice watch with a blue dial. I have the same model at home but don’t wear it anymore. To avoid disciplinary problems.

As we drink our West Lake Longjing tea, he asks about my life.

“It’s been all right,” I say. “With my humble post in the Ministry of Finance.”

“Come on, you’re modest to a fault. Everyone knows you’re a big shot now.”

“No, I’m not. I know my place,” I quickly correct him. Boasting, the beginning of the downfall.

“Anyway, I’m not surprised you’re doing so well. You were a top student back then,” he says. “And you played video games a lot. How did you manage it? The more I played, the worse I did in school. You were the opposite.”

“Well, I studied hard after I played games…”

“How come you never told me that! I know you’re a trickster.”

Am I?

“And behind a successful man, there’s often a great wife,” Ding Wen says.

“Oh, Jingjing is amazing. We met at Harvard. I was an exchange student while she was doing her MBA. It was love at first sight,” I say, glowing.

“It turns out we complement each other well,” I conclude. Now I’m an official, and she a businesswoman. Her family’s real estate company will continue to thrive.

“I suppose your daughter is as bright as her parents,” Ding Wen says.

I can’t help but let out a proud smile. “Liangliang is a top student at an international school. She speaks English with a Brooklyn accent, loves Jay-Z madly, and plays the guitar like a pro. Her motto: Long March, to Ivy League!”

“Ivy League!” Ding Wen says. “Are you sending her to America? But they don’t want us.”

“People struggle upward, as the proverb says.”

“So America is the upward place to strive for?”

“Shh, no one should hear that,” I say, smiling, while scolding myself silently.

“I always liked the way you smiled. Modest. Pensive. And those dimples of yours, I never forgot them,” Ding Wen says, smiling. He has dimples, too.

I hold up my cup and take a gulp. Has Ding Wen just said he liked me, sort of? For the first time.

I cast my eyes downward. Images of the past flash in front of me. An illusion. Short-lived. Like everything else in youth. By the time I look back up at him, formality has returned. A professional instinct.

“By the way, your last film was amazing. Romantic, with a dark twist. I’ve watched it twice,” I say with admiration. I’ve only read a review.

“Thanks! I wish it had done better at the box office though.”

“But it premiered in San Sebastián, didn’t it? Maybe next time you’ll go to Cannes or Venice,” I say. “And what’s your new film about? Is it set in Beijing?”

“It’s about a man’s perpetual sense of unbelonging, wherever he goes,” he says. “Beijing only appears in childhood flashbacks.”

As our conversation continues, I learn that Ding Wen is just divorced after a five-year marriage. He doesn’t say why.

I talk, impersonally, about Sino-U.S. trade relations and geopolitics. No more about myself or my family. I can’t trust Ding Wen yet. Not until I find out why he suddenly wanted to see me. He said he had got my number from Ms. Zhao, our high school English teacher, who happens to know my aunt well. Why take the trouble?

I already have my hypothesis. As someone who has made it in the capital, familiar with the ways of the world. I assume Ding Wen wants a favor from me: his nephew or niece might need a job in Beijing, or that his new film seeks more funding. He can’t just want to meet me. We’re both too busy, too old for purposeless nostalgia.

***

By the time I glance back at Ding Wen, I find him gazing at me—I must have been lost in thought again. The consequence of an unresolved past. Why has he come back to me? Why now?

“Is there anything you want to ask of me? We were friends. We can be frank,” I finally say, after gulping down the rest of my tea which has turned cold.

He takes a deep breath and wraps his hands around his teacup. “The thing is, Kang Kang, I’ve been thinking about you a lot, and there’s something I must tell you,” he says, gazing at me earnestly, his hands shaking. “I’ve never forgiven myself for being cruel to you. I was too young. Too self-absorbed. I ignored your feelings, and as a result, my own as well. I’m gay—I’m sure now. Perhaps it’s already too late, but I owe you the truth. I’ll regret it if I offer no closure, or a future. I have waited for twenty-five years and lived through great turmoil to tell you what I’ve always felt. Yes, I loved you back in school. And I still do. Kang Kang, you’re the one I’ve loved the most.”

For God’s sake. I hold my breath. Fear rises. It has never gone away. We went from friends to strangers within moments, and now, what he’s just confessed, what I waited and wished for back then, might immediately vanish. Just like before.

Numerous questions are swirling in my head. Particularly, how my letter affected him in high school; how it might have changed his life—our life. The way our friendship ended broke my heart. It gave me haunting loneliness. Wherever I went. Whoever I was with. I felt lonely. I still do, only I’m used to it.

Ding Wen reaches out and holds my hand. I want to lean in and hug him. I sigh instead. All I say is, simply, “We’ll be fine.”

He releases my hand.

I could have said more but my professional paranoia intervenes. What if our conversation is wired? A blackmail setup for the future minister? This is the right way of thinking, I remind myself. Never forget to watch your back, because the higher you climb, the more people want to push you off the cliff, as my wife would say. In fact, we both know she could have been a better politician than me, if she were a man. It’s unfair, I once told her, but together, we can make the most out of it.

Frowning, I suddenly think of my imminent tasks: a report I still need to oversee tonight, on the impact of the U.S. tariffs; my speech at an international economic forum the day after tomorrow; the banquet for my father-in-law’s upcoming seventieth birthday—and to pick up my daughter from her guitar lesson. I’m running late.

“Ding Wen, I’m glad to see you today, but I really need to go now,” I say, while signaling to the waitress for the bill.

As we’re leaving, I stuff a red envelope into his pocket: 1,666 yuan, a bonus for Liangliang’s guitar tutor—yet that can wait.

“It’s just some small cash. Get yourself a decent hat and proper leather shoes,” I say.

What I can’t tell him is that my feelings for him, love or intimate brotherhood, died along with my youth. That I have long moved on and like many people, will never move back. That throughout our meeting today, I can’t help but see him and my teenage self as strangers, for I have become a completely different man: ambitiously cautious, ultimately uninteresting. That although we have walked separate paths, the year we spent together was pure, and I’ll never find anything like that again. Henceforth, I will not turn away from it. I shall guard it instead. The money is my way of thanking him for the closure.

Yet his smile freezes and his face crumples. “You’ve made something of yourself. You’re of the world now,” he mumbles and sighs. He forgot to thank me.

Once outside, I hold out my hand, but he spreads his arms. We hug each other one last time.

“Take care,” I say. “I know it’s hard, but please keep making films.”

“Yes, I will,” he says, patting me on the back. “Goodbye, Kang Kang.”

“Goodbye, Ding Wen.”

We turn and walk in different directions.

I’m searching for the keys to my car when I find the envelope back in my pocket. The touch of it gives me a shock. What have I done?

I look up. As if Ding Wen were still sitting across from me. Only now he seems older, infinitely lonely. Yet still the same guy, who, for a few months in my life, waited every morning outside my building, even in the rain, just to go to school with me. I pause. I almost turn back. I already know what to say. To him. To us. But no, I won’t see him again. Instead, I’ll watch his films. Maybe one day he will tell the story of us. So we can live on even when we’re long gone.

DU Jie grew up in Sichuan, China. He did his MFA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he won the Vice Chancellor’s International Scholarship Award. He has since written two novels and two full-length plays. Belated was longlisted (Top 12) for the 4thWrite Short Story Prize in the U.K. in 2024.