Title In Progress

Chapter 1

As he looked around out of the small window, he saw the man who just moved in next door as he was carrying his luggage inside the house. The man’s upper body was naked, he grabbed the largest cardboard box, turned back, then picked up two nearby bags, making his way through the workers who came and went as they moved the furniture, his shoulders were broad, his waist narrow, his muscles strong and healthy with beautiful and eye-catching lines.

It was dusk, so the light of sunset fell over the roof, and fell over the man’s mountain ridge back like a glossy layer of honey.

Soft midsummer wind blew into the courtyard, the man’s figure disappeared under the shade of the trees in one instant and reappeared the next. He seemed spellbound, the candy in his mouth irritated the lining on the inside of his cheek and it was a long time until he switched to the other side, and, after his shower, drops of water fell from the tips of his hair and hung from the sides of his nose. He reached out a hand and rubbed, tirelessly propping up his chin until his elbows turned red from pressing against the wooden windowsill, and his mother’s shout came from the crack in the unlocked door.

“Come downstairs to eat!”

He jumped in fright. He was kneeling on a desk, messing up a pile of graphing paper, so he turned his body and answered in a loud shout, “Coming!”

When he turned back again, the man was already gone, and there was no one in the patio. The pile of junk in the lawn had been completely tidied up, the moving company’s truck came to life with a hum, then got on the perfectly straight road outside of the lawn, leaving behind a string of dark grey exhaust fumes.

He paused, feeling bored, and bit down on the candy, then swallowed hard. He scratched at the mosquito bites that appeared on his snow-white calves and looked for his slippers with his bare feet, then finally left the attic before his mother lost her patience.


This was the first day of his summer vacation.


The second day was as usual. He did homework, stared dazedly, and did extra tasks assigned by the clubs. He liked listening to music while he read — Panic! At The Disco or The Vamp’s new albums — his father was determined to quash this distracting hobby, but he had no way to eradicate it. He also liked skateboarding, iced soda, R-rated movies, and that swimming pool in the backyard that hadn’t been filled in several years. He didn’t like those noisy girls at school that didn’t hesitate to call early in the morning and ask him to go out in the afternoon to “find something fun to do”. He tactfully declined, using the half-hearted excuse, “I’m gonna take an afternoon nap.”

That wasn’t a lie. He rested his head on his arms, looking at his own toes and thinking, sleep soon, I’m going to sleep right now.

He looked for a nice, shady spot in the patio and placed down a deck chair that would let the air pass through, then curled up in it in the most comfortable position, covering his face with a book. The contents of the book were not important, and he didn’t care about them either, it just had to be the right size and light enough so that he could both shelter his face from the dazzling sunshine and uncover his eyes at the right time.

Not long after, he was startled awake by the low then suddenly loud chirping of cicadas, so he stretched, and the spine of the book slid down his nose. The rhythmic banging of hammers came from next door.

The man next door was fixing the roof.

From this angle, he could see the man with his back towards him, sitting at the top of a tall A-frame ladder with a leather toolbox slung across his shoulder, its lid open to reveal an assortment of maintenance tools inside. A pair of white gloves was stuffed into the pocket of the man’s overalls, which looked like two doves when they fell down, fluttering to the ground.

Without thinking about it, he whistled at the unaware man, “Hey, your stuff fell!”

The man turned his head under the scorching sun.

Sound, colour, wind — everything came to a stop, including his vigorous eighteen-year-old body. His muddled brain and lazy heartbeat were suddenly interrupted by a powerful, ingenious force which jammed those originally smoothly-running parts, making them all malfunction simultaneously and become broken-down machines, completely messed up, with no cause or reason.

For a few seconds, only a few seconds.

The man was holding the steel nail he was about to use in his mouth, he lowered his head and saw that his gloves had fallen down, then lifted his head and smiled, his eyes narrowing under the intense light, “Oh.”

The corners of the man’s mouth rose slightly and his expression ended with a smile. This woke his mind from its momentary blank and ushered in a round of explosions.

The book slid down to his chest and he opened his mouth awkwardly, flushed red from the tip of his nose to the base of his ears, speaking loudly due to the dryness of his throat, his changed voice now sounding hoarse, “Want me to pick it up for you?”


TN: This is a little challenge for myself because the characters don’t have names, its just “him” (our protagonist) and “the man” (the neighbour). The distinction between the characters is a lot clearer in chinese because the author only uses the pronoun “he” to refer to the protagonist, but in english you can’t really build sentences like that, so I’ll try to work with the text to make it as clear as possible.