Bo Yuxu's eyelids could no longer stay open. Bo Xin thought, just go to sleep—you'll see them tomorrow. She moved gently; they both lay flat to sleep with a dividing line in between. Occasionally, the line would be crossed, but Bo Xin always blamed it on Bo Yuxu. Waking up, Bo Xin found her hand tightly grasped.
The sleeping face beside her was peaceful and serene. Had he grown? He was starting to look more and more like that annoying person.
In the morning, Bo Xin only drank a glass of milk and casually packed some fruits and snacks in her bag.
The two kids tried to do the same trick with their backpacks, but Ji Xingzhi had brought something this time—a camera. She hadn't seen it in his room last night.
Bo Xin puzzled over it, turning it over, then pressed the shutter on a person. Because she was close, the face was especially large in the frame. But up close, there was no trace of extra flesh; his bone structure was indeed prominent. At least the kids inheriting that from him was acceptable.
“Why did you bring this?”
Ji Xingzhi explained, “Visiting the zoo with the kids is worth commemorating, especially since one of them is experiencing it for the first time.”
Bo Xin looked at him; the corner of his mouth lifted. “No need to doubt—I'm naturally romantic.”
Bo Xin remained skeptical. “I didn't notice it yesterday when I went to your room.”
Ji Xingzhi had originally piled everything under the bed in that room, then moved in a cabinet that stood conspicuously in the corner. He had tidied it up for his belongings. “After all, your interest in that cabinet only lasted a moment.” Back when he first brought it in, she was so eager to see it, but now that it was actually there, she hadn't asked about it once. When she came into the room, she hadn't even glanced at it.
Bo Xin lowered her eyes, hesitantly staring at the camera, but didn't delete the pictures. It was strange—he was the one who hadn't wanted her to see him earlier, and now he was complaining that she didn't want to look. What was he doing in his free time? Battling between his left and right brain?
Bo Xin knew the value of the camera; she didn't toss it around but put it into its dedicated camera bag.
They arrived relatively early, but they still had to queue because this was the country's largest zoo, and few zoos nationwide had pandas. This one had three: two adults, Momo and Maimai, and a cub named Xiangxiang. The crowd around the cub was even bigger than around the adults.
Bo Yuxu squeezed out of the crowd, breathing heavily. He couldn't get to the front; he was short and could only see bobbing heads. So maybe pandas weren't that great anyway.
Ji Xingzhi stood at the periphery and pointed in a direction. “If you can't see the pandas, you can go see the giraffes.” That was one of the two main attractions of Xiangshan Zoo.
Bo Yuxu was annoyed. “Normally, a father would say something responsible like, 'Stand on my shoulders, I'll lift you up so you can see.' Isn't that the kind of thing a dad should say?”
Ji Xingzhi rubbed his chin with one hand, as if seriously analyzing the feasibility. But after only a second, he gave up. “Hey, I'm an injured man.”
Bo Yuxu fumed silently. He stubbornly walked away, and Ji Xingzhi stayed just two steps behind him.
After about ten minutes, they reached a dead end. A sign stood there, indicating they had indeed arrived at the giraffe enclosure. There were fewer people here; many held poles with leaves for the giraffes, but the giraffes ignored every pole. So Bo Yuxu's first thought was that they really were hard to please.
A pole stood beside him, and a nearby vendor said it cost thirty yuan. Thirty yuan for one chance to feed them? He didn't seem like someone who would waste money like that.
Ji Xingzhi sat cross-legged, organizing the photos in his camera—some he had taken randomly. This was the latest model; even standing still, it could capture distant subjects. But some photos were out of focus and too blurry; better to delete them. Then he heard familiar, light footsteps. Ji Xingzhi looked up. “Why aren't you going to play?”
Bo Yuxu: “Feeding them costs money.”
Ji Xingzhi didn't think Yuxu genuinely liked animals; it was just a child's desire to see what others had seen. “If you're so reluctant to spend, you'll never make big money.”
Bo Yuxu had learned from his mother not to fall into self-justification. “A normal father would say, 'I'll cover the cost, just go have fun.'”
Ji Xingzhi used to pretend, but now he didn't even bother. “Really? Is that what a father should say?”
Bo Yuxu: “You—?!”
Ji Xingzhi's lips curled into a mischievous smile, then faded. According to books, children without a sense of security tend to hoard money because it's their only source of security. But occasionally, they should allow themselves to enjoy spending on themselves.
“If you don't hurry, the pole spots will be gone soon.” It was limited, and with the weekend crowd, he had gotten up at dawn around seven, and even then, he had to queue for over half an hour.
Bo Yuxu didn't reply, but he took thirty yuan from his single-strap water bottle bag and handed it over. His arms were strong; the bamboo wasn't heavy. He deliberately chose the freshest leaves. After holding it up for over ten minutes, he started to regret it. This thing was just a scam, wasn't it?
In the distance, a giraffe woke up. Strangely, it seemed to sleep standing up. There was an introduction nearby. Bo Yuxu glanced at the red words on the stone, and when he looked up, his leaves were being eaten by that giraffe. Because this giraffe was the tallest, Bo Yuxu felt many eyes on him. That feeling was quite nice. His eyes lit up, his expression completely different from usual.
Ji Xingzhi's shutter clicked several times in quick succession. This excitement—liking but not often pursuing—was rare for Yuxu. Ji Xingzhi decided to retract his earlier thought that Yuxu didn't really like animals.
Bo Yuxu noticed the commotion easily; when he turned, Ji Xingzhi's camera was already back in its bag. So fast? Curious about what was inside, Bo Yuxu spoke up: “Let me see.”
Ji Xingzhi opened the camera and showed him how to view the photos. There were more than ten shots of that same scene. “Wait, weren't you supposed to capture people and animals in harmony? Why only me?”
Ji Xingzhi shrugged casually. “Sorry, I'm not good at it.”
Bo Yuxu kept pressing forward. “And what's all this before?”
Ji Xingzhi had tried to zoom in on the pandas, but he only got fuzzy black-and-white blobs. Too far away, blurry was the norm; only a few relatively clear ones survived. He remembered others getting sharp shots from miles away with this model. So Ji Xingzhi really was bad at it.
Ji Xingzhi patted the kid's back, steering the topic away. “Let's go find your mom and Yanyi. They said they're more interested in hippos, right?”
—
Bo Xin arrived just in time for the morning feeding session. A zookeeper tossed a whole watermelon into the hippo's mouth; it was crushed and swallowed, with red juice dripping from the corners. Ji Yanyi stared longingly. “Such a waste.”
Bo Xin remembered that Yanyi loved watermelon. Maybe it really was a pity. “The ones they eat are quite different from what we buy.”
Ji Yanyi pointed. “Can we buy one to try for ourselves?”
Bo Xin thought she had set a bad precedent. The food here was strictly rationed; buying a feeding experience only gave you the chance to feed, not to eat. She decided to nip it in the bud. “The watermelons here are the sandy kind.”
Ji Yanyi's eyes widened. She no longer felt sorry seeing the red juice from the hippo. How magical.
Bo Xin checked her watch. It was inconvenient without a phone. They had agreed to meet at the main gate at ten o'clock, but they were farther from it now, so the return time would increase. Maybe the other two would get impatient and start searching separately, leading to an endless cycle of looking for each other and eventually resorting to the zoo's loudspeaker. Plus, there were no sightseeing carts in the zoo at this hour.
Bo Xin looked at the rising sun and felt nothing but reluctance. Then she heard Ji Xingzhi call out, “Hey, over here.” She was glad she hadn't turned around. She should have known those two were trouble.
“How did you get here so fast? Did you actually see the pandas?”
Ji Xingzhi said smugly, “They're all in the camera.”
Bo Yuxu's eye twitched. So those photos were of the pandas? Then “You could say we saw them, but also you could say we didn't.”
Bo Xin: “???” It was rare for something to baffle her, but this did. When she saw what such a good camera had produced, she was silent for a moment—what a waste of a good camera.
They didn't get home until four in the afternoon. The first thing Bo Xin did was check the answering machine for messages. She had asked Bo Xiao to help find someone. If that person had been in an orphanage, there should be traces.
Bo Xin had thought so. “You mean they left at age ten and never returned?”
Bo Xiao nodded, yawning. Since the matter was urgent, he had taken time from his busy work schedule to investigate. He had called the orphanage and reported verbatim: “They were very worried. Sui Dongsheng cried hard when he left and said he would definitely come back to visit them. But it's been so long with no news, they're afraid something bad happened to him.”
Bo Xin: “...” Of course there would be no news—that male lead only showed kindness to useful people. Once he left the orphanage, there was no need to keep in touch. From that perspective, he was really calculating.
Author's Note: None.