After Shi Yan knew that He Nuo was afraid of sudden gushes of cold air, he gave He Nuo two masks. He had wanted to get him a scarf, but he knew that He Nuo had no place to hide a scarf and his family would discover it, so He Nuo definitely wouldn’t want it. Thus, he changed it to masks. In any case, when Shi Yan fetched him everyday he would wrap a scarf around him tightly, and the scarf would only return to Shi Yan’s neck when they parted. Yet, even though He Nuo was afraid of the cold, he would often go to the toilet. It wasn’t as frequent as before when he had to go after every period, but it was still much more frequent than lazy students and other students who were afraid of the cold.

There was one day when Shi Yan was eating when he unintentionally asked his parents why someone would always want to go to the toilet when the weather turned cold. It was just a casual question, but his parents immediately got nervous and asked how Shi Yan felt when he went to the toilet, and whether it hurts when he urinated, or if there was blood in his urine. Shi Yan explained that it was a cla.s.smate who always had to go to the toilet the moment cla.s.s ended, yet he would keep drinking water. Then his parents told him that catching a cold during winter could easily be bad for the kidneys, so one’s urination would become frequent and urgent. But the moment you urinate blood and it’s very painful when you do so, then it would have turned into a big problem, and it might even kill the one who’s afflicted in the future. This scared Shi Yan a lot, then he thought about how He Nuo would sweat every time he came back from the toilet, and realised that it might have been due to pain. He had such a tolerant personality, plus his family doesn’t seem to like him very much, so there was a high chance for him to drag on any condition he might have without uttering a word.

Shi Yan asked a few more questions, like how you could get this kind of disease, how this disease should be treated, and what should be taken note of. His parents nagged him a whole bunch, and urged Shi Yan to cover himself up well and keep warm, and even told him that this was actually a bit of a ‘rich’ disease. As long as those who were rich recuperated well and nourished their body with supplements, then once they treated it at a young age they would be fine, but if it wasn’t treated, then the problem would follow them for the rest of their lives; but as for those who were pure, whether or not they would recover from this disease would depend on luck and on themselves.

When he saw He Nuo at night, Shi Yan was furious. The moment he dismounted the bike, Shi Yan asked, “Are you urinating blood?”

He Nuo wondered how Shi Yan knew, and he was even looking very angry right now, “No.” He answered carefully.

Shi Yan brought him into the office building — where his father worked, He Nuo had been here before. Because the building was located quite near the school, He Nuo had thought that Shi Yan was here to take something, but he ended up getting dragged by Shi Yan to the toilet.

“Pee!”

“?” He Nuo was shocked to see Shi Yan stand beside him as he stared fixatedly on him, then understood that this was a white porcelain urinal, so you could see the colour of your urine. The school only had squatting pits, once you peed you wouldn’t be able to see anything.

“Hurry, or do you want me to help you?”

He Nuo knew that he didn’t believe him and was insistent on seeing it with his own eyes. But to be seen by him like this…was awkward.

“Don’t say you’re too embarra.s.sed to do so, I’ve already touched it anyway. You won’t take it out (urine) at school!”

He Nuo took off his pants and began to pee — he really didn’t urinate blood anymore, but every time he started there would still be a slight, stinging pain, and it would end off with a few seconds of intense pain. When Shi Yan saw that there was no blood in his urine, he heaved a sigh of relief and raised his head as he intended to make fun of He Nuo. But instead, he saw that He Nuo was in so much pain that he was trembling. The colour had also drained from his face; his lips were pursed tight and sweat could be seen on the tip of his nose.

“What’s wrong?” Shi Yan supported him.

“Nothing, I’ll be fine in awhile.”

Shi Yan’s gaze turned gloomy, “You’ve always been like this?”

“When it gets cold in the winter it’s easy for me to become like this, but it’ll be fine when the weather turns warm.”

Shi Yan entered the office to give w.a.n.g Feng’s family a call and asked if w.a.n.g Feng had gone to school. Because He Nuo’s house was quite far from the school, and he was meeting Shi Yan, it was still quite early for them to go to school now. w.a.n.g Feng was about to leave his house. Shi Yan told him to bring any medical book regarding kidneys1 to school — his mother is a physician.

During the last period of their night self-study sessions, Shi Yan couldn’t help but take the medical books out to start looking through them. w.a.n.g Feng had asked his mother before, and these were books recommended by his mother. Shi Yan flipped to the pages that w.a.n.g Feng’s mother had folded its corners for as markings, then began to read it in detail. After school ended, Shi Yan asked if He Nuo had urinated blood before. He Nuo nodded his head.

Usually after their night self-study sessions ended, Shi Yan would only bring He Nuo to the entrance of his residential area, then He Nuo would walk the rest of his way back home. It wouldn’t be a problem for him to allow He Nuo to ride the bicycle back home then come fetch him the next morning, but the problem was that He Nuo didn’t dare to ride a schoolmate’s bike home. If his parents knew that he had “taken” benefits from others again, there would be trouble. He Nuo saw that Shi Yan didn’t stop by the entrance of his residential estate today and instead continued to cycle, so he knew that he intended to send him back, “You don’t need to send me home, or else you’ll have to ride back by yourself later.”

“It’s okay, I want to cycle for a little longer.”

When they reached the outside of He Nuo’s house, he thanked Shi Yan, but Shi Yan asked, “When was the first time you urinated blood?”

“Last year. It was winter then too.”

“Did it occur again after that?”

“During the summer holidays, un, when you saw me down with a cold during summer.”

“Was your urine frequent, urgent and painful?” Shi Yan recited the professional words that he had memorised.

“Un.”

“What other symptoms do you have? Tell me everything at one go, I’ll help you ask w.a.n.g Feng’s mother. She’s a physician.”

“There aren’t any others, just that it always gets like this when it’s cold, and I always want to pee. At the start my urine would be red, but when I can’t pee anymore there would be drips of blood that look like paper foam. That’s when it would hurt a lot, but if I drink more water so that I have urine, it’d feel much better. There hasn’t been any blood the past few days, but it would hurt at the beginning and at the end when I pee. It would feel a little uncomfortable right after I pee, but after a few minutes it’d get better.”

All these descriptions corresponded to the dangerous symptoms that Shi Yan had read about. Shi Yan felt rather heavy-hearted, then sympathetically re-tied the scarf that He Nuo had taken off around him again tightly, “Just go straight into your room, no one will see you. Put it on again when you leave the house tomorrow, if you’re scared of the cold then wear thicker clothes.”

When he got home, Shi Yan couldn’t even be bothered to eat the usual fruits for supper and straight away flipped the medical books open again to read. There were two types of nephritis: pyelonephritis and glomerulonephritis, and their symptoms coincided with He Nuo’s perfectly. Shi yan thought about how He Nuo’s first urination of blood occurred a year ago, and after dragging it out for a year, it had probably turned chronic. Then he thought about what this illness would turn into in the future — uremia. When he thought about how He Nuo might die, his eyes instantly turned astringent and sour. He Nuo was so kind, so great, and so unloved, yet he had never heard He Nuo criticise others or complain about them.

When Shi Yan lied on his bed, he told himself that he must see to his friend’s recovery. He Nuo would definitely become healthy again and be his friend for the rest of his life.

1. Author’s note: Shi Yan doesn’t know what department it belongs to (now big hospitals have a much more detailed cla.s.sification, and it belongs to the urology department), so he told w.a.n.g Feng that it was a viscera disease that was related to the kidney.↩