บท 23: Chapter 23 No One Outside
Lu Xun pinned him against the back of the sofa and kissed him, passing the cream into his mouth. The more he resisted, the more Lu Xun forced him to eat it.
...
"Stop... there are still people inside," he pleaded.
Aunt Ren was still around. Whether she was asleep or not was unclear, but he couldn't control his own voice. At least, not under this demon named Lu Xun.
The next moment, Lu Xun scooped him up.
The sudden weightlessness made Lu Heyang instinctively grip Lu Xun's shoulders. His knuckles were pale, like a magnolia petal resting on Lu Xun's shoulder.
"There are people inside..." Lu Xun paused subtly but didn't stop walking. "But no one outside."
"Lu Xun, you...!!"
"I saw you liked the garden in the backyard, so let's go to the bench."
The white stone path creaked under their combined weight. Not far away, lights from the neighbor's house flickered beyond the courtyard wall. There were the sounds of barking dogs and faint, scattered voices.
It felt as if the whole world could see them, engaged in their most private act.
The sky was a deep curtain of stars, and as they looked up, the starlight seemed to fall like crushed diamonds into the narrow space between their chests.
...
This time, Lu Heyang truly felt Lu Xun. He brought him both pleasure and pain, their bodies and lives intertwined, growing in the same span of time, even as their lives had once been broken and pieced back together.
"Enough," Lu Heyang said, trembling, his eyes tinged with a blush of red.
"Far from enough." Lu Xun kissed his eyelashes, calling his name over and over, "Lu Heyang, far from enough."
Lu Heyang's hands, trembling in both pain and helplessness, waved feebly in the air, brushing against a nearby bush of pale purple roses.
"Hiss..."
His finger was pricked by a thorn, and a drop of blood oozed out.
Lu Xun stared intently at his brief frown and gently kissed the blood away from the side of his finger, then placed his hand back on his shoulder.
"Hold on to me."
The night breeze grew gentle, brushing against their temples as it passed, flipping through the pages of the book left on the sofa, finally settling on a dog-eared page, where it read—
"I love you too deeply, so I can't help being clumsy."
The next morning, when Lu Heyang woke up, Lu Xun was already gone, leaving no words of explanation as usual. He lay sore and achy in bed, staring at the blank white ceiling, calmly accepting the reality.
After their encounter last night, they had bathed together. In the bathtub, Lu Xun had carefully cleaned him, washing away the cream from his body. He had been so tired at the time that, for a brief moment, he seemed to glimpse a tenderness in Lu Xun's eyes beyond desire. But that moment, now rubbed against the present, felt faint, the line between illusion and reality blurred.
He got up late, and by the time he had freshened up and come downstairs, breakfast was already served. Aunt Ren was always considerate, and since it was close to lunchtime, the breakfast was light—coffee and toast—not too filling, but enough to perk him up.
"Mr. Lu Xun left you a watch. It's on your shelf in the dressing room; you can take a look after breakfast," Aunt Ren said.
Compensation? Lu Heyang wanted to laugh.
He had once envisioned many different relationships between him and Lu Xun—family, brothers, friends, strangers, lovers—but he had never considered this option.
"Thank you," Lu Heyang said to Aunt Ren, "I'll go take a look."
After that, Lu Xun rarely came over, and when he did, he never stayed long. Sometimes, they would have a meal together. Other times, he would wait until Lu Heyang was asleep before quietly leaving.
Lu Heyang realized he had developed a mild case of Stockholm syndrome. He began to look forward to Lu Xun's visits, whether to force him, scold him, or give him looks of disdain. At least then, they could talk, they could touch—real and warm—and it would bring some ripple to the otherwise stagnant, filthy waters of his life.
For this, he deliberately left one more button undone on his pajamas, walking around in areas with cameras on the second floor, or he would come out of the bathroom with wet hair, not bothering to dry it, taking his time picking a magazine from the low shelf, spending five minutes to pull one out. The water in his hair would slowly accumulate and then drip onto the countertop.
All these "accidental" actions would be seen by Lu Xun, in the hopes that they would serve as bait for him to press him down on the bed or the desk during his next visit.
Lu Heyang felt like he was slowly becoming someone else.
If you want to destroy a person, imprisonment is undoubtedly the best way.
After two weeks of stifling heat, the weather finally broke with a heavy rain. There was no grand display of thunder and lightning, just the steady release of water, like a sprinkler truck passing by in the sky. The cold-scented roses in the yard were drenched and wilted, their fragile petals falling into the mud, and their fragrance fading. The temperature suddenly dropped, with the signs of early autumn.
Lu Heyang stood under the eaves, watching the rain. He cupped a small handful of rainwater in his palm, letting it spread along the lines in his hand. For some reason, he felt that the rain in Jiayou City was different from elsewhere. In America, he had experienced all kinds of rain—torrential, fine like cow hair, thunderous—but none of them affected him. Yet the rain in Jiayou City was different; it could easily stir his senses, opening the valve to his memories.
He had encountered such rain once in high school.
That day, both he and Lu Xun had a parent-teacher conference. Lu Bingwen couldn't get away from work, and Su Mei couldn't be in two places at once.
She rushed into the hallway of the school, splashing water everywhere. Lu Heyang noticed that her high heels and stockings were soaked, her skirt dripping wet, and the intricate embroidery of peonies on her dress had darkened like overripe plums from the water.
Under Lu Xun's disdainful gaze, Lu Heyang offered her a tissue.
Su Mei took it and wiped herself, absorbing the water that had soaked her clothes. Then, she reached up to touch Lu Xun's cheek. "This is your first parent-teacher conference, so Mom will go with your older brother, okay?"
Lu Heyang inhaled a cool breeze, turning his head to look at Lu Xun. He knew that Lu Xun had scored second in the grade on the entrance exam and had wanted Su Mei to attend the conference for the praise, but Su Mei didn't choose him.
With a bag slung over one shoulder, Lu Xun said nothing, his expression one of expectation. With a mocking smile, he said, "Fine, you're all one family."
Su Mei's mouth opened, but no sound came out before Lu Xun dashed away, disappearing into the rain like a heavy, formless shadow.
Lu Heyang had witnessed everything. At that time, he had just recovered from an allergic reaction to accidentally consuming honey and had been in the hospital for three days. A feeling of schadenfreude was hard to suppress.
He pretended to be considerate, saying to Su Mei, "Lu Xun's classroom is at the far end of the hall."
"Good boy." Su Mei exhaled a sigh of relief, feeling comforted. She reached out to pat his head but hesitated, instead placing her hand on his shoulder. Even through the thick school uniform, he could feel her cold fingertips, like a thin layer of frost on top of a freezer.
After that, Lu Xun began to spiral out of control.
His grades plummeted like a kite with a broken string. He skipped classes, often punished to stand in the hallway, glaring at Lu Heyang as he passed by.
In Lu Heyang's limited imagination, this was the worst it could get.
Until one day, he came home from school, only to find the elevator broken. He opened the door to the fire escape and saw Lu Xun kissing a girl in there.
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