He was very angry and started avoiding seeing him. Teng Yuan was in his final year of high school, and had little time to pay attention to his emotions. Bai Xizhou saw it, but he was busy too—besides studies, he had a troublesome family.
After the college entrance exams ended, Teng Yuan initially wanted to find Qu Qingchen. He bought many things—all things Qu Qingchen liked. But Qu Qingchen passed by him as if he didn’t see him at all.
Qu Qingchen was sulking. He hoped this would make Teng Yuan change his mind and give up going out of town. But until the summer holiday ended, Teng Yuan and Qu Qingchen did not meet again.
Bai Xizhou comforted him, saying they could still meet during winter or summer break. But the first summer, Teng Yuan didn’t come home. In winter break, he returned. When Qu Qingchen heard the news, he intended to apologize. But the one who opened the door was a girl he didn’t know.
She was Teng Yuan’s girlfriend.
Qu Qingchen suddenly realized: he was not unique to Teng Yuan. Teng Yuan had a new life, would meet new people, and those people could take Qu Qingchen’s place.
He still didn’t see Teng Yuan. He ran away first—returned home, locked himself in his room. He was angry: angry because he hadn’t seen Teng Yuan, and angry because Teng Yuan hadn’t cared about him at all.
Things on the desk were swept aside all at once, hitting the floor with noise. Pages flipped, and Qu Qingchen’s gaze landed on a note sandwiched in a book.
That note had been written long ago while chatting with classmates. When talking to others, he subconsciously doodled on paper. When he realized what he had written, the two characters “Teng Yuan” already filled the whole sheet.
A friend asked him whose name it was. Qu Qingchen avoided answering and merely crumpled the paper and stuffed it in a drawer. But after school, he still smoothed it out and slipped the note with Teng Yuan’s name back into the book.
What on earth was he doing?
He knew clearly that Teng Yuan was an adult. Dating and marrying were normal. Yet he still felt irritated. The thought that there would be other people near Teng Yuan—just the idea drove him crazy.
Qu Qingchen raised his head and looked at the unsealed envelope on the desk. Inside was a carefully made greeting card. After entering high school, he didn’t like making these things much anymore. That card was originally meant for Teng Yuan—but now it seemed unnecessary.
He tore the card into pieces and threw them into the trash can. Qu Qingchen stared at the scraps. His breathing labored. Teng Yuan’s girlfriend was like a knife cutting open the barrier between him and Teng Yuan. Qu Qingchen finally glimpsed the unbearable side of his own heart.
Teng Yuan was his “gege,” but he didn’t want to only be “brother.” He wanted to stay beside Teng Yuan—but not as a little brother. But Teng Yuan didn’t like him. Teng Yuan liked women. He could only ever be the brother.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I wanted too much.” Qu Qingchen squatted down, muttering—like comforting, yet like warning himself. “Gege, don’t ignore me.”
He picked up the scraps from the trash, taped them together. The writing on the card was neat, the strokes strong; he even drew a cake by the signature.
It was the birthday gift he never delivered—his forever-unseen hope.
After the winter break ended, Teng Yuan returned to school. Before leaving, he went to Qu Qingchen’s house. He was worried—now that things had come to pass, Qu Qingchen should be over his anger. If not, he’d apologize. He couldn’t let things stay like this forever.
After high school graduation, they met face to face for the first time. Snow had just fallen in Xincheng. Qu Qingchen stood at the doorway and didn’t let Teng Yuan in. Teng Yuan asked about his studies and life. He answered honestly—then no more communication.
Someone so close, yet as if separated by a veil. That feeling was like back at the beginning. Teng Yuan bit his lip, raised a hand to ruffle Qu Qingchen’s hair, expression forced casual.
“Still mad at me? Mad that I didn’t stay local?”
“I’m not mad. That was your choice. You didn’t need to think about me.” In a place Teng Yuan couldn’t see, Qu Qingchen’s hand tightened on the doorknob. “I have homework. I won’t keep you.”
Teng Yuan had nothing to say. His usual slick talk couldn’t perform in front of Qu Qingchen. Qu Qingchen had grown taller—more adult-like than before—but less cute than in childhood. A layer of unsolved sorrow lingered in his eyes.
Seeing Teng Yuan silent, Qu Qingchen closed the door first. From that day, they parted—until Qu Qingchen graduated from high school. They only saw that one time.
Although they exchanged messages later, every time Teng Yuan invited him out, Qu Qingchen had a hundred excuses to refuse.
On Qu Qingchen’s eighteenth birthday, Teng Yuan and Bai Xizhou happened to graduate from university. They hadn’t seen each other in so long. Bai Xizhou arranged a gathering—to celebrate gradation and Qu Qingchen’s birthday.
Teng Yuan and Qu Qingchen hadn’t seen each other for ages. They had reached a subtle balance, reverting to the initial relationship. But Teng Yuan felt repressed. He didn’t even know why things turned this way.
Under both their gazes Qu Qingchen made a wish and blew out his candles. At the moment the flame extinguished, in the brief darkness, he looked at Teng Yuan.
When the lights came back on, he withdrew his gaze—as if everything that happened was an illusion.
Teng Yuan said he was going to start a business out of town. At that time he looked at Qu Qingchen, seeming to hope he’d say something. But Qu Qingchen said nothing—just served himself a slice of cake.
The cake’s cream was so sweet it turned bitter. Still, Qu Qingchen put it in his mouth, bite by bite. Teng Yuan talked about the future at the dinner, but Qu Qingchen understood: for him and Teng Yuan, there was no future anymore.
“Qingchen, you’re not going to say anything to Teng Yuan?” Bai Xizhou was the first to notice Qu Qingchen’s oddness.
Ever since entering high school, he’d grown more and more silent. The once cheerful, lively Qu Qingchen seemed to have been strangled by himself at some point.
It seemed to be in the year Teng Yuan went off to college.
“I have nothing to say. That was his choice.” Qu Qingchen had no say.
Teng Yuan turned to him, wanted to say something, but his head was blank.
That night, eighteen‑year‑old Qu Qingchen drank a lot. Dazed, he leaned on the table, tried to stand—but his legs gave way and he swayed sideways. Thankfully Teng Yuan caught him.
Was he drunk?
Actually, no. He was just a bit disoriented—all kinds of feelings tangled inside his mind. The scent of Teng Yuan made him more dazed.
Teng Yuan took him home, like carrying the sick him years ago—same road, same person, same empty house. The only difference: Qu Qingchen was now taller than Teng Yuan.
He intended to settle him and leave. But what happened next happened in an instant.
The presumably drunk Qu Qingchen suddenly grabbed him—with unknown strength pulled him onto the bed, leaned over him.
The kiss, filled with alcohol, came crashing—covering his mouth just as he was about to speak. He looked at Qu Qingchen in disbelief. The clarity in his eyes made him suspect—perhaps Qu Qingchen wasn’t drunk at all.
Teng Yuan tried to break free, but likely from lack of exercise in college, his strength wasn’t comparable to a high‑schooler’s—his wrist, clutched, had blood circulation disrupted.
What followed felt like a surreal dream. Yet Qu Qingchen’s whole body felt burning hot—burning enough that he cried out in alarm.
When Qu Qingchen barged in, Teng Yuan was completely unprepared—almost fainted. Maybe he still held a glimmer of hope, thinking maybe Qu Qingchen was just drunk. But now—it shattered. His lips bled; it was licked off by Qu Qingchen. Teng Yuan’s face suddenly went wet. He couldn’t see what it was, before he was blindfolded.
When the first ray of sunlight entered the room, Teng Yuan opened his eyes. His body was covered in marks; his wrist still bruised. Below his waist felt like it had fallen apart.
After all, an eighteen-year-old male’s stamina—he nearly fell asleep midway. Qu Qingchen pulled him again in the bathroom and they did it once more.
Thinking about last night, Teng Yuan’s face flushed, yet when realization hit, he felt furious.
What was he doing? That was Qu Qingchen—his little brother he’d known since childhood. Not a biological sibling, but like one. Yet last night they rolled together on one bed.
Absurd. Too absurd.
Recalling last night, one detail flashed in his mind: Teng Yuan’s expression last night didn’t look like someone drunk.
He hadn’t fully grasped it before, when the other already woke. He looked over: Qu Qingchen sat up, the blanket slipped off his shoulders. On his collarbone were large bite marks; further down were scratches.
Marks from last night. Teng Yuan quickly looked away, and thought about how to explain last night more “reasonably.”
“Gege?” Qu Qingchen’s voice was low. It tightened Teng Yuan’s heart. “I was drunk last night.”
So everything last night didn’t count.
Teng Yuan had nothing to say. He laughed himself‑mockingly—laughing at himself for thinking too much. People say: “just drunk”—so that page flips over.
“Gege, if we’re like this—what about your girlfriend?” Qu Qingchen asked again.
Teng Yuan didn’t speak again. He simply got up and picked his clothes up from the floor, putting them on. His walking posture was still a bit unnatural, but he clearly had no intention of staying in this room any longer.
“I don’t have a girlfriend. We broke up a year ago.”
Before leaving, Teng Yuan left behind this sentence.
Only Qu Qingchen was left in the bedroom. He sat on the bed in a daze. After a long time, he clutched his head in pain and buried his face into his knees.
He had done something absurd under the influence of alcohol, but suddenly realized that things weren’t exactly as he had imagined.
Last night, in his sleep, Teng Yuan had called his name.
Later, Teng Yuan started his business, and Qu Qingchen went to university to study medicine. Without either of them knowing, Bai Xizhou left for Germany alone. He didn’t know what had happened between the two of them, and they, by unspoken agreement, never mentioned it.
That night truly seemed to have become nothing more than a hallucination in memory. Qu Qingchen returned to his place as the younger brother, focused quietly on studying, and Teng Yuan, busy with his startup, was running around nonstop. They rarely saw each other, and even when they did, barely exchanged a few words.
In university, Qu Qingchen was not lacking people pursuing him, but he could never feel any interest in others.
He pinned Teng Yuan’s chat window to the top, and during his free time, he would keep watch over his phone, afraid of missing any message from Teng Yuan. But Teng Yuan’s conversations with him always stayed at the level of daily check-ins, never again like the warm concern of before.
He was close to giving up. When he took a bus alone to stand downstairs from Teng Yuan’s company, he thought of finally saying everything face-to-face—that night had happened too suddenly, and he hadn’t had time to say anything. But then he saw Teng Yuan talking and laughing with another woman.
Qu Qingchen let out a self-mocking smile. He had almost forgotten—Teng Yuan had always liked women.
He didn’t go up to Teng Yuan. He turned back and returned to school. He thought he should’ve given up on those unrealistic fantasies a long time ago and gone back to living the life Teng Yuan had always hoped he would.
But time refused to let him go. Any casual mention would bring back those memories, forcing Qu Qingchen to remember that period of his life.
He couldn’t let go. He couldn’t escape. He had considered starting a new relationship to shake off the pointless longing—but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t use someone else as a substitute. That would be unfair to anyone involved.
There was a period of time when he learned to smoke. Desperately—one pack a day. His classmates couldn’t understand. As a medical student, it was impossible he didn’t know the harm of smoking. In others’ eyes, Qu Qingchen’s behavior looked like slow suicide.
If not for seeing the sunlight in the hospital that day, maybe he really would’ve gone on like that.
That day, he was accompanying his advisor to the hospital to deal with something. On the way back, the professor casually brought up something he’d just heard—that last night, a patient with gastric bleeding had been rushed in. At first, he wasn’t interested, until the professor mentioned the patient’s surname.
The surname “Teng” was far too rare. In all of Xincheng, only one family had it. In that instant, Qu Qingchen felt his blood turn cold. He didn’t know how he said goodbye to the professor, didn’t know how he asked the nurses about Teng Yuan’s room number—he only remembered that when he arrived, the first thing he saw was Teng Yuan’s pale face.
At that moment, he thought: if anything happened to Teng Yuan, he wouldn’t go on living either.
And so, he barged into Teng Yuan’s life again—this time, different from before. This time, it was Qu Qingchen’s turn to take care of him.
“I cared too much about what you thought, that’s why I tried to let go. But you didn’t cherish yourself. Gege, from now on, I won’t leave again. Whether you accept it or find it disgusting, I won’t leave. And you can forget about getting rid of me.”
These were the first words Qu Qingchen said after Teng Yuan woke up. From that day on, every day, there was Qu Qingchen by his side.
“Back then, when I brought my girlfriend home, it must’ve hurt you deeply, didn’t it?”
Teng Yuan was held in Qu Qingchen’s arms, being kissed on the top of his head.
“But it was also that moment that made me truly realize—my feelings for you weren’t just brotherly affection. I had other desires toward you.”
But by the time he realized it, it was already too late. Teng Yuan already had a girlfriend. He couldn’t bring himself to break up a couple, nor could he stand by and watch them being affectionate and feel nothing.
He began to avoid Teng Yuan, stopped replying to his messages, and didn’t even go to see him off when he returned to school.
“So the reason every page of your diary had my name in it… is because you started liking me back in high school, right?”
“Yes. I thought I could hold it in. But I overestimated my self-control. You have no idea how happy I was when I heard you broke up with your girlfriend. Also… on my 18th birthday, I wasn’t actually drunk.”
“It was exactly because I knew you weren’t drunk, and I didn’t push you away either… that I kept feeling like I was the one who corrupted you. That’s why I kept hiding from you after.”
Teng Yuan let out a sigh, and took the initiative to kiss Qu Qingchen.
“If you hadn’t taken the first step… I think the two of us would’ve never happened in this lifetime.”
He was a coward. But luckily, Qu Qingchen loved him and hadn’t given up on him.
Now, he felt completely Right in this moment, he felt truly happy.
Author’s Note
Frozen Starlight
This side story was already planned when I wrote the outline — I had decided from the beginning to write about this pair. Originally, I wanted to write three chapters, but in the end, I condensed it into two parts: upper and lower.
As for the main CP’s side story… honestly, I don’t know what to write for them. It feels like they’re already happy and fulfilled enough in the main story.
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