Li Xuan’s arms tightened around Sheng Min’s waist. “Who are ‘they’?”
“My mom and my dad’s relatives,” Sheng Min replied after a long pause. He laughed lightly, “When my dad was sick, they were afraid they’d be asked for money, so they all avoided contact. Now, I only need to give one-tenth of the living expenses I give my mom, no, even one percent, and they all rush to tell me this secret.”
He turned his head and rested it on Li Xuan’s lap. His voice was soft, “But how is it even a secret? Everyone knew, except me.”
Li Xuan’s hand gently ran through his soft hair. It felt as if his heart was being scraped by a rusted blade. The dull ache he had been suppressing all night finally hit him full force.
“I must have told you before—my dad used to drive a freight truck.”
“You did,” Li Xuan replied, his voice rough as he struggled to remain composed.
Sheng Min seemed not to notice and hummed lightly. “They didn’t have kids for a long time after getting married. The doctors said there was no problem, but my mom just couldn’t get pregnant. One spring, Dad was coming back late from a delivery. He was driving through a curve when he heard a loud crash ahead. When he got closer, he found it was a car accident.”
Another car accident. Li Xuan frowned slightly. His parents had died in one, too, leaving him orphaned. Their fates seemed inextricably tied to these cruel coincidences. Now, Sheng Min was unveiling yet another story tied to a crash.
“It was supposedly a luxury sedan,” Sheng Min’s gaze seemed unfocused as he continued, “A young woman was driving, and there was a child seat in the back with a baby who hadn’t even reached a month old. The front of the car was completely destroyed. My dad called 120, but the ambulance hadn’t arrived yet. The woman bled to death, but the child survived. The police came and my dad, as a witness, was kept for questioning. They found her ID and the baby’s birth certificate in the car. She was unmarried, and the birth certificate didn’t list the father’s name. They contacted her parents, but they refused to claim the body, let alone take care of the child… The body was handled by the authorities, and the child was supposed to go to an orphanage. But my dad thought that since they couldn’t have any children, they could adopt him.”
His tone was calm, like narrating the opening scene of an old black-and-white film. Li Xuan felt a great sorrow in his heart. No matter how eloquent he was, at this moment, he was lost for words. He couldn’t comfort him because he knew Sheng Min didn’t need it. What else could he say? Should he try to find his own family? But if the story was true, what kind of identity could Sheng Min even claim?
Li Xuan didn’t want to think about it any longer. He tightened his hold on him.
“It might not be true. How are you more gullible than me?”
Sheng Min seemed to have read his mind, forcing a faint smile. “You don’t know. This time I’ve heard so many versions of this story. Any random person could tell me a hundred versions, and none of them have evidence… Luckily, there isn’t any. If there were, it would have been sold to gossip magazines by now. It would have been trending for days straight… The one I picked for you has a clear beginning and end, with rich details. There are other versions, though—like one where my parents went back to their village to burn incense, passed by a broken house, and heard a child crying. They went in and saw me. It sounds like a ghost story…”
He tried to act relaxed, but Li Xuan knew that not all of it was true, so he could only smile in response: “Where would you find such a beautiful ghost?” He seriously kissed Sheng Min’s face, “Warm, and there’s a heartbeat.” He guided his hand to touch the shadows of the two of them reflected on the window, “And there’s also a shadow.”
Sheng Min also smiled, his fingertips lightly tracing the blurred outline illuminated by the moonlight. Suddenly, he sat up from Li Xuan’s embrace, reached out, and pushed open the tightly shut window. The wind rushed in uncontrollably, revealing his smooth, full forehead. His face was neither sad nor happy.
At that moment, Li Xuan had a vague sense that Sheng Min was too far away from him. The voice seemed to come from a very distant place: “I also heard another story. I wasn’t found; my dad and some woman had me…” He paused for a long time, then continued, “My mom probably always suspected this, but she didn’t have any children at that time, and felt powerless, so whether she believed it or not, she had to endure it…”
He looked over at Li Xuan, his eyes soft, “I did a DNA test. Me and Sheng Hui, we have no blood relation…”
At this point, he hesitated slightly, then turned to look at Li Xuan again, “But who says that if I’m not his brother, I can’t be my dad’s child? Who is cleaner than who?”
Li Xuan understood his implication, his throat tightening. Just as he was about to speak, Sheng Min suddenly reached behind and hooked his neck, leaning in slightly to whisper in his ear, his voice so soft that it could be drowned out by their breath, as if sharing an unspoken secret: “Actually, verifying it isn’t that hard. Did I ever tell you? My dad, he wasn’t cremated, he was buried.”
The moonlight fell on Sheng Min’s brows, half of his face hidden in shadows, but there was a frightening brilliance to him. At that moment, Sheng Min seemed entirely unfamiliar. Looking at him, Li Xuan’s heart raced, almost instinctively covering Sheng Min’s eyes and kissing him hard.
It turned into a struggle. Sheng Min quickly responded to his kiss, almost biting. Li Xuan let him, and soon, a cut formed on his lips, the taste of blood spreading between their lips. Sheng Min paused for a second, then retreated, but Li Xuan held onto his waist and pulled him back, lowering his eyes and gently licking the bloodstains from Sheng Min’s lips.
“It’s fine,” he said calmly.
“What?” Sheng Min asked.
“Anything is fine, as long as you want it,” Li Xuan replied, gently stroking his temple with one hand and pulling him closer with the other, trying to share warmth with him. “But don’t do it yourself. Let me help you. This kind of thing isn’t suitable for you.”
“Is it suitable for you?”
The wound kept bleeding, but Li Xuan didn’t care. His expression remained calm, his voice low: “Everything you want to do is fine by me. Sheng Min, I’m not afraid of anything, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”
“Then what do you need me to do for you?”
“Take good care of yourself,” Li Xuan said, his eyes gliding over the medicine bottle by the window. “Stay with me until we’re a hundred years old. I don’t plan on looking for another boyfriend. You chose me, so you have to be responsible for me until the end.”
Sheng Min looked at him, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. The night wind continued to blow. After some time, Li Xuan sighed and casually wiped the blood from his lips with his thumb. He knelt and kissed him again. Amid the blood and the bitter taste, Sheng Min finally realized it was his own tears. He looked at Li Xuan’s face so close to him, smiled weakly, and then, in the next second, held him tightly and began to cry uncontrollably.
Tears soaked Li Xuan’s clothes, but his hands stayed firmly around him, never leaving. Sheng Min buried his face in Li Xuan’s shoulder. The wind tapped at the window, sounding almost like sobbing. The moon’s shadow moved from the treetops to the wall, and his crying gradually quieted. Li Xuan bent down and carefully picked him up, carrying him back to bed.
Sheng Min was exhausted, crying to the point of weakness. Li Xuan gently fed him a small cup of water, and Sheng Min fell asleep with his head on the pillow.
Li Xuan carefully wiped the tear stains from his face and lightly kissed his forehead.
Sheng Min’s phone was on the bedside table. Li Xuan picked it up. Over the past few days, Wang Shuying had called him many times, but Sheng Min hadn’t answered and had switched to text messages. At first, she tried to continue deceiving him, claiming Sheng Hui had just said something thoughtless. After not receiving a response, she started pleading, asking Sheng Min to remember their mother-son bond. Finally, she began insulting him with vicious and unbearable words.
Li Xuan silently read through it, then made a small adjustment on the phone before placing it back on the pillow. He held Sheng Min’s soft hand against his face, his heart filled with disgust, mixed with a faint sense of relief that, at least in this moment, he was by Sheng Min’s side. Yet, no matter how his thoughts swirled, Sheng Min’s expression in his sleep remained calm.
In the later part of the night, Sheng Min didn’t wake up again. As dawn approached, he murmured Li Xuan’s name in a daze.
“I’m out here.”
Li Xuan held the receiver and responded, then said to the person on the other end of the phone, “Alright, it’s settled. The money is still to be picked up from the usual place…”
There seemed to be something more on the other end, but Li Xuan responded coldly, his tone light: “Nonsense… Why are you contacting me? There are plenty of people waiting to earn this kind of money, and then you’ll say I didn’t give you face.”
He quickly ended the call, broke the SIM card in half, and returned to the bed.
“Where did you go?”
“I was making a phone call.” Li Xuan leaned over and asked, “Are we going up the mountain today?”
Seeing Sheng Min nod, he handed him his clothes. Sheng Min looked at him but didn’t take them. Instead, he turned his body, tightly wrapped his arms around Li Xuan’s waist, clinging to him with unusual affection: “Li Xuan.”
“Hmm?”
“Forget it.” After a long pause, he sighed, his voice and expression once again familiar to Li Xuan. The slight dampness at his waist was nothing but the tears that hadn’t dried from last night. Everything else seemed like a fleeting dream, vanishing into smoke. “I don’t want to know anymore. It’s not important, I’m just glad it’s not true.”
