Chapter 21

CW: mention of suicide, suicidal thoughts/ideation

Those photos spread through the school at an expected speed. I knew that this couldn't have been accomplished by my dad alone; he had gotten an assistant. Or perhaps, in other words, this was just the punishment that we had to serve.

The number of unusual stares I got increased. At the start, there were only subtle differences; namely, those girls didn't cheer for me on the basketball court anymore and their eyes that had been filled with infatuation in the past were now perplexed and hesitant. I heard some people speaking behind my back, "Duan Yan is normally such a cold and detached person, would he really do those things? I find it a little hard to believe."

After school, the girl who sat in front of me looked nervous as she pulled me to the empty space behind the classroom block. This place was very near the rubbish dump and a rotten smell pervaded the air. It suited me well.

She trembled as she took out a creased photograph. The photo was of my Ge and me sharing a deep kiss.

I stared at her. I realised that when people were shocked and extremely nervous, their pupils really would shrink.

"Is this…you?" Jiang Xue's voice shook. When a pretty girl's heart broke, it sounded somewhat like the clear sound of a glass cup falling onto the floor.

"Why…? You are blood-related brothers right…homosexuality is already very difficult for people to accept, just what are you two doing? Have you gone crazy? Or has your Gege gone crazy?"

"Yes, it's me," I stuck my hands in my pockets and nodded, "I've gone crazy."

There weren't any surveillance cameras here. I wanted to snap her slender neck to preserve all the secrets that I treasured, but unfortunately everyone had seen them already. There were hundreds of photos circulating in the school, and I couldn't kill everyone.

I pulled Jiang Xue into my arms and caressed her trembling hair to stop her from shaking. My Ge had always done it like this.

Then I took out my phone and opened the front camera to take a photo of the two of us from behind Jiang Xue's back. When the matter was exposed to the year head or director, I would show the photo to them.

I couldn't help but laugh out loud. Once a person was pushed to the edge, they would know how despicable they could be. In my world, humans were split into three categories: me, my Ge, and people who had nothing to do with me, whom I could abandon anytime. The only laughable thing here was that the love affair between my Ge and me had to rely on 'dating early' to be covered up.

Outside the school gates, my Ge was in the car waiting for me.

I opened the car door and squeezed into this safe little space. There was another bouquet of roses in the backseat, and my name was written on the card.

When I came back to reality, the car was already parked in the garage. Only then did I realise that I had hugged the roses and zoned out throughout the journey home. I then looked at the driver's seat. It was empty.

I immediately broke out in a cold sweat. I frantically got out of the car to look for my Ge, but in the end I opened the door too hard and hit his nose.

My Ge sat on the floor, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He teasingly raised an eyebrow as he lifted his head to ask me, "Fucking hell, are you toying with me?"

I took the roses with me out of the car. With my hands in my uniform pockets, I raised a foot and stepped on his shoulders, firmly kicking him over. I stepped on his long eyelashes, thin lips, alluring eyes and sharp nose bridge with the sole of my shoe. In short, I made his face dirty and not pretty anymore.

My Ge didn't fight back, letting me torment him as I pleased. His face was covered in dirt and the corner of his quirked up lips was bleeding slightly. He lay on the ground with his eyes closed, unconditionally accepting all of my resentment.

I knelt down on one knee and showed him the picture I had just taken of me hugging Jiang Xue. He didn't want to look at it, but I grabbed his hair and forced him to look at the screen.

"Just how much longer until you can fix this bullshit? If you continue dragging it on, I'll fix it myself."

My Ge sat up and dusted the dirt off his expensive suit. He loosened his tie with one hand and smiled at me with crescent-shaped eyes, "How are you planning to fix it?"

I said, "Having sex with every single girl who has written a love letter to me."

The laughter in my Ge's eyes froze. He locked up the car doors and went into the lift. As the lift doors closed, I read the indifferent words on his lips, 'Go ahead then.'

Now, my dull brain could only operate slowly, mechanically bringing my roses up the lift. My Ge was showering in the bathroom, the pattering sound of water drowning out all the sounds in the desolate house.

As I listened to the sound of water, I grew tired. I fell onto the pillow, my eyelids fighting to stay open. I hugged the roses in my chest. If in the future, I could only marry a girl as my wife, I would hug roses and sleep on the floor every single day.

In my dream, there were rose thorns on the table. I gripped them in my hand. My palms were pricked painfully and blood flowed through the gaps between my fingers, dripping onto the floor.

In my half asleep and awake state, I faintly heard the sound of water stop. My Ge walked out, then ran over and shook me crazily.

I woke up with great difficulty. The drawer by the bed was opened and the spare razor blade inside was gone. I thought for a moment about where the blade had gone before realising that it was in my hand. My palm was cut and drenched in fresh blood, the blood dripping down and seeping into the gaps in the floorboards.

My Ge sat on the ground and hugged me, his eyebrows creased as he spoke to someone on the phone.

He seemed to be talking to a doctor.

"Yes, his condition has always been stable, I thought that he had almost fully recovered."

"Yes, he was gripping a razor blade."

"Alright, tomorrow morning I'll bring him to your consulting room for a re-examination."

My Ge tossed the phone aside and hurriedly continued to help me bandage my wounds. He used gauze moistened with Yunnan[1] to bind my palm, leaving my five fingers out.

I purposely opened and closed my right fist tightly. The blood gradually seeped into the bandage, and at the same time, something akin to fear seeped into my Ge's face. I laughed as I kissed his icy cold lips.

At night, I rested my head on his shoulder as I raised my right hand covered in bandages, curiously observing it. My Ge silently held me with one arm while using his other hand to check through my phone and delete Jiang Xue's photo.

"Ge, can I kill Duan Jinjiang? With a fruit knife, or an iron baseball bat or something."

"No, you're not a minor anymore, if you're sentenced to execution by a firing squad it will be very difficult for me to get you out." He inspected my photo albums seriously and easily guessed the password to the locked one, seeing the few hundreds of our sexual photos in bed inside.

I didn't want to let him see Wife's Pretty Pictures, but unfortunately the password was my Ge's birthday. When my Ge guessed my passwords, he always tried his birthday first. This was an idiotic tacit understanding.

I started thinking again. There was one question that had puzzled me for many years: people were destined to die, and between dying now and dying after suffering through another few decades, the latter was obviously more agonising. So why did everyone choose to live?

I theorised that if two people mixed their ashes together when they died, they would become lovers in their next life. I decided to hand the task of mixing our ashes together to Jiang Xue, but I'd have to trouble her to pick out and throw away the piece of ash representing my Ge's cock. In our next life, I wanted him to really become my wife.

"Ge, let's commit a double suicide in the name of love. Go turn on the gas." I lay on my side with my head supported by my hand, interlocking our fingers together.

"The natural gas valve is on the first floor, by the time it reaches here a lot of gas money will be wasted. Plus, our house has a warning alarm." He held my hand and kissed the corner of my lips.

"How about we drink pesticide?"

"We'll froth at the mouth, and before dying our stomachs will corrode first, then other organs. It will hurt a lot."

"Let's drown in the bathtub then."

"Our corpses will be bloated and the police will come and take photos of your dead body to save records. Your ugliness after death will be studied by every new generation of police officers and forensic detectives."

I realised that my Ge was proficient in suicide. He had probably had these thoughts before too. It made sense, though; after all when I was eighteen I had my Ge to love me, but when he was my age, who had he had to love him?

I said sorry to him. Just now in the garage I had been too rough with him.

He reached a hand into my uniform, caressing me. He lay on his side and leant over, using his tongue to lick my lips and kiss me.

"If this is the prostitution fee, I can afford it. There's always some things that can't be bought with money, right?"

He fearlessly kissed me, until I was completely submerged in his tenderness. He told me not to be scared; he would fix all the problems.

I decided it was better not to commit a double suicide in the name of love. Instead, I would try suffering through a few decades more before dying with romance.

Footnotes:

[1] - Yunnan (Baiyao): A white medicinal powder used in traditional Chinese Medicine for treating wounds. Read more here