Chapter 55

What exactly did it feel like to be alive? It had been a long time since I last experienced it.

Those days spent at the hospital always felt like I was wandering at the edge of the world. Even the air I breathed wasn't real. To the outside world, this place was transparent; it couldn't be seen. We were a ball of toxic sewage gas, concealed, a laughing joke of the mortal realm.

Every day spent here, thoughts flew in my mind, but the questions I pondered were all vague and indistinct.

Until I heard someone ask me, “Who are you? Yin Ming? Yan Xuan? Or…Yan Yang?”

Who was I?

He asked me, “Which one do you want to be? Do you need me to help you?”

I stared at the ceiling, panic-stricken. I asked myself over and over again; who did I want to become?

When my gaze shifted to the person leaning over and watching me, a sudden impulse overtook me. I fiercely grabbed him and pulled him onto the bed.

Yan Yang was caught off guard. His head hit the metal head of the bed. He frowned, a low groan leaving his throat. Soon after, his lips were captured by mine.

Even if it's just a hallucination, let me resolve my longing for a moment.

It seemed like it was no longer important who I would become. The important thing was whether I could even live like a normal person anymore.

Those days once spent in Boston felt like a lifetime ago. That tiring but prestigious job, bright and comfortable home, and every minute and second we had spent living together all seemed like they had happened in a past life.

I pinned Yan Yang down beneath me. I stripped off his clothes and undid his belt. He did not resist at all, letting me bully him however I liked.

His pants were pulled down to his thighs by me, and his person was also flipped over by me, leaving him lying on his stomach.

His soft and fair buttocks were exposed before my eyes. I leant over, and through the thin cloth of my hospital clothes, I ground my cock, already erect, against his ass.

I did not actually enter, only rubbing there through the cloth. The more I did it, the worse I felt. I kept asking myself who I was.

I collapsed on his body and cried. This was the first time I had had an outburst in a long time.

Yan Yang remained lying on my hospital bed, not moving or saying a word, until a long time had passed and I had stopped crying. He pushed me away and got off the bed, then pulled up his pants and tidied his clothes. He turned his gaze to me expressionlessly as he said, “Perhaps you should continue staying here.”

He turned, about to leave, but I grabbed his wrist.

That day, Yan Yang settled the discharge paperwork and brought me with him in his car, away from the hospital.

At the time, I had still been unsure if this was all a hallucination, but I was thinking that if it was a hallucination, then he was definitely here to take my life, and since he wanted my life, I would just give it to him.

In the past two years, I had never taken even half a step out of the hospital. This time, on the night of Chinese New Year’s Eve, sitting in Yan Yang’s car, I had left.

I didn’t ask where this car was going. He could take me anywhere he wanted.

As we went farther and farther away from the hospital, a part of my body seemed to finally be awakening.

I was not Yan Xuan, and had already long since not been Yan Yang.

At the end of the day, no matter how many twists and turns I took, I could not escape my roots.

Yin Ming would be Yin Ming. He had lived with a lunatic when he was young, getting startled awake in the middle of the night by screams. He was a burden that had been abandoned, an ant squashed beneath a shoe.

I turned back to look towards the hospital. It was clearly a night of good weather, yet the place looked like it was cloaked in a dense fog.

Yan Yang sped out of the fog with me in tow, returning to the bustling and noisy world.

I looked at the tattoo on his finger and asked him, “Do you not hate me anymore?”

“I do hate you.” He kept his eyes straight ahead. While waiting at a red light, he wound down the car window and lit up a cigarette.

I didn’t know when Yan Yang had picked up smoking, but in the past two years at the hospital, I had actually unintentionally quit smoking.

The way he smoked was swift and practised. Seeing it made my brows knit.

From the beginning to the end, Yan Yang did not look at me. He exhaled a puff of smoke outside, then said, “I hate you as much as I love you.”

The whole journey, my gaze was pinned on him. When I came back to my senses, I realised it was snowing outside.

I was wearing the clothes that Yan Yang had brought to the hospital for me. They were new; the tag hadn't even been removed yet.

He drove me to the old apartment. Here, ten years could pass and it would only seem like a day. I had not returned for the past two years, yet it looked no different from before.

“Get down from the car.”

He lit a cigarette and waited outside for me.

I sat in the passenger seat, hesitating as I did not want to go down.

To me, this place was a cage that had imprisoned my life. I would rather be a scrap collector in the outside world than come back to this place.

The person outside knocked on the car window. With a cigarette held in his mouth, he finally looked at me.

In the end, I still unbuckled the seat belt and got down from the car.

So he really had come for my life. In a while, I was going to jump from that window.

I walked behind Yan Yang, following him up the stairs.

For every floor we climbed, it seemed like I was taking a step closer to ‘Yin Ming’.

Finally, we stood outside the door. That door that had spoilt long ago had already been switched out. Yan Yang fished out the keys and pulled the door open.

I seemed to hear a voice next to my ear saying: Welcome to your grave.

Yes, this place had once been my grave.

Two years had passed, and I had returned to my grave once again.