Chapter Text
Wu Suowei had never understood why adults insisted on calling him easy.
Teachers told his parents he was calm and mature. Neighbours cooed about what a polite young man he was becoming. His mother liked to brag that he was the kind of teenager other parents prayed for. The kind who did his homework without being reminded. The kind who never shouted back. The kind who greeted elders properly, listened carefully, and smiled at all the obligatory family dinners.
If they had seen him at six, grabbing another kid by the backpack because the boy had stolen his favourite sticker, maybe they would have chosen their compliments more carefully. If they had witnessed him at eight, bursting into tears and diiging his nails on a kid because his friend’s new best friend had dared to sit next to him at lunch, the reputation would have cracked then and there.
His parents did see those early storms. They reacted with the grace and panic of two people who wanted desperately to get it right.
There were consultations. A short period of therapy. A laminated sheet with self regulation rules pinned next to his desk. And eventually a little white bottle in the bathroom cabinet that Wu Suowei learned to swallow from without flinching.
By the time he turned fifteen, everything was smoothed down. He was calm. Disciplined. Stable. He still felt things too intensely sometimes, like wanting to crawl out of his own skin if someone raised their voice too suddenly, but he had coping strategies. Adults loved that word. Coping.
He could live with that.
He was, in the simplest terms, the best son his parents could have asked for.
Which made it extremely inconvenient that his body chose the exact moment Chi Cheng stepped into their apartment to rebel.
That afternoon had begun like any other.
His older brother, Wu Gang Zi, had sent him a message so short and cryptic that only siblings sharing a lifetime of partial brain cell custody could decode it. Something like:
cc coming. buy snacks.
Wu Suowei read it twice, felt a little flutter start somewhere under his ribs, and dutifully stopped by the corner shop on his way home. Crisps, soda, chocolate, the holy trinity of university student fuel. He let himself in, greeted his mother, stacked the snacks in the kitchen like offerings, and went to his room to pretend he was not waiting.
The doorbell rang half an hour later.
His mother called out for Gang Zi, who yelled back from the bathroom that he was not decent yet. There was a short, annoyed exchange. Then she sighed and called for her younger son instead.
"Xiao Wei, go open the door."
He rubbed his hands on his trousers, for no reason at all, and went.
He knew of Chi Cheng the way younger siblings knew all the names that hovered around their older brother. A cool university student, he had heared. Good at everything. A little wild, but never in a way that stuck. Gang Zi talked about him with the casual fondness reserved for people who had seen each other do stupid things and survived.
None of that prepared him for the real thing.
He opened the door and almost forgot how to stand.
Chi Cheng filled the doorway without even trying. Tall without being ridiculous, hoodie unzipped over a T shirt that clung in just the right places, hair slightly messy like he had run a hand through it while walking. His eyes were sharp and bright, a small mole near the corner of one making them look even more expressive, Wu Souwei couldn't help but follow the one on his nose until his eyes dropped to the mole on the younng man's bottom lip.
He had a mouth made for trouble and a smile that suggested he knew it.
"Hi," Chi Cheng said. "Xiao Wu, right."
He knew his name.
Wu Suowei’s brain emptied itself of all content.
"Yes," he squeaked.
Chi Cheng’s gaze softened, amused. The corners of his mouth tilted up a little more as he took in the pink spreading over the boy’s cheeks.
"Your brother is taking forever," Chi Cheng said. "Can I come in."
"Yes," Wu Suowei repeated, stepping aside so fast he nearly collided with the shoe cabinet.
After that, it was over.
The not usually shy, talkative, slightly chaotic Wu Suowei turned into pudding whenever Chi Cheng was around. His knees forgot how to behave. His heart developed a sprinting habit. His face lived in a state of permanent light pink that deepened into alarming red depending on what was going on.
He did not have a name for it at first.
He just knew that when he heard the familiar knock and Chi Cheng’s laugh in the hallway, his whole body reacted before his mind caught up. He drifted to the kitchen on the flimsiest pretexts, perching on the stool closest to the living room so he could watch without being too obvious.
He was not subtle at all.
He stared. He observed. He filed.
The way Chi Cheng’s hands moved when he talked through a story, long fingers sketching shapes in the air. The way his mouth quirked when he was about to say something stupid and knew it. The way his T shirt rode up a little when he stretched to grab the remote, exposing a slice of skin and a scattering of tiny moles that made Wu Suowei’s brain fizz.
At school, nothing and no one explained any of this.
Other teenagers talked about crushes in a vague, loud way. Girls passed notebooks with hearts drawn around pop idols. Boys nudged each other in the ribs and laughed about actresses and models. None of the examples quite matched the very specific way his body reacted when Chi Cheng leaned over the back of the couch and said, "Move, you are sitting on the controller."
He suspected, briefly, that he might be ill.
His heart hurt in a way that felt physical when Chi Cheng left. His stomach flipped when he heard his name in that amused tone. His palms went damp. At night, he dreamed in images and feelings that made him wake up tangled in sweat damp sheets, breathing hard, the details slipping away as soon as he tried to hold them.
He did what he had been taught to do when something scared him.
He watched it. He measured it. He tried to put space between the feeling and the doing.
He remembered the sticker incident at six. The lunchroom meltdown at eight. He remembered the laminated self regulation rules his mother had stuck to his desk, the therapist’s soft questions, the quiet little pills in the bathroom cabinet. He knew he could get stuck on something or someone until the world blurred.
He did not tell anyone about this particular focus.
Instead, he told himself he would behave.
He answered politely when Chi Cheng asked him about school.
"How are your grades, Xiao Wu."
"They are fine," he would mumble, ears hot.
"Of course they are," Chi Cheng would say, ruffling his hair like he was a satisfied cat. "Model student."
That gesture alone could power an entire week of daydreams.
Over the next two years, he got a little more comfortable. Or he tried.
He managed to sit on the edge of the couch instead of hiding in the kitchen. He could stay in the same room without shaking. He even began small experiments, though he pretended they just happened.
Once, when he passed Chi Cheng a soda bottle, he let their fingers brush for longer than necessary.
Static crackled up his arm.
Chi Cheng glanced down at their hands, then up at his face, and smiled, obviously endeared.
"Thank you," he said.
Nothing more.
No thunderbolt, no dramatic music, just that warm look that said you are a cute kid and nothing else.
It made Wu Suowei want to scream into his pillow and also never wash his hand again.
At night, his dreams grew more detailed and more embarrassing. Hormones did what hormones did. He learned practical things about his own body in a field conditions crash course with no manual, just instinct and the memory of Chi Cheng’s laughter. Every discovery made him more frustrated. Every frustrated morning made him more determined.
He told himself he just needed to be patient.
He would turn sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. He would grow taller, his face would sharpen, his voice would settle. He would stop looking like a kid next to a university student and start looking like someone who could stand beside him without people raising their eyebrows.
He would confess then. Properly. Not with weird half gestures and fingers brushing over plastic bottles.
Reality had other plans.
The first hit came when he was sixteen and unusually free.
His parents, after long years of cautious schedules and tightly drawn boundaries, had finally agreed to let him stay out later than five in the evening. It was not exactly overprotection. They trusted him, mostly. They also knew he could get lost in his own head and forget time and common sense if something caught his interest, so they preferred to keep his radius small.
This time, they said yes when his classmates invited him to the mall for a movie.
He was absurdly excited.
They were not the permanent kind of friends. Wu Suowei floated between groups by nature, a social butterfly who never quite settled. Getting an actual text that said come with us, we got tickets felt like a small miracle.
He left the house in a mood so good it was almost suspicious. The sky was already dimming, the air warm. He hummed a tune under his breath, thumbed out an I am almost there message on his brand new phone, and stuffed it back in his pocket.
Then he raised his head and saw them.
They were not even properly hidden. Half tucked in the shadow of a side alley near the mall entrance, close enough to the streetlights that there was no mistaking who they were.
Two figures. One pressed against the wall, head tilted back slightly. One standing close, hand braced on the rough surface, the other fisted in the front of the other man’s shirt.
For a heartbeat, it looked like a fight.
Then the man against the wall smiled, slow and lazy, lips already a little swollen. His fingers tightened on the other’s hip. The air around them changed from potential violence to something else entirely.
Wu Suowei’s brain tried to reject the image.
Chi Cheng stood there, profile sharp in the half light, focused on the man under his hand.
The man in question turned his head just enough for the streetlight to catch his features.
He was good looking in a way that was almost irritating. Clean jawline, sly eyes, mouth made for smirks. The kind of face that would look great in a mirror and knew it.
Their eyes met for a fraction of a second.
A cold, crawling feeling moved under Wu Suowei’s skin.
His fingers slackened. His phone slipped. The sound of it hitting the ground barely registered.
In the next instant, Chi Cheng dipped his head and kissed the man he was holding.
Not a chaste peck. Not an accident. A real kiss, full and deliberate, like he had done it a dozen times before. His hand in the man’s shirt pulled him closer. The other man’s palm splayed at the back of his neck. Their mouths moved together like they had found exactly the right angle.
Something in Wu Suowei’s chest twisted hard.
He wanted to look away.
His body refused.
He hated everything about what he was seeing. The way Chi Cheng was reckless enough to do this in public. The way the other man smiled into it, clearly enjoying himself. The fact that it was a man at all, as if the universe were mocking him, removing even the flimsy fantasy that Chi Cheng might be secretly straight and uninterested in all of this.
Most of all, he hated the sudden, stupid realisation that he had never truly considered the possibility that Chi Cheng might be with someone else.
He had seen things. Questionable videos online. Manga he definitely should not have been reading in bed at one in the morning. In theory, he knew how it all worked. In practice, somewhere in the back of his mind, Chi Cheng had been filed under mine without any supporting paperwork.
Reality did not care about his fantasies.
As he watched, stunned, Chi Cheng broke the kiss, said something against the other man’s mouth that made him laugh, then tugged him away from the wall by the front of his shirt. His gaze dropped in a quick, appreciative sweep over the man’s backside and his hand followed, delivering a light smack.
The man huffed and pushed at him without any real annoyance.
Wu Suowei’s stomach lurched.
He folded in on himself.
Before he quite realised what he was doing, he crouched down on the pavement, knees pressed together, fingers digging into his thighs. His eyes burned. Tears spilled over, hot and humiliating.
People glanced at him. A couple of passersby slowed, probably debating whether to intervene. He barely registered them.
He stared at his phone.
The screen was cracked, a web of broken glass catching the streetlight.
Perfect, he thought wildly. Now it matches.
He did not make it to the movie.
He sent some vague, badly typed message about feeling sick and staggered home instead, keeping his head down so he did not have to see his reflection in any shop windows.
That weekend, he did something even more uncharacteristic.
He did not come out of his room when Chi Cheng visited.
Weekends had become synonymous with Chi Cheng. That was the routine. Gang Zi announced his arrival in the group chat with minimal punctuation. The front door opened. Two pairs of shoes hit the entryway. Laughter floated down the corridor. Wu Suowei drifted to the kitchen stool, pretending to be absorbed in whatever book or magazine happened to be there while absolutely not taking his eyes off the living room couch.
He lived for those crumbs. A casual question about school. A hand ruffling his hair. A chocolate bar tossed his way with a careless "Happy birthday, Da-Wei, your brother forgot."
This time, when he heard the familiar knock and the sound of his brother greeting Chi Cheng, he pulled his blanket over his head.
He stayed there.
Downstairs, life continued.
If Chi Cheng noticed the absence, he did not press the point. He had always known, vaguely, that Wu Suowei liked him. The crush had been clear enough that a blind person could have seen it. He chose to treat it as one of those sweet, harmless things life sprinkled on you sometimes. The kid was cute, earnest, easily flustered. Teasing him a little was almost a hobby. Being careful not to cross the line was a duty.
He prided himself on being a relatively decent influence, at least in front of Gang Zi’s parents. He did not drink too much in their house. He did not swear too loudly. He did not, as a rule, get visibly hard on their couch when someone like Wang Shuo decided to send him a nude at a strategically terrible time.
The day that had happened, he had quickly angled his phone away, rearranged his clothes and taken a few deep breaths. When he glanced up, he caught a glimpse of Wu Suowei in the corridor, face the colour of ripe tomatoes, and pretended not to notice.
Poor kid, he had thought. Gay awakening speedrun. He would be fine. Everyone had to start somewhere.
He did not immediately connect that to the younger boy’s sudden disappearance that weekend.
Maybe the homework load was heavier. Maybe he had gone out. Maybe he was just moody. Teenagers were allowed.
If anyone had asked him later whether he was a tiny bit disappointed to lose his easiest target for teasing, he might have admitted it. To himself. Quietly.
For Wu Suowei, the disappointment was a crater.
He rationalised as best as he could.
Of course Chi Cheng was dating. Of course that guy in the alley was not the only one. Of course no one as attractive and charming and infuriating as Chi Cheng would sit politely at home and wait for a teenager to turn eighteen and make a dramatic declaration.
He knew all of this.
Knowing did not help.
It felt as if he had been playing a game he did not know the rules of and had just discovered that everyone else was already three levels ahead.
He told himself it was his fault. If he had been born four years earlier. If he had been more proactive. If he had done anything other than sit on a stool and stare.
The thoughts ate at him in circles.
He kept them from eating everything else only because he had practice. Therapy taught him not to act on every impulse. The medication took the edge off the sharpest swings. He did not follow Chi Cheng physically. He did not start fights. He did, however, begin choosing his routes very carefully.
He knew now which building on campus Chi Cheng’s major used. He knew approximately when classes tended to end. It just so happened that there were several perfectly reasonable paths home that led him past that area.
He told himself the universe was playing tricks on him when he kept seeing familiar shoulders in the crowd.
The universe, frankly, was innocent.
He was the one who kept going back.
He saw Chi Cheng alone, laughing with friends, walking with his head bowed over his phone. He saw him with other people too. Men, mostly. Once or twice he recognised the same sly faced guy from the alley. He learned his name accidentally, overheard in someone else’s conversation.
Wang Shuo.
He hated how the name sat in his mouth.
He also could not stop looking when he caught sight of him.
They looked good together. That was the worst part. Young, bright, self assured. The kind of pair who would feature in other people’s stories as background characters you envied.
Every time, Wu Suowei felt a little bar in his chest bend.
He told himself he could handle it.
He focused on school. On being the best son. On being the right kind of patient.
Inside, something coiled tighter and tighter.
He told his reflection in the mirror, just wait until eighteen. Just wait. Then you can do it properly. No sneak attacks. No childish nonsense. You will confess like a functional human.
He almost managed it.
Then the couch, and the sleeping face, and his own stupid mouth ruined everything two months too early.
The universe had a sense of humour. It was just very mean.
Wu Suowei lasted another ten months on stubbornness alone.
He grew.
Literally. His mother complained that he ate like a bottomless pit. His trousers got short at the ankles. His jaw sharpened a little. His barber started treating him like an adult instead of asking if his mother approved the haircut.
His brain, on the other hand, stayed exactly where it had been.
He still timed his movements to the sound of the front door opening on weekends. He still ended up on the kitchen stool, book open in front of him and eyes absolutely not fixed on the living room.
If anything, his crush matured like fruit left in the sun too long.
The dreams got worse.
They were no longer vague heat and colours. Now they came with fragments of voice and weight, a familiar laugh at his ear, a hand on his hip. He would wake up with his heart pounding, sheets twisted around his legs, breath too short. Sometimes he could not remember the details, only the raw, overpowering need.
He tried being scientific about it.
He read things he probably should not have read. He clicked on articles with titles like hormonal changes in adolescent males and then immediately balanced the tab with something about exam technique so his browsing history would look neutral. He gave himself lectures in the bathroom mirror.
This is normal, he would think, staring himself down. This is biology. Other boys have this. You are not going to die.
It helped for exactly half a second.
Then he would catch sight of the faint mole at the corner of his own mouth and his brain would cheerfully overlay it with Chi Cheng’s, and he would want to stick his head in the sink.
His coping strategies upgraded, but the content did not change.
Longer showers. Extra time spent pretending to look for the right T shirt in his wardrobe when he was actually just trying to calm down. A notebook that he used for blood going south problems and also, unfortunately, for writing down half formed fantasies before they ate his brain completely.
He did not show that one to anyone.
Through it all, Chi Cheng remained exactly himself.
Older. Confident. Easy in his own skin. Still occasionally sprawled on the couch like the sofa was made for him personally. Still throwing Wu Suowei casual smiles that felt like they were worth a million points each in some game only he was playing.
There were more photos on social media that hurt to look at.
Group pictures. Nights out. The occasional shot of someone’s shoulder by his side that might or might not have been Wang Shuo. Wu Suowei tortured himself with every pixel. He would stare until his eyes ached, then slam his laptop shut and go for a walk around the block like he could outrun his own mind.
He told himself it would change at eighteen.
He repeated it like a spell.
Just hold on. Just wait. When you are an adult, you have the right to say things that would sound stupid out of the mouth of a kid. You can stand in front of him and say it straight. If he laughs at you, at least you tried.
He almost made it.
Two months before his eighteenth birthday, the universe placed Chi Cheng on the living room couch like a final exam.
It was a Saturday afternoon. The light was soft. His parents had gone out together for once, an anniversary dinner they had both half forgotten and decided to celebrate anyway. Wu Gang Zi had dragged Chi Cheng home under the pretext of watching a game.
They had made it halfway through the first half before Wu Gang Zi’s phone buzzed.
"Shit," he said, already standing. "I forgot I promised to help Lao Zhou with his move. Ma will kill me if he calls her because I bailed."
"You are useless," Chi Cheng said cheerfully.
"You can stay," Wu Gang Zi told him, hopping on one foot as he tried to shove his shoes on. "Finish the game. Eat our snacks. Make fun of my brother."
He yelled up the stairs.
"Da-Wei, I am going out. Be good. Do not burn the house."
"Do not be late," their mother called automatically from the hall, even though she was the one leaving with him.
The door closed behind them with a muffled thud.
Silence settled in the apartment, broken only by the murmur of the commentators on television.
Wu Suowei lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling.
He had planned to stay firmly in his room. Two months, he had told himself. You can behave for two months. You are a responsible human. You have medication and coping strategies and a laminated sheet of rules somewhere in a drawer.
Then his brain offered a new piece of information.
Chi Cheng is alone.
He sat up.
This is a trap, he thought.
He stood anyway.
He told himself he would just walk past the living room on his way to get water. That was all. He was allowed to drink water. Hydration was healthy. None of the therapists ever said not to hydrate near your crush. He was technically following all the rules.
He grabbed an empty glass for realism and crept down the corridor, heart thudding.
The living room was half dark, curtains drawn halfway against the afternoon glare. The television flickered with moving colours. On the couch, Chi Cheng had slouched down until his head rested on the armrest, feet propped up on the coffee table. One arm lay across his stomach. His eyes were closed.
Asleep.
Of course he was.
The game commentators murmured about strategy in the background. A half finished bag of crisps sat open on the table. The remote lay near his loose fingers.
Chi Cheng’s face, without the animation of speech or laughter, looked softer. The angle of his jaw was still sharp, but the tension was gone. His lashes cast small shadows on his cheeks. His mouth, bare of any half smirk, looked almost gentle.
Wu Suowei’s knees went warm.
He should go.
He knew that. Every sensible part of him knew that.
Instead, he set the empty glass on the shelf behind him, as quietly as he could, and walked closer.
He moved slowly, like he was approaching some rare animal that might scare if he exhaled too loudly. His socks made no sound on the floor. The television’s glow painted his skin in shifting blues.
He stopped when his knees bumped the edge of the coffee table.
From there, he could see everything.
The slight flutter of Chi Cheng’s lashes as his eyes moved behind them. The faint crease between his brows, like he was thinking even in sleep. The small mole at the corner of his lipe that had ruined Wu Suowei’s life sometime the previous year.
Up close, he could smell him.
Laundry detergent and something sharper, some cologne that lingered on the fabric of his hoodie. Under that, the warmer, quieter scent of skin.
Wu Suowei’s whole body tingled.
He stood there for a long time, breathing carefully, trying to decide whether this counted as a crime.
Looking is allowed, he thought. Looking is free. No one can arrest you for standing here.
His brain did not stop there.
His gaze dropped inevitably to Chi Cheng’s mouth.
He had imagined this exact view a thousand times. Sometimes in slow motion, sometimes in flashes. In all those versions, there was reception, or rejection, or a hand lifting to his face. Never this perfect stillness.
The thought arrived fully formed.
You could just try.
Just once.
Not tell anyone. He never has to know. You get it out of your system. Then you can go upstairs and pretend to be a sane person.
His heart hammered so hard it almost made him sway.
He leaned down.
His hands braced on the back of the couch for balance, fingers curling in the fabric. He brought his face close enough that he could feel the warmth of Chi Cheng’s breath on his own lips, each quiet exhale raising goosebumps on his skin.
His eyes fluttered shut.
For a second, he almost backed away.
Then some reckless engine in his chest overrode every therapist, every laminated rule, every carefully rehearsed plan.
He tilted forward the last few millimetres and pressed his mouth to Chi Cheng’s.
It was barely a kiss.
Just the softest contact, the light press of his lips against the older man’s, like a question whispered into cotton. His breath caught so hard it hurt. His fingers tightened on the couch until his knuckles ached.
He had imagined fireworks.
What he got was quieter.
Heat. The shape of another mouth under his. The faint give of relaxed lips. A weighty, dizzy rush running from the point of contact straight through his chest and down, leaving his knees weak.
He stayed frozen there, both terrified to move and terrified that not moving made it worse.
He did not feel the exact moment when Chi Cheng’s lashes brushed his cheek.
Chi Cheng woke slowly.
He had gone under without meaning to. One minute he had been watching the game, the next his body had taken advantage of the sofa and the empty house to knock him out. The soft sound that pulled him back could have been anything, a shift in the commentators’ tone, a change in the light.
He became aware of three things in this order.
The weight of his own limbs. The warmth on his chest where the afternoon sun reached. And a strange, feather light pressure against his mouth.
He opened his eyes.
For a second, his sleep muddled brain attempted several wrong interpretations. Maybe he had rolled onto a cushion. Maybe the couch fabric had changed. Maybe this was a weird dream and the universe had decided to give him someone’s mouth while he napped, which would not be the strangest thing his subconscious had come up with.
Then his vision focused.
He saw a fringe of familiar hair, tremble fine eyelashes, and the very tense, very pink face of Wu Suowei, hovering over him with eyes squeezed shut and lips pressed to his in a line so careful it almost hurt to look at.
Well, Chi Cheng thought.
That answers that question.
He kept very, very still.
He could have jerked back. He could have made a joke. He could have said something like wow, starting early, are you not fifteen, what are they feeding kids these days.
Instead, he lay there and let the younger boy have that one stolen moment.
He watched the flush creep from the tips of Wu Suowei’s ears down his neck. He counted the seconds in his head. At three, he saw the first flicker of panic in the slight tremble of his shoulders. At four, his fingers dug harder into the couch. At five, he sucked in a tiny breath against Chi Cheng’s mouth, like he had just remembered lungs still existed.
Then he pulled back.
His eyes opened.
They locked directly onto Chi Cheng’s, which was unfortunate, because at some point in the last seconds those had definitely stopped pretending to be closed.
Time did a strange thing.
It stretched wide, like the film of a soap bubble just before it broke.
Wu Suowei’s expression went through several stages in fast succession. Confusion. Realisation. Horror. Something small and hopeful that Chi Cheng did not have time to identify before it was drowned in a rush of pure, unfiltered mortification.
"I," Wu Suowei said.
That was as far as he got.
His whole body flushed hot enough that Chi Cheng almost felt the temperature rise. He lurched upright, nearly knocking his knee into the coffee table, and ran.
Not a metaphorical run.
An actual, full sprint down the corridor, socks sliding on the floor, bedroom door slamming, lock clicking with the speed of muscle memory.
The apartment fell silent again.
Chi Cheng lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling.
"Well," he said softly, to no one, "shit."
If Gang Zi or their parents had been home, he would have had to get up immediately, go act normal, maybe knock on the boy’s door and try to defuse his panic before it solidified into something harder.
As it was, the house was empty.
He gave himself one minute of stillness.
During that minute, he revised several opinions.
He had known that Wu Suowei liked him. Anyone with eyes could see that. The way the kid turned into a blushing statue whenever he entered the room had been almost comically obvious. He had chosen to treat it as a harmless stage, something that would fade once Wu Suowei grew a little and discovered that the world held more than one interesting person.
The kiss said otherwise.
This was not the vague, experimental curiosity of someone who wanted to tick a box.
That had been worship and terror in equal proportion.
He scrubbed a hand over his face.
It was not that he was offended.
People liked him. He liked that people liked him. He was not blind. He also had rules. Personal ones, unspoken but strictly observed.
Do not touch your friend’s little brother.
Do not encourage minors.
Do not do anything you would not be able to explain to someone’s furious mother.
Also, more selfishly, do not get attached to walking catastrophes when you already had enough of your own.
He sat up slowly.
He considered knocking on the bedroom door.
He imagined the muffled, mortified silence that would greet him. The way Wu Suowei would probably want the floor to open and swallow him whole rather than hear anything Chi Cheng had to say.
He also thought of the time.
He had a plane in two days.
He had not told the Wu family yet. That conversation was scheduled for tonight. His parents had decided, in their characteristic way, that sending their son abroad for a management certificate would be a good way to keep him out of trouble and teach him something useful. Chi Cheng had fought it at first, then given in when the alternative seemed to be a slow suffocation in a company where people only saw his surname and never his work.
He had meant to tell Wu Gang Zi and the others over hotpot, joke his way through their protests, promise to come back with Swiss chocolate and boring stories about meetings.
Now he had an extra thing he should probably clarify.
He pushed himself to his feet.
He walked down the corridor and stopped outside Wu Suowei’s door.
He knocked, gently.
"Da Wei," he called. "Open up."
Silence.
He could almost picture the boy on the other side, body pressed to the door, eyes wide, holding his breath as if invisibility could be achieved by sheer will.
Chi Cheng leaned his forehead lightly against the wood.
"I am not going to yell at you," he said. "I just wanted to say goodbye. I will be…"
The end of the sentence blurred under the sound of heavier footsteps.
Wu Gang Zi came up the stairs two at a time, keys jangling.
"Did he lock himself in," Wu Gang Zi said, arriving in the corridor. "What did he do this time."
"Nothing," Chi Cheng said automatically.
"Xiao Wei, Ma called from downstairs," Wu Gang Zi said, ignoring him. "Open the door."
Nothing.
Wu Gang Zi rolled his eyes.
"Leave him," he told Chi Cheng. "If he wants to hide, let him. It's his bad."
He slung an arm around Chi Cheng’s shoulders and steered him back towards the living room.
"Come on," he said. "Help me finish this game before Ma drags you into a conversation about your future again."
Chi Cheng let himself be guided, though his gaze lingered on the closed door.
He told himself there would be other chances.
He would talk to the kid before he left. He would joke, make light of it, set a clear line. He would say something like, you scared me there, you know you cannot just jump people in their sleep, right, save that kind of thing for when you are older and they are awake and say yes.
It was a plan.
Unfortunately, the universe did not care about plans.
The next two days vanished under a swarm of errands, family obligations and last minute packing. His mother cried over his suitcase twice. His father held forth for half an hour on the importance of not getting stabbed in foreign countries. Friends came by to say goodbye. Wu Gang Zi got dragged into overtime shifts and barely had time to swing by for a rushed hug at the airport.
There was no private corridor, no quiet minute in which to pull Wu Suowei aside.
In fact, Wu Suowei did not appear at all.
Chi Cheng left the country with the odd, unpleasant feeling of having left a door half open behind him.
If Wu Suowei had not been so deep in his own shame spiral, he might have noticed the heavier atmosphere in the house that evening. He might have caught his mother’s slightly too bright smile at dinner, the way his father cleared his throat before saying that Mr Chi’s son was going abroad to study for a while. He might have realised the knock on his door earlier had been the last easy chance.
Instead, he lay on his bed in the dark, headphones on, music turned up to a level that would give him tinnitus by thirty, and replayed the scene on the couch on a loop.
The kiss. The eyes. The fact that Chi Cheng had been awake.
His stomach twisted every time.
He made it to his eighteenth birthday on autopilot.
There was cake. His parents decorated badly. His mother cried a little about how fast he was growing. His father patted his shoulder awkwardly. Some cousins called. Wu Gang Zi sent a sloppy video from abroad, raising a beer can as a toast.
At the end of the small pile of gifts, he found a box he did not recognise.
Inside lay a silver chain with a snake shaped pendant, sleek and elegant. There was a folded note tucked under it.
The world is yours now, Wu Suowei. Sorry I could not make it.
Chi Cheng.
For a moment, everything in him went very quiet.
Then all the noise came back at once.
He wore the chain for three days straight, tucked under his shirt like a secret. He ran his thumb over the pendant when no one was looking.
He told himself it meant Chi Cheng did not hate him.
He also noted that the note did not make any promises.
He stalked social media even harder.
Photos of Swiss mountains. Cafes. Office meeting rooms. Other people, laughing with Chi Cheng, faces he did not know. Wang Shuo appeared once, in a tagged shot, smiling with a group in a different city. Seeing him there instead of at Chi Cheng’s side poked at something bitter and mean in Wu Suowei’s chest.
He started university with a hole where his grand confession plan had been.
He moped.
He isolated.
The boy who had once flitted between friend circles now sat at the back of lectures, hood up, headphones dangling around his neck even when no music played. He answered group chat messages late, if at all. He met new classmates and forgot their names within minutes.
His parents watched him with worry sharpening their eyes.
They gently suggested he see someone again.
He smiled, tight around the edges, and told them he had it under control.
In truth, the only thing under control was that he did not do anything massive or dramatic. No scenes. No public breakdowns. No grabbing people by the sleeves until they stayed.
All the drama stayed inside.
He checked Chi Cheng’s accounts more often than he checked his own homework schedule. He learned to scroll fast so that if someone glanced over his shoulder, they would see only landscapes or coffee cups, not the lingering pauses over every candid smile. He created a fake account he never told anyone about, just in case he needed to look without the risk of a like betraying him.
He wondered, often, if he had destroyed everything with one stupid, stolen kiss.
Did Chi Cheng hate him. Did he feel disgusted. Did he regret ever coming over. Had he laughed about it with someone else. Had he told Gang Zi. Had they joked about it together, his idiot little brother trying to kiss people in their sleep. The thought made his skin crawl.
The worst part was that he had no one to ask.
Gang Zi had gone abroad too, chasing his own doctorate and his own freedom. Phone calls were short and usually conducted on speaker, with their mother hovering nearby. Wu Suowei did not feel like saying, so, remember your friend, the one I tried to mouth-burgle while he was unconscious, has he mentioned me.
He did what he had always done when left alone with his head.
He adapted.
He threw himself into studying. He made himself focus on practical things, like getting good grades and making sure his medication was always refilled on time. He let himself have small distractions, low stakes ones that did not look remotely like the bright, painful line of his first love.
For a while, it almost worked.
Later, when a very bubbly, very nosy classmate named Jiang Xiaoshuai sat down next to him and refused to be shrugged off, Wu Suowei would think that maybe the universe was not always cruel. That sometimes it left doors half open so that other people could push them wide.
Back then, though, in the quiet stretch after the couch and before that café, he did not know any of that.
He only knew that there was an empty space at the edge of the living room couch and a snake pendant against his collarbone that sometimes felt heavier than it should.