“Zhang Bin.”
Zhang Bin didn’t answer. He simply leaned over from the island bar counter, gently clinking his glass against Ren Changdong’s. In the dim room, it produced a soft, clear chime of glass.
Ren Changdong didn’t apologize to him.
“Thank you.”
Ren Changdong was still talking about yesterday’s incident.
Having offered his thanks, Ren Changdong stood up, lightly steadying himself against the back of the sofa as he walked away from where he had been sitting. The room had no lights on, gloomily dark under the heavy overcast sky. Zhang Bin watched as Ren Changdong retreated into the shadows.
“Ren Changdong,” Zhang Bin called out to stop him.
Ren Changdong turned his head.
“Is there something else?”
Zhang Bin hopped down from the counter.
“Are you walking me out?” Ren Changdong asked.
“Going to the front desk to look for some candles,” Zhang Bin said. “It’s on the way anyway.”
Ren Changdong glanced at Zhang Bin, clearly reluctant to walk with him. Zhang Bin wasn’t keen on wandering around in his bathrobe either; he stripped it off, casually threw on a floral button-down shirt, and stepped into a pair of board shorts.
Ren Changdong remained silent. So far, not for even a single second had he seen the version of Zhang Bin described in the background dossiers. This island seemed to possess some strange magic—anyone who set foot on it inevitably turned into “Robinson Crusoe.”
When the two of them reached the hotel lobby, they found the floral-shirted manager and the curly-haired kid desperately trying to lock the front doors. The manager shoved against the heavy frame with all his might, the muscles in both arms bulging. The curly-haired kid scrambled with the bolt as the wind whipped his eyes shut.
The door finally locked just as a monstrous gust slammed against it, howling as if it were determined to break in. A place that had been bathed in sunlight just days ago instantly felt like the threshold of an apocalyptic wasteland.
The manager wiped his face with the hem of his undershirt.
“I need to go to the pier,” Ren Changdong said.
The manager waved his hands, telling him to give up on that pipe dream even if he managed to force the door open: “The pier got shut down even earlier.”
Having watched a bit too much overseas short-video content, the manager started humming a tune to show off his linguistic prowess:
“Love is like a blue sky and white clouds, suddenly holding a crazy donkey…”
“Rainstorm,” Zhang Bin corrected his pronunciation. “Rain, rain—donkey is ass.”
The manager flashed a giant, exaggerated heart gesture at Ren Changdong, complimenting him on having a very fine “ass.” Ren Changdong discovered that when a person is pushed to the ultimate limits of speechlessness, their mind goes entirely blank. Having spent his whole life rooted in urban concrete jungles, he simply couldn’t fathom how people who lived entirely in eternal summer operated.
Ren Changdong figured the manager was probably too oily to drown anyway; if Zhang Bin was frivolous, this manager was both frivolous and saturated in fat.
The manager equally failed to understand what “time” meant to this high-powered mega-businessman from the metropolis.
Sensing that the situation was heading south, Zhang Bin realized that based on the predictable trajectory of this cliché, the manager’s next line would be that the hotel was out of rooms, asking if he and Ren Changdong could share one. Unwilling to get tangled up with Ren Changdong any further, Zhang Bin decided he didn’t even want the candles anymore; he prepared to walk straight back out, terrified of getting roped into something messy.
Instead, the manager shot Zhang Bin a pointed look, silently asking whether the hotel should logically have vacant rooms. Then, he emphatically traced out another massive heart shape in the air.
Zhang Bin and Ren Changdong wore identical expressions of speechlessness.
“We are not close.”
Zhang Bin and Ren Changdong spoke in unison, drawing a hard line.
The manager didn’t believe a single word of it. If they weren’t close, why would someone travel all the way to his humble little corner of the world?
“It’s the same room you had before, it was just cleaned,” the manager said, using both hands to present the room key to Ren Changdong. His hotel never reached full capacity even during peak season, so empty rooms were certainly never in short supply.
Ren Changdong yanked his hand back from the manager’s grasp and walked away with the key.
Only after Ren Changdong left did Zhang Bin step closer to the front desk and ask the manager what his problem was. The manager guessed that he and Ren Changdong must be a divorced couple going through a bitter split—why else would they avoid each other’s eyes like that, with one running away, the other chasing, and neither able to escape?
“You really need to delete your social video apps.”
Zhang Bin had no desire to converse any further with an idiot.
Collecting the candles, Zhang Bin asked the manager, “Is the ferry genuinely out of commission, or are you just pulling his leg?”
The manager looked deeply wounded. “What did I do wrong to make you suspect I’m a lying, unscrupulous merchant?”
“You’re definitely not an unscrupulous merchant,” Zhang Bin pointed around the hotel. “An unscrupulous merchant could never build a place like this. That neighboring You’an Island across the way—that screams shady real estate developer.”
“Right?!” The manager and Zhang Bin found common ground.
Zhang Bin laughed at the manager internally, thinking that if Ren Changdong ever heard someone call him a shady merchant, he’d probably reply with a humble, “You flatter me,” just to put on a show of false modesty.
Back in his room, Ren Changdong checked his messages to confirm where He Chengfeng was. Making sure his assistant had safely made it onto the island, Ren Changdong didn’t offer any extra instructions.
He contacted the front desk to request an old computer from the manager, and after a long while, the manager hauled in an antique desktop monitor with a massive protruding back. The manager reminded Ren Changdong that thunderstorm weather on the island often led to power outages, advising him to save his work frequently.
Ren Changdong’s spoken English was mediocre, and he didn’t catch most of what the manager was saying, but the mention of Zhang Bin’s candles earlier helped him roughly piece together the warning. He gave a nod.
Trapped inside their rooms, both Ren Changdong and Zhang Bin felt convinced that the other person was a jinx. Glancing out the window, they both agreed that the heavens lacked timing, the earth lacked favor, and they lacked harmony. As the weather shifted abruptly, Zhang Bin wondered just how catastrophically incompatible his and Ren Changdong’s astrological signs must be to turn a sunny paradise into a tempest the second Ren Changdong stepped ashore.
Mutually blaming each other, they waited out the storm for the pier to reopen.
The island’s extreme weather blurred the passage of time. Ren Changdong hadn’t noticed how late it was getting; when he finally tore himself away from his work, the world outside was a chaotic blur, and the unfamiliar room filled him with a quiet disorientation.
The hotel room was a relic of the turn of the millennium—tasteful and well-built, but heavy with the passage of time and distinct vacation-style aesthetics.
For a fleeting second, he couldn’t tell where he was, or even what year it was.
Just as Ren Changdong raised his head, a flash of lightning rent the sky, instantly illuminating the room in a blinding glare. The light from the French windows cast sharp, harsh shadows indoors, weaving the room in stark black-and-white contrast like something out of a ghost story.
At that exact microsecond, Ren Changdong saw a humanoid shape crawling across his window glass. His heart rate skyrocketed, hammering against his ribs like a war drum. He had never heard anyone mention wild monkeys on this island.
Zhang Bin tapped on the glass again, and Ren Changdong finally realized who was outside.
Normally a presentable-looking man, Zhang Bin’s proportions were stretched by the stark play of light and shadow into something non-human, his distorted silhouette against the French window looking genuinely terrifying.
Refusing to look at that unsettling sight any longer, Ren Changdong stepped over and pulled the French doors open. The two adjacent rooms shared an outdoor terrace and the same swimming pool.
“Can’t you use the front door?” Ren Changdong asked.
“I tried, nobody answered,” Zhang Bin said. “I just wanted to check through the glass to see if you were in your room.”
Catching sight of the bulky old desktop monitor, Zhang Bin remarked, “Playing Minesweeper? You’re really getting into it, huh?”
Walking inside, Zhang Bin flipped on every light in the room and drew the curtains shut.
“What are you doing here?” Ren Changdong asked.
“Sleeping.”
Zhang Bin lived his life by a strict schedule; he never allowed himself to stay up late for no reason, as it interfered with his bodily functions.
Ren Changdong stood there in sheer disbelief. “Are you out of room money? Surely it hasn’t come to that.”
Not caring what Ren Changdong thought, Zhang Bin walked right back out through the front door and returned carrying his own bedding and sleep essentials.
“I’m terrified of thunderstorms. I need someone to sleep near.”
Zhang Bin neatly arranged his silk pillow and silk sleep mask on the bed, placing a small brown bottle of oil on the nightstand. He even brought along a candle-warming lamp, setting down a local specialty coconut-scented aromatherapy candle.
Although Ren Changdong already knew Zhang Bin wasn’t fleeing for his life, he never expected him to act quite this much like he was on a leisurely vacation.
“Did you take too many false oaths in your lifetime or something?”
Ren Changdong tried to make sense of Zhang Bin’s behavior, especially considering how the man had treated him like the plague just this morning.
“Stop spreading rumors; people who throw around casual oaths don’t believe in them in the first place,” Zhang Bin shot back, looking at Ren Changdong. “You’re allowed to have a phobia of water, but I’m not allowed to be terrified of thunder? I got struck by lightning when I was a kid.”
Ren Changdong didn’t buy his nonsense—at least, not entirely. If someone had actually been struck by lightning, how could they not have a single scar on their body?
Zhang Bin stated frankly, “Look at the time. I genuinely need to sleep; staying up late messes with my biological functions. Even if the sky falls, a human still has to sleep.”
Zhang Bin was genuinely terrified of thunder, and he was equally desperate for sleep.
Ren Changdong asked him, “Couldn’t you find someone else willing to take you in? Anyone else in this hotel would probably be more than happy to host you.”
“On this entire island, the only person I can guarantee won’t crawl into my bed and try to devour me in the middle of the night is you, Ren Changdong. Understand?” Zhang Bin looked at him. “Sleeping in your room might not guarantee total physical safety, but at least my dignity stays intact.”
Relying on the fact that he had already completely burned his bridges with Ren Changdong, Zhang Bin abandoned all pretense and simply lay down on the bed. During previous thunderstorm nights, he had always taken refuge with a local Spanish family, but that family had checked out last island-bound week. He certainly wouldn’t dare approach the floral-shirted manager, nor did he want the curly-haired kid keeping him company for bizarre reasons.
Just as Ren Changdong opened his mouth to say something, Zhang Bin pulled his sleep mask up onto his forehead, sat up, and shut Ren Changdong up with a single word.
Gripping Ren Changdong’s absolute weakness, Zhang Bin hissed: “Uncle!”
Ren Changdong briefly wondered if he was running a high fever from his near-drowning incident and hallucinating this entire bizarre dream. When it came to problem-solving, Zhang Bin knew how to hit the nail on the head—he just used utterly unscrupulous methods to get there. Ren Changdong found it hard to describe what he was feeling at that moment, but he truly couldn’t use his “uncle” status to refuse him any longer.
Seeing Ren Changdong concede defeat, Zhang Bin proceeded with his bedtime routine.
He picked up the sleep-aid essential oil from the nightstand, rubbed a few drops between his palms, and massaged them behind both ears. Once the oil was applied, he smoothed on a layer of colorless lip balm, and finally lay down with the stiff grace of a vampire entering a coffin.
Ren Changdong had always assumed that gay men were soft and gentle—at least someone like Li You, who loved to act spoiled. But Zhang Bin was so aggressively dominant that he constantly made Ren Changdong forget about his sexual orientation altogether.
Only now did it hit him that Zhang Bin was actually quite an intricate, high-maintenance gay man. With a sense of awkward stiffness, he walked over to lie down at the exact opposite end of the bed.
Intentionally trying to make things difficult for Ren Changdong, Zhang Bin tossed out a parting line: “You know, most gay men have a foot fetish.”
Ren Changdong grabbed his pillow and walked over to the sofa.
Confident that Ren Changdong was banished to the sofa, Zhang Bin finally pulled out his ultimate sleep comfort object—a little plush mouse cloth. He didn’t mind Ren Changdong knowing he was afraid of thunder, but he drew a strict line at letting anyone know he still needed to squeeze this thing to fall asleep.
His older sister had originally bought him that ridiculous cloth toy when he was four or five just to scare him. While Zhang Bin had indeed been startled out of his wits and knew his sister had done it on purpose, he had simply looked up at her with big, innocent eyes and said, “Thank you, sister.”
He was naturally gifted at acting. By putting on that innocent act, he had saved himself from getting beaten by his eldest sister, Zhang Lu, for over a decade. And that security cloth was something he had kept gripping ever since.
Outside the window, another flash of lightning tore through the sky, plunging the hotel into total darkness once more. The candle-warming lamp flickered out, leaving the rich scent of coconut lingering in the air.
Far away, the mainland cities remained brilliantly lit, while this tiny island was plunged into blackness. The island was so small that it felt completely detached from the mainland, drifting like a precarious cradle.
Ren Changdong didn’t know whether Zhang Bin had actually been struck by lightning in his past, but he knew for a fact that he himself deeply loathed this sensation of sleeping suspended over water.
After tossing and turning on the sofa for a while, sleep completely eluded him. Turning on his phone’s flashlight, he crept on tiptoe back toward the bed. Pulling back the blanket, the very first thing he saw was Zhang Bin clutching that pathetic scrap of mouse skin to his chest. Ren Changdong’s heart rate spiked yet again, entirely driven by the man sleeping beside him.
Staring at Zhang Bin’s face, Ren Changdong decided that Zhang Bin’s judgment was spot-on after all. While he himself would never dream of taking liberties with him in the middle of the night, he genuinely felt a strong urge to smother him with a pillow.
Suppressing his murderous impulses toward Zhang Bin, Ren Changdong retreated back to the sofa.
Zhang Bin slept soundly until morning. The moment he opened his eyes, feeling nothing out of the ordinary, everything before him looked identical to the past month.
The room’s layout, its scent, its temperature—all routine.
Zhang Bin got out of bed and pulled open the drawer to grab a pair of disposable underwear, only to find the drawer completely empty.
Meanwhile, Ren Changdong was finishing up washing his face in the bathroom, wiping down his glasses before putting them back on. He pulled open the bathroom door, adjusted his frames, and instantly locked eyes with Zhang Bin—the entirety of Zhang Bin, completely exposed.
Zhang Bin stood there for a second, glancing around the room to re-evaluate his surroundings. That was when it hit him: this wasn’t his room.
The shock Ren Changdong experienced far outweighed what he had felt the previous night when he saw the “mouse skin”—he could actually feel his entire nervous system silently screaming. As a man steeped in tradition and conservatism, his mind had never once conceived that such a thing could exist in the wide world. How could anyone be ruthless enough to inflict this sort of hidden weirdness on themselves?
The aspect of Zhang Bin that differed from ordinary people was truly out of bounds. Dressed impeccably in formal business suits on the outside, beneath his clothes he actually concealed that sort of thing.
Ren Changdong also confirmed one thing: Zhang Bin clearly didn’t just sleep with anyone at random. Otherwise, given his physical condition, rumors would have inevitably leaked out.
Realizing the situation had gotten complicated, Zhang Bin casually reached out, grabbed the bathrobe Ren Changdong had left draped over the bedside, and wrapped it around himself.
“The last person who saw this and used it is no longer in this world.”
Ren Changdong couldn’t tell whether Zhang Bin meant that literally or figuratively.
Zhang Bin threatened Ren Changdong: “If word of this gets out through you, I’ll just tell everyone that you knew because you’ve used it yourself.”
Finding him utterly preposterous, Ren Changdong felt his face burn with scalding heat.
“Get out of my room,” Ren Changdong snapped, at his absolute limit with this law-defying weirdo. “Once we leave this island, you and I will have zero further connection.”