A small flame suddenly intruded into his nauseating, muddy world.
It seared an orange-red blotch onto the surface of his pupils, like a vast, raging wildfire spreading rapidly along cracks and fissures, until every silver-white gap was glued together by that blazing red heat.
“When did you learn to smoke?”
Yu Lang’s voice cut between them.
Yu Lang stepped down from the motorcycle pedal. As he put the lighter away, he also pulled out the key and turned off the engine.
He wasn’t wearing a helmet yet the wind seemed to favor him, tousling his hair into just the right kind of messy disarray.
Chi Jianqing closed his eyes, then opened them again.
Faced with Yu Lang’s sudden appearance, there was an unreal, floating sensation, so unreal that it was hard to believe.
Chi Jianqing flicked the cigarette away and explained, “Someone else gave it to me.”
“I treated you like that, aren’t you angry?”
Chi Jianqing still wore the expression of a dead man, his gaze lowered, stopping on Yu Lang’s legs.
He was considering whether to break the knees, the calves or simply snap the ankles.
From Yu Lang’s perspective, Chi Jianqing was once again indulging in his usual lecherous staring.
Yu Lang pressed his lips together, then let out a soft laugh.
“You’re really nice. I did all that and you’re still not angry.”
Yu Lang opened his arms proactively and hugged Chi Jianqing.
Not satisfied with just that one embrace, he rose onto his toes, brushed close to Chi Jianqing’s cheek and rubbed against it lightly.
Yu Lang’s fingers slipped into Chi Jianqing’s palm. Like a paintbrush, they traced meaningless patterns along the lines of his hand.
His little finger quietly looped around Chi Jianqing’s little finger, circling, hooking together and then letting go, only to hook back again the next moment.
“I’m sorry. I really have no sense of security. I’m afraid you’ll suddenly leave, so I kept pushing you away first, over and over, just to test you.”
Yu Lang was actually apologizing.
“I’ve thought it through. So this time, let me be the one to take the initiative.”
Yu Lang took a deep breath, puffed out his chest, released the little-finger experiment and raised both hands to cup Chi Jianqing’s face.
The two of them gazed at each other at close range, their breaths interwoven, like red threads tangled together.
Yu Lang said, “Let’s go home.”
We.
Go home.
Those four words sounded almost excessively happy.
They carried an intense sense of unreality.
But Chi Jianqing did not display the infatuated reaction Yu Lang had anticipated.
On the contrary, he was very calm, so calm that it barely seemed like the attitude Chi Jianqing should have toward Yu Lang.
Yu Lang asked him instead, “You don’t believe I’ll be good to you?”
Chi Jianqing smiled.
The corners of his mouth lifted slowly and evenly, as if pulled upward by invisible strings, carrying a strong, inhuman quality.
“Heh heh.”
The two of them returned to the seaside villa and sat on the sofa, leaning against each other, watching the waves outside the glass window crash against the cliff.
The sea roared. White seagulls, like little triangles, flew from one side of the window to the other, drifting back and forth like a clouded leopard on television.
Yu Lang’s hand squeezed into Chi Jianqing’s palm. Their fingers curled and intertwined, ten fingers tightly locked.
Yu Lang suddenly said, “I didn’t touch that money. I transferred it all back to your card.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t need it.”
Yu Lang lowered his head and leaned into Chi Jianqing’s chest.
“Having you is enough.”
“Being with you really makes me feel safe. I want to be with you forever. I was very unhappy during the days you weren’t here. I cried all the time. If pillows had hearts, then my tears would have flowed through every single blood vessel of the pillow.”
“I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. Day after day, I curled up inside this house, lying on the bed where we last lay together. I regretted, countless times, how I treated you back then.”
Yu Lang’s voice dimmed, his head lowered as he spoke, as if he truly knew he was wrong and didn’t dare look Chi Jianqing in the eyes.
“I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”
“Obviously, we didn’t need so many twists and turns between us.”
Yu Lang’s voice trembled badly, breaking into sobs, choking with emotion.
Yu Lang seemed like he truly knew he was wrong.
But at the same time, it felt as though he was holding back laughter.
Laughter and crying, in truth, sound very much the same.
“Are you thirsty?”
Yu Lang asked Chi Jianqing.
“I’ll get you a glass of water.”
“Okay.”
Chi Jianqing watched Yu Lang’s busy figure in the kitchen.
He didn’t feel happy, nor did he feel that Yu Lang had truly realized his mistake.
Emptiness, instead, expanded rapidly because of Yu Lang’s presence, like spores taking root in soil, growing, breaking through the surface, greedily drawing vitality from the body.
Based on Yu Lang’s pattern of giving a slap and then a piece of candy, again and again, now was the time for the slap.
The water glass entered Chi Jianqing’s field of vision, interrupting his speculation about Yu Lang.
The water today was somewhat cloudy.
Yu Lang noticed it too and explained, “The pipes are rusty. It’s not very clean.”
“Okay.”
Chi Jianqing took the glass, his dead-fish eyes staring dully at Yu Lang.
The corners of his mouth, connected to his brows and eyes, lifted once again in that strange way, like a high and mighty stone deity gazing down with unpredictable moods.
Or like a puppet being manipulated by unseen hands behind the curtain, silently revealing: I’ve already seen through your little tricks.
Chi Jianqing tilted his head back and drank it all in one go.
Bang!
The glass shattered on the floor, exploding into fragments that scattered everywhere.
In Chi Jianqing’s eyes, that white-haired figure grew increasingly blurry, just like that cloudy water, unclear and indistinct.
Thud!
Like flesh and blood stripped of bones, Chi Jianqing collapsed onto the floor, crumpling into a heap, motionless as if dead, with only faint breaths continuing to sustain this body’s life.
Yu Lang nudged the person in front of him with his foot.
“Fell asleep?”
“……”
“Fell asleep~”
Yu Lang’s voice lifted lightly, fluttering like a little bird.
He took out a rope and tied Chi Jianqing up. Then he brought over the gasoline he had prepared in advance, quickly circling the room once, extending a line from each of the four corners toward Chi Jianqing’s body in the center of the room.
Empty gasoline cans piled up around the body.
One can…
Two cans…
Five cans, ten cans.
After everything was set, he took out the lighter from his pocket, his thumb resting on the ignition.
He didn’t press it right away. Instead, he stroked it ambiguously, as if caressing a private part, his movements sticky and obscene.
There had been signs all along.
Yu Lang never smoked yet today he had brought a lighter for no other reason than to set himself on fire.
“Yu Lang, is this fun?”
A voice as clear as water poured into the scorching, acrid air.
The voice sounded tired, as if it had grown weary of playing.
Yu Lang froze. One hand went to his waist as he tilted his head, looking down at the man on the floor who had woken up.
The dosage was too low. Chi Jianqing woke up earlier than expected.
It just so happened that he regained consciousness at the very moment before Yu Lang was about to light the fire.
“If I’d known, I should’ve fed you rat poison.”
Yu Lang laughed. His thumb pressed down and a flame sprang to life.
“But then you wouldn’t be able to feel how you’re being burned to death. That wouldn’t hurt enough.”
Holding that small flame, Yu Lang slowly squatted down, bringing the lighter close to Chi Jianqing’s face. The fire singed a lock of his black hair.
The smell of scorching instantly doubled in the air yet this was only the beginning.
Yu Lang smiled, his face filled with fearless delight. He even used the lighter to burn Chi Jianqing’s face, as if he wanted to burn away this layer of false human skin entirely.
The deathly pale face finally gained color, blood-red color, bleeding color.
Chi Jianqing, blood streaming down his face, stared at Yu Lang, trying to find even the faintest trace of love on him.
The answer was: none.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t need it.”
At the moment when consciousness was at its most blurred, the one who was confused found the answer with terrifying clarity.
There was not a shred of emotion in Yu Lang’s smile. Toward Chi Jianqing, he felt neither love nor hate, only the indifference one would feel toward a dead stranger.
“Any last words? The more painful, the better.”
“Yu Lang.”
Chi Jianqing spoke Yu Lang’s full name.
“Chi Jianqing~”
Yu Lang tilted the lighter forward. The flame, like a maggot, rolled hotly and writhed into Chi Jianqing’s pupils.
“Will your last words be that you love me?”
Yu Lang’s lips crossed over the flame and pressed intimately against Chi Jianqing’s lips. He flicked his tongue like a snake, teasing wantonly, deliberately.
A hissing, secretive laugh slipped from his throat.
“When we meet again, I’ll lock you up. I’ll rip out your tongue, gouge out your eyes, break your bones, until you completely lose the ability to leave.”
It was not spoken in the threatening or restrained tone of the past.
It was a perfectly calm declaration.
Like the hard, cold scraping sound of a cleaver dragged across a whetstone before killing a fish.
The final overture of death that the fish hears before its scales are stripped away, its skin torn open, its flesh split apart.
Yu Lang wasn’t frightened. Instead, his smile grew even more unrestrained, the corners of his mouth splitting wide as if cut open by a blade.
“And then what? Then you’ll say you love me?”
At the instant he was about to step over the threshold, Yu Lang’s hand dropped. The lighter flew from his fingers and was casually thrown to the ground, erupting into a massive spray of sparks with a roaring noise.
The fire spread rapidly along the paths soaked in gasoline.
Like a drop of blood flowing from the heart into every limb.
The heart beat. The flames leapt.
The sky was dyed red by firelight. That night, a torrential rain fell.
Like the tears of heaven, piercing through the world. The vertical lines of rain bound sky and earth together like the iron bars of a cage, no matter where one went, there was no escape.
Yu Lang returned to his small, square room and tidied up briefly before preparing to sleep.
Outside the window, the sky was a dark purplish black. Thunder roared and lightning flashed.
Crack!
A white flash tore through the darkness. At the far end of the ashen corridor appeared an even paler human figure.
Yu Lang broke into a cold sweat for no reason, jolting upright in bed, breathing hard.
Tap! tap! scrape!
Tap! tap!
Scrape!
Yu Lang remembered that sound.
It was the sound from the rainy night when he first met Chi Jianqing, the sound of him dragging a shovel while chasing him all the way!
Lightning split the sky, squeezing through the gap of the door, its light severed by a human body, black in the middle, white on both sides.
The footsteps stopped. The scraping sound of the shovel against the ground vanished.
Then came the knocking.
Knock! knock!
Yu Lang, of course, did not respond.
So the person outside used the shovel to help Yu Lang respond, directly.
Lifted it.
Brought it down.
Thunder roared, rumbling violently.
?!
That rotten wooden door was split open from the middle. From the jagged, rough fracture burst out a hand so pale it was nearly bloodless.
Like a vine.
Like a tentacle.
Like the claw of a claw machine.
It lunged forward.
✦ ✧ ✦
Cresvynia
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
A coffee offering has been placed before the translator altar. ✧
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
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ChaptersChapter 1 · Dead HusbandChapter 2 · Ghost ChaseChapter 3 · I’ve been fooled againChapter 4 · I need lots and lots of loveChapter 5 · I’ll kill you!^^Chapter 6 · Haha, really!Chapter 7 · This is what it means to be love-struck.Chapter 8 · We meet again, my loveChapter 9 · The little snakeChapter 10 · I’ve been fooled againChapter 11 · The daily routine of sasaeng fans following othersChapter 12 · Inferiority complexChapter 13 · It hurtsChapter 14 · Want to go out? Sure!Chapter 15 · Damn it!Chapter 16 · My wife hitting me is a reward for meChapter 17 · Licking sweatChapter 18 · The vinegar was friedChapter 19 · What a clever tactic, Chi Jianqing!Chapter 20 · Loving me is a very painful thing.Chapter 21 · The words may be rough, but the principle is soundChapter 22 · It wasn’t just two hitsChapter 23 · Turns out I’m not 3, I’m 1!Chapter 24 · Easy To CoaxChapter 25 · Confessing loveChapter 26 · DearChapter 27 · Honey, it felt so good when you scolded me.Chapter 28 · Let’s go after tearing off the human skinChapter 29 Part 1 · Honey, I caught you!Chapter 29 Part 2 · Honey, I caught you!Chapter 30 · Little Blind CrippleChapter 31 · How could I give up? I’ve given you my heart.Chapter 32 · The gloomy CEOChapter 33 · X-harassmentChapter 34 · Little third wheelChapter 35 · I am Chi JianqingChapter 36 · I am his husband, and you are?Chapter 37 · CarChapter 38 · Broken carChapter 39 · I want to kiss youChapter 40 · Silly babyChapter 41 · Chop off hands and feetChapter 42 · Ships and DeathChapter 43 · Chi Jianqing participated in the battle royale and finally obtained a ticket to meet Yu Lang.Chapter 44 · You bastard, get out of here!Chapter 45 · Bad cats can only be forced to love.Chapter 46 · Circle the fox’s tail and rub it back and forthChapter 47 · It hurts so muchChapter 48 · The Second World EndedChapter 49 · Brainless and grumpyChapter 50 · I don’t like you anymoreChapter 51 · I haven’t thought of a title yetChapter 52 · You smell so good, let me hug you and pet youChapter 53 · A big dog bit a kitten’s muzzleChapter 54 · Captive canariesChapter 55 · Male Ghost StrikesChapter 56 · I told you to be quiet!Chapter 57 · I have decided to bestow upon you the title of my wife.Chapter 58 · We’re talking about loveChapter 59 · I really, really like you!Chapter 60 · I want to eat your noodlesChapter 61 · Don’t abandon your puppy!Chapter 62 · What a blissful ending!Chapter 63 · Extra 1Chapter 64 · Extra 2Chapter 65 · Extra 3