Song Zhuchen stared at his phone without responding. A video was playing silently on the screen, an informal interview. In the footage, Fang Ye wore a black one-piece racing suit, his gaze shifting, his spirit radiant. His long, nimble fingers toyed with a fiery red helmet. The beautiful young man smiled with unrestrained arrogance and said to the camera, “Why did I learn to ride motorcycles? Because I love learning and digging into things!”
Then he narrowed his eyes in the sunlight, the corners of his mouth lifting, his delicate chin tilting up with a touch of pride like a haughty, gorgeous cat.
Song Zhuchen hadn’t turned on the sound, but through those colorful, flashing subtitles, he could imagine the light, cocky tone of Fang Ye’s voice at that moment.
Pain suddenly ignited in his chest, bursting into flame, burning his soul to ash that drifted down piece by piece, scattering into dust on the floor, dust that could never be pieced back together.
From the moment Fang Ye’s accident happened, Song Zhuchen had remained restrained, rational, handling everything related to Fang Ye meticulously and methodically. It was as if a stranger named Song Zhuchen had detached from his own body, sealed away all emotion, calmly managing everything while pitilessly watching over the hollow, riddled shell that he himself had become.
Song Zhuchen’s fingertips traced, with exquisite care, that vivid, radiant face on the screen, and he said softly, “I never should have played along with him. He was mine from the start. I should have tied him up and carried him home on the very first day I found him.”
Song Zhuchen’s voice was hoarse and dry, like it hadn’t touched water in ages. Beneath the calm gentleness of his every movement lurked a madness on the verge of collapse. Dr. Qin said nothing, only pressed his shoulder comfortingly.
Qin Zhun was Song Zhuchen’s private physician, and the only person who knew how Song Zhuchen felt about Fang Ye. Now that his beloved lay on a hospital bed, his life or death uncertain, anything anyone said would seem pale and powerless.
But the things that needed saying still had to be said. Dr. Qin looked at Fang Ye, lying unconscious on the bed. His wounds had long since been cleaned and disinfected. His ink-black hair spread softly across the pillow, and his already fair skin now showed an inhuman pallor fragile and weightless, like a pure white bird with immaculate wings, ready to fly away at any moment.
And he truly might fly away at any moment. Those shocking wounds covering his entire body, if not for Song Zhuchen’s willingness to spare no cost to keep him here, this white bird might not even have survived off the operating table. Or rather, if Song Zhuchen hadn’t deliberately arranged, from the very first time Fang Ye went out riding, for Nuochen’s highest-level ambulance to be quietly parked nearby, this white bird might never have made it onto the operating table at all.
“Dr. Song,” Dr. Qin said, switching forms of address, “you know Fang Ye’s condition very well. He’s already brain-dead. The breathing you see is only because of the most advanced life-support equipment. Once the machines are shut off.”
“I know,” Song Zhuchen interrupted. “Give me a little more time. Just a little.”
Qin Zhun said nothing more. He glanced at the readings on the various monitors and left the room, and the world fell quiet again.
Song Zhuchen knelt slowly down against the edge of the bed, burying his head beside Fang Ye’s hand. The bedsheet was soon soaked through in a large patch. Song Zhuchen’s shoulders shook violently, yet he made not a sound. Even though he knew perfectly well that Fang Ye could no longer hear anything at all, Song Zhuchen still worried about disturbing him.
Song Zhuchen lifted his head, his eyes bloodshot, the veins at his temples bulging from the effort of holding himself back. He reached out a hand covered in blood from digging his own nails into his palm, and with his fingertips gently traced the small heart-shaped red birthmark at Fang Ye’s temple. His lips trembled uncontrollably as he murmured soundlessly, “I’m sorry…”
The young master of the Song family, a man with multiple Best Actor trophies to his name, had never once lowered himself to beg anyone. Yet now, each hopeless apology that left his lips sounded like weeping blood. The emotions he had suppressed for days finally burst their dam. Song Zhuchen clutched that cold, limp hand tightly, and in the cold, empty ICU room, his always straight and rigid shoulders finally collapsed. Kneeling at Fang Ye’s bedside, he broke into low, muffled sobs.
In stark contrast to the quiet grief inside the room, the internet was in an uproar.
In all the years since his debut, this was the first time Song Zhuchen had been blasted onto the trending searches.
But Song Zhuchen said he didn’t care.
Song Zhuchen’s manager, Zhou Che, put down her phone and irritably lit another cigarette, its scarlet tip flickering in and out of view in the darkness. She couldn’t control Song Zhuchen. Rather than a manager-and-artist relationship, she was more like his spokesperson to the outside world, she had no say over him. The trending topic had hung there for so long; if Song Zhuchen were just some idol star, he’d have been shelved by now.
But he wasn’t. He was the one and only Best Actor Song.
And to put it another way, he was the heir of the Song family, whose assets were unfathomably deep. If the Song family wanted to control the comments, it would be effortless.
But he said don’t touch it, no one was allowed to touch it.
Zhou Che scratched her head in frustration. Why did Song Zhuchen have to wade into this mess! He wasn’t the one who had someone practice driving, and he wasn’t the one who chose the role. At the end of the day, what did any of it have to do with him?
So what if he occasionally bickered with Fang Ye, teased Fang Ye about his acting? Why did Song Zhuchen have to obsess over it?
Why couldn’t he just see reason!
And Song Zhuchen, ever the top student, thought quickly, and thought it through just fine.
When Qin Zhun received the call and walked into the ICU, he was astonished to see that Song Zhuchen had already shed the sterile gown that had practically become a second skin to him these past days, and changed into an expensive black bespoke suit. Aside from his face, still haggard beyond concealment and crisscrossed with ligature marks, he was dressed so formally he could have walked straight onto an awards stage the next second.
“The paperwork is all done. I now have the right to make decisions for Fang Ye.” Song Zhuchen sat by the hospital bed, holding a silk handkerchief, dipping it in water and carefully wiping the face of the unconscious person on the bed. He caressed his bloodless face with lingering tenderness, then leaned forward and kissed Fang Ye’s smooth forehead. In less than a minute, Fang Ye’s clean, neat black hair was dampened into fine, clinging strands.
“You must hate me quite a lot, right? It’s one thing that you won’t wake up to look at me, but you won’t even come curse me in my dreams,” Song Zhuchen said, tidying himself before picking up a nail clipper and carefully trimming Fang Ye’s nails. “Do you know? I went to find you, afterward. But I was taken away before I could. And when we met again, why didn’t you recognize me anymore? I regret it so much, Fang Ye. I truly regret it so much. Do you know, I built a home for you, a big one, with white walls and a red roof. You would have loved it.”
Song Zhuchen was once again impeccably dressed, but those hands, once hailed as masterpieces by his fans could not deceive anyone. From prolonged wear of medical gloves and repeated washing with disinfectant, when he had trimmed Fang Ye’s nails, the actor’s fingers, mottled and raw from being soaked over and over in sweat and disinfectant, stood in stark contrast to Fang Ye’s pale, cold, yet clean and tidy fingers.
Qin Zhun’s gaze traveled up from the fingers, and sure enough, along Song Zhuchen’s forehead and temples, hidden beneath his long hair, were blood marks of varying depths left by the sterile suit. He looked ten thousand times worse than Fang Ye, who lay on the hospital bed.
The machines continued their steady rhythm. Song Zhuchen chattered softly beside Fang Ye, but Fang Ye would never wake again.
“Dr. Qin, thank you for your trouble. Go ahead and pull the plug.” After a long while, Song Zhuchen finally stood up and said, “His body can’t hold on any longer.”
At that very moment, as if by telepathy, a chubby-cheeked Blue-Gold Kitten before a desolate temple suddenly felt its whole body loosen, as if some tether had abruptly snapped. Like a kite with a broken string, from the depths of its soul arose a strange, bewildered panic, a newfound freedom, yet an uncontrollable, endless falling.