That night, Jiang Minyu had a dream.
In the dream, he returned to the home of his youth, not his own house but Ran Fan’s. His own house had never given him the feeling of home. Only when he lingered beside Ran Fan, like a stray animal that had finally found shelter, had he ever felt something close to comfort.
It was probably a summer night.
The window in the room was open yet the heat still pressed in heavily. The old electric fan at home was too noisy; it rattled loudly and disturbed sleep, so they had not turned it on. Ran Fan, seeing him drenched in sweat from the heat, lay on his side at the head of the bed and fanned him gently by hand.
Half dazed from the warmth, Jiang Minyu narrowed his eyes and looked at him. Ran Fan’s face was flushed from the heat as well, red and warm yet the breeze in his hand seemed always stingy toward himself, falling instead upon Jiang Minyu.
Noticing that he was being stared at without pause, Ran Fan leaned closer in concern and asked softly, “Minyu, what’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
The dream shifted.
They were on a forest path. Many children were running along the road.
Jiang Minyu felt his hand clutching something tightly. When he turned his head to look, he realized it was Ran Fan’s hand.
In the dream, Ran Fan was still in high school, wearing a light blue school uniform. He looked awkward and uneasy. Behind them, faintly, there were shrill cries and murmured discussions.
“Minyu,” Ran Fan said helplessly, “two boys don’t usually hold hands outside.”
Jiang Minyu had been stubborn then. If he wasn’t satisfied, he would grow angry. He insisted on holding hands.
Ran Fan’s face flushed red. Under the sunlight, his hair and face glowed warmly, even the tips of his ears tinged orange.
He could do nothing about him.
He really liked him.
Jiang Minyu felt a secret, triumphant happiness at getting his way,
And then he woke.
The vast room was filled only with the low hum of the air conditioner. No other sound echoed within it. There was only himself.
Jiang Minyu stared blankly into space for a long while. Then he pulled the blanket over his head and curled up on the bed.
His heart ached, a sour, dull pain. Not enough to make a person wish for death yet impossible to ignore. It would take a very, very long time, after he had forced himself to adapt again and again to this loneliness, before it would slowly fade.
Gradually, he grew accustomed to it.
In the latter half of the night, unable to fall back asleep, he idly scrolled through Moments.
By coincidence, he saw Ran Fan’s new post.
The self media account Ran Fan once ran as a side project, focused on home cooked dishes, had long since been abandoned. Now he had opened a new account.
It was no longer work related; he only posted casually, recording his life when the mood struck him yet his filming and editing skills remained and it was clear in every frame that whatever he did, he did it with care.
Jiang Minyu had discovered this account through Li Yang’s updates, Li Yang had been enthusiastically recommending it to people everywhere.
The content consisted of everyday video snippets: the daily life of a family of three and a large ragdoll cat that Ran Fan had once mentioned to him but that he had never paid attention to before, a cat that shed an astonishing amount of fur.
Jiang Minyu watched silently to the end.
Then he tossed his phone aside and went into the study to write songs.
Music.
When he had first been acknowledged and brought back into the Li family, Jiang Minyu had wanted both fame and fortune. For a time, he had tried to reach for everything. Now, all of it felt tasteless. He stayed at home, devoting himself quietly to music.
Unexpectedly, during the lowest point of his emotions, he wrote several sorrowful love songs and they all became hits. Ironically, they earned him a place within the music industry. The unpredictability of life often made Jiang Minyu want to laugh.
He shut himself in at home for several days.
When he went out again, it was to attend a university classmates’ gathering.
The invitation had come around the time when Ran Fan and Li Yang’s child was born. Jiang Minyu had secretly gone to see a psychologist then. The doctor had suggested he go out more, meet more people. Jiang Minyu had no energy for either suggestion. He attended the reunion only after repeated urging from multiple sides.
It was a mistake.
He regretted it within two minutes of sitting down.
He had attended a prestigious film and media university in S City. His classmates were all in the same industry. Now that Jiang Minyu’s career was flourishing the most among them, nearly everyone at the gathering surrounded him.
He had once been deeply infatuated with this feeling.
Now he was exhausted by it.
He did not want to speak to anyone yet the topics about him were endless.
“I heard from those marketing accounts in the industry that you’re actually the Nth generation descendant of some wealthy family, lost outside for years and only recently acknowledged. They say your family is incredibly rich and now you can basically do whatever you want. Is that true?”
Jiang Minyu nodded perfunctorily.
Then someone else asked, “What about your brother?”
For a moment, Jiang Minyu was stunned. “What?”
The person asking looked equally confused. “Your brother, the one who brought you food at your graduation performance. Wasn’t that your brother?”
Memory surged forward.
All at once, Jiang Minyu remembered.
It had happened two or three years ago, distant now yet fleetingly close.
At that time, due to work commitments, Ran Fan had only come to his university twice: once when he first sent him there and toured the campus with him and the second time for his graduation performance.
People loved excitement. When they heard someone had come looking for Jiang Minyu, a crowd of classmates stared from afar and began questioning him.
“Who is it? Is it your girlfriend?”
“You look like someone who definitely has a partner. Our school cafeteria food is so good yet you complain about it every day. You live ten kilometers away but still go home every night. Don’t tell me you don’t have someone waiting at home, I won’t believe it.”
Their school was known for producing beautiful people. Seeing that Jiang Minyu did not refute the teasing and even seemed faintly pleased, everyone’s expectations rose.
But when Ran Fan finally arrived, he appeared as a simple, ordinary young man.
The disappointment on everyone’s faces surfaced instinctively. They could not hide it.
That kind of disappointment was easy to detect.
Before Jiang Minyu himself even realized it,
It pierced him like a thorn.
They had agreed, for the sake of Jiang Minyu’s career, to introduce each other as brothers. At the moment of that introduction, he had, for once, avoided the gaze Ran Fan cast toward him.
“Huh?”
Afterward, more than one person pulled Jiang Minyu aside to ask, “You’re not biological brothers, right? You two don’t look alike at all. A blended family? Or some distant relative?”
There were also those who had never gotten along with Jiang Minyu and did not bother to hide it. One of them said bluntly to his face, “If you really are blood brothers, then genetics is way too biased.”
Now, Ran Fan was no longer his boyfriend.
Jiang Minyu could not blame anyone. He could only blame himself.
Yet the pain and regret still made his teeth ache. He thought to himself that perhaps the signs of his decay had already begun to show back then.
A voice sounded beside him, edged with provocation. “I know a bit more than the rest. Your family recently gained a younger brother, didn’t it? More than twenty years younger than you. They dote on him like he’s the apple of their eye.”
“In wealthy families there’s always a mess,” the speaker went on lazily. “Fighting over inheritance until heads bleed isn’t the scariest part. The scariest part is when the father favors one child and leaves everything to the youngest.”
The one speaking was precisely the classmate who had clashed with Jiang Minyu back in the day.
He smiled and asked, “Your family wouldn’t be planning to leave everything to the little one too, would they?”
Jiang Minyu lifted his head. “They probably will.”
He met the man’s eyes directly and continued, “Not just my family’s assets. Most likely my things will be left to him too. My money, my investments, my music copyrights.”
“What? Don’t you claim to know a lot? Haven’t you read my gossip columns? I’m gay.”
After the gathering ended, his manager came to pick Jiang Minyu up.
Jiang Minyu had drunk quite a lot at the table. On the surface he still looked perfectly composed, like a normal person but once he slumped against his manager’s shoulder, he murmured in a low voice, “Ran Fan…”
The manager’s neck stiffened at the sound. He hurriedly helped Jiang Minyu into the car.
Jiang Minyu dozed all the way home. Only when they reached the gate did he regain full awareness. He turned to the manager and asked, “Did I say anything?”
The manager shook his head. “No.”
Jiang Minyu gave a faint smile. Then his face suddenly darkened. “Watch your mouth.”
The manager’s throat tightened as he forced a laugh of compliance. He did not actually know that Jiang Minyu and Ran Fan had once been lovers but after being summoned by Li Yang several times, he had pieced things together in private.
There was something else he had also come to understand: neither Li Yang nor Jiang Minyu, the father and son, was easy to deal with. Li Yang’s frightening presence, as though he could swallow the sky itself, needed no elaboration but Jiang Minyu, who always sought him out immediately after Li Yang had done so, was clearly no simple character either.
Caught between the two of them, even knowing that the same man stood entangled between father and son, he did not dare to comment in the slightest.
“You’re cursing me in your heart right now, aren’t you?” Jiang Minyu said suddenly. “Thinking I’m shameless. That I didn’t cherish what I had and now that I’ve lost it, I’m here pretending to be devoted.”
The manager, his thoughts exposed without warning, felt cold sweat bead on his forehead.
Yet Jiang Minyu did not scold him. He merely spoke to himself. “I am shameless. I really am shameless.”
As he said it, he closed his eyes and fell asleep.
✦ ✧ ✦
Fleurveil
[Translator]
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← PreviousNext →
ChaptersChapter 1 · Let’s break upChapter 2 · A hand landed on Ran Fan’s backChapter 3 · Jiang Wenyu’s biological fatherChapter 4 · Li Yang kissed him againChapter 5 · Could you come to the hospital?Chapter 6 · I hope you can give birthChapter 7 · Are you bothered by the fact that I am Jiang Wenyu’s biological father?Chapter 8 · Don’t you think I’m ordinary?Chapter 9 · Don’t consider it me going back on my wordChapter 10 · You are a truly remarkable personChapter 11 · Would you say you’re cold-hearted towards Ran Fan?Chapter 12 · Dr. Ran resigned several months ago.Chapter 13 · Can we meet up?Chapter 14 · You also know the child’s fatherChapter 15 · You are the most important to meChapter 16 · Extra 1Chapter 17 · Extra 2Chapter 18 · Extra 3