Chapter 23
IT WAS YAN JUN’S birthday.
Yan Jun had first realized he liked guys in high school. At the time, the object of his affection was called Mu Zeng. They knew each other from the first year of junior high until their graduation. Mu Zeng was bright and soft-spoken, a first-rate guy, and he was careful not to reveal his true feelings for Yan Jun beyond being exceptionally nice to him. Beginning in the first year of high school, Mu Zeng bought him breakfast, took notes for him, gave him shoes, and went traveling with him.
Mu Zeng’s parents were divorced, and he lived with his mother. A fair-skinned boy with pretty features, he was also sensitive, with emotions as delicate as a girl’s. He liked to write stories in his notebook and listen to classical music. His sense of aesthetics was great too, and he bought clothes for Yan Jun, taught him to appreciate art and music, and even tutored him in his studies.
Yan Jun, in his adolescence, was at an age where his protective instincts ran high. He took naturally to the role of looking after Mu Zeng. The girls in their class often made fun of them, and after two years of being teased about it, their interactions began to resemble those of a young couple. If, at that time, Yan Jun had known to hit the brakes, things might have turned out differently. But he didn’t; it never occurred to him. He saw his desk mate as a younger brother.
In high school, Yan Jun applied to share a dorm room with him. Once they started living together, Mu Zeng’s feelings seemed to become even more fragile, and like a couple, they began to bicker, make up, bicker… Friends did that too, though, and Yan Jun still thought of it simply as brotherly possessiveness. His buddy just happened to be very sensitive, that was all.
Sometimes, he found Mu Zeng unreasonable. He didn’t realize that Mu Zeng already considered Yan Jun his boyfriend and had just failed to make that explicit. In their sophomore year, Yan Jun was dealt a heavy blow: His father passed away due to illness. For almost six months, he was in extreme anguish, and in those dark times, Mu Zeng was there for him. Yan Jun’s family was no longer complete, but Mu Zeng had been living with a similarly fragmented family for many years. They licked each other’s wounds and sought solace in their companionship.
One winter night, just after his eighteenth birthday, Yan Jun got drunk. When he returned to his dorm, he somehow ended up in bed with Mu Zeng.
Waking up the next morning, Yan Jun thought, Oh, fuck! What the hell have I done?! He had no understanding of sexual identity. He considered Mu Zeng his buddy, not realizing that Mu Zeng had been eyeing his “little buddy” all along. It came as a great shock to him.
Mu Zeng didn’t speak a word about what happened that night. After a few days, Yan Jun got over it, dismissing the episode of wild, bewildering feelings as an outrageous drunken romp and trying his best to return their relationship to what it was before. But before long, Mu Zeng launched another offensive. He was clever, while Yan Jun was clumsy and inexperienced. Yan Jun didn’t want to continue that way, but he also couldn’t bear to give up his five years of friendship with Mu Zeng.
They had sex again. Yan Jun was completely sober this time around, and could no longer make excuses to himself. Mu Zeng had been sulking in the dorm over a minor incident—Yan Jun didn’t wait for him at mealtime—and he hid under the covers and cried. Yan Jun, trying his best to placate him, ended up hugging him, which led to kissing him. In the end, Yan Jun had to admit that he was gay. He had feelings for guys, especially guys with a gentle temperament.
Guilt-ridden, he kept denying himself, but at the same time, he indulged in Mu Zeng’s tenderness… Mu Zeng had gotten what he wanted and went to great lengths to tie Yan Jun down. Yan Jun was a virgin, and Mu Zeng was his first love; after a show of reluctance, he agreed to be Mu Zeng’s boyfriend. He was terrified that his classmates and teachers would find out, though, and was racked with apprehension and uncertainty about his future.
Fortunately, Mu Zeng took the initiative to end the relationship. In their junior year of high school, he left for the UK without so much as a word. Deep down, Yan Jun was relieved, but he also felt a sense of loss. This melancholy hit its peak when he prepared to visit Mu Zeng, only to learn that Mu Zeng had a white boyfriend now.
He was enraged, feeling deceived and betrayed. He wanted to tell Mu Zeng that he’d developed real feelings for him—and besides, whether his feelings were genuine or not, what kind of person ended things like that? Mu Zeng didn’t even tell him he was going abroad. He simply stopped contacting him during the summer between their sophomore and junior years and vanished.
Down the line, though, Yan Jun reflected on himself and realized that he hadn’t been forthcoming either. In the bedroom, Yan Jun was the top and Mu Zeng the bottom, but emotionally, Mu Zeng was the proactive one. Struggling with conflicted feelings, Yan Jun was always thinking about how to shake him off and resume a heterosexual—and conventional—lifestyle, one where he could date a girl, get married, have a child, and build a family, just like his older brother.
In the end, though, he didn’t just fail to return to straight life, he lost interest in girls completely. The only thing he accomplished was breaking up with Mu Zeng. In his senior year, he found that he was no longer attracted to the opposite sex, only to gentle, fair-skinned, clean-cut guys. After his graduation, he went to Jiangdong City to join his older brother. His family urged him to find a girlfriend and get married, and Yan Jun endured it in silence.
He had no love life, and his career was nothing to write home about either. Every day, he grabbed a few steamed buns and squeezed onto the subway to get jostled around, feeling like the walking dead. Then, his brother and sister-in-law were involved in a car accident, leaving behind an orphaned Xiao-Qi with no one to rely on. Yan Jun finally found a direction. He decided that it didn’t matter if he was single for the rest of his life. If he could raise Xiao-Qi into healthy adulthood, he would have fulfilled his purpose in the world.
Until, that was, he met Zhang Yuwen.
He was attracted to Zhang Yuwen from the moment he laid eyes on him. At first, this attraction was vague and hard to define, but it gradually sharpened and finally crystallized when they held their respective guns, aimed at each other across a vast expanse of forest, and looked into each other’s eyes. It was as if the windows to their souls had opened to each other.
They shared a special kind of rapport that manifested in all aspects of their lives. Even after Huo Sichen entered the picture, Yan Jun still believed this. It was what his intuition told him. And before long, it became clear to Yan Jun that he was head over heels. Zhang Yuwen’s striking looks, polite but not zealous temperament, open-minded and optimistic personality, and sense of humor… All of it had him hooked.
Yan Jun had an inferiority complex. Whether it was the low self-esteem of a country bumpkin in the big city, the inadequacies of his own shallow intellect against the erudite Zhang Yuwen, or the self-consciousness of his dull soul butting up against a charming one, his insecurities piled up until they crushed his unyielding heart. It made him too timid to express his feelings to Zhang Yuwen or pursue him.
And he had to admit that Huo Sichen and Zhang Yuwen were a good match. Huo Sichen was rich, good-looking, and interesting. If Yan Jun had been more like Huo Sichen, he would’ve pulled out all the stops to charm Zhang Yuwen. Sometimes, he even fantasized about being a social elite so that he could go wild pursuing Zhang Yuwen on equal footing. As it was, though, he had to hide his feelings carefully.
He was a little envious of Huo Sichen, but he also looked down on him. Intuition told him that Huo Sichen was devious. And at the same time, he doubted that Zhang Yuwen’s affection for Huo Sichen would last.
Yan Jun had observed Zhang Yuwen and Huo Sichen on the train ride to the hot spring earlier. They sat together, engaging in simple conversation, but no matter how he looked at it, they didn’t seem like a couple. The longer he watched Zhang Yuwen, the surer he was. It was only when Xiao-Qi walked over that he snapped out of it. When Zhang Yuwen picked her up, he looked over at Yan Jun, and they shared a smile.
These small interactions brought him an unprecedented happiness. They reminded him of his high school romance… No, this was even more soul-stirring than that. He hadn’t loved Mu Zeng with such passion.
Yan Jun often found himself simmering with torment, and while it wasn’t intense, it slowly eroded his self-control. Often, just as he thought Zhang Yuwen was about to pair up with Huo Sichen, Zhang Yuwen would take the initiative to walk over to him instead. Take just now, for example: He was outside playing with Xiao-Qi, and the first thing Zhang Yuwen did on leaving his room was come over to him.
“Let’s go for dinner, Capricorn,” Zhang Yuwen said.
Yan Jun made a hushing gesture, signaling him to keep it from the others. “I have social anxiety,” he confessed. “For heaven’s sake, please don’t bring out a cake later.”
“All right.” Zhang Yuwen laughed. “I’ll spare you that.”
The dinner was a lavish feast of barbecue and hot pot. Since it was New Year’s Eve, the resort also prepared some special dishes. Worried that the six of them wouldn’t get enough to eat, Zhang Yuwen planned to add in some extra dishes, but the resort had accurately estimated their capacity for food. The portions were generous on top of the food itself being exquisite. Xiao-Qi even got her own children’s special.