Chapter Text
The young man looks like he's sleeping, his pale lips parted as if he's taking soft breaths, but he's dead.
His body is no more than an abandoned vessel, utterly empty and cold, as cold as his skin is frost-white, and some of that cold seeps into Xue Yang's own limbs, crawls up and down his veins, rooting him in place. The man is lying sprawled out on a heap of straw that's been leveled into a sort of low bed, and his long, raven hair spills over the edge, nearly touching Xue Yang's knees. The man's white robes, the hands calmly lying at his sides, the immaculate cloth tied over his eyes, they all say 'don't disturb me', convey the impassable gap between the living and the dead, yet Xue Yang is doomed to sit there on his knees on the dirt floor, helpless, and to keep staring at him, to keep taking in every disturbing, sinister detail, unable to leave, unable to escape.
Why is he though?
Xue Yang struggles to take his eyes off the corpse, even if his gaze keeps getting drawn back to it again and again, and glance into the dark room around them. But it's all too hazy - he can only make out more of the dirt floor, more straw scattered, dim light filtering through some thinned-out rag, the faint outline of old furniture thrown around haphazardly, broken.
What the hell is this place?!
The room has no door, its gaping mouth opening to a pale, fading horizon of grey and mist, into which he can make out nothing. Specks of dust dance in the light and the air is stale, smells of mould and of something putrid-sweet. Just like everything else, the air too is still, dead, and hard to breathe. And Xue Yang just sits there, on his knees, his hands stained with something black and sticky, fisting into the fabric of his clothing.
And then it happens again.
He can't breathe. His chest heaves, a sharp pain raking the inside of his ribcage, but draws no air and he's choking, gasping, struggling until his eyes are finally open and he spots the familiar cracks in the ceiling of his room. What follows is the blessed relief of realizing it has been nothing but a dream and gradually the nightly terror goes away. He's in his room, in his bed, and now he can breathe again, albeit still labored, his heart pounding much too fast. Still, that awful feeling lingers and as he sits up, he throws an uncertain glance around, half-expecting to see the dead man in white lying somewhere nearby.
"Fuck," Xue Yang mutters, burying his face in his hands. He wakes up a lot to this word.
It could have been worse, though. At least this time he didn't need to wake up his uncle. He’s had this dream before – of the dead man in white – not always the same but it’s a recurring theme, just like the other dreams he keeps having, but while the others are just horrid, this one is painful too. Scorching.
His chest still hurts, just below his sternum, feeling almost like a stab wound - or at least what he imagines a stab wound must feel like. He's shivering - with the pain and the sweat which is starting to cool icily against his skin. And why the hell is it so cold?! On a second thought, maybe he should wake up his uncle after all.
"Did you turn off the central heating?" Xue Yang asks, and the fingers of his damaged hand feel unsettlingly numb around the phone. But he is convinced that if he doesn’t use it as much as possible it will go to shit for good.
"Paid a fortune last month," says Xue Chonghai. "And it's basically spring anyway."
"It's February," the younger points flatly, dropping back on the pillows and pulling the blankets up to his chin. It doesn’t really help.
"You've been cooped up inside for too long, that’s the problem, your blood is not flowing properly anymore. Listen, come down and help me today, I know you're not working."
Obviously, Xue Yang made a mistake. He didn't notice that it's past six in the morning and his excessively energetic uncle is already in full swing.
"You're not working, are you?"
"No... " Xue Yang curls up tighter under the blankets. "I just... I had another episode. Another stupid dream. It wasn't as bad as the last time, but-... "
"I told you - you're vegetating too much and getting all sorts of ideas. You just need to keep yourself busy, a-Yang."
The onslaught of loud noise and pungent smells of Xue Chonghai’s kitchen are really the last thing he needs though. He’s managed to sleep for another two hours or so after that, but it wasn’t restful and a dull ache still lingers behind his brow, now amplified by all the commotion around. But at least he made it down here, it's a first step. Truth be told, he stayed indoors all alone for too long, only wasting time.
"It's been pretty crowded lately and the new boy I brought in last week is painfully slow," his uncle states with a sigh. "I really haven't been lucky with the waiters lately..."
At that Xue Yang passive-aggressively pulls a sour face, but doesn't say that he hoped to wash the dishes or handle the crates, or really anything else other than dealing with other people. Instead, he shrugs on a standard blue button-down over his shirt and makes an effort to work a friendlier expression before walking out to the dining area.
"By the way, someone called about renting the spare apartment, they'll drop by later on to see it. Maybe you can help with that too," Xue Chonghai informs him cheerfully.
“Great! They must be really desperate.”
He's one to talk though. Xue Chonghai's three-storey building is technically a shithole (and having the joint on the ground floor, with all the noise and the smells from the kitchen drifting upwards at all times would be less than ideal in any circumstances) and he wouldn't have let Xue Yang move by himself into one of the three empty apartments aside from his when he turned eighteen if there was any chance to rent it out. Even so, there are two more left above and it's a miracle if anyone is actually interested in living there. Xue Yang would have moved out ages ago, as soon as he started making his own money, if not for the nightly terrors which leave him breathless and hyperventilating and his pathetic, childish need to be near someone familiar, to cling onto them.
The morning is slower, but past lunchtime his legs – unused to this toil anymore – already hurt. Also, he’s lost the habit of faking a smile he’s not feeling for extended periods of time and that just adds to the effort. Maybe this is not the best option to keep himself busy, he thinks.
Two months into the new year, Xue Yang hasn't written a single line. He's not exactly feeling pressure at this point, but rather experiencing the frustration of mind turned to soup, a mess of something unfocused and purposeless. When he works, he's completely into it - the plot he's spinning and unfolding takes him fully, he's absorbed into it day and night in an obsessive sort of detachment from reality, which is actually great because Xue Yang's real life is terribly boring (when it's not a pain in the ass for whatever reason). He doesn't really have any friends. He doesn't really go anywhere, unless he's doing research. He doesn't really do anything.
As such, now he's not really doing anything. He's signed up for five years and it's only been three so far, so he should be working. He should go out there and hunt for a new story, except... it's too early. It just feels that way -after each book is completed, he feels raw somehow, tender, and it takes time to recover from it, sometimes less, sometimes more, but lately he’s been on a roll, especially with the last two books which he worked on almost in the same time, jumping back and forth between them in mad excitement, so now he’s simply drained.
Xue Yang knows he’s not a very functional individual but when he works, he doesn’t have to be.
He's ready to tell his uncle that he'd very much like to call it a day already when another customer walks in and goes to occupy one of the window tables. Xue Yang lets him study the menu at length, waiting for the other boy to come back from his bathroom break, but just now the little shit has decided to take his fucking sweet time. As such, he has to get up from his seat behind the counter and go take the man's order himself, ignoring the painful protest of his knees and calves.
"Welcome to the Lucky Dragon! Would you like to order?"
The man looks up at him and the customer-service grin Xue Yang plastered on his face for the occasion drops brusquely into a nervous twitch of lips he can't even keep steady. If not for the full daylight and being surrounded by people and bustling, lively reality, Xue Yang would think that he strayed into yet another nightmare, one in which the dead man in white has left his straw bed and his bleak resting place and came after him. And instead of trying to snap out of it, Xue Yang thinks that he’s never, in his dreams, seen the dead man alive, moving, talking, doing anything, or without that weird blindfold tied over his eyes. He has no idea what the other’s intentions are and how to deal with him.
The stranger is very beautiful in a disturbing sort of way. His face is thin, in refined angles, his eyes gentle like a doe's and his Cupid's bow has a perfect shape, his hair falls luscious and shiny black into a long braid swept over one shoulder. But his body, lanky and bony and much too thin in the loose white shirt is decidedly not matching the otherwise sensual air his person could possess, instead giving him a weird, ascetically sterile air, something between bridal and funerary.
But then he orders the cheapest vegetable ramen noodles on the menu and a herbal tea, candidly returning the smile, and the even, soft sound of his voice makes it all very normal, very natural, very familiar and Xue Yang brusquely feels like a stupid child checking under his bed for monsters.
“Oh... uh, okay. Coming right up,” he says and turns on his heels, more awkwardly than someone on their very first day, taking their very first order. What the actual fuck.
While the cook works, he loiters nervously around the kitchen, feeling increasingly stupid and angry about the whole thing. Xue Yang is a little introverted and quietly gives off hostile vibes more often than not (especially when there's no practical reason to be charming), but he's definitely not shy. Yet now - if it weren't absolutely lame of him - he'd be tempted to ask the kid to serve the stranger's order in his place.
It's nothing, he tells himself, just a coincidence. And people have bad taste in clothing, no big deal about that. Xue Yang can't stand white and why anyone would choose to wear this color (is it even a color?) is utterly beyond him. If he were to put on a white shirt, he'd probably stay immaculate for like three seconds tops. Also, the stranger's hair would be more suited for a girl. It's too long, too black, altogether too extra. Sometimes, in the dreams, Xue Yang has waist-long hair like that too and while he thinks nothing of it in there, in reality it would be completely unmanageable and he wakes up thankful to find it again cropped close to his skull.
When Xue Yang returns to his table, the stranger is absorbed by the various traditional decorations crammed up on the shelf stretching along the wall. Among them there’s a small, red-and-gold painted statue adorned with bright crimson tassels that he doesn’t remember having seen before, not that he ever really paid attention to all the crap Xue Chonghai piled up for the atmosphere’s sake.
“Interesting that you should have this here,” the stranger says, his long fingers finding the tea cup. “Out in the open I mean.”
“... what?”
“The Rabbit God.”
Xue Yang has never heard of any rabbit god and is quite sure his uncle hasn’t either, and moreover it didn’t occur to him that some obscure deity decoration might give rise to any attention from a connoisseur. And the other’s words make him suspect that this might have been an unfortunate choice.
“I don’t know what that is.”
The man’s smile is gentle, but for some reason it tugs at his insides and makes him sick. And why the hell does it?! Has he met him before? It feels like a bad memory coming back, bringing the shadow of old pains and fears to the surface.
“A long time ago, in the Qing dynasty, a young soldier fell in love with a handsome official and was sentenced to death for confessing his longing. When his spirit traveled to the Underworld, the soldier’s crime was forgiven as one of passion and he was ordained The Rabbit God, the god of secret lovers. The god now travels through eternity, answering prayers of forbidden love.”
The statue sits there solemnly, a golden glass ball in its right hand, all of its skin is painted bright red too under the golden, ornate garment, and several red tassels of different lengths spill over and between its spread knees, while a round plastic talisman with an intricate symbol covers its crotch.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
“So, it doesn’t bring luck,” he observes flatly, for lack of better words. He’ll have to google this shit later on and if the stranger hasn’t fucked with him, he needs to tell his uncle to throw the damn thing away.
“You don’t think love is luck?”
Is the creepy stranger flirting with him? He really hopes not.
“I don’t know, sounds like it didn’t go well for that guy. Would you like anything else?”
"What happened to your finger?"
Xue Yang flinches, realizing he's forgotten to wear his glove today. He doesn't wear it when he's at home and he's been home a lot lately, enough to get used to being without it. Luckily, no other customers noticed, because he can imagine that the sight is off-putting, especially at the table. Still, he finds it rude for the other to point it out like that, all the more since he's still smiling that unnerving smile.
"It's not in your bowl, I promise," he replies with a grin of his own, definitely acid. His other fingers close protectively around the stump and he draws his hand behind his back. "Everything is 100% vegetarian."
The stranger balks a little, and starts fidgeting. "I'm sorry about that, I didn't mean-.... Do you know if Mr. Xue is around? He told me to come this afternoon about a place to rent. I'm Xiao Xingchen."
Xue Yang nods slowly and momentarily considers trolling this guy into abandoning the idea, but then thinks that the apartment itself will do the trick. Or his uncle. Or both.
Sadly, it doesn't happen and his day only goes downhill from there.
Xiao Xingchen has already brought with him a tiny bag which apparently contains all of his possessions and whatever little money he has on hand, and Xue Chonghai happily takes him upstairs, because however little the newcomer has is still better than nothing. In an attempt to prove himself friendly and accommodating, Xue Chonghai also drags his nephew along and pesters Xiao Xingchen with all sort of questions meant to distract him from the brutal reality of what he's offering. And it works too, because Xiao Xingchen is not picky, and not only because he can't afford to be at the moment.
He tells Xue Chonghai that he grew up in a very small mountain village he left not very long ago. Upon coming to the city, he met a man, moved in with him and they got married soon after. The whole thing ended when Xiao Xingchen and his husband had an ugly fallout and he found himself back on the streets. Xue Yang thinks the thing is a little confusing, since the other didn’t mention having married abroad, but he bites back the snide comment dancing on the tip of his tongue because he doesn't want to antagonize his uncle, more than he will anyway when he lets him know he's spent money on a statue of a cock-sucking god.
"He's very pretty," says Xue Chonghai afterwards, when they finally let the newcomer to his own devices, to settle in. "And I don't think they’ve heard of the minimum wages in that shitty little village of his. What do you think? I could get him to work for me."
Xue Yang wouldn't argue with that. His uncle is a shameless slave driver and as tight-fisted as they come, but he's the only family he's got. It doesn't matter anyway. The reality of this man - Xiao Xingchen - living in their building is hard to stomach as it is, for reasons he can't really explain to himself, but he's hoping to stay out of his reach as much as possible. And with the other working as a waiter his uncle won't be needing him anymore; he will just go out and actually do some work while he's at it.
Support groups are a pain in the ass though, he needs to go down a different avenue this time. He's tired of telling strangers his 'life story' – most of it made up because it's not much that he actually remembers and objectively speaking nothing about it is even that tragic either. Not something in need of therapy. He's just lost like half a finger in a car accident, for fuck's sake. Sure, there's the whole shit with the dreams and the panic attacks which come afterwards, but that's... not real.
Two days later, he hasn’t come up with any useful ideas.
He leans over the windowsill in the kitchen to have a smoke (he doesn’t often, only when he’s really, really bored) and sees his new neighbor down in the backyard, sitting cross-legged on the low bench next to the laundry ropes, looking like he’s meditating. At least, now he’s wearing a blue tee and grey tracksuit pants, and his hair is tied up in a bun at the back of his neck, so the resemblance to the dead man in his dreams is almost non-existent. Almost, because he has the same lanky, too-thin shape and the same pallor.
“Smoking is very bad for you, you know?” Xiao Xingchen points serenely, with his eyes closed.
‘Fuck you’ thinks Xue Yang, but doesn’t verbally express it, because his uncle asked him to be nice to the guy. Which is a real pity, because he is taken with a stringent need to be really unpleasant right now, even more than before. Again, he doesn’t know why, but it’s somewhat compelling.
“...yeah.” He takes another drag and blows out the smoke purposefully.
“There’s no TV here,” the other says after a minute, eyes still closed, posture unchanged. “My husband had a TV.”
Well, that’s too bad.
“Do you have any books I could borrow?”
On the spot, Xue Yang finds the question very intrusive, it instantly feels like Xiao Xingchen is inviting himself in, invading his personal space, and that irks him to no end. He's a very private person. He almost never has people over, unless it's very worth it for him in some way. He doesn't like his things touched. He doesn't share. And he is not friendly either, he can only fake it on a very superficial level.
But… maybe he could make an effort, even if right now he needs to work, to explore things on his own and for that privacy is a must. He does have books, quite the collection he has amassed during his school years and even more afterwards, when he could afford to buy them at leisure. Still, he rarely reads the same thing twice, so it wouldn’t be such a loss, even if the other forgot to return them.
And, of course, there’s his own series - all copies from first editions. He's not so crazy about the whole aesthetic of the covers and stuff, but he gave the publishing house free reign over all details he finds ultimately unimportant. Somehow, he doubts Xiao Xingchen would be into those though.
"Sure, come on up," he says eventually and tosses the only half-smoked butt out.
He hasn’t changed out of the saggy sweats and the stained t-shirt he was wearing and Xiao Xingchen throws a bit of a suspicious glance around the apartment his neighbor doesn't bother to keep in much order, but still wanders into the living curiously.
Xue Yang doesn't have much furniture, aside from a few nondescript second-hand pieces, and is not into decorations either. The space is small enough as it is and any unnecessary addition only makes it more cramped and suffocating. Maybe the other will make another remark about how his ‘husband’s’ house was much nicer, too.
“May I?” he asks instead, motioning towards the stacked shelves, and Xue Yang nods, hoping this won’t take long. Hoping with all his black little heart that this isn’t because the new tenant is lonely and needs someone close to his age to socialize with, because that would such be a pain in the ass.
“I didn’t think you were home at this hour. Your uncle said you were busy working.”
Wonderful. His uncle talked about him.
“I work at home, mostly.”
Xue Yang hovers awkwardly in the door frame of his bedroom, keeping the distance so that the height difference between them is not so evident – because yes, he does have a problem with that too - and Xiao Xingchen is not looking at him, pensively observing the backs of the books on display. And there’s a lot to look at.
“What are you working?” he asks idly.
Xue Yang tries to tell himself that it’s because the other is likely used to living in a tiny community, where everyone knows everything about everyone else, and has no idea that people in a big city are quite different. So maybe he's asking because knowing is natural, and his uncle was so fucking welcoming that he basically feels at home with the two of them. But he can’t be really interested, hopefully, because it’s not something Xue Yang wants to talk about, with him or with anyone else.
"I just... write some stuff. Nothing important."
"You write?"
Xiao Xingchen turns slightly as he says it, and gives him an open once-over. Again, quite rude, but he probably isn't aware of it. Maybe he'll make some goofs like that with the customers too and Xue Chonghai will get rid of him. And the worst is, his stare makes Xue Yang feel self-conscious, in that irritating way people effortlessly attractive tend to make everyone else feel. Not that he for one finds the other attractive, but he can tell that – objectively – he is. He does have fucking eyes.
“It’s-… no big deal. I just do minor work for a publishing house.”
Thankfully, Xiao Xingchen seems distracted enough so that he doesn’t prod further on the subject. He pulls a book out, then another, stacks them studiously in his arms, and Xue Yang thinks he’s finally going to leave when he reaches out and plucks one more from the shelf, one of them.
“Is this okay?” Xiao Xingchen asks, and he realizes he’s dug his teeth into his bottom lip a little too hard, that his tension is evident. “I’ll take good care of them, I promise.”
He shrugs. “Sure. Enjoy.”
He’s being paranoid. No one would ever make the connection between him and the books, definitely not someone as clueless as this guy. Because, let it be said, unless he goes into full gremlin mode, Xue Yang looks quite benign, if not quite entirely ingenuous.
He didn’t get to see which one of his books the other chose, but he takes comfort in the thought that whatever he got his hands on, he will be at least disgusted, if not completely horrified. Which is great, because at least he will think that Xue Yang has dubious tastes and is the kind of person he might not want to seek closeness to. At any rate, it's stupid to go out of his way just to avoid the new tenant and just because the man makes him feel uncomfortable for reasons he's not fully edified about. The rational decision is to actively ignore the guy and a good step in that direction would be to start working already.
Once he starts writing, everything else will go away. If only he would find a subject sometime soon.
"I was thinking of doing something different this time."
This is already different, because he never talked things with his editor before having at least a couple of chapters down. But Wen Ruohan is one of the few people he actually feels completely comfortable talking to and doing it feels reassuring, even in the middle of the momentary block he’s experiencing. And maybe he can get something out of it.
"Different how?" Wen Ruohan asks, and he has to admire the man for skillfully hiding whatever concern this piece of news might cause him. Editors don't like surprises.
"Well, not vastly different in subject, since it’s in the same series," Xue Yang says. "But maybe this time I could just puzzle together pieces of various different 'stories' as it were, and also make things up here and there too, but like more than usual. You know, not write anything very real for once."
The other makes a non-committal sound in reply. “You know best if it works that way or not, I don’t see why it wouldn’t.”
“Right, so I think-“
“Listen, kid, are you still worried about that thing with the police? We shook them off already, that actor we sent to impersonate you for the questioning did a good job. He told them everything they wanted to know. And they already caught everyone involved, they closed all the cases. Yes, those people read your books, but what about it? All media these days is violent but in the end it’s just entertainment and they fucking want it too, don’t they? You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Well, that sure is debatable, actually. Someone might beg to differ.
“So why did you send that guy in my place? An actor.”
The idea that he needs to be impersonated by a fucking actor to the outside world is a little unsettling, despite the fact that having his identity secret just made everything better. He’s not a showy person, he doesn’t need any spotlight. But does he need to hide? Did he say too much in those few interviews? But then again, isn’t everyone so keen on fucking authenticity in this day and age?
“You know why. It’s not because I don’t trust you to talk some crap and incriminate yourself just for the sake of it or to because you want see what happens.” says Wen Ruohan calmly, although that’s exactly why he did it. He’s a practical person and very much convinced that writers – like all artists – are anything but. He’s admitted to not understanding how creative minds work and doesn’t want to find out either, possibly via a nasty surprise.
“It’s because that guy is so completely different from you – he’s older, glamorous, greedy and played the typical author who’d hide behind a veil of crafted lies to make himself look interesting enough to sell. He made it all look about money, like everything you ever said about yourself is just a publicity hoax. I mean, anyone can tell the guy has always lived the good life of a celebrity, he didn’t ‘have a troubled past’ and shit.”
“Yeah,” Xue Yang agrees. “It makes sense. But even so, there were a little too many coincidences with the other books, so if it were to happen again-… Would they still buy it that I had nothing to do with it?”
Technically, Xue Yang understands why his editor was so keen to protect him, and also that on the other hand Wen Ruohan finds this potential teetering on the edge of risk very beneficial for his business. The murder mystery of murder mysteries – it must be so morbidly seductive.
As for the police, he can’t actually help pondering with a sort of fascination what they would do to him if they ever found out that he did send the books to those people after he wrote them. It is a little weird that no one talked, no one confessed about receiving them anonymously in the mail. But even so, he thinks that he only honored his real-life characters, gave them the closure they needed.
Can he really be accused of anything? Of instigating murder? Does he even have such a power?
If they afterwards decided to transpose it into reality, it's not his fault. And even if it is, he doesn't feel guilty. Those who died, every single one of them, fucking deserved it. The evil they caused, the pain, the suffering, the wounds which wouldn't close for years and years, it fully earned them a one-way ticket to hell.
“Okay,” says Wen Ruohan. “I’m not worried, but if you want to tone it down a little for a while, I don’t mind. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable, so whatever floats your boat.”