At nine o’clock, Sang You arrived at the private room on time.
The pretty Young Master Sang had picked through his wardrobe, dressing carefully to see the person he liked.
But when he saw Gong Ze, he suppressed his joy, pouted, and sat down beside Gong Ze.
He looked at Gong Ze coldly and said: “You’re finally going to explain the Feng Yuan matter to me? What exactly is going on between you and him?”
And Gong Ze looked at Sang You’s familiar face and fell silent for a moment.
Sang You felt a little nervous under his gaze.
“What’s wrong?” He subconsciously touched his own face. “Why are you looking at me like that? So strange…”
Hearing this, Gong Ze smiled slightly. “What kind of look?”
“Just,” Sang You furrowed his slender brows, “nostalgic and complicated. I can’t describe it. You looking at me like this makes my chest feel weird.” A pricking, piercing pain.
Sang You was inexplicably afraid.
But he did not know why he was afraid. Gong Ze was the person he liked, not a monster.
“Don’t think about it.” Gong Ze poured him a cup of tea and placed it in front of him. The golden eyeball on the feather in his pocket moved. Gong Ze sensed it. He restrained his emotions and spoke calmly, slowly saying to Sang You: “I’ll tell you everything.”
His fingers gripped the feather in his pocket.
As the protruding, mysterious golden eyeball spun rapidly, on the other side Sang You’s head actually began to ache faintly.
That unease expanded.
“But before that, can you answer one question for me?” Gong Ze said quietly.
“What?” Sang You asked blankly.
“Sang You,” the person looking at him had sorrow hidden in his gaze. Sang You heard Gong Ze say: “Do you still remember how you died?”
Sang You: “…”
Wh-what?
Sang You was stunned by the question.
He looked at the person with pitch-black, dim pupils and little expression. Hearing this, his heart uncontrollably pounded faster and faster. But Sang You clearly knew it was not liking, but… fear.
Why fear?
A voice quietly asked himself. Sweat overflowed from Sang You’s forehead. Clearly on the way here he had been secretly delighted, fantasizing this was a date between him and Gong Ze. His mind had surfaced the image of the youth sitting in the back row of the classroom, clean and distant.
He liked Gong Ze.
Liked Gong Ze’s mysteriousness, liked how Gong Ze’s pupils turned brown in sunlight, how his eyelashes turned golden, liked how his long-jointed fingers toyed with the answer-sheet pencil.
Liked the sense of distance between Gong Ze and him.
But now his sixth sense was screaming madly, warning him to hurry and escape from Gong Ze’s side. Sang You’s pupils slightly dilated. Staring at Gong Ze’s lips opening and closing as he spoke calmly, he seemed to see a lot of blood flowing out from inside.
Blood…?
Sang You trembled.
He hugged his own arms and looked again blankly, but there was only Gong Ze’s red tongue tip flashing past as his lips opened. There was no blood.
Although Gong Ze was speaking, Sang You, breaking out in cold sweat, could not control himself from zoning out.
Was the air around them too hot?
It was almost like fire burning…
His fingers, cold as ice, subconsciously grabbed at his own neck. There was no wound there, but Sang You felt as if his neck had been sliced by something slender and metallic. The tiny sound of skin and flesh being cut open, like cloth tearing, echoed by his ear.
Sang You sniffled.
Oxygen seemed to go against him, unable to enter his lungs no matter what, suffocating him.
He even seemed to smell the choking scent of burning wood.
Sang You stumbled and propped himself up on the table to stand. “Something’s wrong… Gong Ze, I-I feel something’s wrong…” He trembled yet was unbearably hot. While murmuring in fear, tears spilled out from panic as he looked to Gong Ze for help. “I can’t breathe. What’s happening… Gong Ze, take me, take me out…”
“It’s too hot, it’s too hot here… I can’t catch my breath, my throat hurts so much…”
What was going on? Too terrifying. Was it asthma?! I actually have this disease too? Or some other acute illness? What should I do?? A doctor… right, I need a doctor…
Sang You bent over, both hands clutching his neck. In extreme fear, his nails nearly dug through the skin on his throat.
“Gong…” Ze.
“Help me…” Call a doctor.
Bang.
Suddenly he was tightly hugged. Another hand pressed over the back of his hand, where veins bulged, and pulled his hand away from clawing at his throat.
The trembling Sang You was enclosed against Gong Ze’s chest. The moment faint body warmth seeped in, Sang You was stunned.
Dazedly he saw a burning house. On a chair behind an office desk, a man held him, both burning to ash in the flames.
Just seeing it, Sang You could no longer control endless grief. Tears fell like broken pearls from his dazed face.
“…”
A flood of memory fragments surged up from the sea of memory.
Sang You remembered.
That was them… him and Gong Ze…
·
Sang You remembering past memories was probably the feather’s effect. When the eyeball on the feather began to turn, changes occurred in Sang You.
Gong Ze tightly held the familiar cat-like, slightly smaller body in his arms, smelling the same scent. His trembling eyelashes lowered, covering all fragility and pain, hiding the apology inside.
He clearly sensed Sang You in his arms suffocating until his face and neck flushed red, fingers clawing at his throat… At the end of their story, Gong Ze had used a paper knife to cut Sang You’s throat. He could not leave the mentally collapsed Sang You alone in the world.
That was Sang You’s wish.
He had considered the future for him, but Sang You could not accept being the only one left in the world, carrying all the truth and living on.
“Qin Chuan died… Yan Liben died… Uncle Qin, Uncle Yan… everyone died…”
Including us.
Sang You raised his face, empty pretty eyes looking at Gong Ze. “Have you never loved me? Have you never thought of giving up revenge for me, never thought of hiding everything and living with me? Why, Gong Ze, why did you have to say it!!”
“Why was my ending like this…”
“What are you doing? I don’t want to disappear! I won’t accept it!”
Sang You cried and shouted. His pupils dyed with resentful blood-red as he stared at Gong Ze. The person who had been steady in Gong Ze’s arms began struggling, desperately trying to burrow out. The teacup on the table was knocked over.
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