(2/5)
On the way home, Yang Siguang remained visibly unsettled.
His mind replayed the words Xu Lu had said earlier.
Had Li Chen… really saved him?
Just thinking about it brought a heavy weight to his chest.
No matter how hard he tried to recall the early days of his freshman year, only fragmented and blurry memories emerged—faint shadows of fleeting emotions. Whether moments of happiness or sorrow, they had all faded into indistinct fragments.
For someone like him, having a poor memory made life easier to endure.
Sealing off his heart and erasing all unpleasant or troubling events had long become a survival instinct. Yet, at this moment, Yang Siguang hated that very instinct.
He couldn’t remember.
No matter how much he struggled to dredge up the events of that night when he had been forced to drink, his mind offered no clear images.
The only memory he could muster was of the noisy, chaotic private room: steam rising from hotpot mixed with the acrid stench of cigarettes and beer; young men, pretending to act mature, leaning on each other and chatting boastfully. Somewhere among them, malicious stares lingered on him, making his skin crawl as if cockroaches had scuttled over it.
And then?
Bitter liquid, fizzy with carbon dioxide, filling his mouth.
The grotesque grins of senior students leering through the haze of steam, their restless eyes rolling about.
That was where the memory ended—everything after dissolved into darkness.
At that time, he hadn’t yet fallen out with his roommates, nor had he started living back at home. He vaguely remembered waking up the next day, his body aching to the point where even moving his fingers was difficult, but his clothes were spotless. Someone had even neatly folded his jacket and placed it at the foot of his bed.
He’d always assumed it was Xu Lu who had taken care of him.
It wasn’t until today that he learned the truth: it was actually Li Chen.
The same Li Chen who seemed to despise him, who was cold to the extreme…
Had seen him at his most pitiful and helpless—forced to drink until he passed out.
Sitting in the back of the rideshare, Yang Siguang found it increasingly difficult to breathe.
“Young man? Are you alright?”
The driver’s voice brought him back to reality.
He looked up to see the driver glancing at him worriedly in the rearview mirror.
“Are you carsick? There’s a vomit bag in the back if you need it.”
The driver added cautiously, clearly on edge.
Yang Siguang composed himself for a moment before mumbling, “I’m not carsick… I just… I’ve reached my stop. Pull over up ahead, please.”
When he got out, Yang Siguang noticed his palm was damp. He opened his hand to find a deep bite mark along its edge, with blood starting to seep out.
Ah, this old habit again.
Yang Siguang belatedly realized.
No wonder the driver seemed so alarmed—it wasn’t just his pale face but this wound as well. When overwhelmed with stress, he often hurt himself unconsciously.
…
The pain spread from the bite, radiating outward.
The injured area was already starting to swell, but Yang Siguang paid it no mind. Gripping the small bottle of formalin solution in his bag, he stumbled his way home.
When he opened the door, intending to head straight to his room, his foot bumped into a brand-new pair of sneakers in the entryway.
Yang Siguang’s nerves immediately tensed. Looking up, he noticed that the door to his bedroom—carefully locked before he’d left—was now slightly ajar.
“What are you doing here—”
Rushing into the room, Yang Siguang shoved the door open and barked in a low, trembling voice at the figure inside.
A young boy in a school uniform was sitting on the floor, his hands braced on the ground.
Startled by the sudden yell, the boy screamed in fright. Turning sharply, his eyes bulged as if they might fall out of their sockets.
Yang Siguang wasn’t surprised to find that the intruder was his younger half-brother, Ding Xiaolong.
What did shock him, however, was seeing the usually cocky and defiant Ding Xiaolong looking as if he’d seen a ghost—his face as pale as plaster, trembling with fear.
“B-Bro… I just… I only wanted to look around… Mom confiscated my iPad… But, but…”
Ding Xiaolong stammered incoherently, his whole body frozen in terror.
Yang Siguang frowned deeply.
“How did you get in here?”
He had locked the door before leaving.
Though still in middle school, Ding Xiaolong was already nearly as tall as an adult and particularly burly for his age.
To maintain her marriage, Mother Yang doted on her youngest son like he was her prized possession.
In Yang Sigang’s view, Ding Xiaolong, who grew up pampered by his parents, might have grown physically tall, but his brain seemed stuck in the animal stage and hadn’t matured at all.
Unlike Yang Sigang, who had consistently excelled academically since childhood, Ding Xiaolong attending school was akin to a chimpanzee visiting the city—his grades were an utter mess.
When Ding Xiaolong’s parents looked at his pitifully bad grades, they had no other recourse but to confiscate his phone, his tablet, and dock his pocket money—their go-to three moves. Whenever they took something from Ding Xiaolong, he would immediately find ways to steal it from Yang Sigang.
Most of the time, Yang Sigang couldn’t be bothered to argue with such an idiot. But today was different; his irritation was barely contained, and his voice became unusually sharp.
“…I-I don’t know. The door, it-it opened by itself,” Ding Xiaolong stammered, his voice trembling.
As he spoke, tears began to fall.
Yang Sigang, seeing Ding Xiaolong so frightened, was momentarily stunned. Given Ding Xiaolong’s typically fearless nature, a little questioning wouldn’t have been enough to make him cry.
“Brother, y-your room—” Ding Xiaolong swallowed hard, about to continue explaining when a sudden gust of wind blew in from the window.
The rising curtain hit the pen holder on the windowsill, sending it crashing to the floor with a loud “thud.” It rolled under the bed.
The small accident startled Ding Xiaolong so much that he let out a shriek. The boy jumped to his feet, pushed past Yang Sigang, and bolted out of the house like his pants were on fire.
To say the least, Yang Sigang was shocked by Ding Xiaolong’s behavior. The impact of the collision left him stumbling, nearly falling to the ground.
In a daze, he felt something cold and icy support him from behind, steadying him. He turned abruptly, only to find himself leaning against the cold door handle.
His pounding heart gradually calmed down.
What just happened… What kind of madness was Ding Xiaolong up to?
Yang Sigang stared in confusion at the direction where Ding Xiaolong had fled but couldn’t make sense of it. Shaking his head, he walked over to close the door again. Returning to his room, he carefully checked his belongings.
Nothing was missing.
After all, he had long gotten used to not keeping any valuables in his room. But what exactly had terrified Ding Xiaolong?
Suddenly, his heart skipped a beat.
He rushed to the drawer, pulled aside some books he had strategically placed as a cover, and reached into the deepest part of the drawer.
His fingertips immediately touched the smooth surface of a glass jar.
The eyeball remained safely submerged at the bottom of the water. When Yang Sigang took it out, it trembled slightly at the bottom of the glass, following the tremor of his hand.
The eyeball was still in place.
The books placed in front were also in the correct order.
So, theoretically, it shouldn’t have been this that scared Ding Xiaolong.
Thinking of this, Yang Sigang finally let out a normal breath.
“Sorry…” he murmured to the eyeball in the jar.
Even though he didn’t know why he felt compelled to say it.
“I came back late.”
As he spoke, Yang Sigang slowly sat down. Calming himself, he reached out, dipping his pale fingertips into the slightly foul-smelling, warm liquid, and carefully retrieved the eyeball.
He held his breath, staring at the eyeball for a long time.
Compared to the first time he saw it, the surface of the eyeball now seemed slightly sticky.
Its texture had become softer too.
Perhaps because his body was cold and the summer room temperature was too high, even though he knew it was just an illusion, Yang Sigang still felt that Li Chen’s eyeball seemed to retain a trace of warmth from the living.
An odd, sour feeling surged to his nose. He blinked, wondering why he suddenly felt like crying.
“It’s okay now.”
“It’s all okay now.”
He muttered to himself before placing Li Chen’s eyeball into a new sealed glass jar.
He filled the jar with formalin.
The eyeball floated up and down in the solution before finally settling at the bottom of the jar again.
Yang Sigang carefully tightened the jar lid and, after a moment, smiled faintly at the eyeball.
“There. Now you won’t rot.”
The golden-brown iris gazed at him gently.
The room began to fill with the pungent smell of formalin, yet faintly, Yang Sigang could still detect the unique stench of a corpse.
—
This wasn’t supposed to be Li Chen’s smell.
Yang Sigang thought.
He couldn’t recall when he fell asleep.
His dream was filled with an unpleasant stench of alcohol… and a faint, familiar woody scent.
Under the heat of a man’s body, that aroma reminded him of ash and tobacco. It was rich and intoxicatingly pleasant.
He couldn’t help but bury his face deeper into that person’s embrace, like a dazed little animal, greedily and instinctively absorbing the man’s scent.
“Mm—”
A low, muffled groan sounded by his ear.
This was followed by a spasm-like shiver.
Yang Sigang could feel his body tightly constrained by a pair of strong, muscular arms. The man’s strength was overwhelming, bordering on painful. If it were an ordinary person, they might instinctively struggle against the discomfort.
But Yang Sigang was different.
He had long learned to derive pleasure from excessive restraint.
And so, in this moment, he whimpered softly, continually yearning for more intense punishment and bondage. It was as if he had grown accustomed to extracting the sweetest rewards from this man.
Beside his ear, the breathing grew increasingly heavy.
[Sisi…]
[My Sisi…]
[Those people have no idea what kind of person you are. They don’t understand you… So why bother mingling with that swarm of cockroaches…]
It felt like someone had bitten his ear. Snow-white, even teeth pressed against the flushed, burning curve, leaving faint teeth marks behind.
His tightly shut eyelids were pried open, bit by bit, by a damp tongue. Amid the tears that poured out instinctively, his eyeballs were meticulously, earnestly licked.
[Why… are you looking at others?]
[Looking at them will only dirty your gaze.]
[But it’s okay. I’ll make you clean again, Sisi…]
A hoarse whisper emerged amidst the scorching breaths.
Author’s Note:
After thinking about it, I believe Li Chen used Penhaligon’s Lord George as his cologne when he was alive (==).
I personally find it quite unpleasant, but somehow, it suits someone as dark as Li Chen…
Also, in the outline, Si Guang actually drank all the water used to soak the eyeball earlier.
I felt a bit nauseated writing it, so I quietly deleted that part…
In the last story arc, the seme and uke seemed to have fallen in love independently of the author’s intent.
But in this arc, the two have spiraled into infinite darkness and twisted pathology, completely beyond control…
