At 4:30 PM on October 11th, the exact time Zhou Zefeng and Lu Zhao had agreed to meet, Zhou Zefeng was setting foot on a path leading in the completely opposite direction.
In the afternoon, just as Zhou Zefeng had finished packing up and was preparing to head out, he received a WeChat message from Ms. Li.
[Get your ass home right this instant]
Of course, it was impossible for Ms. Li to have returned to the living world; it was glaringly obvious who had actually sent this message. Yet this physical manifestation of her account did not touch Zhou Zefeng or give him the comforting illusion that “Mom has briefly come back to life.” On the contrary, it brought nothing but endless, consuming rage.
Zhou Zefeng finally acted obediently for once, returning to the home he hadn’t stepped foot in for a very long time.
Zhou Ruixuan owned many properties, but his absolute favorite was still his gaudy, nouveau-riche style grand villa nestled in the mountains on the outskirts of G City. Not wanting to spend an exorbitant amount on a taxi, Zhou Zefeng transferred between numerous bus and subway stations to get there. The moment he stepped through the main gates, a suffocating aura of decay washed over him, provoking a visceral, physical disgust.
This place had once been lush with thick foliage and vibrant green grass, all born from Ms. Li’s meticulous care. Now that she was gone and given that Zhou Ruixuan was both lazy and a cheapskate who refused to hire anyone to maintain the grounds after his wife’s passing, it had fallen into utter ruin. Passing by the flowerbed and lawn where he used to frolic and play as a child, Zhou Zefeng felt a profound sense of sorrow.
Zhou Ruixuan was sitting right there in the main hall. In his youth, he had been handsome and imposing, and even in his old age, one could faintly catch a glimpse of his former glory. However, his hunched spine and streaks of white hair exposed the undeniable fact that his best years were behind him. Looking at him, Zhou Zefeng only wanted to lament indulgence really ruins a man.
“What right do you have to use my mom’s phone?” Zhou Zefeng demanded, cutting straight to the chase.
Zhou Ruixuan glared at him with cold eyes; though they were biologically father and son, they looked like bitter enemies crossing paths. Zhou Ruixuan’s tone was heavily restrained as if suppressing an explosive fury. “Your mother’s old phone broke a few days ago, and it was just fixed today. The moment I turned it on, I saw it; is everything you said in there true?”
“What the hell does it have to do with you?”
“What did you say?” Zhou Ruixuan slammed his hand on the table and surged to his feet, staring directly into Zhou Zefeng’s eyes. “Is that how you speak to your father?!”
When facing his son Zhou Zefeng, Zhou Ruixuan had always suppressed his anger and harsh criticisms out of a deep sense of guilt, doing his best to accommodate whatever he could. It was only when Zhou Zefeng stubbornly insisted on pursuing sports that the father and son truly fell out. Yet even so, Zhou Ruixuan had never genuinely lost his temper until now.
Zhou Zefeng let out a disdainful, cold chuckle. “Just spit it out. What grand lecture are you trying to give me?”
“I am asking you if it’s true that you like men.”
“It’s true. Aren’t you the same?”
Hearing this, Zhou Ruixuan suffered a massive blow. As if struck by a bolt from the blue, he collapsed back into his seat, completely speechless.
Zhou Ruixuan began to question whether sexuality could be inherited. The single wrong choice he had made in his life had brought him endless retribution; heaven’s punishment had befallen his wife, then his greatest love, and now, even his only son was suffering the consequences.
Could there really be divine justice and inescapable retribution in this world? Then why hadn’t he himself been punished?
Zhou Ruixuan wanted to weep but had no tears. However, his mountain-like patriarchal dignity wouldn’t allow him to show even a shred of weakness. Forcing himself to rally his spirits and organize his words, he assumed the posture of someone who had been through it all and said, “Do you even know what love is? In reality, this is nothing more than an illusion and a temporary sense of novelty. The nature of your university is also quite specific, surrounded almost entirely by men. It’s not unusual to develop this kind of misconception…”
“You’re asking me what love is?” Zhou Zefeng let out a mocking laugh. “Then do you love Feng Xiao? If you love him, why did you still marry my mom?”
Zhou Ruixuan was rendered speechless. After a moment, he rallied his forces once more.
“Are you with him yet? If you are, break up immediately!” After roaring this sentence, Zhou Ruixuan stood up and paced back and forth while muttering to himself as if in a daze, “You cannot follow in my footsteps. I have already made a catastrophic mistake. My son cannot…”
“We aren’t together. It’s unrequited love on my part,” Zhou Zefeng took a deep breath, his tone tightly suppressed. “And why would I ever follow in your footsteps? I won’t be like you, finding an innocent girl to marry.” Speaking up to this point, Zhou Zefeng stared at Zhou Ruixuan with a gaze bordering on hatred; a gaze that resembled poison needles, piercing his father until he was riddled with holes.
Unable to face Zhou Zefeng’s gaze, Zhou Ruixuan lowered his head in wretched guilt, yet his attitude remained unyielding, “You’re not getting married? You make it sound so simple. Are you going to marry a man? I won’t allow our Zhou family’s ancestral line to end with you! I only have you as my son. Do you have no shame before our ancestors…”
Zhou Zefeng suddenly burst out laughing. As he laughed, tears unconsciously spilled from the corners of his eyes.
He shook his head. “To think that my mom’s entire life was ruined and sacrificed just for you to carry on the family name.” Pausing for a moment, he found it even more ridiculous and continued, “You already like men and have such progressive thoughts, so stop clinging to these feudal remnants. Even the ancestors would shake their heads if they knew.”
The moment Ms. Li was mentioned, Zhou Ruixuan fell silent. He muttered haltingly, “It was my fault to begin with, I failed your mother, but these are two separate matters. You have no idea how difficult the path of homosexuality is. Have you thought about how other people will look at you? Have you thought about the consequences of having no one to care for you and see you off when you grow old?”
“Furthermore,” Zhou Ruixuan grew aggressive as if he had finally found the right argument, “you aren’t even together with that Lu guy yet. Are you certain he even likes you? If he doesn’t, aren’t you just putting on a one-man show here? You’re already this old, don’t be so childish, Zhou Zefeng. Listen to me and cut it off early. Find some time the other day to meet up with Old Chen’s daughter. She just came back from the UK, so you two should have common ground to talk about.”
Zhou Ruixuan was still prattling on with earnest and well-meaning advice, but Zhou Zefeng had already fallen into deep thought.
He had suddenly come out on his end, yet what Lu Zhao actually thought was something Zhou Zefeng knew absolutely nothing about. In fact, the original plan for this afternoon was for Lu Zhao to meet up with a completely random, unfamiliar man. What the hell did any of this have to do with him, Zhou Zefeng?
“Enough, stop talking,” Zhou Zefeng cut off Zhou Ruixuan’s endless nagging. “This is just how I am. You should have gotten used to it already after all these years. If you’re afraid that I’ll be with a man and won’t marry or have kids, then kick me out of the family genealogy. I won’t take the surname Zhou nor will I disgrace your Zhou family. Will that do?”
Zhou Zefeng’s words carried an undeniable weight. He turned to leave right after speaking, and just as Zhou Ruixuan was about to break into a furious torrent of abuse, Zhou Zefeng suddenly turned back and added one last sentence. His sinister expression sent a sudden chill down Zhou Ruixuan’s spine, despite it being broad daylight.
“If you dare to try your old tricks again and have a second child, I guarantee your scandal will appear on the front page of every newspaper. Don’t think I don’t know what your company has been up to all these years.”
With that, Zhou Zefeng walked away with swagger.
“Don’t you dare come back if you have the guts!”
After roaring this last sentence, Zhou Ruixuan watched his son’s retreating figure with a single turbid tear tracing the wrinkles at the corner of his eye and falling onto his hand.
Zhou Ruixuan knew he had done wrong and that it was already beyond redemption, but back then, he felt he had no choice at all.
In his youth, he had been forced into marriage by his parents, breaking up with his boyfriend Feng Xiao, and was introduced to Li Yao through his mother and father. Li Yao was a young lady from a wealthy family, yet after marriage, she was willing to step into the kitchen and cook for Zhou Ruixuan. Zhou Ruixuan would also return home the moment he got off work, never going out to indulge in a life of debauchery. Later, after they had Zhou Zefeng, he threw his entire heart into the family even more.
The three of them had a very warm and happy time together. Raised in the warmth of a harmonious family, Zhou Zefeng had possessed an exceptionally good temperament since childhood, always taking pride in having such wonderful parents.
That was until Feng Xiao got back in touch with Zhou Ruixuan. One thing led to another, and they began dating again, which gradually turned into a weekly clandestine affair. Zhou Ruixuan believed he had hidden it perfectly; from beginning to end, this relationship developed quietly in the dark, right up until Feng Xiao fell ill and passed away.
Only then did Zhou Ruixuan find out that when Feng Xiao contacted him again, it was because he wanted to spend the final stretch of his life with him.
Feng Xiao didn’t have much family. On the day Zhou Ruixuan finished arranging his funeral affairs, a torrential downpour was raging. He pushed through the rain to get home, and Li Yao stepped forward to greet him. Seeing Zhou Ruixuan completely soaked, she quickly grabbed a towel to dry his face, asking him why his eyes were so red.
Zhou Ruixuan held Li Yao in a tight embrace, his tears blending covertly into the rainwater on his face.
He explained that it was because the wind was too strong, making his eyes sting.
Li Yao merely said, “Then let me get some hot water to apply a compress for you.”
Zhou Ruixuan had always believed Li Yao knew nothing about the matter. Even after Li Yao was diagnosed with cancer, and throughout the period until her passing, despite Zhou Zefeng and Zhou Ruixuan caring for her devotedly, her physical and emotional condition continued to deteriorate with each passing day. The only thing that remained constant was the gentleness that never faded from her until the very end.
When Li Yao closed her eyes and the electrocardiogram turned into a flat line, a dull ache pierced Zhou Ruixuan’s heart. He felt that the soft light that had always shone upon him throughout his life had suddenly and cruelly been extinguished.
From the moment Li Yao left, Zhou Zefeng became like a completely different person toward Zhou Ruixuan. He stopped calling him father and applied for boarding at school to avoid living at home. Zhou Ruixuan faintly sensed that Zhou Zefeng had found out about something, but he himself didn’t dare to poke through that layer of paper window either.
The first time the conflict between the father and son exploded was because Zhou Zefeng discovered the letter Li Yao had left for him.
The letter spanned several pages, full of continuous care and instructions, carrying a deep reluctance to leave the world and her son; yet it didn’t mention Zhou Ruixuan by a single character. Only then did Zhou Zefeng realize that the secrets he and his “good father” thought they had hidden so securely were actually things his mother had known all along.
Zhou Ruixuan had snatched that letter and read it over and over again to confirm that he hadn’t been mentioned by Li Yao by even a single word.
Zhou Zefeng and Zhou Ruixuan had a massive fight. That precarious layer of paper window was finally torn open ruthlessly, and all the filthy matters were dragged out into the daylight. Only then did Zhou Ruixuan find out that when his son was using his father’s phone to receive verification codes, he had accidentally seen the chat logs between Zhou Ruixuan and Feng Xiao that Zhou Ruixuan couldn’t bear to delete.
Zhou Zefeng had wanted to tell Li Yao, but by then, Li Yao had already been diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer. A bad mood is the absolute worst thing for that disease, so Zhou Zefeng kept enduring it and didn’t speak up by hoping that his mother could spend the final stretch of her life in happiness.
As it turned out, Li Yao had known the truth for a long time, perhaps for far longer than anyone realized. Otherwise, given her personality, it would have been impossible for her to say absolutely nothing about her own husband.
From then on, whenever Zhou Zefeng thought about what might have caused Li Yao’s breast cancer, a sharp pain would pierce his heart.
From that moment on, the father and son turned into bitter enemies. Zhou Zefeng had always been rebellious by nature. Ignoring every bit of Zhou Ruixuan’s advice to study business management, he stubbornly chose to pursue the path of a student-athlete instead. Later, after he was injured, he became even more unwilling to return home to recover, choosing instead to fly abroad on his own. Even when Zhou Ruixuan canceled his credit cards and cut off his living expenses, Zhou Zefeng never once went back home.
Countless times, Zhou Ruixuan would wake from his dreams in the middle of the night, only to find himself reliving the day he had cremated Feng Xiao and returned home through the pouring rain. It was his own tears that had blurred his eyes, making him fail to see the countless layers of despair and agony hidden beneath Li Yao’s fluid gentleness; all while she bore it alone until it caused internal damage, just so their son wouldn’t have to live in a broken home.
Zhou Ruixuan had done many wrong things in his life and failed three people. No matter how heaven punished him, it wouldn’t be uncalled for. He only hoped that the dead were at peace, and that the living wouldn’t have to suffer the same sins as he did.
“Li Yao, I don’t beg for your forgiveness, but please tell me what I should do.”
Zhou Ruixuan lit a cigarette while staring blankly at the distant green mountains. It felt like more than half a lifetime had passed, yet it also seemed like just the blink of an eye.
/
The time Zhou Zefeng and Lu Zhao had agreed on was Saturday afternoon, but Lu Zhao waited at home all day and didn’t hear the doorbell ring as scheduled.
Lu Zhao’s weekends were exceptionally long and drawn out. He didn’t have many recreational activities and had long ceased to enjoy noisy bars. Aside from going to the gym, he just stayed cooped up at home writing research papers. Aside from the occasional hookup, his life could be described as dull and uninteresting.
Lu Zhao wanted to maintain the same attitude toward Zhou Zefeng as he would toward any ordinary Sub or normal friend. Following his usual weekend routine, he got up to make breakfast, drank his coffee, and wrote his research papers. The only difference was that he canceled his planned trip to the gym. He started reading at two in the afternoon and sat in the living room all the way until eight in the evening.
He had even carefully rehearsed what he would say when he saw Zhou Zefeng, determined to maintain his composure.
Sitting alone in the darkness of Apartment 1205, Lu Zhao gazed out through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the beautiful river scenery and the dazzling stream of traffic below, his eyes utterly devoid of warmth.
Was he disappointed? Yes, but not overwhelmingly so. What did it matter anyway?
As usual, Lu Zhao got to his feet with Xuebing’s leash in hand, preparing to take him downstairs for a walk.
The moment he opened the door, Lu Zhao was startled.
Zhou Zefeng was sitting right outside his door with his tall and large frame blocking the doorway entirely; by the looks of it, he had already been sitting there for quite a while. Seeing the door open, Zhou Zefeng slowly raised his head, his red, tear-rimmed eyes locking directly with Lu Zhao’s gaze.
With Zhou Zefeng looking so thoroughly aggrieved, anyone who didn’t know better would think Lu Zhao had kicked him out and refused to let him inside.
“Why are you here?” Lu Zhao cleared his throat, asking despite already knowing the answer.
Zhou Zefeng didn’t get up from the floor. His aggrieved expression shifted into a fierce scowl; he thought he looked menacing, but in reality, he looked exactly like a large snarling dog baring its teeth.
“Then where were you planning to go? To see a man?” Zhou Zefeng let out a cold laugh, maxing out his sarcasm.
Lu Zhao held back a smile and began spouting nonsense, “Yeah. I originally had an appointment with someone, but he never showed up, so I was thinking of going out to look for him myself.”
“He’s not coming, so save your breath.” Zhou Zefeng wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes, glaring askance at Lu Zhao. “Are you really that desperate for a man?”
Lu Zhao asked with a touch of feigned distress, “Why isn’t he coming?”
“Why do there have to be so many whys?” Zhou Zefeng said irritably. He didn’t know why he had shown up here, much less why he was sitting on the floor having an awkward conversation with Lu Zhao, but for some inexplicable reason, he just didn’t want to leave. “Anyway, he’s not coming. He’s angry.”
“Why is he angry?”
Lu Zhao squatted down, looking into Zhou Zefeng’s eyes as he asked with utter sincerity.
No matter how foolish Zhou Zefeng was, he finally sensed that Lu Zhao must have figured it out. He suddenly felt unbearably foolish; ever since meeting Lu Zhao, he had been firmly held in the other man’s grasp, toyed with at will, his thoughts and actions guided by him, driving him to do all kinds of absurd things.
He lowered his head wretchedly, feeling overwhelmed by shame.
After all, isn’t there a cliche saying that goes like this? The one who falls in love first loses. Zhou Zefeng was the one who had lost entirely and utterly.
Seeing that Zhou Zefeng didn’t answer, Lu Zhao didn’t get annoyed either. He leaned closer to Zhou Zefeng and asked in a low voice, “He’s angry. What should be done about it?”
Zhou Zefeng kept his head down and remained silent. He only felt that Lu Zhao was still making fun of him, and the urge to flee the scene even began to well up inside him.
“If I give him a kiss, could he stop being angry?”
Hearing this, Zhou Zefeng raised his head in utter astonishment, just in time to meet Lu Zhao’s approaching lips.
They were warm, moist, and soft.
Incredibly brilliant, and deafeningly loud.
One of a kind in the entire world.
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