Chapter 32

“Baby’s full?”
“Mm.” Jing Miao nodded.
Xi Siyan tipped his chin. “If you don’t want to sit here, go play over there for a while.”
“I want to stay with gege.”
With one hand free, Xi Siyan tapped his nose using the back of clean fingers. “Okay.”
After dinner, some watched the Spring Festival Gala, some kept playing cards, and the younger group proposed fireworks.
Wang Song rejected them with a stern face: “No one is setting off fireworks tonight.”
“What?! Why?!”
“Because your Brother Xi will set off fireworks. Don’t steal his spotlight.”
So everyone except Jing Miao knew what Xi Siyan planned tonight.
That “running naked in public” feeling gave Xi Siyan a headache. He repeatedly warned everyone not to disturb them.
He took Jing Miao for a walk by the sea. The night sky was full of stars, the sea breeze gentle, a brightly lit house behind them and a vast night ocean ahead.
After two laps, Xi Siyan sat him down on sand a little away from shore. Jing Miao wanted to sit closer to the sea; Xi Siyan said they could only sit here.
Jing Miao pouted. “Bad gege.”
Xi Siyan kissed him until he behaved, then held him while they watched the stars and listened to the waves.
After a long quiet embrace, Xi Siyan asked,
“Baby, how old are you now?”
“Nineteen,” Jing Miao answered calmly.
Xi Siyan shook his head. “Not the age I told you to use.”
“Other than what you tell me, I don’t know how old I am,” Jing Miao said seriously.
Age was like an unsolvable math problem for Jing Miao. Sometimes people said he was twenty-two, sometimes fourteen. Xi Siyan told him if others asked, he should say nineteen.
It didn’t matter anyway. None of that mattered.
His expression was still childlike—he pouted, his eyes went watery.
“We’re already married, baby. You know that, right?”
Jing Miao’s eyes lit up. “I know my age now, gege! I’m twenty-two!”
Xi Siyan blinked. “What?”
“TV says twenty-two is legal marriage age. Gege and I can get married, so I must be twenty-two!”
Xi Siyan laughed. It was a perfectly closed logic loop, accidentally right.
“Do you want to know about your past, Miaomiao?” Xi Siyan asked.
Jing Miao thought, then shook his head. “Not really.”
“Why?”
“Were we not together all the time back then, like now?”
“Mm.”
Jing Miao’s eyes reddened again. “Then I don’t want to know. I only want to know the things after I was with you.”
Seeing him on the verge of tears, Xi Siyan immediately kissed and coaxed him.
“Good baby, don’t be sad. Look.”
He opened his phone and pulled up photos—shots of Jing Miao’s old diary.
“Look, this was written by the old Miaomiao. Even when we weren’t together, your world was still full of me.”
Jing Miao hesitated for a long time before reading.
They were ordinary checklists and schedules, with barely any explicit mention of Xi Siyan’s name—yet Jing Miao could still sense something.
“This was written by eighteen-year-old Miaomiao,” Xi Siyan said.
Without noticing, Jing Miao’s eyes became wet.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Xi Siyan hugged him and kissed the corner of his eye.
Jing Miao suddenly smiled. “I just feel… the old me really seemed to like gege a lot.”
Xi Siyan nodded. “Mm. Liked me very, very, very much.”
He repeated those four “very likes” from Jing Miao’s note.
“Then does gege like me?” Jing Miao asked.
Xi Siyan said softly, “I’m sorry, baby. Back then I didn’t know you.”
Tears spilled down Jing Miao’s face. He bit his lip, trying not to cry out loud.
Xi Siyan quickly soothed him:
“Even though I didn’t like you back then, since we got together, gege has loved you every single day.”
“Today I love you more than yesterday. Tomorrow I’ll love you more than today. I’ll make it up to you.”
Jing Miao threw himself into Xi Siyan’s arms and cried in grief.
Xi Siyan kissed the crown of his head and said quietly,
“Do you know, Miaomiao? I’ve always been afraid that once you grew up, you’d leave me, stop loving me. So sometimes I go crazy and do too many things that are too much.”
Hearing this, Jing Miao cried even harder and panicked into pledges:
“I love you. I really love you. I’ll love you all my life.”
Jing Miao had grown used to crying. No matter how old he was, facing Xi Siyan, he always had endless grievances.
“I won’t leave you. I’ll always love you. Even one day if you stop loving me, I’ll still love you.”
“Gege…” he sobbed, tears pouring. “Gege doesn’t know how much I love you.”
Loving you is more important than my own life.
Xi Siyan felt full to the brim, wiping his tears nonstop.
“Gege knows now. You won’t leave me anymore.”
“You’ve grown up now, right, Miaomiao?”
Jing Miao paused, then said softly, “Seems like it.”
“You’re an adult. You’ve seen the world. You’ve seen many people. And you still want to stay by my side, right?”
Jing Miao shook his head.
“No. Not ‘still want.’ It’s ‘always wanted.’ Miaomiao never had any other choice. Nothing is more important than gege.”
Xi Siyan was so moved he almost cried. “Mm. Yes. Gege misspoke.”
His hand began to tremble.
“Baby, when you see fireworks this year, what wish do you want to make?”
Jing Miao answered between sob-hiccups, “Miaomiao told gege not to be angry.”
Xi Siyan kissed him. “Not angry. I will never be angry at you. I love you.”
Jing Miao whispered:
“I want gege to always love me, love me most, never leave me, miss me every second the way I miss you, not treat me worse because I grow up, and tell me… three times a day that you love me.”
Thirty times would be better.
But he didn’t dare say it.
As soon as he finished, a whistling burst cut the air—countless fireworks exploded over the beach and sea.
Then a circle of ground fireworks lit up around them too.
Jing Miao startled. Xi Siyan stroked his back.
“Don’t be scared, baby. Look—so beautiful.”