Chapter 58

Hearing that, Jing Miao immediately stopped crying.
He wiped his tears in a panic.
“I won’t cry.”
Listening to the news about major companies starting to donate money and supplies, he asked Xi Siyan in a trembling voice:
“Gege, can we donate money too? I think I have a lot of money.”
Xi Siyan wiped his tears and brought warm water to his lips.
“Yes. Tonight we’ll look at donation channels together and help others like Mom, okay?”
“Okay.”
He raised a hand, turned off the TV, and pressed Jing Miao’s head to his chest.
Xi Siyan had originally wanted to hide everything too.
Hiding things from Jing Miao was easy:
keep him off news and phone, and he truly could know nothing.
But that was wrong.
Xi Siyan thought that this method—believing you’re doing it for the other person’s good—might one day make Jing Miao regret deeply when he learned the truth.
Life and death, good and evil—
he should have concepts for these.
He should know them.
No one had the right to take that away.
Xi Siyan kissed him.
“My good baby.”
A week after Hongcheng’s lockdown, the situation had not improved at all.
Cities on the map turned red one by one, including the capital.
Everyone spent a quiet Spring Festival in an atmosphere soaked with fear and grief.
On New Year’s Eve, Xi Siyan took Jing Miao to the small courtyard.
Wearing masks, they played with sparklers.
Jing Miao loved fireworks.
Every year when the Xi family planned where to spend Spring Festival, the first question was always: can fireworks be set off there?
Xi Siyan once asked him why he liked fireworks so much.
With colorful bursts exploding behind him, the boy reached into Xi Siyan’s coat and hugged him.
“That’s gege.”
Xi Siyan didn’t understand.
“What?”
“The first time I saw gege, it was like fireworks. In a white world, only gege was beautiful.”
His eyes shone brighter than the fireworks overhead.
This year they could only light this small cluster of sparks.
In this suffocating climate, it was one of Jing Miao’s rare happy moments.
Xi Siyan turned and kissed the part of his face visible above the mask—his eyes.
“Baby, are you making a wish this year?”
Jing Miao said:
“This year gege can’t help me fulfill this wish. I want Mom and Dad to come home soon. I want sick people to get better soon.”
Xi Siyan sighed.
“They will, baby.”
When he said this, he truly looked pained.
“Today I got New Year messages from my students, telling me to protect myself carefully.”
Jing Miao sounded muted.
“But I’m not very happy, gege. I used to think as long as gege was here, everything would be fine. I didn’t know there were so many sad things in this world. People can be separated forever by so many things…”
In Jing Miao’s gradually peaceful, smooth life, this was the one thing he had never dared to imagine.
Ten years.
Over three thousand days and nights.
The longest they’d ever been apart was that graduation year, when Xi Siyan went south for a conference: four days.
Those numbers spun through Jing Miao’s mind.
For the first time, through a cold electronic screen, he faced death directly.
He remembered there seemed to have been a period when he kept trying to die.
He could no longer recall clearly how it felt—
but he remembered Xi Siyan’s face then with painful clarity:
exhausted, terrified, eyes blood-red, emotions collapsing.
He seemed to have given Xi Siyan a very bad stretch of time.
And that mark, left on Xi Siyan, survived through the years, rising at random moments to torment him.
Xi Siyan was afraid when Jing Miao went to heights.
He forbade him from using knives in the kitchen.
He got angry if bath time ran too long.
At night he would hold and kiss the scarred leg with tears in his eyes.
Jing Miao cried and hugged him tightly.
“I’m sorry, gege. I’m sorry!”
Xi Siyan didn’t know what he had suddenly thought of, why he was crying and apologizing.
He could only steady him first:
“Baby, this world is not always kind. Every day there are many disasters. Every day people die and separate.”
He kissed his forehead, wiped his tears.
“But every day, people are also born, fall in love, and grow through the seasons. We should cherish every day we are alive, right?”
Jing Miao kept crying, hugging him harder.
“Was I too terrible before, gege? Did I make you worry for a long, long time? Gege, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
Xi Siyan still couldn’t understand exactly what he meant and could only keep asking.
But Jing Miao couldn’t explain.
He couldn’t remember what happened back then.
He only remembered that he always wanted to die.
“I think I wanted to jump from buildings… hurt myself with knives… Gege seems… still very scared even now.”
Xi Siyan’s ears rang briefly.
In this same house, he remembered how Jing Miao had once hated life, remembered those utterly dark days.
Now what he felt was no longer fear.
It was attachment to life.
The moment he heard about the virus, he had fallen into paranoid panic.
His treasure—
fragile, pitiful, always making his heart ache and soften.
Who doesn’t think about death?
He had many times.
Jing Miao had too.
But now, looking back at each day with Jing Miao, Xi Siyan only felt:
it was wonderful that they were alive together.
He always looked forward to tomorrow:
before sleep, a soft body in his arms;
on waking, the face beside him first thing.
Xi Siyan thought:
this was a good moment to teach.
He sat Jing Miao on the hanging chair and placed the now-heavy Xiaoxiao on his knees, letting him feel the warmth of life.
Xi Siyan knelt before him.
“Baby.”
He took Jing Miao’s left hand, wedding ring on it, opened his palm, and laid it beside his own.
Their palm lines formed one continuous path.
“Human life has an end. One day we will both die.”
He looked into his eyes.
“But before that day comes, remember forever: we are on one line. If one side breaks, the other dies too.”
He straightened and kissed him through their masks.
“We must cherish life, cherish each other, and stay with each other until death.”
At midnight, the villa property management struck the New Year bell.
A few homeowners opened windows and shouted, “Happy New Year!”
It was still a small kind of romance in this country.
No matter how bad the environment, people still tried to stay hopeful.