Chapter 179 - My Costar Asks Me To Marry Him

Yao Shen and Xin Hulei spend the rest of their day in domestic bliss. Maybe it's due to the recent threat on their life, but Yao Shen thinks there's nothing he'd rather be doing than cleaning the apartment while Xin Hulei cooks them dinner.

It's so easy to take the simple things in life for granted. Free time to spend with the people you love is the greatest privilege of all.

The news of Xin Hulei's impending retirement make Yao Shen think about his own long-term plans.

He has just dipped his fingers into acting, Yan Shuyi is his first major acting role, and all things considered, 'Crimson Promise' does kind of reduce him to Xie Huan's love interest, and little else. 

Yao Shen wants to take on meatier roles, the kind of roles people will remember him for in the future. The kind of roles Xin Hulei has always had the luck to play.

So he's not ready to join Xin Hulei in retirement just yet -- but he also wants to look over the Underworld too. That's a promise he made himself, that he would never let things get as bad as they were.

Despite his terrible temper, he knows he can trust Xie Bian to run everything, and Fan Wujiu to do as Xie Bian tells him.

Still, there's the whole immortality of it all to consider.

"What are you going to do, once you retire?" Yao Shen asks Xin Hulei, over dinner on the safe.

Xin Hulei smiles, and it softens his whole face. He has been doing that more today, and it never stops leaving Yao Shen a little winded. 

"I was thinking you would let me hang out with you."

"'Hang out?'" He raises one eyebrow. "You thought that, uh? That's all you want? To hang out with me?"

Xin Hulei hums. "Maybe there's other things we can do too."

"Yeah? Like what," Yao Shen asks, enjoying Xin Hulei's pleased little smirk.

"Maybe we could make 'hanging out' official."

A beat. Yao Shen's blood starts pumping loudly inside his ears. Perhaps it's just his own wishful thinking, but he could have sworn that sounded like...

"Are you...proposing?"

"No," Xin Hulei says, and sets down his bowl on the table in front of the sofa.

Yao Shen tries not to let his disappointment show. "Oh."

He's looking down at his hands, so he doesn't see the moment Xin Hulei takes out a red bookmark from his back pocket. 

Yao Shen almost jumps out of his skin when Xin Hulei places the bookmark over his hands, its cool touch startling him.

"I bought this during our first date," Xin Hulei says, his voice low and warm, like a roaring fire on a cold winter day.

Yao Shen turns the bookmark around in his fingers. It's decorated with auspicious sayings for marital bliss, along with some tacky traditional wedding decorations. It makes Yao Shen smile.

'Their first date' could barely have been called that...but...trust Xin Hulei to remember the occasion nonetheless.

"I was drawn to that one, I can't say why."

Yao Shen holds up the bookmark in front of his face. "Could it have been because of its incredible good taste, and of what an excellent example of graphic design it is?"

Xin Hulei's smirk widens. "Almost certainly." Despite his glib words, it's obvious this matters to him. "Anyway, I just wanted to buy it, so I did. But I didn't give it to you, despite how much it reminded me of you."

"A wedding themed bookmark reminded you of me?" Yao Shen asks, at once confused and touched.

Xin Hulei nods, drying his palms on his pants. "I think I understand why, now," he clears his throat, "A bookmark means something was interrupted, but it will be resumed at a later date." He lifts his eyes and meets Yao Shen's gaze, his own filled with tenderness. "It's a little like our story."

Yao Shen sucks in on a sharp breath. "I guess...I guess it is."

"So, the bookmark, it's a promise."

Yao Shen runs his thumb over the smooth, plastic surface of the bookmark. "A promise...that our story will be continued?"

Xin Hulei chuckles. "No, a promise that I'll marry you."

"Oh," Yao Shen says, and then as it dawns on him, "Oh! Does that mean we're engaged? Is this ugly bookmark my engagement ring?" 

Xin Hulei tackles him to the sofa, smothering Yao Shen's laughter with kisses. "I'll buy you a ring, if that's what you want."

Yao Shen loops his arms around his neck and pulls him down into another kiss. "No, I want to be able to tell the story at our wedding. The guests are going to love hearing how my husband, the most famous actor in the country, proposed to me with a cheap bookmark."

He can feel the shape of Xin Hulei's smile against his lips as they kiss. This moment right here, in the living room of Xin Hulei's cramped Hengdian apartment, surrounded by the scent of cleaning products and fresh food is the happiest Yao Shen has ever been.

He wouldn't trade this moment for the world, and if the tortuous path that led him here was necessary to reach the destination, then he would walk it all over again.

He slips down from the sofa, and pulls Xin Hulei down on top of him. They lose their clothes along the way, and themselves in each other. Yao Shen scores Xin Hulei's back with the shape of his fingernails and urges him on with chants of: "harder", "faster", "like that", and "husband" -- Xin Hulei likes that last one best of all.

--

In the morning a phone call wakes up Yao Shen.

"Laoshi, the security team is here, but they can't get past the media," the same harried assistant from the day before tells him, sounding five minutes way from quitting on the spot. "Filming will be delayed another day."

Yao Shen can't say he minds.

He thanks the assistant and disconnects the call. He goes into the living room to tell Xin Hulei the good news, but finds him inspecting the vials on the counter.

"What are you going to do with these?" he asks, rolling one of the vials over the smooth stone surface of the counter.

"I...I haven't decided," Yao Shen says, leaning against the doorway.

"Don't drink them," Xin Hulei says, his eyes still fixed on the vials. 

Yao Shen doesn't ask him why, although he could. He thinks he understands Xin Hulei's reticence. He knows first hand the feeling of having several memories downloaded into his conscience at once.

"I think I still want to see them," Yao Shen says, approaching Xin Hulei and looking down at the vials. "I just want to know, what Meng Po meant by 'the price of memory'." He shrugs. "I don't know, I feel like maybe I owe it to myself...the other versions of me."

Xin Hulei nods. "Do you want me to go with you?"

Yao Shen thinks about it, really thinks, but ultimately ends up shaking his head in denial. "No, I think this is something I need to do on my own."

"Okay," Xin Hulei says, "I'll be here waiting for you when you return."

He will, won't he? Yao Shen smiles and takes Xin Hulei's hand in his. Xin Hulei will never know how much that means to him.

---

After breakfast Yao Shen decides that he should take advantage of the unexpected free day. Who knows when he'll have another opportunity like this.

He sets up the incense burner and the memory vials in the bedroom, while Xin Hulei keeps himself busy in the living room.

He lays down on the bed, on top of the covers, and dreams.

---

This time, there's no one controlling what he sees, no Si Wang to guide him through a series of memories meant to make him despair, or the tether of Xin Hulei to anchor him to reality, so Yao Shen dives right into it.

He loses himself in the dream, which passes before his eyes like a movie.

He sees himself, this Yao Shen, struggling to live with the weight of what happened in his past life. He remembers all of it, and it paralyses him.

This reincarnation of him is the son of the leader of an important cultivation sect, renowned for their sword cultivation. Except that Yao Shen can't hold a sword, his hands start trembling the moment he comes close to one.

His father beats him black and blue for it.

He knows who he is, what he did to himself, who pushed him to it. He lives in fear of hearing that familiar voice again.

And one day, Si Wang comes to see him, dressed as a wondering cultivator. Promising to free him of that terrible existence, promising to make him the Emperor of the underworld, in all the ways he wasn't the Emperor of the nation, as he should have been in his past life. He just needs to let go of his silly attachment to Xin Hulei.

Yao Shen tells him he'll think about it.

That night he starts writing down everything he remembers, and everything he has been told.. When morning comes, he goes to the creek behind the sect's martial hall and drowns himself.