CH 85

Chapter 85 – Wreckage In The Sea

I love you very much

This was a wonderful sentence.

Fang Juexia, who was being hugged by him, could almost imagine that picture when he closed his eyes. He could even smell the scent of salty water and damp wood.

Nestled in the hollow of Pei Tingsong’s shoulder, in a way that displayed his full reliance on him, he sniffed and asked softly, “But we haven’t replaced our parts with new parts. Even with all the changes, there are parts that are still old, so we may not be able to sail for hundreds of years.”

“Do you want to become an immortal?” Pei Tingsong’s voice finally had a smile in it, and he gently touched Fang Juexia’s back with the palm of his hand. Clearly, he was the younger one, he was still behaving like a person coaxing a child. “Old parts are old parts, and we can rot together. Maybe on a calm day, we will sink to the bottom of the sea together and become two sets of remains, just like how dead whales sink slowly…”

Fang Juexia’s nose stung again. “I like the end of this story.”

Pei Tingsong smiled at him. “I like it, too.”

Maybe one day, some people would dive into the deep sea and discover their existence. They would then uncover the story of how they used to ride the wind and waves side by side together, and they may even realize that every inch of the rotten parts on them actually came from each other.

Two completely different Ships of Theseus became each other’s remains and were eventually buried at sea forever.

Fang Juexia knew that it might have been a very stupid and risky thing to choose to explain himself just as he had accepted the complete breakdown of his fantasies, but he had really wanted Pei Tingsong to know.

Without Pei Tingsong, Fang Juexia could not imagine his own state at this time.

He would have definitely been swallowed by the darkness.

“I love you.” He let go and looked into Pei Tingsong’s eyes. “I love you very much, Pei Tingsong.”

Pei Tingsong was stunned.

This was the first time he had heard Fang Juexia solemnly say the word ‘love’ to him. He had always thought that they were still at the ‘like’ phase, especially Fang Juexia. He had never dared to ask for too much emotion from this person; he knew it was very hard for him. Therefore, Pei Tingsong was always afraid of crossing that boundary, was always afraid that his own too-strong feelings would force him into a retreat. 

But Fang Juexia was so brave that he even took the lead to say these words first.

Fang Juexia’s eyes were clear, and although there were wounds on his face, he still looked so beautiful. The red birthmark at the corner of his eye was even more beautiful than any flower’s petals. Pei Tingsong couldn’t help kissing there as he whispered, “I love you, too. I love you even more than you can imagine.”

Pei Tingsong had read countless books, and there were all kinds of love in these books. He had tasted them all, but those words had never become real emotions. Words were just words, and they only lived on paper. It wasn’t until he met Fang Juexia that he realized that he could love someone like this.

And in loving this rebel, he would automatically become his armor. 

“Thank you.” Fang Juexia took the initiative to press against him and kiss his lips, then quickly released him, his eyes soft and open.

Pei Tingsong’s eyes also stung. In order to hide his emotions, he smiled again, looking a bit childish. “You really, I’ve even imagined the scene of me telling you ‘I love you’ first many times. It should have been especially romantic, but you beat me to it.”

This sudden “accusation” made Fang Juexia a little confused. “That…. You didn’t discuss that with me ah.”

Discuss?

Pei Tingsong felt this was even more funny. How could this guy be this serious? “It’s more than that, I have never seen you cry before, and I thought that when you would cry in front of me for the first time, it would be because of me.” He lowered his head and bit the tip of Fang Juexia’s nose. “Yet as a result, this idea has also been dashed to pieces.”

Thinking that he had been shedding tears the entire time just now, Fang Juexia was a little embarrassed. He lowered his eyes and muttered, “What’s so good about crying…”

“Of course it’s good.” Pei Tingsong gently kissed his eyebrows and eyes. “You also look good when you cry. You look good doing anything.”

Young people’s love was always reckless, they eagerly proffered it up in front of you, for fear that you would turn a blind eye.

Pei Tingsong frowned slightly again. “But if you really do cry, I will feel very bad. My chest gets especially painful, and I’m not afraid of your jokes, I have never felt so bad before. When I received the message from the bodyguard and knew that it was your father who was following you around, my hands started shaking. Even with such hot weather, I still trembled.” Pei Tingsong took a deep breath and continued, “And San Francisco is so far away from Beijing ah.”

His words were full of complaints, and the ending sound was a childish whine. Fang Juexia could almost imagine how frantic this irascible guy must have gotten at the time, and couldn’t help laughing.

Pei Tingsong was still immersed in recounting his own emotions. “I was really both scared and suffering, scared that upon my return, you would be in despair because of your father’s situation, and scared that you suddenly wouldn’t want me anymore.”

Fang Juexia hugged him and rubbed from the back of his neck to the back of his waist, just as if he were comforting a big dog. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“En.” Pei Tingsong said to him, “I won’t let you face it alone. I also won’t let him show up in front of you again.” He looked at Fang Juexia solemnly. “When you were taking a bath, I already had him sent to a compulsory drug treatment center. To be honest, I really hate that I can’t kill him and have him disappear from the world, but I know that if you were given the choice, you wouldn’t want to do that.”

Fang Juexia looked at him in silence, and his eyes had already given him a positive reply.

A rehabilitation center was indeed the best destination. He had already accepted the fact that Fang Ping was no longer his father, but he still wanted to give him a chance to be a person.

“If he really can be rehabilitated, it depends on his nature. If he can’t be rehabilitated, then he will stay there for the rest of his life, so as to prevent him from doing anything more extreme.”

Pei Tingsong finished talking and lightly put his hand on the back of Fang Juexia’s waist. “Does it hurt?”

Fang Juexia said it didn’t hurt, but Pei Tingsong wore an expression of disbelief, so he whispered, “It’s a little bit painful, but it didn’t harm my bones, so it will be okay soon.”

Even if that person really gave Fang Juexia life, and had been warm towards him when he was young, Pei Tingsong just couldn’t accept him hurting the person he liked the most in such a way.

It seemed that his senses no longer belonged to him, but had all already been transferred over from Fang Juexia. If Fang Juexia cried, his heart would ache. If Fang Juexia got hurt, he would hurt even more.

“Never again.” Pei Tingsong gently stroked his bruise and said, “Don’t cry anymore either, whenever you cry, my heart feels like it’s about to break.”

Fang Juexia nodded, and the corners of his mouth rose slightly.

“It’s better when you smile.” He flicked the strands of hair on Fang Juexia’s forehead. “Our Juexia looks so good when he smiles.”

Fang Juexia had never felt so lucky. This word had always stayed far away from his life, so he kept on walking forward, constantly convincing himself that there must be an exit ahead, and that all his efforts would definitely receive a response.

He still didn’t know if there would be a response at the exit ahead, but he had met Pei Tingsong en route.

This was the luckiest thing that had ever happened to him. 

The tip of his nose was a little itchy. Fang Juexia rubbed it against Pei Tingsong’s chin, then slowly opened his mouth, “It’s already the 15th today. You’ve been gone for six days.” Then he glanced up at the clock on the wall and said, “The calculation isn’t very accurate, but if you calculate based on the present time, you have been gone for six days and ten hours.”

It had really been too long, so long that by this point, his little internal clock had broken down. A second in reality hated the fact that it couldn’t last for a minute in his heart. 

But Pei Tingsong had come back before the first thunderstorm of the summer.

And just in time too, so he didn’t get drenched in the rain.

“Did you miss me?”

Hearing his low voice, Fang Juexia nodded slightly. “En.” Then he added, “And I worried about you every day.”

Fang Juexia had never seen what a real rich family looked like, he had only seen their portrayal on TV; it seemed that they were all complicated and full of conspiracies. Fang Juexia disliked complicated things, and he was also afraid that Pei Tingsong would be bullied by some crafty guys, that his mother would say many things that would hurt him, and that Pei Tingsong wouldn’t be able to control his emotions and get fooled by others.

These days, his heart had been in a wretched state, and he hadn’t been able to do anything well. He had been as sickly as a seedling that lacked water.

“I was just afraid of you being worried. It’s not enough to call you every day ah.”

Fang Juexia leaned into Pei Tingsong’s arms sweetly. “Only when I see you can I feel at ease. I was afraid that you’d deceive me and say that you’re doing quite well, when in fact, you’re not fine at all. You’re stuck listening to your mother’s nonsense, and you would get angry with her.”

What he said was exactly what had really happened, which made Pei Tingsong want to laugh.

“Juexia.”

Fang Juexia liked to hear Pei Tingsong call him this way. Although other people also called him by this name, Pei Tingsong seldom did. Every time these two syllables came out of his mouth, Fang Juexia felt cared for. Pei Tingsong’s palms were dry and broad, and they felt really good as they stroked against his cheek. “This time when I went back and saw my mother, guess what my first reaction was?”

Fang Juexia shook his head. He couldn’t imagine that scene, and even if he imagined something, he didn’t dare to say it out loud.

“So it turns out, she looks like this ah.”

Fang Juexia’s hand grasped the fabric at Pei Tingsong’s waist and held it tightly.

—He couldn’t even remember what his own mother looked like.

“Like what?” Fang Juexia asked, closing his eyes.

“How to say…” Pei Tingsong tried to describe her, “She was wearing a red sleeveless dress with a string of black pearls around her neck. They were very big pearls, but they couldn’t cover the lines on her neck, yet her face was flat without any wrinkles and was bulging a bit, which was different from when I had seen her when I was a child. She was a lot uglier.”

He was very straightforward, describing his mother as if she was a middle-aged woman who was a stranger to him.

“As soon as she saw me, she opened her arms to hug me and called out, ‘Song’, as if we were a very close mother and son pair. But I already don’t remember how old I was when I last saw her.”

Fang Juexia was a bit distressed. “Then when you were a child, didn’t you miss your mother?”

“It’s only when you have a mother that you will miss your mother,” Pei Tingsong replied.

Fang Juexia mulled over this sentence repeatedly in his heart, and it seemed especially bitter.

“I remember when I was four years old ba, she made a rare visit. It was my grandfather’s birthday, and on that day, she was wearing a black dress and standing beside a very tall man, one of her boyfriends. My grandfather asked me to go up to her and greet her. I went over there, but I didn’t say anything, just kept looking up at her. “

Just by listening to him, a picture had already started to appear in front of Fang Juexia’s eyes. When he thought about such a small child, he felt that he must have been very well-behaved and very pitiful. 

“Her boyfriend was French and spoke with a strong accent.” Pei Tingsong could still imitate his awkward tone, “Who is this little guy?”

“‘Oh, this is my nephew,’ my mom said.” Pei Tingsong laughed. “So, at that time, I said hello to that man in French, and then went back to my grandfather.”

Fang Juexia couldn’t imagine a mother who wouldn’t even acknowledge her own child. He became very angry suddenly, despite the fact that he very rarely got angry. “How could she be like this to you? It’s too much.”

He spoke those last three words very heavily, and Pei Tingsong thought it was a little cute. He raised his hand and rubbed at Fang Juexia’s furrowed eyebrows.

Sensing that his face was a little cold, Pei Tingsong turned up the air conditioner two degrees higher and held his hand. “She explained it later, in front of my grandfather. She said that she really loved the man, but he didn’t like children very much. So, in order not to cause trouble, she had just said that.”

To her, it was just a harmless little lie.

“When you think about it that way, she hasn’t actually changed.”

For her, he had been and would always be a tool she could take out to please others at any time.

Fang Juexia raised his head and gently pressed a kiss on his chin to comfort him. Pei Tingsong actually wasn’t so sad; this memory had long become a painless one, and didn’t really bother him anymore. 

“You don’t know, as soon as she saw me this time, she said that she missed me. I told her to stop acting and said, ‘I know you just wanted to take away the legacy that my grandfather left me.’ She replied, ‘No, baby, you misunderstood. He’s just re-publishing the works, he won’t really steal your stuff. Mama still loves you.’”

He imitated his mother’s tone, speaking with an affectionate feel and saying intimate words. Then slowly, the expression on Pei Tingsong’s face cooled down and gradually became impassive.

“You see, in order to achieve her goal, she can utter an out-and-out lie.” Pei Tingsong laughed. “People are people. The title of parents can’t make them great, and they can even turn around and tarnish the title instead.”

Fang Juexia, unwilling to see him sad, stroked his back. He didn’t know what he should say, and it seemed that saying anything was useless. Pei Tingsong had never felt a father’s love or mother’s love; this wasn’t something difficult for ordinary children to obtain, but he had never had them for even a moment.

He thought that, fortunately, Pei Tingsong didn’t grow up in China, and he wasn’t required to write essays like “My Father” or “My Mother” in every composition class, or even read them in public.

He could even imagine such a scene in front of him. A tiny Pei Tingsong holding a blank paper in his little hands, with only the title scribbled on it, and nothing else.

How could such a young child naturally accept the fact that he was not loved by his parents and then turn around and comfort him?

Fang Juexia couldn’t help it as a few tears fell down again. 

It was dark outside the window, the rain had stopped  a long time back, and a thread of red twilight twinkled in the gray sky. Pei Tingsong looked up and felt that the light was very similar to the birthmark on Fang Juexia’s face.

Only when he looked down at his lover did he discover that he was crying again.

“What’s the matter? I’m fine, really.” Pei Tingsong kissed his birthmark and his eyes. His lips were stained with tears as he pecked his lips twice. “I’m not sad at all. So this time when I went back, it was just to take care of business. I’m an adult now, and I’ve arranged all of my inheritance. She has no way to take anything from me now. My Jie also prevented her from contacting me and threatened her that if she harassed me or her again, her boyfriend’s publishing business would not be able to go on well.”

“Your Jiejie is very kind to you.” Fang Juexia rubbed his eyes and said, “She helps you every time. You have to be nicer to her in the future.”

Pei Tingsong laughed. “You’re right, everything you said is right.”

“You’re very similar. You’re all a little strange, but you’re both kind people.”

“You clearly haven’t even met her.”

Fang Juexia opened his eyes a little, and with a little bit of a grumble in his voice, insisted, “But I know.”

“Alright, alright, you know. You know everything.” Pei Tingsong smiled helplessly, but then heard Fang Juexia say to him—

“Pei Tingsong, you also look very good when you smile.”

This was the first time Fang Juexia had praised him as good-looking. Pei Tingsong first thought that Fang Juexia was being very cute and wanted to laugh. He also felt that it was strange; sometimes when he looked at Fang Juexia, it was like he was looking at a child, when clearly, this was a person who was already this old and older than himself. But sometimes, he felt that he also became a child in Fang Juexia’s eyes, because he always showed a magnanimous and doting smile towards him.

Without waiting for his reply, Fang Juexia then said, “I love you very much, and I will make up a lot of love to you, which will be more than your mom and dad’s love added up, okay?”

His voice was so soft, and his words were childish. How could one add, subtract, multiply, and divide love?

But Pei Tingsong knew that he was sincere. Fang Juexia was the person who loved to calculate things in this world the most. What he calculated must be correct, and it would be more than the affection of all the other people all summed up. 

“Okay.”

Fang Juexia lay in his arms and said that he still wanted to hear about his childhood. Pei Tingsong chose some pleasant things to talk about, for example, when he went fishing for rainbow trout by the lake with his grandfather, and then how the fish was put into the pool and died. Also, for example, when he messed up his Jie’s birthday party and also stole her first car.

Fang Juexia didn’t speak too much during this; he was tired and soon fell asleep, breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling slowly. Yet, his hand still held onto Pei Tingsong’s clothes, his tight grip not loosening at all. 

Pei Tingsong didn’t continue, just looking at Fang Juexia’s sleeping face quietly.

Clearly, he was also a person who hadn’t gotten much affection, but he was whole-heartedly thinking about making it up for him. 

Really, he was a strange person. 

Only once Fang Juexia was sound asleep did Pei Tingsong get up and leave the room with his cellphone. He went to the living room and made a phone call to the private bodyguard from before to confirm the progress of the matter. He continuously kept feeling ill at ease, and arranged for several more people to keep an eye on this issue. After that, he called Cheng Qiang and told him that he had already returned, but he had caught the flu. He also said that Fang Juexia had agreed to take care of him and that he might not return to the dormitory these next few days for fear of infecting others.

Cheng Qiang also very rarely got to rest, and he didn’t probe too much, just telling him to take good care of himself. Pei Tingsong nodded in response, hung up the phone, took a bath, changed into clean clothes before going back to bed and falling asleep while holding onto Fang Juexia, who loved to be clean the most.

He finally fell asleep, and then even had a dream.

In his dream, he had become short and small, and was wearing a very expensive but uncomfortable little suit. The dream was full of people, and they were all dancing and eating. A sense of familiarity drifted forward; he had returned to the day of his grandfather’s birthday.

Pei Tingsong tried to find his grandfather’s whereabouts, but when he raised his foot, he saw a beautiful woman calling out his name, and also calling him ‘baby’. Very disgusted by this, he ran in the other direction, running out of the house. It was dark outside, and he ran to the garden full of yellow roses and hid behind the bushes.

This scene overlapped with his memory.

He remembered that he had just hid here in the bushes all alone, thinking about the difference between a nephew and a son, until a servant had found him and taken him back.

There was a sound in the grass. The little Pei Tingsong in the dream was a little on guard, and he wanted to know whether it was a squirrel or the servant looking for him.

But as soon as he looked up, he saw a beautiful child, who was taller than him and was wearing the most common clothes, but he was very good-looking, with a pink birthmark at the corner of his eye. It seemed that he couldn’t see, so he stretched his arm out to fumble forward, slowly arriving at his side step-by-step.

He couldn’t see, but he still managed to find the hiding Pei Tingsong.

Only after he drew closer did Pei Tingsong discover that his left leg was in a plaster cast, he was on crutches, and his arm was bruised.

“Did you come to wish my grandfather a happy birthday, too?” Pei Tingsong asked.

The child shook his head. “I’m here for you.”

Pei Tingsong’s eyes brightened. “You want to be friends with me, don’t you?”

He nodded. “En.”

“How old are you?” Pei Tingsong answered first for himself, “I’m four years old this year.”

“Seven years old.”

“You’re older than me, I have to call you Gege.” Pei Tingsong said, “You’re hurt.”

He nodded. “I didn’t know that I couldn’t see, so I fell down. Later, the doctor told me that I can’t see anything when it’s dark.”

“But you still came to find me.” Little Pei Tingsong didn’t understand. “Your leg is broken, and it’s so dark, but you still came to find me.”

Unexpectedly, that beautiful Gege turned to smile at him. “I wanted to come.

“I promised to make it up to you.”