Chapter Text
“Gao Tu, you’ve followed me for ten years—schemed for ten years—just so you could ask me for ten million when I abort this child?”
A sharp crack split the air.
He hadn’t held back.
Five red fingerprints bloomed across Shen Wenlang’s cheek, growing clearer by the second.
Li Peien’s fingertips burned. His breath shook.
Shen Wenlang couldn’t—mustn’t—say something like that.
A porcelain cup tipped over on the next table. Coffee spilled across the floor, its glossy reflection catching Li Peien’s eye.
Then it hit him.
He wasn’t Gao Tu.
Where had all that anger and heartbreak come from? Was he really trying to defend Gao Tu’s honor now?
But the director didn’t yell cut.
So Li Peien had no choice but to keep acting.
Professional instinct took over—a tear slid from the corner of his eye on command.
“I’m sorry, Shen—”
He looked up and saw Jiang Heng’s already swollen face. The words in his throat shifted—Gao Tu’s worry bled through instead.
“Are you okay?”
Gao Tu’s tears flung outward as he reached to steady him, his own hands trembling.
The man across from him had red-rimmed eyes too, full of something unspoken.
Li Peien remembered the script—he was supposed to turn and leave.
But Shen Wenlang shoved aside the actor playing Gao Ming and grabbed him.
Li Peien tried to pull away and instinctively pushed back.
Bang—
He turned just in time to see Shen Wenlang fall straight to the ground.
The actor playing Gao Ming shouted, “President Shen? President Shen!”
Li Peien stared at his own hand—the one that had pushed him—and heard Gao Ming cry out again. “President Shen!” Still no movement.
He hurried forward, meaning to haul Jiang Heng up. “Stop fooling around, Jiang—”
But Jiang Heng crumpled into his arms like a puppet with its strings cut.
Li Peien felt for breath—nothing.
Cold from the floor shot through his bones. Voices rose around him, overlapping chaos, but the sound of someone dialing emergency services was crystal clear.
Through the window of that all-too-familiar café set, sunlight glared in his eyes.
A spreading black haze swallowed his vision, blurring all sound and light—
But hadn’t they wrapped that show a year ago?
“Family members wait outside.”
The ER doors slammed shut before he could speak.
His own breathing sounded unbearably loud. For a moment he thought the corridor was unlit. Then the fluorescent lamps flickered, painfully white. He slid down the wall, dazed.
A nightmare?
He crouched for a long while; when he stood, his legs were numb.
The emergency hall buzzed with people, yet felt eerily quiet. A gust of cold air blew from the vent overhead. The ribbon beneath it fluttered helplessly.
Jiang Heng will be fine.
He went to the triage desk to ask where to pay the fees—but pain struck his shoulder.
“Doctor! Doctor!”
A parent carrying a child rushed in and rammed straight into him.
He stumbled, landing hard on his hip and elbow.
By the time he pushed himself up, the whole world looked smeared and grainy, like a bad mosaic.
His fingers scraped dust from the tiles before finding his glasses. He put them on—then froze at the smudged fingerprints clouding the lenses.
He took them off. Put them on again.
“You okay?”
A nurse helped him up kindly, but he gripped her sleeve, unable to form words.
When he’d played Gao Tu, the glasses had been non-prescription.
He wasn’t nearsighted at all.
He released her, scanning the hall—no director, no crew, not even a single camera.
He remembered the ride here: every car plate beginning with “Jiang A.” No trace of the real world anywhere.
He often dreamed of shooting scenes with Jiang Heng, but never of being Gao Tu.
Catching his reflection in the glass of a fire hydrant, he felt a chill run through him.
“Excuse me,” he asked the nurse, “where’s the restroom?”
He locked the door behind him.
Facing the mirror, he lifted his sweatshirt.
All the hard-earned muscle from the gym—gone.
He turned sideways. A faint curve rose from his abdomen.
He froze, pressing a palm to it.
Soft.
Sure, for the role of the “pregnant Gao Tu,” eating more to puff out his stomach could’ve been a trick—only he hadn’t planned that far.
“No way,” he whispered, forcing a smile at the reflection.
Then—
a faint tremor inside his belly.
He wasn’t sure what it was. His fingers tensed; the thing beneath his palm seemed to… respond.
Gloop.
Like a small fish blowing a bubble inside him.
“The first time you feel a baby move,” Jiang Heng had once said, lying on the bed, reading from his phone like a scientist,
“you might mistake it for gas, or a heartbeat—like a goldfish’s bubble, or a butterfly’s wing.”
That night after shooting, his fingertips had brushed Li Peien’s abs. Half-asleep, Li Peien had told him to get lost.
“I can’t get pregnant,” he’d said then.
Now his hand flew from his belly. He stumbled back, nearly falling.
Bang bang bang.
“Why’s the door locked?”
“Anyone in there?”
Water roared from the tap. Li Peien lifted his face, cold water dripping down.
In the mirror, Gao Tu’s face stared back—gaunt, exhausted, ruined by pheromone imbalance.
He opened the door. The person outside, mid-complaint, went silent at his expression.
He sat down outside the emergency room, drinking half a bottle of cold water in gulps. The memory before the café slowly returned.
Dinner with their boss. Too much wine.
Jiang Heng, weighed down by scandal.
Li Peien, quiet, just filling his bowl over and over.
“Enough,” Jiang Heng had finally said. Li Peien put down his chopsticks.
The old apartment elevator rattled as they waited. Alcohol burned in his veins.
In the lift, tipsy, every button looked like a giant lollipop. Jiang Heng leaned in and pressed 13 and 14 together.
When the company rented the apartments, Jiang Heng had chosen the one beneath him—said that way, he could “hear every move upstairs.”
Maybe he’d still been half in character from their on-screen pairing. Still, every time Li Peien paced at night, he thought of Jiang Heng downstairs.
He grinned stupidly. Jiang Heng tugged him back.
No one else got in; the air smelled faintly of his cologne.
Ding. The doors opened on Jiang Heng’s floor. Li Peien stepped out first, thinking—wrongly—they still lived together.
Jiang Heng hesitated, said nothing, just took out his keys.
“Come in,” Li Peien said, as if he owned the place.
Jiang Heng laughed—for the first time that day.
Their dog Lele wagged its tail wildly, but the second Li Peien appeared, it abandoned Jiang Heng, pawing his pants with reproach—Forgot me, didn’t you?
Li Peien scooped Lele up and collapsed onto the sofa.
“Don’t sleep there,” Jiang Heng scolded. “You’ll hurt your back.”
“Then where?” Li Peien murmured, rubbing Lele’s fur. “Your bed?”
A cup of warm water appeared in front of him. Silver flashed on Jiang Heng’s ring.
“Sure,” Jiang Heng said easily. “It’s not like we haven’t shared before.”
He always knew what Li Peien needed before he asked.
Li Peien drained the cup, then realized—it was Jiang Heng’s mug.
“Didn’t have time to wash yours.”
Jiang Heng took it back, refilled it, and sat beside him, sipping slowly, like whiskey.
Lele hopped between them, head resting on its paws. Jiang Heng idly scratched its chin.
Silence stretched.
“Play some music,” Li Peien muttered.
Jiang Heng dimmed the lights until only the floor lamp glowed, soft as moonlight.
Teresa Teng’s voice floated through the room:
‘May time flow swiftly by; I only care for you…’
Heat climbed into Li Peien’s face. He closed his eyes.
Footsteps. A blanket draped over him.
“You’re so considerate,” he murmured, smiling. “How could your ex ever leave you?”
Jiang Heng froze, face darkening.
“So you think I was flirting with the staff too?”
Li Peien reached for him. His wrist was cold—too steady, too lucid. It scared him.
“I’ll take you home.”
Jiang Heng wrenched free, turning for his keys—when arms closed around him from behind.
The blanket slipped to the floor.
Only the ticking clock remained.
The air thickened with wine and heat.
He’d held Jiang Heng before, touched nearly every inch of him—but this silence felt different.
Jiang Heng turned, half his face lost in shadow, his smile glinting like a blade.
“Li Peien,” he said quietly, “are you straight?”
Li Peien’s heart pounded so hard he thought he might throw up—
—and then he was back in the café, standing, slapping Shen Wenlang across the face.