Chapter 46 | P. To-Do List

When Ning Yixiao said the word “home,” Su Hui thought that his heart had been completely captured, without a single trace of room left for anyone else.

The world would not stand still, but at least in this moment, no one understood him better than Ning Yixiao.

He followed Ning Yixiao back to that rented room. Three months ago, this place had been nothing more than somewhere to stay for a night, a refuge from a lonely, unbearable evening. But now, this small room was what Ning Yixiao called their home.

Su Hui thought himself lucky. Life hadn’t gone the way he’d hoped, but at least he had gotten what he wanted most, and Ning Yixiao was gentle, never making him wait too long.

Evening came and the sky began to darken, the last of the sun unable to pierce through the basement walls. It was dim inside. Ning Yixiao switched on a small desk lamp, casting a warm, soft halo of light over the narrow room.

They curled together on a single bed, Ning Yixiao holding Su Hui without any gap between them, fingers lightly stroking his hair, gently patting his back.

Su Hui was demanding in his own willful way, wanting to be held and kissed, wanting Ning Yixiao to express his love in deeper ways too. And Ning Yixiao’s way of expressing it was indulgent to a fault, giving everything, holding nothing back.

The autumn air had gone completely cold, not a trace of summer’s warmth remaining, as though that summer had never existed at all. But the temperature inside the room was scorching. The pale yellow lamplight fell across Su Hui’s sweat-damp ivory back, rising and falling, the thin sheen of perspiration shimmering like rippling water, each drop carrying with it a desire in full bloom.

Fingers pressed into Ning Yixiao’s chest, fingertips nearly digging into skin, and when they finally loosened, Ning Yixiao reached up and caught his hand, lacing their fingers together.

He was beautiful like a priceless painting, the kind Ning Yixiao wouldn’t have dared dream of even in his sleep. The strands of hair clinging to his cheek, the flush spreading across his face, the tilt of his head and the slender curve of his waist, sharp as a blade’s edge. Every part of him was flawless.

In the world beyond their sight, dusk had lingered unusually long, as though reluctant to let go of something this beautiful. When the last thread of light finally withdrew, Su Hui’s body sank down, falling into Ning Yixiao’s arms.

He lay half-draped across Ning Yixiao’s chest, staying there a long while like a cat nestled in someone’s embrace, too spent to speak, letting Ning Yixiao clean up and tend to him, soothing him with touch and warmth.

Ning Yixiao dressed Su Hui in his own hoodie, oversized and loose, swallowing Su Hui’s frame whole, as if it could shield him from everything he didn’t want to face.

He kissed Su Hui’s face gently, feeling the warmth of his cheeks beginning to fade, noticing how drowsy and dazed he’d become. He murmured softly, “You sound like a little cat.”

Su Hui’s ears went red. He assumed Ning Yixiao meant that he’d been too quiet, that it hadn’t sounded good, so he explained, “The walls here are thin, you know that.”

“I meant it’s cute. Even if it was only a few sounds.” Ning Yixiao rubbed his ear, leaning close, calling to him in a low voice, “Little cat.”

Whenever Ning Yixiao called him that, Su Hui’s face always grew warm. He pretended not to hear it, burying himself in the crook of Ning Yixiao’s neck, back aching, utterly exhausted, and before he knew it, he drifted off. He thought he’d slept for a long time. When he opened his eyes, he was disoriented, and asked Ning Yixiao how long he’d been out. He was told: only twenty minutes.

“What’s going on with you today?” Ning Yixiao brushed the loose strands of hair from his forehead. “Did something happen at home?”

“Sort of. I’m used to it.”

Su Hui didn’t want to go through all of it with him. There was too much to say, and this wasn’t the only thing weighing on him. What stuck with him, refusing to let go, was the question the girl had left behind after that hasty blind date ended.

That question lingered in Su Hui’s mind without rest. Even in his happiest moments, it would suddenly surface, like a bird crashing hard against his chest.

“Ning Yixiao.” Su Hui’s fingers caught a small fold of fabric at the back of Ning Yixiao’s shirt and he spoke quietly. “What if my illness never gets better?”

Ning Yixiao didn’t answer right away. He was never the kind of person to speak without thinking, and when he did, his tone was what it always was: calm and steady.

“We treat it slowly. It’s a chronic condition. It was never going to get better overnight.”

Su Hui corrected him, rephrasing the question. “I mean, what if it never gets better at all.”

Ning Yixiao sensed something. He leaned down closer. “That’s fine too. I’ll be here with you.”

Su Hui was quiet for a moment. “And if I died?”

After the words left him, he realized he was hurting Ning Yixiao, so he added an explanation. “I mean, what if one day I can’t hold on anymore, and I end up choosing to leave.”

Ning Yixiao went very still. A long stretch of silence passed. Su Hui grew uneasy, and guilt crept in, so he spoke first.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” He wrapped his arms around Ning Yixiao, pressing his face into his chest, voice muffled. “Forget those words.”

Ning Yixiao let out a quiet laugh, as if he found him slightly foolish.

Then he touched Su Hui’s head and told him, “Don’t apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

But neither of them said anything more about the illness after that.

As though to make up for the moment, Su Hui shifted to another topic entirely, and talked at length.

“Ning Yixiao, can we move somewhere by the sea someday?” Su Hui gestured broadly. “A really big sea. Ideally one you can see from every room in the house.”

Ning Yixiao said, “All seas are big. Though seeing it from every room is a bit difficult, unless you’re on an island.”

“Not an island.” Su Hui laughed, fingers playing with the drawstring of Ning Yixiao’s hoodie, winding it back and forth. “I watched a horror movie once, I’m a little scared of islands now. I want a seaside with lots of sunlight, and ideally a garden in the house, full of plants I love, something in bloom every season.”

Ning Yixiao loved watching him imagine the future. He couldn’t help leaning in to kiss his lips. “Mm.”

But Su Hui pretended to be annoyed that the kiss had interrupted him. “I wasn’t finished.”

“Go on.” Ning Yixiao kissed the tip of his nose instead.

“Let’s get a dog. I love dogs.” He looked up, eyes bright, like a child’s. “A big one, ideally. The kind you can hold all at once.”

Ning Yixiao nodded, and pulled him all the way into his arms. “Well, if we get a dog someday, what name do you have in mind? Think of it as a rehearsal.”

The question caught Su Hui completely off guard. He thought about it for a while and came up with nothing suitable, so he gave up. “You decide. I’ll leave the naming to his dad.”

Ning Yixiao couldn’t help but laugh. “Then what does that make you? His mom?”

Su Hui’s face flushed in an instant. He realized too late he’d walked right into it. “I am not.” And then, immediately, he clamped a hand over Ning Yixiao’s mouth, physically cutting him off.

Sure enough, Ning Yixiao didn’t repeat it back. Su Hui relaxed and lowered his hand.

But then, with perfect composure, Ning Yixiao spoke again. “You seem to have a pretty clear sense of self.”

“You…” Su Hui pinched his arm and defended himself. “You’re his dad, I’m his daddy. Is that not allowed?”

Ning Yixiao pressed his lips together to hide a smile, and under the full force of Su Hui’s authority, nodded his agreement. “It’s allowed. Absolutely allowed.” Then he asked, “And what about your seven little elephants?”

“Oh, right.” Su Hui remembered. “They can’t be checked on a flight, but we can visit them together in Africa. When you’re feeling a bit better, we’ll go. I want to play a seven-note scale on a harmonica right in front of them, and you’ll film it for me as a keepsake. Hopefully the sanctuary is clean. If not, I’ll just walk in myself and you can wait outside.”

Ning Yixiao nodded. “Do you know how to play the harmonica?”

Su Hui smiled and shook his head, like a child. “No. Let’s learn together.”

And so the to-do list grew by one more item.

He talked and talked. Much of it Su Hui himself couldn’t keep track of, his thoughts running faster than his words, forgetting as he went. But Ning Yixiao listened carefully, as if taking all of it in.

By nine o’clock that night, Su Hui was hungry. His earlier clothes had gotten dirty, so Ning Yixiao found him a pair of his own to change into, then took him downstairs for supper.

The back alley of the old neighborhood was lined with small stalls, some selling skewers, others small shops doing fried rice and noodles. Ning Yixiao didn’t come here much himself, but Su Hui had a particular fondness for hole-in-the-wall spots, so he simply followed Su Hui’s lead.

They had just ordered and settled into their outdoor seats when Ning Yixiao’s phone started ringing. An unfamiliar Beijing number, calling three times in a row.

Because of the debt collectors, Ning Yixiao had always been cautious about unknown numbers. But he had transferred a payment to the creditors just a week ago, and his instinct told him it was too soon. Besides, they always called from hometown numbers, which didn’t match. So when the Beijing number called a fourth time, Ning Yixiao stepped aside to a quieter spot and answered.

To his surprise, the voice on the other end was someone he hadn’t expected at all: Xu Zhi.

Xu Zhi got straight to the point. “Su Hui’s grandfather has been looking for him all day. His calls aren’t going through and no one at the school has seen him. I thought of you. Is he with you?”

Ning Yixiao asked, guarded, “How did you get my number?”

Xu Zhi let out a breath, as though this was hardly worth addressing, but answered anyway. “I got it from a teacher in your department. It’s the information age. Everyone’s data is pretty accessible.”

Ning Yixiao had already mostly pieced it together the moment the call came in. Xu Zhi had connections most people didn’t, and things like this barely registered as effort to him. He almost said something about Xu Zhi misusing his network, but thought better of it and let it go.

“He’s with me. We’re eating. He’s fine.”

“Which street are you on? I’ll come pick him up.” Xu Zhi offered no alternative. “Su Hui’s grandfather is upset. There’s something important he needs to discuss with him in person.”

Ning Yixiao hesitated, and Xu Zhi added, “Don’t think that protecting him right now is helping him. You might actually be making things worse. Whatever the case, he and his grandfather are family. A fight between family members is small. Letting it go without talking is what turns it into something big.”

That landed.

“Let him finish eating first,” Ning Yixiao said.

He hung up and went back to the small table. Su Hui asked who he’d been talking to. Ning Yixiao considered it, then told him.

He’d expected Su Hui to get angry, or to push the food away and leave. But after hearing it, Su Hui responded the way someone does when they’ve long since resigned themselves, just a quiet “oh,” and then looked back down and took a large spoonful of fried rice.

“I knew it.”

He swallowed the fried rice with some effort and let out a short, humorless laugh. “Even without going through you, they would have found a way to track me down.”

Ning Yixiao didn’t know how to comfort him, or what role he was supposed to play in someone else’s family affairs. He only wanted Su Hui to feel a little better, so he reached over and touched his face.

Su Hui had been holding it together. But as soon as Ning Yixiao tried to comfort him, the tears came quickly.

The composed, adult expression he’d barely managed to hold for a few minutes crumbled all at once. He went back to looking like a child. One hand rose to wipe at his eyes as he let himself give voice to a quiet, painful wish.

“I wish my dad were still alive. I could live with my mom and dad. It wouldn’t have to be like this.”

Hearing that, Ning Yixiao felt something complicated move through him. He took out a tissue from his pocket and wiped Su Hui’s tears.

He had thought the same thing many times himself. Made the exact same kind of wish, imagining what it would be like if he had a father. Would things still be this exhausting? Would he at least be a little happier?

But Ning Yixiao, being the steadier one of the two, said to Su Hui, “Things will get better.”

Su Hui looked composed when he got in the car, almost eerily so, as if nothing had happened. Ning Yixiao stood by the roadside and watched them drive away.

Su Hui was shut behind the small car window, body turned all the way around to face Ning Yixiao, both hands pressed flat against the glass, very much like a child who doesn’t want to leave an amusement park.

Ning Yixiao’s chest felt hollow. He didn’t know what had happened, and he was worried it was something to do with him. He was afraid their relationship had been found out and would have to end there. He stayed awake almost the entire night, restless, turning it over and over. Near dawn he finally drifted into a half-sleep and dreamed the thing he’d been dreading.

He dreamed that Su Hui told him it was over. That his family had found out everything, and thought he wasn’t suited for him, not a good match. That he hoped Ning Yixiao would understand.

Ning Yixiao woke up from that.

He still hadn’t fully shaken it off by the time he was getting ready. But when he stepped outside, got on the bus, and headed to his internship, Ning Yixiao thought it through with a clearer head. Su Hui wouldn’t say something like that. And his family couldn’t have figured out their relationship this quickly. They hadn’t slipped up enough for that.

Maybe it was something else. Maybe it was something internal between them. There was no way to know.

Ning Yixiao held firmly to the belief that dreams mean the opposite of reality, and threw himself into work, hoping to get through the day and forget every detail of the nightmare as fast as possible.

He stayed busy all morning. He sent Su Hui several messages, none of them returned. Then he was pulled into an all-afternoon meeting with his team, where he presented his recent work. It had gone well enough that the head of the R&D department praised him directly, then smoothly dangled the prospect of a permanent offer in front of him, encouraging Ning Yixiao to stay on after the internship.

An earlier version of Ning Yixiao might actually have stayed for that. Getting a foothold at a big company wasn’t easy, and with his abilities, he could have carved something real out of it, climbed out of the difficulties he’d been living with.

But hearing those words now, the first thing that rose in Ning Yixiao’s mind was Su Hui’s small, scattered wishes. They had somehow already threaded themselves through everything he imagined and hoped for in the future.

He drifted through the rest of the day, a little lost. He was so out of it that he only realized his phone had died and turned off after he’d already boarded the bus home.

He wanted to get back quickly, charge his phone, reach Su Hui. So when he got off, he broke into a run, covering the distance back to the old neighborhood as fast as he could.

He went into the run-down building and took the stairs down quickly, the rapid sound of his footsteps triggering the motion-sensor light in the stairwell.

But when he turned the corner to the basement level, he stopped.

There was a figure there, curled and crouching in front of his door, a white suitcase standing upright beside them.

Ning Yixiao stood frozen. The motion-sensor light went out. Everything fell into darkness, like a dream extinguished.

Then a voice came from the dream, and the dim yellow light blinked back on.

“Ning Yixiao, are you back?”

Su Hui looked up, squinting slightly, taking a moment to confirm what he was seeing. He stood, a little stiffly, one hand on the handle of the suitcase.

“You took so long…” he started, voice small and miserable, and then steadied himself and said only what mattered.

“I had a fight with my grandfather. He told me to get out, so I just grabbed a few things and left.”

Ning Yixiao, only now catching up, came down the last few steps, moving toward Su Hui in the light that flickered on and off.

“I really have nowhere to go this time. Homeless.” Su Hui murmured it to himself, then rested his forehead against Ning Yixiao’s shoulder.

“How could that be?” Ning Yixiao kissed the top of his head and finally let out a breath. “You still have me.”

There was one more thing he’d thought about saying. He turned it over, and left it unspoken. Decided it wasn’t quite time yet.

I can give the little cat a home too.