Chapter 75: N. A Game on a Spring Night

Ning Yixiao’s mouth curved slightly.

“And if I want to break the rules?”

“Then I’ll lock you outside and you can sleep on your own.” Su Hui raised an eyebrow, blew on the steamed egg to cool it, and ate a satisfied mouthful.

Ning Yixiao said, straightforwardly: “You can’t sleep.”

“I couldn’t sleep anyway. I can read or watch something or draw.” Su Hui smiled.

He got up, retrieved the half-finished bottle of wine from the fridge, poured some into a glass, and took a sip. “So. Are we playing or not?”

Ning Yixiao took the glass from him. “Let’s play.”

They moved from the kitchen island to the living room.

The room was large, with high ceilings that made it feel open and airy, furnished in a Bauhaus style, vintage prints on the walls. The floor was covered in a deep green rug, and the sofa was soft and full, like a marshmallow left too close to a fire.

Ning Yixiao went to the side of the room and started the record player, putting on something Su Hui liked, then switched on a standing lamp. In one moment, the empty room filled with warmth.

Su Hui cleared the coffee table and sat cross-legged on the rug, setting the wine glass beside him.

“Okay.” He opened the clock on his phone and set a thirty-minute timer. “Truth first, dare after.”

Ning Yixiao settled into the sofa, amusement surfacing in his eyes. “What are you afraid of?”

Su Hui played innocent and touched his earring. “Certain people breaking the rules too early and ruining the game.”

He held out his right hand, fist raised to his shoulder like a child, ready to go.

“Come on. Rock, paper, scissors!”

Su Hui threw scissors. Ning Yixiao threw paper.

First round, and she had the advantage. Su Hui was pleased with the omen. “You lose!”

Ning Yixiao nodded, lounging against the sofa, expression unhurried. “Go ahead. Ask.”

“Let me think…”

When Su Hui was thinking, his eyes automatically drifted upward.

“Got one.” He narrowed his eyes. “Ning Yixiao, when did your eyesight get bad?”

Ning Yixiao blinked, then laughed. “You win one round and that’s what you ask?”

But Su Hui was completely serious. “I’ve always been curious. You didn’t wear glasses before. I remember your eyesight being fine. I really want to know.”

He knew Ning Yixiao wouldn’t fully understand why it mattered, but Su Hui cared about every small thing that had changed, wanted to know the reason for each one, wanted to understand everything they had missed. He hadn’t asked before because he hadn’t had the standing. The position of ex-boyfriend was too awkward, worse than a stranger in some ways.

But that was different now.

All the things he hadn’t known across those six years, Su Hui wanted to fill in, slowly.

“A bet is a bet. Answer the question.”

Ning Yixiao considered for a moment whether to say something vague, but since it was supposed to be truth, he decided to be honest.

“My vision was fine before. After the accident, the doctor said my right optic nerve was damaged, so the vision in my right eye became very poor, everything blurred. I’ve been having treatment for the past few years and it’s improved somewhat. I can get by without glasses, but because the two eyes are so different now, it’s better to wear them.”

Su Hui understood then that Ning Yixiao’s glasses had nothing to do with nearsightedness. They were a consequence of that accident.

He didn’t want to imagine what would have happened if Ning Yixiao hadn’t been found in time.

Ning Yixiao saw the sadness moving through Su Hui’s expression, leaned forward from the sofa, and reached out to pinch his chin lightly. “Where did you go?”

“It’s not as serious as you’re making it.” He let go and said lightly, “The doctors all said I was lucky. They see car accident victims every week in emergency, and apparently I was one of the milder cases. Nothing vital was hit.”

Su Hui didn’t entirely believe him, and was quiet for a few seconds.

Ning Yixiao took a sip of wine. “Next round?”

But Su Hui didn’t raise his hand. Instead he stood up, walked over, and opened his arms. “Let me hold you for a moment first.”

“Alright.” Ning Yixiao put one arm around his waist.

Su Hui lowered his head and kissed his eyes.

“At least my face didn’t scar,” Ning Yixiao said, with a self-deprecating note.

Su Hui kissed him again. “It wouldn’t matter if it had. I’d love you exactly the same.”

That actually pleased Ning Yixiao.

The game went on.

“Rock, paper, scissors!”

Su Hui threw rock, Ning Yixiao threw paper. The tide had turned.

Ning Yixiao’s first question sounded like he already knew the answer. He looked directly at Su Hui, voice easy. “During those six years, were you alright? Was there anything good?”

Two questions, technically.

Su Hui didn’t mention it.

It seemed like something every pair of ex-lovers would eventually ask each other after finding their way back. But they hadn’t asked it before, not until they were back together, and the way Ning Yixiao asked it felt less like curiosity and more like a kind of comfort.

Su Hui didn’t pretend to be strong, but he smiled and shook his head. “Not really. A bit unlucky. It was difficult the whole way through. Though thinking about it, I don’t think I was doing very well before either. The only genuinely happy stretch of my life was when we were together.”

He grabbed a cushion and held it against his chest, picking at the corner. “Good things… if I really have to think of one, I suppose it was Professor White taking me to New York to study. And more specifically…”

Su Hui’s memory had never been quite like other people’s. Many things had faded, and what remained was mostly the harder parts, which always seemed to cut deeper than the small joys.

He searched, and then his eyes brightened slightly. “Didn’t we meet at that hotel in Seattle? The next day I went to the Seattle Art Museum for an exhibition, and someone acquired one of my pieces. It had happened before, but not that quickly. And then my grandmother was diagnosed with liver cancer right after, so that collector really came at the right moment.”

Ning Yixiao’s expression remained neutral, entirely composed, as if this were information he was hearing for the first time and had no connection to whatsoever.

“Is that so?”

Su Hui nodded. “He was kind too. We email sometimes. He even made something small from one of my works and sent it as a gift. It felt like he really understood me. Different from most people.”

When he talked about this collector, a small involuntary smile appeared on his face. He leaned against the sofa, voice taking on a soft, almost charming quality, and Ning Yixiao felt a quiet, unreasonable pang of jealousy. They had never even met in person, only exchanged the occasional message, and yet Su Hui spoke of him as though he were somehow singular.

If Su Hui ever learned the truth, what would his face look like?

“You like him a lot?” Ning Yixiao asked, deliberately.

Su Hui caught the subtle shift in his expression and clarified quickly. “Not like that. It’s purely admiration. The way you feel about a friend.”

Ning Yixiao nodded, turning the wine glass slowly in his hand.

“Don’t read into it,” Su Hui added. “We’ve never even met.”

Ning Yixiao held back a smile. “Mm. Fairly well-behaved.”

Then, pressing further on purpose: “If I weren’t around, do you think you’d fall for him?”

Su Hui had never considered this.

“I don’t know. I can’t run that kind of hypothetical.” He frowned slightly. “I don’t think I’m capable of falling for someone else at this point. I can’t even picture what that would look like.”

It sounded like flattery but wasn’t meant as any.

This feeling was like a dream written into Su Hui’s body, something that had arrived, dissolved, and then been recovered against all odds. Every last bit of emotion and capacity he had for falling in love had been used up, staked on a single hand with nothing left to deal to anyone else.

He smiled at that thought. “I fall for small animals pretty easily though. Every single one. But people…”

He shook his head.

“Okay, okay, next round.” Su Hui pushed things along.

From that point, the game began to fall under the influence of Su Hui’s consistently poor luck.

“I lost again…” He smacked his right hand with his left in frustration.

Ning Yixiao set down his glass with the composure of someone who had won before the game started. “That was just the warm-up. Now I’m going to be serious.”

It sounded like a threat. Su Hui poured a little more wine into his glass. “Lucky this is still the truth round. Go ahead.”

Ning Yixiao had prominent brow bones and long, narrow eyes that carried a natural gravity even when he was doing nothing at all.

He put on the most neutral expression imaginable and asked: “During all those years apart, did you ever think about me while touching yourself?”

Su Hui had expected him to ask something less than respectable, but not this soon.

He drew one knee up, rested his chin on it, and dropped his gaze, avoiding Ning Yixiao’s eyes.

“Yes. Fine? Satisfied?”

Ning Yixiao wasn’t finished. “That’s all? The answers before were much more thorough.”

Su Hui looked up at that. “How thorough do you want?”

His eyes were always soft and bright, like a child’s, and yet there was something in them that came naturally and couldn’t be taught.

“Your call. As much as you want.” Ning Yixiao’s smile was faint.

Su Hui answered seriously. “Honestly, for most of the time after we separated I was in depressive episodes. The hypomanic periods were infrequent and short. I didn’t have the energy for that kind of thing most of the time. But during the manic periods it still happened sometimes, and I couldn’t always stop it, so there were a few occasions…”

Having just gotten back together, sitting across from his boyfriend and admitting that after the breakup he had thought about him while doing that to himself was genuinely mortifying.

“Thinking about me?”

“Yes.” Su Hui’s voice had gone very small.

More than thinking. There had been hallucinations.

At the worst of them, no matter what Su Hui was doing, Ning Yixiao would be there beside him, talking to him, sometimes even touching him, holding him. Thinking about it clearly now was unsettling, but at the time Su Hui couldn’t distinguish, and those had been some of the only moments of happiness in his numbed-out existence.

“Is that thorough enough?” Su Hui glanced briefly at Ning Yixiao, and they moved on to the next round.

This time Ning Yixiao threw scissors and lost.

Su Hui lit up easily over small victories, this one making him smile with his whole face, though the wine was starting to settle in, and tipping his head back made the room sway.

He steadied himself and asked something that wasn’t too pointed.

“When we were apart and you missed me, what would you do?”

Ning Yixiao thought for a moment. “Do you remember the little cat plush you gave me?”

Su Hui blinked slowly. “Mm.”

“I’d look at it. Squeeze its small hands, its legs. Pat its head.”

“That’s all?” Su Hui pictured it and felt a little sorry for Ning Yixiao.

Ning Yixiao smiled. “Were you hoping for something more explicit?”

Su Hui waved both hands immediately. “Absolutely not.”

“Absolutely not~” Ning Yixiao echoed back in the exact same intonation.

They played another round quickly, and Ning Yixiao lost, unusually, twice in a row.

Su Hui, at peak smugness now, stopped putting any thought into his questions. “When did you fall for me?”

Ning Yixiao found him slightly insufferable. “Shouldn’t you have asked this six years ago?”

“What does it matter…” Su Hui took another sip. “You were my boyfriend then and you’re my boyfriend now. Just tell me.”

Ning Yixiao couldn’t find a way around it and paused.

“The first time I saw you, probably.”

Su Hui had suspected something like this, but hearing it said outright still caught him off guard.

Ning Yixiao continued. “In the screening room. You were late, you snuck in quietly, and the projector light fell across your face. That was the first time I thought, there are actually people who look like this.”

“It must have been obvious,” Ning Yixiao said, with a faint smile. “Didn’t you specifically tell me afterward that I’d been staring at you for a long time?”

“That wasn’t specifically.” Su Hui corrected him immediately. “I was in a hypomanic phase, so I was more direct than usual… so does this count as love at first sight?”

He smiled the way a child does after receiving a prize.

“Yes.”

Su Hui wanted to say that it had been the same for him, but felt it would be better if Ning Yixiao asked. So he held it back, barely.

“Next round, next round.”

At which point the timer went off.

Ning Yixiao raised an eyebrow. “Time for dare, Professor Su.”

The wine was catching up with him. Su Hui felt warm.

Every time he drank, that clean, full face of his took on a slightly lost quality, the thin upper eyelids lifting to reveal eyes that had gone tired and heavy.

Su Hui kept his hand raised in position, waiting for Ning Yixiao to meet him.

Ning Yixiao threw a fist. Su Hui threw scissors.

Su Hui was beginning to suspect Ning Yixiao had some form of telepathy, because there was no other explanation for how he kept winning.

“Again…”

He fell backward onto the sofa, legs stretching out flat on the floor, fully surrendering.

Ning Yixiao’s slipper-covered foot tapped lightly against the tips of Su Hui’s toes.

“Giving up before it even starts?”

“I’m not giving up.” Su Hui sat back up. “Go on, just don’t ask for anything unreasonable…”

“What counts as unreasonable?” Ning Yixiao prodded him deliberately. “Take off one item of clothing. Is that unreasonable?”

Su Hui looked down at himself.

“Fine.”

None of this had gone how Su Hui imagined. He had thought he might win a few rounds, hold the advantage, make Ning Yixiao do things on his terms.

The opposite had happened entirely.

Su Hui undid the top two buttons slowly, then grabbed the hem and pulled the whole thing over his head. His bleached silver hair was thrown into disarray, soft and slightly wavy, glinting in the warm yellow light of the living room, half-covering his ears which had gone thoroughly red.

He was slender, narrow at the waist, with a faint suggestion of muscle along his abdomen. The wine had brought a flush to all of his skin. His ribs showed faintly. The navel piercing he wore today was a very small butterfly, catching tiny sparks of light.

Ning Yixiao found himself thinking of the photographs taken with the diamond chain around his waist, the way the glinting links had rested against his skin in the dim light, every movement catching fire.

Su Hui’s arms were very pale, the faint blue veins on the inner side visible and clear, like pale blue leaf veins.

“That enough?” Su Hui noticed he was looking carefully, and extended one foot to press against Ning Yixiao’s knee, tone carrying a slight edge of command. “Next round.”

This time Su Hui pulled it back, scissors beating Ning Yixiao’s paper.

Vindicated at last, he returned the request without modification. “Taking off one item isn’t unreasonable, right?”

Ning Yixiao didn’t argue. He was wearing a loose black hoodie. He reached up, pulled it off, and shook his head once to settle his hair, which had grown a little longer recently and sat softly around his face.

Su Hui liked that small gesture. It reminded him of a large dog.

Ning Yixiao’s skin was considerably darker, and the difference in their builds was significant, the lines of his muscle well-defined, shoulders broad. Su Hui thought he must be losing his mind, because even the scars on his skin looked good to him.

“You don’t even work out every day. How are you built like this…” Su Hui felt that life was unfair.

“I swim regularly.”

Ning Yixiao wasn’t entirely comfortable being looked at openly with his scars showing and nothing being done about it, but Su Hui seemed to genuinely not mind.

“Does it look alright?”

Su Hui nodded agreeably, repeatedly.

“Next round,” Ning Yixiao said.

Su Hui’s luck held poorly. He lost again, rock to paper.

“How is my luck this bad.”

He already had a sense of what Ning Yixiao was about to ask for and wanted to disappear.

“Want to take it back?” Ning Yixiao asked.

“Of course not.” Su Hui braced himself, but what happened next was not what he had prepared for at all.

“Good.” Ning Yixiao stood. His shadow fell like something dark and heavy, settling over Su Hui completely.

For a moment Su Hui drifted back to the days when hallucination and reality had tangled together, when he was confined to a narrow and lonely room, bound by the dark, aching for Ning Yixiao’s arms and his kiss. He had appeared then too, but always false, never real.

Now the real Ning Yixiao came forward, followed the rules of the game, did not touch him, only leaned down and spoke very quietly into his ear.

When he was done, he drew back, returned to the sofa across from him, and waited, at his ease, to observe.

“Go ahead.”

The lamplight pressed warm against Su Hui’s spine. Ning Yixiao’s gaze was equally steady, like reading a book that had no words, only pictures, every page open without obstruction.

Su Hui’s head felt slightly heavy. He steadied himself with a hand on the edge of the sofa and stood. Through the floor-to-ceiling window, a flock of white gulls swept across the beach outside, falling like dropped cloth, silent against the rocks.

The shellfish in those waves open when they breathe, exposing everything soft inside, entirely unguarded, but at the smallest disturbance they draw back and close again.

Su Hui’s flushed knees were trembling.

Too much light.

He closed his eyes. His brow furrowed without his noticing. The room was a comfortable temperature, like every intoxicating spring night, but his forehead and the small of his back had already gone damp.

“Don’t bite down.” Ning Yixiao’s voice was low. “Relax your lips.”

Time stretched. The minute hand traced a third of its arc across the dial.

The leather of the brown sofa, once damp, clung close, like a kiss that left no room to breathe.

“That’s enough now…”

“No.” Ning Yixiao looked clear-headed and composed, like a researcher making the most objective possible assessment of a subject. “Not even cumming yet.”

“Ning Yixiao, you are deranged…”

Su Hui leaned forward suddenly, carrying the pink residue of warmth and a trace of irritation, arms coming up to wrap around his neck, beginning to negotiate. “I don’t want to play anymore.”

Ning Yixiao deliberately moved his hands away.

The way they looked at this moment made Su Hui think of Frederic Leighton’s painting The Fisherman and the Syren. The resemblance was almost exact.

“Why are you pulling back…” Su Hui was becoming difficult to reason with.

Ning Yixiao kept his expression flat, managing himself carefully. “Su Hui. These are the rules you set.”

“You’re following them this carefully. Are you a dog?”

Su Hui’s smile had gone hazy. He moved forward and settled himself in place, voice soft and slightly blurred.

The faint warmth of breath moved between them in the small remaining distance.

“Then you’d better keep your hands to yourself. All night.”