Of Old Secrets and What We Don't Say

'Xie Qingcheng. Why did you follow me into the fire just now.'

After some effort he had soothed Xie Xue and persuaded her to sit back down with the other evacuees, He Yu and Xie Qingcheng submitted to a stern dressing-down from the fire brigade. When it was over they stepped aside, and He Yu glanced sideways at Xie Qingcheng, who had lit a cigarette — the one he'd cadged off a policeman. He couldn't read what had driven Xie Qingcheng into that building, so he asked.

'The side you went to hadn't reached the truly dangerous stage yet.' Xie Qingcheng drew on the cigarette and let the smoke out slowly. This time he finally felt something close to real relief.

Sparks brightened and faded between his fingers. Ash drifted down like a light fall of snow.

'Tell me your situation.' Xie Qingcheng tapped the ash and looked straight ahead. 'When did it start.'

He meant the Blood Gu.

'Not long after you left. I was at the private hospital for a follow-up and ran into a psychiatric patient — discovered it by accident. I use my blood as bait, and they do what I say.' He Yu paused. 'You know about this?'

'I know.' Xie Qingcheng coughed softly, took another drag, kept his voice deliberately offhand. 'Blood Gu — a mutant branch of psychiatric Ebola. You haven't told anyone else about this, have you?'

He Yu smiled slightly, eyes going a little cold. 'Only you know.'

'...'

'If I ever feel like killing someone to keep a secret, all I have to do is get rid of you.'

Xie Qingcheng gave him a flat look. 'Try it.'

The cigarette the policeman had given him wasn't to Xie Qingcheng's taste — too harsh, and of all things a burst-bead menthol. He'd choked on it several times already. He stubbed it out, faintly irritated.

'Don't tell anyone else about this. Not a doctor either.'

'I'm not that stupid, Xie Qingcheng.' He Yu said it evenly. He was, in truth, every inch the young gentleman — after everything he'd been through, he was still the most impeccably dressed person in the crowd, handsome and composed in a way that made him look like he'd stepped out of a magazine. Several of the people who'd just been rescued were stealing glances at him.

'Solitary Case Syndrome is already enough of a liability. Add an ability to make psychiatric patients obey my every word, and I can forget about living quietly for the rest of my life.'

'But Xie Qingcheng, you need to remember —'

He leaned in suddenly, his almond-shaped eyes moving over Xie Qingcheng's face with cool, unhurried appraisal. 'These eyes of yours are the only pair that witnessed any of it.'

He was close enough that his lashes nearly brushed Xie Qingcheng's. His voice came in low and even, threading into Xie Qingcheng's ear through the surrounding chaos, meant for no one else.

It could have been a murmur. It could have been a threat.

'And that mouth of yours is the only mouth that could let the truth out.'

His gaze dropped to Xie Qingcheng's lips, lingering there, moving back and forth as if he might reach out and touch them. The look itself was light. The weight behind it was not.

Xie Qingcheng had a jacket draped over his shoulders — the kind the fire brigade put aside for evacuees.

He Yu stood in front of him, eyes still on his face, and reached up to straighten Xie Qingcheng's collar. To anyone watching it looked like a courteous gesture. But only the two of them knew what it actually was: He Yu's hands pulled the collar tight with quiet, deliberate force — a warning and a hold, dressed up as nothing at all.

When he finished he smiled — gentle, perfectly mannered. 'So this secret —'

'You keep it right where it is.'

'Hold it in tight. Don't let it slip out.'

Xie Qingcheng, voice gone cold as iron: 'Are you threatening me?'

'I wouldn't dare. Just a reminder.' He Yu's hand slid away from Xie Qingcheng's collar. He sighed. 'I only want to live an ordinary life.'

Xie Qingcheng genuinely could not be bothered to waste more words on this lunatic.

What was He Yu even doing?

If he were actually going to expose He Yu's condition, he would never have told He Yu to stop disclosing it to anyone in the first place.

But that wasn't how He Yu saw it. He Yu did not extend that kind of trust to Xie Qingcheng.

All he could see was that Xie Qingcheng's mouth had become a threat he very much wanted to stop up — packed tight, like a gagged hostage, unable to let a single word through, so the secret could never come out.

Xie Qingcheng looked at him. 'You say you only want to live an ordinary person's life. So why did you risk going into a burning building to use Blood Gu to save those patients?'

'Because wanting and being are never the same thing.' He Yu said. 'I want to be normal. But I am, at the end of it, a psychiatric case.'

'I went in to save them — first, because the fire hadn't spread to that side yet and I knew there was still time. Second — you remember what I told you once, that people can never truly understand each other, never truly connect? Like two entirely different species. Those patients feel more like my own kind than any of you do. The only difference between me and them is that I'm better at pretending.'

He Yu said, without inflection: 'If even I can treat their lives as expendable, then who's left to look at them and see actual human beings?'

Every society, every group, every righteous organization, every criminal syndicate — whatever kind of person you are, you need those who are like you.

Because absolute solitude drives you mad.

He Yu was that kind of person — too deeply alone. No one could truly understand his suffering; others could only take in his descriptions of it, knowing his pain at a surface level. The three people who had shared his exact condition were all dead.

He could only go among people who resembled him, and try to find some small footbridge back to the world.

But that same He Yu was also dangerous. He could bend those kindred minds to his will. His blood was a reward the psychiatric patients craved; his words were commands they could not refuse.

If he chose to, he could use all of this to commit crimes.

— Small wonder he didn't want anyone to know.

And small wonder he wanted to silence Xie Qingcheng, the one person who did.

Xie Qingcheng: 'Your own kind matters that much to you. Enough to risk your life.'

He Yu, detached: 'Doctor, you wouldn't understand us. You stand in the light. The dark is something you've never seen.'

'...' Xie Qingcheng let out a quiet breath and decided to drop it.

'Last question. If you have Blood Gu, why didn't you use it when we were dealing with Jiang Lanpei?'

'Because it's unstable.' He Yu said. 'There's a real chance my blood could send a patient further over the edge. Under those conditions I couldn't afford the gamble. Unlike you —'

He stopped.

'And you — I mean, honestly. The other person had you in hand, and you still brought up Cinderella. Betting on me like that — weren't you afraid I wouldn't catch on in time?'

'I bet on you because I think you're fairly sharp.' Xie Qingcheng said, unhurried. 'And the last time I went to your dorm to change clothes — wasn't Cinderella exactly what you'd been trying to tell me about?'

He Yu went quiet for a moment, then finally dipped his head and let out a short, low laugh. Xie Qingcheng pressed a hand briefly against his own forehead. Between the two of them, for the first time since it all began, something loosened — the particular lightness of people who have come through something and are still here —

Yes. They both still remembered that. Neither of them had thought it would one day become the code that saved a life.

He Yu had been around eight or nine years old at the time.

Xie Qingcheng had felt then that beyond the standard medical treatment, He Yu needed to get out more. Many doctors held that treatment for psychiatric patients depended primarily on medication, but Xie Qingcheng belonged to a different school of thought. He believed that mental state was a person's response to the environment around them — that you shouldn't isolate a psychiatric patient as a solitary clinical case cut off from society. Medication could not be decisive in the fight against mental illness. What determined whether a patient could come through was the rebuilding of their connections: to society, to family.

So he raised the idea with Lü Zhishu.

Madam Lü, in the brief pause between two business calls, looked up and gave Xie Qingcheng a smile that was faintly apologetic. 'I don't have time. Dr. Xie, why don't you take him.'

Xie Qingcheng kept his voice level. 'He is your child.'

Madam Lü had been talking business so long it had become reflex; she didn't even look up. 'I'll pay you more.'

'...'

Then Lü Zhishu walked off, phone pressed to her ear, holding court. She seemed to be a merchant first and a mother somewhere after that. The portly, well-dressed woman was smiling into her phone the entire time, calling out 'Boss Zhang, Director Li' in a warm, carrying voice, her gaze never once landing on Xie Qingcheng.

To say nothing of He Yu, who was standing behind him.

Xie Qingcheng turned and looked down to find that He Yu had not reacted to his mother's behavior at all. He seemed entirely accustomed to this particular shape of their relationship. He was sitting on the sofa, eyes lowered, peeling a fat, brilliantly golden mandarin.

The mandarin was bigger than his hand. Halfway through peeling it, He Yu lost his grip. It dropped to the floor and rolled away under the coffee table. He hopped off the sofa and reached for it — and found, in his line of sight, a bright and gleaming Christmas apple.

'You're going to eat something off the floor?' Xie Qingcheng sighed, not entirely sure why he was going soft on this, but he handed He Yu the apple and picked up the dusty mandarin.

'I'll take you to an amusement park tomorrow.'

So the next day Xie Qingcheng brought his little sister and He Yu together. Xie Xue was easy-natured, quick to laugh, good at looking after younger ones; He Yu's whole demeanor seemed to lift considerably.

But on the way back, the sky opened without warning.

By the time they managed to hail a cab all three of them were thoroughly soaked, and since He Yu's Villa was far out in the suburbs, the drive was a long one. Xie Qingcheng took the two children to the Medical School Dormitory first.

Xie Qingcheng's university dormitory was the same as He Yu's current one — four to a room.

When he brought the two drowned rats home, his roommates were all at the lab working on their projects. The dorm was empty.

'Gege! Your cactus bloomed!' The moment Xie Xue stepped inside she made a beeline for Xie Qingcheng's desk with the ease of someone who knew the place well, beaming as she bent over the eggshell planter where a round little cactus was ringed in small pale-yellow flowers. 'Wow... it's so pretty.'

She had clearly been to her brother's dorm more than once.

Xie Qingcheng brewed two cups of hot ginger tea, one for each of them, and pressed the cups into their hands without offering a choice.

'Drink it while it's hot.'

Xie Xue liked spicy food; she wrapped both hands around the cup and began sipping away happily, finishing it off in no time. He Yu was another matter — the young master's stomach could not handle anything too sharp. He sat hunched over his cup and barely got two sips down.

Xie Qingcheng had gone to wash his hands in the bathroom. He Yu was still at a loss for what to do with the pungent, scalding thing in his hands when Xie Xue beside him let out a long, contented sigh. 'It's so good.'

'...' He Yu turned his head and looked at her without expression.

She felt his gaze, glanced back, and grinned at him — eyes already sliding toward his cup. 'If you don't like it...'

'No, I like it very much.' He Yu said, flat.

'That's impossible, look how little you've drunk in all this time!'

He Yu smiled slightly. 'It's because I like it that I'm reluctant to drink it.'

'...Oh...' Xie Xue seemed to accept this. She nodded, a little wistful, and was just about to look away.

Only then did He Yu hold out the mug he'd been planning to give away all along. 'Here. For you.'

'Huh? But — didn't you say you liked it?'

'You want it, so I'm giving it to you.'

The little fool's eyes went wide. She took the ginger tea with both hands, genuinely grateful.

He Yu calmly remembered to add: 'Drink fast. Your gege can't find out I gave you mine. Or he'll scold you.'

Xie Xue, thoroughly played and grateful for it, gulped the hot tea down at tremendous speed in one go, nearly choking on it. 'Cough, cough, cough —'

He Yu smiled and patted her on the back.

'Ginger tea is my absolute favorite.' When Xie Xue caught her breath, her eyes were soft and warm. She held the mug — still faintly steaming — in both hands and murmured to He Yu, 'When I was little and it snowed, we lived in a narrow lane and there was nothing to keep warm with, so gege would make this for me...'

The memory was one of hardship and ache. But the way she told it, her eyes were lit.

As if she were recalling something that had been nothing but fun.

Xie Qingcheng came back from washing his hands and glanced at the two children sitting side by side on the edge of his bunk. 'You two finished?'

The two children exchanged a look — a shared secret passing between them. He Yu was perfectly composed. Xie Xue was a little rattled. She nodded quickly, but having drunk too much too fast, she couldn't help parting her lips just slightly — and let out a small, quiet hiccup.

Xie Qingcheng left them to it and turned to rummage in the wardrobe for a change of clothes. Xie Xue's martial arts school was near the medical college; every time she finished class she was soaked in sweat, so Xie Qingcheng had put aside a few spare outfits for her to change into. They came in handy now.

'Belle or Cinderella?' The older brother spoke from inside the wardrobe, and the words that came through those spare, cool lips were the names of two soft fairy-tale princesses.

'Belle!' the little girl called back happily.

Xie Qingcheng handed her a pale yellow princess dress. Xie Xue gave a happy cry, gathered it in her arms, and went pattering off to the bathroom to change.

Xie Xue was gone. He Yu was still standing at the edge of the bed, damp through.

Xie Qingcheng rummaged in the wardrobe a little longer, then finally sighed, turned around, and did something thoroughly unreasonable —

'Wear this set.'

He Yu took the clothes, shook them out, and looked at them. Calmly: 'Dr. Xie. I think there's been a mistake.'

'No mistake.'

He Yu went rigid. He raised his head slowly, eyes narrowing, an unmistakable cold fury settling over his face.

'You've handed me a dress.'

And not just any dress. Cinderella's blue princess gown.

Faced with He Yu's barely contained outrage, Xie Qingcheng — whether deliberately or not — actually smiled. But on that face, habitually cool and unreadable, even a smile left you unable to tell whether it was mockery or something genuine.

'You have no other options. It's the only thing I have that'll fit you.'

He Yu: 'I believe I could wear your dress shirt.'

Xie Qingcheng crossed his arms and leaned against the bunk ladder, looking down at him from above. 'Kid. My dress shirts would swim on you.'

'...'

'Not going to wear it? Then I suppose you'll just have to go out there without anything on.'

'...'

Outside, the rain kept on falling — pattering softly, the backdrop to every word of that exchange, all those years ago.

.

The fire at Chengkang Psychiatric Hospital was slowly coming under control. Firefighters moved in one after another; police were busy with their investigation. Xie Qingcheng and He Yu looked at each other and found, in each other's eyes, a faint reflection of the past.

He Yu said: 'You even told me I wasn't losing out — said there was a candy in the princess dress pocket, suggested I check, called it your emotional damages payment. But I said what you were offering was poison and I wasn't touching it. Looking back on it now, you really were appalling.'

Xie Qingcheng: '...I don't remember that.'

And moved to leave.

'Don't try that on me.' He Yu shot a hand out and blocked his path, palm flat against the tree behind Xie Qingcheng, eyes narrowing. 'Don't remember? Don't remember that when Jiang Lanpei had you, you mentioned the candy in your pocket — from Cinderella — just to tip me off about the phone?'

Xie Qingcheng, expression unchanged. 'Coincidence.'

That did it. He Yu's temper caught.

He thought: taking Xie Qingcheng back to the dorm and lending him a T-shirt had been entirely too generous. In hindsight, even a same-day delivery service could have done better — he should have arranged a wedding dress for the man, and not just any wedding dress but the kind with a thigh garter and lace-edged suspenders, sheer stockings and all. If he refused, tie him up, throw him on the bed, and wrestle the whole thing onto him by force. Nothing less would be humiliating enough, because this man had absolutely no shame.

'Don't remember, is that it?'

He leaned in close and said it quietly.

'Then you'd better be careful from now on — don't go getting yourself so soaked again...' He Yu's gaze drifted slowly over Xie Qingcheng's features. He said softly, 'Because next time, what I put you in might not be an old T-shirt.'

Xie Qingcheng's response to the threat was to reach up and pat He Yu on the face. 'Relax, kid. You won't get the chance. If I get soaked I'll just go out with nothing on.'

'Nothing on — what do you mean, nothing on?' A policeman came over, recognized the two lunatics who had run into the fire earlier, and said at once: 'You cannot go back in there without gear! I mean — you can't go back in at all, with or without — '

He Yu smiled warmly, eyes mild and guileless. 'Quite right. That's exactly what I was telling him. So dangerous, isn't it — isn't that so, Xie-ge?'

'What do you mean, telling him? Wasn't it you who ran in first, and then his older brother followed?' The young policeman glared at both of them. 'Anyway, forget it. Have you both had your injuries treated? Once you have, come back to the Local Police Station with us. It's going to be a long night.'

The case was large in scale and involved a great many people; everyone would need to be interviewed carefully and in turn, statements taken.

Police cars brought the relevant parties back to the Local Police Station in batches. There were far too many people to handle at once, so the station cleared out a few rest rooms and let those who hadn't been called yet wait out the chaotic night there.

Xie Xue followed along behind Xie Qingcheng and the others.

She was a young woman, so she was placed in a room with a female nurse. He Yu and Xie Qingcheng were put in the room next door.

By the time Xie Xue went in to rest, she had recovered considerably. She had been unconscious throughout most of it and had seen very little of the violence, so she wasn't badly shaken — in fact she had already started comforting the nurse, who was still trembling and wide-eyed.

'It's all right. We survived the worst of it — good things must be ahead. Let's rest first; the police will come for us when it's our turn.'

'I can't sleep, I can't sleep...'

'If you can't sleep, I'll sing to you. Drop the Handkerchief, drop the Handkerchief...'

'No no no no no — not that song, that song is cursed!!'

Xie Xue sounded genuinely puzzled. 'I don't know why that one just came into my head. I had the feeling the whole time I was unconscious that someone nearby was singing it... Let me try another one. Up in the blue sky in the river of stars, there's a little white boat...'

The nurse: '???'

Xie Xue looked crestfallen. 'My head is all muddled. Sorry, sorry. I'll just tell you a joke instead.'

Xie Qingcheng and He Yu were placed in a rest room together.

'You two are sleeping here — it's not the best, but make do. If you need anything, just come find us. Someone will come get you when it's your turn.' The young policeman rattled it all off and left at once; he had a whole queue of witnesses still to sort out.

Xie Qingcheng and He Yu pushed the door open together and stepped inside. Then they both went still at the sight of the room's layout —

This really was a rest room thrown together at the last minute.

One room. One goddamn sofa bed.

How were they supposed to sleep??