Shameless

The milk — not pure enough — sat where it landed, untouched.

And Xie Qingcheng's own delivery order amounted to two baozi: one pork, one vegetable.

He Yu didn't like the pork one — too much filling, too greasy. But when offered the vegetable one instead, he decided the cabbage leaves hadn't been washed properly. He wore the expression of a concubine in some old dynasty household. Xie Qingcheng kept his face frozen and opened the fridge, and after some digging managed to produce, from the back of the chill compartment, a single bag of wonton.

Xie-ge asked the young concubine: 'Made by the neighbor next door. Last bag. All-natural, no additives. This is what there is. Do you want it or not?'

The concubine's gaze flicked across Xie-ge's eyes and registered what it found there: the master of this house had reached the edge of his patience.

He had come here to clear his head, after all. Genuinely annoying Xie Qingcheng would do him no good.

So He Yu smiled — and his fine, clean-featured face managed to look almost reticent for a moment. Manufactured, but still.

'Then I'll leave it in your hands.'

What followed could only be described as magical realism within the volunteer sector.

The lonely elder being visited — Dr. Xie — stood at the induction cooktop with a wooden-handled ladle and a grim face, thin lips pressed shut, watching the water in the pot for the first sign of a boil.

The visiting university volunteer, He Yu, had meanwhile positioned himself as far from Xie Qingcheng as the room's geometry allowed. A gentleman keeps his distance from the kitchen — he stood there on exactly that principle, composed and unhurried, taking in the room.

He had been here a few times in middle school, following Xie Xue. Li Ruoqiu was still around then, and the apartment had displayed a wedding photo of her and Xie Qingcheng.

The photo was gone now.

But it wasn't only Li Ruoqiu's photo. A few other spots on the walls showed older absences — the faint marks where frames had hung, visible only if you looked closely. He Yu thought those might already have been gone by the time he came in middle school; he just hadn't noticed, his attention fixed on Xie Xue.

'Do you want vinegar?' Xie Qingcheng asked.

'Yes.' He Yu said. 'I'll add it myself.'

The room was quiet. Through the wall came the small, scattered sounds of the neighbors packed into Moyu Lane — the sounds of lives running on different clocks. People in the world are like cells in a body: each with its own rhythm, its own metabolism. While the family on one side was washing up after dinner, the family on the other was just now lighting the stove.

He Yu was leaning against the window frame when a chameleon crawled across the sill.

He reached out a hand. The chameleon didn't flinch — it let him stroke its head.

That was just how He Yu's presence worked. Cold-blooded creatures had always been easy around him, never pulling away. Perhaps they recognized something.

Xie Xue, on the other hand, loved warm, furry things more than anything, and was terrified of anything that crawled or stung.

If Xie Xue saw this chameleon she would shriek and chase it off in a panic.

He Yu stroked the chameleon's head. The chameleon squinted with pleasure.

He thought: maybe he and Xie Xue really were too different, in ways that mattered — different enough that she didn't want him, and wanted Wei Dongheng instead.

Standing here now, in the place where Xie Xue had grown up, all of it — the textures of her life, the things that should have been a comfort — had turned to dense, thorned growth.

Roots driven into the earth. Branches thrown at the sky.

Once that kind of thorn takes hold in a person, even the world starts to ache with it.

He Yu felt the discomfort settle in him. He said a quiet goodbye to the chameleon and moved away from Xie Xue's window.

When Xie Qingcheng turned around with the bowl of wonton, he found that the university volunteer He Yu had, at some point, half-sprawled himself across the edge of his bed with a pillow covering his face.

Xie Qingcheng: '...What are you doing. Have you even showered? Don't just lie on my bed like that.'

He Yu said nothing. The pillow stayed over his face, like the chameleon's camouflage.

Xie Qingcheng said: 'Still not saying anything?'

'...'

'Keep that up and I'll assume you've suffocated yourself. I'll call the morgue to come collect you.'

A few seconds of silence. Then — presumably to avoid the fate of the morgue — He Yu finally raised a hand and pulled the pillow down just far enough to show half his face. His almond-shaped eyes regarded Xie Qingcheng from behind the pillow's edge with open disdain: 'Your bed reeks of tobacco.'

Xie Qingcheng set the bowl down. 'If you hate the smell, stop lying there. Get up and eat. Then go home. I need to sleep.'

'It didn't smell this bad when I came to your place last time.'

'And when was that?'

Fair point.

He Yu thought.

That woman — Li Ruoqiu — when she was still around, Xie Qingcheng hadn't smoked.

She probably wouldn't have allowed it. Xie Qingcheng ran cold, but he was responsible — he held himself to things. If his wife didn't like something, he would find a way to accommodate her.

He Yu lay on Xie Qingcheng's bed and watched Xie Qingcheng's expressionless profile, and found himself drifting back to the first time he'd come here — Li Ruoqiu smiling as she went to prepare tea and snacks, himself sitting and waiting, and his gaze catching by accident on this same bed, half-screened behind a gauze curtain. Even then he had thought it strange. He couldn't quite picture it: Xie Qingcheng sleeping with a woman.

Could desire actually reach that cold and severe face?

Xie Qingcheng frowned. 'What are you thinking about?'

He Yu, evenly: 'Life.'

'...'

'Xie-ge, did you ever go on another blind date after that?'

'I have no intention of remarrying.'

'You're barely past thirty...' He Yu said slowly. 'Aren't you lonely?'

Xie Qingcheng gave him a flat look. 'Your scope of inquiry is remarkably broad — Pacific Ocean Doctor.'

He Yu smiled.

Probably just asexual, he thought.

'Are you eating the wonton or not? I'll throw it out.'

He Yu was hungry enough by now. He finally did as Xie Qingcheng said — got up and sat down at the small table.

The chair Xie Qingcheng gave him was one Xie Xue had used as a child: low, small, laughably undersized for He Yu's 189-centimeter frame. Xie Qingcheng tossed him a bottle of vinegar and a spoon, then added flatly: 'Want a bib as well?'

He Yu didn't rise to it. He turned his head and smiled — the picture of docility — but his eyes carried enough edge to give away the provocation: 'Why don't you just feed me, Doctor?'

'...'

'Here.' He held the silver spoon out to Xie Qingcheng.

Xie Qingcheng's expression could have frozen the bowl: 'Go eat your own food.'

The wonton was still a little too hot, though, so He Yu set down the bowl and picked up his phone, fingers moving at speed while he waited for it to cool.

The fatherly impulse in Xie Qingcheng asserted itself: 'If you're eating, eat. What are you playing?'

He Yu didn't look up, fingers flying: 'It's not a game.'

Xie Qingcheng glanced at the screen. He was right — it wasn't a game. Lines of code scrolling fast.

'What is that.'

'Keeping my hand in. Hacking drills.'

'Don't you people use computers for that?'

'I've set mine up so everything I run on the computer I can run on my phone as well,' He Yu said, without particular emphasis.

Xie Qingcheng had little interest in such things and even less knowledge, but he had a rough sense of He Yu's level: serious. That said, He Yu seemed to treat breaking through other people's firewalls the way some people treated puzzles — a thing requiring focus, nothing more. He had never done anything actually harmful with it.

'Two minutes.'

He Yu hit confirm with a sharp tap. The data froze on the breach screen of a well-known website. He raised his wrist and checked his watch.

'Decent speed this time. Probably because I was in a hurry to eat the wonton.' He smiled, then closed the page. He had no interest in the data inside — he just wanted to spar with the firewall. Like a thief with an eccentric specialty: he only cared about opening expensive locks. Once the lock was open, he couldn't be bothered to steal anything.

Xie Qingcheng: '...'

He Yu set down his phone. The wonton had reached exactly the right temperature. He bent his head and began eating, slow and unhurried.

Hand-made wonton was hard to find outside someone's kitchen. He Yu ate the whole bowl in quiet, right down to the last one floating in the broth, and still looked like he wanted more. He turned to look at Xie Qingcheng.

'What are you looking at me for. There's no code on my face.'

'Another bowl.'

'Another bowl — what do you think this is, a lucky-draw prize? The neighbor made those and gave them to me. What you just ate was the last bag. There is no more.'

'Can you make them yourself?'

'...' Xie Qingcheng put a cigarette between his lips, voice blurred by the filter: 'I can. I'm not making them for you.'

He struck the lighter with a snap, turned his head slightly, the cigarette clamped in the corner of his mouth, and lit it.

He Yu's brow furrowed deep: 'Xie Qingcheng, when exactly did you pick up such a heavy smoking habit. Can you not do that right now — the room is this size, you're going to smoke us both out, I can barely breathe.'

'Whose house is this?' Xie Qingcheng drew on the cigarette and exhaled — deliberately, in He Yu's direction — then regarded him through the pale blue haze. 'You're eating wonton I cooked for you, sitting on my chair, lying on my bed, face buried in my pillow, and you have the nerve to make demands. Can't breathe? Leave. You've got a villa with excellent landscaping, I'm sure the air is lovely. The door is that way.'

'...' He Yu had nothing to say to that.

Xie Qingcheng flicked the ash. 'Going or not?'

'...'

'If you're staying, wash the bowl when you're done. You're perfectly polite at other people's houses — don't come here and refuse to lift a finger.'

'...'

Fine, he'd wash it.

The young master had studied abroad, after all. He was not incapable of washing a bowl.

To the sound of running water, Xie Qingcheng leaned against the window frame and finished his cigarette.

He had been tired when He Yu arrived, but somewhere in the back and forth the drowsiness had dissolved. The cigarette finished it off — he was fully awake now. He watched He Yu at the sink: no fringe, forehead clean and well-shaped, a few loose strands falling forward as he bent over the washing. Young skin pulled taut, and even in this dim, slightly muzzy light his profile seemed to hold its own glow.

Youthful. Fine-featured. Whatever feral, unpleasant thing lived underneath only showed itself up close.

And sharp, besides.

Xie Qingcheng thought, watching him.

A student like this, absent the psychiatric complications, should have had his pick — whatever girl he wanted. Hard to imagine which one had actually turned him down.

'Your tap needs replacing. The pressure's terrible.'

Young Master He, having condescended to finish the wonton bowl, turned off the water, rolled his sleeves back down, and dried his wet hands.

Xie Qingcheng: 'We're barely here anymore. Not worth replacing.'

The young master took no issue with that in principle, and said: 'Then I'll have Old Zhao come by and sort it out for you next time. And the light in here —'

'What's wrong with the light.' Xie Qingcheng, uncharitable.

'It's too dim. The place looks like a haunted house. Much darker and you won't be able to tell who's standing in the room with you.'

The criticism, delivered so soon after setting down the bowl, did get under Xie Qingcheng's skin. Who ate someone's food and immediately started picking the place apart?

He gave a cold laugh. 'This isn't your apartment, as far as I'm aware.'

'And speaking of not being able to tell who's in the room — who was it that got someone wrong? That was you, wasn't it, He Yu.'

'...'

That landed. He Yu went quiet.

Pinning Xie Qingcheng down and kissing him at the Hangzhou Hotel — pressing him from a desk all the way to a bed — and having mistaken him for a woman: that was not a fact He Yu had made his peace with.

He Yu's voice dropped: 'Didn't you say we weren't bringing this up...'

Xie Qingcheng rolled his eyes. 'You think I want to bring it up. It's the only way to shut you up.'

The awkwardness hung in the air. Then someone knocked at the door.

To escape it, the young concubine cleared his throat and managed — in this one moment — to produce something genuinely deferential: 'I'll get it.'

'Hi there, SF Express — is this the Xie residence?'

He Yu opened the door.

A delivery worker outside wiped his forehead. 'Right, so — Mr. Xie? You placed a pickup order today, said you had a parcel to send, requested a home collection.'

He Yu glanced back, with reasonable politeness: 'Mr. Xie, SF Express, here for a pickup.'

'...' Xie Qingcheng remembered. He pulled a small cardboard box from among the things he'd brought back, walked over. 'Right. I do have something to send.'

'Everyday items. Going to Suzhou. Check the booking slip.'

'No problem, got it!'

The courier confirmed everything and was about to seal the outer packaging when He Yu, arms folded, standing to one side, felt something was off.

'Hold on.' He stopped the courier mid-fold, took the box, and pulled out the item inside — a piece of clothing — to have a look.

A beat of absolute silence.

He Yu, who a moment ago had been meekly answering the door, turned around slowly with the garment in his hand. The air around him had gone flat and cold: 'Xie Qingcheng.'

Xie Qingcheng's expression didn't shift. 'What.'

He Yu: '...You listed the T-shirt I lent you on Xianyu Marketplace? As secondhand?'

'You said yourself you didn't want it back. That shirt would sell for five thousand secondhand — someone snapped it up immediately. All it was doing here was collecting dust.' Xie Qingcheng admitted this without visible remorse. 'Problem?'

'What do you mean, problem. You know I have OCD about my belongings. Something I've used — I'd rather destroy it than let a stranger have it.'

Xie Qingcheng said, unmoved: 'That's a comorbid symptom. A good opportunity to work through it.'

He reached over, took back the box, and placed it into the hands of the bewildered courier: 'Send it. The buyer said cash on delivery.'

'Xie Qingcheng!'

The courier hesitated, glancing between them: 'So... is it going, or not?'

The concubine: 'Not going.'

The master: 'Going.'

The courier mopped his brow: '...W-would the two of you like to discuss it first?'

'Nothing to discuss.' Xie Qingcheng's authoritarian side surfaced without apology. 'I say it goes, it goes.'

He fixed the courier with a look: 'Move it. My order.'

Very few people could withstand a look from Xie Qingcheng. The courier stammered his assent, printed the label at speed, and made his escape.

Left behind: He Yu, expression a thundercloud over the sale of his private property; and Xie Qingcheng, in marginally better spirits for having pocketed five thousand yuan.

'You're unhappy, are you? Come on, then. I'll buy you supper.'

He Yu stood there a moment, hit his limit, and with a flat expression snatched his shoulder bag off the bed, shoulder-checked Xie Qingcheng as he passed, and pushed out the door without a backward glance.

'Eat by yourself!' he said through his teeth. 'And don't blow through the five thousand you made selling my clothes in one sitting. Make it last. If you run out, call me — I'll deliver the next meal personally.'

He hurled the words behind him and left.

The driver had been waiting at the mouth of the alley. He Yu folded his long legs and ducked into the car, dropped into the seat with a dark face, and told the driver to close the windows completely. He didn't look out at the noise and bustle of the lane.

The driver: 'Young master, are you feeling unwell? Should I take you to the hospital?'

'No need.' He Yu put his head back against the seat, expression still black. 'I don't want to see anyone in a white coat for the rest of the day.'

His phone buzzed. A message from someone in a white coat:

'Come to my office Monday morning. You're working.'

He Yu stared at the screen, then turned his phone off.