Sun Rain Chapter 63
byBack at the hotel, Fu Xuanliao ordered hangover soup for Shi Meng.
The sweet and sour taste was surprisingly appetizing. Shi Meng hadn’t eaten much all evening, focusing on drinking, and now felt a little hungry after the soup. He grabbed the chestnuts he hadn’t finished in the car that afternoon and continued eating.
Since Fu Xuanliao didn’t need to drive now, he rolled up his shirt sleeves and helped peel them. At first, he peeled them and placed them on a small plate, then into Shi Meng’s palm, and finally, for convenience, directly to Shi Meng’s mouth.
Shi Meng’s soft lips touched his fingertips several times, which Fu Xuanliao considered a bonus for the night.
While feeding him, they talked about the past. To ensure fairness, Fu Xuanliao tore open a deck of playing cards from the hotel room, shuffled them face down, and in each round, they each drew one card to compare values. The person with the lower card had to speak first.
In the first round, Shi Meng drew the lower card, but he cheated and asked for a redo.
In the second round, Shi Meng still drew the lower card. He stuffed the card back and claimed he had taken the wrong one.
In the third round, Shi Meng was very cautious, picking a card from left to right with a lucky number sequence. He flipped it over to find a 3. Fu Xuanliao held up his 10 and shrugged at him, looking extremely smug. Shi Meng angrily threw his card back: “You cheated.”
Hearing this, Fu Xuanliao’s shoulders shook with laughter: “So you know what cheating is.”
Shi Meng didn’t want to tell him that when he was little and ran to the Shi family house to watch Hong Kong movies on the DVD player, he had secretly peeked at a few scenes himself.
They tried another round, and finally, Shi Meng drew the higher card. Fu Xuanliao willingly let him win, accepting the loss immediately. He then recounted in detail how he learned the truth and the countless times the two of them had missed each other.
Shi Meng listened quietly, picking at a chestnut shell in his hand for about ten minutes. He tacitly agreed to most of the story, but when Fu Xuanliao mentioned Christmas Eve nine years ago, he held his breath and said, “That wasn’t me.”
“Yes, it wasn’t you,” Fu Xuanliao agreed. “It was a little mushroom.”
Shi Meng denied it: “I’m not a mushroom.”
Fu Xuanliao spread his hands: “See, I didn’t say you were. You’re the one applying it to yourself.”
Shi Meng grew angrier, picking up the plate as if to smash it, but Fu Xuanliao caught his wrist and replaced it with a pillow.
“Easy now,” Fu Xuanliao advised. “Compensation is a small matter, but what if the guests downstairs complain to the front desk and everyone comes to watch the show?”
“Let them watch,” Shi Meng insisted stubbornly.
“Then people will find it strange seeing two men staying in a king-size bed room. Will I still say I’m your brother?” Fu Xuanliao pretended to think, then suggested, “It’s not impossible, but you have to call me ‘Gege’ first, so I can get used to it.”
Shi Meng gritted his teeth and slammed the pillow in his hand hard onto Fu Xuanliao’s head.
Later that night, after they had calmed down, they lay in bed, spacing out.
Shi Meng was still fiddling with the deck of cards, organizing them by rank, and asked casually, “How did you know?”
The topic had circled back to Christmas Eve.
At the time, Fu Xuanliao was young and couldn’t hold his liquor. Though completely drunk, he retained a sliver of consciousness. He said, “I just remember the person carrying me wasn’t tall. My feet were dragging on the ground.”
Seeing Shi Meng looking around for another handy “weapon,” Fu Xuanliao laughed and pulled his hand: “Just kidding. I confirmed it with Aunt Fang later. She told me you were the one who carried me back and fed me soup… I really was something, blacking out after just a few beers.”
What Shi Meng cared about wasn’t that he didn’t remember, but: “You mistook me for someone else.”
Fu Xuanliao sighed deeply at this: “Actually, I mistook him for you.”
Looking back, from the drawing stuffed into his desk drawer, to the secret visits to the infirmary, and then that crucial Christmas Eve, all his moments of heart-fluttering emotion corresponded to Shi Meng himself.
He liked a person because of these accumulated moments, not because of a person did he believe these events were related to heart-fluttering.
Fu Xuanliao told Shi Meng: “If I hadn’t made that mistake, I wouldn’t have developed those feelings for him. Knowing he did what he did, it would be impossible to continue associating with him. Maybe we wouldn’t even be friends anymore.”
Saying these words required courage for Fu Xuanliao.
Because he knew that to outsiders, his honesty might not seem like frank sincerity, but rather poor judgment, or even a heart of stone, capable of severing a decade-long friendship instantly.
But he had to be truthful: “You know my temper.”
Shi Meng certainly did.
Fu Xuanliao was the kind of person who would stand by him when everyone else mocked him as an illegitimate child, telling him not to take those words to heart, and who carried him out of the dark mountain forest.
This person possessed a rare integrity in this murky world. Even Shi Sihui’s devotion to him stemmed from his perpetual clarity and his unwavering distinction between good and evil.
Thinking of Shi Sihui, it was hard for Shi Meng not to recall the farce involving the drugging years ago.
Although that misunderstanding had long stood between them, impossible to erase or resolve, causing more confusion and trouble, Shi Meng was still grateful that it was he who walked up to the Attic and had intimate contact with Fu Xuanliao, and not someone else.
Feeling inexplicably jealous again, Shi Meng suddenly sulked, tossed the cards, turned his back, and muttered, “Bad temper.”
Fu Xuanliao couldn’t help but laugh: “You’re as stubborn as a rock, and you’re calling me out?”
They were two of a kind, headstrong and equally matched. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have insisted on competing in the past, resulting in mutual injury.
Now, things were better. They both understood that yielding was a form of cherishing, and the best protection was ensuring the other person wasn’t hurt.
Fu Xuanliao immediately surrendered after indulging his tongue: “Alright, alright, I have the bad temper. You don’t. Little Mushroom is the sweetest.”
“I’m not a little mushroom.”
“Fine, you’re Toad.”
“What is Toad?”
“A very powerful king.”
Fu Xuanliao pulled a card from the deck and held it up to Shi Meng’s eyes. Shi Meng glanced at it—it was the King of Hearts.
“Just like this, especially powerful.” Fu Xuanliao’s voice was low, making everything he said sound solemn. “You are the king who rules my heart.”
It wasn’t until later, when Shi Meng learned from Jiang Xue’s boyfriend, Gao Lecheng, that Toad was a mushroom-headed character with a red-dotted white cap, who at most possessed royal blood in the Mushroom Kingdom, that Shi Meng was speechless for what felt like the hundredth time.
Jiang Xue even looked up the character online, pointing at the picture and laughing hysterically: “The way he used to draw you, that’s what you looked like.”
She then advised Shi Meng, “Men are boys until they die. Don’t you still like the rabbit from the cartoon you watched as a kid?”
Shi Meng was so annoyed he grabbed a small notebook and drew ten rabbits, naming them all Fu Xuanliao.
It was the first day of the Lunar New Year, and Li Bihan’s affairs were mostly settled. Everyone checked their schedules and spontaneously decided to uphold tradition by going up the mountain to burn incense and pray for blessings.
The place was packed with people. It took a great deal of effort just to queue up and squeeze inside.
After purchasing incense, they entered the Buddhist hall one by one. Shi Meng saw Li Bihan bowing her head and murmuring something, and then saw Fu Xuanliao imitating her, holding the incense with his left hand over his right, closing his eyes in devout prayer.
Afterward, Jiang Xue hosted a meal for everyone. Li Bihan said that as an elder, she wouldn’t join the young people’s gathering, then pulled out her phone to invite Jiang Rong for tea.
No sooner had the elders left than the young people opened several bottles of wine, clinking glasses, playing finger-guessing games, and starting a round of Truth or Dare.
The questions mostly revolved around the wishes they had just made before the Buddha. Jiang Xue frankly told everyone: “Of course, it’s to earn more money.”
Gao Lecheng also confessed: “To marry, have children, and reach the pinnacle of life.”
He earned an eye roll from Jiang Xue.
On the other side, things became hesitant.
Fu Xuanliao preferred to drink as a penalty, waving his hand: “It’s a secret. It won’t come true if I say it.”
Shi Meng also refused, giving a flimsy excuse: “I forgot.”
Jiang Xue felt cheated and complained to Gao Lecheng: “Look at you, what kind of friends do you keep?”
Gao Lecheng spread his hands: “You’re no better.”
Games have rules, and they couldn’t be let off easily. Jiang Xue quickly changed the question: “If you had a choice, would you choose a life with him, or without him?”
For any other couple, this would be an easy question. But for Shi Meng, it became a life-or-death question that made Fu Xuanliao hold his breath.
Fu Xuanliao’s answer was one word: With.
Shi Meng, however, thought for a long time. Once decided, he stood up decisively: “I choose Dare.”
Then he cupped Fu Xuanliao’s chin beside him and leaned down to kiss him.
They initially thought that this kiss had thawed Shi Meng’s long-frozen heart, but on the second day of the Lunar New Year, Shi Meng boarded a plane heading south, claiming he needed to find inspiration because the competition was imminent.
Fu Xuanliao thought, what is there to find? Isn’t the inspiration right here? But he dared not overstep. He had pushed too hard before, and it was time to let the little mushroom breathe.
He was desperately anxious, though. Dragged back to the company by Old Fu, he couldn’t focus on work. He spent all day holding his phone, typing and deleting words in the chat box. The question he couldn’t bring himself to ask was—Did you look at the contents of the cardboard box?
He wasn’t sure if Shi Meng genuinely hadn’t seen it, or if he had seen it and was deliberately not responding.
That day, he received a message from Shi Meng asking if he was free. Fu Xuanliao shot up from his seat, rushed to the airport without even tidying his clothes.
On the way, he received a call from Fu Qiming: “Are you planning to abandon the company?”
“Didn’t I arrange everything before I left?”
“You only arrange, you don’t execute?”
“Please, who was it who dumped a mess on me to clean up and ran off abroad to accompany his wife?”
Fu Qiming coughed, sounding slightly guilty: “I had to do that for the sake of the family…”
“You did it for yourself,” Fu Xuanliao said. “I’m doing this for myself now. I’ve lived for the Fu family for so long, I want to live for myself once.”
Silence on the other end of the line for a moment: “You’ve decided on him?”
Thinking of the reply he received when he asked what was up—Shi Meng had replied, “To look at the stars”—Fu Xuanliao’s gaze softened.
“Yes, just him. No one else.”
After more than two hours of flying, Fu Xuanliao arrived in the warm, spring-like southern city.
He rushed to the guesthouse where Shi Meng was staying, but as he got out of the car, the weather turned sour and it began to rain. Stargazing was out of the question. When the rain lessened, the two went for a stroll on the beach.
The sky was black, and the sea was black. The sound of waves came from an unknown direction, and the crunch of their footsteps in the sand was very clear.
Shi Meng hadn’t brought flip-flops, and the wet sand poured into his shoes and burrowed into the soles of his feet. Seeing him walk awkwardly, Fu Xuanliao strode forward, crouched down, grabbed both his arms, and lifted him onto his back.
Shi Meng gasped as his feet suddenly left the ground and asked, “What are you doing?”
Fu Xuanliao said, “Carrying you.”
“Who asked you to carry me?”
“Should I put you down then?”
A punch landed on his shoulder. Fu Xuanliao hissed: “You weren’t this fierce when we got lost on the mountain back then.”
Shi Meng assumed he meant the very first “back then,” and thought, I wasn’t familiar with you then, so of course I couldn’t be fierce. Then he thought, looks like he hasn’t been bitten enough.
Seeming to recall the later events, Fu Xuanliao chuckled softly and said, “Being fierce is cuter.”
Back at the hotel, Shi Meng showed him what “fiercely cute” meant.
He pulled Fu Xuanliao into the shower stall, turned on the overhead shower, and gave them both an indoor rain, soaking them completely.
Fu Xuanliao was taller, so Shi Meng stood on his tiptoes to reach him, wanting to kiss and bite, baring his teeth like a hungry kitten.
There was no anti-slip mat on the floor, and fearing Shi Meng might fall, Fu Xuanliao simply picked him up again, pressed him against the wall, and tilted his head back to cooperate with Shi Meng’s wanton playfulness.
When they had played enough, Fu Xuanliao refused to put him down. He wiped the water from his face and asked, “Did you look at the contents of the cardboard box?”
Shi Meng was annoyed by the question. He leaned in to block Fu Xuanliao’s mouth again, but Fu Xuanliao used the web of his hand to cup both sides of his jaw, continuing to press: “Do you want a life with me, or without me?”
Shi Meng was forced to pout, shaking his head with difficulty, meaning, “I’m just not telling you.”
Fu Xuanliao resorted to threats: “If you don’t answer, I won’t put you down.”
Hearing this, Shi Meng narrowed his eyes, seemingly smiling, then softened against Fu Xuanliao, exhaling a hot, damp breath, and said, “Here is fine too.”
It wasn’t until the items on the counter in front of the mirror were swept to the floor with a clatter that Fu Xuanliao remembered he had once described Shi Meng as a demon, in bed.
The Shi Meng of today was different from before—bolder and more seductive, clinging to him like a snake, his red lips slightly parted, asking breathlessly, “You don’t want to?”
How could he not want to?
For a long time, Fu Xuanliao had harbored many indecent fantasies about Shi Meng—wanting to pin him down and kiss him, wanting to be with him everywhere.
This was the base thought hidden deep in every man’s heart, not to be spoken of, and the most direct physiological manifestation of loving and desiring him.
It turned out there was never any coercion; it had always been instinct.
And there was never any need for restraint.
Holding Shi Meng seated on the counter, they faced each other honestly, tracing the patterns on each other’s chests, brushing over the scars left by the absurd accident.
For the first time, Shi Meng didn’t hate himself so much, and didn’t hate the rain so much.
He stroked the not-so-delicate pattern and the abrupt cigarette burn within it, murmuring, “I’m on you.”
Fu Xuanliao lowered his head, kissing the skin that was once tattooed with flames and was still as hot as a flame, and whispered, “You are also in my heart, as long as my heart is still beating.”
Shi Meng held his neck, feeling the pulsing of his artery.
He threaded his fingers into Fu Xuanliao’s hair, slowly tightening his grip, and couldn’t help but ask, “What if it stops beating?”
“Then I’ll hurry up and reincarnate, be reborn, and come find you.” Burying his face in Shi Meng’s embrace, Fu Xuanliao spoke the insane words with the calmness of a prayer. “Whether you want it or not, I must be a part of your life.”