Sun Rain Chapter 57
byFu Xuanliao, however, could only respond instinctively.
Eventually, it was less a kiss and more a brutal, unrestrained release, a desperate entanglement of bodies.
Shi Meng used his lips and teeth, every movement full of force, as if he wanted to devour Fu Xuanliao alive, eating his flesh and drinking his blood.
The latter not only endured it but bent down and tilted his head, making it easier for Shi Meng to bite him fiercely and block his mouth completely.
Pain and pleasure—that was the description of the moment.
After they separated, both men needed the other’s support just to stand steady. Fu Xuanliao raised his hand and pressed the switch on the nearby wall. The moment the overhead light flickered on, their most disheveled and miserable states were fully revealed to each other.
Blood seeped from the corner of Fu Xuanliao’s mouth; the unhealed wound had been bitten open deeper.
Shi Meng, meanwhile, gasped violently as if starved of oxygen, streaks of tears running down his face, leaving mottled trails.
“You don’t want me to die.” His chest was still heaving rapidly, but Fu Xuanliao couldn’t wait to confirm, “You don’t want me to die, do you?”
Hearing this, Shi Meng seemed to pull back a sliver of rationality from his frenzy and realized how absurd the cause of this outburst was.
He had actually said something akin to jealousy, and the object of his contention was a dead man.
All his promises to forget, all his claims of indifference, had become empty words.
But what was done was done. Shi Meng bit his lower lip, which felt numb from the recent friction, and stubbornly insisted, “If you want to go, go. What does that have to do with me?”
“Fine, I’ll go right now.”
With that, Fu Xuanliao released the hand wrapped around Shi Meng’s waist. This time, before he could even turn his body, Shi Meng grabbed his clothes and yanked him back.
Under the light, Shi Meng’s eyes were tinged with a desperate redness, fierce but lacking much deterrence. Especially since his thick eyelashes were clumped together by tears; a gentle blink squeezed out more. This sight softened Fu Xuanliao’s heart completely. He was willing to agree to anything Shi Meng said, and he would accept any further pain with sweetness.
Pulling the soft body of the little mushroom back into his embrace, Fu Xuanliao clenched his jaw, his own eyes reddening.
“You don’t want me to die.” This time, the tone was certain. “I knew it, you couldn’t bear it.”
Falling into an irreversible situation again and again due to impulsive soft-heartedness, Shi Meng bitterly resented Fu Xuanliao’s cunning.
He struggled a few more times but still couldn’t escape. Not wanting to hear any more, Shi Meng’s nostrils flared rapidly. He clenched his fists and pounded Fu Xuanliao’s shoulders and back, as if needing an outlet for his frustration.
“How dare you, how dare you not let go, how dare you… force me like this?”
“How dare you make me…”
Make me love you too.
His throat felt stuffed with cotton, and his tear ducts seemed out of control. Shi Meng desperately bit his teeth, refusing to let himself cry anymore.
Crying was a trick used by the weak. He now possessed everything, lacking nothing, so what was there to cry about?
Perhaps he didn’t hate Fu Xuanliao; he was angry at his own weakness and incompetence.
He should have stopped having expectations long ago. Facing Fu Xuanliao’s relentless pursuit, his heart should have remained calm and composed. But the moment he heard those three words, he simultaneously heard a sound of something giving way inside his heart.
The mountain peak, piled high into the clouds, was shaken as if by an earthquake. A few scattered stones tumbled down, and the originally stable mountain body swayed violently.
And Fu Xuanliao was the instigator of it all. Before, he watched coldly, even delivering a fatal blow to the collapsing mountain at crucial moments. Now, however, he stood madly at the foot of the mountain, opening his arms to catch the falling debris, willing to be battered and bruised, just to use his own strength to carefully protect it.
And then pile it back up again.
“Yes, how dare I,” Fu Xuanliao mocked himself.
Late regret and deep affection were useless, but he had no choice but to stand his ground.
“Maybe I’m just lucky,” Fu Xuanliao said. “I’ve been lucky for two whole lifetimes. In the last life, you were waiting. This life, it’s my turn.”
He tightened his arms, holding the long-lost treasure firmly in his embrace, silently expressing his fear of loss.
“I’m afraid my luck will run out, and there won’t be a next life. So in this life, whether you want it or not, I will give it to you. I won’t let you escape again.”
Finally, Shi Meng, exhausted from crying, was carried to the bed by Fu Xuanliao.
It was very late when they returned, and after all the commotion, a pale gray light was already appearing on the horizon.
Shi Meng tilted his head, staring out the window. He raised his hand, found the switch, and turned off the only light source overhead. The room became dim and gray, the cold stillness before dawn.
Fu Xuanliao showered quickly, perhaps deliberately speeding up. After hastily washing off the sweat, he haphazardly pulled on clothes and hurried back to the room. Seeing the lump under the covers on the bed, he draped the dry towel over his head and slowly walked in, casually wiping his hair.
“I used your towel,” Fu Xuanliao said. “The white one.”
A clean, white face peeked out from under the covers, the dark top of his head fully exposed. Shi Meng glanced at him and gave an expressionless “Oh.”
Fu Xuanliao walked over and sat on the edge of the bed beside him, looking out at the distinct line between the rooftops and the sky in the distance.
After watching for a while, he draped the towel over his shoulder and suddenly spoke, “I dream about you often, starting a long time ago.”
Shi Meng, curled up in the quilt, blinked.
“The you in my dreams is the same as in reality—beautiful, cute, and gentle. You always smile at me.”
Shi Meng was too lazy to speak, thinking internally, No one has ever described me as “gentle.”
Sure enough, Fu Xuanliao’s next sentence was: “But you are not gentle to me at all.”
“You tie me up, yell orders at me, and you always bite me.” As he spoke, Fu Xuanliao raised a hand to touch the corner of his mouth, where threads of blood were seeping out again. “It makes me feel very embarrassed… and it hurts.”
Shi Meng didn’t know why Fu Xuanliao was saying this. He naturally assumed he was bringing up old grievances, holding him accountable.
It takes two to tango; Shi Meng never believed he was entirely innocent for the state of their relationship.
But what Fu Xuanliao said next exceeded his expectations.
“Later, I realized that you were supposed to be gentle. A long time ago, you were the gentlest person in the world. Then, so many disasters that shouldn’t have been yours fell upon you. You were forced into a corner and had no choice but to disguise yourself, hiding your gentleness away.”
“You were forced to this point by me, by us.”
After the tremor in his heart came a vast emptiness, as if his soul had been drained. Shi Meng twitched the corner of his mouth meaninglessly and said, “I’ve never seen anyone like you, insisting on taking the blame.”
This was aimed at Fu Xuanliao’s words, subtly referencing the time he confessed to the crime and was arrested.
Fu Xuanliao naturally understood, so he smiled too, but without complaint or self-mockery.
“I’m willing,” he said. “I’m even afraid it’s not enough. I’ll take another wave of blame entirely.”
Before Shi Meng could call him a lunatic again, Fu Xuanliao turned to look at the person lying on the bed and proactively answered the reason for his actions: “Dreams reflect my subconscious desires. I want your gentleness, I want you to smile at me, because you are Shi Meng, the person I like.”
That was why he couldn’t remember Shi Mu’s appearance—that was just a shell. What he truly clung to was the illusory shadow who loved him and gave him tenderness and beauty.
And after the truth surfaced, the moments that made his heart flutter overlapped one by one with Shi Meng. Black and white turned to color, and the person he liked finally gained a vivid, concrete form.
True love is never sudden; it grows day by day.
“What about Shi Mu?”
Shi Meng, after his hysteria, possessed a kind of reckless calm, so calm that he was no longer ashamed to ask about the things he deeply cared about.
He had already been turned inside out anyway.
Shi Meng even made the question specific: “You said you would only like him, and it was impossible for you to like me.”
After a few seconds of silence, Fu Xuanliao said, “It wasn’t impossible, it was forbidden.”
At the time, he was shackled; everyone reminded him not to forget. The more he feared forgetting, the more eager he was to distance himself. Later, he realized that Shi Meng was not just a temptation to him, but the oxygen he needed to survive.
He should have faced his heart long ago.
Unsure if Shi Meng could grasp his meaning, Fu Xuanliao simplified the complex matter: “In short, I like you. Only you. It was you before, and it will be you in the future. Before, you couldn’t live without me. Now, I can’t live without you.”
As if recalling the word opposite to “live,” Shi Meng shivered. Although he was still skeptical, he didn’t press the issue further.
“You can say anything you want now,” he said, exhausted and lacking energy. “You’re just taking advantage of the fact that I still…”
Unable to finish, the thick-skinned Fu Xuanliao completed it for him: “Yes, I’m taking advantage of your soft heart, taking advantage of the fact that you still… have love for me.”
Fu Xuanliao felt despicable, but he had to, and could only, do this.
He could openly admit that he liked him, that he desired him, that he was wrong and wanted to correct and salvage things. He only asked Shi Meng to admit that he hated him, that he cared, and that he wanted to be loved.
For them, love could be completely irrational, or it could be mutually calculating.
Shi Meng, having been “tortured into confession,” faced Fu Xuanliao’s blatant exposure of his long-hidden feelings. The helplessness following his fury gradually dissipated, replaced by another rare emotion.
He didn’t want Fu Xuanliao to see it, so he turned his face toward the wall.
Then he parted his lips and slowly said, “Before dawn, on the street opposite the convenience store, I looked back.”
Fu Xuanliao naturally remembered the recent event. He had followed Shi Meng for as long as Shi Meng walked. He also remembered that a gust of wind had picked up then, and when Shi Meng turned his head, the first look he gave him wasn’t cold; there was a strange sense of reassurance within the indifference.
“I actually didn’t need to look back,” Shi Meng continued. “But I did.”
Since Shi Meng rarely initiated topics, Fu Xuanliao couldn’t figure out his angle or the purpose of bringing this up.
Is he asking me to guess why he looked back?
However, Shi Meng also had a habit of not wasting words. After posing the question, he didn’t keep him guessing but proactively provided the answer.
The awkward posture of twisting his neck made Shi Meng’s voice slightly muffled, a choked sound of helplessness that he couldn’t hide.
He said, “Because I wanted to see if you were still there.”
Fu Xuanliao was momentarily stunned, unsure if it was because Shi Meng had finally shown a hint of vulnerability in front of him, or because of the immense information contained in that short sentence.
Amidst the confusion and astonishment, he still “translated” the sentence first.
He didn’t need to look back, yet he did. What Shi Meng meant was—
My mouth told you to leave, but my body and heart honestly hoped you would stay.