"How much did you drink?"
"Five or six bottles?"
"...You can hold your liquor quite well." Xie Yu frowned. He waited for the people to leave before letting go. "I told you not to smoke, so you drank instead? Thinking outside the box?"
He Zhao looked at him and said nothing.
Xie Yu saw the bruise at the corner of his mouth and was about to say, "And you fought somebody, too?" when He Zhao reached out and pulled him into a hug.
"Don't move." He Zhao pressed his forehead to the crook of Xie Yu's neck and whispered, "I won't smoke. I just want to hold you for a while."
The street was empty and silent, and the cold wind had mostly woken him from his drunken haze. His little friend was wearing a puffy jacket, loose-fitting and thick, and it felt soft under He Zhao's hands. It was the complete opposite of the annoyed expression on his face.
On both sides of the road, the streetlamps stretched into the horizon like pinpricks of starlight that had shattered and dissolved into the night.
After a while, He Zhao asked, "Why did you come?"
Xie Yu said, "I came to claim my boyfriend's corpse."
He Zhao had recovered from his drunken haze, and now his bullshit flowed smoothly, again. "Your boyfriend is so good at holding his liquor that another ten bottles wouldn't be a problem."
"...You're asking to get hit."
He Zhao went on teasing for a while, then fell silent. He shut his eyes and only now did he feel it sink in—it was over.
It was all over.
Was this finally an escape? He Zhao thought about it and decided it probably wasn't.
But he gradually came to understand why his father had not stopped him, at the start. He had left He Zhao to do as he wanted. He had watched He Zhao stuck to the spot, without a plan, using the most extreme of methods to solve his problems.
Someone picking him up and him getting up on his own were two completely different matters.
"Shall we go back?" The night was very cold, and if they kept standing here they might catch a cold the next day. He Zhao let go and said, "We can't get a cab here. Let's go to the intersection up ahead."
Xie Yu hesitated for a second.
When he left the house, Madam Gu had already gone to bed and he had not told her he was going out. It would be past midnight by the time he got home if he left now, and he wouldn't be able to explain himself easily.
He Zhao tilted his head and looked at him. "My place, then?"
He Zhao's house was empty.
His dad had left several days ago. He was in the midst of a multi-country trip and had only returned to rest for less than a week. He had looked at He Zhao's end-of-term grades, said nothing, tossed the grade sheet on the table, and invited He Zhao to play a game of chess.
"No matter what path you take and how you walk it," Old He had said, his voice dropping low on the last word. "I believe in you."
Xie Yu napped in the cab and He Zhao woke him up when they reached their destination.
He Zhao got out, paid the fare, then circled around to the back seat and rested his hand on the door. He couldn't bear to wake Xie Yu. Eventually, he bent down and kissed the corner of Xie Yu's mouth, and said, "We're here."
He Zhao's house was neat and tidy—the sort of neat where it didn't feel lived-in. Aside from a housekeeper who came once a week to tidy up, nobody came and went in this house.
