A Broken Heart Still Beats.

Chapter II

The brothel was surprisingly not as terrible as he remembered.

Perhaps it was just because he wasn't nearly as scared as he used to be. Where he had used to cower in the storage closets, hide in the wardrobe, and sniffle and cry like a pathetic little twerp for his big brothers; he now stood stiffly, strictly, and without a break, he wore the clothes laid out for him without question or complaint, he did his hair as was required, and never neglected his duties even if this uselessly weak body of his was near the brink of collapse.

Madam Wang had yet to find a single reason to scold him in both his lessons and his work in the brothel.

It satisfied him smugly whenever he watched her exasperatedly look for even the slightest mishap in either his calligraphy or mathematics, even going as far as to try and best him in Go, only to lose to a thirteen-year-old who wore an expression of detached impassiveness entirely foreign to his normally expressive nature.

He reveled in the sight of the madam storming off angrily, without even the reason or right to scold Bai Daiyu for anything. His Jiejie's life was simpler this way, when he didn't get in the way or cause any problems, her life was peaceful. It could have always been like this if he hadn't been so weak in the past life.

Even when Chen Qiang visited, there was practically nothing for either of them to get onto him for. It pleased the brothel master immensely, and he had even started to greet the stiff form of Shen Yuan: who bowed to him and greeted him with a clear voice and bleak tone, with a head pat as he entered, happily awaiting the perfect scores of music the boy would play for him, along with the tea and snacks masterfully prepared.

Shen Yuan didn't care for his praise, he didn't care that he made the brothel master happy, he didn't care that he wasn't being hit as often as he used to be, he didn't even care that Chen Qiang had even learned to call him by his name rather than Shen Shi as everyone else knew him. Even when the brothel master outwardly bragged about him to the regular customers; especially those disgusting friends of his, having him specifically serve them for the hours they were there, even going as far as to have the boy sit at his side as though his successor.

He had nearly gagged when one of those slimy, debaucherous, men dared to call him the little Chen-gongzi. Only for another to say, "No, no, a face like that is too fair to be a little gongzi. Perhaps a little Chen-guniang instead?"

If those men had been any blinder, Shen Yuan would have sworn that they all were disabled and deserved pity for their mistakes. But he knew, likely better than most, that the men he stood before as nothing more than brief entertainment were not blind, but they were disgusting.

They were horrible, debaucherous, greedy, slimy, and vacuous.

If Chen Qiang had seen the way his fingers flexed into the thin, pale orange robes he wore with a too-low collar, that only served to reveal the flat chest that would always stay flat, because he was a man. He didn't voice it, and instead laughed off his friend's harmful teasing, and waved Shen Yuan off to either get them more to eat or to return to whatever chores he had left to complete.

This life...he hated it as much as he hated it before, even though now he knew how to bear with it...it was infuriating.

He wasn't Chen-guniang, he wasn't Chen-gongzi.

He was Shen Yuan—no one else.

He was not Shen Shi, he was not Shen Tianyan, he was not Chen-gongzi or Chen-guniang.

But...was he even truly Shen Yuan?

He wasn't a girl, he didn't like to wear these clothes, he didn't like to be touched by that Chen Qiang, even if it was just a pat on the head. He didn't like that those friends of his teased him in such a cruel way, even though they knew that their comments cut him deeper than a knife. He didn't like playing music for them, he didn't like to sing for them, he didn't like making their snacks and tea, and he didn't like sitting next to Chen Qiang: whose mood could go from volatile or chummy in less than a second.