Count All the Stars

"Dr. Yu, I'm so sorry to trouble you, but you have a visitor and he's insisting that you see him."

"Mrs. Chen, you know I prefer not to be interrupted when I'm compiling my research data. Please tell him to schedule an appointment during my posted office hours."

"I know, Dr. Yu, and I did tell him so. But he refuses to leave, and he's—well, he's a very large man, sir, and very intense. He also gave me a message for you, but frankly it doesn't make much sense. Do you want me to call campus security?"

"What's the message?"

"'Tell him I've come from the Rose Nebula.'"

"From the—what is his name? "

"Xiang. Xiang Hao Ting."

~

Does one stand to greet a ghost? The point is moot, Yu Xi Gu realizes, because he couldn't move from his chair if he tried. Just the sight of the man in the doorway is enough to drain all the color from his face and the strength from his limbs.

Xiang Hao Ting. Older, wearier, his face touched by grief and pain, but undeniably Hao Ting.

Someone's Hao Ting anyway. Not his. He'd buried his Hao Ting years ago, along with all he ever knew of joy.

Despite the shock, Yu Xi Gu is the first to break the silence. "You're dead," he says softly. "But I suppose you know that."

"Yes," Hao Ting replies, gaze never leaving his face. "That's what took me so long. Well, that and several years heading down a blind alley of time-travel research before I refocused on alternate universe theory."

He's huge. Yu Xi Gu remembers him as big but he's towering. Surely he could cross the office in two strides of those long legs. But he just stands unmoving in the doorway, eyes locked on Yu Xi Gu as though afraid he'll disappear. An understandable fear, under the circumstances.

"Am I dead too?"

"Where I come from? Yes. Hit by a car at eighteen, not long after we moved into our apartment together. What about me?"

Yu Xi Gu swallows hard against an upswell of complicated grief. "Nineteen. You were hiking in the mountains—there was a landslide. I wasn't with you. I'd been offered a prestigious summer research internship, and I thought that was more important than a vacation with my boyfriend."

"Xi Gu, surely you don't blame yourself."

"Why shouldn't I? The man I loved died alone on a mountaintop because I put my ambitions ahead of his happiness."

"Oh, Xi Gu." Now Hao Ting does close the distance between them, kneeling at Yu Xi Gu's feet. "You didn't bring down the mountain. None of us has power over life and death."

Yu Xi Gu doesn't even realize he's weeping until Hao Ting's big hand comes up to gently wipe the tears from his face.

"Please don't cry, little Xi Gu. I didn't cross all these universes just to make you cry."

This man isn't his Hao Ting. He's not. But his hands feel the same, and so does the sheltering warmth of his big body as he draws Yu Xi Gu into his arms. And so Yu Xi Gu clings to him, sobbing as though he still has any heart left to break.

~

Yu Xi Gu takes him home. What else can he do? There's no one else in this world to whom Hao Ting wouldn't be a stranger, a madman, or a ghost.

Besides, this man proved the many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics and broke through the walls between the worlds just to see Xi Gu's face again. It might be polite to at least feed him dinner.