Kaleidoscope of Death

Against reality, however, words of comfort were like trying to put out a wagon fire with a single cup of water.

Not only the Cheng twins, but also everybody else in the mansion were in low spirits because of this door. As someone who’d just entered Obsidian, Ye Niao didn’t understand the organization very well. Even so, he still felt the thickly solemn atmosphere; he was by nature lively and upbeat, but during this time period, he didn’t even dare to speak too loudly.

Until a few days later, and the time came for the twins to enter their door.

The weather was good that morning. Lu Yanxue made a rich breakfast, including Cheng Qianli’s favorite soup dumplings. Cheng Qianli had a great time eating, swallowing down practically one per bite like a squirrel storing food away for the winter.

Lin Qiushi’s appetite, however, was average. He felt kind of like a parent waiting on the scores of his kid’s college entrance exam, and figured everybody else felt about the same. The truth was, though, that the price to pay for failure in the doors was a lot more painful than the exams.

While everybody was eating, Cheng Yixie and Cheng Qianli suddenly stood. The two turned and went upstairs.

Lin Qiushi watched them go and immediate understood what was about to happen. He was oddly nervous, not even managing to properly hold onto the chopsticks in his hand, and they clattered onto the table.

Lu Yanxue was the only woman left in Obsidian after Zhuang Rujiao left. She forced a smile.

“They’ll be fine, right? Ruan-ge?”

Ruan Nanzhu sat beside Lin Qiushi with his gaze cast downward. He did not give an answer to Lu Yanxue’s question.

For a tenth door, he couldn’t even promise that he himself could make it out alive.

Under normal circumstances, a single door lasted around ten minutes in reality.

Lin Qiushi had never thought that ten minutes could be so difficult to bear. He stared at the watch in his hand, watching the second hand scoot forward bit by bit. He even instinctively held his breath, until he realized he wasn’t getting any air and hurried to inhale a breath or two.

“I want a drink, do you guys want any?” Chen Fei suddenly got up and asked in agitation.

“Mh,” Lin Qiushi nodded.

Ruan Nanzhu glanced at Lin Qiushi, but didn’t try to talk him out of it.

And so Chen Fei got a bottle of Maotai, and the group began drinking bright and early in the morning.

Sunlight cast bright dapples in through the window, but they got no heat from it. Lin Qiushi mouthed at the liquor in his cup and felt the whole house go so scarily silent.

But the moment of judgment they were waiting for finally came.

Nine-eighteen AM, there came a wail from upstairs.

Like everybody else, Lin Qiushi’s expression immediately changed. They rushed up the stairs and found the twins on their bed.

One was holding the other, and the one being held had blood pouring endlessly out of his mouth—Lin Qiushi had never seen so much blood, mouthful after mouthful. It dyed the sheets, the carpet, and everything within sight.

“No!! No!!” A tearing voice like the lament of someone also dying, the one left behind let out a wretched cry. “Don’t leave me, Qianli, Qianli—”

Cheng Qianli was being held, but he didn’t seem to have much strength left. His eyes were wide open, but his gaze had started to disperse at the edges. A fingertip slowly drew across Cheng Yixie’s cheek as he managed to make himself smile, as he managed to call a quiet Gege.

“Aaaaaaahh!!!” Cheng Yixie screamed like he’d gone crazy, in devastating pain as if he could do nothing but watch as a part of his very soul was slowly dying.

“120, quick, call 120!!”

Lu Yanxue’s face was covered in tears as she called 120 with trembling hands. Then she threw herself before Cheng Qianli, taking his hand. “Qianli, Qianli, hang in there, Qianli—”

Cheng Qianli didn’t speak. The life in his eyes was beginning to fade, and the breath in him was weakening. Like color fading from a painting until all that was left was black and white, a chill enveloped his entire body.

He worked hard to open his mouth, calling out, “Ge.” And then, with all the strength left in his body, said a last few words: “Don't…be sad.”

At the sight of this, Lin Qiushi covered his face with his hands. He slowly turned and leaned against the wall, all of him withering.

In his ears were Lu Yanxue and Cheng Yixie’s sobs, playing like a funereal dirge.

What use was an ambulance? They all knew the price of failure.

In the end Cheng Yixie turned away the medics. By the time they came, Cheng Qianli had already stopped breathing. He wasn’t willing to let his most beloved brother leave his arms for even a moment.

Ruan Nanzhu said nothing the entire time. It wasn’t until Cheng Qianli’s death was confirmed that he went into the bathroom and fetched a clean towel. Half-kneeling before Cheng Yixie, he wiped the blood bit by bit from Cheng Qianli’s face.

Cheng Yixie watched Ruan Nanzhu’s motions in silence. All the light in his eyes had gone out, leaving only an endless black.

Finally, he spoke, calling out: “Ruan-ge.”

Ruan Nanzhu looked up at him.

“I’m leaving Obsidian,” Cheng Yixie said.

Ruan Nanzhu didn’t reply. When their gazes met, he understood what the look in Cheng Yixie’s eyes meant.

He said, “I’ll give you a vacation.”

Cheng Yixie was silent.

Ruan Nanzhu clasped his shoulder with one hand; words were so useless in times like these. He extended a finger and gently touched Cheng Qianli’s cheek—it was already cold, never to hold the warmth of before.

“I was wrong,” Cheng Yixie said. “You were right.”

Ruan Nanzhu didn’t know what to say. He only cleared his throat lowly once, like he was pushing down some emotion threatening to burst from his trachea.

“This door was too hard. Only the two of us were left in the end,” Cheng Yixie spoke, sedated. “He was foolish his whole life, and he had to be smart just this once.”

There was no pain in his expression, but tears still endlessly spilled out of his eyes, like he no longer had any control of it at all.

“Had to be smart just this once.” Cheng Yixie pressed his forehead against Cheng Qianli’s forehead. “It’s all my fault.”

In his eyes, Cheng Qianli was a kid who could never grow up. And now, he finally would never have to.

Cheng Qianli—he’d never have his eighteenth birthday. His time had been stopped at this moment, never to go forth a second or a minute more.

Nobody said a single word of comfort. Nobody told Cheng Yixie to be strong, to hang in there, that this too shall pass. They all knew well that this was something that would never pass. Everything they could say were just platitudes and lies. They’d completely and utterly lost that kid who would laugh so foolishly.

Lu Yanxue began to weep, following Yi Manman’s sobbing.

Ruan Nanzhu left the room and went downstairs. Lin Qiushi was curled up in a corner, frozen like a statue.

He’d seen so many goodbyes, but he still couldn’t get used to it. Toast the corgi, who’d been napping downstairs, seemed to have sensed something wrong as well, scampering upstairs in a panic. When it discovered that its owner would never move again, it began to bark rapidly in panic, like it wanted to wake Cheng Qianli from some dreams he’d fallen into.

But this wasn’t a dream. Or, even if it was, it was a nightmare that they couldn’t be woken from.

Lin Qiushi couldn’t catch his breath. He himself was in so much pain, so what about the one who shared Cheng Qianli’s twin life, Cheng Yixie. That was a feeling Lin Qiushi was too scared to even imagine.

How the rest of that day passed, Lin Qiushi didn’t much remember.

It was as if the human body had a natural defensive mechanism: some memories were reflexively muted. But Cheng Qianli’s pale white face was imprinted deeply in Lin Qiushi’s mind. He remembered it too well, to the point where he couldn’t sleep for a long time.

The funeral came after.

The twin’s parents rushed over. They’d wanted to bring Cheng Qianli home at first, but Cheng Yixie turned them down.

Cheng Yixie said that he wanted Cheng Qianli to stay by his side. His parents, seeing that he could not be swayed, agreed.

In only a few days, Cheng Yixie had thinned down. A patch of white had even appeared at his temples.

He was only seventeen. He ought to have been blossoming.

Cheng Yixie held the urn of Cheng Qianli’s ashes and placed it in that tiny little grave.

The grave was split into two parts. On one side was written Cheng Yixie, and on the other Cheng Qianli. Cheng Yixie likely figured that he would be the one to go first, and had even gotten his own name painted gold. But the reality came out completely different than he’d anticipated.

“I’m the selfish one.” At the funeral, Cheng Yixie said this to the tombstone. “I wanted to go, and leave him here.”

But the one left behind was by far the most miserable. Suddenly, he laughed, saying, “at least he doesn’t have to suffer all this.”

Lin Qiushi looked at his smile and wanted so badly to tell him to stop. But he couldn’t say it. The truth was, the number of times he’d talked in the past few days could be counted on one hand.

After the funeral, Cheng Yixie went missing.

His room was the same as it had always been, just missing some clothes and a luggage bag.

Lin Qiushi was the first to discover this. He asked Ruan Nanzhu where Cheng Yixie had gone, but Ruan Nanzhu’s answer was: “I don’t know.”

Lin Qiushi was silent.

“I don’t know where he’s gone, and I don’t know where he could go,” Ruan Nanzhu said in a composed tone. “He’s been at Obsidian ever since he started entering doors. Obsidian is his home.”

Lin Qiushi looked at Ruan Nanzhu, a kind of dazed unknowing in his eyes.

Ruan Nanzhu sighed lightly and pulled Lin Qiushi into his arms. He gave Lin Qiushi a comforting kiss and said, “some things, we’ve already seen coming.”

“Including death?” Lin Qiushi asked.

“Naturally,” Ruan Nanzhu said. “Everyone experiences death sooner or later.”

“But their death, it came too soon,” Lin Qiushi said. They were still so small, and hadn’t experienced much of anything at all. They were supposed to have more time, they…

Ruan Nanzhu said: “The gods are unfair.”

Had Cheng Yixie and Cheng Qianli been born with healthy bodies, they’d have never entered the doors. Though the doors were difficult, they gave the two more time, as well as the chance to get in a good look at the world. It was just that even such bestowed blessings came to an end. Plunging down from heaven to hell was the most painful thing.

That night, Ruan Nanzhu and Lin Qiushi slept together. Lin Qiushi asked: “Did Cheng Yixie have that kind of hint?”

Ruan Nanzhu: “Yes.”

Lin Qiushi was silent.

“You have to pay for these things sooner or later,” Ruan Nanzhu said. “And the price is always more painful than you think.”

Lin Qiushi was about to say something when he felt Ruan Nanzhu slip a candy in his mouth. Tonguing the candy, he mumbled around it, “have you successfully quit smoking?”

“Yes,” Ruan Nanzhu answered.

Lin Qiushi didn’t know what to say again. These days, his silences were growing more and more frequent, and more and more extended.

Ruan Nanzhu seemed to sense his disorientation, and held him in his arms, saying softly: “Go to sleep.”

Lin Qiushi closed his eyes and fell deeply asleep.

It was like Cheng Qianli’s death had broken a mirage of tranquility in the mansion, and a particular heaviness began to spread throughout the house.

Lu Yanxue would often start wiping away tears in the middle of cooking, perhaps because she’d seen a particular food item and remembered someone who liked to eat it.

Toast, after discovering its owner was gone, was also depressed for a very long time. It was only under Chestnut’s soothing that it managed to come back around.

As for Lin Qiushi, he’d kept up a sense of unreality about the twins’ departure. It was as if any minute now, he could go back to the living room and see Cheng Qianli watching TV and giggling on the sofa. That illusion took until one night to break.

That evening, he came down from upstairs and saw a horror movie playing on the living room television. There was a person watching on the sofa with a blanket wrapped around his body, looking positively terrified. Seeing this, Lin Qiushi called out, “Qianli?!”

But it was Ye Niao’s face that peeked out of the blanket. He looked at Lin Qiushi and spoke quietly.

“Qiushi?”

The moment he saw Ye Niao’s face, Lin Qiushi finally realized that he would never see Cheng Qianli again. It was a feeling difficult to describe in words, like a fantasy that he’d managed to trick himself into believing had suddenly burst by someone else’s hand, and he could only face the cruel and bloody truth.

“Nothing.” Lin Qiushi turned.

Ye Niao called out Qiushi again, but Lin Qiushi just headed straight upstairs. There was concern in the way Ye Niao looked on, because he’d gotten a good look at Lin Qiushi’s face just now and all the tears that hung there. Lin Qiushi seemed to have mistaken him for Cheng Qianli…He didn’t know why, but there was a sense of regret in Ye Niao’s chest. How nice would it have been to have joined Obsidian a bit earlier, and have experienced all the ups and downs with them? At least he wouldn’t be left by the wayside.

It wasn’t until Lin Qiushi got back to his room that he discovered he was crying. When Cheng Qianli passed, he hadn’t cried. He hadn’t expected losing control now.

He sat at the side of his bed and realized all of a sudden why Cheng Yixie left. Because in the mansion, the traces of Cheng Qianli’s life was everywhere, and all these traces were like a dull knife, slicing again and again at the flesh without drawing visible blood.

Lin Qiushi lied on the bed and exhaled slowly. He emptied his mind, and fell asleep in a daze.

Ruan Nanzhu came back at midnight and found Lin Qiushi curled on top of the bed. He didn’t wake him, only gently placed a blanket over Lin Qiushi’s body.

“Oh.” But Lin Qiushi startled awake anyways, mumbling, “Nanzhu.”

“Mh.” Ruan Nanzhu sat down beside Lin Qiushi. “I’m here.”

“I miss Qianli now,” Lin Qiushi said.

Ruan Nanzhu said, “I also miss him.” His admission was forthright. “Every time I see Toast, I remember Qianli.”

He would remembered the sight of Qianli holding Toast, and that brilliant, childlike grin.

“What do I do now?” Lin Qiushi said. “I also miss Wu Qi, Tan Zaozao…” They’d all been passersby in his life who’d come, and gone.

“You can only endure,” Ruan Nanzhu said. “You’ll be fine once it’s passed.”

Hearing how calm Ruan Nanzhu sounded, Lin Qiushi’s heart suddenly began to ache. Pretty much everybody fell apart after Cheng Qianli passed. Only Ruan Nanzhu collectedly handled everything; he contacted the twins’ parents and the funeral home, and had even scheduled the burial time.

Lin Qiushi didn’t know how many times Ruan Nanzhu had gone through such a thing to be as calm as he was now.

Ruan Nanzhu saw right through Lin Qiushi’s look. He sighed softly, but smiled.

“Don’t hurt so much for my sake. I’m really not as tragic as you think.”

Some things you just had to get used to.

Three months after Cheng Yixie left Obsidian, he sent Obsidian a letter with no return address. In the letter he said that he was doing fine, and that they shouldn’t worry.

Lu Yanxue was the first to get the letter, and when she saw the familiar handwriting on the paper she nearly fainted from crying so hard, clutching the envelope to her chest as she sobbed: “This no-good kid, how can he only write us now, this no-good—”

“Can you find out where he is?” Chen Fei asked Ruan Nanzhu.

After inspecting the letter, Ruan Nanzhu took the envelope from Lu Yanxue as well, but in the end shook his head.

“There aren’t any clues. He’s very careful.”

Chen Fei sighed.

“Will he still come back?” Yi Manman was actually not particularly close to Cheng Yixie, but he had been very close to Cheng Qianli.

“I don’t know.” Ruan Nanzhu didn’t give a definitive answer.

“Whether or not he comes back, as long as he feels better, that’s fine.” After she said this, Lu Yanxue began to cry again. “But how can he do this by himself? Can he bear it?”

Nobody knew the answer to this question. But even if he couldn’t bear it, he had to. This was time that Cheng Qianli had traded his life for. Cheng Yixie would never give it up.

Lin Qiushi stared at the handwriting on the envelope and didn’t speak for a long time.

Not until Ruan Nanzhu pulled him back to his room and said, “Qiushi, you don’t seem to be doing well recently.”

Lin Qiushi, “hm?”

“You keep spacing out,” Ruan Nanzhu said. “Haven’t you noticed?” His brow lightly puckered, and his gaze fell upon Lin Qiushi’s face.

“I space out?” Lin Qiushi blinked. “Do I?”

Ruan Nanzhu didn’t reply, but the look in his eyes were answer enough.

“Oh.” Lin Qiushi rubbed at his own face, saying, “I’m just feel a bit tired lately.”

Ruan Nanzhu said, “let’s go on a vacation.”

“Hm?” Lin Qiushi didn’t think Ruan Nanzhu would say that all of a sudden, and so startled for a bit. And then his thoughts all swam away again, until very lightly, Ruan Nanzhu pinched his cheek.

“Spacing out again?”

Lin Qiushi coughed. It was only then that he realized how out of it he was, even right there under Ruan Nanzhu’s scrutiny. He cleared his throat twice more and said awkwardly, “sorry about that.”

Ruan Nanzhu sighed.

After discovering Lin Qiushi’s poor state, Ruan Nanzhu rapidly began preparing for travel.

Spring was supposed to be the season of resuscitation and happiness, but due to Qianli’s passing, this spring was even more difficult to bear than the frigid winter.

Lin Qiushi didn’t even recall seeing the trees grow new sprouts. By the time he came back around, the time was already summer.

Tall, dense canopies framed the streets. These past few months seemed to have been plucked out of their lives by some strange and powerful force.

But life had to continue. It was just that nobody in the mansion had to enter a door recently, and so everybody lived on in peace. Ruan Nanzhu as well. In a one-eighty from how he used to go in door after door, he was preparing to take Lin Qiushi out on a long vacation.

“Where do you want to go?” Ruan Nanzhu brought a map over and asked Lin Qiushi.

“Anywhere is good. I’ve never even left the country,” Lin Qiushi said. “Have you?”

“I have in the past. Not so much now,” Ruan Nanzhu answered.

“In the past?” Lin Qiushi suddenly remembered that Ruan Nanzhu rarely talked about his background, and had never seemed to bring up any family.

“Mh,” Ruan Nanzhu said. “My family’s pretty well-off. They just all thought I was crazy.” He spoke softly but fully, like he was talking about something that had nothing to do with himself. “I didn’t stay in touch after that.”

“Oh,” Lin Qiushi said. He could tell that Ruan Nanzhu wasn’t enthusiastic about this talk of family, and asked no further.

“If you want to know, I can bring you back for a trip,” Ruan Nanzhu said.

“I don’t really want that,” Lin Qiushi said, smiling. “I only need to know you.”

Ruan Nanzhu glanced at Lin Qiushi.

“Really?”

Lin Qiushi flipped up his palms.

“What else is there?”

In the end they decided on a set of islands near the equator as their vacation destination.

When he learned that they were going there for recreation, Chen Fei was shocked, saying Ruan-ge, you haven’t taken a break for years, why a vacation trip all of a sudden?

Ruan Nanzhu, “is it so weird to go on vacation when you’re tired?”

Chen Fei chuckled dryly, “not at all, not at all. You guys have a great time. If anything happens don’t hesitate to call.”

Ruan Nanzhu made a noise of confirmation. When he turned to look at Lin Qiushi however, he found Lin Qiushi spacing out once again on the sofa. Some exasperation bled through Ruan Nanzhu’s expression as he approached, leaned over, and bit down right on Lin Qiushi’s cheek.

“Ah!” Only after being bitten on the face by Ruan Nanzhu did Lin Qiushi startle awake, putting a bewildered hand to his face. “What did you bite me for?”

“I was scared that if I didn’t bite you, your soul would fly away.”

Lin Qiushi, a bit exasperated, “it’s not that serious.”

Ruan Nanzhu had truly taken a bite, and not only was his face burning in pain right now, it also had a new neat row of teeth prints.

“If you don’t want to be bitten then don’t space out,” Ruan Nanzhu said very seriously.

Lin Qiushi looked to be struggling. He too didn’t know why he was spacing out so much recently…Plus, was spacing out really something he could control?

Translator’s Notes:

• Oh. boy. The chapter title is “雙生” which means twins, born together, dual lives, etc. It’s unintentional but the double meaning of Twin Lives (noun) and Twin Lives (verb) is literally. breaking my whole heart right now.