You Are Deep in The Stars

The bells of the Municipal Square could be heard faintly in the distance, and it was already eight o’clock in the evening.

While Liu Chunchun heated milk in the kitchen, he complained to Bai Xi on the other end of the phone: “Why did you think of me now… It’s okay… No, no, no, he didn’t domestically abuse me; I made him cry… What bragging? I really wasn’t bragging.”

“Do you still want me to come over?” Bai Xi asked.

“Please don’t.” Liu Chunchun tried his best to lower his voice, like an underground party liaison. He hung up the phone, poured the hot milk into the cup, and added a little sugar to make the taste sweeter.

Wang Yuanchen’s mood had returned to calm at this time. He leaned on the sofa in the bedroom with his legs crossed, playing mobile games out of boredom. He didn’t want to face or admit the fragile side of his heart, so he used more arrogance and indifference to cover up his expression. The light in the bedroom was a cold white that was colder than the moon, which made him look quiet and cold, like a piece of ice that could neither move nor smile.

Liu Chunchun placed the milk cup on the small coffee table.

“Take it away.” Wang Yuanchen looked at the screen of his phone and said coldly.

“…Then you go to bed early.” Liu Chunchun didn’t want to make him angry at that moment, so he agreed sensibly, turned around, and wanted to leave silently. However, Wang Yuanchen had already impatiently dropped his phone and stood up by himself. In doing so, his legs swept down the water glass without any accident. Buzz Lightyear knocked off the handle on the leg of the coffee table, and the milk rushed across the carpet, leaving an ugly dark trace.

Wang Yuanchen ignored all of this. He went straight into the bathroom and turned on the shower to the maximum. The rushing hot water washed over the ground, splashing a cloud of hot air, which soon made the person in the mirror blurry—at least it would no longer be so obviously embarrassed. What was deep in the memory, what he was unwilling to touch, clung to his bones and nerves like black vines, bringing sharp thorns that pricked every place, leaving him bloodied and riddled with holes.

He clenched his fists, causing horrible veins to appear on his entire arm. When the anxiety subsided and he was finally able to walk out of the bathroom, he found that the floor of the bedroom had been cleaned up, and the wet carpet was placed next to the balcony railing. The room was very quiet, and the lights in the corridor were dimmed. Liu Chunchun seemed to have returned to his bedroom, but the Christmas gift with the beautiful ribbon had not been taken away. It still sat alone on the dining table, seeming extremely pitiful.

Wang Yuanchen laid on the bed with his arms pillowed on his head, looking at the bright lights on the ceiling, listening to time flying by in his ears: one second, one minute, one hour, three hours.

His sense of hearing was so developed that it could even be called a supernatural power. Especially in such silent late nights, it was so sharp that it resembled radar, allowing all the tiny sounds coming from the guest bedroom to fall clearly into his ears at that moment.

Liu Chunchun, wrapped in a blanket, sat on the carpet, focusing on the screen of his mobile phone. His bedroom and the master bedroom were completely different in style. The lights were changed to warm colours, and the bed sheets were orange with two bears on them. That had been a gift he and Wang Yuanchen bought together at the supermarket when they went to buy chocolate biscuits a few days ago.

At that time, Mr. Wang had a good temper. He would line up to weigh apples, pick onions, buy ice cream, and help carry shopping bags.

Thinking of this, Liu Chunchun sighed deeply again.

Wang Yuanchen, who had been lingering outside the door, finally couldn’t help it. He strode forward and pushed open the bedroom door.

Liu Chunchun turned around in surprise: “Is something wrong?”

Wang Yuanchen stood in front of him like a god, condescendingly holding a gift.

Liu Chunchun said nothing.

Liu Chunchun pointed to the clock on the wall: “It’s almost one o’clock.”

Of course, Wang Yuanchen didn’t care what time it was, but he sat next to him and asked expressionlessly, “Are you angry?”

Liu Chunchun shook his head.

Wang Yuanchen frowned. “I allow you to be angry.”

It was the first time in his life that he met such a conceited, arrogant, bad-tempered, and domineering roommate. Liu Chunchun felt dumbfounded. He was not angry at all. He just said, “I want to go to bed.”

Wang Yuanchen handed the gift to him.

Liu Chunchun had no intention of taking it.

The atmosphere became awkward again. Seeing Liu Chunchun’s flickering eyes but refusal to look at him, Wang Yuanchen took back the gift and asked lightly, “Do you want to know what happened when I was a child?”

Liu Chunchun was surprised: “Huh?”

Wang Yuanchen took off his T-shirt, revealing his strong and graceful upper body—but Liu Chunchun had painted it countless times, so he didn’t think it was anything special. Until Wang Yuanchen turned his back to him and, for the first time in his life, took the initiative to show those intertwined ugly scars to others.

Liu Chunchun was shocked. “This…”

“This was my childhood,” Wang Yuanchen replied.

More than ten years ago, all his friends had envied him, envied him for being adopted by a famous rich man, and for being able to transform overnight from a helpless orphan into a young master with no worries about food and clothing. At the beginning, he had indeed been happy and nervous, but this joy did not last long. Just three months later, he had been taken to the underground warehouse on his birthday and had witnessed the distortions with his own eyes, along with a cruel experiment.

“The glass was very thick, so I actually couldn’t hear any screams, but I couldn’t forget their expressions,” Wang Yuanchen said. “And the man who adopted me held me and stood outside the laboratory, like visiting a zoo. It was the same thing, walking through all the rooms one by one and making introductions while talking and laughing.”

Those cruel pictures distorted the world, everyone’s faces, and Wang Yuanchen’s internal organs. That night, he squatted in the bathroom and vomited, causing bile to flow out as the world turned upside down. He had a high fever for three full days, but he still couldn’t escape what happened on the fourth day—Shi Dalong took him to the laboratory again, and holding his thin and tender little hand, he pressed it forcefully against the chest of a dying superpower.

Looking at the other party’s turbid and blood-red eyes, the young Wang Yuanchen was almost terrified. He instinctively wanted to withdraw his hand, but instead, he released a force as heavy as a sap and quickly took away the other person’s last breath.

“Well done, baby,” Shi Dalong hugged him and walked down the corridor, praising him like a truly loving father. “Believe me, given time, you will be one of the most powerful people on the planet.”

But Wang Yuanchen trembled all over. The lingering spasm in his palms and the sudden stop of the other person’s heartbeat almost became the beginning of all his nightmares in the future.

And the darkness went beyond that.

Facing this young, beautiful, and pale “brother,” who was as cold as a snow doll, Shi Tian did not hide his abnormal habits at all. He was obsessed with this fragile and powerful existence, not only for his superpowers but also for more dirty, fun things only for grown men.

“As long as Shi Dalong was not around, he would come to my bedroom,” Wang Yuanchen said. “But I learned to scream, so every time, in less than half a minute, a woman would rush over.”

She was Shi Dalong’s wife and Shi Tian’s mother, a violent and cruel superpower. She had no job, low self-esteem, and was paranoid. She was afraid of her husband, doted on her son, and was extremely disgusted with this little boy who had appeared out of thin air. It was even speculated that he was the husband’s illegitimate child.

“Although it was Shi Tian’s fault every time, she hit me every time, with a belt and a steel ruler. The worst time was on the bench.” When he said this, Wang Yuanchen paused for a moment before continuing, “At the beginning, I thought I would die, but later I realized that I would not die. That man adopted me because I would not die. My extraordinary recovery ability was even comparable to that of the transformed Han Zhuo.”

“When I grew up, I planned to run away from that home.” Wang Yuanchen looked at him, “How about it? Is it completely different from your childhood?”

“…” Liu Chunchun didn’t know what to say. Shock, distress, sympathy, and the helplessness and fear of suddenly touching the other side of the world blocked all his words in his throat.

Note

It’s always the one with thorns, hiding dark violent past. Poor baby.