Zhou Xiwei looks down at the five-pack of condoms in his hand.
Well, this is different.
A first for them.
He loves Song Bai, so he’s going to do them both the favor of not looking into why… having a liaison… with Shan Haoyu is a huge issue if he’s the one below, but seemingly A-OK if he’s the one on top. Or why Song Bai was so sure of their configuration, without ever asking him. He’s sure the answer would be hurtful. And offensive.
Instead of focusing on that, there’s really just one question that he needs answered. And for the first time in their lives, it’s natural to ask him:
“You’d really be okay with me hooking up with him?” With anyone?
Song Bai tidies Zhou Xiting’s new bed, tone unstressed. Even playful, a bit.
“I mean, it’s not something that I want to think about too deeply, obviously. But you’re not a monk, so– maybe it’s good, to dip your toes in the water somewhere where if it goes badly, he won’t be stalking you or blowing up your phone, you know?”
They both spare a thought for the waitress that Zhang Zhiping had chased for three months last year, only to publicly disavow her the moment she showed up somewhere she shouldn’t and risked his connection with the real goddess of his heart (and his likely future marriage partner, if their two families had anything to say about it). God, everyone in their circle really is an asshole, to some degree or other.
After, Zhou Xiwei has a moment of clarity and spares a thought for himself.
Song Bai-
Song Bai really, truly, has absolutely no romantic or sexual interest in him. Not an ounce.
He knew already, of course.
But somewhere along the line, he deluded himself into thinking that Song Bai’s protectiveness was a form of possessiveness, and maybe one day they’d get to have a nice, toxic ‘no one else can have you, only I can’ kind of play. You know, him coming home with a boyfriend and Song Bai finally realizing that he wanted him after all. Being a little tyrannical, and then earnestly wooing him to win him over.
Yes, he read a lot of webnovels as a youth. Why do you ask?
But life’s not a novel, and he’s not endlessly delusional.
It’s obvious that he’s been misunderstanding the situation.
Turns out, Song Bai’s totally fine with him fucking people. He just doesn’t want him to get fucked. Probably, for the sake of his fucking reputation. Or worse, his parents’ legacy.
Which is the last thing that Zhou Xiwei wants connected to his bedroom matters. But this is seemingly the life that he’s doomed to live. In love with someone that will probably throw a fucking parade if he manages to get laid.
How depressing.
Zhou Xiwei slowly closes his fingers around the condoms, and closes his eyes.
“Alright. Thank you. But with everything that happened, I think I really just want a chance to decompress.”
Song Bai smiles, obviously relieved that the talk ‘went so well,’ and even ruffles his hair as he leaves.
Zhou Xiwei flops back on his new bed, which is at least adequately triple-decked. He finds himself silently laughing at the ridiculousness of that conversation, his love, the insane circumstances that prompted it.
Fucking. Perfect.
Ai, he wishes Shan Haoyu was around for another walk. Or just to sit and be with one another. His presence is nice and settling and there’s no shame in it. No complications except for the geographic.
—
Over the next few days, plenty happens.
Ding Dongqi wakes up and screams loud enough to wake the dead. Which is especially apt, as it happens at nearly three in the morning, according to the hand-wound clocks in the dormitory hallway and on the front face of the school building. Luckily, they’ve been keeping watch, and he’s kept from accidentally injuring himself by the efforts of Song Bai, who is on the late shift.
More luckily (for Song Bai, and the rest of them), once Shan Haoyu showed the medic how to get the ladder and climb into the window of the otherwise inaccessible second-story infirmary, there’d been plenty of painkillers and even some old school shit like bottles of ether. Sure, it’s all expired, but they still get the job done.
Anyway, those dates are more like guidelines than a hard and fast rule.
The antibiotics are harder– there’s really only one package of them, and they’re too important to waste. Important enough that Song Bai had decided not to treat his vicious bites with anything more than a painful amount of disinfectant and fresh bandages to keep anything from getting into the cuts. Everything goes to Ding Dongqi. Even the one half-bottle of anticonvulsants that are dug up, compliments of a long-graduated epileptic student.
No one else is allowed to get ill, got it?
Which actually creates a bit of a problem, when it comes to the radio tower.
After all, now that they’ve taken stock of their medical supplies, it’s clear that they really can’t afford to take risks with heights. Or electricity. Or worst of all, tetanus. Even ‘bored to death’ Father Song is convinced to give up the idea and just wait for rescue.
Which is quite the ask from someone that’s used to being the CEO of a company where he can make anything in the world happen. Usually without anything more than a look at his assistant.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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Everyone settles in for a longer stay, and stops worrying about speeding up rescue.
They comfort themselves that a month isn’t too long.
That it’s already been a few days, that maybe they’ll get lucky– hell, maybe there will even be a search plane that passes over or a boat that comes to take a look for them. After all, according to the captain, the storm shouldn’t have pushed them that far off course, though no one can figure out why this island that they never saw is where they landed.
A quirk of the maps, or something. A dead spot.
This sort of idle hope leads to a new hobby: creating ready to light bonfires and giant S.O.S formations on the beach. Which actually proves to be damn fucking hard, when 80% of the rocks on the island are the same matte black volcanic.
Still, what else are they going to do? Re-read textbooks? Take up birdwatching on an island oddly lacking in birds? Just spend all their time hooking up with one another?
That can only end messily, so… trying out their hand at far-flung signaling schemes, just in case, wins.
—
A routine develops.
Wake up, wash, eat– take turns helping with chores, for the sake of letting time pass a bit more quickly while giving their hosts some face.
For some, like Zhou Xiwei, chores are stable, helpful things like cleaning dishes while having low, teasing conversations with Shan Haoyu.
For others, like Mother Song, chores are more of a token effort– pruning the occasional shrub or organizing the soaps in the shower or opening all the windows to ‘air out the rooms.’ But for someone as used to being served as she and Father Song (who helps wind batteries and lamps via good old kinetic energy), the fact that they’re willing to try at all is enough to earn some goodwill.
After chores, everyone breaks into groups.
Chef Wang Bohai and Stew Wang Xi have borrowed sprouts from Director Xi and are trying to create their own hybridized garden outside their cottage. Mother Song has captured Deckhand Xu Mei and Chief Stew Fang Daiyu and roped them into her ‘ladies group’ alongside Zhou Xiting, where they play cards and chat about life, even though the generational and class gaps are striking enough to make it feel like they’ve been kidnapped into a strange finishing school.
Mother Song makes due with what she has, and the three young ladies make do with learning the kinds of things that young women used to distract themselves with, when they were confined to their homes with no internet to connect them.
At least it makes the time pass, and keeps them from having to deal with sunburns or shucking clams?
Qian Li buries himself in the art that he abandoned, when he had to ‘put away childish things.’
His skill as a draftsman is still there, but sleek buildings and sellable landscaping are replaced with strange ocean creatures and darkly beautiful landscapes that fall somewhere between still life and fantasy. According to him, he’s just sketching out what he’s dreaming.
He ends up harvesting Zhang Zhiping as a genuine fan, instead of just a friend of convenience.
It’s not the same thing every day– sometimes Zhou Xiting works in the garden, sometimes Zhou Xiwei spends the whole day reading novels in the library, sometimes Mother and Father Song walk on the beach and hold hands (though they’ll deny it, if you’re gauche enough to ask).
But everyone finds something to keep the cabin fever at bay.
If it weren’t for the loved ones that must be worried about them and the dreadful situation with Ding Dongqi, it would almost feel sustainable.
If.
While everyone else feels the comfort of routine, Ding Dongqi only feels bewilderment, and creeping dread. He’s never had to lay still so long, and has never had to suffer like this.
Recovery is a slow process. Recovery from his particular injury is as psychologically taxing as it is physically exhausting.
He has too little to do, too much time to think, and too much pain to manage.
Pain that makes itself known, everytime Xu Wang (who has morphed from medic to emergency home-health aide) has to help him use the bathroom, or change his dressings (twice a day!) or monitor his painkiller usage. That’s not including the pain that he feels, everytime he looks down and sees the blistering, peeling mess that was once his manhood.
Xu Wang sighs and shakes his head. “It looks worse when it’s healing. Which is why you shouldn’t pay attention. If you could see where we started, you wouldn’t be like this.”
“Find me a man that wouldn’t pay attention to his- fuck, careful- in this situation, and I’ll find you a fucking eunuch.”
Xu Wei clicks his tongue but doesn’t argue, using a disinfectant-soaked cue tip to lightly debride the wounds and apply ointment as needed to the most challenging lacerations.
He doesn’t take it personally.
After the first venom-laced days of Ding Dongqi’s convalescence, when he accused him of everything from medical malpractice to jealousy to sadism, this sort of snippiness was completely unremarkable.
Perfunctory, even.
“You’re hardly swollen anymore. And no necrosis. That’s the main thing, if a necrotic abscess had developed, we might really have had to chat about the role of eunuchs in modern society.”
“Your bedside manner is absolute shit.”
“Well, I’m just a deckhand, so…”
He finishes wrapping him up, stands to stretch, and heads out to empty the catheter bag.
At first, Ding Dongqi was embarrassed that his bloody piss was being paraded around in front of everyone. But humans can get used to almost anything, and compared to losing a little face, Ding Dongqi had greater worries. Worries about his future, about whether or not he’ll ever be whole again, about whether he’ll have a lifetime of whipping out his cock, only for his bedmate to recoil at its deformity.
Worries about how he was injured in the first place.
It doesn’t make sense.
The water he was standing in that day– it’s a screaming, choking blur, but it wasn’t waist-deep. It was too cold for him to submerge his bait and tackle. He knows that. He knows that the water was thigh-high, at most. And jellyfish don’t climb, al-fucking-right? So what-
Sure, maybe he just has the worst luck in the fucking world, and the minute he fell down, that fucking thing did fucking that to him. But then, what pulled him under? If the jellyfish came after, then what was it that made his whole body feel like it was paralyzed? What clawed him down and pushed all the air out of his lungs and let all the freezing pain in?
And most importantly of all– was it still coming for him?
—
Ding Dongqi is not a spiritual person.
As a child, when he was afraid of the shadows in his room, his nanny would comfort him by saying that monsters didn’t exist and that they were just a way to control naughty children. She was a very competent, very cold person. The first person whose love he couldn’t obtain, the first person that showed him what it meant to care for someone exactly to the bounds of your contract, and not a fraction more, even for a moment.
When he went to his parents– there was no going to his parents, no wasting the limited time he had with his titan of industry mother and his fiery father.
Someone that spends 90 hours a week running restaurants doesn’t have time to coax a child, only to be exasperated by their request. Ding Dongqi learned that early. He would only show his best, most impressive side to them, even at only six years old. He wouldn’t be a burden.
He self-soothed, and when that took too long, he stopped believing all together. Much more efficient.
He taught himself that none of those fake things — good or bad– existed.
There was just this world. Just the people that you saw in front of you, and the things you wanted, and what it took to get their attention or obtain that object. Everything else was just weak-mindedness.
A distraction, a con, a failed test.
But ever since he woke up, skin on fire and body wrung out–
Ever since, every time he’s left alone, he swears, there’s shadows in his room again. Shadows, and dripping water, and the sound of something slimy sliding across the floor.
He knows they all think he screams himself awake from the pain. Even Xu Wang thinks it, popping more pills into his mouth and adjusting the dosage schedule.
But only Ding Dongqi knows the truth– he screams when he can’t take it anymore, when his rational brain fails and he swears that wet tendrils are drooping, closer and closer to his face. He screams when he looks up, and sees undulating wet on the ceiling. Screams so that they can’t fall, so the deluge won’t be let in, so that his eyes won’t be burned and his breath won’t be choked, when the jellyfish covers his face and starts to slowly slink into his mouth, digesting him from the inside out.
He screams to keep from going mad.
It’s so bad that he’s grateful to whoever keeps watch over him, even when it’s Zhou Xiwei, who he’s never taken seriously. But as long as he’s not alone, he can convince himself that he doesn’t feel the remnants of the sea, sloshing about inside him. As long as he’s not alone, he can pretend.
He wants to go home. He wants to live dreamlessly again.
He’ll do something crazy, if he can’t get away.
If he just has to stay easy prey, stuck in bed, he’s sure he’ll continue falling into madness. And if it comes down to that, if he can’t be confident and carefree, then…
Well…
He’d rather be dead.
—
While Ding Dongqi is being tortured by his own mind’s blue and black wallpaper, Zhou Xiwei is-
Honestly just bewildered?
Bewildered, and discovering new heights of his ability to blush and feel like scum, simultaneously. Like right now, sunbathing with Shan Haoyu, and sneaking peeks that he shouldn’t at the curve of Shan Haoyu’s spine, or the scars that crisscross it, pale white against olive.
He’s not even sure how it happened.
One minute, they were doing a favor for A-Tian, who had sent them out to see if the wild goji berries were ripe yet. An errand that might have been a set up?
He’s not sure, but little Shan Yutian’s gaze certainly had a subtle sense of expectation hidden in it. Either way, they’d walked up the crest, towards a familiar boulder, and just like before, the sun had appeared. And Shan Haoyu had reacted to it with even more joy than Zhou Xiwei did, like if he didn’t take his chance now, he’d never be able to feel it on him again.
Zhou Xiwei really couldn’t bear to say no to that. Indulging him was much better. And much more dangerous.
One minute, they were walking with empty baskets in their arms and the next, Shan Haoyu’s shirt was off and his pants were rolled out and he was laid out before him, completely free and unguarded. Joining him seemed to be the best way to stop staring, so that’s what Zhou Xiwei did.
That was nearly thirty minutes ago.
Ten minutes ago, he took off his own shirt, in the interest of being democratic, and also because it really was a shame not to take advantage of the vitamins on offer. Shan Haoyu had turned his head, looked at him, and just slowly smiled. The kind of smile that still made Zhou Xiwei feel hot, bothered, and conflicted.
“Zhou-ge is really handsome.”
Zhou Xiwei had to turn onto his own belly after that. For physiological reasons. Ai, really conflicted.
He can’t tell if his feelings are very cheap, or if he’s just hit the lottery despite never playing it.
After all, he’s spent nine years quietly and desperately loving someone that considers him a genuine sibling. And thus unfuckable, even if he was gay. (Which he obviously isn’t).
Zhou Xiwei had been able to follow Song Bai single-mindedly, through not just high school (where the lack of options and acceptance made it easy) but even through college, where he actually had the chance to date or just sleep around casually.
This had made him feel that Song Bai must be his one true love.
And then, they’d all ended up tossed on this strange island and he was reacting more strongly than he had to anyone, to Shan Haoyu.
And Shan Haoyu’s insistence on calling him Zhou-ge, like he’s a man, like his smaller frame and pale skin don’t automatically make him impossible to call like that?
It awakens something.
Even with Song Bai, it wasn’t like this.
After all, for all his deep feelings, they’ve always been underpinned by a sense of violation. Even at fifteen, when he’d only been living with the Songs for six years, he knew that loving Song Bai was wrong, and thus, could never be proud or open or wholehearted about it.
It was like…
Like he found a beautiful burl of teak. Wood that he should have been able to carve an epic love poem across the grooves of. But he never bothered, because he knew that just inside, there was rot and mold and beetles. He knew that if he touched it at all, he’d hasten its destruction.
So he just sat it in the corner and admired its natural state. Trying not to want more.
Now, quite by accident, he’d found himself inspired again. And this time, there was nothing wrong with it. Even Song Bai wanted them to get on with it! Now, nothing was stopping him, except his own desire to understand his feelings and to know where they were coming from.
After all, Shan Haoyu is a good person. A good person, who has done him the (baffling) honor of liking him. Zhou Xiwei wants to take better care of Shan Haoyu’s feelings than the world has taken of his.
He wants to be sure of his feelings first, and not just think with his dick.
Especially once he sees the scars, and remembers all the reasons that children might be packed off to what was effectively an orphanage. Remembers what A-Tian told him, about how they came to this place, how they learned to trust the world again, only for that monster to take advantage.
Zhou Xiwei doesn’t want to be the third strike.
So even though his body (and his friends) and his racing heart are all telling him to go for it– to finally have his first kiss– instead, he lays on the boulder and he tries to rationally think through something so very instinctual, and he-
He thinks it’s very brave, when the edge of their fingers touch, and he hooks his pinkie over Shan Haoyu’s.
That’s about his limit for the day, but Shan Haoyu smiles so brightly that Zhou Xiwei feels like maybe slow and halting is actually okay?
They’ve still got a few weeks until the boat is due to arrive. A few more weeks to walk and find berries and let their hands touch, like it’s an accident.
Maybe it’s childish, but to Zhou Xiwei and Shan Haoyu, it’s exactly right.
A second chance at the sweetness of the kind of adolescent flirting and courting that they both managed to miss the first time. Like the sun on the slope, it’s rare, but warm and brilliant.
Author’s Corner: Sorry for the chapter being late, in Chicago for the weekend and was busy at the zoo and walking around today since the weather was lovely.
Not much happening this chapter, hah. Just Zhou Xiwei trying to figure out the difference between interest, lust, liking, and love, and Ding Dongqi trying to figure out WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED.
Best of luck to both of them, ah.
In more personal news– this story is a lot more experimental than my last, and I do think that there are some growing pains in a sophomore effort, especially with a genre shift. I love horror but that doesn’t mean that I know how to pace it exactly right. And although I adore horror interrupted by fluff, it’s a beast of its own where you wonder about too fast/too slow, too graphic/too idyllic.
I hope that in the end, even if there are some odd arcs and chapters, that you’ll all find something to enjoy in it. (I’m finally happy with this story in the 30s but it’s intimidating to think that it might be an unpolished pearl until then, especially since Guide to Falling felt right to me in the early teens!!) Being able to post and get feedback is tremendously helpful to me and I just… Want to thank you all for reading with me! 
Thanks for the chapter!
Honestly I feel like you’re doing very well with the pacing on all fronts: giving long/short time for fleshing out of personality for everyones’ why’s of reactions (like Zhou Xiwei taking it slow), giving Ding Dongqi time to stew in the horror he’s thus far survived and letting people get falsely comfortable before the next horror hits |･д･)ﾉ
they’re so damn cute 🥹
Thank you for the chapter. I’m loving this story! You might not feel fully “into” it yet, but I sure am. Can’t wait to see where it goes. These two are sweet and deserve all of the good things.
Aaaaaaaaaah. I’m so soft on the inside :3
Don’t worry, no story needs to be perfect ! And it’s quite awesome for now so you’re fine in my books eheh
It’s a little funny that Ding Dongqi spends any time stuck in his own head when there are people around with, almost literally, nothing else to do 😄. I’ve attracted creepy predator types for as long as I can remember, and I wouldn’t like it, but I probably would sit in the room and ignore them. Of course, I have a gift for that so it’s no hardship lol. I think it’s cute that Zhou Xiwei thinks him hurting Shan Haoyu would only be the third time he’s been hurt. Sweet boy.
Ah! Ding Dongqi is still terrified! Serves him well XD