The more minutes pass, the more normal Zhou Xiwei feels. And the happier he is for Shan Haoyu’s company, and his excellent personal hygiene products.
Naturally, he’s eager to make up for the trouble.
Zhou Xiwei helps set the table, feeling a bit bad that his unauthorized field trip had pulled not just himself, but Shan Haoyu away from the morning’s work and left poor Shan Yutian cooking and setting. The boy bats his apologies away, like it’s nothing at all, but it’s obvious in the well-cleaned but mismatched plates and the ludicrous number of juices and the carefully folded napkins that this isn’t normal–
That Shan Yutian and the rest are making a real effort for them.
Which is why it’s pretty fucking disrespectful, how no one shows up on time. Sure, there’s no clocks, but– But he can see movement in the curtains of the dormitory and it’s getting well and truly into mid-morning and it’s ridiculous, with their early turn-in, to think that no one is awake.
It’s not like they stayed up all night playing video games or binging bad television. There’s no excuse for their tardiness, and it reeks of the kind of casual disrespect that Zhou Xiwei expects for himself, but can’t accept for their rescuers.
It’s awful to think that no one woke up and got the others together to make sure that poor Shan Yutian’s efforts wouldn’t stay on the table, getting watery and cold and going to waste. Zhou Xiwei gets up, as his annoyance turns to shame at his own failure to rouse the troops. Sure, he wakes early– early enough that more than one person will probably hate him, but if it’s between their annoyance and Shan Yutian’s self-effacing insistence that it’s ‘fine’–
Well, maybe he’s disloyal, but he’ll rouse them all. Even Song Bai.
Starting tomorrow, he’ll get them up as soon as he finishes his shower. He’s not one of those people that will insist their loved ones are right if he knows perfectly well they’re wrong.
(His sister goes without saying– Sure, he loves her the most of all of them, but it’s one of the great privileges of a little brother’s life, to be able to annoy their elder sibling. Especially while hiding behind good manners and good practices).
When Shan Haoyu realizes that he’s getting up to leave, instead of just to serve himself from something far away, he gently touches his wrist. Asks without asking, and at the very least, Zhou Xiwei can explain this with righteousness.
“They’re really being too much. I’ll get them and be back in ten minutes tops, even if I have to bring them out in towels or pajamas.”
“You don’t have to-”
“I do. Really. Your brother is working hard, you’re helping early, I even saw Director Xi out picking snap peas for that little cold salad that my sister mentioned liking. The least we can do is show up on time. Really.”
Shan Haoyu’s lips twitch up, ever so slightly, and he lets Zhou Xiwei leave.
—
He’s not proud of it, but Zhou Xiwei loses his temper a little, when he enters the dormitory and discovers that everyone is indeed up– but no one has anything like a sense of urgency in arriving at the breakfast that their saviors have made for them.
His sister is trying for what looks like the dozenth time to braid her hair into a crown, Mother and Father Song are still looking through the clothing that they’ve found, tutting over the sorry state of it, and–
Surprisingly, he’s the maddest at Song Bai.
Because Song Bai knows better.
Song Bai has always been the most thoughtful, the most empathetic– but even he’s just sitting in bed, throwing a rubber ball against the wall (and scuffing it!) while Qian Li flips through old textbooks and Zhang Zhiping adds juvenile cartoons in the margins and Ding Dongqi– waxes perverted about the beauties he’s missing, and how it’s criminal that this island doesn’t have either internet or at least a few ‘silly and easily seduceable darlings’ to keep him from being bored to death.
Disgusted, Zhou Xiwei loudly raps on the doorframe.
Song Bai looks up with a smile, Ding Dongqi with a leer– ‘What, you offering then?’– and the other two are just background noise. Makes him madder, but it’s Song Bai, so he drops his eyes to the floor and keeps his voice calm. Conversational, even.
“Breakfast has been ready for a while. Everyone should head over.”
“Aww, did you come and get us on their behalf?” Zhang Zhiping is adding breasts to a portrait of a Japanese general, like they’re still in high school, and he’s still sleepwalking his way through his ‘guaranteed to pass’ coursework.
“Shouldn’t I? Shan Yutian works hard, everyone does, and I just… Don’t want his efforts to go to waste.” He looks to Song Bai for backup, but it ends up being unnecessary. Because Ding Dongqi hops up first, scrubbing his face and looking at his stopped watch and even marshaling the others like he’s polite instead of perverted.
“XiXi is right, we’re being rude, we should go!”
It’s what Zhou Xiwei wanted, but he can’t help the worried twist that stabs through his gut. He has a very bad feeling, about exactly why a bored and horny twenty-something wants to hurry up and look for an orphaned teenager.
A really, really bad feeling. And why does it suddenly smell like rancid fruit and dead fish? Is the man from the beach back? Or…
No, he must just be imagining things.
—
With young men in the lead, everyone else manages to make it out the door and down the path to the schoolhouse in something like an orderly mass. The crew, who refuse to ever be more tardy than the bourgeois that they’re used to serving, join in, and if Zhou Xiwei squints, he’s pretty sure he sees the chef and the other stew down from their lovenest as well.
They almost fulfill his promise of ‘ten minutes.’
Sure enough, humans are herd animals. As long as most of them go, the rest follow. Even when they’re in a completely separate building.
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.
Unfortunately, Ding Dongqi has never struck Zhou Xiwei as much of a gazelle. He’s more like the jackal that waits for something young and injured to wander off. And unfortunately, there’s exactly one person on this island that matches his preferences. And they’re heading straight towards him.
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“I’ll watch him. But you have to relax.” Song Bai bumps his shoulder gently. “You know Old Ding. Always with a bad mouth and dishonest hands, but he never really goes too far. He’s just a little free.”
A little free doesn’t seem like the best descriptor- Especially since-
“Sometimes, at the KTV-”
Song Bai squeezes back.
“That doesn’t have anything to do with you. The people that work there are paid with an understanding of those kinds of things.”
Even if Song Bai knows best, Zhou Xiwei isn’t so sure. The way that girl had been crying, it hadn’t look like she agreed. But even if she did…This isn’t that. This is someone else’s home.
“But this isn’t a-”
“I know. I’ll watch him, okay? But I don’t want you alienating someone from our circle, just because you’re catastrophizing about someone that you’ll never see again. That’s-” Song Bai clicks his tongue and sighs. “-It’s very good of you. Very egalitarian. But part of business– of life in general, is knowing how to pick your battles. And you’ve always been a little too sweet for that.”
Zhou Xiwei doesn’t find Song Bai’s touch as reassuring anymore.
Look.
He gets it.
He knows what he’s saying. Knows he’s right, even, in a stomach clenching kind of way.
Ding Donqgi is the only son of one the most successful restaurant developers in their region. And the Zhou family (what’s left of it) is in the hotel business. Just like how the Songs are the wider real estate market. It’s a closed ecosystem, and one of the reasons that Zhou Xiwei has been forced into ‘friendship’ with someone that he’s so obviously unsuited to is for the sake of those future mutually beneficial business relationships.
What luxury hotel doesn’t have a fine dining restaurant? How can you survive if you can’t get favorable terms from half the market? They need to get along with one another, or at least not be at constant cross purpose.
Song Bai’s advice is good. Song Bai is showing his care, while promising to intervene if needed from his more secure position atop their little social food chain. It’s pragmatic. It’s fair.
But it makes Zhou Xiwei feel a little cold.
A little bit like he’s lost something; like he’s returned to his childhood home and discovered that his favorite toy sword isn’t made of mithril at all, but is just spray painted plastic and wood.
All the fire from earlier is gone, and instead he just feels bereft. His steps falter.
“Xiao Xi?”
“It’s nothing. I just– maybe nearly dying is making me think about things a little different. Maybe…”
Song Bai stops, examines his face closely, and then pulls him into a warm hug, rubbing his back and squeezing him in that way that he did for years, every time hard rain took Zhou Xiwei back to terrible nights, and phone calls that made him an orphan. Zhou Xiwei melts into the safety of his arms.
“It’s okay, if you’re shocked. I’m sorry that I haven’t checked in with you. And I promise, no one will do anything to keep you up at night, okay? Not as long as I’m sleeping between him and the door.”
There’s the familiar pull, the trust, but it still feels the tiniest bit hollowed out. But Zhou Xiwei’s not willing to let go of the comfort. And he really does trust Song Bai. Song Bai will keep his word. He’ll do his best.
Zhou Xiwei clings to what they have.
“Thank you, Song-ge.”
“Of course, Xiao Xi. Your ge is sorry for making you worry.”
—
Breakfast is rather subdued, with everyone wrapped up in their own concerns.
Zhou Xiwei is worried about Ding Dongqi’s appetites; Song Bai is worried about Zhou Xiwei’s stress and delicacy. Shan Yutian is worried about everyone having enough to eat; Shan Haoyu is… withdrawn into himself, glancing at Zhou Xiwei and then snapping his head back, as if reminding himself that the stranger isn’t his to look at.
Director Xi watches the three of them, with an air of wistfulness that’s hard to untangle.
Meanwhile, Ding Dongqi is acting like a complete gentleman (always a reason for concern), while Qian Li has been pulled into Father Song and Engineer Di’s conversation about radio towers. They still need to wait– when Engineer Di’s bandage was changed this morning, ship’s medic (and deckhand) Xu Wang was clear that he was healing, but certainly shouldn’t yet be doing things like climbing up towers to go check rusty electrical boxes or salt-corroded connections.
Zhou Xiting, Chef Bohai, and his boyfriend Wang Xi are having a little roundtable about their favorite places to eat on the mainland, and where they’d go around the world, if they had the time and credit limits to follow their stomachs anywhere. Yet even their conversation, which is full of hope, or Father Song’s, which is full of vigor and self-determination–
All of them are just oddly… restrained.
It’s like they’re eating in a museum, instead of on an open-walled veranda on a fucking island. Like speaking in a whisper, even when you’re using your normal tone of voice. Like being shrouded. In short, it… truly doesn’t make sense.
But Zhou Xiwei, the only one sensitive enough to pick up on the oddity, is too tied up in his own conflicted feelings to look into it. He attributes any weirdness to his own state of mind tainting his perceptions, and leaves it at that.
He wonders why he keeps wanting to steal glances at Shan Haoyu. Almost- almost more than he wants to peep at Song Bai?
Which is just madness.
Compared to the mystery of the island and the church and even the stomach-emptying man on the beach, Zhou Xiwei’s far more perturbed by his own feelings. By the things that he used to brush off, that now concern him. By the unfairness of letting things slide being the ‘adult’ thing. By the confusion, of his anger not fully bleeding out, even when Song Bai hugged him.
It was mostly gone, but…
Not completely.
That’s new.
And in Zhou Xiwei’s well-ordered world, new is terrifying.
Terrifying enough to twist him up in knots and make him worry: that he’s fickle, that he’s spoiled, hell, maybe even that he’s mentally ill, and it’s showing up due to the cracks caused by having his life endangered. By being so completely fucking useless, a grown man that can’t do anything from surviving a shipwreck to keeping a pervert in line, without a Song-ge having to step in and take care of it.
He doesn’t want to be a child forever. He doesn’t want Song Bai to act as his guardian.
He loves Song Bai. He loves that he’s been protected, that he and his sister have been blessed by the care of a family that genuinely wants the best for them, even if the care is somewhat stifling at times. It could be so much worse. He could have been forced to fight for every mouthful of his birthright. He knows that.
But for the first time in his life, in this small disagreement over Shan Yutian–
He finds that he’s a little resentful. Resentful of his own weakness, his own feelings– his own self-abandoning tendency to always give way to those who know better, even when deep down, he thinks that he’s the one in the right.
His inner turmoil turns breakfast tasteless.
Another sin against poor Shan Yutian, for which there’s no reckoning. When it comes to small injustices, especially against good and gentle people, it seems there rarely is. And that’s suddenly a little hard for Zhou Xiwei to come to terms with.
—
Shan Haoyu eats his porridge one-handed.
The other one, the one that had held Zhou Xiwei’s warm wrist just an hour earlier, spasms under the table. He knows better. He- People like Zhou Xiwei don’t stay in places like this. At best, they don’t feel anything but well-intentioned pity for people like him. He knows this, he’s known this since he was a child, packed away to save his father’s family from the shame of their flighty mother.
But all creatures love the sun.
Even dumb plants, even creepers raised in the darkness, will instinctively twine themselves towards the light, no matter how indifferent it is in shining down on them. Even as a wretched and forgotten person, he craves warmth; but unlike mindless beasts, he knows to hold himself back. He knows to cherish the small, stolen moments, and then disappear back to the shadows that have molded him into someone too awkward and rough to ever belong in the shining world that the rest of them inhabit.
He knows to step back before he becomes unwanted. But against Zhou Xiwei’s gentleness, it’s hard to hold himself back. Hard not to fight for even a sliver more of his warm attention. Of his lightness.
Across the table, he feels his brother silently reaching out to him, but he ignores it. He’s fine. He’s too old to pout. He’s just trying to catalog the feeling of warmth. Trying to imagine what it would be like, to hug Zhou Xiwei, the way that Song Bai had been allowed to.
Just a small indulgence.
Just a bit of bittersweet, to chase away the endless nothingness.
—
Rage also does the trick.
Rage, as he enters the kitchen, and finds his little brother pressed into the corner, the boy that looks cruelly at Zhou Xiwei blocking him in. He might be holding a dishrag, his license to ‘help’, but he smells like bad intentions. And his hand–
Why is his hand on A-Tian’s waist, under his shirt, fingers skimming past his waistband?! Who does he think he IS?!
It’s rage that takes over, as he crosses the tiles and pulls the man away, flings him so that he lands just right, cracking his head against the floor without crashing into the drying racks or the cupboards of any of A-Tian’s things, which shouldn’t be tainted by him. A-Tian shouldn’t have to clean up after such filth.
Not ever again.
That person should quietly and neatly die, he should stay out of A-Tian’s sight from here on out so he’s not further disturbed by his perversions. He hates- hates him, hates that hand, hates the way his brother looks shaken, but not lost- Not anymore, not after so many other men have seen him and felt entitled to things that would never be the right of any of them.
He hates unclean things. They both do.
Unclean things have even less right than him, to seek the lightness of people like A-Tian or Zhou Xiwei. Unclean things shouldn’t come into their space at all. The unclean should stay away, the unclean should never step off the beach, the unclean should let themselves be carried into the deep, and consumed by the corpse eaters at the bottom of the sea.
They worked hard to be clean. They- This place should be safe, safe for A-Tian, and if it’s not safe, then- then-
Unknown to Shan Haoyu, black cracks start to creep up his neck, undulating with every beat of his blinded heart.
“What happened?” Zhou Xiwei’s voice breaks through the red veil, and Shan Haoyu finds himself calming. The cracks disappear, so that none but Shan Yutian will know they appeared at all.
He looks over, and sees that Zhou Xiwei isn’t alone– that Song Bai person followed him. Good. If he likes him so much, if he’s going to monopolize his light, then he should be diligent. He shouldn’t take it for granted, he should-
Shan Haoyu might be a little jealous.
But he’s not going to be rude. Well, he doesn’t intend to be… But then Song Bai is looking up at him, like he did something wrong, and the commitment to showing his best side to Zhou Xiwei falls apart. A smidge.
“What the hell? I know Old Ding can be an acquired taste, but what are you attacking people for?” It’s made worse by the evenness of Song Bai’s voice. How very adult and even-keeled he seems, harvesting righteousness despite clearly backing the wrong person.
It makes Shan Haoyu anxious to explain himself, especially because Zhou Xiwei hasn’t yet picked a side.
“Attacking? He’s the one that was in here-” Shan Haoyu points at his brother, who is bright red and twisting a dishcloth like it’s the bed sheet he’s counting on to escape from prison.
Zhou Xiwei blanches.
Even Song Bai shows a look of understanding, though he doesn’t stop gently checking the back of Ding Dongqi’s head. Like he deserves nursing. Song Bai clicks his tongue and for once, he’s the one who looks apologetic. Though he’s still touching the bastard, so he must not really understand, not the way they do, not the way the island shows them–
He tries to explain more.
“He’s too old, and too unclean, and too unwelcome to try to touch my didi. All I did was pull him off–” -he’s lucky there’s not a knife buried in his thigh or his neck.
That’s the unsaid bit. How the sentence would end, if Zhou Xiwei wasn’t here to listen. If he wasn’t trying to be lighter, in honor of this person that was briefly letting him enjoy uncomplicated warmth again.
He doesn’t want things to turn out the way they always do. Not if he can help it.
“I apologize. Dongqi has always been a little free, and it can come across as predatory, especially if you’re not used to matters between men-”
“I don’t have a problem with that.” He swears, he doesn’t mean to look at Zhou Xiwei. Or to add, “At all.”
It’s just a slip. And maybe it’s inappropriate– not the time, not the place, not his right– but it’s nice, the way Zhou Xiwei blushes. Nice, the way it distracts him from Song Bai’s patronizing little assumptions. Nice in the way that his accidental near-flirting makes A-Tian come out of the corner, that look in his eyes that says he’ll be teased about it later.
Nice, that Zhou Xiwei believes him, and even contradicts Song Bai, a little:
“He’s been going farther and farther since he graduated. Unrestrained. It was only a matter of time– he’s lucky that all you did was remove him. And we’re wrong for not correcting him before Xiao Yu was accosted. I’m sorry. Honestly, I am, and he won’t approach you again.”
The last two sentences are directed at A-Tian, who does his best to dodge Zhou Xiwei’s deference. “No, no worries! I wasn’t very clear, so it could just be a misunderstanding–” “No, really, it’s our pot to carry-” the pair of them will get into a loop of apologies, if left to their own devices. Shan Haoyu sets them straight.
“The only one who needs to apologize is unconscious.”
Both A-Tian and Zhou Xiwei get the same cute, somewhat speechless look. It makes the rage feel more distant. A tide that’s already fallen. A tide that falls more, when Song Bai takes that sack of shit away, and Zhou Xiwei stays behind, choosing their side. Paying attention to him.
And helping with the dishes. Probably, he’s just here to help with the dishes, like he’s done every breakfast.
But Shan Haoyu prefers his interpretation.
Author’s Corner:
Happy New Year! I hope everyone has a peaceful and prosperous 2023, and that if anyone ends up shipwrecked on an island, their company is more like the Shan family and less like the Old Dings of the world.
The island has now unlocked true punishment mode.
Song Bai: Have you considered that you are homophobic?
Shan Haoyu: No.
Song Bai: Good talk. XiXi, why are you blushing???
Happy new year!
Ahah! So the friends are truly all just business, but still my last glimmer of hope for Song Bai, as the ‘big brother’, has faded. He’s not much better than the pigs if he can keep trying to defend them rather than letting them get what’s coming to them if they can’t learn.
happy new year!! 🎊
and this ding bastard is deserving of everything our ml thought of earlier 😘
You know. I kinda understand Song Bain if he is sincere. His friends are utter criminal BB it he grows up with them, they are close. We tend to be in denial of how shotty people we like can be so. I’m leaving him the benefits of the doubt. Still wished that Shanshan would have trashed the guy even more even with witness fufufu
Yo, during the rage part it says ‘zhou xiwei’ blocking him in, i think it was supposed to be dongqi?
Cheers, loved your last book to pieces and I’m so here for this new one
Ha! I like how he says “matters between men” in a way that further demonstrates his privileged ignorance, sort of. Like he does know about these matters? Or it would be ok for a woman to corner the child and get intimidating and handsy. I wonder, did he secretly expect Zhou Xiwei to be understanding as Dongqi got more and more invasive? It sounds like that’s where it was heading before the shipwreck.
God.. Ding Shitqi deserves any bad thing in the world!
Haoyu, I fully support the idea of a knife in that cunts thigh! Also bastard song