The whole room gave a fierce shake. A crack opened in the floor. Then all the shaking weirdly stopped. Kou Tong found the strength somewhere to suddenly push Huang Jinchen away. He covered his mouth. His eyes, which had already dried, were once again swimming with tears. 

After a while, gasping in a breath, he finally said, “You fucking…” 

Huang Jinchen looked innocent. 

Kou Tong didn’t remove the hand covering his mouth. “Didn’t I tell you to use cold water? Was that cold water?!” 

Huang Jinchen used the tip of his foot to kick the bowl a little further away. “How could I bear to splash you with cold water?” 

“…” Kou Tong glare at him fiercely. “But you could bear to bite my tongue? It’s bleeding! Shit!” 

“Um…” Huang Jinchen lowered his head and looked guilty. “Well, I just got a little too excited.” 

The person pounding on the door obviously changed. They heard Manman’s tender voice call from outside: “Auntie says to tell you two to control yourselves a little. There’s an earthquake, so you can just hold out. As long as the ceiling doesn’t cave in, the sheets and the bedplate will still be here. You can keep rolling around when you get back.” 

Kou Tong and Huang Jinchen looked at each other blankly. Kou Tong bumped Huang Jinchen with his knee. “Rock, paper, scissors. Whoever loses goes to calm them down.” 

Huang Jinchen looked fixedly at him for a while, then quietly said, “I lose.” 

Then he reached out to wipe away the tear stains on Kou Tong’s face and pulled the quilt over him. “Lie down. You just took medicine. Don’t catch a cold.” 

He walked out and closed the door. The sound of quiet conversation came from outside. 

Kou Tong looked down at his arm and found that all the blood had stopped as if by miracle. The wounds were still there, but they seemed to show signs of healing. 

“How humiliating.” Kou Tong gave a bitter laugh, feeling an almost self-abandoning sense of freedom. 

Living wasn’t easy. It seemed that you had to go through some hysteria, pain down to your inner being, down to the bone, engraved on the heart, leaving a brand on the soul, had to go through several reincarnations until it could no longer be erased, before you could reach enlightenment. 

It was a long time before Huang Jinchen, using some unknown means, finally reassured the people outside. When he came back, he found Kou Tong with his back to the door, lying on his side, slightly curled up, seeming already asleep. So he immediately made his movements lighter, carefully walked over, sat on the bedside, and reached out to feel Kou Tong’s forehead. He felt that the fever seemed to have basically gone down. 

Suddenly, Kou Tong grabbed his wrist. Only then did Huang Jinchen find that his eyes were open. 

“Er-Pang, do you want to fuck me?” Kou Tong looked at him out of the corner of his eye. His eyelashes still seemed wet. The corners of his eyes were very long, as if outlined by a pen. 

Er-Pang resisted the allure of beauty. He nodded uselessly. 

Kou Tong asked, “Would the other way around work?” 

Er-Pang looked over Dr. Kou’s little body laid out on the bed and was conflicted for two seconds, feeling that there was some difficulty about this. 

But before he could answer, Kou Tong rolled over and lay face up on the bed. He smiled and cheerfully said, “Fine. Come on, then.” 

Huang Jinchen’s throat bobbed up and down with difficulty. He shuffled towards him. “Oh, well…really?” 

Kou Tong dragged out a long nasal hum: “Hm?” 

This hum of his made Huang Jinchen’s nose heat up—was this guy human? Was he human? The wretched Er-Pang inwardly cried out and ran around, beat his breast and stamped his feet, let out howl like a wolf’s. The dim green light of a starving wolf shone from his eyes…

But he only shone like a flashlight for a while. He didn’t move. 

After a long moment, the tense Huang Jinchen finally lay down beside Kou Tong, hugged him, gently kissed his temple, and reached up to turn off the bedside lamp. 

“Don’t fool around. Sleep,” he said. “I don’t take advantage of others’ misfortunes.” 

He patted Kou Tong on the back over and over, as if comforting a child, feeling his breath slowly even out… Then Kou Tong suddenly moved in the dark. In deadly earnest, he said, “What, are you having erectile disfunction?” 

Two charming little veins popped up on Huang Jinchen’s forehead. He pinched Kou Tong’s waist and fiercely said, “Shut up and sleep!” 

Kou Tong laughed silently and closed his increasingly heavy eyelids. 

Great floating dreams and preposterous stories in the end came to such a conclusion. It was clear that in this world, the fate of humankind, all the ups and downs of life, came swiftly and changeably. No wonder so many people on earth lived every day as if it were the last and worried about tomorrow when it came. 

The next day, as soon as Kou Tong moved, Huang Jinchen woke up. He didn’t open his eyes, only raised the arm lying on him and felt around for Kou Tong’s forehead. He found that his temperature had returned to normal, then finally relaxed and rolled over, indicating that restraining himself all night had been very painful, and he needed to get some more sleep. 

When he got out of bed full of vitality, he found that Kou Tong wasn’t in the room, but he had already swapped out the broken mirror, cleaned up the shards on the floor, and scared up a row of small rugs to cover up the crack. 

Kou Tong was in the study, testing his model. He was barefoot, his long legs propped on the table, the refined UV-protection lenses of an inhuman mouthpiece on his nose, holding a cigarette in his mouth in a vulgar fashion. 

…Though his actions were vulgar, his expression was unusually earnest. He didn’t even notice when the study door was opened. 

Huang Jinchen stood at the door looking at him for a while, then quietly closed the door and retreated. The outcome was that as soon as he turned his head, he found Kou Tong’s mom standing behind him peering around surreptitiously, looking probing. 

Huang Jinchen said, “Auntie.” 

“Ah…haha.” Kou Tong’s mom looked him up and down with a peculiar expression. Her gaze even made an extra circle around his butt. “You’re up? Just now? You’ve been working hard. Are you hungry?” 

Huang Jinchen looked at her woodenly—Auntie, are you overthinking things? Or do you have too much confidence in your darling son?

Kou Tong’s mom, faced with his expressionless look, probably felt that she couldn’t withstand it. She complained, “Honestly! The rotten brat got up first thing in the morning to go tinker with his computer. That’s not tender at all. He’ll definitely turn into one of those vulgar shut-ins in the future. I’ll go teach him a lesson!” 

Huang Jinchen felt the skin of his face twitching and quickly held her back. “He has urgent business. Auntie…you’d better not disturb him.” 

Kou Tong’s mom put on an expression of “this child is so sensible, it’s so gratifying.” Then she turned and boldly went towards the kitchen. “What do you want to eat? Come on, order whatever you want!” 

Huang Jinchen rubbed his nose and smiled. But when he remembered that this woman was the female main character of the story Kou Tong had told last night, he couldn’t smile anymore. He looked back at the tightly shut study door and thought that…even if they got out and left in the future, and this world became a pile of junk data, in Kou Tong’s heart, would she remain living like this, so thoughtless and tough? 

No happiness like the happiness of a new acquaintance, no grief like the grief of a parting in life. 

Huang Jinchen suddenly breathed in from the diaphragm and yelled: “He Xiaozhi!” 

The sound of clattering came from He Xiaozhi’s room. Then he hastily stuck his head out. “Huh?” 

Huang Jinchen knocked on the surface of a mirror with his knuckles and beckoned to him. “You understand.” 

“OK.” He Xiaozhi shifted over slowly, then suddenly said to himself, “Why do I feel like I’ve turned into a travel array?” 

Huang Jinchen looked askance at him—lately the kid hadn’t been trying to kill himself, and he had even developed the ability to talk back!

He Xiaozhi quickly swallowed his words and obediently did the proper work of a travel array—sent Huang Jinchen to see Lao Tian.

When he was gone, Kou Tong’s mom stuck her head out, holding a spatula, and beckoned to He Xiaozhi. “Hey, hey.” 

He Xiaozhi: “?” 

Kou Tong’s mom twisted her fingers and rather awkwardly said, “Why did he run off? Hey, do you think I was too direct? Did I embarrass him?” 

He Xiaozhi was silent for a while. “I…don’t…think so?” 

…Auntie, you really are overthinking things. 

Yao Shuo heard movement but didn’t come out. He only sat upright in place, looking at the little water pistol in front of him—Kou Tong had given it to him. Supposedly it was the ultimate weapon that had eliminated the rules of the Lovers.

Kou Tong had said, “Look, such a little thing, and in fact it also has its use. You should take it, sir. You can take it out to look at when you miss your family. I’ll get everyone out as soon as possible.” 

Yao Shuo had taken the water pistol silently, looking at the man who had once again become healthy and active overnight, ready to continue wreaking devastation on the world. He had suddenly thought, hadn’t there always been a type of person in the world that was naturally elite and aloof? A type of person who, before even managing to take care of their own business, in dire straits and covered in blood themselves, always wanted to be a savior to others? 

So he had expressionlessly closed the door in Dr. Kou’s lucky cat-like face, but he had gently clasped the seemingly fragile and unbelievably small water pistol, lit a cigarette, and sat silently on his own. 

Huang Jinchen familiarly arrived at Lao Tian’s place. Making himself at home, he entered the log cabin and poured himself tea. 

Lao Tian said, “You’re here?” 

“Yeah,” Huang Jinchen said. “My significant other gave me a scare, so I came over to take a breath and rest a little.” 

Lao Tian silently waited for him to continue. 

“I saw him cry, and I went all muddleheaded. There was nothing I could do.” Huang Jinchen sighed. “When I saw him today, I didn’t know what to say.” 

Lao Tian smiled when he heard this. “Nonsense.” 

“How is it nonsense?” Huang Jinchen frowned. 

“A person is born crying. That’s because the child is squeezed through the birth canal. Think about it, a baby has such a big skull when it’s born. How much pain must it suffer being born?” 

“Who knows?” Huang Jinchen laughed. “We’ve forgotten it, anyway—what does that have to do with it?” 

“It’s the same,” Lao Tian said. “You suffer when you’re born and suffer growing up, and after getting old, you still have to suffer. When one day you croak, someone else may suffer.” 

Lao Tian looked at Huang Jinchen. “No matter how well you get on with someone in your life, you can never become him, not unless you slice him up and stew him in a pot, cook him and eat him. Otherwise, even if you spend your whole lives together, there are some matters where he’s still him and you’re still you.” 

Huang Jinchen drank in silence, perhaps considering the suggestion of slicing up and stewing in a pot. 

“If he gets a scrape, looking at it makes your heart hurt, but it’s still only your heart. You can’t feel the pain for him in your flesh,” Lao Tian said lightly. “There are always final partings in life and death. When the time comes, you’ll find that a person’s whole life is in fact very short.” 

“And so?” Huang Jinchen asked. 

“If you want to understand each and every thing, then you don’t understand anything,” Lao Tian said. “You have to get by however you can. If there’s a pit he can’t get over and you value your emotional tie, you can pull him over or wait beside him, but you can’t jump over it in his place. When he gets over it, there’s also no need for you to look back and keep it in your heart.

“Don’t look back,” Lao Tian said softly. “Until you’re old, don’t look back. You know in your heart that once you look back, old friends and stories will be gone, but you’re still unwilling to believe it. So don’t look. It’s enough to understand. You can’t always be sighing. If you sigh too much, you’ll compromise your own good fortune.”