After Qixi, both sides of Qin Siyu’s chest remained swollen for several days.
His clothes were all made from cheap, rough fabric, and wearing them rubbed his skin painfully, almost as though it had been broken.
He considered tearing off pieces of medical tape and covering those places, but the thought of what would happen when he pulled the tape away… made him abandon the idea.
An ice compress might speed the healing, but his family had never owned a refrigerator. Neither had the neighbors.
So every evening when he got home he took off his shirt and applied a thick layer of petroleum jelly. He told Qin Sanfu and Lin Xiangmei that he needed to concentrate on his studies and would keep his door closed, so they must knock before entering. Then he went about his tasks with his upper body bare.
Kingsley Aston… Qin Siyu thought. He’s a little too wild.
To do this to him through a shirt.
In public the man was always elegant and dignified, the very picture of decorum. A Christian, supposedly disdainful of bodily desire. Yet in private…
When Qin Siyu recalled his heavy, absorbed breathing in the darkness that night, the rustle of fabric, and the wet sounds of mouths and tongues, he—
He was still borrowing medical books, reading papers, and researching. But whenever he lowered his gaze, he could see the two glaring patches, red, swollen, bruised purplish, and gleaming from the petroleum jelly. They ached dully and felt uncomfortable. He wanted to bang his head against a wall.
It felt as though he’d become the kind of homosexual who was ‘addicted to pleasure,’ an entirely different person.
Every night when he applied the petroleum jelly, he felt dreadfully embarrassed.
Because he needed to spread it thickly and carefully.
He scooped some onto his fingertip, rubbed it around the edges, then gently spread it across the center, attending to every spot. To make it dry faster, he often bent his neck and blew on it a few times. Cool and hot all at once. He still wanted to bang his head against a wall.
But what had the wall done wrong? Just because he’d been kissed into a state of swelling didn’t mean he should bang his head against it. He knew better.
Fortunately, after about three or four days, his chest returned to normal.
Phew.
Qin Siyu feared and worried about his present condition, but at the same time he was wildly excited.
He could even call it exhilaration.
Thinking that he’d kissed and touched that person, and would keep doing so, made his breathing quicken. He could hardly believe it. He was overwhelmed with excitement.
Such dangerous happiness.
As though he were dreaming.
The two of them liked each other.
He liked Kingsley Aston. Kingsley Aston liked him. He and Kingsley Aston liked each other.
It seemed unreal, yet it was really happening.
He’d tried touching that part of his own chest and felt nothing at all.
He’d tried every technique Kingsley used… and felt absolutely nothing.
But… at other times, he didn’t even need to touch himself. Simply remembering how Aston had bent over him that day sent his blood surging again and his entire body tingling.
How strange.
Qin Siyu wanted to become a doctor, yet he couldn’t explain it at all.
He circled that day on his calendar too.
Again and again the magnificent, colorful lights returned to his mind like scenes in a film.
One light after another came on until everything shone bright as day. Aston had said, ‘Sean, every one of them came on because of you.’ ‘Welcome home.’
Once, lights had come on especially for him. More than a thousand of them.
Before falling asleep each night, he recalled the scene quietly, then drifted into dreams with a smile.
Perhaps because Qin Siyu was truly born for medicine, chosen by medicine itself, after reading nearly every medical journal he could find, he actually discovered other possible explanations for the patients’ conditions.
Although only one of the two patients from that night seemed to be a clear match.
He took the medical journals to Dr. Sterling, who’d never thought much of him and had been the senior doctor responsible for both patients that evening.
‘Dr. Sterling.’ Qin Siyu set a journal gently on his desk. ‘Do you remember the girl diagnosed with “syphilis” who came in the Saturday before last? I believe she was transferred to internal medicine.’
Dr. Sterling raised his eyes, his gaze cool. ‘Mm?’
He hadn’t been the doctor on duty that night, but the supervising physician. He’d spent much of the evening in the surgical clinic, returning only to deal with complicated cases, and had seen Pearl.
‘I asked about her afterward. She’s been extremely resistant to treatment and refuses to take her medicine. She keeps saying she hasn’t had relations with anyone. Her father once tried to force mercury medication into her mouth, and she bit him between the thumb and forefinger! She would rather hurt her father than take the medicine! And after her parents managed to force an arsenic preparation into her… her symptoms got even worse.’
Dr. Sterling stared at Qin Siyu. ‘What are you trying to say?’
‘Her behavior strikes me as very unusual,’ Qin Siyu said calmly. ‘Fear of death should be instinctive, shouldn’t it? Dr. Sterling, I’m also an ethnic minority. I know that look in her eyes. It’s full of grievance and anger. Because of a label attached to her from birth, everything about her is rejected at the outset, including her character. She’s angry and hurt by that.’
‘You seem to be letting your emotions cloud your judgment, Sean,’ Dr. Sterling said.
‘Maybe I am.’ Qin Siyu shrugged. ‘But perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. Actually listening to patients, instead of relying entirely on our own assumptions, isn’t necessarily wrong. Patients know themselves better than anyone else.’
Dr. Sterling looked at the journal. ‘So? Have you found something?’
‘Dr. Sterling.’ Qin Siyu pushed the journal across the desk, opened to a particular page, and pointed to the passage he’d already underlined in pencil. ‘I think her illness looks more like this one.’
Dr. Sterling read the words: systemic lupus erythematosus.
‘Personally, I think the red patches on her face are more consistent with lupus,’ Qin Siyu said. ‘Their shape resembles a butterfly, crossing the bridge of the nose and spreading over the cheekbones, with the nasolabial folds spared. When she gets upset, the redness becomes more obvious. And that evening, when she was “diagnosed” with syphilis, the patches grew brighter.’
At the time, her face and even her neck had turned red. The butterfly-shaped patches seemed soaked in blood, painfully inflamed.
Qin Siyu turned a page. ‘The two diseases share many symptoms: fever, fatigue, joint pain, anemia, swollen lymph nodes, damage to the kidneys—’
He pulled out another journal and opened it to a page. ‘This disease is very rare, and only last month a European physician happened to discover…’
Qin Siyu leaned forward and pointed at a line of print. ‘Patients with systemic lupus erythematosus can show a weak false-positive result on syphilis tests.’
In 1933, the disease had already been recognized, but it was extremely rare. It was understandable that doctors encountering these symptoms would think first of syphilis. And it was only the previous month that a European medical journal had, for the first time, warned physicians of potentially abnormal syphilis-test results in these patients.
Dr. Sterling kept his eyes on the article. ‘Can you leave both journals here? I’ll need to discuss them with the physicians in internal medicine and investigate this specifically.’
‘Of course.’
Sterling didn’t want there to be an error, but he was at least a responsible doctor. After those quick glances at the articles, he already had a suspicion. He put the journals aside. ‘Very well, then.’
Qin Siyu took out another journal. ‘And Mrs. Miller, the patient transferred to psychiatry—’
Dr. Sterling looked up again. ‘You have something else?’
‘…Mm.’ Qin Siyu opened the journal. ‘Coincidentally, I may have. Both happened together. There’s a disease called acute intermittent porphyria. Some of the symptoms seem to fit, although I’m not certain: mental disturbances, violent irritability, abdominal pain, and urine turning red in sunlight.’
He’d been volunteering for two and a half months, and these were really the only two such cases he’d encountered. Both patients had appeared on the same night; the relevant papers were published in European journals, and he’d discovered them at roughly the same time.
Dr. Sterling said, ‘Leave this journal here too.’
Qin Siyu looked up. ‘Thank you for being willing to read them.’
Dr. Sterling: ‘…………’
After leaving the office, Qin Siyu intended to go home.
At the hospital entrance, a woman was carrying one child and had another on her back. One had just fallen from a tree branch and apparently suffered a fracture.
The older child wasn’t easy to carry, so Qin Siyu took the little baby from her, holding it upright against him with its head supported on his shoulder.
Separated from its mother, the infant became restless and whimpered. Qin Siyu walked with a gentle bouncing step and began singing softly. It was ‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?’, a song from Disney’s Three Little Pigs, the cartoon that had swept America that year. ‘Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Big Bad Wolf, Big Bad Wolf?’
Almost everyone in America knew the song. Some people said the Big Bad Wolf represented the Depression, while they were the little pigs who drove the wolf off by working hard to build a brick house.
Qin Siyu glanced sideways and suddenly noticed a smiling man standing nearby. Aston had been sitting to one side all along, but Qin Siyu had spotted the woman first and hurried over to her.
‘Kingsley!’ Qin Siyu said. ‘Why are you…?’
Aston replied, ‘Let’s talk about that in a moment.’
The baby whimpered again. Qin Siyu accompanied the woman toward the emergency department, still bouncing gently, supporting the baby’s head against his shoulder and singing into its ear. ‘Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Tra-la-la-la-la~’
He saw Aston’s lips curl upward as the man followed them a little way, chuckling quietly.
The baby grabbed Qin Siyu’s hair. Unruffled, Qin Siyu said, ‘Ouch!’
Aston glanced at him and smiled again. Several nurses finishing their shifts stared in amazement.
By the time he’d nearly finished the song, they had reached the emergency department. Qin Siyu returned the baby to its mother.
He turned and smiled at Aston. ‘Why are you here?’
‘To pick you up,’ Aston said.
‘Hm?’
‘Let’s have dinner.’
Their eyes met and lingered. ‘Sure,’ Qin Siyu said. ‘I’ll go change. I have another shift tonight, though. I have a two-hour break. Today I’m working from two to six, then eight to midnight.’
‘All right.’
It was only to be a simple dinner, and Aston hadn’t booked anywhere.
As they rounded a street corner, both noticed a photography studio.
The display window showed wedding portraits, birthday portraits, group photographs…
For no particular reason, they looked at one another, then walked through the door in perfect accord.
Qin Siyu wanted to leave something behind, some record of them.
At the time, portrait studios followed a style very similar to Hollywood’s.
Aston had come to the hospital from his work at an investment bank. He wore a shirt and carried his suit jacket. His own clothes suited him better than anything in the studio, so the owner chose an outfit only for Qin Siyu.
Qin Siyu adjusted it before a mirror.
A black suit jacket of medium-long cut.
He was tall, and a suit suited him very well.
The photographer, a Frenchman, began with street scenes.
Traffic passed back and forth through downtown. Following the Hollywood fashion, the photographer asked the two men to walk toward the camera side by side.
Qin Siyu left his jacket unbuttoned over a waistcoat and tie. A pocket watch hung from the waistcoat on a slender gold chain. His legs were long, and one hand was in his pocket.
As they approached, Qin Siyu looked into the lens with a slight smile. Aston, as always, was tall and handsome, his gaze relaxed, his jacket draped over an arm. He glanced casually toward the camera.
San Francisco was always windy at that time of year. The wind stirred their hair, one black and one gold. It lifted the hem of Qin Siyu’s jacket, and as he walked, the powerful shape of the muscles in his thighs could be seen.
Then came a bench in a park in the middle of the street.
The two sat together. Leaning against the backrest, Qin Siyu lifted a maple leaf toward the sun and looked through it, while Aston looked at his face.
In another photograph Qin Siyu still leaned back, but Aston stood behind him. Qin Siyu turned his face a little and glanced sideways as though speaking, while Aston bent forward, eyes lowered to listen.
Back inside, they continued in the Hollywood style.
Without his jacket, Qin Siyu sat sideways to the camera on a chair, lit a cigarette, then turned his eyes toward the lens. He looked unexpectedly alluring, the beauty mark beneath one eye striking.
The photographer knew nothing of Chinese physiognomy, yet somehow felt that the little beauty mark was seductive.
Aston stood behind him, glancing toward the camera as well.
Their relationship was so secret that all their interactions looked like those of friends.
Yet the photographer had an inexplicable sense of how perfectly attuned they were.
He asked Aston to sit facing him in an old-fashioned chair. Aston showed little expression, but Qin Siyu stood beside him, leaning on a column, both hands in his pockets, gazing at Aston with a lazy half smile.
The photographer thought, inexplicably, that the image was perfect.
Such simple poses and composition, yet so beautiful.
Next he positioned Aston in profile to the camera, while Qin Siyu faced it with his eyes lowered toward the floor and a cigar between his lips.
Strangely, although they weren’t interacting at all and only the corners of their shoulders rested lightly against each other, the photograph felt warm.
The final planned portrait showed them standing against separate columns, gazes meeting across the space between, one black-haired and one golden-haired.
After taking perhaps ten or twenty pictures, the photographer said that would do.
Qin Siyu sat on a sofa leafing through sample photographs. Aston pulled up a chair opposite him and looked through them too. The moment Aston sat down, Qin Siyu raised his eyes. As their gazes met, the photographer, almost involuntarily, pressed the shutter again.
Their eyes met. Qin Siyu held a sample photograph in which a husband and wife were kissing.
Qin Siyu checked the clock, took out his pocket watch, and adjusted the time. ‘Let’s grab something simple to eat. Then I have to get back to the hospital.’
His watch was secondhand and didn’t keep time well, so he adjusted it whenever he had the opportunity.
There was something almost mystical about it: sometimes if Qin Siyu shouted at the dial, ‘Keep good time or I’ll throw you away!’ it would run correctly for two or three days. But the trick couldn’t be used continuously. If he threatened it three times in a row, the watch grew accustomed to it and stopped trying.
‘All right.’ Aston asked the owner, ‘What’s the earliest we can have the photographs?’
‘Tomorrow.’
Aston asked politely, ‘Would tonight be possible?’
The owner genuinely liked them. ‘They won’t be dry until after eleven. We usually close at ten. But I live upstairs, so if you can knock before midnight, that would be all right.’
‘Thank you,’ Aston replied politely. ‘I’ll come before midnight. Please develop two copies of every photograph.’
‘Very well.’
Back at the hospital, Qin Siyu finished another busy shift.
He was only a volunteer, but the doctors and nurses had come to trust him, even rely on him.
A dockworker had been struck by a heavy shipping container that fell from above. A child had been hit by a private car. A woman giving birth at home had developed life-threatening complications. Someone had suffered alcohol poisoning after drinking alcohol following the repeal of Prohibition. And there were even victims of gang fights sent in with injuries—
Elio’s Notes: National Prohibition in the United States was not fully repealed until December 5, 1933, when the Twenty-first Amendment was ratified. Low-alcohol beer and wine had become lawful earlier, in April 1933, but the novel places this scene shortly after Qixi in August. The original wording about alcohol poisoning after the repeal is retained as a period anachronism. Sources: U.S. National Archives, Twenty-first Amendment and U.S. Senate, Beer by Christmas.
It wasn’t until after eleven that the emergency department quieted a little.
Dr. Sterling suddenly came over. ‘Could you come to my office?’
‘Certainly,’ Qin Siyu said.
He handed off his immediate tasks, then went to find Sterling.
Dr. Sterling returned the medical journals to him. ‘The physicians in internal medicine have investigated. Her symptoms do fit lupus better.’
Qin Siyu: ‘…!!!’
He’d suspected as much, yet he was delighted.
‘Unfortunately,’ Dr. Sterling said, ‘we’ve consulted the larger hospitals in the city. At present there’s no effective treatment for this disease.’
Qin Siyu: ‘…’ He’d more or less known that.
‘Eventually many patients suffer organ failure. The mortality rate is very high,’ Sterling continued. ‘We can only give her some medication, advise rest and good nutrition, and try to strengthen her immune system. I recommended that she go to a mission hospital for further care. Before… when she was diagnosed with syphilis, they refused her. Now… they can finally admit her.’
‘The mortality is indeed high.’ Sterling drew a deep breath. ‘But even so, discovering the correct course of treatment is good news. Mercury and arsenic compounds were actually making her condition worse and shortening the time she had left. And—’
He said, ‘She finally proved to the people closest to her… that she had been telling the truth, that her character was unblemished.’
Qin Siyu felt sorrow, but he could tell Dr. Sterling did too.
‘When it happened,’ Sterling said, ‘we told her parents first. They simply stared at one another. And when they told her…’
She broke down and wept.
Her face was covered in tears. ‘See? I wasn’t lying! I wasn’t lying! I was cleaning hotel rooms to help you!’
Her mother knelt and embraced her, devastated. ‘Sorry… Sorry… I’m sorry…’
Because of segregation, Pearl was housed in the Black patients’ ward. It wasn’t even in the main building but far away, with too few beds and poor conditions. After several days of treatment, the bills had mounted. Her family could scarcely afford them. Pearl’s parents had already been planning to give up and take her home.
Qin Siyu looked at Sterling. ‘But… even if she had syphilis, she could still have been innocent.’
Dr. Sterling froze for a moment.
‘What about the other patient?’ Qin Siyu asked.
‘The other one… we’re still observing and investigating,’ Sterling answered. ‘Perhaps it’s porphyria, perhaps not. If we change the diagnosis, I’ll let you know.’
‘Thank you,’ Qin Siyu said.
He gestured behind him. ‘Then I’ll go back to work?’
‘All right. And another thing—’ Dr. Sterling seemed to find it difficult to say. ‘I think perhaps I owe you an apology for my earlier prejudices and misunderstandings.’
Qin Siyu paused and looked at him. ‘Dr. Sterling, I won’t say “It didn’t matter to me,” because your attitude really did hurt me then. But—’
He continued, ‘It’s like a patient. As long as someone is willing to face their condition and begin treating it, that’s a good start.’
When Qin Siyu returned to the photography studio, Aston was already waiting outside with the prints.
He’d been standing there waiting for Qin Siyu.
When Aston first received the photographs, he felt a small tremor inside.
For a long time, because of his family, he’d imagined his other half would be an aristocratic young lady or a daughter of great wealth. His mother especially favored the royal families of Europe. Alexander and Victoria Aston were both controlling people, and every prospective bride they chose for their only son was elegant and dignified.
But in this stack of photographs… sometimes the two men walked side by side, sometimes stood shoulder to shoulder, sometimes sat opposite each other. They were intimate and warm, yet there was also a faint sense of neither quite yielding to the other.
That subtle tension made them special to Aston.
‘Kingsley!’ Qin Siyu called.
Aston raised his eyes. ‘Sean.’
Qin Siyu ran over looking happy. ‘Did you get the pictures?’
‘Mm.’
‘Let me see!’
But Aston lifted the envelope high. Qin Siyu reached for it and couldn’t catch it. ‘???’
He rested a hand on Aston and shifted his gaze from the envelope to his face. ‘?’
Aston lowered his eyes. They looked at each other for several seconds in the moonlight. Then Aston smiled slightly. ‘What time do you have to be at the hospital tomorrow?’
‘Two o’clock again,’ Qin Siyu said.
Aston lowered his hand. ‘Then let’s go somewhere else.’
‘Where?’
‘You’ll know when we get there.’
The destination was actually quite near, in the Sunset District.
It was an emerging middle-class neighborhood, with views of the ocean and lovely scenery, though the houses were modest and stood close together.
Aston drove to a beautiful small house, got out, opened the garage door, and climbed back into the car.
He smiled. ‘I just rented it yesterday. There’s one parking space on the ground floor and two rooms above.’
Qin Siyu: ‘…Huh?’
What did this mean? Were they really ‘homosexuals’ now? Did they have a place where they could meet?
‘Sean,’ Aston asked, ‘you seem more relaxed tonight. This afternoon you were tense, but now you’ve eased up. Did something happen at the hospital?’
‘Ah!’ Qin Siyu hadn’t had a chance to tell him. Surprised, he said, ‘Yes. Last Sunday, I told you about a Black girl who had been diagnosed with syphilis.’
Aston inclined his head. ‘Pearl.’
Qin Siyu was even more surprised that Aston remembered her name. Every word Qin Siyu said was heard and stored away. ‘That’s right. Pearl.’
‘She didn’t have syphilis, did she?’
‘Mm,’ Qin Siyu said. ‘She has systemic lupus erythematosus. It’s very rare.’
‘Will you tell me,’ Aston asked earnestly, ‘what the two diseases have in common and how they differ?’
Qin Siyu’s heart swelled with fullness. He knew he’d loved the right person. Wrong sex, wrong race, wrong class. Every social label was wrong, but Aston was the right person. He answered with equal seriousness. ‘First, both can cause red patches on the face. But with lupus the rash has a butterfly shape, crossing the bridge of the nose and spreading across both cheeks—’
When he finished, Aston reviewed what he’d heard, then said, ‘I’ve remembered it. Thank you, Sean.’
He switched off the car lights. In the darkness Qin Siyu could no longer restrain himself and leaned over to kiss him.
To be truly seen and listened to, as an Asian person from the bottom of society, overwhelmed him.
Especially by someone like Kingsley Aston.
Countless people, almost everyone, wanted him to glance at them just once or listen to them for even a moment, but he was always so cold.
Only with Qin Siyu was he different.
He responded to every single thing Qin Siyu said.
Even Qin Sanfu and Lin Xiangmei had never truly wanted to look at or listen to him.
After so long being overlooked, Qin Siyu kissed Aston slowly and carefully.
Their lips met and tongues twined, setting off a fresh tingling through his body.
The garage door was still standing open in the darkness. When their lips and tongues had gone numb, Qin Siyu finally drew away. ‘Should we go inside first?’
Aston licked away the moisture at the corner of Qin Siyu’s mouth. ‘All right.’
They went up the stairs beside the house to the second floor, and Aston turned on the light.
It was a very typical middle-class home: at one end of the landing were the living room, kitchen, and dining room, and at the other end were two bedrooms.
Aston set the envelope of photographs on the coffee table. Qin Siyu reached over, drew it toward himself, opened it, and examined the pictures one by one.
So… beautiful.
Naturally the photographs were black and white.
At the time, only Hollywood could take color photographs with three cameras running simultaneously, at enormous expense.
Wrong sex, wrong race, wrong class. Yet… the atmosphere between them seemed to leave no room for anyone else.
In one photograph they walked along the street, Qin Siyu wearing a slight smile.
In another he leaned against the bench holding up a maple leaf while Aston looked at him.
…
Aston sat in a chair and Qin Siyu stood against a column nearby, hands in his pockets, looking at him.
The last one was an unposed photograph.
Qin Siyu had been leafing through the photographer’s sample album while Aston sat opposite, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. They’d both looked up, their eyes meeting, just as the photographer captured the moment. In Qin Siyu’s hand, the sample photograph showed a married couple kissing.
Everything was perfect. The two of them belonged together.
‘Kingsley,’ Qin Siyu said softly, ‘we have photographs of the two of us.’
‘Mm.’ Aston sat on the sofa too and brushed through the stack with long fingers. He drew out the final picture and studied it intently, looking unusually relaxed and casual compared with his manner on campus. Qin Siyu began again from the first photograph, handing each one to Aston as he finished. Aston examined them all once more.
Qin Siyu naturally finished first. After passing over the last photo, he kept watching Aston’s profile. Aston studied it for a long while before finally looking back at Qin Siyu. They gazed at each other in silence. Aston tossed the photo onto the coffee table, reached over, switched off the floor lamp beside the sofa, and kissed him.
The curtains weren’t as thick as those in Aston’s family home. Aston crooked a finger, loosened his tie, and blindfolded Qin Siyu with it.
‘Hey—’ Qin Siyu protested.
Except for the time they’d been ‘confused for a moment’ at Qin Siyu’s home, they’d never kissed while both sober and in the light.
As though the blindfold meant they could keep deceiving themselves.
With something usually worn against Aston’s chest covering his eyes, Qin Siyu felt that at least he could still sense him.
The tie wrapped gently around his eyes twice. Finally Aston tucked in the tip, which usually hung against his lower abdomen, so it wouldn’t fall. The pointed end lightly touched the skin at the outer corner of Qin Siyu’s eye, a shape Aston especially liked.
But with someone he loved this much, Qin Siyu instinctively wanted to check, to make certain.
So he called quietly, ‘Kingsley—’
His eyes were covered by the tie, and his voice echoed through the living room.
Aston answered, ‘Sean.’
Then he trapped Qin Siyu’s tongue again, rubbing and playing with it.
Somehow, both men lost their shirts.
Aston sat on the sofa, Qin Siyu on his lap.
Aston leaned in and kissed his chest, making soft sounds.
Blindfolded, Qin Siyu was terribly embarrassed. He bent forward, but Aston gripped his lower back firmly, holding him against himself. With his other hand he caught Qin Siyu’s shoulder and pulled it back.
Then he bent toward the other side, lingering there again and again.
It was driving Qin Siyu mad.
To be held open like this, chest lifted, for another man to…
Qin Siyu’s fingers trembled as he reached to touch Aston’s chest too.
But the instant he touched it, he wanted to snatch his hand away. It was too overwhelming.
Before long, however, Qin Siyu grew entranced and placed his palm over Aston’s heart.
The heart beat vibrantly beneath it, each thump sending a tremor into his hand.
In the darkness, Qin Siyu brought his other hand to his own chest.
Both hearts beat very fast, and it almost seemed… as though they were beating in time.
Their heartbeats synchronized, their souls perfectly matched, the mood of their photographs so harmonious. Yet everyone else would say the two of them were unforgivable.
Seeing Qin Siyu touching his heart, Aston watched him too. He laid his fingers across Qin Siyu’s hand and caressed each finger carefully.
He stroked upward along the sides of each finger, then down the back of each one.
Qin Siyu bent forward and kissed the place over Aston’s heart.
Then he kissed it a second time, and a third. At last, as though unable to restrain himself, he extended his tongue and licked the spot.
He wanted to lick all the way to Aston’s heart.
Aston reached out to feel Qin Siyu’s heartbeat too.
In the darkness, both men furtively brushed their noses together while memorizing the other’s heartbeat.
After a while Aston began unfastening Qin Siyu’s belt.
Qin Siyu was already—
Aston looked for a moment. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
Qin Siyu: ‘Why—why are you apologizing?’
Aston went on. ‘When you’re facing a man… you shouldn’t react like this. So it’s all my fault.’
The discomfort low in Qin Siyu’s body grew worse. ‘Shut up!’ he said.
Aston still wouldn’t stop. With even greater ‘sincerity’ he apologized, ‘Sean, I beg your forgiveness… Please accept my sincerest apologies.’
Hearing Aston use that intensely aristocratic English accent to say he begged forgiveness and offered his most sincere apologies, Qin Siyu felt mortified beyond belief. ‘Shut up…’ he repeated.
The belt came free, the buttons were undone, and the cloth was… At the moment he felt as though someone had seized his soul, Qin Siyu couldn’t help crying out, ‘Kingskley—’
‘Mm?’
Qin Siyu asked, ‘You really know what you’re touching, don’t you?’
Aston’s hand didn’t hesitate in the slightest. ‘Of course.’
He even wanted to cross far more serious boundaries. They’d lost control long ago.
At that ‘of course,’ something seemed to explode in Qin Siyu’s head. He moved his waist and said, ‘Kingsley, hold me tighter. I want you to hold me closer!’
Don’t show even a trace of doubt.
Aston kissed him again, sweeping his tongue against Qin Siyu’s, while his hand continued…
Before long Qin Siyu could endure no more. He began to tremble, and at one moment doubled over, his body tensing like a drawn bow.
His eyes were still covered. He felt Aston withdraw his hand and wipe his own chin.
He seemed to lick something away too.
‘Kingsley.’ Qin Siyu embraced him and suddenly spoke a sentence in Chinese. ‘I love you.’
He thought Aston wouldn’t understand.
He knew he shouldn’t say it. If he didn’t, they could stop at any moment and pretend nothing had ever happened. But he longed so desperately to say those words that he said them in Chinese.
To his surprise, Aston understood perfectly.
Aston didn’t tell him, but he had already begun learning Chinese. He also understood why Qin Siyu had chosen to say that sentence in Chinese. Yet since Qin Siyu had taken half a step forward, Aston had no reason to stop where they stood. He wrapped his arms around Qin Siyu’s waist and answered into his ear in the official language of this country: ‘Sean, I love you, too.’