The overhead lights shone across Zhuang Xiao’s face. He made no extravagant or excited gesture. He merely watched Pei Yan, his gaze steady as the man emerged from behind the scenes into the bright center of attention.
Pei Yan stepped out of the great shadow at the side of the stage, almost as though he were emerging from the darkness inside his own heart and taking one stride into the light. He had drifted over the endless ocean, lost and uncertain, until he finally swam toward the “lighthouse” that guided his life and toward that safe harbor. The surrounding water had grown warm again…
Without saying a word, he went straight to Zhuang Xiao and lowered his head to adjust the ropes on his back.
He wished he could switch off his hearing entirely, unplug its antenna, and hear nothing at all. The uproar all around him in the theater had already caught fire…
He could imagine the faces of everyone watching: entertainment reporters, audience members, fans.
Zhuang Xiao looked over his shoulder. “If you don’t check them yourself, I really won’t feel safe.”
Pei Yan murmured, “You just have to make sure everybody sees me. Think my skin’s that thick?”
“If you don’t give the ropes a good tug, I won’t trust them. I won’t dare jump,” Zhuang Xiao answered.
Pei Yan desperately wanted to mock him. Seriously? Are you teasing me? Yet his nose was stinging with emotion.
“There. No problem.” He gave a thumbs-up, then signaled the stunt director with another thumbs-up to show everything was perfect. It was just as they always prepared for a shot on set. All clear.
He then hurried to the center of the stage and fixed his gaze on the landing target, checking where the mat had been placed. Something about it had worried him from the start. He thought the positioning was wrong.
Every stunt performer cared desperately about that kind of thing. They had to inspect a landing over and over before daring to jump.
If the mat wasn’t properly positioned, the result could be fatal. On an action-film set once, a mat had been placed incorrectly. A stunt actor performing a fall from a building had struck the edge of the mat with his head, hit the floor, and died immediately.
With his experienced eye, Pei Yan reckoned the mat was off by around ten centimeters.
He started tugging on the enormous mat. It wouldn’t budge with only one person pulling, so he called out, “Give me a hand. Drag it over here, another palm’s width!”
“Good enough now?” someone muttered. “There’s no need to keep shifting it. A few centimeters won’t make a difference.”
“It’s crooked!” Pei Yan insisted. “A little farther!”
A whole crowd of stunt personnel grunted as they hauled the enormous mat. Pei Yan stood up and crouched again several times, adjusting angles and positions, until he was panting from the exertion.
Somebody behind him whistled.
A reporter actually pushed into the front row and thrust a microphone toward his mouth with all his might. “Mr. Pei, say a few words!” Pei Yan avoided the microphone without speaking and simply walked away.
In the middle of the front row sat Zhang Shaochi, alongside several important guests and cultural officials.
It was only a short distance away. Zhang Shaochi watched Pei Yan, then Zhuang Xiao, watching the way they looked at one another. There was warmth in those gazes. The entire stage seemed hot, burning his eyes.
He had quietly seen some of the stills and video from the latest film the two men were making. Wasn’t that the one based on the late Qing “Assassination of Ma” case, in which three sworn brothers betrayed each other for fame, status, and wealth, turning their blades against their own family?
He himself was tasting that pain of having one’s heart and liver torn apart. Each stab was drawing blood. Pei Yan really should have invited his “Second Uncle” to appear as the tragic Second Brother. Zhang Shaochi could have played that doomed part with remarkable conviction, because he knew the feeling so intimately.
In their youth, he’d sat on the red-brick “Great Wall” inside the residential compound with Xu Qiyue and Du Mingjun and others. They’d drunk soda, whistled, sworn brotherhood, and watched red clouds gather at the horizon… Those simple, loyal days would never return.
* * *
The makeup team made their final touch-ups. They also had to apply oil to both leads to give their muscles a glossy sheen under the stage lights.
Old Jason had been left waiting for ages. He wandered over with a knowing expression. “Hey, who’s that guy?”
Zhuang Xiao said, “Don’t you know him?”
Jason gave him a look and smiled. “I do know him. But shouldn’t you introduce him another way this time?”
“My partner,” Zhuang Xiao said.
The word usually meant a work partner or teammate, but it could also carry another meaning in legal language. Jason understood the double meaning. He burst out laughing and slapped Zhuang Xiao vigorously on the shoulder. Frank, straightforward, like one man recognizing another.
Zhuang Xiao took the container of oil from the makeup assistant and tossed it to Pei Yan. Help me put some on.
Pei Yan obediently went to work, rubbing the oil between his palms and spreading it across Zhuang Xiao’s chest and back…
“You’re crazy too,” he murmured while he worked. “You great seducer.”
“Isn’t this what you like?” Zhuang Xiao replied. “I’ll give you a whole bucket of it to rub on, if that’s what you want.”
They stood very close together, but made no suggestive gestures. Pei Yan was simply applying makeup oil. He even carefully avoided the sensitive spots on Zhuang Xiao’s chest, passing over them to rub his shoulders and back instead. He kept his head lowered without looking around. He felt as though he were floating in a warm cloud, his eyes stinging in the lights…
Brother Xiao was reaffirming his promise to him in this way, ignoring all the criticism and the crushing weight of public pressure.
Having known the pain of losing his home and being separated from someone he loved, he still kept that Yanyan Bear beside his bed as a reminder. Zhuang Xiao was telling Mr. Pei in the most solid terms: I want this living, warm, real Yanyan. You’re so good.
Countless flashes formed arcs of light around them. People whistled and began applauding, finally raising their hands above their heads to cheer…
It was practically coming out, but neither man would give the explicit answer.
How close were they? Look for yourselves.
Want an answer? Not getting one.
Pei Yan patted Zhuang Xiao’s lower back. His usual calm confidence had returned. “Brother, give it your best!”
* * *
Zhuang Xiao stepped onto the high platform. His eyes traveled across the packed audience in the theater before settling, at last, on Pei Yan.
Pei Yan gazed up at him from far away, just as he always had. Whenever he faced Zhuang Xiao, he looked upward, worshipping him with utter devotion, bowing in his heart. He was more than happy to stand at the edge of the stage with imaginary pom-poms, cheering and dancing for this man. He admired him willingly and wholeheartedly.
Zhuang Xiao sprang from the platform in a breathtaking leap, sending screams through the theater. Midair, he drew his bow to shoot down the sun, aiming at the blazing blood-red sun projected on the high-tech screen.
His arrow flew straight into the center.
Pei Yan’s heart trembled, his eyes taking on a crimson sheen as warm blood rushed through his limbs. Before him lay green mountains and deep gorges, fireworks bursting in brilliant colors.
* * *
The fantasy blockbuster’s premiere proceeded smoothly after that, leaving everyone satisfied.
Zhang Shaochi let out a breath of relief. He sat in the front row for a long time, stunned, forgetting to stand and bid his guests farewell…
Zhuang Xiao and Pei Yan had provided the film with headline-worthy publicity free of charge. Even if they had done it to promote the movie, the publicity was so natural and unforced that it seemed the two men had always been like that, and everyone had known.
Pei Yan left the side of the stage first. Zhuang Xiao found himself surrounded by a flood of reporters, but calmly answered their questions. Whenever someone demanded specific information about his private life, he neither confirmed nor denied the rumors. He simply refused to answer.
They’d seen it with their own eyes. What was left to ask?
Would he touch any other person in public with such easy familiarity? No. Pei Yan was always the “exception,” the one who was “special.”
In a way Zhuang Xiao had rescued President Zhang from a public ordeal. Reporters had planned to corner Zhang after the premiere and grill him about Jiahuang’s involvement in the renewed investigations, generating lengthy front-page articles. But the unabashed closeness between Zhuang and Pei distracted them all. The reporters were so dazzled they forgot President Zhang, allowing him to slip away. He hurried into his car and left.
But as soon as the premiere ended, one wave of trouble subsided only for another to rise.
Zhuang Xiao had removed his makeup backstage. Before he could invite his old colleague Jason Banner out for a meal, he received a call from Xing Rong.
Several of Jiahuang’s hottest young performers had attended the red-carpet event to support the film. Xing Rong alone had been absent. In the eyes of outsiders, Brother Rong was already yesterday’s news. He’d offended a powerful industry figure, and his acting career was surely finished. Events where people came to bask in reflected fame no longer had room for him.
Xing Rong told Zhuang Xiao, “I’ve got this terrible feeling. I’m so anxious I can’t sit still. I keep worrying something might happen to Xiao-Sa. I called him, but I can’t get through. He won’t answer.”
“What’s wrong? What could happen to Xiao-Sa?” Zhuang Xiao asked.
“President Shang keeps threatening me. He says he’s going to take revenge. I don’t know what that man might do.”
What could an evil, stupid madman do? Anyone who wasn’t that evil or stupid would find it difficult to imagine. A brutal coward who bullied the weak and feared the strong, if he thought crushing a powerless person were as easy as stepping on an ant, would not hesitate to lift his foot.
That afternoon, several groups of people simultaneously headed toward a film set in suburban Huairou.
Sa Risheng had finished filming the television drama about Genghis Khan’s military campaigns. After returning to Beijing, he was helping as a stunt double for another historical drama, doing a few fight sequences the young television stars couldn’t manage. Once this job was done, he’d go home for the New Year.
There was a large film base in Huairou. In winter it wasn’t convenient to travel to distant provinces for location shoots, so many crews worked in Huairou on relatively straightforward scenes.
By late afternoon, only one stunt shot remained for the crew. Once they finished it, everyone could go home.
Inside a Buddhist temple set, a pagoda more than twenty meters tall rose from the courtyard. Its reflection lay cold and still upon a slightly frozen pond, with thin white mist drifting around it. The weather really was frigid.
Stunt workers stood at the fifth floor of the pagoda, where ropes had been installed. A camera crane extended into the air. The director sat high in its basket, searching for the right angle and urgently issuing orders to the people below. On the ground, workers moved everywhere, scattering and crossing one another in no particular order…
The shot was fantastical. The hero, a martial-arts master, was supposed to fight an enemy and then leap suddenly from the pagoda, more than twenty meters high, landing precisely on a white horse and escaping at a gallop.
In actual filming, of course, the “pagoda jump” and “mounting the horse” would be shot separately, then edited together to look like one elegant feat of martial skill. Stunt doubles handled both actions. The television stars wouldn’t attempt them themselves. They neither had the ability nor the courage.
The tower was so tall that the people below looked like a busy colony of ants. Workers were arranging protective mats on the ground. Not far away, a white horse stood eating a bundle of fodder. It turned its eyes slightly and glanced upward, checking where its own young prince might be.
The crew had hired a specially trained stunt horse, intelligent and sensitive to people. It had just worked with the young prince to finish the dangerous “mounting the horse” shot. Xiao-Sa liked any production with horses. When he was bored or lonely between takes, he would lean against the white horse’s neck and whisper to it… Nobody else understood what language horse and rider were using together.
Sa Risheng stood near the railing on the fifth floor. Stunt workers were fastening his harness and securing the safety ropes.
He had no intimate partner on set to personally inspect his ropes, but stunt professionals trusted one another. They knew the danger of the work and took it seriously.
Clouds of steam escaped his mouth. His silk costume was very thin so that he could move freely. Even someone as tough and insensitive to temperature as he was felt that Beijing was cold this winter.
The wonderful person who made him feel warm wasn’t at his side. Rongrong was always vanishing somewhere, impossible to find or hold.
It was so warm when he embraced Rongrong, whose skin was as smooth as white silk. He missed him terribly, terribly much. But his Rongrong was always like a frail, drifting shadow, like the chilly reflection in the pond. Whenever Xiao-Sa reached out to catch it, the shadow shattered into fragments. He didn’t know how he was supposed to hold on to him…
The director called out.
It was time to jump.
Sa Risheng tugged at the rope behind his back himself and gave the director a gesture. Everything was fine. Then he let out a loud, clear whistle toward his white horse in the distance.
The clever horse tossed its long mane and whinnied to the sky in reply.
They were ready. Xiao-Sa stepped several paces backward, took a running start, planted one foot, and launched himself over the railing. His body flew into the camera’s field of view, soaring toward the sky like an eagle…
Pei Yan was driving at top speed toward the Huairou film base, with Zhuang Xiao in the passenger seat.
Zhuang Xiao called Zhang Shaochi. “How many people know about Rongrong and Xiao-Sa? President Zhang, do you know?”
“You’re asking me? Isn’t he one of your own Zhuang crew’s boys?” Zhang Shaochi said. “Of course I know. Who couldn’t tell? Xing Rong’s been walking around distracted and in a daze all day. He doesn’t even care about entertainment anymore. His heart’s set on someone outside the industry.”
“So you saw what was going on long ago. Does that mean you told Shang Xuelin?” Zhuang Xiao asked.
Zhang Shaochi was furious. “What the fuck does it have to do with me?”
Xing Rong was coming by another route in a different car. The whole way there, he suffered through unbearable worry and terror. Xiao-Sa’s innocent face kept flashing before his eyes, together with an indistinct blur of red blood. The driver even took a wrong turn near the set. Xing Rong almost went mad, shouting, “That’s the wrong way! Turn around!” He grabbed the driver’s collar from the back seat and urged him into a U-turn, frantic with anxiety…
The car came to a lurching stop outside the film base’s main gate. Xing Rong flung open the door and ran like an arrow.
Zhuang Xiao’s car arrived just behind. He and Pei Yan ran into the film compound, searching for people.
Xing Rong kept running, his breath bursting into icy clouds. There were several courtyards and numerous indoor and outdoor soundstages. He didn’t even know which set Xiao-Sa was working on. He finally reached a crowded work area, only to discover it was the wrong production. Defeated and helpless with fear, he rushed away to continue searching…
Without his noticing, tears streamed down his cheeks, quickly forming a thin layer of frost, almost freezing to his face. From that moment onward he began making bargains with fate. If Xiao-Sa gets through this safely, then I’ll… Only he didn’t know whether his realization had come too late.
Dusk spread across the earth. A deep temple bell rang out, startling a flock of crows into flight.
High atop the pagoda, a soaring eagle leapt.
Xing Rong’s steps stopped abruptly. He looked up into the sky, his heart seeming to stop beating…
Sa Risheng completed the action the script required. The ropes behind him pulled suddenly taut with a loud bang, then slackened and slipped away…
It was as though a bowstring had snapped, producing a sharp and unfamiliar report.
Xiao-Sa jerked his head upward to look. The safety rope at the back of his waist had been tightly fastened. It was the overhead rope that had failed.
There had been a main rope and a backup. The main rope snapped as it passed through a pulley.
Sa Risheng should have been suspended in midair at the peak of his leap, held by the main rope. They would finish the shot there, then lower him slowly to the ground. But this take could never be finished.
People all around began shouting amid the chaos. “The rope! The rope!” “How could it snap?”
His body swung out and downward with tremendous momentum. He was heavy, and the backup rope couldn’t bear the force either. Several steel wires snapped. The rope slowly tore apart, like muscle fibers being ripped through, and the safety line above Xiao-Sa’s head broke as well.
He watched the rope fail before his own eyes, powerless to save himself. A man didn’t have wings. He couldn’t rise into the air again like a bird…
Those one or two frozen seconds were the instant between life and death.
“Aaah!”
Xing Rong saw everything and screamed up at the falling figure. But his voice was swallowed by the chaos on the set. Nobody could hear him. The familiar person dropped across his field of vision, dragging Xing Rong’s heart down into the abyss with him, smashing it bloodily against the bottom. It felt as though his very insides were being torn apart.
Everything blurred before his eyes. Zhuang Xiao and Pei Yan fought through the disordered crowd and ran toward the fall. Someone was already trying to drag another foam mat into place.
But they were still too far away. There wasn’t enough time.
Two thick layers of foam mats had been laid on the ground, yet the force of a fall from that height would be overwhelming…
Zhuang Xiao cried out in pain, his eyes instantly red. He’d never personally seen his father fall when a stunt rope broke. Today he saw it happening.
A violent streak of white flashed through the crowd like winged lightning…
It was the white horse. It moved faster than any human.
Pei Yan sprinted toward the falling figure, trying to catch him barehanded. If he failed, Xiao-Sa would be hurt. If he succeeded, his own arms or legs might shatter.
The charging horse struck his shoulder with its own, shoving him aside in an instant and knocking him back behind its hindquarters. He stumbled, and the blow hurt quite badly.
As Sa Risheng fell, he raised his elbows to shield his head and landed sideways across the white horse’s body…
The yellow evening light lingered, and the mist refused to clear. Sunset painted a blood-red stain along the mountain crests.
The courtyard bell rang out, singing a funeral lament.
Many people remained wandering about in shock, staring at the aftermath. The set was chaotic. Several productions had been working at the film base simultaneously, with all sorts of people moving through it. It was impossible to identify immediately who had tampered with the steel-cable rig. The culprit was long gone…
Sa Risheng sat cross-legged on the ground, stroking the horse’s mane and whispering to it over and over.
Perhaps the white horse had mistaken the event for another stunt. In the next shot, Xiao-Sa was supposed to leap onto its back, so it had galloped over to catch its young prince.
Or perhaps it hadn’t misunderstood at all. Perhaps it knew Xiao-Sa was in danger, and deliberately rushed to catch him.
Sa Risheng laid his gemstone collar over the white horse and sang a herdsman’s song in a low voice. The horse’s neck had broken. Against the thin covering of snow, blood stained the ground the color of peach blossoms. Then the horse died beside its young prince.
Xing Rong was overwhelmed by grief, repeating, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Xiao-Sa did not cry. He kept his face taut, preventing the tears from falling. He remained seated for a long time, his silent back as immovable as a mountain.
Everyone stood there quietly, their eyes red.
Zhuang Xiao took out his phone and scrolled through the recent calls in his contact list. He found the number of the police investigator who’d previously questioned him about the case and pressed it without hesitation, reporting what had happened.
Zhang Shaochi stepped out of his car and saw the scene from afar. His eyelids trembled and twitched uncontrollably. He pulled his phone from his coat pocket too, gripping it so tightly he nearly crushed it.
What fucking brotherhood? What fucking loyalty of the jianghu?
People were worse than horses.
He himself might be next.
Zhang Shaochi clenched his jaw until his gums bled. He tasted blood in his mouth and felt as though blood stained his hands as well. He too dialed the police…
Author’s Note
Domestic Partner (家庭伴侣): Before the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, many gay people chose to register legally as domestic partners in order to enjoy rights similar to those of married couples. Thus partner can mean a work partner, but it can also describe a committed partner living together without being married.