After winning the NCAA fencing championship, Aston became the focus of yet another wave of admiration and praise on campus.
“The first fencing champion from the University of California system,” students said.
Those who liked him liked him even more. Those who disliked him disliked him even more.
The campus newspaper devoted a large spread to him, and the university naturally updated its bulletin boards, placing Aston’s championship announcement prominently and giving it lavish attention.
On the day the boards were updated, students kept gathering in front of them and reading every word of the announcement.
Qin Siyu hadn’t seen Aston again since the fencing competition. Fate really did seem to have developed a sense of tact.
All he could do was steal a glance at the photograph whenever he passed the bulletin board, furtive as a thief.
That evening, on his way home, he deliberately took a small detour. He wanted to look at Aston’s photograph again.
Even though it was already quite late.
Since the fencing competition, Qin Siyu had been studying in the library until nearly dawn every night. He needed something else to occupy his mind and distract him.
Qin Siyu had sensitive skin. Although the fencing saber’s tip was blunt, that spot between his collarbones had still been left with a small red mark after Aston pressed on it.
During the days when the mark remained, he had touched it almost obsessively, every few minutes.
At night, after sitting propped against his headboard for a long time, when he finally sought relief on his own, his throat always felt hot. He opened his mouth wide, struggling to draw in enough air. That little red circle was the only trace Aston had left on his body. After so long, Aston had finally marked him again, branded him again.
He regretted closing his eyes that day. If the blade had pressed a little deeper, the mark might have lasted longer.
He had even wanted to get it tattooed onto his skin, to make it permanent.
But that was impossible, of course. Qin Siyu could only touch it and watch helplessly as it faded a little more each day.
When it disappeared completely, Qin Siyu knew he had to divert his attention. He threw himself wholly into the library, studying until close to dawn every day, feeling perhaps a little closer to being a normal person.
He wanted to return to an ordinary life. Then, quietly and attentively, to think about Aston a few times every day would be enough.
At that hour, the road was deserted.
Maybe tonight I can stand in front of the bulletin board a little longer, Qin Siyu thought.
He looked forward to it and approached with quick, light steps.
But as he came near the board, he stopped.
Someone was already standing in front of it. He was a thin, short white man, leaning very close to the glass. One hand braced against it; the other hovered in the air, busy with something.
Qin Siyu: “…???”
He moved more quietly, approaching from behind. Under the streetlamp, he finally saw what the man was doing!
He held a brush loaded with paint and was dragging it viciously across Aston’s championship announcement!
One stroke, then another, then another, trying to deface it!
As he painted, he muttered, “Drop dead… drop dead… damn you…”
An X had been slashed across Aston’s face. The photograph of the competition was smeared with paint.
Qin Siyu stepped up behind the man, grabbed him by the head, and shoved it forcefully into the glass. “What the fuck are you doing?!”
The man’s head struck the pane with a tremendous bang. It hurt like hell!
The university had made such a fuss about the bulletin board’s tempered glass. As it turned out, the first person to test how hard it was had used his own head!
Qin Siyu dragged him back a little, then slammed his head against the board’s steel frame four or five more times. Bang, bang, bang! Only after a long while did he release him and demand again, “What the fuck are you doing?!”
The man turned around clutching his head. His vision swam, black spots and sparks flashing before his eyes, and his forehead was covered in a mess of paint.
He would have liked to ask Qin Siyu the very same question. But he knew that what he’d been doing in the middle of the night was hardly respectable. Besides, the target was Aston. If this got out, he could be in serious trouble. With his head spinning and nausea rising, as though his brain had been knocked apart, he thought Qin Siyu had one hell of a vicious hand. He gave him a venomous glare, abruptly shoved him backward, and ran.
“…” Qin Siyu remained before the bulletin board for a while. After a moment of silence, he felt for the handkerchief in his pocket and went looking for the nearest tap.
He simply couldn’t bear seeing Aston like that.
Defiled, insulted. Even if they were only photographs, Aston ought always to be treated with respect.
A school football field stood a few minutes away. Qin Siyu remembered a whole row of outdoor faucets there.
He searched until he found them, turned one on, soaked his handkerchief, then went back to the bulletin board and began wiping off the paint.
After a single stroke the handkerchief was dirty.
He turned it over and kept wiping.
His eyes lowered, he worked carefully, almost as though handling something precious.
Paint was difficult to remove. Qin Siyu had to go back and forth repeatedly to rinse his cloth and clean the glass.
The campus was vast and silent before dawn. Tall buildings stood motionless around him as he walked between them again and again, the streetlamps lengthening his shadow, then shortening it.
It’s so quiet.
It’s as if we’re together, Qin Siyu thought.
I’m wiping his face.
He’d done something like this many times before. Only, in the past… it had been Qin Siyu himself who’d sprayed things over Aston’s face and dirtied it, when they were alone together.
He didn’t even dare rest his other hand normally against the photograph. He wiped with one hand and held the frame or another part of the board with the other. He believed Aston wouldn’t like Qin Siyu’s hand touching him.
Gradually, Aston’s face emerged from beneath the paint.
Every time Qin Siyu wiped the glass, he glanced at the face underneath.
So close, Qin Siyu thought. I’ll probably never have another chance in this life to get this close to Aston himself, will I?
He didn’t seem to know when to stop. The glass was already clean, with only a faint blur where traces of paint had spread. Still, Qin Siyu went to rinse his cloth several more times and wiped and polished with painstaking care, until at last every trace was gone.
The glass looked brand-new.
A streetlamp shone on his hair, giving it a faint halo.
In the distance, Aston had just finished handling several fraternity matters. Passing behind a stand of trees, he stopped there for a long time, watching Qin Siyu come and go until every smear left by some gutter rat had been wiped away.
Aston was used to things like that.
Many people liked him; many hated him. The ones who hated him could do nothing significant, so they resorted to petty tricks. His photographs and news stories had been defaced several times before, but he’d never cared. No one really cared. Such tactics were beneath notice.
Over the past year and a half, he’d wondered more than once what it looked like when someone like Sean was truly, utterly good to another person.
He had received that goodness. During the past few months he’d thought he’d lost it again. Apparently he hadn’t, after all.
Over there, Qin Siyu finally finished. He put away his handkerchief, looked at the photograph one last time, and left.
His posture as he walked was as upright as ever, exactly as Aston remembered: shoulder blades drawn back, revealing a stretch of pale neck.
Aston turned and went to a bar alone.
It was some distance from Berkeley. Nobody here knew him.
Aston was extremely practiced now. He ordered precisely as much alcohol as would bring him to the verge of drunkenness.
Before he and Qin Siyu separated, Aston hadn’t known how much he could drink. Now he was quite familiar with his limit, even adjusting it according to how he felt that day.
Otherwise, he couldn’t sleep through the long nights.
During this time, he hadn’t gone looking for Sean.
He’d considered any number of ways to do so. But Sean had thought things through and wanted to separate. And he, as always, would give Sean anything Sean wanted.
Several glasses of hard liquor went straight down. Aston bent forward a little, rested his forehead on his wrist, and murmured, “Sean, come back…”
The next time Qin Siyu happened to see Aston was a week later.
Valentine’s Day had fallen in between.
On Valentine’s Day in February 1934, the campus was bustling. Couples carried flowers in their arms and went on dates. Qin Siyu thought of Aston again and grew listless. After a large lecture, he went home, caught a little cockroach, put it in a small box, named it “Jean,” and spent the day with it. He only threw it away before going to bed.
The name could belong to a man or a woman, and suited “Sean” rather well.
It was the only living creature he could have by his side.
And in his extensive experience, that cockroach was quite handsome.
Seeing Aston again was genuinely unexpected.
Qin Siyu had gone to the sink to wash his hands after a physical education class.
He hadn’t been washing long when he heard a rush of noisy footsteps. Aston and his teammates had just finished playing football and were coming to tidy themselves up before changing.
Perhaps because of an instinctive dislike of Chinese people, or for some other reason, Aston’s teammates occupied all the spaces around the sinks while leaving only the place next to Qin Siyu free for whoever came last.
Aston always came last. Naturally, he ended up standing beside Qin Siyu.
“…” Qin Siyu’s breathing caught. Instinctively, without realizing what he was doing, he turned the tap down a little.
Aston didn’t turn his tap on very far either. He opened it a fraction and held his fingers under the water.
The water trickled gently. Both men washed their hands, slowly.
Qin Siyu washed with extraordinary care, as if something stubborn were stuck to them. Aston did the same: palms, backs of hands, fingers, the spaces between them, thumbs, wrists—
Qin Siyu was watching him from the corner of his eye the entire time.
He knew those hands so well.
He remembered days when, in broad daylight, desire had overtaken them and they’d ended up in bed. When Aston held him, Qin Siyu sometimes couldn’t control himself and cried out. Aston often said then, “Can I stay behind you?”
Afterward Aston would hold him from behind, embracing him while… and kissing his hair or the back of his neck. Qin Siyu couldn’t see Aston himself. He could only see his hands.
Long fingers, smooth nails, broad palms, prominent wrist bones, yet with something unmistakably youthful about them.
Yes. He knew those hands so well.
At such times, for perhaps twenty whole minutes, they had been the only part of Aston he could see.
Those hands were as nimble as a pianist’s in everything they did.
During those months they could bring him to wave after wave of climax with ease.
He remembered too the night Aston had worn red thread around his hand.
How beautiful it had been.
And the times they had interlaced their fingers—
As he washed his hands, Qin Siyu thought, Hands… they’re the part of a person you see most often every single day. When Aston looks at his own hands now, does he regret it? Does he hate them, because of what they once did?
Has Aston gone back to normal?
Will everything be all right for him from now on?
As for himself, Qin Siyu knew he would never forget Aston, would never become “normal” again.
Even now… even now, only thoughts of Kingsley Aston could excite him.
And how terribly they excited him.
On countless nights, with his neck and even his whole body damp, his throat moving, breaths rough, heart hammering, blood rushing and chest growing hot, he’d whispered “Kingsy,” pretending his own fingers belonged to that man, heat spreading through him while his legs trembled.
He had long since become neither properly human nor ghost.
And perhaps he would remain in that wretched state for the rest of his life.
Neither of them finished washing for a very long time.
The water was actually cold, but both washed slowly.
Even when there was nothing left to wash, Qin Siyu didn’t close his tap.
He mechanically rinsed his palms and the backs of his hands, with no idea what he was doing.
Aston was the same.
He held his hands beneath the stream, and both men gazed down into the sink.
Water falling from their fingertips struck and blended with the other man’s water, spreading, mingling, swirling together. Then it ran down the sides of the basin, gathered the other stream into its embrace, and spiraled together into the drain.
After watching for a while, they raised their eyes slightly. Their gazes met.
Qin Siyu struggled to breathe. His entire body seemed to freeze. Even now, he still couldn’t bear having those eyes look at him.
After a moment he forced himself to look away, withdrew his hands from the water, turned off the tap, stepped backward twice, shook his wrists, and left first. His head was spinning.
Aston glanced at the water droplets on the ground, straightened, and shut off his own tap.
Qin Siyu had intended to go straight to the library to read magazines.
But for some reason, thinking about those two minutes and that single meeting of their eyes, he suddenly felt unbearably sad.
They’d stood side by side for two or three minutes without saying a word.
They’d looked at each other once, and only once.
Qin Siyu went to a window in the library and sat sideways on the sill.
He hugged his knees and looked outside.
The sunlight was beautiful, spilling across the windowsill, illuminating everything, including him. Under a clear, mild sky, clouds trailed their tails and drifted lazily past.
Memories came surging toward him like a tide, bathed in enchanting golden light.
Will I ever hear it again, in this lifetime?
Aston calling his name. Calling him “Sean,” even “Seany.”
Probably not.
As Qin Siyu stared out of the window and remembered what had just happened, the hard lump that had been stuck in his chest for so long seemed to loosen, crack, and crumble. Tears spilled from his eyes.
He drew his knees closer, wrapped both arms around them, pressed his forehead down, and hid like an ostrich while the tears fell.
He’d forgotten his handkerchief. At first there weren’t many tears, and every few seconds he rubbed one eye and then the other against his sleeves. But before long he simply leaned over, pressed his nose into his arm, and let the sleeve absorb the tears.
It felt rather better.
How strange, Qin Siyu thought. We’ve been apart for more than two months. Shouldn’t I be calming down by now? Why am I crying only now?
At some point someone seemed to stand outside the window looking at him. Qin Siyu couldn’t do anything about it. He was in such a sorry state that he couldn’t possibly raise his head.
He didn’t know how long he cried. Gradually he calmed down, or forced himself to. One sleeve was soaked, so he wiped his face with the other several times before finally raising his eyes.
When he looked out the window, he froze.
On the windowsill on the other side of the glass, someone had left a handkerchief.
It was folded neatly, perfectly clean, in a way different from how ordinary people folded theirs. It belonged to someone of another social class.
It rested quietly outside the window.
In one corner was an embroidered crest of the Aston family.