Chapter 155 - Extra 2 Part 3 Second Day of Chinese New Year
CONTENT WARINING: discussions of s**cide
"The rest of your life."
The smoke from his father’s cigarette drifted away in the biting wind, leaving no trace. But the words he spoke still lingered, as if they echoed endlessly in his ears.
"You mean to say you plan to live this way for the rest of your life?"
"If you're referring to the fact that I like men… Yes." His voice was light and gentle, yet very resolute. "I don't want to deceive others for the rest of my life, nor do I want to deceive myself."
His father didn’t turn around, continuing to walk ahead in silence, while Qi Jing quietly followed behind him.
Lunch ended smoothly, during which Qi Jing continuously found new topics to keep the conversation flowing, prompting Qi Xi's husband to join in, ensuring that there were no awkward silences during the family reunion.
After which, Qi Xi insisted on having her brother play with her daughter for a while. Even though Qi Zhe was glowering at her with a dark expression, it didn't change her mind. So, Qi Jing accompanied her to take little Nannan to the nearby children’s park, where they played all afternoon while Qi Jing told his older sister stories of his life over the past few years. It wasn't until the sun had gone down that they headed back.
The second day of Chinese New Year peacefully came to a close.
After dinner, Qi Xi's husband stayed in the bedroom to play with Nannan, Qi Xi chatted with their mother and brother in the living room, while Qi Jing accompanied his father for a walk outside.
They called it a walk, but in reality, it was just an excuse to have a private conversation—
About two or three bus stops from their residential estate was an empty wasteland, once a site for old industrial railways. However, with the city planning rerouting the railways elsewhere, old railways using traditional wooden sleepers like this had mostly ceased operations. But as part of the city’s history, the local government transformed the area into a railway-themed public park.
As a child, Qi Jing often followed his father here, running up and down the abandoned tracks, searching under rusted iron plates for the first sprouts of grass of early spring.
Now the grass was still withered, lying sickly among the gravel. Two rusty rails ran through them, stretching towards the distant horizon, disappearing into the vast twilight.
"How nostalgic," he remarked.
His father simply continued to smoke in silence at the side.
For a brief moment, Qi Jing didn’t say anything either. Then, all of a sudden, he took a step forward and, just like when he was a child, hopped lightly down from the platform, landing on the gravel. He then walked between the tracks and stood still.
"This was the first place I came after I packed my things and left home six years ago."
As Qi Jing spoke, he looked up at his father and his slightly furrowed brows. His father stood tall, framed against the backdrop of a vast, empty land, he looked like a small and lonely pillar, yet incredibly resilient.
"Dad, I still remember that every time when we used to come here, you'd teach me the same lesson. You said, "Life is like a road, and as a person, you must stay on the right track; you can't derail; you can't go astray." Looking back now… that saying actually taught me the principles of how to live and conduct myself, and for that, I'm really grateful to you."
After saying this, he paused briefly. When he spoke again, his voice was much hoarser.
"But, six years ago when I stood here, I felt so lost and scared. I didn’t know if the choices I’d made in life meant that I had already gone astray, or have I… sinned."
He took a couple of steps forward along the railway sleepers, then, without warning, stepped off them entirely, standing just outside one of the tracks. He turned around and sat down, then slowly leaned back until he was lying across the two cold steel rails.
This action startled his father, his facial expression suddenly freezing as he instinctively took a large step forward. If not for the sudden realisation that no trains ran on this railway anymore, he might have jumped down from the platform, but fortunately, he came to his senses in time.
"I considered myself an optimistic person and believed I would never do anything depressing or self-destructive. But I overestimated myself."
Qi Jing just lay there unmoving, gazing up at the sky, which was quickly losing its light, as though he were looking at his younger self, slowly sinking into a mire. No matter how much he struggled or resisted, he couldn't stop the increasingly strong negative emotions from robbing him of his normal life.
"I had lost you all, and then… I lost the man I thought would stand by my side through everything. During that time, my work wasn't going well either. I struggled with eating; I couldn't sleep, and when I finally did, I'd be haunted by nightmares. I'd dream that I was sitting in front of a television, watching the news, and on the screen, they were live-streaming the entire process of someone committing suicide by lying on the tracks. Then the camera would zoom in, and I'd suddenly realise that the person was me. I would jolt wake up in a cold sweat, and that's when I knew I had actually considered 'suicide' in my subconscious."
The idea of "suicide" was something that many others like him in society have entertained, and most of those who acted on it did so because they could no longer bear the prolonged psychological torment.
Fortunately, the percentage wasn't high.
"When I realised I had these thoughts, I made a conscious effort to read positive and uplifting material, go out with friends, and keep myself busy to improve my mindset. After some time, the thoughts gradually faded, and I finally breathed a sigh of relief."
His father, who had been silently listening up till this point, slowly relaxed his tightly clenched fists, as if he too had breathed a sigh of relief.
Qi Jing lay there quietly with a smile on his face for a while, then finally sat up and calmly brushed the dirt off his clothes.
"The current me is very satisfied with the way I live my life. And I've also come to terms… If the "right path in life" means getting married and having children in a conventional way, then for someone like me, lying on that path is like silently waiting to be crushed by an oncoming train at any moment."
The "right path" for others was, to him, nothing but a slow march toward self-destruction, one that could never lead to a happy destination.
His father silently took the cigarette from his mouth, threw it to the ground, and crushed it heavily with his shoe.
"…Come up."
His father's words were very ordinary, but they held a hint of compromise hidden within them. Qi Jing’s eyes flickered slightly, but he didn't say anything more. He heeded his father's words and climbed back onto the platform.
Just then, his phone suddenly rang.
Qi Jing hesitated and didn't answer immediately—this ringtone was one that he had set specially, such that he knew exactly who was calling just from the sound. However, with his father present, he wasn't sure whether or not he should answer the call.
Seeing his hesitation, his father could more or less guess who was calling. He let out a soft "hmph" through his nose but didn’t object outright.
Qi Jing took a deep breath before finally pressing answer. However, instead of stepping aside to answer the call, he put it on speaker in front of his father and held the phone at shoulder height so his father could hear clearly.
"Hello?" A deep voice came through the speaker, carried by the evening breeze into their ears. "Ah Jing, it's me. How’s everything going? All good?"
"Yeah, it's going pretty well." Just hearing that voice caused the corners of his lips to subconsciously curl into a smile.
His father watched the change in his expression, and could immediately tell the fundamental difference between this smile and the polite one from earlier at the dinner table. It was completely unembellished, a genuine reflection of his actual feelings.
The last time he saw his son smiling so happily from the bottom of his heart—when was it?
—He couldn't recall it anymore.
The only thing that came to mind was the harsh slap he had given Qi Jing back; how the last glimmer of light in his son's eyes had been completely shattered by his own hand.
But Qi Jing's attention was entirely focused on the call and was oblivious to the brief flash of pain in his father’s eyes.
"Actually, before I came back, I had already prepared myself mentally and considered the possible worst-case scenarios… but things turned out to be much better than I expected."
"Is that so? That’s good to hear." Shen Yan could be heard heaving a big sigh of relief from the other end of the line. "Just looking at your text messages, without hearing your voice or seeing your expression, I couldn't tell if you were really alright. I didn’t want to call during your talk with your parents and make things awkward, so I held off from calling you during the day. But now, hearing how relaxed you sound, I can finally stop worrying."
"Pfft." Qi Jing couldn't help but let out a chuckle.
"You can tell what I'm thinking just by listening to me? Then tell me, what am I thinking now?"
"You're probably considering if you should stay at home for a few more days… or something along those lines." Qi Jing's teasing actually got a serious answer from Shen Yan as a response.
"Although I did think about that, it's not what I'm thinking now," he smiled slightly. He didn’t care that his father was listening or that the speaker was still on; he said candidly, "Right now, I'm thinking about you—"
Shen Yan's breath caught slightly at these words.
After a while, Qing Jing finally heard his response from the other end of the phone, both helpless and doting, "Oh you…"
Qi Jing burst into laughter.
However, to his surprise, his father showed no signs of flying into a fit of rage. Even though his eyebrows were tightly furrowed together, there was no trace of the fiery rage he had exhibited when he first learned of his son's sexual orientation. Qi Jing couldn't help but feel a little dumbfounded by this stark difference in reaction.
"Ah Jing?"
"I'm here." Shen Yan's voice snapped him back to reality, and he quickly continued, "I suddenly feel very apologetic towards you—it's only the second day of New Year's and I've left you alone to go home. Don't worry, I'll make sure to make it up to you when I get back."
A soft chuckle seemed to have come from the other end of the line.
"There's nothing you need to apologise for. We'll have plenty of time together in the future. What’s important is that your father took the initiative to ask you to come home—that's a really big step. And besides… the New Year is meant for family reunions. Don’t worry about me; I have the two little ones to keep me company here."
"Mhm."
"I don’t know if your father made things difficult for you today, but I feel like the fact he asked you to come home means he’s starting to accept you. After all, you’ve spent over twenty years together, it's not easy to cut off one's own flesh and blood just like that, that kind of pain is definitely not one-sided…"
"Mhm." As Qi Jing responded softly, he raised his eyes slightly to look at his father. Unfortunately, much of his father's expression was hidden by the shadows of the night, and he couldn't see it fully.
At that moment, Shen Yan paused for a while before continuing slowly, "Ah Jing, this is where you and I differ—you and your family have so many wonderful memories together. I know you've endured a lot of hardships living on your own these past few years, and you might feel resistant towards them because of what happened in the past. But sometimes, it's just a hurdle. Once you truly cross it, the road ahead is often much easier than you'd think."
Qi Jing took in every single word—it was as if he allowed this man's tenderness to penetrated into his heart inch by inch. Even the toughest of grudges would surely be softened by these words… disappearing for good.
"Ah Yan," he called out suddenly.
"Yes?"
"Actually, my dad's been standing right in front of me this whole time." There was a hint of mischief in his smile as he deliberately let this key piece of information slip, calm and unhurried. "And I've had the speaker on from the start—"
The line suddenly went deathly silent, and then unsurprisingly, the unmistakable sound of someone gasping in shock could be heard on the other end.
Qi Jing could hold back and ultimately burst into laughter, laughing so hard he nearly dropped his phone.
His father, probably not expecting him to pull a stunt like that, could only frown and look on, momentarily at a loss for words.
However, the person on the other end of the line seemed to have regained his composure, even remembering to extend New Year’s greetings to the elder.
"…Happy New Year, Uncle."
His father didn't answer. After a long silence,he suddenly spoke, his voice cold and mechanical, "If I say I will never accept this son; never let him back into the house unless you immediately cut ties with him and disappear from his life completely, would you do it?"
Qi Jing's laughter stopped abruptly.
He suddenly looked up, his expression stern, silently confronting his father's cold gaze, but did not interrupt their conversation.
But undeterred by his reaction, his father continued to press Shen Yan, "You said it yourself just now—the bond of twenty-odd years of flesh and blood is the most important. What right do you have to destroy it? Don't you think that's cruel?"
Shen Yan waited patiently until he had finished before answering with a soft voice that carried great weight, "Uncle, what's truly cruel… is abandoning him a second time as his new-found family despite knowing that his family once abandoned him."
The call timer on the phone screen ticked up second by second as the conversation slipped into a brief silence.
None of the three spoke, each remaining silent.
After a long while, Shen Yan let out a deep sigh, his voice hoarse as he spoke again, "Perhaps you can't understand a relationship like ours, but aside from being of the same gender, we're really no different from anyone else. To me, Ah Jing is my lover and my family. I hope to live a peaceful life with him, taking care of each other and supporting each other. But I also understand… In this world, there are things I can't give him, only you can."
Blood relations and the familial love derived from romantic love were, in the end, fundamentally different.
"Honestly speaking, Ah Jing is the kind of person who can't live anymore without either one of us; he's perfectly capable of living independently. But I don't want to see him living without any expectations of life, where he turns into someone who doesn't care whether he lives or dies…"
Hearing that, Qi Jing scoffed wryly.
Back when he first met Shen Yan, his life was exactly as Shen Yan described. He was completely indifferent even though he had nearly been killed in a car accident.
However, his father remained expressionless, and after a while, coldly retorted, "…And being with you will make his life better? You'll always be judged by society and maybe he won't have a change of heart, but can you guarantee that you won't? That you won’t turn your back on him and marry a woman and have children?"
"Dad—" Qi Jing couldn't help but interject. He knew his father was using the man who had betrayed him years ago as an example.
"Uncle," Shen Yan still answered earnestly, "Even if I gave you a verbal promise, you probably wouldn't believe it. Time is the best proof. How much I like him, how much I cherish him… time will prove everything to you on my behalf."
This time, his father didn't speak. He lowered his head, pulled out what must have been his umpteenth cigarette of the day, lit it silently, and took a deep drag.
"Hang up the phone."
His father commanded, but he didn't seem to care whether the order would be carried out as he turned and strode off into the night. Seeing this, Qi Jing’s shoulders relaxed slightly, as if a great weight had been lifted from him. He had taken a gamble by putting the call on speaker, but looking at the situation now, it felt worth it, regardless of the outcome.
"It's okay now, my dad has left." Qi Jing paid no heed to his father's words. He turned off the speaker and held the phone back to his ear to continue their conversation.
"You really gave me a scare this time," Shen Yan chuckled, oh what would he do with Qi Jing. "But your father is easier to communicate with than I expected."
"He was clearly aggressive from the start, even telling you to break up with me." Though he said this, there was a hint of laughter in his voice.
"Mhm… But I feel like he was just trying to test me."
"I think so too." Qi Jing lowered his head with a smile. "I wonder if his opinion of you has changed at all, Mr "daughter-in-law"."
He could hear the other person chuckle softly on the other end of the phone, his low breathing seemed to blow into his ear with every word, making his heart itch. "So, when are you coming back to keep your "wife" company?"
Qi Jing felt a sweet taste in his throat, as if many sugar cubes were melting inside, and even his voice was a little hoarse from the sugar grains.
"…I'll be back once the second day of the Spring Festival is over," he said in a low voice, "Wait for me."
From the phone, Shen Yan’s quiet laugh came through. "Mhm, I'll be waiting for you."
Qi Jing stopped talking and didn't chase after his father either. Instead, he walked alone along the old station platform, savouring the peaceful atmosphere as he stepped through the circles of light cast by the dim yellow street lamps.
The old railway tracks stretched endlessly beside him, extending further and further.
But if he paused for a moment and looked closely, he would notice a small, unremarkable, winding path cutting through the barren land beyond the railway tracks.
As it wasn't part of the railway foundation, the soil around the small path hadn't been filled or reinforced. Even in the coldest season of the year, it was overgrown with lush wild grass—and even had a few clusters of unknown white wildflowers. In his childhood memories, the petals were small and thin, and when the sunlight passed through them, they would emit a slightly waxy glow, blooming quietly in a hidden place.
Perhaps, he thought. Perhaps someday in the future, on the second day of Chinese New Year, he could bring Shen Yan here to see it.
To see this path, this patch of wild grass, these clusters of wildflowers.
To see the beauty that exists beyond the "right path".
As their shared memory, written into a page of their lives, year after year, unchanging. So that whenever they looked back, the page would surely emit a faint, waxy glow.
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Thank yous!! (˶‾᷄ ⁻̫ ‾᷅˵)
I hope you enjoyed this chapter and have a great day!!
You can support me by sending some love in the comments or through the button below
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