TF01 103

Ying Ming stayed outside the door until nightfall. It was only after the sky had turned completely dark that he finally unlocked it and stepped back inside.

Shi Yi was sitting on the sofa, smoking. When he heard the door open, he turned and glanced over.

Their eyes met, both catching sight of each other’s wrecked appearance. For a moment, neither of them knew whether to laugh bitterly or simply feel ashamed.

Ying Ming reeked of smoke. He walked over and sat down in the far corner of the couch. “Well? Cooled off a little?”

Shi Yi’s throat hurt so badly even swallowing felt like it scraped. He only gave a small shake of the head, trying to signal that he hadn’t quite recovered yet. But the blank, frozen look was gone from his face. He still looked miserable, but at least now he was starting to resemble the Shi Yi Ying Ming knew.

Neither of them spoke for a long while. They just sat there, staring into space, until the sudden ring of a phone broke the silence.

Ying Ming got up to answer it. Shi Yi let out a barely audible sigh.

The call was from Dong Xiao, asking if he would still attend the costume fitting the day after tomorrow. Ying Ming said yes, but didn’t promise anything definitively, since he still had no idea whether anything would change before then. Dong Xiao understood his situation and didn’t press. It was hard to say whether the collaboration would still happen, but as long as Dong Xiao didn’t pull the plug, Ying Ming wouldn’t be the one to back out. He would give everything he could to whatever he was still part of.

By the time he hung up, Shi Yi had already stood up and dressed.

He looked at Ying Ming. “I’ve got to move back home no matter what. I won’t take anything. If I need something, I’ll come back and get it.”

“Alright.”

Ying Ming frowned slightly and nodded. He looked at Shi Yi’s exhausted face and wanted to say something comforting, but the words didn’t come out.

They had fought. They had yelled. Ying Ming had said everything there was to say. In the end, the only person who could get through this was Shi Yi himself. No one else could help him.

For all these years, Shi Yi had said he hated living under his father’s pressure, that he rejected it. But deep down, no one relied on that family more than he did. Ying Ming knew how hard this blow had hit him, but knowing didn’t change anything. Right now, no one could help Shi Yi.

It was all on him.

---

When Shi Yi got home, the house was quiet.

He still had traces of Ying Ming’s blood on him. His clothes were a mess from everything that had happened. He frowned but went straight to his parents’ bedroom.

This was the place he should have always called home, yet it was somewhere he rarely returned to.

Everything in it was familiar. Even though he had not spent much time here, there was a kind of closeness that lived deep in his bones. Something he could never fully forget, even if he wanted to. And the truth was, he had never wanted to.

He walked upstairs and gently pushed the bedroom door open.

His mother was still sitting at the edge of the bed, holding his father’s photo.

Shi Yi felt a weight drop in his chest. Still, he forced out a hoarse greeting. “Mom.”

This was the first time he had spoken to her since his father passed. His mother’s shoulders shifted slightly, but she did not lift her head.

Just that one small movement made Shi Yi’s chest tighten. He lowered himself in front of her and repeated it, quieter this time.

“Mom.”

The room was stifling. The kind of quiet that made it hard to breathe. Pain seemed to fill every corner of the space. Both of them were completely worn out. The emotional strain of the past few days was far worse than any physical injury. Shi Yi let out a long breath and lowered his head, eyes closed.

It took a long time before his mother finally spoke.

“Back when your dad’s health started going downhill, he used to bring you up all the time.”

Her voice was raspy from crying too much. Weak, barely audible.

“I kept telling him to call you, to ask you to come home more. But he always stopped me. He said you were fighting for your future. Said these few years are everything for a man. Whether you rise or fall depends on how hard you push yourself.”

As she spoke, her tears began falling again. They landed on the back of Shi Yi’s hand, stabbing into him like needles.

“Your dad knew he was too strict when you were younger. After you graduated, you insisted on going out on your own. No matter what we said, you were going. He spent days sighing at home, saying that you’d grown up, that you had your own thoughts now. He wanted the best for you, but you didn’t want to listen.”

“Mom…” Shi Yi clenched his fists. His head had started to go numb again.

But she didn’t stop. As if she hadn’t heard him, she went on remembering.

“Even when he was angry you ignored him, wherever he went he couldn’t stop bragging about you. He made you sound like you were the best of the best. You were his pride, Shi Yi, you know that?”

She reached out and touched his face.

“You have no idea how much your father cared about you. You really don’t.”

Shi Yi’s eyes burned, so dry they hurt. But no tears came out.

Every word his mother said made him want to crawl out of his own skin. But those same words also held him in place, forced him to stay grounded. He listened carefully, really listened, as she told him all the things he had ignored, forgotten, or never bothered to see. As painful as it was, he wanted her to go on. He wanted to hear more.

She only stopped when her voice finally gave out. Shi Yi stood and poured her a glass of water. Outside, the sky had gone completely dark. There was a heavy chill in the air that crept through the windows.

Shi Yi asked if she wanted to eat something.

She shook her head and said she had no appetite.

Still, Shi Yi stepped into the kitchen.

All his life, he could count on one hand the times he had cooked anything himself. Back in school, sometimes he would try something out when hanging around with friends, mostly for fun. He usually never ate what he made, and no one ever gave real feedback, only empty flattery.

There wasn’t much left in the fridge. Some of the vegetables had gone bad from sitting too long. He started going through them one by one. The smell of rotting greens filled the kitchen. He took everything out, washed what he could, and threw the rest away. The faucet gushed water onto the leafy vegetables, sending droplets splashing in every direction.

Halfway through washing, he pulled out his phone and made a call to Kou Jing.

“Shi Yi?”

The surprise in the voice on the other end was obvious. A bit cautious too.

Everyone knew Shi Yi was in a bad state right now. His friends cared, but none of them could do much to help.

Shi Yi gave a quiet “mm,” then briefly explained why he had called. “Ying Ming’s injury might have opened up again. Can you check on him? If it looks serious, take him to the hospital. He hit his head earlier too.”

“You saw him?”

“We were together all afternoon.”

He didn’t hide that they had met, but he didn’t mention the fight. The exhaustion in his voice seeped through every word. It made it hard for Kou Jing to press him for details.

“All right,” Kou Jing said after a pause. “I’ll go check on him soon.”

“Thanks.”

It was rare for Shi Yi to say that word, but once he did, he ended the call without giving Kou Jing a chance to follow up.

Shi Yi could guess where Ying Ming’s injuries had come from. For both of them, hurting the other was the same as hurting themselves. He knew Ying Ming must have been in just as much pain. Maybe that was the only thing they had left now, a shared kind of misery that ran so deep it kept screaming, even when the world around them stayed silent.

He went back to washing and chopping in silence. It took him almost an hour to make a simple vegetable porridge. When he finished cleaning up and carried the food into the bedroom, his mother had already fallen asleep over the edge of the bed.

He paused for a moment, then set the bowl down beside her.

Gently, he pulled the blanket up to cover her. He stood there for a while, uncertain whether to wake her up. In the end, he decided against it.

As he was about to go downstairs, his eyes fell on his father’s study.

His limbs felt cold as he walked over. Right before opening the door, Shi Yi took a deep breath.

Everything inside that room still carried the weight of his father’s presence.

The furniture hadn’t moved. Everything was still in its place. The desk and the bookshelf showed clear signs of long-term use. Shi Yi sat down in the chair and ran his fingers along the edges of the desk, slowly tracing the line from one side to the other. As he did, he could almost hear his father’s voice again, lecturing him the way he used to when Shi Yi was young.

“Shi Yi, this kind of mistake is a matter of principle. It absolutely cannot happen again. Do you understand?”

“Putting on an act for me now is useless. One day you’ll regret it when you have to suffer the consequences.”

“I can manage tens of thousands of people, and I can’t manage my own son?”

His father’s tone had always been serious, even over the smallest things. He would blow it up into a matter of ideology. Back then, Shi Yi had always resisted his father’s expectations. He prided himself on getting away from those rigid molds, and never once stopped to think—if he had followed his father’s plans, what kind of person would he be now?

He closed his eyes and tried to imagine it, but no matter how long he sat there, he couldn’t picture it.

He opened the drawer and saw some old documents, all written in his father’s handwriting, with handwritten notes in the margins. He picked up one of the books and began flipping through it slowly. The more he read, the more the sourness welled up in his chest.

People always say regret comes after loss. Shi Yi had always believed he understood that. He used to look down on those who collapsed after losing something. Part of why he had been with Ying Ming in the first place was because he didn’t want to live with regret, didn’t want to leave anything undone.

But he had been focused only on the person next to him. He had forgotten the one who was supposed to be closest to him. The one he cared about the most.

Maybe it was because parents are always there, always waiting. That presence becomes so constant, so unshakable, that it becomes easy to ignore.

Tears finally came. No matter how hard he tried to hold them back, they still fell. The sting made his eyes ache, but he didn’t wipe them away. He looked down at the familiar handwriting, wondering what his father had been thinking during those last days. What had he been worrying about? That hollow space in his chest let out a soft, broken whimper like wind blowing through an empty room.

“Dad…”

He whispered, “I’ll take care of Mom. I’ll take care of the house… You…”

He wanted to say more, but the words died in his throat. His voice had no strength.

In the end, he buried his face in the books and wept. He pressed himself against the pages like he was trying to absorb the scent his father had left behind, to reclaim something that was already gone. But it was no use.

That helplessness, that crushing sense of failure and grief, could destroy a person completely.

In the haze of his broken thoughts, Shi Yi suddenly remembered the way Ying Ming had screamed at him, saying this pain would follow him for the rest of his life. He clenched his brows, letting himself sink into the darkness.

He knew Ying Ming had been right.

This regret, this guilt, this punishment in his heart, it would follow him for the rest of his life.

All those easy assumptions, all that avoidance, would twist into something ugly and permanent. The hole left in his chest would never be filled. It would sit there like a brand, burning into him, reminding him of exactly what he had done, and exactly what he now had to carry.

For the first time, Shi Yi understood what had been placed on his shoulders.

And for the first time, he understood just how cruel regret could be.

That realization settled heavily in his chest as exhaustion finally overtook him. Sometime after he drifted into a restless sleep, his phone vibrated a few times in his pocket.

Ying Ming’s name lit up on the screen, but the call ended after just a few rings, fading back into silence.

Outside the window, the night remained pitch black. Any trace of light felt impossibly far away.