More Than Brothers

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2001, our freshman year.

Through various clues, we brothers in the dorm unanimously suspected that Xiang Lei might be gay, and so we half-jokingly, half-seriously tried to get him to confess. Under pressure, he eventually admitted it.

As if urgently needing some kind of proof, we began endlessly joking about Xiang Lei’s sexual orientation while unconsciously distancing ourselves from him physically and emotionally.

Xiang Lei didn’t seem to mind. He remained focused on searching for his so-called true love, but reality proved far more complicated than his romantic ideals…

The story of Xiang Lei, the hopeless romantic.

Note: The perspective shifts between a standard third-person narrative and the first-person viewpoint of a dormmate and fictional author of the story (whose name is never mentioned). The first-person narration is used only when that dormmate is present in the scene.