MFW 20

Chapter 20

Fu Siting couldn’t recall exactly when he’d fallen asleep on Li Fei’s chest that afternoon. All he knew was that when he woke up, he was already in bed. Outside, the drizzle continued unabated. The sky was completely gray and gloomy, the sound of falling rain fine and persistent.

“Awake?”

He mumbled a response, shifting slightly. The bed was warm and comfortable. Something odd felt strapped to his knee, and he instinctively reached down to touch it. It was a heated knee brace, rechargeable.

“… ”

Only then did Fu Siting recall his bad leg. It had always suffered from that old ailment, a bone-deep, stabbing cold pain that flared up on rainy days.

In that dark, damp house, he had endured countless gloomy rainy days and countless nights when tiny insects seemed to gnaw at his bones, clutching his knees and gritting his teeth through the agony. But today, despite the heavy downpour, his knee felt only a faint ache, no pain. He drifted in a haze as raindrops continued pattering against the window. Li Fei sat at the nearby desk, his long fingers tapping the keyboard.

Seeing he’d woken, Li Fei set aside his laptop and sat beside him. He guided Fu Siting’s leg onto his own lap, fingers tracing the pressure points around the aching knee joint.

“…”

Soon, even the last vestiges of discomfort faded. Motionless, Fu Siting stared at Li Fei’s profile. Such practiced movements came from professional training and countless repetitions.

Outside, rain smeared the windowpane into a frosted blur. Fu Siting stared, wondering if Li Fei had actually learned massage just for him…

What had he done to deserve this? Lost in thought, Li Fei’s dark eyes suddenly turned toward him, carrying an inexplicable chill.

Fu Siting was confused, then felt a slap on the back of his hand. It stung. He was even more bewildered.

“…”

“That was for you,” Li Fei’s dark eyes remained still. “Sixteen-year-old Fu Xiaoting, you owe me.”

“You’ve been naughty, not taking good care of my precious.”

“You know how to cook, yet you never made sure my little treasure ate more nutritiously. When his shoulders ached or his legs hurt, you never took him to the hospital. Even these two hands—” Li Fei grabbed one of his hands,”In the first winter after we met, he still got frostbite. Red, swollen, itchy, scratching every day but still pushing through. Didn’t even know to buy gloves!”

“Fu Siting, you’re perfectly capable when taking care of others. You’d cook up all kinds of dishes every day, scouring recipes for nutritious and delicious meals.”

“But when it comes to taking care of yourself? Why did you just stop caring altogether???”

“…”

Fu Siting fell silent. A wave of drowsy drunkenness washed over him again, his eyelids grew heavy.

“You dare to sleep? Get up and reflect properly! No sleeping!”

“Mm…”

Before being dragged back into the darkness once more, Fu Siting had actually been… well, properly reflecting. It wasn’t that he deliberately neglected himself. It was just that, back then, he genuinely didn’t know what a “good life” was supposed to look like. All those years, he truly believed leg pain was normal, daily exhaustion was normal, and getting frostbite in the bitter cold of winter was normal too.

Too much pain in life had become second nature to him. So ingrained that he never imagined any alternative beyond enduring night after night clutching his aching legs. He never thought to dip into the medical savings he’d been setting aside for his mother, to grit his teeth and buy himself a cotton coat or a pair of gloves. Perhaps then the pain and cold wouldn’t be so unbearable. But there were too many things he couldn’t conceive of.

…

Ever since arriving in this world twelve years later, Fu Siting had slept soundly every night. He hadn’t had a single dream, good or bad. But this time, as he closed his eyes, he felt himself being pulled into a pitch-black abyss by some invisible force. At first, he found himself back at the city hospital.

The small town remained bitterly cold in winter, its lights casting a stark, icy glow. He thought of what he’d read online—”the five-year survival rate for stage III gastric cancer is 20 to 40 percent”—and once again stumbled out of the hospital gates in a daze. Only this time, outside the hospital, the city’s bustling lights and traffic had vanished, replaced by a series of twisted, shifting white portals of space and time.

It was the very scene from that sci-fi movie he and Li Fei had watched together in the theater. The film was filled with complex terminology, and Fu Siting hadn’t fully grasped it. He only recalled that the male protagonist possessed countless different futures, each forming a new parallel world. Not every protagonist in every world could attain the same happiness.

Happiness was profoundly rare. In one world, the protagonist left home just one minute too late, forever missing his true love. In another, a single fleeting thought sent his life spiraling into irreparable ruin. Before countless possible futures, often just an insignificant, tiny difference could lead one down entirely divergent paths of destiny. And now, it was his turn.

Sixteen-year-old Fu Siting now stood frozen before a row of twisted parallel world portals. Countless possible futures lay beyond each door. In one future, sixteen-year-old Fu Siting succumbed to illness. Lying pale and frail in a hospital bed, tubes and wires attached to his emaciated frame, he waited quietly for death.

In another future, Fu Siting, nearing thirty, mechanically performed a mundane, hopeless job day after day. Returning home to an empty room, his numb face showed no trace of surprise or emotion. That home was dim and gloomy, its walls peeling nearly bare, devoid of any decorations. Not a single photograph. No mementos of holding hands with a loved one while gazing at snow-capped mountains or the ocean, no laughter shared aboard a helicopter, no cheerful doodles scribbled on the backs of photos. Only an old mirror covered in scribbles. In the dim light, the reflection revealed a face worn, gaunt, dull, devoid of vitality, and almost indistinguishable. “No…”

“This isn’t me…”

His hands gripped the sink’s edge tightly, fingers trembling, knuckles turning white from the pressure. But, but Fu Siting’s future shouldn’t be like this. Because he had seen it, he had seen Fu Siting’s future, and that future was so, so good. So good it felt like a dream. In that future, he was healthy and successful in his career. He met Li Fei… and they were so happy together.

He knew such a future had to exist. Because he had seen it, because that was his future! In the pitch-black dream, he ran like a madman, panting between row upon row of white doors. But where was that future? The next second, all the white doors suddenly shattered into mirrors. Each mirror reflected fragments of his own haggard, broken face.

A drowning agony seized him, robbing him of breath. Through blurred vision, he saw himself pounding the mirrors. Each punch left bloodstains tracing the cracks, everything shattered and torn apart, just like that young, broken heart. Fu Siting was licked awake by his puppy, Cheese.

The puppy whimpered, obediently licking away the streaks of tears across his face. Fu Siting stared with wide, vacant eyes, finally recovering from the suffocating rush of his racing heartbeat after a long moment. Slowly, he made out the familiar surroundings. The soft blue bed, the dreamlike jellyfish lamp… and the warm, plush knee brace on his knees.

Outside the floor-to-ceiling window, the rain had nearly ceased, leaving only the occasional patter. Seeing he was awake, the puppy happily wiggled his plump little body, wagging his tail and nudging Fu Siting to play. Fu Siting roughly wiped his face and spent a while playing ball with Cheese in the room. Cheese fetched the ball back again and again, excitedly shaking his head and wagging his tail.

He managed a half-hearted smile, his mind still unfocused. The rain finally ceased completely, and the twilight sky grew slightly brighter than before. The knee brace still held residual warmth on his leg. Fu Siting stumbled out of the room, half-asleep, and headed to make dinner. Li Fei had been in a video conference in the living room all afternoon and had just wrapped up. Spotting Fu Siting emerge, he set down his laptop and followed his back into the kitchen.

Fu Siting stood with his back turned, opening cabinets and grabbing a spatula. He didn’t turn on the kitchen light, not wanting Li Fei to see the lingering redness in his eyes. “Baby, are you sober now? You’ve got the energy to cook? So, what should we have for dinner?” Li Fei grabbed an apron and tied it around him.

Fu Siting began calmly listing dishes, his voice straining to remain even. But it was futile, suppressing emotions in front of a professional actor was beyond the sixteen-year-old’s experience.

“What’s wrong, Xiaoting? You were happily playing with the puppy just now.”

“Nothing.”

Li Fei reacted quickly, grabbing Fu Siting’s hand before he could turn on the stove: “Come on, tell me what happened. Even the puppy couldn’t cheer you up.”

“Ah, right. My precious Xiaoting is getting harder to please every day. What are you overthinking now?”

Fu Siting still avoided his gaze, struggling to light the stove. “Nothing. It’s late. We need to cook quickly.”

A sudden, forceful tug yanked him several steps back. Without a word, Li Fei pinned him against the wall and yanked off his apron. “Fu Siting.”

“Have you forgotten what you told me when you were drunk?”

Fu Siting didn’t remember. Night fell outside the window. His heart remained trapped at the bottom of a nightmare, soaked and heavy, impossible to lift. He had no energy left to think about anything else. Li Fei sighed, cupping his face: “Then let me refresh your memory. Fu Siting, when you were drunk, you told me you hoped I could treat you like a ‘boyfriend’ from now on.”

“Not a little brother, not a pet, a real boyfriend.”

“…”

“But I have strict requirements for a ‘boyfriend’.”

“Whatever troubles my boyfriend has, good or bad, he must tell me immediately. He can’t hide them or bottle them up.”

“Fu Siting, you could actually try confiding in me.”

“Anything, happy or sad, even the worst things. I won’t feel burdened. I won’t break under the weight, and I won’t blame you.”

“I still believe lovers should trust each other. If you want the privileges of a boyfriend, you can’t shirk the responsibilities.”

“If you still insist on staying silent, then I’m sorry, I’ll just keep treating you like Fu Xiaoting. Like a little brother, like a pet. I won’t give you any boyfriend privileges now, and I don’t want to in the future either.”

“So, Fu Siting.”

“Think carefully about what you really want.”

“I’m giving you one minute to decide. Countdown: fifty-nine seconds. Start thinking.”

With that, he snapped his fingers and flicked on the kitchen light. The world instantly flooded with blinding brightness. The tiles and walls gleamed with a harsh, reflective glare that made him freeze. Fu Siting squinted, his slightly drooping, swollen eyelids betraying a hint of defeat. He could no longer hide.

Had he been crying again… Li Fei raised his hand, reaching toward Fu Siting’s eyes. Fu Siting could only turn his head away in embarrassment. He opened his mouth, struggling to force a smile, but no laughter emerged. Only the chill in his limbs and the hoarseness in his voice remained. Time ticked away, second by second. Li Fei lowered his hand, his voice was calm: “Twenty seconds left.”

“Ten seconds.”

“Five, four…”

With nowhere left to hide, Fu Siting lowered his head and gave a nervous snort.

“It’s really nothing… nothing major… I just had a… nightmare.”

He looked down at himself self-deprecatingly, trying to appear lighthearted, but the awkwardness didn’t fade despite his sarcasm and pretense.

For a moment, Fu Siting genuinely felt grateful that Li Fei had cornered him against the wall earlier. Now, with the cabinet supporting him, he could at least steady himself.

“What did you dream about?” Li Fei asked.

“…Nothing important. Just a nonsensical nightmare where I was being stupid.”

“…”

“Tell me exactly what you dreamed.”

Another complete silence fell. Li Fei waited for about half a minute, his gaze darkening as he turned to leave. Fu Siting felt a hollow ache in his chest and grabbed Li Fei’s wrist. Li Fei probably wasn’t really going to abandon him. Yet his heart still spasmed painfully at the look Li Fei had just given him, as if his patience had finally snapped. “Don’t go. I’ll tell you.”

“…”

“I dreamt… I dreamt I didn’t survive the cancer. I dreamt I died before I could meet you…”

“I also dreamt that even if I had survived, I would never have seen you.”

“See? I told you it was just a stupid, meaningless nightmare. It means nothing. You don’t need to hear it.”

Li Fei closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then turned back to Fu Siting.

Did he know? The more he lowered his gaze and smiled, the more he feigned ease, the more desperate and heartbreaking he appeared.

“So… my illness… it really is cured, right?” he asked.

“Of course it’s cured,” Li Fei frowned, walking back to stand before him.

“Fu Siting, no one would lie to you about something this big. Want to see the medical records and past checkup reports? I can get them for you right now.”

Fu Siting shook his head. He still clutched Li Fei’s wrist, like a drowning man refusing to let go of a straw: “But… with such a low cure rate, how did I possibly…”

Li Fei felt a flash of irritation, yet his heart softened completely at the same moment.

He sighed silently, pressing down on Fu Siting’s trembling fingers braced against the cabinet. “Because your luck has always been too bad. But in a stroke of misfortune, the tumor was caught early, and technology has advanced since then. The argon-helium cryoablation can completely freeze and destroy the lesion, and the subsequent targeted drug match rate is exceptionally high.”

“…”

But Fu Siting didn’t look any better. Instead, he looked as if struck by something terrifying, his entire face suddenly draining of color.

“…You just said it was detected in the early stages?”

“It was early.” Li Fei confirmed.

Fu Siting whispered, “Stage III cancer is mid-to-late stage, not early.”

“Stage 3? What do you mean stage 3?”

Fu Siting didn’t respond. He couldn’t hear anything else now. The world was filled with loud, twisted laughter. He felt hollow as dreams eroded reality, draining the blood from his body, leaving everything teetering on the brink. Only now did Li Fei suddenly realize something, he had always felt, deep down, that something was off.

Now he finally knew what it was! “Fu Siting, you lost all your memories after age sixteen, right? Then how did you know you got sick at twenty-six?”

“…”

“Twenty-six?” Fu Siting laughed. Li Fei nodded. Twenty-six. Two years ago, he had been by his side the entire time. There was no way he could be wrong.

Fu Siting swayed slightly, his eyes slowly clouding over. He lowered his gaze and laughed again.

“So in this timeline, I got sick at twenty-six. Not… sixteen, right?”

Li Fei frowned. “Sixteen? What are you talking about, Fu Xiaoting!”

“I’m saying it’s different,” he nodded to himself, a tear finally spilling down his cheek. “In my timeline, I was diagnosed with stomach cancer at sixteen.”

“Sixteen years old. Stage 3 stomach cancer.”

“…”

“…”

Suddenly, it was as if all his strength had been drained from him. He could say no more words.

 It was impossible for a sixteen-year-old to have stage 3 stomach cancer that went untreated until age twenty-six. In that moment, the parallel universes from his nightmare, the divergent timelines, the twisted, monstrous white door, all invaded his reality. So his timeline and this one were fundamentally incompatible. Hah. Of course. He knew it. He knew it couldn’t all be that perfect.

For several minutes afterward, Fu Siting remained dazed, unsure of what had transpired. Voices called his name, yet they sounded muffled, as if separated by layers of glass. His heart pounded like a drum, ringing in his ears, until the person cradling his face shouted at him, forcing his gaze upward with both hands until he met a pair of eyes as pure and dark as black jade.

Li Fei: “Fu Siting, speak!”

“Fu Siting, breathe properly, then talk to me. What happened when you were sixteen? Tell me everything now!”

“…”

“…”

“Speak!!!”

Fu Siting still didn’t respond. Li Fei’s gaze turned icy as he began to twist his face. Only when the pain hit did he snap back to consciousness, staring at the familiar yet unfamiliar face before him. Those dark pupils had never been… so cold and stern. His eyes suddenly stung, blurring his vision once more.

I scared him. Li Fei cursed silently, but he couldn’t back down now. Not only did he refuse to yield, he applied even more force. Fortunately, at twenty-eight, overpowering a sixteen-year-old was relatively easy. Besides, as a professional actor, he could instantly project an intimidating aura.

“Fu Siting, my patience is truly running out,” he gritted out.

“…”

“You insist on this, do you genuinely think you’re so grand and magnificent? Do you believe it’s honorable to shoulder all the pressure and troubles alone, never letting anyone else worry? Fu Siting, then why did you even bother finding a boyfriend? Why not just live out your life alone, old and lonely? What do you take me for? Hiding every painful thing from me, did you ever see me as an equal partner in love?”

“Or are you just like everyone else, not seeing me as human at all? Just an art piece to project your fantasies onto, devoid of thoughts or personality, while you smugly revel in your self-delusion and self-pity?”

“Look, you’re making that face again.You’ve always been good at using that pitiful, almost-mad look to soften my heart. Fu Siting, I won’t fall for it anymore. If you still choose to shoulder everything alone, then leave. Really, go. Leave now. Just don’t stay here, because that version of you isn’t what I want. Huh? Why aren’t you leaving? The door’s over there—”

After saying this, Li Fei admired his own intensity in that moment. Fortunately, in his acting career, he’d always excelled at portraying ruthless characters who stabbed others in the heart. He never imagined his real self could be even more merciless.

Fu Siting collapsed almost instantly under the blow, his body swaying, unable even to cry. Yeah, even a twenty-eight-year-old Fu Siting might not handle this. How could sixteen-year-old Xiaoting? Li Fei felt his heart aching, nearly making him change his tone. But he couldn’t. Li Fei knew all too well the endless trouble that came from momentary softness. He knew just how much this person could endure. If he didn’t ask what needed to be asked now, letting him hide it would lead to endless trouble later.

Even as his fingertips brushed against Fu Siting’s flushed eyelids once more, Li Fei’s expression remained cold and unyielding. He stared at Fu Siting, forcibly holding his gaze in place with fierce intensity, crushing him into despair. Fu Siting could barely breathe.

Li Fei shouted at him again: This is your last chance, Fu Siting. Speak!!”

The target of the roar finally shattered completely. His gaze went unfocused as he lowered his head, his voice breaking into a hoarse, self-destructive whisper: “What exactly do you want me to say? I don’t know anything… What else could you possibly want to know? I just… found out I’m sick. I’m having surgery in a few days. I don’t know if I’ll survive, and I have no idea what the future holds. Then, for some reason, I ended up here. Everyone says I’m twenty-eight. Everyone says I’m just suffering from amnesia!”

“But I genuinely only remember events before I turned sixteen.”

“So what exactly do you want me to say? That there was never a classmate named Qu Zhifan in my high school?”

“Or that my high school grades were nowhere near good enough to get into Z University?”

My family couldn’t possibly afford to support me through both treatment and university. The world I lived in was nothing like yours, too different, too distant… In my timeline, I… was poor and unlucky. I might have died soon after. Even if I somehow survived, even if I fought with all my strength, I could never be as fortunate or as capable as your Fu Siting.

“Li Fei, you and I… aren’t we fundamentally… not the same Li Fei and Fu Siting from the same timeline, the same spacetime, not even the same dimension?”

“In my timeline, we’ll likely never… cross paths in this lifetime.”

“You’d never even know I existed. Even if we did meet, you’d never… spare me a second glance.”

Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe.

A chill spread through his body, engulfed by overwhelming despair. He clutched his chest tightly, feeling as if it were being torn apart inside, the pain driving him mad. Tears finally fell in heavy drops, hot and stinging, splashing into Li Fei’s palm. He was about to collapse, gritting his teeth, the agony making him want to whimper.

“But I… I still want to be with you…”

“I want to be with you. I like you so much. I want… I want to stay here forever.”

He choked, his chest heaving. “I want to stay by your side and never leave. But I know… the you here could never belong to me. You belong to that ‘other’ in the parallel universe…”

How cruel.

So cruel. All the happiness these past days had been nothing but a mirage, seen but never touched. Why let him see it? If he hadn’t been shown this, he could have endured that hopeless life. Bullying, illness, struggling through the mire from birth to death, he could have endured it all!!!

It was the first time Fu Siting had cried like this. And it was the first time Li Fei had seen him cry like this. Tears pelted his palms, as if they would burn holes through them. He wiped them away, yet it felt like he could never wipe them all away.

“…”

“Fu Xiaoting.”

In a daze, he heard Li Fei call his name. His body was gently yet firmly embraced, and it seemed Li Fei even kissed his hair.

Yet Fu Siting couldn’t stop trembling. His heart was now filled only with pain and greed. He just wanted to be held, unwilling to think of anything else. At least in this moment, Li Fei belonged to him. He still belonged to him, his embrace still so real and warm. Even if it meant drinking poison to quench his thirst, he only wanted to sink deeper into this.

Why… why couldn’t this man belong to him? Couldn’t that happy, fortunate Fu Siting—who had everything else—just give this man to him? He liked him so much, he truly wanted to steal him away. He wanted to sneak him off and take him back to his own world. Li Fei took a deep breath.

“…”

“Fu Siting, are you an idiot?!!” he shouted at him.

“Snap out of it! What timeline? What parallel universe? What time travel?! What the hell have you been thinking about day in and day out? That stuff only exists in fantasy movies! Do you seriously believe it’s real? Did that movie from last time leave you with some kind of psychological trauma?”

“It was just a movie! The director and screenwriter’s imagination, meant to give you an entertaining experience, not to trigger your stress response and make you torture yourself with wild fantasies. You know what kind of audience directors dread most? People like you, the ones who overanalyze, twist everything out of context, and get so deeply invested in the story it becomes their own reality!”

He reached out, wrapping his arms tightly around the stiff, shivering body. Like a comforting caress, he stroked his back, once, twice, and again. Li Fei sighed.

“Alright, I finally get it,” Li Fei said. “No wonder.”

“No wonder when they diagnosed you with that illness two years ago, you suddenly went berserk, refused treatment, and even threatened to break up with me. Now I finally understand why!”

“So that episode at twenty-six was a ‘relapse’? No wonder you lost your mind so completely.”

What?

Fu Siting’s head buzzed. He leaned against Li Fei, desperately soaking up warmth like a fish gasping for air, grasping at the faintest glimmer of hope. But he still couldn’t understand the meaning of those words. Li Fei held him tight, gritting his teeth as he whispered into his ear, “Listen carefully, Fu Xiaoting. There’s no such thing as parallel universes or alternate timelines.”

“There’s only one… that bastard who thinks he has to shoulder everything alone!”

“That bastard got seriously ill when he was just sixteen. He faced it all by himself back then, you have no idea how hard and terrifying it must have been. Thankfully, he managed to pull through after all that struggle.”

“But this bastard, after three whole years together, never told me a single word about something this important!”

“Yeah, that bastard’s always been arrogant and self-righteous. He’d go to any lengths to chase someone, hand over his paycheck, cook meals, drive you around, pull off all these little romantic gestures. But when it came to anything painful, he’d just tough it out alone, refusing to say a word!”

“Later, the bastard’s luck took a turn. At twenty-six, his illness came back. He probably thought he was done for.”

“True. Back in the day, not many survived two bouts of cancer.”

“That stubborn little bastard didn’t realize how far medicine had advanced in the past decade. When he got sick the second time, he didn’t even need surgery. Just six months of cryoablation injections and targeted drugs, and he was cured. His checkups are perfect now, he’s bouncing off the walls every day.”

“Hmph,” Li Fei snorted, laughter mingling with exasperation. “I always wondered why that little bastard went berserk back then, screaming it was incurable, impossible, refusing treatment, when it was clearly still early stages.”

“So that’s the backstory?”

“…”

Fu Siting froze. Like someone thawing from prolonged hypothermia, he suddenly regained a sliver of sensation as warmth returned. Unbelievable. He dared not believe it. He seemed to be struggling to grasp the meaning behind every word, repeatedly sifting through his speech for any shred of… possibility that might convince him.

Watching Fu Siting look like he’d just survived a catastrophe, miserable and pitiable, Li Fei genuinely almost couldn’t resist the urge to punch the kid. He really deserved a beating! If he were his actual younger brother, he would’ve hit him already. What a damn brat.

***

Author’s Note: Scaring myself here~~~ (Hey, don’t be so mean!)

Chapter 2: Yin Yihao’s description of Fu Siting as “wildly imaginative” wasn’t wrong. He’s both reserved and introverted yet full of inner turmoil, yet can be incredibly sunny when nurtured properly. This personality is actually perfect for game design.

[Amateur Writer] So while the synopsis says Xiaoting is unlucky, modern technology can actually treat his condition. Especially with sufficient resources, this isn’t some made-up sci-fi plot device. Real breakthroughs exist now. Technology has advanced tremendously these past few years.