Chapter 15#
Offering the Crematorium to a Homophobic Straight Man 15#
The next afternoon, the sky was somewhat gloomy.
Lead-gray clouds pressed down low, as if it could rain at any time.
Qiao Qing took a taxi. When he gave the familiar address, his heart still tightened uncontrollably.
The car drove into the familiar neighborhood and stopped under the unit building.
Qiao Qing looked up at that familiar window. There used to be a light on there no matter how late it was.
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Now, it was silently embedded in the gray sky like other windows.
He took a deep breath and slowly walked into the elevator.
The metal doors reflected his somewhat pale face and tense jawline.
The slight weightlessness brought by the rising elevator made him feel for a moment as if he had returned to countless ordinary days in the past.
With a “ding,” the elevator arrived.
The corridor was so quiet he could hear his own heartbeat.
He walked to that dark brown security door. The fingerprint lock still recorded his information, but he didn’t use it. Instead, he raised his hand and pressed the doorbell.
Almost the second the doorbell rang, the door was suddenly pulled open from the inside.
Lin Jinbai stood at the door.
He was wearing a set of well-fitted dark gray loungewear, his hair a bit messy, not meticulously styled as usual.
His face was somewhat pale, with obvious dark circles under his eyes, and his lips were tightly pursed.
Those eyes, which always carried a bit of aloofness and pride, were now staring dead at Qiao Qing.
“You’re here.”
His voice was somewhat raspy as he stepped aside to make way.
Qiao Qing nodded, didn’t look at him, and walked in silently.
A familiar scent rushed at him.
It was the scent of the cedar aromatherapy Lin Jinbai often used.
The living room was still tidy, even more spotless than when he left; Lin Jinbai must have hired someone to clean it.
A thin blanket he was familiar with was casually draped over the sofa, and the greenery on the balcony seemed a bit wilted from lack of care.
Everything seemed to have not changed, yet everything had changed.
Qiao Qing didn’t stay in the living room, but walked straight toward the second bedroom, the room where he had lived for eight years.
Most of his things were kept in this room and the connected walk-in closet.
“Qiao Qing.”
Lin Jinbai followed behind him, his voice tense.
Qiao Qing stopped in his tracks but didn’t turn around.
“I’m here to pack things. You just go about your business.”
“I’m not busy.”
Lin Jinbai’s voice suddenly rose.
“I took leave, just to wait for you here.”
Qiao Qing closed his eyes, suppressed the rising irritability in his heart, and continued toward the room.
He pushed open the door to the second bedroom. The room still looked as it did when he left, even the book he hadn’t finished was still on the nightstand.
He began to pack.
Opening the closet, many of his clothes were still hanging inside, with his shirts and pants neatly folded beside them.
He took out several large cardboard boxes he had prepared long ago, and silently began taking the clothes down one by one, folding them, and putting them into the boxes.
His movements were somewhat slow because the injury on his arm hadn’t fully healed, but they were orderly.
Lin Jinbai just leaned against the doorframe, watching him without moving.
That gaze was almost palpable, pressing heavily on Qiao Qing’s back, making every inch of his skin feel like it was being pricked by needles.
“You’re so impatient to draw a line with me?”
Lin Jinbai finally couldn’t help it, his voice as cold as ice.
“Not even willing to leave a single piece of clothing?”
Qiao Qing’s movements in folding clothes paused, but he still didn’t turn around.
“I have use for these things; it’s normal to take them away.”
“Use for them?”
Lin Jinbai sneered, took a few steps to the closet, and snatched a gray sweater Qiao Qing often wore out of his hand.
“Is there a single thing in this house that you don’t use? The pots and pans in the kitchen, the computer and books in the study, the toiletries in the bathroom…”
“Which one didn’t you pick out carefully and use every day? Take them all away!”
His tone was full of sarcasm and provocation, trying to provoke Qiao Qing, or rather, trying to confirm something in this way.
Looking at the sweater crumpled in his grip, Qiao Qing felt a pang in his heart.
He took a deep breath, trying to keep his voice calm.
“Lin Jinbai, can we not be like this? I just came to take what belongs to me and then leave.”
“Can’t we just have a clean break?”
“A clean break?”
Lin Jinbai seemed to be stung by these words, suddenly slamming the sweater onto the floor, his eyes instantly turning red.
“Qiao Qing, is the relationship between us one that can have a ‘clean break’?”
“Over ten years! We’ve known each other since we wore split pants, grew up together, were bullied together, went to university together, worked together, and lived in this house together for eight years!”
“Now you say ‘clean break’ so lightheartedly, wanting to wipe all that away?!”
His emotions completely spiraled out of control, his voice trembling with excitement, carrying a thick nasal sound and a desperate hoarseness.
Looking at his red eyes and out-of-control state, Qiao Qing’s heart felt as if it were tightly gripped by an invisible hand, a suffocating pain spreading.
How could he not feel pain?
This over ten years of emotion had long since grown into his flesh and blood.
Now to forcibly strip it away, he could only scrape the bone to cure the poison, a pain piercing to the heart.
But he knew he had to do this.
“Otherwise?”
Qiao Qing looked up, looking directly at Lin Jinbai, his eyes showing unprecedented fatigue and clarity.
“Lin Jinbai, you tell me, what else should we do?”
“Like before? Continue being good friends? Watching you get married and have children in the future, and then I continue to stay by your side as a friend, helping you take care of your family and worrying about your children for you?”
“Or do you hope I continue to be like a shadow that can’t see the light, with filthy thoughts about you, despising myself while unable to control being good to you?”
His voice wasn’t loud, but it was like a blunt knife.
Word by word, it cut open the self-deceiving disguise between the two, revealing the bloody truth underneath.
“I…”
Lin Jinbai was left speechless by the question, his face turning even paler, his lips trembling, yet unable to say a complete sentence.
“You can’t say it, right?”
Qiao Qing smiled bitterly.
“Because you’ve never thought about our future.”
“Or rather, in the future you envisioned, I’ve always been a person with an ambiguous position yet who must exist.”
“Lin Jinbai, you’re too greedy, and too selfish.”
“I’m selfish?”
Lin Jinbai was like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, suddenly grabbing Qiao Qing’s arm with enough force to make Qiao Qing frown.
“Qiao Qing, clearly you were the one who provoked me first! You were the one who fell in love with me first! Now you say you’re leaving, who exactly is being selfish?!”
It was like this again.
It was always like this.
Looking at his handsome face, which was somewhat distorted by anger, the last tiny flickering flame in Qiao Qing’s heart was completely extinguished.
He forcefully shook off Lin Jinbai’s hand; because the movement pulled at his injury, cold sweat seeped from his forehead.
“Right, I was the one who liked you first, I was the one being cheap, I deserved it!”
Qiao Qing’s voice also carried irrepressible excitement. He pointed to his chest, where a dull pain from the car accident still remained.
“So now I’ve woken up! I don’t want to be cheap anymore, is that not okay?”
“Lin Jinbai, liking you is my business, but I can’t, just because I like you, throw away my dignity and self for a lifetime, begging for a bit of attention and warmth you occasionally bestow like a beggar!”
He was panting, his eyes also red, yet he stubbornly didn’t let the tears fall.
“You say I provoked you? Yes, I did, but now I’m letting go, I’m not provoking you anymore, I’m staying far away from you. Isn’t this exactly as you wished?”
“Don’t you find homosexuals disgusting? Then for me, this disgusting homosexual, to disappear from your sight, you should be happy!”
“I’m not…”
Lin Jinbai instinctively countered, but the words “I didn’t mean that” were stuck in his throat, unable to be said.
He looked at Qiao Qing’s red eyes, which no longer held the familiar gentleness and tolerance, but were full of hurt.
Like a flower gradually withering from lack of water.
An unprecedented panic, like icy tidewater, instantly submerged him.
He felt he was losing something important, and he would never be able to find it again.
“Qiao Qing… I…”
He tried to say something to salvage it, his voice harsh.
“What I said that day were words of anger… I didn’t really think you were disgusting… I just… I just…”
He was just what? He was just afraid? Just unable to accept? Just trapped by childhood shadows?
These reasons, under the gaze of Qiao Qing’s hurt eyes at this moment, all appeared so pale and weak.
“Just what?”
Qiao Qing looked at him, his gaze as calm as still water, as if looking at a stranger.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. Lin Jinbai, what matters is that between us, it ends here.”
Having said that, he no longer looked at Lin Jinbai’s instantly ashen face, bent over to pick up the sweater on the floor, patted off the dust, and continued to pack things in silence.
He categorized and boxed the books, packed some commonly used electronic products, and carefully put that unfinished book on the nightstand into a box.
Throughout the process, Lin Jinbai just stood frozen in place, like a statue that had lost its soul.
He watched Qiao Qing’s busy yet silent back, watching him erase the traces belonging to him in this room bit by bit.
When Qiao Qing began packing some small items from the nightstand drawer, Lin Jinbai’s gaze fell on a small velvet box in the corner of the drawer.
His pupils shrank suddenly.
That was the gift he gave for Qiao Qing’s birthday last year.
A wristwatch that wasn’t particularly precious, but Qiao Qing liked it very much and had always worn it on his hand.
Later, because of a fight, Qiao Qing took it off and casually placed it here.
Qiao Qing also saw that box.
His movements paused; he reached out, picked it up, and opened it.
The watch lay quietly inside, the dial reflecting a faint light in the dim light.
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He closed the box and, without hesitation, put it into a box labeled “to be processed.”
Items he didn’t plan to take with him, intended for donation or disposal, were placed there.
“You’re going to throw it away?”
Lin Jinbai’s voice was trembling violently, carrying disbelief.
“Yeah.” Qiao Qing didn’t look up. “It’s no longer appropriate.”
“No longer appropriate?”
Lin Jinbai suddenly rushed over, snatched that box, and gripped it tightly in his palm, his knuckles turning white from the force.
“This is the birthday gift I gave you! You said you liked it very much!”
“That was before.”
Qiao Qing finally looked up at him, his eyes filled with complete detachment and indifference.
“Lin Jinbai, people change.”
“What was liked before might not be liked now.”
“What was thought important before might be insignificant now.”
This sentence was the last straw that completely broke Lin Jinbai.
He suddenly slammed the watch box onto the floor. The velvet box sprang open, the watch rolled out, and a crack instantly appeared on the dial.
“Qiao Qing! What exactly do you want from me?!”
He roared in a breakdown, tears finally bursting out uncontrollably, sliding down his pale cheeks.
“I said those weren’t my true thoughts, can I apologize, I was wrong, I shouldn’t have said that about you…”
“Can you… can you not leave? Let’s be like before… is that not okay?”
He was like a lost child, incoherent, trying to use apologies and tears to keep him.
This was the first time he had lost his composure so much, been so humble in front of Qiao Qing.
Looking at the watch with the cracked dial that had rolled to his feet, and then looking at this Lin Jinbai who was covered in tears and almost pleading, Qiao Qing’s heart felt a sharp, intense pain.
Once, how he had longed to see Lin Jinbai show even a little bit of a different emotion for him, even if it was just caring.
But now, when all this actually happened, he only felt endless fatigue and desolation.
He squatted down, carefully picked up the broken watch, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and put it back into that “to be processed” box.
Then, he stood up, looked at Lin Jinbai, his voice as light as a sigh:
“Lin Jinbai, you still don’t understand.”
“Our problem has never been this.”
Having said that, he stopped staying, picked up the two boxes already packed, and walked toward the door.
“Qiao Qing!”
Lin Jinbai shrieked behind him, his voice shattered beyond repair.
Qiao Qing didn’t turn around.
He opened the door, walked out, and then gently closed the door behind him.
“Click.”
A light sound, separating two worlds.
Inside the door was Lin Jinbai’s breakdown of painful crying and a messy past.
Outside the door was a gloomy sky and an unknown path that had to be walked alone.
Qiao Qing leaned against the cold wall, looked up, took a deep breath, and forced back the moisture in his eyes.
It was over.
This time, it was truly over.
He took out his phone and dialed the number of the moving company, his voice having returned to calm: “Hello, you can come up to move things now.”
When he left the neighborhood in the car, the sky that had been gloomy for a long time finally began to drizzle.
Rain washed the car windows, blurring the familiar scenery outside.
Looking at that place getting further and further away in the rearview mirror, Qiao Qing’s heart was peaceful.
He didn’t look back.