Chapter 17#
Pudding, Down#
Li Heng mirrored his smile.
“Ji Landong,” Li Heng said.
It wasn’t the kind of thing that needed a response. Li Heng seemed to enjoy saying his name, and Ji Landong didn’t mind — he let him say it as freely as he liked.
Li Heng reached out, gathered him at the shoulder blades and the backs of his knees, and carefully tried to lift the person lounging in the sofa as though he weighed nothing.
Ji Landong’s arms fell back, his head tipped backward. He was gathered up and settled against Li Heng’s chest, and then he slowly opened his eyes again — quiet and curious, as if to say: do as you like.
Li Heng said nothing. The tempest that had risen behind his eyes subsided where he’d willed it, and he only gently stroked the dry outer corners of Ji Landong’s eyes.
Film Emperor Ji’s professional competence had slipped considerably. The three-second-tears technique of a seasoned performer was long gone.
“Ji Landong.” After a long silence, Li Heng asked softly, “Can I hold you?”
That was a strange thing to ask.
It wasn’t as though Team Leader Li had ever thought to ask before.
And besides — the man was already in his lap.
Ji Landong had just taken his medication. The effect was at its strongest now — drowsiness smothered the sensation of falling through open air, that loss of control over his own body. His thoughts were soaking in warm water, unable to turn over, too sluggish to sort out whether the pot was still on the fire.
Ji Landong said offhandedly: “Very expensive.”
Li Heng: “I’ll pay.”
He pressed his Investigation Bureau credentials into Ji Landong’s hand. Ji Landong’s hand fell against Li Heng’s knee — those pale, elegant fingers trembling from the medication’s effect, unable to grip — and the plastic-sleeved badge clattered to the floor.
Li Heng had no mind to care about that. He held Ji Landong closer, not letting this person study his own hands or the thing that had fallen, and his voice came out rough: “…Ji Landong.”
Ji Landong was pressed against his chest, ribcage compressed. A soft, muffled sound escaped him.
Li Heng held that scarred hand. He bowed his head and pressed his lips to it. For the first time, Ji Landong showed resistance — tried to pull his hand away.
But Li Heng only kissed those bloodless knuckles in silence. There was nothing coy in these kisses, nothing frivolous. Perhaps it was the opposite. Perhaps it was the other end of the scale entirely — Li Heng pressed his burning eyes against fingers that had gone limp and slightly curled, drained of all strength.
What was there to say?
— Sympathy, fury, outrage, righteous indignation… all of it was too theatrical, too cliché.
Li Heng was not the sort of man who drew his gun at the first sight of injustice. He was not an idle bystander who enjoyed staging rescue scenes. The nature of Investigation Bureau work meant there was no end to the darkness and filth you encountered, the ghosts and monsters — you couldn’t manage them all.
He was a politician who read the room. Clear objectives, clear paths. He’d come to find Ji Landong because of the parliamentary election.
So what, exactly, was this thing scorching his insides?
…
Ji Landong coughed without warning.
Li Heng startled, lifted his head to check — but didn’t succeed. Ji Landong didn’t cooperate. An ice-cold hand came up and covered his eyes.
Ji Landong coughed violently. The little dog panicked and barked in a frenzy, scrambling to jump onto the sofa. The cold moonlight pooling through the window seemed jarred out of rhythm by the commotion. Li Heng tightened his arms, letting the ice-cold face bury itself in the hollow of his neck.
The dog dug all four paws into Ji Landong’s lap.
Li Heng said quietly: “Pudding. Down.”
The person he was holding coughed and shook his head, gripping Li Heng’s wrist. Ji Landong had taken his medication — he could tell hallucinations from reality.
Li Heng: “Pudding. Down.”
In front of Ji Landong, he had never been this unreasonably stubborn.
The dog occupied Ji Landong’s knees and stared wide-eyed at its rival, bracing for confrontation — only to find that the visitor wasn’t as domineering as expected. There was even a silent plea in his eyes.
Li Heng’s voice dropped lower: “Pudding.”
Li Heng commanded himself to reach out and touch it, pushed down his own heartbeat, coming close to coaxing: “Pudding.”
The little dog, timidly: “…Woof.”
Ji Landong’s coughing stopped.
Quiet fell.
Li Heng held him tighter. He took Ji Landong’s hand and guided it to a small dog named Pudding — a small dog that would one day grow very large.
Li Heng knew with certainty that he would learn to cook dog food. He would buy a frisbee. He would walk the dog every day. He even began turning over the question of whether he could rent a greenhouse for Ji Landong to grow mushrooms.
Ji Landong was sweating heavily, his face wet and cold where it pressed against Li Heng’s neck. The breath he exhaled curled in the gap of Li Heng’s open collar — as if it might condense into white mist and frost flowers right there.
“Team Leader Li.” Ji Landong spoke slowly, voice rough, with what sounded faintly like amusement at someone else’s expense. “You’re going to be keeping it now.”
Li Heng knew full well what a great sacrifice he was making: “I am practicing ignoring dog hair.”
This statement, paired with his Investigation Bureau uniform — which looked as though it had survived a disaster, one button hanging on by a thread from the scratching — was not without its charm. Film Emperor Ji moved his fingers and tugged at the button. He gave a soft laugh, not particularly flattering about it.
“Its name is Pudding.”
Team Leader Li had one more petition to add, as a supplementary request: “Can I be called Li Heng?”
Ji Landong had said it once before, and it had sounded good. Ji Landong had a particular way of biting into words — saying these two characters, it was as if they rolled softly from the tip of his tongue all the way to its root.
Film Emperor Ji was very agreeable at this moment. He lowered his eyes and, like an Aladdin’s lamp granting wishes on request, obliged: “Li Heng.”
Li Heng bent down and kissed his eyes.
It was a little bad.
Tears during coughing were a physiological response. But these eyes were still dry. Ji Landong seemed to have lost that capacity entirely.
“Did you catch a chill?” Li Heng pressed his forehead against Ji Landong’s. “I told you not to open the window to play in the snow.”
Ji Landong’s eyes were half-closed. He pressed his lips together, the corners curving — and smiled. The gesture seemed to come more easily to him now.
Li Heng made belated amends — not knowing whether it would help, but making a pot of red date and ginger tea anyway. Then he brought Ji Landong to the bathroom, filled it with billowing white steam from the hot water, and carefully lifted him into the bath, which had been prepared with warming herbs.
Ji Landong reclined against the edge of the tub while Team Leader Li fed him ginger tea by the spoonful. Because he wasn’t cooperating with swallowing, the pale brown sugar-water trickled away again.
Li Heng asked: “You don’t like the taste?”
Ji Landong closed his eyes.
Li Heng thought it over for a while, even took out his phone to search, and finally found the answer in a peculiar place — he took a mouthful of ginger tea and kissed Ji Landong with it.
This was new territory for Li Heng. And, in truth, for Ji Landong as well. It turned out even this kind of thing could be done with a patience that reached its utmost limit — Li Heng cradling his back, half-kneeling beside the tub, clumsily coaxing the person in the hot water, patiently keeping him company until he’d swallowed that small, meaningless mouthful of spiced sweet liquid.
“Team Leader Li.” Ji Landong called him that, then remembered and corrected himself: “Li Heng.”
Li Heng set down the remaining half-bowl of ginger tea and cupped his hands to pour warm water over the paper-pale body. Ji Landong had grown frightfully thin — bones sharp to the touch.
Li Heng murmured in response and gently touched his eyes.
Ji Landong asked: “Are you a hallucination?”
“No.” Li Heng considered it reasonably, bent his head, and discussed it with him in good faith. “Hallucinations should be a little more perfect, don’t you think? Ji Landong — is there any chance we could get a dog that doesn’t shed.”
…Team Leader Li really did have a thing about cleanliness.
Ji Landong smiled — very lightly, very at ease — and stopped asking. He closed his eyes.
Li Heng held a towel and carefully helped him wash, one scar after another cutting stark across the skin. Li Heng couldn’t help but bow his head and kiss them, even though he himself didn’t fully understand why he wanted to.
Ji Landong fell asleep in the hot water. Or rather — the last of his fuel burned out and he stopped.
Li Heng carefully lifted him from the water.
“Ji Landong.” Li Heng asked quietly, “Tomorrow morning I’ll go walk the dog. Do you want buns? I know a place with pork rib buns — they smell incredible. We’ll order a whole table. A dish of pickled vegetables, a dish of vinegar, fresh-cooked millet congee on the side, and then we’ll walk home after.”
It was the most ordinary, unremarkable small talk imaginable — useless to any plot, unworthy of any script, unworthy of being spoken aloud by Film Emperor Ji.
And therefore: never worthy of reaching Film Emperor Ji’s ears.
Li Heng wrapped him in a bath towel, dried him carefully, blow-dried his hair. He leaned down to lift the person who had dozed off against him — and then he paused.
Li Heng held the falling hand. He cradled the heavy, soft weight of his head and neck. He made his movements as gentle as possible, and crouched down.
He kissed away the moisture caught in the lashes of this sleeping body.
He carried the somewhat-warmer Ji Landong to the bedroom, tucked the blanket in, arranged the pillow, and returned to the living room — where Team Leader Li sat on the sofa and looked at the case files and his service weapon.
The silence in his eyes turned cold.
…
The next morning, Ji Landong did not get his buns.
This wasn’t Team Leader Li’s fault. Ji Landong had slept so deeply that when someone gently stroked his hair and tried to wake him at noon — softly calling his name — he only barely opened his eyes before quietly going back to sleep.
Li Heng sat on the edge of the bed, case files spread across his knees.
A series of search warrants were issued from that dim, warm bedroom, sending a tremendous wave crashing through still water.
Many things that had been confusing now had answers.
Li Xingyun, for instance — he had indeed been surrounded by people with ulterior motives, who had managed every piece of information he received, ensuring it was all true, just incomplete.
Li Xingyun saw Ji Landong using his influence to threaten people.
Saw Ji Landong beat Ji Ran until he was covered in wounds, barely alive, nearly dead.
Saw Ji Landong ignoring the evidence of his stepfather’s medical episode — a photo taken secretly through the gap in the curtains: a thin young man sitting on the windowsill, a cigarette at his lips, gently stroking a stray cat that had wandered in through the wrong window. On the filth-smeared floor below, a figure contorted in a desperate, ugly convulsion.
Saw Ji Landong expressionless — leaning against a car door, on the phone, one hand pressed to the bleeding wound on his left chest from his birth mother’s knife attack — and then sending her to the psychiatric institution.
Li Xingyun only ever saw these things.
And so he was certain. And so the blood rushed to his head and he didn’t ask a single question — condemned the person closest to him as a depraved, shameless monster, grabbed him by the collar, and shoved him against the wall: “Why are you like this?!”
Ji Landong hadn’t even been clear on what kind of person he was.
Ji Landong had not grown up in a normal family. Had not received a normal education. Before he was fifteen, aside from being taken out again and again to audition and perform and bring in money, he had been kept under lock and key in the attic of the house. It was a very narrow attic. His only companion was the mushroom growing in the gaps between the floorboards.
His understanding of “human life” came entirely from genius-level mimicry — the technique of a Film Emperor — and his only reference material was scripts.
You could only call it coincidence.
By coincidence, the scripts he took were scripts about being a good person.
By coincidence, the people in those productions were kind to the quiet, still boy. The taciturn old veteran actor, there with his little grandson, broke off half a piece of sesame candy and gave it to him.
Ji Landong had simply, by accident, grown into a good person whom everyone despised.
Apparently that was a capital offense.
The more truths the investigation uncovered, the faster the resistance rose — the undercurrents growing fiercer and more turbulent. Li Heng was urgently summoned back to the Li family home. The message was severe and unmistakable: he had no business going this deep. It would affect the upcoming parliamentary election.
Li Heng did notice, however, the thoroughly wrecked front lock. Li Xingyun had run — smashing the lock on his way out, leaving a trail of blood.
Li Heng asked: “Where did Li Xingyun go?”
“That is none of your concern!” The Li family elder choked, then rage surged up. “First one, then another — once, twice — what the hell is so special about this Ji surname bastard—”
And then Li Heng understood: “So it was you.”
No wonder. Back then, when the Li family had locked Li Xingyun up and Ji Landong had come to bring him home — the price of that exchange had been Ji Landong being forced to watch, over and over, the footage of his biological father’s death.
So the Li family had known all along what was happening in the shadows. They had known all along that Li Heng would be attacked for the hastily closed case on his record.
They had used Li Xingyun. Had worked again and again to break down Ji Landong’s defenses. It was to destroy Ji Landong. To clear obstacles from Li Heng’s path in politics.
And so the answer was already obvious: it had never been Ji Landong trying to get close to the Li family through Li Xingyun.
It was the Li family guiding Li Xingyun toward Ji Landong.
Li Heng rose and walked toward the door. The old man at his back slammed his cane hard against the floor and bellowed: “Li Heng! Do you still want a future?! Get back here!”
Li Heng called the investigation team: “Bring them in too.”
The Li family was tangled in this deep enough that there was no way they had no part in it. He also needed to find Li Xingyun quickly — a man who’d been pushed over the edge could end up anywhere, could do anything. Li Heng had no patience at the moment for more public incidents.
— Half an hour later, Li Heng took that back.
A public incident would have been preferable.
Li Xingyun was being twisted by the shoulder and pinned to the ground, dragged away from the security door, efficiently restrained with his arms behind his back, and shoved out onto the enclosed outdoor balcony on the other side of the heavy fire door.
The agents keeping watch weren’t to be trifled with — and on top of that, Li Heng had had the locks changed: “What did you come here for?”
Li Xingyun looked genuinely wrecked — reduced to skin and bone in just a few days, his face white as a ghost, but his eyes flooded red with burst vessels, his voice ground hoarse as if he’d swallowed burning coals: “…How is my brother?”
Li Heng looked down at him, expression unreadable.
Li Xingyun was gasping. He had no idea how many days he’d gone without sleep. The indifference he was met with nearly burned through his last thread of reason — but he clenched his jaw and swallowed back the outrage.
He didn’t dare throw a fit in any place where Ji Landong was: “I know he must hate me. That he never wants to see me again for the rest of his life. I won’t disturb him. Li Heng — just tell me how he is. I’m scared.”
Li Xingyun bowed his head. Boundless terror swallowed him, and he couldn’t stop shaking.
During the time he’d been locked up by the Li family — the collapse, the pain, the hysteria, the despair that made even moving feel like too much — he had started to remember the past.
The five years he and Ji Landong had been together.
Ji Landong, engaging with considerable interest in the act of imitating and performing the role of a normal person.
That feeling had surfaced often, actually — many times, in those subtle half-second gaps less than a heartbeat long, Ji Landong would be making a judgement about what response was called for in that moment.
The vast majority of the time, Film Emperor Ji’s technique was so accomplished it was nearly invisible — smiling when he was supposed to smile, enjoying things when he was supposed to enjoy them, looking down on the world when he was supposed to. But that didn’t mean there were no exceptions.
There were moments absurd enough that even if the tabloids ran them, no one would believe it.
No one believed it. Not even Li Xingyun at the time.
Ji Landong was filming then. A capable director, a genuinely top-tier production. They’d deliberately saved the final scene for the wrap day — the long-awaited happy reunion ending, the whole family gathered. The lighting was perfect, the script was perfect, the pacing was perfect. The emotional pull was strong enough to draw in even the crew standing on the sidelines.
Ji Landong had of course performed it flawlessly, beyond all question — the only problem was that at the cheerful wrap party, Film Emperor Ji was nowhere to be found.
Li Xingyun, who’d come to visit the set, was completely at a loss. Frantic with worry, he searched for Ji Landong all night.
It turned out Ji Landong had simply hailed a cab and gone home on his own.
Li Xingyun had ridden his motorcycle through half the city at full speed through the night, pushed open the door — and laughed despite himself in exasperation. Ji Landong was sitting perfectly fine on the sofa. Hadn’t even turned the lights on. Not a sound.
“What are you doing?” Li Xingyun had tossed his helmet over. “Everyone was in great spirits — Gē, pulling a stunt like this had everyone scared out of their wits. Who upset you? You could at least have finished dinner first.”
He went to pull Ji Landong up, and couldn’t. Ji Landong seemed to be nailed to that sofa by the moonlight.
Like something rusted over. Like a program that had always run without error, and had finally faulted.
Ji Landong went rigid and fell sideways onto the floor.
Li Xingyun also sat down on the floor. He was too stunned to move.
“I didn’t want to go.” No one knew how much time had passed when Ji Landong slowly propped himself up, turned over, and sat with his back against the sofa.
“Too good. Something will go wrong.”
“I’ll want to stay inside it forever.”
“Xingyun, I can’t find a reason not to.”
These words came out in fragments, toneless — entirely unlike the “normal” Ji Landong of any ordinary moment.
But that was the real Ji Landong. He had acquired a memory of exceptional quality — flawless and unassailable — and he could not control the instinct that wanted him to remain inside it. With medication, with a blade, with anything that could ensure he would not have to wake again.
This wasn’t quite right. Ji Landong judged as much with his rational mind. It would cause adverse consequences. He needed to see a doctor. He needed to see a therapist.
Ji Landong asked: “I’m not feeling well. Is it all right to be sick?”
Li Xingyun had been frightened senseless. He stared with wide, blank eyes and couldn’t say a word.
Ji Landong understood.
No.
“Sorry,” Ji Landong said. “Give me a hand, will you.”