The tires screamed against wet asphalt as Zhao Liren's car cut through the city like a blade. Neon smeared into streaks of belonging and regret as he pushed the accelerator harder, the world reduced to the narrow ribbon of road and the single voice on the line that kept fraying at the edges.
"Li An- QIN YUELIN! answer me." He barked the names the way someone throws a rope to a drowning man. His hands were white on the wheel, jaw set like stone. The club lights still glowed behind him in the distance, but inside his chest there was only a single, rising panic.
He had been late by minutes that felt like hours. The building's stairwell smelled of damp concrete and lost time when he bounded up. He pounded on their door until his knuckles stung, breath fogging in the cold hallway.
"Li An! Open up!" he shouted. "Li An, answer me!"
No reply. The lock clicked mockingly in the dark. Zhao shook the handle, then slammed his shoulder into the door. It held. He hammered again, sharper this time, every thump a prayer.
When silence swallowed his shouts, something in him snapped. He shoved his shoulder forward with everything he had. The lock gave with a protest, wood splintering, then the door swung inward with a sicking, jagged sound.
The apartment was the same small universe he knew... two beds, the kitchenette piled with mugs, the window where birds sometimes sat like punctuation marks. But the air felt wrong, colder and taut as a held breath. He moved fast, like an animal that knows danger by scent, calling, "Li An! Where are you?"
He found him curled in the corner of the bedroom, knees pulled to his chest as if to fold himself small enough to disappear. The pale skin he had protected for years looked paper-thin under the lamp's glare; Li An's hair fell across his face like a curtain. He was rocking slightly, a small, quiet motion that tore at something in Zhao's chest.
"Li An." Zhao crossed the floor in three strides and fell to his knees, catching the trembling boy in his arms before the world could drop him. Li An's body folded against Zhao like a thing that had finally found its anchor. He sobbed in a soundless, broken way, burying his face into Zhao's chest. Zhao felt each small convulsion as if they were his own.
"Hey, hey, hey," Zhao murmured, arms tightening around him. He pressed his face into that hair he had watched grow up beside him, breathing in the faint scent of jasmine and old laundry. "You're fine. You're okay. I'm here."
For a moment the world narrowed to the rhythm of two heartbeats: the fragile, fast stutter of Li An's; the steady, protective drum of Zhao's. Tears soaked into Zhao's shirt, and he let them, because that was what he had promised the sky to do since they were children... take on the storms for the other.
When the sobbing eased into a ragged whisper, Zhao tilted his head. "Tell me. Tell me what happened."
Li An's voice came out as fragments. He pressed his palms against Zhao's chest as if to keep himself anchored there, eyes shut tight. "Mirror… words. The message. They… they said my name."
Zhao's mouth hardened. "shhhh... it's nothing. Nobody knows your real name but me." He reached for Li An's hand and squeezed, an iron-knuckle promise. "No one else." even though he was comforting qin yuelin... he himself was afraid of what was happening.
Li An's breathing hitched. He lifted his face slowly, eyes rimmed red but startlingly luminous. Even in the aftermath of terror, his features cut the air like contraband beauty: pale skin that caught the light like porcelain, lashes heavy with tears that made his storm-gray eyes shimmer gold at the edges, lips parted with that small, bewildered look that made Zhao want to stop time.
"You were always small enough for me to pick up on the first try," Zhao said without thinking, voice cracking with a humor that had once worked to lure a smile out of the quietest childhood grief. Li An managed a shaky laugh, and Zhao felt the room tilt back toward grace.
He remembered how the two of them had started.... how the distance had closed, centimeter by stubborn centimeter.
Flashback- sixth grade.
The schoolyard had been a place of loud directions and clumsy cruelty. Li An-then still unguarded and raw, stood like a pale bloom among the other children, and the brightness in him made others uncomfortable. They would point, whispering as if naming his silver hair and gentle ways were a sport. He had learned to fold himself inward, to make his smallness into a shell.
Zhao had been a block of sun in those days. He was bigger than the boys who circled Li An, brash and hot with a temper that was already fierce. He remembered the first time he'd seen Li An's head bowed, shoulders trembling from a name thrown like a stone. He'd walked straight through the ring of mouths and fists and caught the boy's chin with a hand that smelled of dust and determination.
"Hey. Leave him alone." The words were small, but there was no retreat in them. He'd stared the bullies down until they moved, like shadows losing color under a steady light. That first moment of standing between Li An and the world had been the start of a promise that would not be undone.
Those early weeks were not easy. Li An did not trust the sudden warmth; it had been given and taken away too many times. Zhao learned patience the hard way... by waiting outside the library for the boy to speak, by leaving food on his desk, by reading the same book in the same bench until Li An looked up and noticed the steady presence.
Two years of small, invisible work: sharing an umbrella in the rain without comment, answering a taunt with a louder laugh that emptied the room of cruelty, sneaking an extra piece of bread into a lunchbox. Two years of showing up until the stranger began to believe in the safety of showing up back. Zhao's stubbornness was a gentle siege; he tore down Li An's walls with ordinary kindness until the boy let him in. When Li An finally offered his trust, it was a treasure Zhao swore to guard with his whole life.
End flashback.
The memory settled over them both, a warm coat against the cold that had just been. Zhao cupped Li An's face, thumb wiping at a tear that had stuck to the boy's cheek. "You're my brother," he said simply. "No one gets to hurt you. Not if I can stop it."
Li An's reply came like a confession, voice thin and raw. "They wrote it… on the mirror. The words. 'You can't hide, Qin.'" His fingers trembled as he described the smeared letters, his voice making the shapes of the letters just as tangible as the stroke of ink.
Zhao rose and crossed the room, each movement purposeful. He found the mirror at the desk and looked for what Li An had said... dark stains marked the glass in the place Li An had described. Zhao's stomach clenched, but his hands were steady. He grabbed a damp rag from the sink and began to wipe. The smear resisted at first, sticky and obscene, but with forceful, methodical strokes he cleared the message until the glass shone blank and honest.
When he finished, he sat beside Li An on the floor and pulled him into his lap, knees curling around the boy's small frame. He hummed a tune low and absurd, the song they had made up in childhood to chase away nightmares, ridiculous lyrics of dragons and silly kings. Li An sniffed and hiccupped and a fragile laugh finally broke through, one that tasted of relief and the terrible frayed edges of safety.
"Stop it," Li An said between breaths, hitting Zhao weakly on the arm. "You're ridiculous."
"You love ridiculous," Zhao countered, pressing his forehead against Li An's. The gesture was both private and sacred. "And you love me when I'm ridiculous, so quit pretending you don't."
They sat like that for a long while... two stolen heartbeats outside the world, Zhao humming, Li An clinging, the apartment slowly filling with the ordinary noises of life: the fridge's hum, a distant dog, the city breathing.
Zhao fished out a mug from the counter and poured hot water, steeping tea with hands that didn't shake. He put it by Li An, wrapping both their hands around it for warmth. His voice was soft then, a promise strung low: "Tomorrow, we go to the station. I'll talk to the police. I'll put cameras on the doors. I'll-" He stopped, because promises had to be kept with action, and action was what he intended.
Li An swallowed, eyes luminous. "I don't want to be a burden."
"You never are." Zhao's jaw tightened. "You're not a burden. You're my precious baby."
There was no bravado in the sentence... only a bone-deep protectiveness that had been forged in classrooms and rainy alleys, in nights lying awake waiting for the other to come home. Li An let his head fall against Zhao's shoulder and closed his eyes, and for a time the world was a place with edges again.
Zhao took a rag and, with deliberate tenderness, cleaned the last smears from the mirror. When he was done, he planted a small kiss on Li An's hair, one of those private gestures that made the boy's entire face soften.
"You'll sleep," Zhao said, making the order soft like silk. "I'll stay up. If anyone comes, I'll be ready."
Li An nodded and curled into him like a sleeping thing, small and fragile and suddenly, inexplicably safe. Zhao wrapped the blanket around them both, the mundane motion of pulling cloth over shoulders becoming an armor all its own.
Outside, the night made its slow shift. The city would go on, lights blinking, people moving, life grinding onward. But in their small apartment a hold had been taken against the darkness. For now, there was a quiet that was not the absence of fear but the presence of something stronger: a person's refusal to let go.
Zhao kept his hand in Li An's hair and whispered nonsense into the quiet... the same stupid lines that had once made a child squat and giggle behind bookshelves. Little by little, Li An's breath flattened and regulated. The storm had not passed; it had only been hushed.
Yet at the back of Zhao's mind, a cold thought lingered. The word. The mirror. The message... written with a confidence that knew names. Whoever had done this did not simply want to frighten. They wanted him to know which hollow to knock on.
He tightened his arms around Li An and let the boy's slow heartbeat against his chest be his answer: till the end, he would be the door that would not open to any stranger.
For now, they would sit in the small, urgent warmth of each other and wait for dawn. For now, Zhao would watch, endlessly, the pale shape of the boy at his chest and vow, again and again... that no shadow would claim him while he still breathed.
Would you like Chapter 5 to begin with Zhao at the police station, or do you want the morning to reveal something else first, like evidence that the unknown had been inside their apartment earlier?
END OF CHAPTER