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Yangyang is only too happy to go into exile. Despite his lineage, all the years of training, and all the times he’d been nudged into high-profile battles, he’d never been one for the sword. When the opening battle cries went up, he only half-heartedly participated, like he was mouthing the words to a song he barely knew. What he did know was how quickly those battle cries would lose their confidence and quickly turn to cries for mercy, which Yangyang would readily provide. Blood would be spilt on the earth by hands not his own, then be ground deeper into the soil underneath the same person’s feet as they rushed toward death, and meanwhile, on the periphery of the battle field, he’d spot a different kind of target. It would be barely moving, but like Ares’s hunting dogs, Yangyang had been well trained to seek out weakness.

All the stories and songs gave the impression that weaponry sinking into flesh would produce more noise than it actually did. This made it even easier on Yangyang when, already standing at a distance, he’d draw his bow and put the gravely injured soul out of its misery. He’d repeat this until he ran out of arrows, at which point he’d retrieve more from the bodies around him (of which there was no shortage), and then he’d start the process over again. And then, at the end, he’d answer to the disappointment in Ares’s eyes and voice when he asked Yangyang how many he had killed, already knowing the answer.

In the aftermath of what Yangyang didn’t know was his final battle, he turned his back on Ares and walked away while his father was still in the process of berating him. Ares, who had suffered many an indignity in his long life, reacted to this newest one in the way he knew best, and to teach Yangyang a lesson, he shot him in the back.

Some time later, Yangyang comes to in the temple overseen by Kun. Kun, as Yangyang finds out after some conversation, is one of Athena’s higher-ranking priests who had also spent some time studying under Asclepius, just to broaden his horizons. “You weren’t too much work to look after, though,” he says to Yangyang. “It’s the kind of thing gods heal from all the time.” What will be much harder to heal from, allegedly, is the ignominy of being cast out of Olympus. “And apparently you won’t be stepping anywhere near another battlefield for the rest of your life. Orders from Ares. But something tells me you don’t really care about that,” Kun says, smiling.

“Not really,” Yangyang admits. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself now, but it’s not like I knew what I was doing with myself before.”

“I actually might already have someplace in mind for you,” Kun says. “It’s a place where quite a few people go when they’re feeling lost.”

“Oh?”

“In a certain forest, you’ll find a small temple to Aphrodite. You won’t see it on any map; it’s the kind of place you need to be referred to, you see.” Kun ruffles Yangyang’s hair, and as foreign as Yangyang finds the casual gesture of affection, he finds he doesn’t mind. “Consider yourself in luck that you came to the right person.”

Yangyang grimaces. “I don’t know; Ares is pretty unhappy with me already. I’m not sure he would put up with me working for Aphrodite while I’m at it.”

“You wouldn’t be working for Aphrodite,” Kun says. “You’d be working for the person who works for Aphrodite.”

“Sorry?”

Kun wrings his fingers in his lap. “Xiao Dejun. One of the goddess’s protégés; he’s the one she personally chose to watch over her temple, and he’s…” Kun gives a tired sigh, and Yangyang can tell there must be quite a story behind it, but he doesn’t feel like they’re well acquainted enough for him to press for more. “Well,” Kun says at last, “he’s very affectionate.”

“I mean, that’s not all that surprising, considering.”

“I know. But I worry about him, I do. I pretty much watched him grow up, so I can’t help it. He just—” Kun clicks his tongue disapprovingly, “I don’t think it occurs to him that not everyone deserves his affection. I keep telling him, ‘Dejun, I know you can’t help who you love, but you can’t just trust everybody you meet,’ but does he listen?” He suddenly looks to Yangyang like he’s expecting a response.

“Um,” Yangyang says, “I’m going to guess no.”

“Of course he doesn’t,” Kun says. “He’s been fortunate so far that no one’s tried to take advantage of him, but… Anyway, that’s where you come in. You won’t even really have to do much. Just make sure no one’s hurting him; that’s all I ask.”

It’s a vague assignment, but at this point, Yangyang will take any direction he can get.

There are well-worn footpaths through the wilderness leading to the house, hinting at not-infrequent visitors. The vines growing, carefully curated, on the house’s exterior make Yangyang feel even more like he’s in a painting. His gaze flickers up to the roof, where a flock of sparrows roosts contentedly in a huddle.

“Guess the birds must really like him,” Yangyang remarks, noting how they don’t so much as stir at his and Kun’s approach.

“Most things do,”  Kun says, and he looks a bit sad as he raises his hand to knock on the door. “You might want to stand back a bit and let me introduce you first.” Yangyang shuffles back a little as Kun knocks, and they don’t need to wait long before the door swings open and a ferocious-looking hunting dog comes barreling outside, past Kun, and straight toward Yangyang. Yangyang braces himself; he knows how to handle dogs like this, but when the enormous hound reaches him, it doesn’t pounce. Instead, it rolls onto its back and looks up at Yangyang expectantly.

“Bella?” a voice says from the doorway, “Where are you? Say hello to Kun.” Yangyang looks toward the door and sees Kun in a tight embrace with a man who he assumes must be Dejun. Then the man lifts his head from where has it buried in Kun’s shoulder and locks eyes with Yangyang for the first time.

Yangyang knows he should say something, should greet him, but all of a sudden his tongue is sticking to the roof of his mouth. He thinks he smells rain even though it’s midday with not a cloud in the sky; the only explanation he can think of is that being in this Dejun’s presence gives him the same electric, ozone presentiment that diffuses through the air before a storm. Dejun’s small frame is almost hidden behind Kun’s as Kun holds him close, so for the moment all Yangyang can see of him are his slender fingers on Kun’s shoulder and a pair of incisive, soul-searching eyes that make Yangyang feel like he’s being dissected on the spot. It’s an unsettling first glimpse of a supposed son of Aphrodite.

“Dejun,” Kun says, “I’ve brought you someone.”

“So I see.”

“Do you know him?”

“Sorry,” Yangyang says, “we’ve never met.”

“You’ve never met him, you mean,” Kun says cryptically. “Dejun, go on and take a look at him.”

“I know him,” Dejun says without needing so much as a second glance.

“Oh, good,” Kun says as Yangyang racks his brain for any memory of this person. “Go on and show him then.” He peels Dejun’s hands away from his clothes and gives him an encouraging push in Yangyang’s direction, like he’s a parent urging his child to go make a new friend.

As Dejun approaches, the hunting dog at Yangyang’s feet leaps back up and trots to his side. Dejun skims the back of his hand over her head, keeping his attention on Yangyang. His long lashes do nothing to soften the intensity of his gaze, and Yangyang holds his breath all the way up until Dejun is practically nose to nose with him. Then Dejun plants his hands on Yangyang’s cheeks and begins to speak.

“Liu Yangyang,” he says, “You have a natural curiosity about the world that hasn’t been nurtured by the ones around you. I want you to know that once you start to get to know the world and the people in it a little more, those people will see the same flame in you that I see, and they’re going to want to be your friend. Don’t let go of that flame. You want to please the people in your life because you have a caring heart, but I hope that at the same time, you will learn to unburden yourself of others’ expectations, because fulfilling expectations is not the same as making someone happy. Especially when it makes you so unhappy. You might feel like your life is at a standstill right now, but it won’t be forever. Trust me. I love you.”

“You love me?” Yangyang asks, voice hoarse. Dejun hadn’t blinked once during that entire time he spoke, and it had stolen Yangyang’s breath away. He worries that his heart will be soon to follow.

“Of course,” Dejun says, smiling at last. “I’m a son of Aphrodite. I love everybody.”

“Oh, so you’re a proper son of the gods,” Dejun says when he and Yangyang are getting to know each other. “I’m only an honorary member.”

“What do you mean?” Yangyang asks as he moves his meager belongings into Dejun’s spare room.

“Well, one day my parents were praying to the gods, and they heard a voice say that Aphrodite had chosen me to be her servant, and in three days’ time I was to be taken away. Sure enough, after three days, a chariot showed up in front of our house that only we could see, and I was brought here. I heard the same voice tell me that I would spend the rest of my life passing on Aphrodite’s messages to people who need to hear them and,” Dejun shrugs, “that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.”

“Was it hard to leave your family?” Yangyang asks.

“Of course. Wasn’t it the same for you?”

“No,” Yangyang says bluntly, which seems to take Dejun aback. “My father and I never really saw eye to eye to begin with and well…” he laughs to himself, “let’s just say we’re not on speaking terms these days.” He waits for Dejun to ask follow-up questions, but to his surprise, Dejun nods in understanding.

“Son of Ares, right?”

“That’s me.”

“Who does have a good relationship with Ares, honestly? I certainly don’t.” He bends down to brush pollen off Bella’s coat. “He gave me Bella though, so I suppose at the very least I have to thank him for that.”

“I did think Bella looked familiar, now that you mention it,” Yangyang says. “I thought I was just imagining things.”

“Nope. She was really one of his. Though what Ares thought I was going to do with a hunting dog, I’m not sure.”

Yangyang looks at Bella, who wags her tail at the attention. She moves forward to push her snout underneath Yangyang’s hand, still awaiting the pets that he hadn’t given her at their introduction, and Yangyang is happy to give in to her demands. “Why’d my father give you one of his dogs in the first place?”

“Come on now,” Dejun says dryly. “You know your father better than anyone. What do you think he was trying to do with me?”

“…Ah.”

“Well, too bad for him, he didn’t make it very far anyway. Aphrodite got to him before he could try anything.”

“What did she do?”

“Got Hephaestus to throw another net on him.” Dejun gives Yangyang a sly smile. “I’m pretty sure he was happy to do it, too.”

“Can’t blame him,” Yangyang says. “It’s a good thing Aphrodite is watching out for you, though. She must really care about you.”

“She does,” Dejun says, running his hand up and down the wall of the house the goddess had given him as though he’s congratulating a trusty steed. “I know Kun worries about me—” he shoots a knowing look Yangyang’s way— “and I know he put you up to this. But he doesn’t need to do either of those things. Aphrodite would never send me someone who would hurt me.”

Yangyang’s scratches behind Bella’s ears grow a little more nervous in their rhythm. “Does that mean you don’t want me here?”

Dejun lets the ice in his expression melt into something more comforting, and there’s no pity in his gaze, only raw kindness. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you need, Yangyang,” he says. “When the goddess does bring someone to me, it’s because that person is in need of love in their life. And I can tell that you need a lot of it.”

Dejun explains to Yangyang that his main job is to keep the temple looking presentable in the eventuality that a traveler drops by. It’s nothing like the grandeur that the gods are used to, no towering pillars or gleaming marble. The temple Dejun has been tasked with is barely bigger than his own home, though still big enough that Dejun devotes a good chunk of his time to its upkeep.

“Every day?” Yangyang asks as he watches Dejun scrub the floors for the third day in a row.

“Every day. Cleanliness is close to godliness, after all. And it’s not like I have much else to do.”

Bella accompanies him the entire time, carrying his basket of cleaning supplies in her mouth. When he’s finished, Dejun says a little prayer in front of the statue of Aphrodite that sits in the temple’s center, and when he cracks an eye open to see Yangyang standing on the sidelines, he pulls Yangyang over to stand next to him and join in. It’s the first time Dejun has touched him since Kun brought him here, and Yangyang’s body unexpectedly starts to ache, as if it’s only now just realizing how rare of an occurrence this is going to be. Then Dejun waltzes out of the temple like nothing had happened between them—and Yangyang thinks morosely that to Dejun, that’s probably true. Like Bella, Yangyang trots after him in search of affection.

The basket of cleaning supplies has now been replaced with a basket of fruit, which fills up as the three of them wander the fields, collecting berries and nuts that Dejun will bake into the small cakes that serve as offerings. “Do you ever worry about running out?” Yangyang asks.

“No. Aphrodite will provide as long as she sees me do my part.” Indeed, the next time they trawl the strawberry field, Yangyang finds fully formed berries sprouting in the same patches he could have sworn they cleared the last time.

Afterward, Dejun recruits him into helping make the cakes, explaining that he finds the process meditative, and that it helps him relax after a long day. “Maybe it will do the same for you?” he suggests. “Give it a try.”

As he rolls out dough, Yangyang thinks on the short time he’s spent with Dejun. So far, every night before they each retire to their separate rooms, Dejun will look at him and say, “Good night, Liu Yangyang. I love you.” And then Yangyang will give him an awkward nod of the head and an even more awkward “G’night” before scurrying into his room, leaving Dejun standing there like a jilted lover. Dejun’s train of thought must have followed a similar track, because after about a week of this, he’d called out a plaintive “Wait,” and frozen Yangyang mid-stride.

“Yangyang,” he’d said in a tone that sounded genuinely heartbroken, “when I tell you I love you every night, why do you never say it back to me?”

“I mean… did you want me to?” Yangyang responded, keeping his eyes on the floor.

“Well, it’s not the same if you feel obliged to do it, is it? I’d rather you not say it at all than say it as a formality.”

Yangyang’s fingers clenched and unclenched the door handle. “I guess…” he said, choosing his words carefully, “in my head I was thinking that it wouldn’t sound sincere coming from me." He forced his feet to turn him around so he could see Dejun, who was easy to spot in the darkness thanks to the candle he was holding. “When you say it, it sounds right because, you know—” he wiggled his fingers, “Aphrodite and all. But if I said it it’d be, I don’t know, like I was just trying to fit in or something?” He watched a droplet of molten wax slide down toward Dejun’s hand like a tear. “You know, sometimes I wonder if I even feel the same feelings that you do.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, even if I said I loved someone and meant it, I feel like… it wouldn’t even be on the same level as if you said the same thing.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I just think we’re built for different things,” Yangyang said helplessly. “And because of that, even when it comes to things like emotions, we just don’t experience the world the same way.”

The wax teardrop reached Dejun’s hand, though the heat didn’t seem to cause him any pain because he only gave it a distracted, detached downward flick of the eyes. “I see,” he said.

Yangyang pinched the skin between his fingers. “Do you?”

“No,” Dejun said, and blew out the candle. Yangyang’s eyes didn’t adjust to the dark in time to see him walk away; only the sound of his bedroom door shutting behind him let Yangyang know that he was alone again.

“…yang?” Dejun says, and Yangyang feels a dusty cloud of flour hit his cheek. “Hello?”

Yangyang looks up from the dough to see Dejun staring intently at his profile. “What?”

“You seemed like you were very far away just now. Where did you go? Somewhere scenic, I hope.”

“Sorry, yeah. Just feeling nostalgic for Olympus, I guess,” Yangyang says, because even though he hasn’t known Dejun long, he’s pretty sure Dejun wouldn’t appreciate him responding with, “Your bedroom.”

“I’ve never been,” Dejun says. “What’s it like?”

“Beautiful,” Yangyang says. Like you, he thinks. The clean angles of Dejun’s jawline and cheekbones are enough to rival the lines of the statue in the temple he cares for. His eyes are so dark they’re nearly black, like the rivers of ink that Yangyang has no doubt the poets would spill in order to describe Dejun’s beauty if they could only meet him. He can easily picture Dejun with a laurel crown in his hair, black as ebony and just as luxurious, walking the ranks of Mount Olympus, completely at ease.

“Well,” Dejun says, “I’ll leave you to your reminiscing, then. Try to work a little faster, though. We have a guest coming tomorrow and we’ll need extra.”

The next morning, Yangyang watches from the window as he sees, for the first time and far from the last, Dejun welcoming someone into his arms the way he’d done for Yangyang. “Huang Guanheng,” he hears him say, “You might like to let others think that all you get up to is mischief, but you really do care for them, despite what they might think. You’re hardworking and you have so many things you want to accomplish, and you have so many things that you will accomplish because you’re always thinking about how to improve yourself. You want people to see past your appearance, and Aphrodite has sent me to tell you that that will happen, so long as you continue to focus on your skills and keep your goal in sight. Even now, you have me here, and I see you for what you are. I love you.”

“How do you do that? Know what to say to people, I mean,” Yangyang asks once Dejun has sent Guanheng on his way after an excruciating day of forcing Yangyang to watch the pair of them nestle like doves.

“It’s a nice trick, isn’t it?” Dejun says as he blows Guanheng a farewell kiss.

“Well I definitely thought it was impressive.”

Dejun nibbles on a leftover cake. “I’ll tell you a little secret,” he says, “just between us children of gods here.”

Yangyang leans closer, pleased to be included in Dejun’s selective company.

“Everybody who comes to see me,” he draws a circle in the air as if to demonstrate the world, “I dream of them before I meet them.”

“Really?”

“Mmhm. So they’re already in my heart before I’ve even seen them face to face.” He walks outside to toss some seeds to the sparrows. When Yangyang realizes Dejun isn’t planning to elaborate, he feels a little cheated, and he jogs after him.

“Wait,” he says, carefully stepping around the sparrows that have flown down from the treetops, “you can’t just leave it at that.”

“I mean,” Dejun accepts the gift of a shiny button from one of the birds, “I don’t think it’s that difficult of a concept to grasp.”

“No, I get the concept. What are the dreams like though? Like,” Yangyang points to himself, all shame lost, “what did you see before you met me?”

“Oh!” Dejun puts a coquettish hand over his mouth. He drops the last of the seeds on the ground and carefully lifts his feet over the birds that gather to them. He treads gingerly over to Yangyang, then puts his arms around Yangyang’s neck. “You,” he brushes a stray hair out of Yangyang’s eyes, “came to me when the cicadas were singing. I was walking out of this house because I thought I saw a sparrow fledgling fall out of its nest, and when I opened the door, there you were. You had a sword in your hands, and you were holding it with your palms facing up like you were giving me a gift, but you clearly didn’t consider it one because you practically begged me to take it from you.” He pulls Yangyang a little closer to him and lowers his voice, like he’s telling Yangyang a story to lull him to sleep. “I said, ‘What would I do with a sword?’ and you laughed and said you didn’t know either, and that’s why you were trying to get rid of it. I said, ‘Well, I can take it off your hands, but since I don’t want it either, you’ll have to give me something in exchange.’ And do you know what you said next?”

Yangyang shakes his head.

“You said, ‘Don’t you love me?’”

Yangyang wants to smack his dream self.

“Just like that. Not ‘Do you love me.’ ‘Don’t you love me.’ With this adorable fake pout. I said, ‘Of course. I love everybody.’ And then you said,” Dejun pauses to laugh, resting his cheek against Yangyang’s collarbone for just a moment before he comes back up with a wicked gleam in his eye. “You said, ‘Well, you could have fooled me, Xiao Dejun, because you of all people should know that love shouldn’t be treated like a transaction.’ You had me there, I have to admit.”

“That… does sound like something I’d say,” Yangyang mutters, fighting the urge to wriggle out of Dejun’s arms so he can go stand in a corner and think about what he’s done.

“Doesn’t it just,” Dejun says. “But then you broke down and started apologizing, saying you were really just shy and didn’t want to let on that you couldn’t come up with an answer fast enough. It was sweet.”

Well, Yangyang thinks, cringing, at least his dream self had some decency.

“So I said, ‘Tell you what, I have a feeling we’re going to part ways soon, but we’ll see each other again someday. You can think of what you want to give me in the meantime.’ And then I woke up.” One of his fingertips traces up the back of Yangyang’s neck. “You really kept me waiting, you know. I had that dream when I was about fifteen. I didn’t even recognize you at first when Kun brought you to my door.” He pulls Yangyang in just the slightest bit closer, close enough that they could kiss, but not close enough that they could write it off as an accident if it happened. “So what took you so long, Liu Yangyang?”

“Wish I knew,” Yangyang says, avoiding Dejun’s eyes by getting lost in his lashes. “So do… do all your dreams go like that?”

“No. I meet my visitors in all sorts of scenarios. They’re usually not as bold as you were, though.”

“Yeah? What are some of the other ones?”

Dejun lets him go. “None of your business,” he whispers, smirking.

“So then,” Yangyang scrambles to think of an excuse to pull Dejun back in without looking desperate, “what are they to you?”

“Why?” Dejun says, already turning away. “What does it matter to you?”

“It doesn’t matter to me.”

“Well then,” Dejun looks at Yangyang over his shoulder, teasing. “I suppose we don’t have anything more to discuss here. Although you seem like you have more to say.”

“I’m just asking because, you know…” Yangyang trails off.

“I’m afraid I don’t know.”

“I mean, I’m supposed to be looking out for you, aren’t I?” Yangyang says meekly. It’s a shaky explanation and they both know it. “Kun told me he’s afraid people are going to take advantage of you.”

“You don’t need to bring Kun into this.” Dejun bends down to pick a sample from the abundance of clover flowers at his feet. “But if it would give you peace of mind to have a name for what I have with my guests,” he faces Yangyang again so that he can tuck the flower behind his ear, “then I suppose you could say they’re my lovers.”

Yangyang balks.

“What?” Dejun asks innocently, though his smile tells Yangyang that he knows perfectly well what.

“Isn’t that kind of a strong word?”

“What would you suggest then?” Dejun picks a few more flowers and begins to weave them into a bracelet. “I love them. They love me, or at least I think they do. I’m not sure there’s a better word that fits.”

“So then what does that make us?”

As if Yangyang had just struck a piece of flint, something alights in Dejun’s eyes. He tosses the clovers aside and tackles Yangyang the way Bella does when they’re playing. Once they’re on the ground, he settles himself into Yangyang’s arms and tucks his head beneath his chin. “That depends, doesn’t it?” he says, speaking into Yangyang’s neck.

“On what?” Yangyang asks, staring at the sky so he doesn’t focus on the way that Dejun’s roughhousing has hiked his tunic up his legs.

“On if you love me,” Dejun says. “Because you already know how I feel about you.”

In the background, Yangyang hears Bella panting, the sparrows cooing. He smells the ripe, mature grass of summer that hasn’t been cut and probably won’t be for some time. The grass, like everything else in the area, seems perfectly content to simply exist right where it is at Dejun’s side. “You’ve said it yourself though,” he finally says. “You love everybody.”

“That I do,” Dejun says unapologetically. “Do you have a problem with that?” When Yangyang doesn’t give him an answer, he sighs. “I don’t know if you believe me,” he says, “and frankly, I don’t care if you don’t. But I really do feel like I was put on this earth to make people feel loved. So many people need it, and I have so much to give, you know? So I dream of them, and then they come to me, and I love them already. I get to tell them all about how wonderful they are, make them smile. And then I get to love them for a little while longer when they’re visiting my temple, and then they leave and,” Yangyang feels Dejun shrug against him, “hopefully after that they don’t need me anymore.”

Yangyang frowns. “That’s so sad,” he says.

“How’s that?”

“It’s just, if it were me, I’d want to be more to them than just that.”

“And as you say,” Dejun says, “that’s just if it were you. Which it’s not.”

“No one’s ever asked you to let them stay?”

“A few have,” Dejun admits. “But I didn’t let them because I knew that I wasn’t what they needed.”

“I don’t know if you get to make that call for other people, though,” Yangyang says, surprising himself with the conviction in his voice.

Dejun grabs Yangyang by the collar and forces him to roll over onto his side so he can’t escape Dejun’s eyes. The spark Yangyang had kindled in them earlier is gone, and he’s left with nothing but the cold flint. “Liu Yangyang,” Dejun says, “let me spell it out for you in case I haven’t made it clear. You know I’ll never just be yours, right?”

Yangyang tries to make his eyes as cold as Dejun’s right now, as cold as Dejun makes him feel. “Yeah. I know.”

Neither of them speaks for a long while.

“Well then,” Dejun says, wrenching his arms away from Yangyang, trying to hide the way his legs shake as he stands up, “get back to me when you’ve figured out what you want.”

Months pass. The chill that settled over their relationship that day gets stronger with the changing seasons, as if amplified by the weather. Dejun doesn’t bid Yangyang goodnight anymore. His guests (because Yangyang refuses to refer to them as his lovers, especially in the safety of his own thoughts) come and go in a steady drip. The dynamic is off, though. Dejun had always held them tightly, clinging to them so hard he’d bunch the fabric on their shoulders, then he’d run off with them into some secluded corner the moment they finished their worship in the temple. To Yangyang’s knowledge, though, it had never gone further than some sweet nothings whispered into each other’s ears, accompanied by a kiss on the cheek here and there. At least, that’s what he saw when he’d walk in on them, at first accidentally and then gradually less accidentally over time. These days, Yangyang actively tries not to walk in on them; in fact, he tries his best to get far away from wherever he suspects they are, which is often Dejun’s bedroom. And it’s not like Yangyang had been expecting Dejun to save himself for him or anything, but it’d be a lie to say he hadn’t thought about it. One time, he’d opened the door to the house, unawares, and found Dejun and his latest visitor kissing right there on the floor, and it was obvious neither of them intended to stop there. Afterward, he and Dejun didn’t speak to one another for an entire week.

“Maybe you ought to get out more. Start spending time with other people,” Dejun said some time after Yangyang made some snide remark about how he doubted the role of Aphrodite’s servant required so much hands-on activity. “And what would you know about it?” Dejun had shot back, which had plunged them into another few days of silence.

“Is this your way of kicking me out?” Yangyang asks, monotone.

“No. Like I’ve said before, you stay with me as long as you need, and it’s clear that you need a lot of love in your life. But what’s also clear to me now is that I can’t be the one to give it to you. So.” He tossed Yangyang a map that had been used so few times that it was practically still new, “You go and find it elsewhere. And then once you’ve found it, you leave.” Then he pushed Yangyang out the door and said, “Bella can keep you company,” before slamming the door behind him. A few seconds later, Bella came skittering out to join Yangyang, though she seemed confused about what was happening. When the door slammed a second time, she immediately turned back around, tail pointed in a straight line behind her, and barked at the door until Yangyang pulled her away as gently as he could, trying not to think about the crying he thought he heard on the other side.

Yangyang and Bella follow the map to the closest town, which is still a good distance from where Dejun’s haven is cradled in the forest. Having Bella at his side had actually been a good idea on Dejun’s part, even if he had made it out of anger. Bella gives people an excuse to talk to Yangyang when they otherwise wouldn’t have paid attention to a stranger like him. They'll walk up to him, ask if they can pet his dog, and while they're at it Yangyang will chat a bit with them and get to know the area. After he’s talked his way through a good handful of people, he finally hits upon a lead: people are willing to pay good money for a good game hunter now that winter is upon them.

It's been a while since Yangyang has actually fired a weapon. Ever since he’d started living with Dejun, the closest he got was pretending to shoot at Bella so she could play dead (for some reason that neither Dejun nor Yangyang could fathom, she was especially fond of that trick). And it made Dejun laugh, which was a bonus. Old habits die hard though, and muscle memory limbers him up more quickly than he’d been expecting. He comes back with offerings of rabbit and squirrel before the day is done.

It’s nice to be helpful. Watching people’s faces light up when he brings them his catch is something he could get used to. And he’d forgotten how satisfying the weight of coins in one’s palm could be. Oftentimes, though, it takes him even longer to think of something to spend his money on than he’d spent hunting the game in the first place. He knows it’s absurd, but even now, his first reaction is to look for gifts to give Dejun. Dejun would probably appreciate some new clothes so that he doesn’t have to keep mending his current ones in perpetuity. Though the clothes that catch Yangyang’s eye are far from practical; they’re gauzy, embroidered things that Dejun probably ought not to wear day to day. Still, Yangyang thinks, he ought to wear them at least once, if for no other reason than to finally have something that deserved to be worn by him. (And then, just maybe, he’d love it so much that he’d let Yangyang take it off him later.)

But he doesn’t spend his money on Dejun. He indulges in the local cuisine, going around to the most well-reputed establishments and, when he runs out of those, the decently-reputed ones, and he gives his scraps to a happy Bella. When he can, he buys nights at an inn so that he doesn’t have to go back and face Dejun. Oftentimes, the inns won’t allow Bella to stay with him, so he goes through the trouble of sneaking Bella back into the house and then stealing away before Dejun can notice she’s back. Then he skulks off to his rented room and tries to fall asleep before he can dwell too long on how he knows both way too much and way too little about what Dejun sounds like in bed.

Dejun appears to be doing his best to push Yangyang out in a way that still leaves him a good measure of plausible deniability. So one day, after some liquid courage, Yangyang decides on a whim that he’s going to give Dejun what he wants. It takes some time, but without Dejun in his life, he’s got nothing but time. He walks, hunts some, walks some more, stops every once in a while when the winter is too harsh, and eventually he finds his way back to Kun’s.

“Yangyang,” Kun says as he ushers Yangyang inside, “this is… a surprise.” Yangyang thinks it probably wouldn’t have killed him to throw a “pleasant” in there, but growing up, he’d been taught that niceties are a luxury, not a necessity, so he brushes it off.

“Nice to see you too,” he says, sitting down at Kun’s table. “It’s funny; it always seems like the way back to a place is longer than you remember.”

“Well, in this case, it is,” Kun says. “When Aphrodite decides someone needs looking after,” he snaps his fingers, “she speeds things along a little. And it helps Dejun stay hidden if people vastly underestimate how long it takes to reach him.”

“I don’t think that’s something Dejun’s concerned with,” Yangyang says as he accepts the tea Kun offers him.

Kun raises his eyebrows. “Oh dear. What does that mean?”

“Let’s just say he’s been getting a little greedy.”

Kun takes a sip of his own tea without breaking eye contact. “And what does that mean?”

Yangyang purses his lips. “It means that lately he’s decided to expand the definition of ‘looking after’ someone.”

Kun sets his cup down and frowns at the dregs like he’s attempting to divine something from them. For all Yangyang knows, maybe he really can; it wouldn’t surprise him if he learned that Kun had casually picked up tasseography in his spare time. “That doesn’t sound like Dejun,” he says.

Yangyang drains his cup, which Kun, consummate host that he is, immediately refills without being asked. “Yeah, well, life has a way of surprising us, doesn’t it?” He drains his cup again in one go, suppressing a wince as the tea burns his throat on the way down.

Kun starts to tap his foot on the floor. “Did you equivocate like this when you talked to Dejun? Because if so, then to be blunt, Yangyang, I wouldn’t be too fond of you either.”

“Sure. Fine,” Yangyang says, “but there are a lot of other ways to show that you’re angry with someone that don’t involve sleeping with other people just to make them mad.”

“There it is,” Kun says under his breath.

“Alright, you got me, congratulations. You work for Athena; we get it,” Yangyang says, knowing that he sounds like a child but at the same time not caring to do anything about it. A few loose tea leaves have caught in his throat; at least, that’s what he tells himself to explain the lump growing there.

Kun ignores his outburst. “What makes you think he’s doing it just to make you mad?” he asks.

“Look, all I said was the truth,” Yangyang says. “All I said was that he loves everybody, which he does, and he says it himself all the time, so I don’t know what the problem is when I do it.”

“Mmhm,” Kun says. “What came before that?”

“He said that I should know how I feel about him.” Yangyang changes the wording a little so that, to any passing gods who might be listening in, it doesn’t look like he had that conversation memorized word for word.

“You know how this is going to go, Yangyang. What came before that?”

After a few more rounds like this, Yangyang breaks and tells Kun the whole story from the beginning. Kun, having cracked Yangyang’s shell now, takes the pressure off and simply listens to him without commentary or questions. “So now you know,” Yangyang finishes long after the teapot has dried up.

“Now I know,” Kun agrees. “Thank you for telling me; it can’t have been easy.”

“So if you,” Yangyang clears his throat in an effort to get rid of the lump, which feels like it’s only swollen more since he noticed it, “have any other assignments you could give me, it’d be much appreciated.”

Kun sits back in his chair and drums his fingers on the table. “…I might have one.”

Yangyang perks up. “That was fast. What is it?”

“A little bird might have told me that there’s someone out there with a broken heart whose experience you can sympathize with.”

Yangyang doesn’t like where this is going. “What kind of bird was it?” he asks, tensing.

“I think you can probably guess.”

“No,” Yangyang says. “You don’t get to do this after you told me off for the same thing.”

“Fair enough. It was a sparrow, if you must know.”

Yangyang shakes his head.

“Sweet birds. As a symbol of Aphrodite I find them quite underrated; the doves tend to get all the attention. I’m sure she intentionally left them to him, though. I imagine she wouldn’t like him stealing her thunder… so to speak.”

“You’re making that up.”

“No, the sparrows will tell you a lot of things if you know how to listen to them,” Kun says. “They’re very chatty animals. And they’re horrible liars.”

“No,” Yangyang says, the lump in his throat now so big that it squeezes his vocal cords and makes his voice break. “No. You can’t send me back there.”

“You’re right. I can’t make you go.” Kun makes as if to clear the tea set. “But if you’re looking for someone to give you different directions, you’ll have to find them elsewhere.”

For the first time in years, Yangyang starts to cry. As a son of Ares, it was an oft discouraged habit, to say the least. But Yangyang figures that one more slight against his father can’t matter much at this point. “That’s what he told me,” he sobs. “It’s not fair. You don’t get to listen to my story and then use his words against me like that.”

Kun looks stunned, as though Yangyang had just slapped him, and then the color drains from his face. He walks around the table and bends down to rub Yangyang’s shoulder. “You know what? You’re right,” he says, trying to keep his rhythm steady even as Yangyang’s shoulders heave. “You’re right; it was manipulative of me. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“So why did you?” Yangyang’s tears are so heavy from being held in for so long that when they hit the table, they make a sound like raindrops hitting a roof.

“Because anybody who listens to the sparrows can see that neither of you really wanted to be separated.”

“But it’s better this way,” Yangyang insists.

“Is it?” Kun asks.

“All we were doing was hurting each other. And he said—” Yangyang hiccups. His head aches. His chest aches. “He said Aphrodite would never send him someone who would hurt him. And you said it too; you said I had to make sure no one was hurting him. But I was, so I had to go.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Not directly,” Yangyang says, “but I know when I’m not wanted.”

Kun tuts at this. “I don’t think that’s a fair thing to say about someone who’s told you multiple times that he loves you.”

“He says it to everyone,” Yangyang cries. “I’ll bet he’s said it to you.”

“He has.”

“So what does it even matter if he’s sad about me being gone right now? He’ll just find someone else.”

“Yangyang,” Kun says sternly, taking Yangyang by the shoulders. “He never let anyone else stay with him. He told you. People have asked him, and he sends them away anyway, yes, even while he loves them. But he let you stay, even after you broke his heart.”

“That’s not true. He told me to leave.”

“He told you to leave only after you found someone else to love you. You didn’t find that person, but you left him anyway.”

“Why are you putting all the blame on me?” Yangyang asks. “Why do you keep ignoring that he went out of his way to hurt me too?”

“I’m not saying he didn’t,” Kun says. “But I’m talking about you because you’re the one who’s here. What good is it to lay blame on him when he’s not even here to do something about it? What would that do other than make you even angrier at someone you love? Did it ever occur to you that you might have escaped hurting each other if you had just talked to each other instead?”

Yangyang just continues to shake his head, chanting “No” over and over, although whether he’s saying it to refute Kun or acknowledge his point is unclear. 

“Stay here for a bit and think on it,” Kun says. “But I’ll ask you to consider this: whatever pain you’re feeling right now, he’s almost certainly feeling it too.”

The next day when Yangyang wakes up with a clearer head, he sits on the temple steps, watching the sparrows hop about on the ground and trying to coax one over. They ignore him until he tracks down some seeds to throw their way, but even then, they don’t stick around long enough for him to attempt a conversation. Maybe they know he’s the one responsible for Dejun’s misery and are treating him accordingly.

“Alright, nice talk,” he mumbles.

“Looking for a conversation partner?” he hears Kun say behind him.

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure you made that thing up about being able to talk to them,” Yangyang replies.

“I wasn’t. It’s just that you have to listen to them more than speak. And that’s in and of itself a skill that you have to learn.”

“Where do you find the free time to learn all this stuff anyway?”

Kun shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ve just always been good at time management, I suppose. You have to be when you’re managing a temple this size.”

“Dejun could probably learn a thing or two from you.”

“Dejun’s work requires much more emotional energy than mine,” Kun chides. “You can’t really compare them.”

“Eh.”

“Believe it or not, it isn’t easy on him. Being a little bit in love with everyone you meet wears your heart down over time. As the wave erodes the cliffside.”

“Eh.”

“Alright, I can see you don’t really want to have a conversation after all. But maybe meditate on that image for the day.”

Yangyang rolls his eyes, which Kun pretends not to see.

That night, Yangyang dreams. Dejun comes to him, soaked, like he was caught in the rain on his way to see him. “Liu Yangyang,” he says, and Yangyang feels him climbing onto the bed before he sees him, dripping cold water onto the sheets, leaving ghostly handprints that the sunlight will wash away like footprints disappearing under sea foam. But the morning is a long way away. “Liu Yangyang,” Dejun mews again, kittenlike, “why did you leave me? You left me all alone and they came and tied me to the dock and let the tide drown me.”

Yangyang shuts his eyes and turns onto his side. “Who’s they?” he asks unfeelingly.

Dejun sniffles. “All my loves.”

“Sounds like you need to find better people to love.”

“You said you wouldn’t let them hurt me,” Dejun says, shaking his shoulder like he’s trying to wake Yangyang up from the dream altogether.

“That doesn’t make any sense. Why do they get to kill you, call it an accident, and then pass the guilt off to me?”

“They don’t know what my love does to me,” Dejun says. “They only tied me down because they didn’t want the ocean to sweep me away. But it got me in the end.”

“I think you should have just left the dock,” Yangyang says.

“But I can’t. Don’t you see they need me? How will they know where to find me if I’m not there?”

A few tears squeeze their way out of Yangyang’s eyes, like rats slipping underneath a tightly-closed door. “They can’t find you anyway if you’re dead.”

Dejun doesn’t speak anymore for the rest of the night, just sits on Yangyang’s bed until the morning sun turns him to dust like a vampire. Yangyang wakes up with a jolt, in a sweat. It’s cold, as though Dejun had been holding him all night.

“You’re putting ideas in my head,” Yangyang says when he shows up to help Kun sweep the floors. Luckily, he’s done it enough times with Dejun that he easily falls into an efficient rhythm.

“Oh?” Kun says. “Do tell.”

“Yeah. You told me that thing about the waves and the cliffs, and the next thing I know, Dejun’s showing up in my dreams crying about how he drowned and it’s all my fault. So thanks for that.”

“Hm. Interesting.”

And apparently that’s all Kun has to say about that.

That night, before he goes to sleep, Yangyang checks underneath the bed, in the dresser, and any other corner of the room where he thinks something might be hiding, as though that’s going to do anything. But the objective is really just to keep his mind occupied, and this is as good a method as any. The instant his head hits the pillow, suddenly the dark room goes completely pitch black, and he feels his stomach sink as, in the corner of his eye, he sees a candle being lit.

“Liu Yangyang,” Dejun calls to him. “Why did you leave me? Is it so bad to be loved by me?” The candle bobs around the room to the rhythm of an invisible stride, held by an invisible hand. “Liu Yangyang, I love you. Say it back to me so I can find you.”

Yangyang keeps still and holds his breath, like a fox hiding from the hunter. After what feels like hours of this one-sided call and response, the candle flame quivers and goes out, leaving  them both in the blackness. Dejun wails, and Yangyang wakes to the sound of the sparrows chirping outside his window.

“Alright, so maybe you were onto something about the birds,” Yangyang says to Kun over their modest breakfast.

“Of course I was,” Kun says tranquilly, tearing off a chunk of his bread.

“They don’t like me, though.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I think,” Yangyang looks around to make sure there aren’t any sparrows in the vicinity, “they’re the ones giving me nightmares.”

“You had another nightmare about Dejun?”

“Yeah.”

Kun stares at him and chews. “Are you going to tell me what it was?”

“No.”

“In that case,” Kun says, pushing himself away from the table, “it sounds like that’s something you need to work out with the sparrows.”

“Hmph,” Yangyang says, grinding his bread into crumbs and chucking them into the yard.

But Yangyang is in luck that day (or not, depending on the definition of luck). After several hours of meandering about the grounds, watching the sparrows fly away at the first sign of his approach, he turns and finds one staring directly at him from a sprig of the nearest brush. “Oh! Um, hello there,” he says. The bird remains eerily still, as though it’s been taxidermied. Yangyang wants to touch it to make sure it’s real, but he keeps his hands to himself. “Say, do you think you could pass a message on to your friends for me?”

The bird gives him a single blink, which Yangyang takes to mean a yes.

“Can you tell them to tell Dejun… if he has something to say to me, he can come here and say it himself?”

No response.

“Or I can just give him a message directly through you. I just think it’s a little cowardly to use you to torment me. Don’t you agree?”

The bird emits a hollow chirp. It sounds like Yangyang’s hearing it form the other side of a tunnel. Then the bird blinks again, once, and Yangyang finds himself staring at his own face from his perch in the brush, and he realizes he’s already in the dream. He hops his sparrow body onto his human body’s shoulder and twitters in his ear, trying to make himself wake up, but it’s as though his human form is in a standing coma. He flits about trying to find Kun, since Kun will be able to understand him, but the temple’s suddenly empty, and his chirps echo against the walls. In the middle distance, he sees a group of his own kind form a cloud as they depart from the trees, and he follows after them, knowing where they’ll take him.

Now that he knows to pay attention, he thinks he can feel the moment that space bends to bring him to Dejun. His bird heart is hammering, whether from the anticipation or the mere strain of flying, he’s not sure. Then Dejun opens his bedroom window to receive them, and he knows it’s the former. “Hello, loves,” he says, and stares right at Yangyang.

“I think I have to go,” Yangyang says to Kun first thing in the morning.

“I had a feeling you’d say something like that,” Kun says, gazing up at the clouds. “It’s going to be spring in just a few weeks. Very auspicious.” He looks at Yangyang. “Do you remember the way back?”

Yangyang nods.

The snow has started to thaw a bit early in Dejun’s part of the forest, and he has to take care not to tread in mud; any chance he has at reconciliation will be ruined for sure if he tracks it into the house. He hears Bella start to bark before the house is in sight. She might have even smelled him from a literal mile away, because those were the kinds of dogs that Ares raised. Then, the sound of a door opening, and Bella is racing through the trees toward him, pouncing on him and warming his skin with her breath. Dejun is not far behind.

“Bella?” he says, scanning the trees. He’s shielding his eyes from the sun with one hand and carrying his basket in the other. “Bella, who is it?”

Bella, who had previously been standing on her hind legs and obscuring Yangyang from view, drops back down to all fours. Dejun rounds a corner, stops, drops his basket, and bursts into tears.

Dejun had kept Yangyang’s room exactly as he left it. The only thing that looked out of place to Yangyang was the bed, which had clearly been slept in recently. “Were you sleeping in here?” Yangyang asks, running a finger along the windowsill and finding it free of even a speck of dust.

“I was,” Dejun says, massaging his temple like he has a headache. He’s showing other symptoms of not enough sleep: circles under his eyes, cheekbones newly pallid and on the verge of becoming gaunt, a dullness to his hair. It’s a contrast from how Yangyang remembers seeing him last, cheeks flushed from passion after he’d emerge from his own bedroom, then flushed with anger when he argued with Yangyang about it. “I more or less moved myself in once I realized you weren’t coming back. But I couldn’t sleep because all I could think about was how one day I wouldn’t be able to smell you on the sheets anymore, and I wouldn’t even notice it fading until it was already gone.” He presses the heel of his hand against his closed eye and kneads. “Why would you leave me?” he asks for the umpteenth time since Yangyang had swept him up into his arms and carried him back to the house. “I love you so much and you had to have known.”

Yangyang takes Dejun’s free hand and invites him to sit on the edge of the bed. “I just didn’t understand you,” he says.

Dejun shakes his head. “There has to be more to it than that though.”

“Yeah. But I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Try?”

Yangyang turns Dejun’s hand so that it’s palm up and he begins to massage circles into it. “Remember when I said that I think we just don’t experience the world the same way? Growing up, I was raised to think that everything came at a cost, even love. If nobody felt the loss, if it wasn’t painful to somebody, then it wasn’t real.”

“That’s awful,” Dejun says.

“I know,” Yangyang says. “So then I met you, and you loved all these people, and you were so happy to do it. You’d tell me you loved me every night with a smile on your face even though you barely knew me. And then it didn’t pain you at all to say it to somebody else the next day. I couldn’t see it costing you any effort, so I assumed it must not have been true. Because to be honest, Dejun,” Yangyang lowers his voice, “love isn’t effortless for me. I only knew that I loved you because it hurt.”

Dejun’s eyes are watery. “I don’t understand,” he says. “What do you mean it hurts?”

“If I give away my heart,” Yangyang explains, “then nothing grows back. I just don’t have it anymore. I made myself empty, but… willingly? If that makes sense. So to me, that’s how I know if I love someone, because I wouldn’t just empty myself out like that for anybody.”

“Well,” Dejun blinks in confusion, “even if that’s true, isn’t filling that spot what the other person’s love is for?”

“I guess you could think about it that way,” Yangyang says. “But it’s still not mine, you know? There’s no getting me back once it’s gone.”

Dejun wipes his eyes with the inside of his wrist. “Does being with me right now hurt you?”

Yangyang doesn’t want to lie, so he settles for saying, “In a good way.”

As the spring wears on, the sparrows build their nests, and Dejun keeps a watchful eye on them to make sure there aren’t any predators stealing the eggs. He likes to check in on them in the mornings and then give Yangyang a daily status report. He gasps in delight on the morning that he discovers the eggs have hatched. “Yangyang, do you want to see?” he calls down from where he stands atop the ladder that Yangyang’s bracing for him.

“Yeah, I’d like to see,” Yangyang says.

“Alright, but first, think fast.” Yangyang feels the ladder suddenly shift a few inches forward as Dejun leaps off the top, and before he even has time to panic, he instinctively holds his arms out to catch him. Dejun drops into his arms like a stone, and Yangyang teeters on impact, but is ultimately able to pat himself on the back for remaining upright.

“What did you do that for?” he demands, feeling the sting of adrenaline come in several seconds too late.

“Just testing your reflexes,” Dejun says. “Have to make sure my hero is still up for the task.” He gives Yangyang a kiss on the cheek for a job well done. Yangyang turns pink, then pinker still when he looks down and Dejun is still gazing at him adoringly.

“What?”

“You’re really beautiful, you know that?” Dejun says.

“...Me?”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“I mean—” Yangyang stammers, “I mean, it’s not that I ever thought I was bad looking or anything. But I guess now that I think about it, you’re the first person to ever tell me.”

“Really?” Dejun looks genuinely wounded. “That’s a shame. I mean that. Everybody should hear that they’re beautiful.”

“I bet that’s not something you have to worry about.”

“It’s not,” Dejun says, without a trace of pride in his voice. “That’s why I think everybody should be told that as often as I am. I want everybody to feel how I feel.”

“Yeah? What do you feel?”

Dejun beams. “Happy.”

Spring melts back into summer. “Can you believe you’ve been here a whole year?” Dejun asks Yangyang, playing catch with himself using a fresh pomegranate. It had been a gift from his latest visitor. Normally, Dejun’s guests turned up with basic necessities as the need arose: flour so that he could continue to bake the offerings, thread to repair his clothes, an extra helping of food to get through the winter. Dejun always assumed that Aphrodite had given them some kind of instruction before sending them his way, which he was grateful for. And every once in a while, she’d slip something special in too. This time, in addition to the spices Dejun had been running low on, he was gifted with an armful of pomegranates, almost too beautiful to eat. But not quite.

“Hey,” he says, “split this with me so we can eat it while we watch the sunset together.” He tosses the fruit to Yangyang. When Yangyang catches it, it’s still warm from the heat of Dejun’s hands. As he rummages around the kitchen for the paring knife, he watches Dejun through the window, calling his sparrows down from the roof to feed. A faint incense scent wafts up from the pomegranate’s surface; like an aftertaste of the censer Dejun had lit earlier that day. It mixes with all the other fragrances hanging in the pleasantly warm air, as though all the flowers are sighing in contentment. Yangyang wants to know what that’s like.

He finds the knife and scores the pomegranate, relishing the satisfying almost-crunch it makes when he pulls the sections apart, cracking it open like a geode. “Did you open it?” Dejun asks, leaning in through the window, elbows on the sill. The golden light of the sunset pouring in from behind him makes the interior of the house feel just a little more alive, like the warm buzz that comes after sipping wine.

“Yeah,” Yangyang says, holding up his work.

“Well don’t keep me waiting.”

They waste no time reducing the fruit to nothing but the rind and shreds of the membranous insides, which they pile up haphazardly in the grass between them. Dejun cleans out his half first, enjoying it to the fullest the way he does everything in life, doing what he wants and loving who he wants. And speaking of which, Dejun is currently looking back and forth between the pomegranate remains and Yangyang’s face, eyes even darker than usual.

“How many seeds do you think a pomegranate has anyway?” he asks.

“Not sure,” Yangyang says. “Though I guess you could open up another and count them all if you were really bored.”

“It’s not that important. I was just thinking…” Dejun’s lips are red, and not just from the fruit. He’s rebounded from the state Yangyang found him in several months ago, and now he resembles much more closely the painter’s muse who Yangyang had met in their first encounter. “You know… that whole story about Hades and Persephone?”

“What about it?”

“Well, it’s just… you ate a lot more than six seeds,” Dejun says. “So who knows how long you’re stuck with me now?”

Yangyang pokes him in the side. “You are hard to live with. But as far as life sentences go, I guess I could do worse.”

Dejun’s eyes shine. “Life sentence? You’d spend the rest of your life with me?”

“Depends. We’ll see who gets sick of who first.”

“I wouldn’t get sick of you,” Dejun says. “I’d love to get to look at you every day.” He crawls over to Yangyang’s side. “You know, I never did tell you what else I love about you.”

“Oh? I’m listening,” Yangyang says, trying to keep the mood light but feeling it get heavier with each passing second Dejun stares at him.

“I’ve told you I think you’re beautiful,” Dejun starts, “but I didn’t specify. I love,” he slowly puts his arms around Yangyang’s neck like he wants a redo of the day that tore them apart, “the strength of your arms. How you can carry me around and not get tired.” Yangyang watches Dejun’s attention shift to focus on his jaw. “You have such a distinctive smile. I’ve never seen another one like it and I hope I never do. And then when I look at your smile…” He swallows. “I always end up thinking about your lips.” He pauses like he’s waiting for Yangyang to reply, but Yangyang wants to make him squirm a little, and he waits for Dejun to wade in a little deeper, deep enough that he won’t be able to get away easily. Dejun gives him what he wants. “You know that dream I had when I was fifteen? It’s not the only one I’ve had about you.”

Yangyang pounces, pushing Dejun to the ground and giving him a glimpse of the smile that he likes so much. “Yeah? How many have you had?” he asks. Dejun giggles and covers his mouth with his hand, shaking his head. Then he gasps as Yangyang grabs his wrists, pins them down and asks, “More than two?”

Dejun writhes. “Maybe.”

Yangyang works one of his knees between Dejun’s. “More than three?”

“No,” Dejun says, but the singsong in his voice says otherwise.

Yangyang leans down and starts to pull Dejun’s neckline down with his teeth. “More than five?” he asks when he’s dragged it down as far as it will go.

Dejun’s fingers curl into the blades of grass making up the bed Yangyang currently has him on. “I’m not telling you.”

“Come on,” Yangyang wheedles. He gives Dejun his most impish grin. “Tell me how many and I’ll make your dreams come true.” He feels the full-body shudder that seizes Dejun at these words, but Dejun himself remains reticent, turning this way and that like he’s trying to free himself from Yangyang’s grip and doing an intentionally bad job. “Too bad,” Yangyang says, taking his hands off Dejun’s wrists as he starts to retreat. “You must not be that interested then.”

Dejun catches Yangyang’s arm in an iron grip. “If you stop touching me now then I’ll make sure you never get the opportunity again,” he says.

“Go on then. You know what the deal is.”

Dejun bats his eyes, which should count as cheating, in Yangyang’s opinion. “I’m not telling you because I can’t tell you,” he says.

“What? Aphrodite swore you to secrecy or something?”

“You’re not listening,” Dejun whines. “I can’t tell you… because I lost count.”

His face is bright red, bright enough that it’s still perfectly visible in the fading daylight, but he keeps his head high, as if daring Yangyang to make fun of him.

“…Ah.” Yangyang feels like Dejun’s just knocked him off his feet in a duel.

Dejun smacks his shoulder to snap him out of it. “Well? Are you going to do anything with that knowledge?”

Yangyang doesn’t respond with words, just pulls Dejun to his feet, walks back into the house, and lets himself into Dejun’s bedroom, pulling Dejun inside behind him.

“Liu Yangyang,” Dejun exhales into Yangyang’s ear, “Your name is so nice to just say out loud. I think I could say it forever.”

“Yangyang,” Dejun says after they wake up together, “You’re not the only one I love, but you are the one I love best. Is that something you can live with? I won’t hold it against you if the answer is no.”

Dejun had sworn up and down that he loved Yangyang the previous night, in a way that Yangyang liked to think he’d never said to anyone else, as many times as he’d uttered those words to others. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but honestly, what other choice does he have but to believe it? Where would he even go if he left again? Kun could probably line up some other lost soul in need of affection before Yangyang had even packed his bags. And then because Dejun is so trusting, he’d let the newcomer into his life no questions asked, and then somebody else would be opening pomegranates for him, eating them with him, tasting them for a second time on his tongue.

So of course Yangyang has to say yes.

Yangyang gradually begins to make more trips into town with Bella so he can continue to bring some money in with his hunting. He knows they don’t really need it; Dejun had always gotten along just fine without him before, but it lets him meet new people and it’s something to do. Dejun had been clingy initially, and the first few times Yangyang had come back to the house, he’d found Dejun sitting nervously at the window, waiting for him. After a while, though, and a few gifts later, Dejun learns to slacken his grip, and he’s content as long as Yangyang comes back before nightfall (and, although he doesn’t sit at the window anymore, he still soothes the loneliness by going into Yangyang’s room to wait for his return).

“I was thinking,” Yangyang says one day, “maybe you could come with me sometime.”

“Oh?” Dejun is standing in the shallows of a small pond, hypnotized by a black fish’s swirling tail as it circles in the perfectly clear water near his feet. He’s holding the hem of his tunic up in one hand, but that’s not doing much to keep it dry with Bella splashing around him, scattering droplets into the air that refract the sunlight and dazzle Yangyang’s eyes. “What would I do that for?”

“I mean… why wouldn’t you?”

Dejun takes his eyes off the fish and turns to Yangyang. “Because I already have everything I need here.”

“Does that include me?”

Yangyang had meant it as a flirtation, but the sincere way that Dejun says “Yes,” indicates that Dejun clearly hadn’t interpreted that way.

“Well anyway,” Yangyang says, shouldering past his surprise, “it’s not really a ‘need’ thing as much as a ‘want’ thing. You know, for fun. Don’t you ever want to go out and meet new people?”

“But I don’t need to go out to meet new people,” Dejun says, smiling, confused.

“You don’t need to, but do you want to?”

Dejun tilts his head, like the notion has never occurred to him.

“Hey.” Yangyang wades into the pond next to him. As he gets closer, he can see the goosebumps on Dejun’s skin and the fine mist of his breath. “The entire time you’ve been here… has there ever been anything you did that Aphrodite didn’t already tell you to do?”

“I… I don’t know,” Dejun says. His breath forms a cloud, and it chills Yangyang’s skin when it touches him. He can see that Dejun is starting to shiver too. “Probably, but I can’t think when you put me on the spot like that.”

“What would you have done if I showed up and I was someone you hadn’t already dreamt about?”

Dejun’s eyes dart back and forth, lashes fluttering. “I don’t know.”

“Because it’s never happened before?”

Dejun reaches into the water and splashes him. “Are you saying I can’t think for myself?”

Yangyang laughs and splashes him back. “No. I’m saying that maybe your life could be even better than it already is; you just don’t know it yet.” He walks over to Dejun and holds him close, nuzzling into his neck to chase away the goosebumps there. “There’s a festival in a few nights. Come with me and just have a look around. I bet you’ll love it. And the people there already know Bella, so they’ll probably like you too once they find out you’re her owner.”

Dejun hums. “What do you think, Bella?” He asks, turning his head to her. Bella barks back at him. “Alright,” he says, wrapping his arms around Yangyang to hug him back. “We’ll go together.”

Yangyang had been half expecting Dejun to wince at the noise of the crowd, the glare of the lights. But Dejun takes one look at the place, his eyes go wide, and Yangyang knows he’s already in love. And the inhabitants, of course, love him back. It seems like the two of them can’t go ten minutes without Dejun being offered flowers or trinkets or, on one occasion, being straight up proposed to. “I’m sorry,” Dejun says to the man kneeling before him, who is clearly a bit tipsy, “but I can’t marry you if I haven’t even dreamt about you! I’m sure I would love you, though.” Yangyang has to whisk him away before he’s forced to give a long explanation about how no, that wasn’t Dejun’s way of flirting, and then in no time at all, Dejun flits away from him again, chasing some new distraction.

“Yangyang,” Dejun says, flushed with life when Yangyang catches up to him, “Can we?” He points over to a handful of people who are crowded around a man playing the shell game.

“You’re just going to get ripped off, but I guess it’s your money to waste,” Yangyang says, passing Dejun a couple coins and not saying anything about how it’s actually his money. Dejun isn’t listening because he’s already made eye contact with the man, who waves them over.

“Feeling lucky today?” he asks as Dejun eagerly settles himself on the opposite side of the table.

Dejun puts his elbows on the table, clasps his hands together, and rests his chin on them. “Always,” he says. “I don’t mean to brag, but the gods sort of love me.”

The man laughs, and Yangyang can see Dejun melt a little. “You know, there’s a word for that kind of thinking,” he says.

“Oh?”

“Hubris.” He takes Dejun’s money. “Haven’t you ever seen a tragedy?”

“I haven’t,” Dejun says, “but that doesn’t even matter because it’s still true. Go on; I’ll show you.”

“Alright,” the man says. “But let the record show that you asked for it, gorgeous.”

Dejun, predictably, does not win the shell game, and the man scratches another line into the tally he’s been keeping in the dirt next to him. “That makes eleven in a row now for me,” he says. “Guess the gods were busy with other things tonight.”

Dejun plants his hands on the table and leans forward, eyes gleaming, which actually takes the man aback. “But I haven’t actually shown you yet.”

The man regains his composure in the blink of an eye. “Sure you haven’t,” he says. “Were you planning on playing again so you can show me for real this time?”

“No. Something different. Give me one chance,” Dejun says, holding up a finger. “If you’re impressed, you give me my money back. If you’re not, I’ll pay you double.”

The man looks skeptical, but his skepticism is quickly overshadowed by intrigue. “I’m listening.”

Dejun holds out his hands, palms up. “Give me your hands.”

“Are you going to give me a palm reading?”

“No, silly.” Dejun’s fingers make an insistent “Come here” motion. The man rolls his eyes playfully, but he complies. Dejun smiles to himself as he laces their fingers together.

“What are you smiling about, beautiful?”

Dejun giggles. “Just thinking about how wonderful I am.”

“Oh here we go,” the man says with a theatrical sigh.

“What’s your name?”

“Nakamoto Yuta.”

“Nakamoto Yuta,” Dejun repeats. He gives Yuta’s hands a yank, making him fall forward, and then he leans in so he can put his lips next to Yuta’s ear. “I know that you’re not where you want to be in life right now. When you’re not working for your father you’re practicing music because when you were younger, you were inspired by a theatrical troupe that came to your hometown. I know you’re getting discouraged right now, but keep practicing. You bring so much joy to other people just when you smile, and one day the right people are going to notice you too because you’re radiant. I love you.” Then he lets Yuta’s hands go and takes advantage of the stunned silence to swipe Yangyang’s coins off the table. “We’ll see each other again.”

“I don’t know if I was supposed to do that,” Dejun says to Yangyang as he drops the coins back into his hand. “I probably should have waited until he came to me. But I can’t see someone I’ve dreamt of and then not tell them I love them, right? That just seems like a cruel thing to withhold.”

“You can do whatever you want, Dejun,” Yangyang says fondly, noticing the way Dejun’s eye is already straying to the people dancing just a little further off. Dejun kisses him and then slips away into what Yangyang’s sure is about to become a group of people asking him to be their partner. He puts his coins back in his pouch and starts browsing the stalls for a distraction.

“He really is something, isn’t he?” a voice next to him says.

Yangyang turns to see a man bent over the table to his right, examining an array of carved hairpins. He has his eyes on the table and Yangyang isn’t sure who he’s speaking to, so he asks, “Sorry, who?”

The man picks up a pin carved into the form of a snake and turns to face Yangyang, smiling. Despite his youthful face, he has the air of someone who knows a lot of things that others don’t and likes it that way.  His lips are slightly upturned, as though he’s trying his best to smile without showing fangs, but if that’s really the case, then he must be the kind of predator that has only to wait for his prey to come to him, because Yangyang still feels drawn to him. “You know who,” the man says.

“Dejun?”

“Yes indeed.”

Yangyang instinctively looks to the dancers, where he sees Dejun with someone else’s hands on his waist, looking as content as one of the sparrows that flock on his rooftop. The lantern light throws the sharp angles of his face into relief, making him look dramatic, like he’s a romantic figure in the process of being painted so that he can continue to be admired for ages. He probably will be. “Yeah,” Yangyang says wistfully. “He is.”

“And I bet it kills you to know that you’re not the only one he loves.”

The music in the background seems to stop for Yangyang at the same time his heart does. “Sorry?”

“I’m not saying that to offend you, believe it or not,” the stranger says. “It’s just how he’s made.”

“I know that,” Yangyang says testily.

“Of course.” The stranger points the end of the hairpin at Yangyang. “You don’t like it, though.”

Fireflies blink in and out of Yangyang’s vision, giving him the illusion that he’s about to faint and is seeing stars. “You don’t know me.”

“As far as I know, there’s only one disgraced son of Ares named Liu Yangyang in the world.”

“I’m not all that concerned with what Ares thinks of me these days,” Yangyang says, “and you can tell him I said that, since you’re apparently such good friends.”

“Please,” the stranger sniffs, “like anyone’s friends with Ares. Who I am friends with, however, is Aphrodite. And Aphrodite wants you to know that you’re loved.” As he speaks, he starts to wave the hairpin back and forth in the air. It blurs and lengthens, and finally, when it stops moving, Yangyang sees it’s been turned into an arrow. “Or at least, you could be, anyway.” The stranger flips the arrow around so that the fletching faces Yangyang, presenting it to him with a flourish. The crickets in the grass start to hum more loudly, and it occurs to Yangyang in that moment that he didn’t just imagine the music stopping before. He looks around, and everybody else in the scene is frozen. “Ha. Got your attention now,” the man says. “Go on, then. I had Eros make it special just for you.”

“Who are you?” Yangyang asks.

“About time you asked. You can call me Ten. Like the number for perfection. And I,” he gives the arrow a little wiggle to remind Yangyang it’s there, “am the answer to your prayers.”

Yangyang stiffens. “I think I know where this is going, and I don’t like it.”

“What?” Ten asks. “You want Dejun to love you back—don’t say that he already does, because you know what I mean—, Aphrodite wants Dejun to stop distracting her followers, and this way you can kill two Dejuns with one stone. Everyone’s happy.” 

“Doesn’t sound like Dejun would be.”

“Of course he would! He’d be in love, and who isn’t happy when they’re in love?”

Yangyang is silent.

“Alright, be that way,” Ten says. “But you and I both know there are much worse things Aphrodite can do to him than this, and they aren’t all going to come with a messenger.”

Yangyang glares down at the arrow. “Is that a threat?”

“If it were, what would you even do about it?” Ten asks, smirking. “If you wouldn’t kill for Ares, what makes you think I’d believe that you’re willing to do it for Dejun?”

“Dejun wouldn’t ask me to.”

“I think the decision is going to be out of Dejun’s hands pretty soon,” Ten says.

Yangyang glances nervously at all the people around them who have been turned into living statues. He glances to Dejun. Dejun probably hasn’t even noticed anything’s wrong. “You’re not going to let me walk away until I take it, are you?”

“Very astute.”

Yangyang reaches for the arrow, just to make whatever is happening stop, he tells himself. “You’re probably wasting your time. It probably wouldn’t even work on him anyway if he already loves me.”

“Oh, don’t worry; it will. Aphrodite’s promise. Worked out for Paris, didn’t it?”

“Not really.”

“Well how was she supposed to know all the things that would come after? My point is that when she makes a bargain, she holds up her end. Dejunnie here,” Ten nods his head in Dejun’s direction, “I don’t know if we can say the same. He might need a little… push every now and then.”

Back at Dejun’s house after the festival, Yangyang hides the snake pin in his folded clothes. “You’ll know when you need it,” Ten had said, patting him on the shoulder. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how to shoot now.”

Dejun starts getting a lot more visitors after the festival. “Oh, they’re not here for the temple,” Dejun says when Yangyang makes this observation. “They’re here to see me.” Then he stops, as if he’s just realized what he said. “I should probably have them drop by the temple anyway, though, shouldn’t I? I’ll be right back.” And then he scoops up a handful of the fruit he’d recently been gifted and hurries off to leave some for Aphrodite.

One day, Yangyang is harvesting mulberries when he notices that the branches are a lot lighter than they normally are. He thinks back to the previous day, when somebody had come calling while Dejun was in the middle of cleaning the temple. Upon remembering this, Yangyang runs back to the temple to find his suspicions confirmed: the cleaning supplies are still there. He can’t help but feel like it’s only a matter of time before his worst suspicions will be confirmed as well, and one of these days he’ll pull Dejun into his arms, bury his face in his neck, and smell somebody else on him.

“Dejun,” he says that night, kneeling next to the table while Dejun sews.

“Hm?”

Yangyang rests his head in Dejun’s lap. “Have you been making sure that all your stuff for the temple gets done?”

Dejun snorts. “Yes, mother.”

Yangyang closes his eyes. “Okay.” He stands back up and walks to his room.

He hadn’t really been expecting it to be there, so when he shakes out his tunic and a full-length arrow clatters to the floorboards in the middle of the night, Bella starts to bark.

“What’s that?” Dejun asks.

Yangyang whips around. He’d forgotten to close the door. “Left one of my arrows in here,” he says, waving it in what he hopes is a nonthreatening manner. “I was just going to put it back in my quiver.”

“You left it… in your closet? I mean, I’ve heard of sleeping with a knife under your pillow, but…”

Yangyang shrugs. “You get into weird habits when Ares is your father.”

“So I see.” Dejun walks over to get a closer look, then, quick as a bat snatching an insect from the air, swipes the arrow out of Yangyang’s hand and makes it his plaything, twirling it lazily between his fingers. Yangyang grabs at it, but Dejun pulls it away, laughing.

“Stop playing with that.”

“Why? It’s fun and it makes you mad.”

“Fine,” Yangyang says, “but for all you know, Eros could have made that, so if you prick yourself and fall desperately in love with me, don’t come crying to me about it.”

“I bet it’s not all that. Watch.” Before Yangyang can stop him, Dejun is proudly brandishing the arrow in his right hand while a drop of blood swells on the index finger of his left. Then he tosses the arrow aside so that his clean hand is free to pull Yangyang in for a kiss.

Yangyang sees his lashes flutter right before they both close their eyes. His face burns as Dejun’s fingers tighten on his collar, like he’s trying to squeeze out the breath that Yangyang subconsciously held the moment their lips touched. He tastes vestiges of wine, and he imagines Dejun barely remembering to pour out Aphrodite’s share before helping himself to the rest of the “offering” that they both know was really meant for him.

Right as the pressure in Yangyang’s lungs is becoming unbearable, Dejun lets him go. Yangyang searches his expression for any signs of new love. At this point, he’s spent enough time looking at Dejun that he would be able to spot the slightest difference, but he searches in vain. Dejun smiles, pats his cheek, and says, “Told you it wouldn’t change anything.” He looks down at the cut on his finger as though he’s only just noticed it, and then he licks the blood away with one swipe of his tongue.

A few days later, Yangyang finds him standing in the open doorway to the house, scanning the grass with his eyes narrowed.

“What are you looking for?” Yangyang asks.

“There’s a stray cat that’s been lurking around here lately,” Dejun says. “I think it’s killing my sparrows.” He turns to Yangyang. “Have you noticed it?”

Yangyang’s heart pounds. “No, but I’ll make sure to keep an eye out.”

“See that you do. I found one of them dead while I was playing with Bella yesterday and I had to stop to bury it before something else could find it.” Dejun massages his temple, and Yangyang notices the dirt underneath his fingernails. “Honestly, I don’t know how I’ll be able to sleep if I find another one. They’re… they’re mine, you know?”

“Yeah.” Yangyang kisses his hair. “I know.”

When night falls, Yangyang stares out the window while Dejun sleeps. In the dark, he thinks he can make out two small eyes in the grass, but they’re matching his gaze as though they were standing eye to eye. Then the lights wink out of sight, and Yangyang thinks he catches the swish of a long, black tail as its owner disappears up a nearby tree. He waits, fixated, until the sun comes up, but he never sees the cat come down. He inspects the tree at daybreak, but when he sweeps his gaze over the branches, they’re empty. No cat, and no sparrows either.

Dejun jumps as Yangyang stabs his knife into the grass next to him. When he looks down to see the snake pinned beneath the blade, he gasps, not in fear, but in anger. “What did you do that for?” he demands. “It wasn’t doing anything to you.”

“It’s venomous. It was coming near you,” Yangyang says.

“It’s just a garter snake,” Dejun argues. “They’re harmless; I see them all the time.”

“I think you should take another look,” Yangyang says, nodding his head toward it.

Dejun follows his gaze and sees the snake’s body changing, scales falling away to leave a black, shining thing like a smear of ink come to life. After a few moments it stops writhing, then melts into the grass. Dejun looks helplessly up at Yangyang. “…What?” he asks, pleading.

Yangyang sighs, pulls his knife out of the ground, and sits on Dejun’s other side. “That’s actually the third one this week,” he says. “I didn’t mention them to you earlier because I didn’t want to scare you. But the others didn’t come anywhere near as close as this did.”

Dejun chews his lip. “I guess now would be the time to start getting scared, then,” he says. His eyes are dewy. “Yangyang, what’s happening?”

Yangyang puts his head in his hands. “I don’t know.”

Dejun and Yangyang wake in the middle of the night to the sound of Bella barking. Dejun, who seems to have immediately grasped what’s happening, almost shoves Yangyang out of bed as he clambers over him. Yangyang hears his feet as they pound the floor, his hands clumsily unlocking the door, and then his scream when he sees what’s outside.

The cat’s ears twitch when it catches the first signs of a fight drifting out from the open window. There’s a crackle in the air that’s similar to the atmosphere before the rain, the way two people’s voices become more and more charged as they wind each other up. The cat abandons the feather it had been pawing at, stolen off one of the bodies it had left on Dejun’s doorstep not too long ago. To its displeasure, Dejun had buried the birds too deeply for the cat to be able to torment him a little by digging them back up. His initial breakdown had only lasted a few minutes, but he quickly retreated into unfeeling efficiency, and he forced Yangyang and Bella to keep watch until after he’d placed the last handful of dirt on the last makeshift grave. Then, he’d called down his last remaining sparrows, held them in his hands one by one as he told them he loved them, and then ordered them to fly away and never return. Only after the last one had melted into the dark did Dejun wander back into the house, lock himself in his bedroom, and cry until long after the sun had risen.

There’s a thump from inside the house as something gets thrown against the wall. “Get out,” Dejun says, voice raspy.

“Dejun.”

“Get out.” He starts to cry again. “Why couldn’t you have just left me alone?”

“Because you didn’t want to be left alone.” The cat hears Yangyang’s voice grow fainter as he pursues Dejun, who is walking away from him. Drawers slam, Bella’s claws scrabble against the floor, there’s some more muffled conversation before Dejun’s voice floats back out.

“I was so happy before you,” he says through tears. “Now I know Aphrodite hates me because she sent you here to ruin me.”

“Dejun—”

“Stop!” Dejun is sobbing now. “Don’t touch me.”

Bella starts to whine. Then the cat hears the door handle start to turn.

“Where are you going?”

“If you’re not going to leave, I will. You can have this place. There’s no happiness left for me here.”

The door creaks open, and the cat sees the swish of Dejun’s tunic around his legs as he hurries to get away. Bella comes scampering after him a few seconds later. She stops in her tracks and her body goes rigid the instant she smells the cat, her eyes find its hiding spot immediately, and she starts to bark to get Dejun’s attention, but Dejun just keeps walking. Eventually, Bella abandons the endeavor with a whine, and chases after her master.

The cat turns its head. Yangyang stands at the threshold of the door but doesn’t cross. “Dejun!” he says. He’s breathing heavily, his hands are shaking, and the cat can practically smell the fight-or-flight instinct currently dilating his pupils. “Dejun!” he calls again, and when he doesn’t receive a response for the second time, the cat can see a decision being made in his eyes. Yangyang stalks back into the house, leaving the door open, and when he re-emerges, he’s holding his bow. He nocks the arrow Ten gave him, aims, and fires into Dejun’s back, right through his heart.

“What’s happening to us, Yangyang?” Dejun had whimpered into Yangyang’s shoulder after burying his sparrows. They were sitting on the floor of his bedroom, with Dejun cradled in Yangyang’s arms like a child. “What did I do?”

So Yangyang told him the truth. About the arrow. About Ten. About Aphrodite and her resentment. He also told Dejun his theories. That the arrow had never been one of Eros’s to begin with. That Aphrodite was just trying to trick him into killing Dejun. That the sparrows had been a message not just for Dejun, but for Yangyang as well: if Yangyang wasn’t going to kill him, Aphrodite would do it herself. He spun those out into larger theories still. That Dejun’s home was a cage, and Aphrodite had kept him hidden away here, only sending him the occasional person to love for a few days, because she was worried that if Dejun were to live in wider world, she would have to compete with him for adoration. That when she rescued Dejun from Ares that day, it hadn’t been out of concern, it had been because she didn’t want him to steal Ares from her. That he’d never been a son of hers at all.

“Why?” Dejun sobbed. “Why is it that I love so much but I only ever get punished for it? Why was I even made then?”

Yangyang shifted his head so Dejun could tuck himself further underneath his chin. “Because you’re too wonderful not to exist,” he said. “And the world needed more love in it.”

“What do we do now?” Dejun asked. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to leave you.”

Yangyang felt as if his own heart had been shot through. He stroked Dejun’s hair, mind racing through the night, and Dejun fell back asleep in his arms. “I think I know what we have to do,” he said when Dejun awoke, eyes swollen.

“What?”

“I think we have to call her bluff.”

The next time Yangyang went into town, he took Dejun and Bella with him. He didn’t feel good about it, but it didn’t feel right leaving Dejun out of his sight. They spent the day walking, hand in hand, fending off Dejun’s admirers, while they secretly kept an eye out for sparrows. Eventually Dejun spotted one, waiting patiently near a food cart as though it were a patron, hoping for some scraps to drop. The second it saw Dejun, it flew to him to nuzzle into his hand without even being beckoned. Dejun held it close to his mouth as though he were cupping his hand to tell someone a secret, and he whispered that he needed it to find Kun, to please tell him to come to his house with several attendants as soon as he could, and then he gave a list of medical supplies for Kun to hide in the gifts that he’d bring.

Kun answered the call, and Dejun let him and his entourage hide in the guest room, hoping all the while that the cat wouldn’t notice that they hadn’t left. That night, he and Yangyang talked over their plan one last time.

“Yangyang,” he said as they sat on opposite ends of the table, holding their clasped hands between them like they were praying together. “Tomorrow I’m going to say some unkind things to you. I want you to know—I won’t mean any of it.”

Yangyang nodded and kissed Dejun’s hands. The next day, he mustered up all the military training he’d ever endured for the most important shot of his life, and shot Dejun in the shoulder.

The cat watches Yangyang stand numbly in the doorway, eyes glazed, as he waits for Dejun to get back up, run into his arms, and say that he didn’t know it before, but he’s realized now that Yangyang is the only one for him. When the heap on the ground doesn’t get up, even as Bella noses at him and howls, Yangyang snaps out of his trance and drops his bow. He runs to Dejun’s side and pushes Bella out of the way. The cat, from a safe distance, runs with him to witness the aftermath.

The grass is crushed as Yangyang drops to his knees, trying to touch Dejun without hurting him further. He touches bloody fingertips to Dejun’s shoulder, his neck, his hair, begging Dejun to get up, hyperventilating from the panic. In the last moments before his spirit breaks, he raises his despair-ridden eyes to stare into the cat’s soul. The cat, satisfied with its work, flees the scene. 

Yangyang had whistled for Kun and his attendants the second the cat was out of sight, and Dejun was still alive when they carried him back into the house, but he still agonized the entire time about whether they were too late. Even though he isn’t any good for this part of the plan, he still forces himself to watch the entire time as Kun extracts the arrow from Dejun’s shoulder. He feels like he ought to bear witness to Dejun’s pain, as though not to watch would be to abandon him again. The smell takes him back to the battlefield, the sharp scent of blood on even sharper blades. Even back then he’d known that he’d never forgive himself if he were the one to draw it.

Dejun lives, although at this point it’s unclear if he’ll ever regain the use of his arm. His first words once he regains consciousness are “Liu Yangyang, I’ll kill you,” accompanied by a pained smile that makes it possible for Yangyang finally breathe again before he breaks down in relief.

Ten pays them a visit only a day after Kun and his attendants depart. He appears on Dejun’s doorstep first thing in the morning, with Bella’s frantic barking heralding his arrival. Yangyang registers the basket of too-red pomegranates on his arm when he opens the door.

“Aren’t they nice?” Ten asks without even bothering to say hello. “I thought they’d make a good get-well offering.”

“Who’s your friend?” Dejun calls from his chair by the fireplace.

“Dejun!” Ten says with a smile, slipping past Yangyang into the house. “Yangyang’s told me so much about you.”

“Really?” Dejun asks, furrowing his brows in the way that Yangyang has always found terribly endearing. “That’s odd. I don’t think he’s ever told me about you.”

Ten places a hand over his heart and gives a little bow. “Ten, at your service,” he says.

“Oh!” Dejun smiles back. “The number of perfection.”

“You got it.” Ten straightens back up and looks at Yangyang. “Yangyang, are you going to tell Dejun where we met or are you going to keep making me do your job as a host?”

“Ten and I met during the festival,” Yangyang says, refusing to go into further detail.

Ten seems annoyed at the snub, but glosses over it. “That’s right. And don’t worry your cute little head, Yangyang; I’m not offended that you neglected to mention me to Dejun here. You make so many friends, after all. It’s understandable you can’t keep track of all of them. Right, Dejun?”

Dejun starts. “Me?” Yangyang walks over to his side intuitively and takes Dejun’s good hand in his.

“Yes, you.” Ten sets the pomegranates down on the table and surveys the pair of them up and down. “So.” He leans back on his elbows and smirks. “This is what Xiao Dejun in love looks like, huh?”

“I’ve always been in love with the world,” Dejun says.

“Yes, yes, but we both know what I meant, don’t we?” Ten looks around the room like he’s inspecting it for cleanliness. “I heard you’re moving. Is that why it’s so tidy in here?”

Dejun looks up at Yangyang, searching for an explanation and finding his blank stare reflected back at him. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” Ten says, drawing it out like his next words are a meal that he doesn’t want to finish too quickly, “I just figured, you know, since you’ll be leaving the temple and all.”

“Who said that?” Dejun asks.

“A little bird told me.”

“There are a lot of those around here,” Dejun says, voice hardening. “Could you please be more specific?”

Ten smiles wider to show his canines. “The dead one.”

Yangyang feels Dejun’s breath hitch. Nobody makes a sound, but Bella, always sensitive to her owner’s moods, curls up closer to him, tail between her legs. Ten picks a pomegranate out of the basket and begins to roll it back and forth across the table like a cat with an especially fascinating ball of yarn. The silence is so tense that Yangyang can pick up on the muted rumbling sound that the fruit makes as its uneven shape passes over the tabletop.

“And anyways,” Ten continues, “I didn’t think to question it at the time because it just made sense, you know? You’d found your one true love, so it’s only rational that you wouldn’t want to seek it from others anymore.” He pauses and looks at Dejun. “How did you know that Yangyang was the one for you, while we’re on the subject? I’m so curious.”

Dejun looks to Yangyang again. Their eyes meet, and though Ten has no doubt seen the fear laid unnervingly bare there on the surface, Yangyang can also sense the deep affection that runs beneath. “I suppose it’s just one of those things where you know it when you see it,” Dejun says, not letting his eyes leave Yangyang’s.

“Mmhm. Are you planning on getting married?”

“What?” Dejun and Yangyang ask at the same time.

“What? It’s a logical question.”

“Um—we hadn’t really talked about it,” Yangyang says.

“Well you should think about it,” Ten says. “Just a tip between friends.”

“…Thanks, we’ll take that into consideration.”

“Glad to hear it.” Ten stops playing with the pomegranate. “Unrelated, but Dejun, what happened to your arm?”

“Sorry?”

“Did the little bird tell you about that too?” Yangyang asks.

“The very same,” Ten replies cheerily.

Dejun subconsciously reaches his good hand to shield his injury, as though Ten’s eyes could slice it wide open again. “It was a hunting accident. Really unfortunate.”

“That so?” Ten says. “I wouldn’t have figured you for the hunting type.”

“Oh, I’m not; it was…” Dejun lowers both his gaze and his voice, just like he and Yangyang practiced. “It was Yangyang, actually,” he whispers, then he puts a hand over his mouth like he’s already said too much.

“Oh do tell.”

Yangyang clears his throat. “Yeah. I… Well, it’s really embarrassing to admit, but I was feeling nostalgic, I guess, and… you know, Dejun’s got this hunting dog that he doesn’t use—no offense, Bella.”

Bella gives him a baleful look but otherwise doesn’t respond.

“So yeah. It was really stupid, but I decided to go out and try hunting again for old time’s sake, and I brought Bella with me. But I forgot that Bella—you know, she might look like a hunting dog, but she’s got the heart of a lapdog.” Yangyang gives a weak laugh that no one echoes. “So we were out in the forest together, and all of a sudden she started barking and chasing after something, and I fired out of instinct and… yeah. That’s what happened.” He squeezes a couple tears out for good measure. It’s an easy enough task; just thinking about what he actually did to Dejun is still enough to make his eyes well. Ten grins, which Yangyang hopes signifies that he’s satisfied with the performance.

“‘Old time’s sake,’ huh? It’s hard letting go of the need for Daddy’s approval, isn’t it?”

“You just had to get one last one in, didn’t you,” Yangyang deadpans.

“You know I’m only teasing you because I love you,” Ten says. Then he stretches his arms above his head and yawns. “In any case, I’ve enjoyed being able to catch up with you two, but I can tell when I’m not wanted.”

“That isn’t true,” Dejun mumbles, not very convincingly. “It’s always a privilege to meet another follower of Aphrodite. The world could use a lot more of us in it.”

Ten clicks his tongue. “You have your opinion; I have mine.”

“I’m… sure you do.”

“Well, congratulations once again to the happy couple. Now goodbye, Xiao Dejun, Liu Yangyang,” Ten says, nodding at each of them in turn. He crouches down low enough to look Bella in the eye. “And goodbye to you as well, Bella.” Then he stands, smiles, and says, “Gods willing, I hope we never see each other again.”

Yangyang opens his mouth to say something about the feeling being mutual, but all of a sudden, the room is now empty except for him and Dejun. The pomegranate Ten had been toying with rolls off the table and onto the floor. Its thud is the only noise in the house. Yangyang holds his breath until it comes to a complete stop, as if he’s expecting it to transform into something monstrous, but it just lies innocently on the floor. He picks Dejun’s hand back up and warms it between his, trying to soothe him. “How do you feel?” he asks.

Dejun’s head is tilted down toward their hands as if he’s watching Yangyang work, but Yangyang can tell by his glassy eyes that he isn’t really seeing them. “I feel…” he says, “like I’ve been put under a spell. I feel like my love’s been taken from me.” His lips start to tremble, and based on the heartbroken expression on his face, Yangyang half expects the wound on his shoulder to reopen and fresh blood to bloom over his clothes. “Is this what it feels like, Yangyang? When you say that being in love takes something away from you? Is this how being in love with me feels all the time?”

“No. I can very confidently say that.”

“If I don’t have my love,” Dejun says, voice choked, “then I don’t have anything.” Yangyang debates whether it would be better or worse to say, “You have me.” Dejun seems to read his mind, because he adds, “That’s not fair to you though, is it?”

Yangyang shrugs. “You can’t help what you feel.” He pauses. “That being said… neither can I. Would it really be that bad to spend the rest of your life with me?”

Dejun shakes his head vigorously. “No, no, Yangyang, I absolutely adore you. You know I love you.”

“Yeah,” Yangyang says, “but…?”

He catches the way Dejun’s entire body tenses from holding in a breath, like he’d rather force himself to pass out than tell Yangyang how he really feels. Dejun continues to shake his head, and when a sob almost escapes his throat, he slaps a hand over his own mouth.

“It’s alright,” Yangyang says. “I’ve already been through a lot in my life. I can handle it.”

“I can’t,” Dejun whispers from behind his palm.

“Can’t what?”

“I can’t get married.” Dejun says. “Not to you, not anyone. I think about getting married right now and it makes me feel ill. It hurts so much.”

“Okay.”

Dejun sniffs, waiting for Yangyang to go on. When he seems to realize that Yangyang isn’t going to reprimand him, he cautiously lowers his hand and continues, “It’s not even that I’m opposed to the idea. I used to really want to, you know. So, so badly. Just the thought of it is so romantic, and well… you know me.” He smiles sheepishly as if to say, “Guilty as charged.”

Yangyang nods.

“There’s actually this thing I used to tell Kun,” Dejun says, smiling sadly, “about how even though being in love makes my heart feel so full, there’s still the sense that loving so many people was wearing me down, little by little.”

“As the wave erodes the cliffside,” Yangyang finishes.

Dejun’s eyes widen. “How did you know?”

“I just really know your heart by now,” Yangyang jokes. “…And Kun said it to me too.”

“Should’ve known. He remembers everything. It’s really amazing.”

“It sure is.”

Dejun sighs. “Anyway, I figured that one day, after some years, maybe my heart would decide that it’d had enough of being worn down, and it’d want to love more deeply than broadly. And then I’d find my someone, and I’d say, ‘I want to spend my life with you,’ and then I’d do just that. And then I’d have the rest of my time to find out all the new ways my heart could love someone…” Dejun rubs his thumb over Yangyang’s. “Of course, when I’d daydream about those kinds of things, they were always built on the assumption that I’d be able to choose the person.”

Yangyang squeezes his hand. “I think I can understand what you’re saying.”

“And also,” Dejun says, “if we got married, it wouldn’t be good for you either.”

“What do you mean?”

“All the people I’ve loved,” Dejun says, “and even now, all the people I would have loved and now won’t get the chance to meet, they still take up so much space in my heart. That’s never not going to be the case. Could you really live with that?”

Yangyang stops for a beat to consider this. “I’ve already lived with it for this long, haven’t I?”

“But would you still say that after five years? Ten?” Dejun says.

“Hey, we tricked them once, we can do it again,” Yangyang says. “The arrow was only used on you, right?”

“Oh, I’m well aware of that,” Dejun says, jerking his head in the direction of his bandaged shoulder. His commitment to his indignation even at a time like this makes Yangyang smile.

“Okay, well you don’t need to be like that about it. It was a rhetorical question.”

“It was a stupid question.”

“Fine. It was a stupid question. Can I continue now?”

“You may proceed,” Dejun says with the air of a haughty sovereign, nose in the air and all. Yangyang has to suppress a “Thank you, Your Highness” before he picks back up where he left off.

“So let’s say down the line—one, five, ten years from now—one of us decides that he can’t be with the other person anymore. Well, the arrow might have tied you down to me, but that never guaranteed that I’d stay with you.”

Dejun raises an eyebrow, intrigued.

“So if hypothetically, one day, you have to leave me, and Ten comes calling to ask me why you’re not around anymore, I’ll tell him that I just fell out of love with you. And you were heartbroken, of course, because I’m such a catch—” Yangyang has to break for laughter as Dejun smacks him on the side of the head, “but I just couldn’t go on living a lie. Then I’d say that even though I appreciated everything he’d done for me, at the end of the day the heart wants what it wants. Then I’m sure he’d say something derisive about how humans are so fickle and they’ll never be happy with what they’re given, and I’d nod along and look very ashamed of my actions and then… that’d be that.”

Dejun presses him. “And what about if you’re the one who decides to leave? What then?”

“Then… well, I guess it’d just be the same scenario, only without the lying.”

“What about after that? What happens if Aphrodite decides she doesn’t want us to get away a second time and she just kills us both anyway?”

“Okay, that’s a tough one, I’ll admit,” Yangyang says. “But given enough time, I’m sure the two of us can put our heads together and come up with something.” He kneels down to better meet Dejun’s eyes. “Do you really want to spend our time like this, though? Planning out the details of how it’s going to end?”

“…No,” Dejun admits. He closes his eyes, takes a shuddering breath, then reopens them. “You’re right. Maybe we won’t make each other happy in the end.” He tilts his head up to stare at the rafters, the bones of the house. “But I do know that being here already makes me unhappy.” He struggles to stand and puts his arm around Yangyang’s shoulder, resting his head in the crook of Yangyang’s neck. “Let’s go,” he whispers. “Let’s just go, right now. I can’t stand to even look at this place anymore.” He loosens his embrace so he can take Yangyang’s hand, which he tugs on as he turns and starts to walk toward the door. Yangyang doesn’t move. “What?” Dejun asks.

“Don’t you think we should get our things in order first or something?”

“I don’t care,” Dejun says. He yanks on Yangyang’s arm like he’s trying to bring a disobedient dog to heel. “And if you love me, you won’t make me stay in a place where all I feel is pain.”

Yangyang stays fixed where he stands, sturdy as a tree. “I’m not asking you to stay here,” he says. “Just give me some time to make sure we have everything we need before we set out. Let’s not make our lives harder out of spite, you know?”

Dejun drops his hand. “Fine,” he says. He crouches down to the floor and picks up the pomegranate with his good arm. He looks down at it with a sour expression. “Guess I can never eat these again. They just had to go and ruin one more thing for me, didn’t they? I bet they’re both laughing at me right now.” He hurls the pomegranate out the window, then repeats the action with the rest of the fruits in the basket which, once, empty, he tosses into the fireplace. Finally, he collapses back into his seat, fierce eyes trained on Yangyang. “Come here.”

Yangyang obeys.

“I’m not letting them ruin you for me too.”

Yangyang thinks he could cry with gratitude. “That’s good,” he chokes out.

Dejun beckons him closer with a crook of his finger. The floor creaks beneath Yangyang as he shifts his weight to lean in and put his lips to Dejun’s. “More,” Dejun whispers against him.

Kissing feels a little unbalanced with one of Dejun’s arms lying limply at his side; Yangyang can’t hold him like he wants. He knows, though, that Dejun must have it so much worse, being unable to love like he wants. Yangyang holds Dejun’s right hand by the fingertips, like he’s guiding him in a dance, careful not to jostle his bad arm. He tastes the memory of pomegranate. His tongue already misses the flavor but he knows Dejun is right; they can never eat those again.

Dejun smells like his house, or maybe it’s the other way around: linen, incense, candle wax. He thinks of how Dejun used to lie in his room, holding Yangyang’s sheets in a desperate attempt to remember his scent before it faded. He’s heard that of the five senses, supposedly scent is the one with the strongest ties to memory. One day, the perfume of this house will disappear from Dejun’s skin and clothes, and neither of them will notice until they’re walking past a different temple in a different city, when the vapor of burning incense will waft out of the entrance and transport them right back to each other’s arms as they huddled by the fireplace, reading together by candlelight.

Or maybe, gods forbid, Dejun will leave him, and even years after they’ve parted ways Yangyang’s heart will break every time he hears a sparrow sing, and every time he’ll still check the surroundings to see if Dejun will step out from some unassuming doorway to meet him. The one thing he’ll never have to worry about is mistakenly spotting Dejun in a crowd. Nobody else has his eyes, and nobody else has his voice.

Yangyang takes Dejun’s delicate ankle in his hand. He’s always thought Dejun was the perfect size to hold like this, and he just knows that all of Dejun’s previous lovers must have thought so too. Judging by the way Dejun shivered and curled his toes whenever Yangyang ran admiring hands over his waist, he had a strong suspicion Dejun was well aware of how they all felt. And, even when Yangyang was more angry with Dejun than anything during that period they were barely speaking to each other, when his gnawing jealousy was taken out of the mix, he’d still worried that someday Dejun would invite the wrong person in. And then that person would find Dejun’s wrists the perfect size not to hold, but to break, and his neck the perfect size to wrap fingers around. Yangyang starts to kiss Dejun’s neck as gratitude for the fact that it’s still here for him to kiss, and Dejun starts to take deep, rhythmic breaths in and out, like he’s in a trance.

As Yangyang continues to run his hand up the back of Dejun’s leg, he thinks about the snakes that had lain in wait for him in the grass, ready to take him the same way Eurydice had gone. And then Yangyang would have had no recourse, because he had been trained to fight, not to sing, and the only heart he’d ever moved was Dejun’s. Or perhaps those snakes would have wrapped themselves around his limbs, slithered into his cupped hands so he could hold them to admire the texture of their skin the same way he held his precious sparrows. He would have trusted them, welcomed them to occupy his body, and then they’d take their opportunity to sink their fangs into his neck at the same spot Yangyang has his lips right now. Yangyang bites down lightly in their place. This breaks the rhythm of Dejun’s breathing, which makes Yangyang feel like he’s breaking the spell over him, so he moves to Dejun’s collarbone and bites again.

“Stop,” Dejun says, nearly falling out of his chair as he shoves Yangyang away. “It hurts too much.”

“Oh. God, Dejun, I’m sorry…”

“No, it wasn’t you, it’s just…” Dejun turns his face away from Yangyang in shame. “Everything hurts so badly and I don’t understand how my heart can be smaller but I still feel so much more pain.”

Yangyang crawls to his side and rests his head against Dejun’s chair. “I don’t know either,” he says. “But I’ll carry some of your pain if you let me.”

Dejun wipes the last of his tears away. “You have one day,” he says. “Or Bella and I leave without you.”

Yangyang looks over the house one last time, committing it to memory. He’s already imagining what its insides are going to look like covered in a layer of dust. Maybe someday, somebody else will come upon it and breathe life into it again, clear out the remains of the basket in the fireplace. He’d used the heat from its embers to keep Dejun warm last night, just sitting before the fireplace and holding him in his lap.

“I love you,” Dejun had recited over and over. “Love you, I love you, I love you.”

“You don’t need to tell me; I know.”

“But if I don’t survive the night,” Dejun said, “I want it to be the last thing I say to you.”

“Don’t be dramatic.” Yangyang had said it in an attempt to lighten the mood, but his heart wasn’t in it, and Dejun must have known, because he continued to tell Yangyang he loved him until he fell asleep.

For all his pessimism however, Dejun has survived worse things than the unknown, so he walks outside to meet Yangyang now with Bella at his side. Their footfalls are the only sound; it’s so quiet without the sparrows to greet him. Dejun doesn’t look back, doesn’t even look at Yangyang as he passes him with a curt “Let’s go.” Yangyang soaks the landscape in for a few more moments on Dejun’s behalf so that he can describe it for him in case he ever wants to reminisce. Then he gives it a quick bow as thanks for all the happiness it’s given Dejun over the years, because he knows the house isn’t the one to blame for his suffering, and it shouldn’t have to carry that burden. His business with it finished now, he jogs after Dejun to follow him into their new life together. As they navigate through the trees, now bereft of life, Yangyang daydreams about the day they’ll be walking along a secluded path in some distant forest, and he’ll look up to see a sparrow flitting from branch to branch just behind them, waiting for Dejun to see it and say hello.