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When Lan Huan became a big brother, he was just about to start elementary school. Up until that point, he had been the one his mother doted on every waking moment. He remembers his mother’s worried expression as she explained to him that she would not be able to play with him that much because babies needed a lot of time and care. In the end, she didn’t have to worry. Lan Huan felt so grown, so proud, when his mother placed the tiny human in his arms for the first time.
“This is your little brother, Lan Zhan. Be careful, you need to support his head. Like that, good.”
Lan Huan looked into that tiny, serious face and those light eyes, the shade of their mother’s, and decided that he would protect Lan Zhan with his life.
As soon as their mother came back home from the hospital with Lan Zhan, Lan Huan was never alone again. He carried the often screaming, more often biting baby everywhere. He only went to elementary school for a few weeks before his father decided the classes weren’t suitable for his prodigy of a son and hired a tutor to homeschool him.
From then on Lan Zhan slept on a cushioned chair next to Lan Huan during most of his classes. While Lan Zhan loved his mother and clung to her, too, he fell asleep the fastest in his brother’s arms. After a while he even stopped biting Lan Huan’s hand and gnawed on his clothes instead, a privilege every other member of the Lan family more than envied.
Like this, the first few years passed. Lan Zhan started to walk, but he still clung to his brother’s leg. He didn’t seem curious about the world the way other children did, never ran off, never did anything without his mother or Lan Huan prompting him. At four years old, he also didn’t speak.
Lan Huan was the only one not worried about it. While his parents took Lan Zhan to see a different specialist every month, Lan Huan knew that his brother understood everything he told him. He learned to write long before entering school simply by copying Lan Huan. If he didn’t want to speak, Lan Huan saw no reason to force him to.
Even when he grew older, Lan Zhan tended to only speak the bare minimum, but Lan Huan always understood. Inside the thick walls of the Lan family’s mansion, it was only ever the two brothers keeping each other company.
Lan Xichen smiles. The minutes go by as he watches the clock on the pale-yellow wall from the safety of his bed. There aren’t a lot of other things to do outside of therapy sessions and community hours.
Every first Sunday of the month is visiting day. In five years, that’s 60 days. Not a lot, compared to the remaining 1766. Today is special, because it’s the last one.
When Lan Huan was thirteen, his mother left. At least, that’s what his father told him at the time. He made it seem like she had packed her bags and ran off with another man, and that’s what Lan Huan believed, until his father vanished, too, half a year later, and left Lan Zhan and him in the care of their uncle.
Only then did he learn that his mother had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where her children would have been able to visit her if their father had let them. He didn’t, and by the time they learned the truth, it was too late. She was gone.
Lan Zhan, still a child, took it harder. Night after night he climbed into Lan Huan’s bed and clung to him in his sleep, silent tears dampening Lan Huan’s shirt.
Almost five years ago, Lan Huan sat in a room with white walls, decorated with tasteful art prints. The man opposite him asked question after question while jotting down things on his notepad. Some of the questions were familiar, used by every new doctor he saw. Some of them were new, added as they got to know him better and tried to venture deeper into his mind.
Name?
Lan Huan.
Age?
32.
Occupation?
Physiotherapist.
Drinking? Smoking? Use of illegal substances?
Rarely. No. No.
It dragged on like that. Until there was a question Lan Huan wasn’t able to answer as easily.
Any family history of mental illness?
Lan Huan knew there was. There had to be. His mother stayed and died at a place just like this, maybe this exact place, he had no way of knowing. Nobody had bothered to tell him anything back then. After all, he had just been a child.
The medication he had been given as an emergency measure made it hard to think. He was tired all the time. He knew he was here because he had done something terrible, but emotionally, he had no connection to it.
The doctor looked towards the clock on the wall. An hour had passed. “Great. Your answers were very clear. I’m glad to see you’re doing better. The medication seems to be working fine, but if there are any side-effects you are concerned about, you can bring them up with me or a nurse anytime. Okay?”
Still, it took months upon months until Lan Huan felt somewhat tethered to reality again. Schizophrenia, that’s what they told him eventually. A condition with a strong genetic component.
Only ten minutes to three now. Ten minutes until visiting hours. Ten minutes until his brother will walk through the door and life will make sense again. It’s been like this for the last five years.
Lan Huan is happy with what he has now. Maybe staying here for good would not have been such a bad ending. In the beginning, he was only able to see Lan Zhan in the community room, therapists or nurses keeping an eye on them. Even then, seeing him was the one thing he was looking forward to.
But he was told that if he got better, he would be allowed to live in another building with less surveillance, more like an apartment than a bedroom in a hospital. Of course, he would still have to attend his therapy sessions and someone would watch him take his medication every day, but he would be allowed to receive visitors in his own room and prepare some tea and simple food, at least with a blunt plastic knife.
The thought of being able to talk to Lan Zhan in private again, drink some tea with him and hug him – if his brother still let him – was his motivation to really try to get better. The hallucinations stopped as soon as the doctors found the right drugs and dosage, but the despair he felt after he realized what he had done stuck. Even now, Lan Huan sometimes feels as if he is being haunted by a ghost the shape of the man whose life he took.
The clock hits three and just a moment later, punctual as always, there’s a knock on the door. As soon as Lan Zhan steps into the room, Lan Huan wraps his arms around him and holds him tight. He can do that, now. Once, he was worried that his brother would never look at him the same way again, would flinch back from his eternally blood-stained hands. But on Lan Zhan’s first visit in his new room, he didn’t even hesitate to hug him. Lan Huan held back his tears and told him he had missed him. Lan Zhan didn’t reply, but the way he held him tighter was enough.
Half an hour later, after serving Lan Zhan his favorite green tea and leaving their shoelace-less sneakers on the floor next to the bed, they are resting on Lan Huan’s small mattress. On their sides and pressed together, the way they slept when they were children and Lan Zhan didn’t want to stay alone in his room, way too big and cold for a small child.
As adults, the bed is more cramped, but that’s really the only difference. Lan Huan sees nothing weird about it. But then, there are many things about their relationship that people with more typical childhoods would think of as weird.
With Lan Zhan in front of him, Lan Huan can only see the back of his head. It might just be his imagination, but he has always thought that Lan Zhan talks more freely when he doesn’t have to worry about eye contact.
Like every time, Lan Zhan talks about his family the most. “Wei Ying got promoted. I think I’ll stay home a bit more now to take care of A-Yuan.” Lan Huan can hear the gentleness in his voice when he pronounces his loved ones’ names. On the one hand, it makes him sad to know that his brother achieved everything he himself couldn’t. Lan Huan will never have a husband, will never have a son. There were once two people he saw a future with. One was taken away from him by a freak accident nobody could have prevented. The other one… Lan Huan doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t want the wave of guilt and self-hatred come crashing down on him again, not now.
He sinks his fingers into the soft fabric of Lan Zhan’s cashmere sweater and shuffles a little closer. When Lan Zhan comes to visit him, he dresses quite casually. Lan Huan doesn’t know what he wears in his daily life nowadays, but when he was younger, he preferred flowy silk pants, lace cardigans and beautiful jewelry. The clothes aren’t any cheaper now, and the color scheme has stayed the same, light blue, white, some beige. But he never wears jewelry when he comes to visit, he wears the softest fabrics and, of all things, sweatpants, something they weren’t even allowed to wear as children. It’s as if Lan Zhan dresses specifically for touching, for lying down in his bed, for comfort.
“Didi… I’m so glad you have them.”
That’s the other half of what he feels when Lan Zhan talks about his family. There was a time, almost a decade ago, when his brother’s happiness seemed so out of reach. Lan Huan used to drive him to the hospital all the time, waiting outside while Lan Zhan sat at his then-boyfriend’s bed. Sometimes he heard his voice, “Wei Ying, please wake up. I can’t live without you. I won’t.”
Hearing his baby brother, still a teenager, in this much pain, broke Lan Huan’s heart. When Lan Zhan was a child, their mother used to worry about him never finding a wife. He just seemed so different. She shouldn’t have worried at all. Wei Ying got introduced to them as the adopted son of a family friend. He took one look at Lan Zhan, decided he was interesting and never left him alone again.
With Wei Ying in the hospital, Lan Huan did everything he could to help. He wasn’t enough reason for Lan Zhan to smile again, but at least he was enough reason to stay alive.
It took more than a year, but Wei Ying woke up. Miraculously, there was no brain damage, he was able to speak, and he recognized Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan proposed to him the same week.
So more than anything, Lan Huan is happy that Lan Zhan has a family who loves him.
Lan Zhan hums. “I’m glad I have them, too. But… you, too, ge. You’re my family, too.”
Lan Huan blinks a stray tear away. “I’ll be out a week from now, can you imagine. And maybe I’ll never find a job again, maybe I’ll always lie on your couch and eat your food and be horrible. You really don’t have to let me live with you. Also… is Wei Ying really okay with it? What if he just says so because he doesn’t want to fight with you?”
From the beginning, Lan Zhan told him that he would be able to live with him after leaving the clinic. Now, that the idea is so close to becoming reality, Lan Huan finds it hard to accept so much kindness. After all, what has he done to deserve it?
Lan Zhan turns around and presses his forehead to Lan Huan’s chest, the way he used to when they were children and he was still a head shorter.
”Wei Ying knows what it means to have a brother.”
For a minute, they only breathe together. When he continues, Lan Zhan’s voice is very quiet.
”You would have done the same for me.”