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Everyone knew that Wumuti and Rui had broken up, just like everyone knew they were once the best friends in the world. The cabaret was a tiny little place, leaving no room for secrets. Almost overnight, the looks cast their way added an extra layer of pity.
Wumuti and Rui had known each other for five years. In the industry where people come and go swiftly, that kind of bond was so rare that you could almost call it loyalty.
When they first started out, they were both young and penniless, and neither knew how to apply makeup properly. The only thing they understood was slapping on cheap cosmetics bought from discount stores before stepping onto the stage. During performances, sweat would wash away their foundation, leaving streaks of white on their cheeks and necks, while smudged eye makeup made them look like they had been beaten up. After work, they washed their faces at the steel sinks in the restroom. Cold water made their hands swell and burn, and their faces flushed red from scrubbing. Looking up at each other, they couldn’t help but both laugh out loud.
Afterwards, they would sit by the ventilation shaft outside their dorm room to eat a late-night snack. One shared pot of ramen, barely enough either of them even after licking the bowl clean. Wumuti often lay awake in bed, too hungry to sleep. After tossing and turning a few times, he would be scolded by his coworker on the bunk above him. Fuming, he thrown on his jacket and headed out, only to find Rui crouched by the back door, tapping on a tiny pixel game in his phone.
Their reversed day-and-night schedule gave them the illusion of existing outside the real world. As daylight crept in, the two huddled together bleary-eyed, chatting while staring down at their knees and shoe tips pressed side by side. Their shoulders and arms brushed against each other, so warm and comforting that neither of them could bear to move an inch. Their minds were foggy; they chatted enthusiastically yet the topics drifted aimlessly here and there. Only when one grew too drowsy to keep up did they tiptoe back inside.
Later, they learned to smoke. After all, whatever guests left on the table was free for the taking. Cigarettes could repress hunger, but the taste was unbearable. Leaning against the door, they took turns sharing a cigarette, a scene suggestive of something faintly obscene that it was hard to watch. While smoking, Wumuti would recount dishes from his hometown as if they were not miserable enough. Rui exhaled into the air, enduring the lingering tobacco taste in his mouth. He craved something sweet instead—perhaps they were simply born without the talent to pretend to be adults.
Yet standing in the cold dawn, laughing softly and taking turns kissing the same filter tip, their intimacy felt like something special and irreplaceable. Stripped of heavy makeup, wrapped in baggy hoodies and sweatpants, eyes bloodshot after removing contacts, witnessing each other’s most vulnerable moments, as if seeing each other naked.
There was a number one rule in the industry that everyone was warned from the start: one should never get too close to coworkers no matter how lonely or despair it may feel. But Wumuti and Rui refused to believe in such superstitions. They were recklessly confident, certain that their bond could break this curse, that nothing could truly turn them against each other. They were inseparable, sharing everything, even when it came to tips. Rui was a master of playing cute and innocent. “You gave it all to him? What about mine?” This trick never failed. Wumuti stared at the bills messily jammed between Rui’s boot cuffs and stocking laces, thinking that if he had money, he would cash out every last note in the country just to fill an artificial lake for him, letting the bills cascade down like a waterfall, soaking him from head to toe.
Past midnight, overhead spotlights and restless drumbeats dampened their foreheads and rattled their eardrums, like a low fever that refused to break. Hungry stares tangled at their feet. Faces blurred in the dark, yet gazes remained sharp and greedy, crawling up their legs like viscous threads, stretching translucent filaments through the air. Wumuti couldn’t help but chuckle softly. This is our habitat, he thought. Their paradise is ours as well.
The backstage of the cabaret was painted a deep scarlet throughout. Old graffiti lay buried beneath newer paint of a slightly different shade. The plaster peeled and cracked from dampness, with corners patched with duct tape. The space was suffocatingly hot, dim, and choked with clutter like a worn-out uterus.
Wumuti and Rui helped each other unzip and untie the straps at their backs, where faint red marks had sunk into their skin. Their undershirts and underwear were soaked with sweat, clinging to their bodies. Rui pressed tissues under his armpits to absorb the dampness, then quickly pulled his clothes back on. The perfume he sprayed on his neck and wrists before going onstage still lingered a faint trace. After making sure he didn’t smell bad, he sat down on the floor relievedly.
“Does it feel embarrassing to go onstage dressed like this?” Wumuti asked suddenly. He watched Rui stretch with flexibility that almost made his body look contorted. “Or is work just work?”
Rui lay flat on the floor, propped on his elbows as he pondered silently for a moment. Whether from exhaustion or something else, he seemed far calmer than usual. “It’s not really about liking it or not,” he said at last, tilting his chin towards the stage costume lying beside him. The corset and flared pants with intricate patterns were piled there untouched like the shed skin of a snake in the woods. “Even though I’m here now, part of me is still there.”
The words carried more weight than the tone implied, though Wumuti was not in the mood for a serious conversation at that moment. He paused briefly, waiting for the distant laughter of their fellow dancers to subside. “Of course. You’re beautiful, everything looks good on you.”
Rui seemed satisfied with this response. He ran a hand through his hair with an exaggerated manner. “You’re welcome. You’re beautiful too.” When he smiled, his eyes and brows smiled with him.
Watching that slightly childish grin, Wumuti couldn’t help but laugh as well. Yet at that very moment, an unexpected wave of bitterness rose up to his throat, like accidentally biting into a hidden spice while eating, leaving his entire mouth numb. He suddenly realized that this was a moment worth remembering. The next time he recalled it, he might have already lost everything in front of him. He shook his head, pretending to brush his hair back, as if to shake the thought away. He was not a sentimental person. He would never allow emotions to control him.
Fortunately, they later came to understand that doing makeup was not simply slapping cosmetics on their faces, and Wumuti clearly made a mark when it came to this. He summoned all his courage to step into a proper makeup store for the first time. The lights, music, and fragrances in the store fused into a sensory dream that gently enveloped him, quickly blurring his vision. Tracing it back, he realized a part of himself had been born within that dream. There, his lips, lashes, and brows assembled a face that felt slightly unfamiliar yet utterly real—not a fantasy, not the reflection that captivated him in front of shop windows—even if this reality could only linger briefly in a small mirror above his dorm bed.
As he raised an eyebrow, fluttered his lashes, and slowly licked his lips at his own reflection, a mixture of euphoria and shame churned together inside him, like milk curdling with acid. Eyeliner became armor, guarding eyes that shed tears; lipstick became a weapon, granting these beautiful lips the power to take lives. Only then did he understand that makeup was not just adornment, but a shield between his raw self and the coldness of the world. With armor like this, he could be invincible.
From the moment he took the first step, Wumuti had tasted the sweetness of endless possibilities and driven to explore further. With a mix of fear and resolve, he ventured into shores he had once deliberately avoided. He could no longer tell whether the strange looks he thought he noticed had truly been there, or whether it was his own mind trying to torment him. He asked himself how far he dared to go. What if—just what if—he could exist beyond the stage or that small mirror beneath his bunk bed?
For the first time, he pulled on a cropped shirt, a plain maxi skirt and a pair of ankle boots with heels. His hair had grown long enough to pull into a ponytail, just right for a few small hair clips. None of those was nearly as bold or flamboyant as the costumes he wore onstage, yet he saw something so unassumingly authentic in them. If he allowed himself to imagine further, he could picture a life lived like this. When looking into the mirror, he seemed to sense a faint electric current rippling through his body. He could recognize this very moment immediately: it was the same feeling he knew as a child, when he tied a jacket around his waist and let it flare like a skirt as he spun. Looking back now, he was surprised how he suppressed that simple, harmless longing for so long.
Before every performance, Wumuti always finished dressing early. He would sit on a prop box backstage and watch Rui struggle across the room, staring into the mirror as he fumbled at his eyelids with a makeup brush. Independent practice was important, Wumuti thought, but sometimes Rui’s clumsy techniques were truly painful to watch. Unable to stand it any longer, he strode over and snatched the brush from his hand. “Well, now, leave the rest to me.”
He gently wiped away the smeared eyeshadows beneath Rui’s eyes before redrawing them. In truth, Wumuti had little experience doing makeup for others. His confidence was merely a bluff. Yet he felt something so important in what he was doing, as if he tried hard enough, Rui would understand what was on his mind telepathically.
Rui sank into the armchair, forced to meet Wumuti’s gaze only inches away. Those eyes, framed by a pair of alluring winged eyeliners and softened by contacts that made them seem almost teary, held his captive. The sight of those heart-stirring earrings jiggling in front of him only made it even harder for him to fix his mind in place.
“Look up,” Wumuti urged.
An emotion so hard to articulate had taken place between those two pairs of pupils. He didn’t know what exactly made him so restless, but he knew eyes never lie. But if he had something to say, why not just say it? Rui walked onto the stage with tangled feelings. When the lights came up, he forced himself to put everything else aside, for now.
Unfortunately, secrets had already long existed. Everything had unfolded sooner, deeper, and more tangled than either of them had imagined.
Wumuti loathed that something-I-have-to-tell-you ritual, the very thought alone gave him a headache. “Not just when performing on stage, I want to dress like this in my everyday life.” “Oh, so you want to be a woman?” Having to endure conversations like that with everyone around him felt worse than just sticking his head under a car wheel. More importantly, he could ignore the rest of the world if he had to, but Rui’s reaction was the only thing mattered. He knew deeply that he would receive understanding and support, but somehow the irrational anxiety inside him still stopped him from sharing his feelings with Rui like he usually did. He couldn’t bring himself to discuss these things without trivializing them as jokes, even when they actually mattered to him deeply. But why? He hadn’t done anything wrong. Why did he always feel the need to hide them all, as if he was committing a crime?
Rui never called attention to it. When they met, he greeted him with the same easy smile as always. “New earrings? They look pretty.” After work, they washed off their makeup together. Wumuti noticed a faint distraction in Rui’s weary voice. “I’m going to sleep. I have things to do tomorrow.” Rui covered his face with his fingers and yawned lightly. “You should get some sleep too.” With makeup washed away, his delicate features were clearly overtaken by fatigue. Wumuti didn’t dare to add another word. There was no prelude, no hint of an approaching storm, no one naming what had shifted. It was just that suddenly, both of them seemed to have more important things to do.
Everyone knew that Wumuti and Rui had been the best friends in the world, just as everyone knew they suddenly broke up. People assumed the cause to be an audition happened last month, where Rui was accepted into a professional dance group. If he performed well during the probationary period, he would become a full-time member. Just as he had planned when he came alone to this unfamiliar city, he would finally become a real dancer. It was an ending that everyone had expected. Rui was simply too perfect. Anyone who had seen him dance could not help but question why he chose to stuck here with everyone else.
A colleague, oblivious to the underlying tension, asked: “You two were close. Won’t you feel lonely now that Rui is gone?” Wumuti shrugged. “He deserves that job. If he wants, they should even make him the principal.” As the words left his mouth, a surge of bitterness suddenly arose to his cheeks. “It’s the cabaret’s loss,” he added, “to lose such an outstanding dancer.”
Jealousy was an ugly color, capable of ruining everything once beautiful and precious. Yet Wumuti could never believe that he felt jealous of Rui. They were the most important friends of each other, and the word “jealousy” seemed to have erased all the intimacy, sincerity, and trust that had once bound them together. Wumuti felt a complex blend of emotions slowly scorching his insides, and jealousy wasn’t even a huge part of them.
He had believed that this place was their paradise. Even almost everything about it was money and lust, stepping onto this stage still brought him unprecedented euphoria. He had believed Rui felt the same. He had believed he was fortunate enough to walk side by side with his best friend on such a rare path in life. Watching Rui apply lipstick in front of the mirror or fix his skirt before taking a seat, Wumuti had mistakenly thought they were resonating on the same frequency. He desperately wanted it to be true. But only now did he belatedly realize that what Rui truly cherished was simply being a dancer and dancing on the stage. The role of playing Wumuti’s soulmate was merely a stepping stone on his journey toward his true dream.
Wumuti imagined every detail, as if to torture himself: Rui returning the dorm after work, napping for a few hours, then riding the subway through the morning rush to his second job at a dance studio. Between classes, he would practice his own works, using employee discounts to rent rooms to record prescreening tapes. When had he organized his life with such precision? So realistic and grounded, like any adult who would truly make something of their life. Comparing himself, Wumuti thought, his own future was only some blurry outlines of a dream—they would have a name and a stage truly belonged to themselves, a paradise of their own. Perhaps Rui wouldn’t be on this journey with him as he always imagined. After convincing himself, Wumuti realized that this might be his last chance to speak his mind without regard for consequences.
As the year coming to an end, the cabaret hosted its final grand show. Dancers and actors were all styled in festive faux fur and jangling jewelry. Wumuti’s costumes were a leather vest with a fur collar and matching leather pants. He adored this ensemble very much: the fluffy fur across his chest and hips softened his contours, while the open collar and bare waist were perfect for adding a few chains.
He raised his arms and danced a little in front of the mirror. As he turned, the fur scarf wrapped around his lower back dangled along. For a moment, he thought he glimpsed a cover lady of some vintage magazine in his own reflection—a sensual woman covered with furs and jewels, red lips and pearly teeth, long hair tied in a bun to reveal her delicate neck, her bare skin seemed pale and almost transparent with the dark fur collar around. The phantom flickered like lightning before vanishing. His mind snapped back into his body. He stood still, pressing the fur around his waist down as if suppressing a swaying tail. Nervously, he quickly checked the door through the mirror, terrified of someone witnessing the little fantasies in his head. On stage, he could do whatever he wanted freely. The spotlight was his protective membrane, like a second skin. But once offstage, the magic disappeared, and he feared being defined by those rigid, black-and-white standards that he never could relate.
When Wumuti entered the dressing room, the dancers chatting and laughing with Rui suddenly excused themselves to go outside for a smoke. With smirks of schadenfreude, they left the room as if they were on cue. Wumuti was half-pushed, half-dragged into the room and sat down on that prop box. But unusually, he hadn’t yet done his makeup that day.
“Hey,” Rui said awkwardly, lifting his eyes briefly in the mirror over his shoulder. “Everyone’s waiting for the drama. At least keep up appearances.”
Wumuti didn’t respond. Their gazes darting back and forth across the mirror like a tennis game. After torturing each other quietly for what felt like an eternity, Wumuti finally broke the silence. “Don’t use that brand of foundation again. It turns gray on your face within an hour.”
Rui sat motionless in front of the mirror for a moment longer. If you leaned close enough, you could almost hear the gears turning in his head. After a long time, just as Wumuti had given up hope on his earlier attempt to initiate a conversation, Rui suddenly stood up. He grabbed Wumuti by his arm and pulled him down from the prop box. Before Wumuti could resist, he was already pushed into the armchair in front of the mirror. Rui bended towards him, lifting his chin with a foundation brush. The tension finally melted from his face, replaced by a sly smile of satisfaction. “For the final performance tonight, it’s my turn to do your makeup.”
Wumuti sank into the chair, resigned to his fate, letting Rui paint across his face as how he wanted. His anger had long faded. Truthfully, he had no reason to be angry at all. What lingered within him was only a faint sense of bewilderment, as if he had finally escaped all the troubles and could now face himself honestly. He could see and feel those scarlet walls surrounding him, as if he were floating in a warm womb, before any memories had taken shape, not knowing the feeling of fear or anxiety.
“I don’t know if you still remember—” Wumuti suddenly spoke, as the beauty blender swept across his cheek, “I asked you then, if dressing like this made you feel embarrassed.” He pointed down at his exposed waist. “You said no, because part of you is in this.”
“I remember,” Rui replied softly.
“I didn’t tell you then,” Wumuti continued, his voice tinged with an emotion too subtle to be captured. His eyelashes shielded everything over his eyes like curtains. “What I meant to say was... all of me is in here. This is the real me.”
As if suddenly forgetting how to use his body, Rui forgot to breathe for a moment, the beauty blender between his fingers frozen in the air. He could remember that day vividly—the lace-patterned imprint on Wumuti’s back, his clumsy yet ambitious makeup, the eyes that always seemed to be holding some unnamed thoughts. Obvious clues and signals flooded into his memory—but if he had something to say, why not just speak it?
Suddenly caught in an embrace, Wumuti blinked in slight surprise. The fur collar of the leather jacket brushed against Rui’s neck and cheek. He held him so tightly, as if trying to embed himself into his body. Wumuti lifted his arms slowly onto Rui’s waist and back. His damp lashes stuck together, blurring his vision. That was when he came to a realization with despair: yes, he was afraid of facing the world all alone. He once thought himself strong and independent enough, not needing a future with anyone else, yet now he realized that he craved a hug during moments of vulnerability far more than feigning nonchalant when waving goodbyes.
“I don’t want to be apart from you,” Wumuti heard Rui murmur in a muffled nasal tone against his ear. The voice was so soft that he doubted for a moment whether it was just a hallucination out of his desperate longing.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the audition. I didn’t know how I’d face anyone if I didn’t make it.” His voice trembled slightly in the air; you can easily imagine the teary eyes behind that voice. “If I can’t prove myself with a shortlist, it feels like... as if my value as a dancer...”
How pathetic, Rui thought, to crave validation from the values and standards he did not even agree with. Being on the stage was indeed his biggest dream, but if it meant spending his life playing a role that wasn’t himself in a place where he was meant to love forever, wasn’t the price too heavy? He would be listed as a “male backup dancer” in the programs and credits, which was the dream and goal for many in their entire career. But why did something still feel off? Why was he still unsatisfied?
“I know. I know...” As if suddenly gaining the power of telepathy, Wumuti answered the unspoken part of Rui’s thoughts. For the first time in a long time, they looked into each other’s eyes and couldn’t help but laugh simultaneously when they actually did it. Their laughter held a hint of bitterness, but it was something genuine and real. “Don’t forget me after today. We will be on the stage together again, I promise. One day, I’ll make you an offer that you can’t refuse.”
At that moment, Rui didn’t yet grasp the full meaning of these words, but Wumuti already understood everything he desired. The yearning to create a new world stirred his heart, igniting a flame that blazed fiercely from within. The blurry outline of that dream rapidly took shape. As Rui’s makeup brush swept across his eyelids, Wumuti closed his eyes. He could see their future vividly in color. They could dance on a stage where their skirts, heels and makeup all would be parts of themselves and their expression, rather than labels used to diminish their worth. They would have a name they could proudly introduce to everyone. They would never need to be ashamed of who they were.
When their paradise could no longer hold us, I would create one of our own, Wumuti thought. The world is vast. Beyond their paradise lay ours.
The End
Since 2025.6.20