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“Are you scared?” Lin Qiushi’s voice is soft. It settles around him like the bedding, feathers and dust.
Ruan Nanzhu watches his face. There are lines between his brows, shadows in his eyes. He will watch them for as long as he can. He will watch them until nothing else is left.
So much data can be transferred in the space of a blink. They count their life together in minutes, not years.
Beside him, Lin Qiushi’s arm rests next to his, matching strings around their wrists, matching beads of raw obsidian. The black stone is dull in the orange light.
The lamp flickers a little. Not enough that anyone else would notice, but Ruan Nanzhu is not anyone else. He shakes his head, lifts his fingers from the covers and traces the edge of Lin Qiushi’s mouth. Along Lin Qiushi’s jaw, the muscles are tense; held so still they cannot shake.
“I have only existed for a short time.” He replies, quietly, “I am not afraid of not existing again.”
Lin Qiushi swallows, his eyes red at the corners. Ruan Nanzhu wants to kiss him, wants to hold him until he smiles again. If only he could rewind the year, watch the tears roll back up Lin Qiushi’s cheeks, soothe away the tension in his jaw the way he can smooth down the pillowcases.
On the bedside table, the lamp flickers again, insistent. The hands of the clock jerk forward. On their wrists, the bracelets are less dull than before. Their gleam is still weak, though. Weaker than the lines of the mattress, the headboard, the walls.
If only he were not himself, he would not notice.
“I can hear your heart.” Lin Qiushi whispers. He presses his palm forward, against Ruan Nanzhu’s chest. “It is beating too fast for me to believe that.”
Ruan Nanzhu closes his eyes. He knows the pattern of Lin Qiushi’s fingertips, the code of his DNA. To have them touching him should be only another piece of knowledge, another line of binary numbers. Should is such a useless word.
He listens to the quiet, seeing if he can also hear what Lin Qiushi hears. Downstairs, the microwave runs, an electronic hum; Chen Fei heating their evening meal. The clock ticks on the wall.
He cannot hear their heartbeats.
“You cannot tell the difference between fear and desire?” He murmurs, his voice hoarse, “And here I was putting my faith in you.”
Through his eyelids, he sees the light flicker again. This time, Lin Qiushi’s breath catches on it, his hand flinching against the fabric of Ruan Nanzhu’s clothes.
“It is almost time.” Lin Qiushi says.
They could go to sleep here. Wake up together, Lin Qiushi’s hand against his beating heart. They could tell each other stories about the future, the pillows pressed against their ears muffling the words.
When he opens his eyes, the stones on their wrists are glowing bright, scattering spots of light over the bedding. They glisten on Qiushi’s cheeks, refract across his nose. Ruan Nanzhu kisses him and tastes salt against his tongue.
Together, they rise from the bed. Ruan Nanzhu hands Qiushi his hoodie, pulls on his own jacket. In the pocket, a note curls around the darkness there. Two will go, one will return.
They open the bedroom door and the white swallows them.
In the blinding light of the in-between, this liminal space where nothing exists, Ruan Nanzhu presses his palms against his eyes. Breathes in, out. He can still see the afterimage of Lin Qiushi’s face. Beneath his eyelids, it fractures, splinters, swirls.
He drops his hands and adjusts his cufflinks. Then he steps forward.