Work Text:
Yuan Hong did not consider himself a particularly unhappy man.
Unhappy were the people who lost their families. Those whose homes were taken from them by war. The children begging on the streets of Beijing, the widows waiting for husbands who would never return, the police officers killed during raids. Compared to them, his life seemed... ordinary. He had chosen this path himself. He had decided of his own accord to devote his life to service. He had no right to complain.
He simply could no longer remember when he had last laughed sincerely.
His days looked almost exactly the same. He woke before dawn, drank bitter tea, went through the reports from the previous night, and then headed to the station, where more cases, more bodies, and more families demanding answers were waiting for him. In the evenings, he returned to an empty apartment, took off his coat, and sat down at his desk to go through the documents he had not managed to read during the day.
That was what his life looked like.
There was no room in it for anything more.
At least, that was what he thought.
+++
The first time he noticed it happened entirely by accident.
Zhao Shaoshang had just finished explaining why the murderer could not possibly have come from the south of the country, because he had used a particular expression incorrectly in a note written on a scrap of paper. He spoke quickly, visibly excited, gesturing so energetically that he nearly knocked a porcelain cup off the desk.
Yuan Hong caught it on instinct.
“You saved it,” Shaoshang exclaimed, delighted.
“So it seems,” Yuan Hong replied calmly.
“Thank you. It was a family heirloom.”
“You were about to throw it at the suspect a moment ago,” Yuan Hong pointed out matter-of-factly.
“That’s different,” Shaoshang answered at once.
Yuan Hong looked at him.
Shaoshang stared back with absolute seriousness.
He lasted perhaps two seconds.
Then he let out a laugh himself.
Brief.
Quiet.
Barely noticeable.
Shaoshang froze.
“Did you... just smile?”
Yuan Hong immediately restored his expression to its usual stony calm.
“No,” he denied quickly.
“You smiled.”
“You imagined it.”
“I swear you smiled,” Shaoshang insisted, refusing to give up.
“You have a very vivid imagination.”
For the rest of the day, Shaoshang told everyone at the station that a miracle had occurred. Apparently, Yuan Hong was capable of laughing.
+++
He did not know when it had begun to change.
At first, it was barely noticeable. The corner of his mouth would lift ever so slightly whenever Shaoshang launched into another absurd story or, with absolute confidence, presented a theory so ridiculous that anyone else would have assumed he was joking.
The worst part was that he was usually right.
Later, Yuan Hong started catching himself looking automatically for the familiar figure before entering an interrogation room. As if Shaoshang’s presence had become part of his daily routine. Something as obvious as the holster fastened to his belt or the weight of his badge in his pocket.
Whenever Young Master Zhao was nowhere nearby, the station seemed strangely quiet.
Too quiet.
+++
“Why are you smiling again?”
Yuan Hong looked up from the documents.
“I’m not smiling.”
“You are.”
“No.”
Shaoshang narrowed his eyes, wearing the expression of a scholar examining an exceptionally complicated artifact.
“That’s interesting,” Shaoshang murmured after a moment.
“What is?”
“You know, I used to think you couldn’t...”
“Couldn’t what?” Yuan Hong asked, for some reason feeling as though he had just lost an argument he had not even realized existed until now.
“Smile.”
“I can.”
“You don’t do it very often.”
Yuan Hong returned his attention to the reports.
“I see no reason to do it more often.”
A moment later, he heard a quiet laugh.
“That’s funny.”
“What now?”
“Because ever since we met, you’ve smiled almost exclusively around me.”
The pen stopped above the paper.
For a second.
Perhaps two.
Yuan Hong did not answer.
Not because he did not want to.
Because he could not.
+++
It was only several days later that he realized something far more troubling.
They were walking down the street after finishing an investigation. The case was closed, the guilty man had been taken into custody, and the residents could finally breathe easily again. He should have felt satisfied.
Instead, he was listening to Shaoshang enthusiastically talk about a newly opened teahouse that supposedly served the best sesame cakes in all of Beijing.
“You have to try them.”
“I’m not fond of sweets.”
“That’s because you’ve been eating the wrong ones.”
“They all taste more or less the same.”
Shaoshang stopped abruptly.
“Yuan Hong.”
He sighed.
“What?”
“That is the saddest sentence I’ve heard all week.”
Yuan Hong looked at him questioningly.
“They all taste the same? How can you say something like that? That’s like claiming all books are the same, or that every painting looks identical.”
“They’re only cakes.”
“No. It’s a philosophy of life.”
Yuan Hong did not understand a single word of that statement.
And yet...
He laughed.
Louder this time.
For real.
Shaoshang fell silent.
He stared at him for a moment with the expression of someone who had just witnessed the rarest astronomical phenomenon.
“See?” he said at last, quiet satisfaction in his voice. “I knew it.”
“Knew what?”
“That you should laugh more often. It definitely suits you.”
Yuan Hong looked away.
He did not want Shaoshang to notice how strangely warm his chest had suddenly become.
+++
That evening, he could not fall asleep for a long time.
He lay on his back, staring at the dark ceiling of his apartment, trying to remember the last time he had come home and his first thought had not been about an unsolved case.
Today had been different.
He thought about the way Shaoshang had taken offense over the cakes.
How he had tried to convince a street vendor that police officers should receive discounts.
How he had spent a good ten minutes pretending to be mortally offended, only to start chattering endlessly again a moment later.
Yuan Hong closed his eyes.
The corners of his mouth lifted almost imperceptibly.
Only then did he understand.
All his life, he had believed happiness was something grand. A reward for hard work. A moment of triumph after solving the most difficult case. Something that had to be earned.
He had been wrong.
Happiness turned out to be a person.
A little too loud.
A little too curious.
A little too stubborn.
A person who could make him laugh with a single sentence and somehow make even the hardest day feel a little lighter.
His little piece of happiness.
And Yuan Hong, who had spent most of his life learning not to expect too much from fate, suddenly realized that there was one thing he feared more than anything else.
That one day, he would wake up, go to the station...
...and would not hear that familiar voice greeting him from the doorway with yet another completely absurd idea.
Because only then would his world become exactly what it had once been.
Quiet.
Empty.
And without happiness.