Chapter 36 – “I Want You to Love Me”
Novel Title: 一屋暗灯 (Ephemeral Light)
Author：麦香鸡呢 (McChicken)
Translator: K (@kin0monogatari)
Protagonists: 宋谨 (Song Jin -MC), 宋星阑 (Song Xinglan -ML)
*Please read at Novels Space.space, the original site of translation. TQ*
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Song Jin stayed at Tang Min’s house for half a month. He Hao often came over. The three of them would cook hotpot together. Sometimes Tang Min had to go back home to see relatives as summoned by his parents, and Song Jin would stay there alone with Grapefruit.
Song Jin knew in his heart that he could only hide for a while. However, everything on New Year’s Eve night made him unable to digest, whether it was Song Xinglan’s attitude or what he said. Song Jin couldn’t figure out his thoughts. He even sadly realised that Song Xinglan, who had regained his memory, at least did not use coercive means on him. For this, he inexplicably felt a trace of gratitude.
His demands on this younger brother of his were unexpectedly so low. So little.
On the Lantern Festival day, Tang Min had something to do during the day and would return for dinner. Song Jin bought flour and vegetables. In the evening, He Hao would also be coming over. Both of them knew Song Jin could cook, so they urged him to make tangyuan. Song Jin had never made tangyuan before. But under Tang Min and He Hao’s continuous praise, he could only say he would give it a try.
Actually, he had wanted to try making them earlier. When he was in the village, a neighbour made tangyuan once and brought a bowl over for him and Song Xinglan to taste. Song Xinglan ate one tangyuan in only two bites, quickly finishing it. He then wiped his mouth and said, “Ge, this is delicious. You’ll definitely make even tastier ones. Will you make some too?”
Song Jin said, “I’ll make some for you during the Lantern Festival.”
Song Xinglan asked, “How long is it until that?”
“Not long. A little over a month,” Song Jin replied.
Song Xinglan seemed to deflate entirely.
Later, Song Jin searched online for many recipes and methods. He had indeed thought about making delicious tangyuan for Song Xinglan during the Lantern Festival of the new year.
But now, no matter how he reminisced, all that came to mind was that cold and indifferent face. That cruel and mocking tone, the unchanging threats, and the controlling demeanour.
It’s not my fault, Song Jin thought. How could it be my fault? The contrast between then and now is so vast. I can’t blame myself for seeing them as two different people. They were always two different people.
“That purely heartfelt smiling face… I’ll never see it again in this lifetime.” Song Jin had dreamed a few times. He dreamt of someone calling him ‘Ge’ with a smile. But whenever he turned around, his vision turned into endless darkness. And then a hand would cover his eyes. The palm was ice-cold.
Every time, it was like this. The last time he had this dream, Song Jin had his eyes covered, hearing someone say beside his ear, “He won’t come back. Don’t expect to see him in your dreams either.”
The person who could say such things, without much thought, he already knew who it was.
Nothing is more absurdly tragic than being awakened by someone from reality. So after that, Song Jin never dreamed of Song Xinglan again. He was subconsciously afraid. He was afraid that one day in his dreams, the recovered Song Xinglan would destroy his own amnesiac self in front of him.
Song Jin felt like he was getting sick, cradling the illusion of dreams, guarding it carefully, to the point where he dared not dream of it again. He feared it would be cracked open by another person.
“Am I ridiculous?” Song Jin stood in front of the kitchen window. The winter sun shone through the glass onto his face in the afternoon. He looked down at Grapefruit sitting beside him, asking, “Would you also laugh at me?”
Grapefruit looked up at him as he flicked his tail and meowed.
The doorbell rang. Song Jin set down the vegetables he was holding and washed his hands. He thought it was Tang Min returning. However, as he walked to the door, Song Jin realised it was a keypad lock. So, Tang Min didn’t need to ring the doorbell at all.
He tried to look outside through the peephole. But it was blocked by a Chinese character pasted on the outside of the door. He couldn’t see anything.
“Who is it?” Song Jin stood inside the door and asked.
“It’s me.”
Such a simple word. But it hit Song Jin like a blow to the face. He felt a moment of suffocation in his nostrils, like being blocked, frozen in place. His heart seemed to explode into pieces. Yet at the same time, it clenched into a tight knot. It was impossible to describe.
“If you don’t open the door, we can wait for your friend to come home. Then, we can all chat together.” Song Xinglan’s voice came through the door. It was low yet distinctly clear with each word pronounced deliberately. “If I remember correctly, your friend saw us at the bar three years ago.”
“I remember we were kissing at the time. How did you explain it to him afterwards? You couldn’t possibly have told him I’m your brother.”
“I don’t mind telling him today.”
With a click, the lock of the door made a crisp sound. Song Jin opened the door, breathing heavily as he looked at Song Xinglan.
Song Xinglan lifted the corner of his mouth, forming a cryptic smile. He asked, “Avoiding me?”
As he said these words, he stepped forward. Song Jin instinctively stepped back and Song Xinglan walked into the living room. He closed the door behind him with a backward motion. His gaze was calm. But Song Jin couldn’t shake the feeling that a volcano could erupt from within him at any moment.
His heels hit the edge of the sofa, leaving Song Jin with nowhere to retreat. His voice trembled on the brink of collapse as he asked, “What do you want to do…”
“You promised to make tangyuan for me during the Lantern Festival,” Song Xinglan said, walking up to Song Jin and looking down at him. He was taking in his panic. He then said matter-of-factly, “Why are you hiding here now, making them for someone else?”
“I didn’t promise you that,” Song Jin said. His eyes were red as he stared directly at him. “The person I promised that to isn’t you.”
“How long are you going to deceive yourself, Song Jin?” Suddenly, Song Xinglan reached out and pushed Song Jin onto the sofa. He bent one knee to rest in between Song Jin’s legs, leaning over him with a hand on Song Jin’s waist. He stared into Song Jin’s eyes and said, “Stop lying to yourself, okay?”
Song Jin was wearing a light-coloured sweater and an apron, giving him a soft and vulnerable homey look. Yet in his eyes, there was a stubbornness that even he found absurd. He asked Song Xinglan, “Do you think you’re the same as him?”
“We’re the same person. Why wouldn’t we be the same?” Song Xinglan countered. “I’m the one who lived with you, the one who kissed you, the one who made love to you in bed. How are we not the same person?”
With his elbow propped on the sofa, Song Jin’s prominent Adam’s apple bobbed as he studied the face before him. Suddenly choked up as he said, “He never did things I disliked. He said he didn’t want to see me cry. He wanted me to be happy. He said he hoped I wouldn’t have to work so hard…”
As if shattering a beautiful dream with his own hands, those fleeting memories held a profound but fleeting place in Song Jin’s heart. He had tasted everything he had never experienced before, making it all unforgettable. He knew he was foolish and delusional. But he couldn’t deny that he was truly trapped in it. The more he thought back on it, the more he couldn’t extricate himself.
Tears slipped from the corners of his eyes, trailing down his flushed cheeks and mingling with his hair. Song Jin cried softly as he questioned Song Xinglan, “Do you think you have any resemblance to him at all? If you do, tell me where. If not, then get out of here. Or give him back to me. Can you give him back to me?”
Song Jin felt he was probably truly losing his mind, asking Song Xinglan for the return of the other him who could never return.
Song Xinglan looked down at him. Song Jin’s emotional outburst was like a jar of spilled glass marbles which were transparent and shattered. One could pick them up one by one, blow off the dust and hold them, or stomp on them and crush them completely.
“No,” Song Xinglan said, being the one who stomped on the glass marbles. “I can’t give him back to you. He’s dead.”
Song Jin wasn’t surprised by this response. His elbow gave way and he collapsed onto the sofa. He raised a hand to cover his eyes, which were streaming tears incessantly. More than anyone, he knew this answer well—from the moment Song Xinglan opened his eyes in the hospital, it was clear that the other person had already died at that very moment.
“Don’t hide here anymore.” Fragile sobs were close at hand. Song Xinglan reached out with a hand and gently pressed it against Song Jin’s hand. Warm tears flowed through Song Jin’s fingers, moistening Song Xinglan’s palm. He said, “Let me do it.”
“Whatever he promised you, I’ll fulfil them for you.”
After crushing the glass marbles, Song Xinglan then became the one who picked them up. Song Jin heard these words. He laughed and cried at the same time in disbelief, “How is that possible…”
He let go of his hand. His tear-streaked face was filled with a surreal sense of confusion. He laughed absurdly, tears continuing to fall. “Song Xinglan, don’t go crazy again…”
“I am him.” Song Xinglan calmly pierced through Song Jin’s obsession once more. “No matter how much you deceive yourself, Song Jin. I am him. It’s you who’s going crazy.”
“If you love him, it means you love your own brother,” Song Xinglan said, lifting Song Jin’s head by the nape of his neck and leaning in closer. “And your brother is me.”
“Then let me ask you…” Song Jin didn’t want to endlessly dwell on this question he couldn’t face. Half-closing his tear-stained eyes, he seemed to look directly at Song Xinglan but also through him as if he’s seeing someone else. He asked, “You promised me you would delete that video. Did you delete it?”
Song Xinglan looked at him. With his voice calm, he replied, “I deleted it three years ago.”
Upon hearing this answer, Song Jin surprisingly felt no sense of relief.
He didn’t understand why. And he could never understand why. Three years ago, Song Xinglan had played the entire video in front of him, threatening to send it to his boyfriend if he entered into a relationship, causing him to tremble with fear for three years. It felt like a dull thorn embedded in his heart, darkening and decaying, impossible to remove. And now, Song Xinglan casually told him that the video had been deleted three years ago.
His over a thousand days and nights of anxiety and fear had ultimately been nothing but a ludicrous self-torture.
The rotten thorn stirred fiercely in his flesh, unable to be pulled out. It instead dug deeper and caused more pain.
“Why… why…” Song Jin suddenly couldn’t breathe, gasping for air as if he had reached some edge. He had never felt so desperate before. Every step Song Xinglan took seemed careless, while he himself threaded cautiously as if on thin ice, manipulated by the other’s casual actions. He was layering himself with one shackle after another, drawing one stagnant prison after another.
“Why do you torment me like this…”
If tears could still flow before, now Song Jin could only stare with eyes where tears gathered but couldn’t fall, showing signs of drying up. He felt his sanity slipping. He was mentally disturbed, with countless thoughts he wanted to clarify, questions he wanted to ask, all tumultuously piling up in his mind. It felt like he was nearing death.
“Because I want you to hate me.” Suddenly, Song Xinglan lowered his head. His lips brushed against Song Jin’s cheek. He leaned close to Song Jin’s ear and whispered softly, “And I also want you to love me.”
At that moment, it felt like a torrential rain crashing down beside his ears, thoughts tracing back to a rainy night over a month ago when Song Xinglan had used the same tone. He was calm and straightforward: “I want you to love me.”
Outside, the sun shone brightly. But Song Jin felt drenched in a downpour.
Immediately, Song Xinglan stood up suddenly by the sofa, reaching out to grasp Song Jin’s shoulder and help him sit up. Just then, the door swung open. Tang Min and He Hao entered while chatting.
Lost in a daze, Song Jin hadn’t even heard the beep of the door code being unlocked outside. But Song Xinglan had heard it clearly and reacted seamlessly, without missing a beat.
Tang Min and He Hao were taken aback to see a stranger standing in the living room while Song Jin sat on the sofa with his face clearly showing signs of recent tears.
He Hao was clueless. But Tang Min remembered Song Xinglan—the person who had embarrassed Song Jin at the dessert shop and later kissed him in the bar hallway. That face was memorable enough to be unforgettable.
“This is…”
He Hao was about to speak. But Tang Min placed a hand on his shoulder, signalling him to stay quiet. Then, he looked at Song Jin and asked, “Song Jin, are you okay?”
Song Jin wiped his face with the back of his hand and hoarsely replied, “I’m fine.”
The entire room fell into silence. Grapefruit, who had been sitting near the coffee table all this time, suddenly meowed. Song Xinglan glanced at the cat, then swept his gaze over the distracted Song Jin before stepping towards the door.
He met Tang Min face-to-face at the doorway. Song Xinglan’s face showed no extra expression. But Tang Min felt a suppressed emotion in his eyes that he couldn’t quite articulate.
They passed each other and the sound of the door closing echoed behind them. He Hao hesitated, unsure how to break the silence, while Song Jin simply stood up and said, “I haven’t started making the tangyuan yet.”
“We’ll help you!” He Hao finally found a reason to speak up, raising his hand eagerly. “I’ll help you wash the vegetables.”
“I’ll help you knead the dough,” Tang Min added.
Song Jin smiled with red-rimmed eyes. “Okay.”
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*Translator’s Note: I’m just glad SJ had such great friends likeTM and HH. -K
☝🏻Tangyuan (glutinous rice ball)
Next update: -Daily-
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