Shen Li finished speaking, his lips pressing into a tight line.
A faint sense of shame stirred within him.
Unlike Qian Xingzhi, he couldn’t voice those words without reservation. Even uttering the single word “do” was enough to make him uncomfortable.
Yet Shen Li’s expression betrayed nothing. That clear, aloof, and indifferent face maintained its usual air of composure and familiarity.
With a faint glance at Qian Xingzhi, Shen Li saw that Qian Xingzhi seemed even more at ease than he was. Qian Xingzhi said, “If you don’t want to, then forget it.”
Shen Li replied, “If you want to do it, then do it. It’s fine either way.”
Once they returned to the room, the two men went about their separate routines of brushing their teeth and washing up.
Shen Li watched Qian Xingzhi’s back as he entered the bathroom. Naturally, Qian Xingzhi hadn’t locked the door, but just as clearly, Shen Li had no intention of going inside today.
For some reason, Shen Li felt they resembled a middle-aged couple married for many years—together in name only, compelled by external pressures to try for a child. They both knew what was coming, yet they shared a tacit understanding, neither saying a word more than necessary.
While waiting for Qian Xingzhi to finish his shower, Shen Li rested the iPad on his lap and handled the day’s business.
Ever since the person in charge, Cao Sheng, had been held accountable, the show’s production structure had seen numerous changes.
For instance, the end time for evening shoots was no longer fixed. It largely depended on Qian Xingzhi’s mood and Li Zhiming’s arrangements for the day.
Likewise, since Jiang Nan’s return, all personnel had been allowed to use their phones freely at any time.
Shen Li glanced at his WeChat chat messages. After double-checking that all the cameras were off and confirming no listening devices were present, he made a call to Zhao Rong from inside the room.
This time, Shen Li received more precise information.
The motive and sequence of events in the 0225 Rape Murder Case had been largely established. If the evidence held up and the investigation progressed smoothly, the team might arrest the prime suspect, Shi Youxia, within a few days.
At the same time, Jiang Nan, as one of WCC’s key executives, was highly likely to be detained as well.
When that happened, the truth they had so painstakingly buried all those years ago would come to light. The victim—long forgotten by friends and family—might finally receive justice, even if only from the grave.
Shen Li let out a long breath. As he hung up on Zhao Rong, he couldn’t quite identify the tangle of emotions inside him.
He had been a police officer for many years and investigated countless cases. This one wasn’t the most challenging to crack, nor the most depraved in its brutality. And yet it filled him with the deepest sense of helplessness.
In those filthy shadows, in that man-eating arena of fame and fortune, how many more souls like Song Wenyu and Xiao Ting existed? Souls who might never even claim a scrap of justice, however belated.
After replying to all his work messages, Shen Li began scrolling through the day’s online buzz about the show.
He skipped entirely the fan pairings he had no interest in. Still, there were discussions about the guests’ educations, careers, salaries, and social classes.
Qian Xingzhi had once remarked that most top idols in the industry commanded exorbitant fees. Even after agencies took their hefty cut, the take-home pay remained astronomical for any average wage-earning household.
Yet celebrities paled in comparison to true capitalists.
Ninety-nine point nine percent of capitalists, once their coffers overflowed, refused to share so much as a spoonful of broth with those scraping by at the bottom.
WCC was a prime example—a ruthless corporate behemoth that, for as long as it dominated, would only further poison the industry’s culture.
Shen Li scrolled through the forum threads for a bit, his mood souring.
In recent years, he had rarely gone online. Aside from the occasional glimpse of Qian Xingzhi’s Weibo, he avoided entertainment news altogether.
Chatting with modern netizens just left him with an odd discomfort.
It was the kind of unease that even ibuprofen couldn’t pinpoint—like he didn’t know exactly where it hurt. It simply gnawed at him until he closed the comments or switched off 5G, and then it vanished.
Shen Li decided to cut himself some slack. With a swipe of his long fingers, he cleared his phone screen resolutely.
No more.
On days without work, his screen time seldom exceeded thirty minutes—the polar opposite of Qian Xingzhi, who had dubbed him one of the world’s rarest specimens.
Likewise, Shen Li had no love for gaming.
Back when they lived in the city, his leisure hours went to reading, cooking, exercise, sleep, or carving out time to spend with Qian Xingzhi if the man was free or between shoots. They’d hole up at home together.
For Shen Li, it meant his mind finally rested while his body punched the clock.
He wouldn’t call it hatred, but fondness was a stretch.
Who enjoyed work, after all?
Over the past few days, Shen Li had reflected deeply on their years of sexual life disharmony. His own share of the blame seemed no smaller than Qian Xingzhi’s—perhaps even greater.
He hailed from a traditional family where sex was a taboo topic, something vulgar unfit for polite conversation. Before dating Qian Xingzhi, Shen Li had considered himself straight, destined to marry a woman. Even after they got together, he never ventured into gay circles.
As a result, for much of his life, Shen Li had assumed penetrative gay sex inevitably inflicted pain on the receptive partner.
For someone like him—who wasn’t innately gay—it seemed unavoidable.
He had braced himself for that burden from the day he agreed to date Qian Xingzhi.
In their early years together, Qian Xingzhi suggested more than once that Shen Li try topping. Shen Li refused every time.
He knew his own limits.
The sight of Qian Xingzhi’s ass aroused no erection in him, no urge to take charge.
In the same vein, during those initial years, Qian Xingzhi would ask during sex what might feel better.
Shen Li never answered straightly, because he didn’t know.
Sex education had been absent in his life, gay communities even more so. Qian Xingzhi’s parents had even pointed at him, calling him the “male vixen” who seduced their son into bed. Every encounter left Shen Li inwardly urging it to end quickly.
In hindsight…
His acute sexual shame stemmed partly from those factors, but secondary ones at that.
Middle school was likely the root of his sex phobia.
His family’s housing complex sat right beside his father’s precinct.
Dad was a neighborhood cop, his life consumed by patrols and mediations, with no bandwidth for much else—least of all Shen Li’s schooling. Thus, Shen Li attended the local elementary and middle schools.
Elementary was passable, solidly average.
Middle school was dismal. The atmosphere was toxic; studying was rare. High school placement rates hovered below 23 percent—fewer than twelve kids per class made the cut.
Shen Li was undeveloped then—pale, scrawny, features exquisitely pretty for a boy. Quiet and upright, he listened intently in class, aced every test. Naturally, he became the class boys’ common foe.
Through those pubescent years, he endured a relentless barrage of sexualized slurs.
Teachers intervened at first.
But soon they realized it was futile—the parents were unreachable.
Shen Li himself appeared unscathed.
He tuned out the abuse, studied diligently, scored perfectly. The teachers stopped intervening.
His parents remained oblivious.
His father perished that very first year of middle school. His mother, lost in widow’s grief, grew frail; Shen Li’s stellar grades spared her any worry about schoolyard woes.
Even later…
He never breathed a word of it to Qian Xingzhi. Shen Li had convinced himself it left no mark.
The arrogance of youth painted him as resilient as a sapling straining skyward.
Against the agony of losing his father, a few taunts of “whore” and “slut” from trash hardly registered. They hadn’t kept him from vaulting from the city’s worst middle school to its finest high school.
But now…
Even if he’d seemed indifferent then, subconscious scars lingered—unhealed even two decades on.
Shen Li excelled at ignoring his emotions.
As a boy, he learned that failing to suppress “feelings” brought physical convulsions of pain.
No hyperbole.
That pitying sorrow, confronted head-on, erupted from the heart, coursing through veins to every limb. A mere blink, and it seized his entire frame.
Later, he discovered that ruthlessly diminishing pain was his sole escape from the pit—
Ignore it, and reason dismantled it.
Avert your eyes from the abyss, and it dissolved.
But was that truly the way?
Shen Li set his darkened phone gently on the table. His eyes drifted downward, unfocused for once, those gray-tinged irises dulled to ash.
Since the divorce, long-buried guilt surged, threatening to engulf him head to toe.
He had plumbed the abyss himself.
Yet he had watched the man he loved plunge into it—benumbed, indifferent, unresponsive. Even discovering that abandoned medical record post-divorce, he’d only tentatively tracked Qian Xingzhi down a handful of times.
Qian Xingzhi had been right.
He had never merited love so profound.
Selfish beyond contempt.
Qian Xingzhi’s affliction might well be the fruit of his own selfishness.
Here, reason commanded him to halt his rumination. The unfamiliar torrent of emotion alarmed him deeply.
That perilous allure, addictive as any vice, silently beckoned him deeper—until Shen Li’s hand shot out, pressing his knee with measured force.
A sharp pang lanced from knee to toes.
Shen Li had also regained his full composure. He began to think calmly about what to do next.
Then came a creak.
The bathroom door swung open.
Qian Xingzhi emerged shirtless, clad only in a pair of loose boxer shorts below the waist. He was towel-drying his hair, humming a cheerful little tune as he sauntered out amid a cloud of steam. Shen Li glanced over at him.
The towel swept across Qian Xingzhi’s taut chest and abdominal muscles, his V-line vanishing into the waistband of his white athletic shorts. He strolled to the side of his own bed, his back to Shen Li, then shook his head like a puppy shaking off water. Tilting it to the right, he instinctively tried to drain the water from his ear.
Then, as if suddenly realizing something, he snapped his head upright. With elegant, refined movements, he began drying his neck and collarbone.
“You go ahead and wash up. The water’s nice and hot,” Qian Xingzhi said, his voice cold and deep.
Even after five or six seconds passed, however, there was no response.
Qian Xingzhi turned to look. Shen Li sat motionless at the head of the bed, showing no sign of getting up to head to the bathroom.
Those eyes of Shen Li’s, usually so clear and bright, were now silent. A heavy, twilight gloom hung over them, mingled with weariness and a fragile sense of brokenness that he couldn’t quite hide.
…
What was wrong?
Qian Xingzhi frowned and strode to Shen Li’s bedside in a few quick steps.
Shen Li snapped out of his daze. When he lifted his eyes again,
Qian Xingzhi was already standing right beside him. He sat down very close, their shoulders nearly brushing, and asked with urgent speed:
“Not feeling well? Where does it hurt? Your knee, or—”
Before he could finish speaking,
Qian Xingzhi felt a weight settle on his right shoulder. It was Shen Li’s head, leaning lightly against him and rubbing ever so slightly closer.
…Just like that proud little cat from years ago, the one they’d found with its right front paw crushed under a car wheel. Out of pain, it had finally begun to act spoiled toward people.
Qian Xingzhi felt his heart stutter to a halt for a split second. His spine straightened instantly. Suppressing his astonishment, he lowered his gaze to Shen Li.
“Little Li?”
Qian Xingzhi rarely used that nickname.
He only did so when he sensed that Shen Li needed his support.
A faint flush colored Shen Li’s pale cheeks. His beautiful long eyebrows were lightly furrowed, and the outer corners of his narrow eyes… seemed dusted with a hint of pink, like an illusion.
Qian Xingzhi held his breath.
After a long moment,
Shen Li’s voice came softly, laced with a touch of gentleness:
“Let me tell you… about my middle school days. Okay?”
