Chapter 36: The mistakes Tong Yuzhi made shouldn’t…

Kong Ji did know.

It was precisely because he knew all too well—why Tong Xilin wouldn’t come home, why he wouldn’t lift his head. He understood it all perfectly in his heart. That was exactly why some things had to be laid out flat and discussed.

In Kong Ji’s eyes, Tong Xilin was still just a kid. The gap in age and status was right there. Even now, even ten or twenty years in the future, Tong Xilin would still be a kid.

But kids grew up.

The growth of a young person was always accompanied by emotions and secrets—very green, very raw. Most people experienced sour and sweet during this process. But Tong Xilin’s entire process of growing up seemed to be nothing but sour.

Every step of his growth ground against his feet, like a pebble lodged in a shoe. Not enough to stop him from walking, but bumping and scraping, steering the direction and pace of his growing path.

“You really do look a lot like your father.” Kong Ji looked at him and said.

Tong Xilin’s eyes, which had just lifted, paused for a long time without blinking. A self-deprecating emotion surfaced in them. They lowered again.

“But you’re completely different.” Kong Ji added.

Tong Xilin was still folding that scarf. The fingers marked with chilblains were stark red and swollen under the light, slightly curled.

“The resemblance is a feeling, Tong Xilin.”

Kong Ji spoke at a very even pace, unhurried, maintaining that leaning-forward posture. But his tone was no longer coaxing a child—it was an equal exchange.

“When I first saw you, I only felt your eyes resembled your dad’s. Can’t help it. It’s in the genes. Everyone carries part of their parents within them. Some innate, some acquired. Some good, some bad. Unavoidable.”

“Truth be told, for me, that first call from you—seeing you in person—it felt very ironic.”

Tong Xilin listened word for word. At this, he lifted his head again.

“Why?” He asked quietly. “Didn’t you have no resistance to him?”

“Mm. When I was young, I really didn’t.” Kong Ji smiled a little.

As Kong Ji said, he also carried traits inherited from his parents. He was naturally proud, and raised in comfortable circumstances. At an age like seventeen, his arrogance, his self-assurance, and his unconventional streak practically made everyone take it for granted.

It was at that time that the seventeen-year-old Kong Ji had just come to realize his sexual orientation. That summer, he followed his art studio on a traveling sketch trip. In the boundless grass-sea of Xilin Gol, he met Tong Yuzhi, who loved wearing white shirts.

Maybe it was the features. Maybe it was purely the line of those eyes. In any case, youthful infatuation was too pure. There was no logic to it.

People of the same orientation had a wondrous magnetic pull. The moment their gazes met, they each understood in their hearts.

The time Kong Ji stayed in Xilin Gol wasn’t long—barely half a month.

In the year that followed, he went back to Xilin Gol on his own many times. From the start to the end, his thing with Tong Yuzhi spanned distance. Until Tong Yuzhi said he was going to marry a girl.

Kong Ji had asked him about it. He skipped a crucial school-specific art exam and went to Xilin Gol, wanting Tong Yuzhi to give him an explanation in person.

Tong Yuzhi said nothing at all. His whole person had turned ice-cold. The last words he left Kong Ji were: You’re too young. You don’t understand.

When Tong Xilin last heard Kong Ji mention Tong Yuzhi, he’d been lying on his lap, crying.

Now, sitting within this old rental building, watching Kong Ji calmly recount these more specific details, the corners of his mouth pursed almost imperceptibly.

“Being young doesn’t mean understanding nothing.” He muttered softly, unsure who he was lamenting for.

“That’s why I found it so ironic when you contacted me.” Kong Ji looked at him, casually ruffling the top of Tong Xilin’s head. “I don’t know what your father was thinking. Too much time has passed. Long since stopped needing an answer.”

Tong Xilin thought about it. He could completely understand.

What feelings could really be unforgettable?

The sensation was very subtle. He would feel a pang of bitterness because Kong Ji couldn’t forget Tong Yuzhi, yet he didn’t feel uncomfortable about Kong Ji’s candid admission of “irony.”

“Then why did you still bring me back?” He couldn’t help asking.

“Why indeed.” Kong Ji paused. “At the very beginning, of course it was because of Tong Yuzhi. Because of your looks.”

“The very beginning?” Tong Xilin repeated.

“Yeah.” Kong Ji hooked the corner of his mouth, not hiding it.

That type of look—Tong Yuzhi’s type—held a strong attraction for Kong Ji. He didn’t deny it. So at the very start, he did treat Tong Xilin as a substitute for Tong Yuzhi. His attitude and approach in their interactions were very frivolous.

“Also felt sorry for you. Raising one more you wasn’t a burden for me. Like bringing home a little puppy.”

Kong Ji continued.

“I wanted to see—what exactly were you father and son plotting.”

What plotting was there?

Tong Xilin lowered his neck and scratched the itching chilblain.

“There was no plot at all.” He told Kong Ji. “Tong Yuzhi only gave me your contact info before he died. I had no idea who you were.”

If not for that car accident, that utter helplessness, Tong Xilin—even if he’d had the slightest alternative—would never have reached out to a complete stranger.

“Don’t scratch.” Kong Ji’s focus was on his hand. He flicked it away with a very light tap. “Scratching makes it harder to heal.”

Tong Xilin then placed his hands at his sides and continued waiting for him to speak.

“And later on?” He asked Kong Ji.

“Later on, I realized you and your dad aren’t the same.” Kong Ji said. “You’re exceptionally stubborn.”

“He wasn’t stubborn?” Tong Xilin didn’t understand. “Didn’t contact you again until he died.”

“Not the same.” Kong Ji said. “I don’t know how you came to be born. The only thing I can definitively tell is that he gave up on his own life. You won’t.”

Betrayal, drunken mistake, family pressure.

Whatever the reason, a homosexual man ending up with a child under those circumstances—in Kong Ji’s eyes, it wasn’t just a betrayal of him. It was Tong Yuzhi’s betrayal of himself.

The young Kong Ji had wanted an explanation. Just an explanation. Even if Tong Yuzhi had given him the most justified reasons at the time, there could never have been any continuation between them.

Broken was broken. There was no way to romanticize betrayal.

The feelings at seventeen were real. The disgust and the unforgivability were also real. More than a decade later, those entanglements of love and hate had long since faded with time.

Tong Xilin appeared suddenly with a single phone call. Kong Ji tried to project Tong Yuzhi’s shadow onto him, yet found that it matched less and less.

“You won’t give up on yourself, Tong Xilin.” Kong Ji repeated. “Your will is too fixed. When you get stubborn, people have no way to deal with you.”

Wanting to test far away? Test far away. Saying you won’t come home? You won’t come home. Saying you’ll repay the money? You can find several part-time jobs—in a city with heating, getting chilblains on your fingers.

The way Tong Xilin admired him couldn’t be hidden in his eyes. His resolve to distance himself was equally unmistakable.

This was a boy perpetually trying to rescue himself.

Not resigning to fate. Uncompromising. Fragile yet resilient.

Tong Xilin couldn’t respond to this. He took a shallow breath, his chest rising slightly.

Kong Ji paused for a moment too. He took Tong Xilin’s right ring finger again, stroking the chilblain.

“But there’s a saying: what is too rigid is easily broken.” He said.

Tong Xilin looked at him, forgetting to pull his hand back.

“When school started, I asked if you were coming back for National Day,” Kong Ji’s voice lowered further, speaking very slowly, making it sound even gentler, “You said no. The reason you gave me was wanting to go out and play a bit, see the world.”

“I liked that reason. At your age, you should also be out seeing more, playing more, meeting more people, going more places.”

“But now?”

He lifted Tong Xilin’s hand slightly.

“You have your own thoughts. I can understand. You want to use every method to tell me you’re Tong Xilin, not Tong Yuzhi. You want distance from me. I understand.”

“There are many ways. I could even teach you.”

“You endured three years in high school, tested into this university. It shouldn’t just be for working part-time jobs and paying back money—for cutting off contact with me, for differentiating yourself from your father.”

“This isn’t the life you should have. The mistakes Tong Yuzhi made shouldn’t be paid for by you.”

“Right?”

Human emotions really are strange.

After learning the origin of his name, all of Tong Xilin’s emotions and feelings had once fallen into numbness. He’d let go of his obsessions with Tong Yuzhi and Kong Ji—that desire for a love uniquely his, complete and whole.

Even hearing Kong Ji’s words about irony and looks just now, there had been no further ripples in his heart.

But right now, listening to Kong Ji speak this passage, hearing those gentle, slow words “right?” — a sudden, overwhelming sense of grievance, like a massive wave, crashed over him completely.

Two hot tears fell onto the space between his thumb and forefinger. Kong Ji lifted a hand and wiped them from beneath Tong Xilin’s eye.

“We can go to grad school. Doctorate. Study abroad. As long as you want, I can send you anywhere. As far as you want.”

Kong Ji looked at the kid’s reddened nose and smiled.

“You don’t need to work part-time. I have money. I am your inheritance.”

“You can totally use me. Even hate me—that’s fine too. Step onto a higher, bigger stage. Not be trapped in a place like this, wasting the best time of your life.”

Tong Xilin sniffled, pulled his hand back, and rubbed his eyes himself.

“What do you mean trapped in a place like this.” He said, voice thick with congestion. “It’s not that bad.”

“It’s very bad. Like a little pigsty.” Kong Ji brushed aside his bangs, half-joking, half-serious. “Don’t compare yourself to the old you. Take the standard of what I can provide as the baseline. Anything that can’t compare to what I can give you—it’s all bad.”

Tong Xilin didn’t make a sound. Kong Ji watched him for a while, then spoke: “Tong Xilin.”

This time, Tong Xilin didn’t agonize before looking up. His eyelashes were clumped into small, damp clusters from the earlier tears, but his expression was still faint, making people’s hearts ache just looking at him.

“I don’t know what kind of life Tong Yuzhi lived afterward. But through the way you described him to me, I can imagine it wasn’t good. Constantly struggling to make ends meet, numb and bitter, living inside his own emotions, unable to get out.”

Kong Ji gazed at him.

“If you truly want to completely separate yourself from him, then don’t let yourself live the way he did.”

Tong Xilin was suddenly, violently stunned.

“Booking that flight wasn’t to force you back. It was to let you know—you aren’t a kid without a home.”

Kong Ji tapped his forehead.

“You have the freedom to not go home. Your life is your own.”