translator: baumkuchen editors: serefina, glitterypanda
……The final diagnosis was a severe tear of the Achilles tendon.
The coach comforted him, saying, it’s okay, take a year off, rebuild, practice, who hasn’t had an injury before.
But Dong Ge saw the deep sorrow in the coach’s eyes.
This sorrow shattered Dong Ge.
Over the next few days, no matter who it was that came, he wasn’t willing to talk. Even Lou Sifan received this treatment.
Faced with Dong Ge’s cold expression, Lou Sifan said especially gently, “I know you’re not feeling well. If you don’t want to see me, I’ll come back again in a few days.”
Maybe because of him being particularly sensitive due to his injury, in this interaction with Lou Sifan, Dong Ge realised many details he had never noticed before.
——Lou Sifan was too gentle.
He was gentle to the point of almost being false, as if he could accept all of Dong Ge’s nasty behaviour, his willfulness, his arrogance, his reticence.
In the past, Dong Ge thought that gentleness was an incredibly wonderful characteristic.
He had never gotten angry, never criticised Dong Ge for his faults, never bickered with him, never quarreled. He simply couldn’t be a more perfect lover.
But, when he thought about it carefully, a lover who never quarreled, never got jealous, never showed his temper, was that really a lover?
Even at this kind of time, Lou Ge still comforted him gently, even-temperedly, simply as if he was using gentleness to coldly push him away, and draw a line of “we aren’t familiar” between them.
The third day after Dong Ge entered the hospital, He Changsheng, who had just finished up with his own competition, came to visit him.
There was dissatisfaction in He Changsheng’s tone, “How did you get yourself like this.”
Dong Ge looked at him. In a hoarse voice, he asked, “What about Lou-ge, did he not come with you?”
He Changsheng turned cold. From the sound of his voice, he was truly angry now. “Can he keep walking this path with you forever? You should think about what you need to be be doing now.”
Upon hearing this, Dong Ge was suddenly overcome with a sense of grievance and sourness.
He said in a small voice, “He can.”
After saying those two words, he then spoke to himself, asking, “……Can he?”
He Changsheng furrowed those two beautiful, willow-like brows. “Hmm?”
That was the first time Dong Ge bared his soul to He Changsheng and spoke so much to him.
He spoke about the love between him and Lou Sifan and confessed his jealousy towards He Changsheng. By the end, he couldn’t suppress his emotions any longer, wringing the corner of the bedsheet between his hands as he began to sob quietly.
……I’m jealous, I’ve sinned, I’m impulsive, but do I truly deserve this kind of punishment?
After He Changsheng heard everything, he seemed a little abnormal. “Is that how it is? ……He’s never said anything to me before.”
For a moment, Dong Ge couldn’t quite understand. “……What?”
He Changsheng said, “I’ve always thought of him as a friend, and I also thought you were just a junior he was taking care of.”
He then asked, “When did you two get together? Lou-ge never mentioned it to me, that you and him……”
Dong Ge was stunned stiff.
&#k2026;&#k2026;Never mentioned it before.
What was “never mentioned it before”?
Wasn’t He Changsheng Lou-ge’s best friend?
Lou-ge wouldn’t let Dong Ge make their relationship public? Fine, Dong Ge wouldn’t say anything, and wouldn’t do anything. He wouldn’t even exhibit any kind of intimate behaviour with Lou Sifan in public.
After all, in the context of this society, homosexuals were still a minority, and couldn’t be discussed freely in public, under the rays of the sun.
And Dong Ge had a restrained personality, and wasn’t the type who liked to perform big gestures of love in front of others.
But he’d always thought that He Changsheng knew.
If Lou Sifan had never mentioned it, what did these five years even count as?
If he never mentioned it, why did he have to be so jealous and hateful of an utterly ignorant He Changsheng?
Seeing Dong Ge remain silent, He Changsheng breathed out a sigh, and said bluntly, “I understand. From now on, I’ll maintain an appropriate distance from Lou-ge, I hope you won’t mind.”
He Changsheng left, leaving behind a stunned Dong Ge on his own in the hospital ward.
About half an hour later, Lou Sifan called.
With great effort, Dong Ge picked up the phone.
The phone was still the one Dong Ge had flipped the wall to buy. It was of very good quality, and Dong Ge was the sentimental type, so he kept using it all the way until now.
Lou Sifan’s number, was the first one entered inside, and was the only number entered inside.
He answered the phone, “Hello.”
The person on the other end was frenzied with anger. “Why did you have to say those things to him? Didn’t I tell you not to? Are you trying to destroy me?”
Dong Ge paused. “……Who are you?”
For a time, Dong Ge actually couldn’t recognise whose voice this was.
After that, Lou Sifan said a lot of things, as if he was concentrating all the anger that he hadn’t let out in those five years into this one hour, turning it into invisible bullets and pelting Dong Ge with them.
In this call, Lou Sifan spoke truthfully and with a soul-piercing pain, “You should thank Changsheng. He was bullied when he was younger, so he has a shadow in his heart. I only protected you because of him. And you? When you were younger, I helped you so much, protected you, and you repay me like this?”
Dong Ge had always thought that Lou Sifan just didn’t like him enough.
But he had never thought that Lou Sifan didn’t even regard him as a person, but just as a useful tool.
——When he was younger, he was the pitiful child Lou Sifan used to curry favour with He Changsheng, to express his kindness and compassion.
——After he grew up, he was just a useful, free blow-up doll.
From Lou Sifan’s accusations, it seemed that Dong Ge had truly destroyed Lou Sifan, destroyed the “friendship” he had carefully maintained for so many years.
Lou Sifan liked He Changsheng so much that he came up with all kinds of plans to make him like him.
He Changsheng, who projected his emotions onto Dong Ge, noticed the bullied Dong Ge, so Lou Sifan also began to notice him in turn.
He originally just wanted to be a good big brother, and take good care of Dong Ge, this “little brother”. He’d never expected that one night of drunkenness would result in him riding a tiger in a daze.
It was Dong Ge who had harmed Lou Sifan, forcing him to make such a difficult choice. It was Dong Ge who forced him to make a choice between his morals and He Changsheng.
Because of his “responsibility”, he “made a sacrifice” and got together with Dong Ge, in order to “make up for his mistake”.
He also knew that this “wouldn’t give Dong Ge true happiness”, but he didn’t want to become a Chen Shimei, so while he wanted to break up but couldn’t, and could only constantly give him “kind reminders” to let him know just how good He Changsheng was to hint to Dong Ge to retreat in the face of difficulty.
And only a fool like Dong Ge would try to advance despite difficulty, unwilling to retreat even in the face of death.
After hearing one after another of his “reasonable”, “upright”, solemnly-worded and forceful complaints, Dong Ge didn’t even have the energy to get angry.
He lay on the bed, his voice so calm that he shocked even himself, “If you didn’t like me, then why didn’t you say so earlier.”
On the other end of the phone, Lou Sifan said, “Wasn’t I constantly reminding you?”
Following that, he then said in a voice full of bitterness, “I’ve already taken responsibility for you, could it be this still isn’t enough for you? You need to consider my feelings, too.”
Dong Ge said weakly, “But you were so good to me…… You were always praising me, telling me that this part of me was good and that part of me was good……”
Could it be that even those were all fake?
Lou Sifan said, “I did say those things, but those were just ordinary compliments, that’s all. You thought too much. Think about it, from beginning to end, did I ever say a single “I love you” to you?”
Dong Ge fell silent.
A moment later, he whispered, “Okay. I understand.”
He politely hung up the phone.
From the age of 11 to now, a full 12 years of expectation and worship had turned into an illusion in a mere hour.
12 years. To Dong Ge, that was already half his lifetime.
Now that everything had already been said, Dong Ge was not going to pester him over and over, begging to reconcile.
He wasn’t that lowly. Since the man had no feelings for him, he would give up.
As he comforted himself like this, he laid down on his pillow, turning the pillowcase dark with big drop after big drop of tears.
……Why did it hurt so much.
……Even tearing his Achilles tendon didn’t hurt as much as this.
Dong Ge hurt so much he couldn’t breathe. He clenched the chest area of his hospital gown in a death grip and murmured comforts to himself.
……It’s okay, it’s okay, without him, I still have ice-skating.
A year later, Dong Ge, already suffering from a severe case of anxiety disorder, returned to the ice rink.
But with the after effects of the severe tear of his Achilles tendon, as well as his restless state of mind, made it so that he could no longer find that state from the year before.
He tried six movements in a row, and all of them failed.
He knelt on the ice and bawled like a child.
Not a single one of those teammates who had mocked his arrogance could remain unmoved, but in this crowd of people, there wasn’t a Lou Sifan.
……He never even gave Dong Ge another look.
Half a year later, Dong Ge, who was staying in the psychiatric ward, found an ice rink that belonged to him in his daze. He broke the thin ice, and fell into the decorative lake.
Chi Xiaochi pulled himself out of Dong Ge’s last memories before his death. He turned back and looked at the decorative pond behind him.
The decorative lake that had become Dong Ge’s final resting place wasn’t like this pond. It hadn’t been very deep. If at that time, Dong Ge had still had the slightest desire to live, if he poured just a little bit of strength into his legs and stood up, he would have been fine.
He undid his bun. A head of thick black hair was blown up by the wind. This hair that was dark as night contrasted even better with his snow-white skin, making him look like a little girl.
Chi Xiaochi wiped his face. He said, seriously, “Fuck his uncle.”
061 was in utter agreement. “En.”
Just at that moment, a pair of leather shoes entered Chi Xiaochi’s vision.
Someone asked in a soft voice, “Dong Ge? Is that you?”
Chi Xiaochi entered his acting state in seconds.
He raised his head, his gaze like that of the young Dong Ge, melancholic yet alert.
The man before him was a handsome young man, with naturally good looks, possessing red lips and phoenix eyes, yet having a unique air of uprightness and elegance, making one feel good just by looking at him.
Noticing Dong Ge’s questioning gaze, the man extended his hand, and said in a refined and courteous manner, “I’m Dong Feihong. If you don’t mind, you can call me uncle.”
The author has something to say:
The kind of scum male Fake Lou is, is very good at confusing others.
He’s especially good with sweet speech and honeyed words, and can guess exactly what you want to hear. When in a relationship, he can always make his partner very happy.
When he has to admit his mistakes, his tongue becomes even more slippery, able to promptly reflect on himself, and having a good attitude.
Typical characteristics of this kind of selfish white lotus scum are:
One, when in a relationship, the only thing he can offer is his words.
Two, it’s especially easy for him to move himself.
When breaking up, he’ll also be like this, all the mistakes are yours, he’s nothing but a pure and innocent white lotus.
baum: just. fk you, lou sifan.
sere: what an ass. But also why is uncle so handsome seems like an important chara
panda: You know it’s an important character when he’s handsome XD