Chapter 66 - Different feelings

Chapter 66: Chapter 66 - Different feelings

Ying Mao sat beside the bed, peeling an apple he had no intention of eating.

The skin curled beneath his knife in a thin, uneven strip. Usually his hands were steady, but tonight the peel kept breaking because his attention refused to stay on what he was doing. Every few seconds, his gaze wandered back to the bed, checking the position of Jua’s head against the pillow, the hand resting outside the blanket, and most importantly, the faint rise and fall of his chest.

Jua had fallen asleep shortly after the doctors left.

They had warned Ying Mao that he would tire easily. Waking, speaking, and attempting to stand after nearly twenty years had been an enormous strain on his body. He needed rest, they said, and Ying Mao had nodded as though that were an explanation he could comfortably accept.

Yet the moment the room became quiet, an old uneasiness had crept back into him.

Almost twenty years.

He had spent almost twenty years looking at this man’s sleeping face.

There had been countless mornings when he arrived at the hospital convinced something would be different. Sometimes he had dreamed of Jua waking and carried the certainty of it with him all the way here, only to walk into the room and find him exactly as he had been the night before. Other times, a nurse had called about some small change and Ying Mao had abandoned whatever he was doing to rush over.

Eventually, he had learned how cruel hope could be.

The knife slowed against the apple.

Had Jua really spoken to him today?

The thought was ridiculous. Of course he had. The doctors had been there. The nurses had been there. Ying Mao remembered every second of it with painful clarity. He remembered the roughness of Jua’s voice, the faint pressure of his fingers against Ying Mao’s wrist, and the expression on his face when he looked up at him and realised how much taller he had become.

You’ve grown.

Just remembering those words made something tighten inside his chest.

Still, Ying Mao had imagined Jua waking before. Perhaps never as vividly as this, but often enough that some frightened part of him still didn’t trust his own happiness.

What if he had fallen asleep in the chair again?

What if he opened his eyes properly and found the room dark, the apple untouched beside him and Jua lying exactly as he had for the last twenty years?

The knife slipped.

Pain cut sharply across his fingertip.

Ying Mao hissed and looked down. Blood welled immediately along the cut and began running toward the side of his nail. He quickly moved his hand away from the apple before it could drip onto the pale flesh, then placed both fruit and knife on the plate.

For a moment, he simply stared at the blood.

The sting was real. The tissue beneath his finger turned red when he pressed it against the cut.

He was awake.

Jua had woken up.

A small movement came from the bed.

Ying Mao forgot about his bleeding finger immediately.

Jua’s eyebrows had drawn together in his sleep.

He leaned forward at once, searching his face for any sign that he was in pain. Jua shifted his head slightly against the pillow but didn’t wake, the little crease between his brows remaining.

Ying Mao reached out with his uninjured hand and gently rubbed his thumb over it.

The crease slowly disappeared.

Jua’s face relaxed again.

Ying Mao’s hand remained there for another moment.

Such a small expression, something another person might not have noticed at all, yet Ying Mao had waited years to see one.

There had once been a time when he remembered every expression Jua had ever given him. He remembered the faint annoyance when Ying Mao refused to release his sleeve, the reluctant smile that appeared whenever he deliberately made himself troublesome, and the way Jua’s face tightened whenever Ying Mao got hurt, as though he could somehow feel the pain himself.

But twenty years was a terribly long time.

Some memories had remained sharp. Others had slowly blurred no matter how desperately Ying Mao tried to hold on to them. Sometimes he could no longer remember the exact sound of Jua laughing unless he played one of the old recordings.

He hated that most of all.

There had been so little left of Jua that belonged only to him, and even his own mind had begun betraying him, quietly losing pieces year after year.

Yet today, Jua had looked straight at him and said his name.

Mao Mao.

Ying Mao lowered his eyes.

His father still called him that occasionally. A few people who had known him since childhood had used it over the years too, but it had never sounded quite right coming from them.

From Jua, it had nearly broken him.

For one brief moment, Ying Mao had felt like that little boy again, standing beside Jua and tugging on his sleeve because he wanted his attention.

He reached for Jua’s hand and carefully lifted it from the blanket, supporting his wrist in his palm. The fingers remained loose, but they were warm.

Ying Mao rubbed his thumb over them.

Warm.

He knew Jua was alive. He knew he had woken. Still, he couldn’t stop checking.

He lowered his head and pressed his lips gently against the back of Jua’s hand.

"My Jua Ge," he murmured.

When he was a child, losing Jua had been more than he knew how to endure. Then Ying Di had become unresponsive too, and suddenly the house was filled with doctors and adults discussing things Ying Mao couldn’t understand, much less fix.

He remembered being told to eat. To sleep. To stop sitting outside closed doors.

Nothing he did made anyone open their eyes.

For a long time, wanting Jua back had been simple. He missed the person who protected him, the warmth of being allowed to climb into bed beside him, and the certainty that someone would always listen when he spoke. Of course he wanted his brother back.

That explanation had been enough when he was young.

It became harder to believe as he grew older.

At some point, Ying Mao realised he no longer dreamed about returning to the way things had been. He didn’t want to become that child tucked beneath Jua’s arm again.

He wanted Jua to wake and see the person he had become.

He wanted to sit beside him as an equal. He wanted to hear Jua laugh at something he said now rather than replaying a twenty-year-old recording. He wanted to irritate him, argue with him, take him home, eat with him and hear him complain about whatever annoying habits Ying Mao had developed in his absence.

And buried beneath all those ordinary wishes was something Ying Mao had spent years refusing to examine too closely.

It was love.

Plain as day. And he wanted Jua to choose him.

Not because he was the little boy Jua felt responsible for. Not because he needed protecting.

He wanted a place in Jua’s life that belonged to him alone.

Realising that had filled him with shame at first.

So he kept them to himself.

He learned to sit at Jua’s bedside without reaching for more than his hand. He learned to leave whenever his thoughts became too difficult to control and return the next morning pretending everything was ordinary. He talked about work, his father, things happening outside the hospital, anything except the life he sometimes imagined having with the man lying before him.

Eventually, restraint had become a habit.

But now Jua was awake.

Ying Mao looked at his sleeping face, and for the first time in years that carefully maintained distance felt dangerously thin.

He wanted to hold him again.

Not like earlier, when Jua had barely possessed enough strength to keep himself upright. He wanted Jua strong enough to put his own arms around him. He wanted to know what it would feel like to have Jua move closer willingly rather than simply leaning on him because his body couldn’t support itself.

The memory of helping him stand returned unexpectedly. Jua’s weight against his chest, his thin body trembling with effort, the startled expression he had given Ying Mao when his supporting hand accidentally slipped too low.

Ying Mao had moved it immediately.

The fact that some part of him had wanted to leave it there had disturbed him far more than Jua’s reaction.

He exhaled slowly and loosened his hold on Jua’s hand.

Twenty years of wanting someone back did not give him the right to demand anything from them once they returned.

Jua had been awake for less than a day. To him, Ying Mao was still the child he remembered. The very least Ying Mao could do was give him time.

The doctors had been pleased with his condition. They had spoken about recovery, rehabilitation, rebuilding muscle strength, and the tests they would perform tomorrow. Ying Mao had listened carefully to every word, but a part of him remained trapped in all those years when tomorrow had meant nothing.

Tomorrow had always been the same.

Jua would still be here.

Still breathing.

Still asleep.

Another day would pass. Then another month. Another year.

Ying Mao would grow older while Jua remained unchanged.

He lowered Jua’s hand back onto the mattress but kept his own beneath it, unwilling to completely break the contact.

"You’re staying this time," he whispered.

The words came out heavier than he intended.

Jua continued sleeping peacefully.

Ying Mao stared at him for a moment before his expression softened.

"Please."

That word hurt far more.

He lowered his head slightly, swallowing against the tightness in his throat.

He had begged like this when he was a child. Back then, he had eventually stopped because begging had changed nothing. He had convinced himself he had grown beyond it.

Apparently, some parts of him had never grown at all.

"I can wait for everything else," he murmured. "Just stay."

Jua’s fingers rested quietly in his palm.

Ying Mao watched his chest rise and fall until the tightness inside him slowly eased. Only then did he reach for the blanket and draw it a little higher, carefully tucking it around Jua without waking him.

He could wait for his recovery. He had waited this long.

He could wait for Jua to walk again, for his strength to return, and for him to understand a world that had changed beyond recognition while he slept. He could even wait for the day Jua finally stopped looking at him and seeing the little boy he had left behind.

But he could not do another twenty years.

His gaze moved toward the phone lying beside the unfinished apple.

Several messages about the research were still waiting for his reply.

For years, that research had consumed his time because doing something had always been easier than accepting that there was nothing he could do for Jua. Every report, every possibility, every failure had given him somewhere to place the desperation he refused to show at this bedside.

Now Jua had opened his eyes.

That should have made the fear disappear.

Instead, Ying Mao realised he was more frightened than before.

Before today, there had been nothing left to lose that he hadn’t already lost.

Now there was.

His eyes returned to Jua.

Ying Mao slowly closed his fingers around his hand, careful not to hold too tightly.

He would give Jua time. He would let him recover. He would keep everything else buried until Jua was ready to face it.

But as he watched him breathe, one certainty settled heavily inside him.

He had spent almost twenty years learning how to live without Jua.

He had no intention of learning how to lose him twice.