Unspeakable

Shen Kanyu trembled as he retracted his wandering hand, then he directed a cautious smile at Gu Yansheng, “I-I, that…it wasn’t on purpose, you looked like you were in a lot of pain.”

Gu Yansheng didn’t answer. He only pursed his lips, as if he was repressing some emotion before going back to the previous topic, “Li Kui wanted to be an associate of the studio, I kept refusing him.”

Shen Kanyu was lost. “Why? To hitch a ride? And because you kept refusing him, he went ahead and brought hired thugs over to threaten you?”

“En, but it’s not just about the partnership. You heard what he said to you, didn’t you?” As Gu Yansheng smoothly steered the car, Shen Kanyu stared, completely enraptured by his side profile.

His mouth feeling dry, he swallowed then spluttered, “Which sentence?”

“That, he wanted to…” Gu Yansheng appeared reluctant; he wanted to speak but stopped himself.

It suddenly dawned on Shen Kanyu. “The one he wants to sleep with is me?”

“En.” Gu Yansheng’s face turned uglier. 

“And you believe him? He was just saying that nonsense because he’s afraid I’d beat him to death.” Shen Kanyu was incredulous at the idea. “Also, he wants to sleep with me when he’s like that? Takes balls, but that’s nothing if he’s dickless.1”
[T/N: 1The idiom is 鸡飞蛋打 (literally chicken flew away and eggs broke) which is used to say that both sides will suffer losses. However, Kanyu uses this idiom in a different way which implies Li Kui will end up without a dick and broken balls if he tries to sleep with him.]

Trash talk slipped out as his temper got the better of him. When Gu Yansheng glanced at him he shrunk back, returning to his scared self once again, lowering his head and not daring to utter another word.

Gu Yansheng withdrew his gaze, as if he were sneaking an eye-roll. He continued, “This isn’t the first time he has mentioned you to me. I suspect his objective isn’t that simple, treat his actions carefully.”

Since Shen Kanyu didn’t say anything, Gu Yansheng spoke with greater emphasis, “Shen Kanyu.”

“Right!” Shen Kanyu rushed to respond. His voice turned very raspy all of a sudden, sounding as if a mouthful of blood was stifling his throat so that he could neither cough nor swallow. Immediately coughing to clear his throat, he nodded vigorously at Gu Yansheng. “I heard you, I understand.”

“En.” Once Gu Yansheng received a response, he focussed on driving and didn’t speak anymore.

The bumpy roads and cool air-conditioning caused Shen Kanyu’s waist to be placed under greater and greater strain over time. Due to the pain, he didn’t even dare to put any strength into breathing, only gently breathing in a bit of air then dispelling it through his trembling lips. Propping himself up on the chair with one hand, he kept trying to adjust himself to a better position, but still ended up being tortured to the point cold sweat broke out over his entire body, and his lips were unwittingly bitten until they split, filling his mouth with a bloody taste.

Most importantly, the sweat was about to dirty the car.

Shen Kanyu felt that he couldn’t hold on until Gu Yansheng drove them to the plaza he normally did his shopping so he told him to stop the car once he spotted a supermarket by the road.

“A-Sheng, stop the car here, I’ll do my shopping here.” Shen Kanyu softly said as he faced the window.

Gu Yansheng pulled over. As he watched Shen Kanyu taking his time when exiting the car, he didn’t rush him impatiently like usual. He waited until he got out and closed the door, before pressing down on the gas pedal and driving away.

***

Shen Kanyu felt that he may have done too many bad things. Not just humans, even the Heavens found him unpleasant to look at. He had just been standing at a newsstand, took out his medicine, and about to take some when it was the end of the school day at the neighboring school. A huge crowd of students came rushing toward the newsstand to buy snacks, drinks, and magazines.

It was really hard to avoid the crowd since he stood in the center. Although he made several attempts to dodge, the medicine bottle was still knocked out of his hand, and the tablets spilled all over the floor.

At that moment, he was a little befuddled. All he could think of was that these were very expensive, very effective painkillers; every single one of them was his life, he couldn’t waste them.

He wanted to pick them up, but this lousy waist of his didn’t allow him to bend over and squat down, so he had no choice but to support his waist with a hand, straighten his back and slowly kneel down. Then he slowly lay on the ground, collecting the medicine and putting them back into the bottle tablet by tablet.

But when it rains, it pours. Before he could pick up half, his hand was stepped on by a chubby fellow. It was stomped on so hard he almost heard the sound of his bones breaking, and he reckoned he would’ve shouted out loud then and there if his throat wasn’t so blocked up.

Am I really that unlucky? Curving his lips into a bitter smile, Shen Kanyu repeatedly swallowed the acidic taste coming from his throat, creased his brows in pain then continued collecting the tablets in a disoriented manner. 

***

When Gu Yansheng drove back, what he saw was the scene of Shen Kanyu crawling and picking things up off the ground. Even when he was trampled on by people, he didn’t make a sound; perhaps the people who stepped on him didn’t even know they had stepped on someone.

Gu Yansheng couldn’t say what some of the feelings he was experiencing, but one feeling was rather clear: anger.

Anger to the point of pain in his chest, so much so that his head also began to hurt.

He marched over and called out to him several times, but he didn’t respond and carried on gathering the pills on the ground earnestly with his head down.

Shen Kanyu recognized Gu Yansheng’s shoes at a glance—he would polish and tend to each pair of his shoes every few days, replace the shoe insoles when they were worn out, and sew the shoes up tightly stitch by stitch when the seams split. So he remembered exactly what each one of his shoes looked like.

He blinked several times, wondering, ‘can it be that I’ve started hallucinating from the pain? This is really serious right?’

Then once he raised his head with difficulty to look up, he actually did see Gu Yansheng’s face.

……

It seems like he was beyond cure.

No matter, if it was a hallucination then it was fine to talk to it right? Anyways a hallucination wouldn’t be annoyed by him and wouldn’t scold him…right?  

There were many, many things he wanted to say, but on second thoughts it’d be better not to say so much. Just calling out to him was enough. It wasn’t easy to see him, what if he gets scared away.

Hence he smiled, calling him in a voice that sounded as if sand was stuck in his throat. “A-Sheng.”

Then he lowered his head once again, picked up the last pill and directly stuffed it in his mouth.

Gu Yansheng was seized with uncontrollable rage. Directly seizing his wrist, he threw those dirty tablets away. “Shen Kanyu!”

This action and roar almost scared Shen Kanyu out of his skin. For an instant, he didn’t feel the pain in his body, his moist flushed eyes were wide open, unable to blink, and he couldn’t think straight. Upon seeing Gu Yansheng angry for some unknown reason that caused his face to turn ashen, his subconscious made him beg out of fright. “Don’t don’t don’t, don’t beat me A-Sheng! I’m wrong!” 

Initially, Gu Yansheng had wanted to chide him, but who would’ve known he would shout such a thing in his banged-up drum-sounding voice. Even if he was fuming, he couldn’t release his rage out on Shen kanyu, and instead inhaled deeply before questioning him, “Where are you hurt?”

After driving on the road for a while, he saw that the right side of the passenger seat was scratched and dotted with blood, so he turned back the way he came right away. Now he saw the fingernails on Shen Kanyu’s right hand were split open with dried up blood on it; the seat was definitely scratched by him.

Gu Yansheng has known Shen Kanyu for many years. He has long been aware that this person would clam up whenever he was in pain, grab onto whatever he could and scratch hard; who knew when he had developed this habit. 

Now he still refused to admit it. The very instant he realized Gu Yansheng had no intention of beating him, his skin thickened and he put on a nonchalant expression, surprised even. “Hurt? I’m not. I’m picking things up.”

“…”

Shen Kanyu licked his pale dry lips, softly saying as he looked at him, “A-Sheng let me go, those are very expensive vitamins I bought for Tiantian…”

Gu Yansheng gritted his teeth. “It’s been on the ground, and you’re still gonna let her eat it?”

Shen Kanyu quickly corrected himself, “It’s for me, for me! Good things shouldn’t be wasted.”

Gu Yansheng ran out of patience. He grabbed his wrist to pull him up, but when he did so, he could feel Shen Kanyu’s entire body violently jerk, as if some kind of long-repressed pain had suddenly erupted. His face was deathly pale, he was unable to restrain the hoarse, feeble groan of pain from slipping out. The body that was forcibly pulled up simply couldn’t stabilize itself, falling heavily once again to kneel on the ground.

“Shen Kanyu!” Gu Yansheng touched his clothing as he held onto him. Only then did he realize the soaked shirt, how his whole body was shaking, and his extremely unfocused eyes that couldn’t gather any light in them. But his trembling lips still opened and closed, wanting to say something to him.

“A-Sheng, it’s alright, don’t be scared.” When he grinned at him, Gu Yansheng discovered his lower lip was bitten into a bloody mess. “It’s alright, you go, you go…to work, I, I…”

He didn’t know where it hurt. This handful of words were stuttered and scattered as he spoke them.

Perhaps knowing that it was hard to speak clearly, Shen Kanyu could only try to deepen the smile on his face; his brows curved and teeth were white as jade. It was no different to smiles he had shown him countless times before, without a trace of impurity. 

Gu Yansheng’s eyes suddenly heated up greatly. Without so much as another word, he picked him up on the streets and quickly walked toward his car stopped on the roadside.   

Although this person was clearly shorter than him by a couple of centimeters, he was far too light. Carrying him in his arms, he felt like he was carrying a weightless paper doll.

The pain was so agonizing that Shen Kanyu became dizzier, but his consciousness wasn’t completely gone. Aware that he was being carried by Gu Yansheng as he walked, his heart panicked as if he had done something shameful. He gripped onto Gu Yansheng’s clothes and said in a barely audible voice, “I’ll get down and walk… there are many people here…what if Su Tong finds out…later on how will, will you be…with him…”

Ignoring his nonsense, Gu Yansheng merely deepened his voice and pacified him. “Hang on, I’m taking you to the hospital.”

Gu Yansheng had always been reluctant to interact with strangers, but at this moment he had no choice but to ask a passerby to open the car door for him as he laid Shen Kanyu down flat on the back seat.

He got into the driver’s seat, only to look into the rearview mirror and see the man struggling to sit up. He immediately flared, “What are you doing?!”

Shen Kanyu was dizzy. The sudden bellow caused his body to shudder, and he could only murmur in response, “I’m all…sweaty, it’s very dirty…”

“Just wash it if it gets dirty, lie down!” These words spoken by Gu Yansheng practically came out as a roar. 

“Oh, okay, don’t be angry.”

Actually, Shen Kanyu was incapable of crawling up at the moment. He could only lie down obediently and silently curl his body up to occupy as little space as possible. Like this, he would dirty fewer places.

Speaking of which, something super happy must’ve happened to A-Sheng today. Otherwise, he wouldn’t treat him this well.

He used to do the same thing; suddenly being nice to him, but then after a while, he would return to being as distant and indifferent as a stranger.

He mustn’t be too delusional, otherwise when A-Sheng comes back to his senses and recalls something as annoying as him sweating all over his immaculate cushion, he’d feel extremely disgusted.

Would a person with self-awareness be less detestable to A-Sheng?

He has already tried really hard to mend his ways, but it seemed like it was too late.

***

Shen Kanyu originally suffered from a slipped disc. On top of that, he got into a scuffle today, leading to acute lumbar strain, which ultimately resulted in his current half-dead state.

After the doctor looked at the X-ray, he expressed admiration for Shen Kanyu’s high pain tolerance. The affected area was large and the pain intense; once in pain, the entire body would tense up as well. An average person would’ve fainted and gone into shock long ago from this kind of suffering, but he still had the strength to prattle on about how the doctor must treat him quickly since he had something important to do.

Gu Yansheng was boiling with rage as he looked at that deformed bone. “What important matter can you possibly have?”

“I need to buy tendons…” Shen Kanyu lay paralyzed on the bed, muttering with half-closed eyes.

Gu Yansheng was so angry he laughed. “You’ve ended up in this state and you’re still thinking about food?”

“The auntie2 at the supermarket said…the tendons are really fresh today…” As Shen Kanyu’s voice grew weaker and weaker, it made one think he may very well just stop breathing at any moment. Yet he still continued speaking, “My A-Sheng ah…he loves to eat spicy tendons the most…I haven’t…bought it for him in a long time…I can’t seem…to take care of him well…”
[T/N: 2Not actual auntie, just a middle-aged woman]

It was only then did Gu Yansheng realize that in Shen Kanyu’s blurred consciousness, he had no idea he was still here, and that he was conversing with him. He just subconsciously wanted to bargain with the doctor to quickly release him so that he could buy the fresh tendons which were hard to come by. 

Gu Yansheng stared dazedly at him for a moment, then lightly sighed, “Doctor, can you inject him with a sedative so he can sleep for a while?”

“We would’ve done so even if you didn’t say anything. The patient’s in intense pain, we’re worried that he’ll go into shock during the treatment in a moment.”

“…Thank you.”