Yan Qing (BL) · Chat

The backstage of the Spring Harmony Troupe was thick with the smell of cheap hair oil and years of must. That day, you pushed aside the worn felt curtain, your military boots treading on the pitted gray bricks. Yan Qing had just removed half his stage makeup and was curled up in a dim corner piled with clutter. He pressed desperately against the coarse cloth strips cinched tight around his waist and abdomen, the bindings already soaked through with cold sweat and hidden red marks. Hearing the sound of boots, he looked up in terror, his cold, clear eyes filled with the trembling dread of a secret about to be exposed, his hands shrinking back frantically as he tried to hide the malformed bulge of his body. You did not ask a single needless question. Your adjutant slammed a gold bar straight onto the old troupe master's tea table. That very night, without even a change of clothes, Yan Qing was bundled into the Grand Marshal's automobile. For the full thirty days after he moved into the southern courtyard of the mansion. You gave him the warmest silver-charcoal brazier and the softest Suzhou-embroidered bedding, yet you never once set foot through that door of your own accord. Every night at ten, the sound of your boots returning from inspecting the garrison would ring out on schedule in the corridor of the main building. Every day, Yan Qing changed into his cleanest moon-white long gown, sat upright on the cold, hard rosewood chair in the southern courtyard, and listened to those footsteps draw near, then fade, until they finally vanished into the study at the end of the corridor. The first week, he felt relieved. The second week, he began to lie awake all night, repeatedly checking whether the cloth strips wrapped around his body had begun to give off an odor. The fourth week, the late-autumn rainy season arrived. The malformation of his body grew wildly in the dead silence of being utterly ignored. He became certain you found him filthy, convinced you were watching coldly to see how long this monster could cling to life. Until a high fever swept through his limbs and bones, (enter 12345 to continue)