sunset melting gold

Fang Shiqiu's body collapsed as it should.

Whenever night fell, there would always be a depressing coughing sound from his room, sometimes it was a crying voice with sobs, and sometimes it was like a hoarse scream when he was strangled by the throat.

Along with asthma comes a persistent low-grade fever.

The low-grade fever and swelling pain that could not subside were entrenched in the brain, and the dull blade repeatedly cut the nervous system.

They will not quickly take away Fang Shiqiu's life, but torment him all the time, leaving him in endless pain.

Fang Shiqiu was always coughing, and a sour-smelling dark liquid kept pouring out of his throat and nose, mixed with viscous blood, and adhered to the pale pajamas and pillow.

The soft and warm big bed was in a mess, the sheets were covered with mottled stains from cold sweat and black blood, the little bear standing on the bed no longer smelled of lavender and sunshine, and there was an unpleasant stench between the clumped fluff and moisture.

Doctors and nurses came and went in the room, and the pungent smell of disinfectant and iodine floated in the confined space. The sharp coughing and the sound of rain were faintly mixed with the crisp sound of a few syringes falling.

This sudden outbreak of the disease followed the entire rainy season and finally recovered with the end of the rainy season.

The breeze after the rain gently brushed the terrace, and the wind chimes hanging under the eaves of the terrace made a crisp sound, and Fang Shiqiu woke up from his lethargy again.

He opened his heavy eyelids, rolled his sore eyeballs, and vaguely saw a vague figure.

Fang Shiqiu blinked his eyes with difficulty, his cloudy vision struggled to focus, and the blurry figure in front of him became his father's face.

The father who was always busy in his memory sat on the edge of the bed with a worried face, looked at himself with red eyes, put trembling hands on his forehead, and stroked the wet hair on his forehead.

"Xiao Qiu woke up."

"Are you still suffering?"

Father's voice was hoarse and tired that could not be concealed, like flowing water rolling gravel and sand, impacting the dull senses.

Fang Shiqiu wanted to respond to his father, but his body, which had not recovered from his long illness, was sore and sore, and there was a sweet rusty smell in his throat, so he couldn't make a sound, so he could only shake his head slightly.

With Fang Shiqiu waking up, everything seemed to be back to the original point. The doctor frequently appeared in the room to check his body and inject life-sustaining medicine and nutrient solution.

Fang Shiqiu lived the same life as when he was in the snow mountain villa and the hospital.

He couldn't eat, the rib cage was clearly visible, and his fragile stomach couldn't digest whole food, so he could only drink some flowing liquid and battered food.

Although the food was processed to be easy to swallow, Fang Shiqiu still ate very little.

The nurse scooped up a spoonful of sticky rice paste and brought it to his mouth. He only took a sip and was unwilling to touch it again.

"Don't eat?" Worrying expressions appeared on the faces of the housekeeper and the nurse again.

Fang Shiqiu shook his head. His overly long hair covered his out-of-focus eyes and the protruding spine at the back of his neck, but it couldn't cover up his rapidly thinning body and his declining mental state.

"Is... not to your liking?"

The butler hesitated in front of Fang Shiqiu's bed, and then left in a hurry.

That night, his father, who was supposed to leave overseas, returned home and sat beside Fang Shiqiu.

"Are there any discomforts?"

"I haven't eaten much during this time. I'll ask the doctor to come over tomorrow to have a look."

His father held Fang Shiqiu in his arms and stroked his back which was soaked in cold sweat.

However, no matter how he and the housekeeper comforted and inquired, Fang Shiqiu remained silent and answered everything with shaking his head.

Fang Shiqiu couldn't tell his father how disgusting the feeling of stuffing those pastes into his mouth was.

When I was in the snow mountain, whenever Liang Min was angry, in order to save myself from suffering, I would meekly kneel in front of Liang Min and open my mouth to curry favor with him.

The foul-smelling object was stuffed in the mouth, and the throat was swollen and red, and then the dirty liquid was poured into the esophagus, filling up the shriveled stomach.

Fang Shiqiu felt disgusted, but still showed an infatuated look, swallowing those things.

He felt that such a self was cheap and dirty, trying to forget those unbearable memories, and attributed the reason for his actions to the result of injecting hallucinogens.

But at night when the asthma attacks, images of humiliating to please Liang Ming in the past will always flash in the chaotic mind, and the pain and numbness of the body will even clearly tell him how he felt when he had sex with Liang Ming.

In the dream without suffering from illness, the memories that had been deliberately forgotten were more clearly engraved in Fang Shiqiu's mind, repeatedly reminding him of the unbearable things he had done in the past.

Everything in the past is unspeakable.

No one blamed Fang Shiqiu for his sudden disappearance and illness, but guilt and embarrassment made him unable to hold his head up.

The next morning, the doctor came to Fang Shiqiu's room.

Fang Shiqiu leaned dully on the soft pillow, looking at his father who was talking softly with the doctor.

He couldn't hear what they said, but the expression that Fang Shiqiu didn't want to see appeared on the doctor's face again.

Fang Shiqiu lowered his head and looked away in embarrassment. Suddenly, a faint bell rang, interrupting the conversation in the distance.

The father said "sorry" to the doctor, and walked to Fang Shiqiu holding the vibrating mobile phone.

"Dad went out to answer the phone, Xiaoqiu wants to listen to the doctor."

The father stroked Fang Shiqiu's head and instructed him carefully.

Fang Shiqiu found that the white hair on his father's forehead had spread upwards much more than before, encroaching on the territory that originally belonged to black hair.

He closed his eyes and gently rubbed his father's palm.

"I know."

He has always been very obedient, that's why Liang Ming praised him.

Father was answering the phone outside the room, and the doctor took his place and sat beside Fang Shiqiu.

"How are you feeling recently?"

The doctor asked some questions in a gentle tone. Fang Shiqiu was reluctant to answer, but he agreed to his father and told the doctor despite the discomfort.

"You can go out and take a walk appropriately to relax."

The doctor suggested gently, but Fang Shiqiu didn't want to leave the room.

"...I want to stay here."

He can't go out, Liang Ming will not agree with him to leave here, he will be torn to pieces by the wolves outside.

The doctor frowned in embarrassment, and asked again: "How about going to the terrace?"

“The garden under the terrace is beautiful.”

"If you can, go to the terrace for a walk. If you don't want to go, it's better to sit there and enjoy the breeze."

Fang Shiqiu knew how beautiful the garden under the terrace was, he designed it himself, and no one knew better than him.

It's just that he prefers to sit in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows and look at it through the transparent glass instead of standing on the terrace overlooking it or walking into the garden.

After the doctor asked the question, he quickly left the room.

Fang Shiqiu sat in an empty room, staring blankly at the easel in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows.

He saw green grass growing on the floor tiles under the easel, and a field of small white daisies bloomed. The small white flowers swayed in the room with no windows open, and intimately touched the white oak standing in the middle of the grass.

Those were flowers that had never appeared in the garden, but Fang Shiqiu clearly remembered that he had already missed the spring when the little daisies bloomed.

Another hallucination.

Fang Shiqiu looked away numbly, and the father who pushed the door and entered softly called his nickname.

Father's face was terrible, his lips were trembling, opening and closing.

Fang Shiqiu felt that his father probably wanted to tell him some bad news, but his situation made it impossible for him to speak, so he could only show this hesitant look.

"Father." Fang Shiqiu said understandingly, "I want to sleep, you go to work."

He didn't want to embarrass his father, and he didn't care what his father was hiding.

Nothing could be worse than now.

Fang Shiqiu didn't pay attention to his father anymore, and sat in front of the floor-to-ceiling window by himself, looking around mechanically.

The light orange roses under the window have withered, the crimson rhododendrons in autumn and the setting sun glow, the rain-washed glass is printed with a large swath of orange and pink, misty clouds float from outside the glass frame, Dissipating slowly in the orange sea.

The light of the setting sun in the west scattered on the white floor tiles, climbed up the slender ankle along the slightly protruding blood vessels and bones, and burned the small piece of pale skin hot.

Both feet were completely submerged in the warm sunlight, Fang Shiqiu lowered his head, imagining the pain of the sun gnawing at the skin and flesh in the flowing broken gold, imagining its brilliance embedded between the bones.

Fang Shiqiu was indulging in vain fantasies. The nurse next to him handed over a glass containing the medicine, and he took it again, holding it carefully.

His throat and neck had been traumatized many times, and his vocal cords were fragile, but he became hoarse and unable to utter a single word after speaking to his father.

Fang Shiqiu drank the tasteless potion lukewarmly. After some time, the water level in the glass dropped to half, and his mother called again.

The nurse connected Fang Shiqiu's phone, and her mother's gentle and soft voice came from the loudspeaker.

"Is Xiao Qiu feeling better?"

The nurse answered for Fang Shiqiu, and the mother babbled to herself. The long and complicated words entered Fang Shiqiu's ears, and then slipped away from the other side without leaving a word.

After a brief moment of silence, Fang Shiqiu heard his mother sigh exactly like his father.

"That person is dead and can't hurt you anymore."

"Mom will come to see you often, and Xiaoqiu will get well soon."

The sound of being distorted and deteriorated by the current floated in the air, the calm water in the glass rippled, and the transparent liquid poured out with the overturned rim, splashing pieces of gold all over the place.

"...Who is dead?"

Fang Shiqiu looked at the pitch-black screen, his wide-open eyes shone with trembling light.

The summer heat was still hot, but he broke out in a cold sweat.