Extra: Twin Lives, Twin Deaths (1) |
Kaleidoscope of Death by Xi Zixu
The first time Cheng Yixie understood that he likely wouldn’t live for long was on the day of his fifth birthday. While other five-year-olds were still bumbling about without much concept of life and death, he had understood something in his mother’s tears and his father’s frowns. His fifth birthday was spent in the hospital, alongside his foolish brother Cheng Qianli. With IV drips in their arms and eating horribly bitter medicine, they stuck five candles into a lovely cake to make a wish.
Cheng Yixie looked at the candles on their cake and quietly thought, he wished he could grow up quicker, because there were still placed he wanted to see in this world.
Cheng Qianli clearly didn’t think as much as Cheng Yixie. He wore a brilliant smile in sharp contrast with the impassive Cheng Yixie sitting next to him, and all of his attention was on the sweet and spongey cake before him. Fools had an easier time than geniuses. A single sweet candy could bring a genuine smile out of him.
Cheng Yixie and Cheng Qianli were twins, but everything about them beside their faces seemed completely different.
Cheng Yixie had realized long ago that they were different from other kids. He’d even heard a doctor discuss their condition with their parents. From that discussion, a single sentence had been imprinted in his brain. Their primary doctor had said that, at the current level of medical progress, he and Cheng Qianli would not live past sixteen.
Sixteen—sixteen. Life would only just be starting. Cheng Yixie went back to their hospital room and watched his brother sit in the hospital bed, giggling at the cartoon on TV. There wasn’t a single shadow in Cheng Qianli’s eyes; they were as bright as the blue skies outside their window.
Cheng Qianli was a lot skinnier than he was, and his body was weaker too. Though he was almost ten, he still looked like an undernourished bean sprout. For treatment, neither of them had any hair. All over their heads and wrists were green and purple puncture marks.
“Gege.” The tiny Cheng Qianli looked right and left, before carefully waving Cheng Yixie over.
Cheng Yixie went to his bedside, and Cheng Qianli indicated he should bend down. Cheng Yixie thought that Cheng Qianli had something to say to him and obeyed. But the moment he bent, a tiny piece of candy was pushed between his lips.
“Sh,” Cheng Qianli said. “Don’t tell nurse-jiejie. Grandma gave it to me in secret. I gave it a lick, it’s super yummy.”
Because they were sick, their diets were under strict control; the amount of snacks they got to eat in a year could be counted on both hands. Cheng Yixie thought, how nice would it be if they were normal children? Then Cheng Yixie could eat all the food that he wanted, and they wouldn’t have to be doing such a pitiful thing.
“You’re feeding me something you already ate?” was how Cheng Yixie responded to Cheng Qianli’s good will. “Gross.”
“You’re lying,” Cheng Qianli harrumphed. “You like candy too, I know it. Mean gege.”
Cheng Yixie said nothing. The candy’s sweetness was dispersing through his mouth, but all he could see was their future. He couldn’t imagine losing this foolish brother of his; he wanted so badly to see Cheng Qianli grow up and have a life of his own.
Cheng Yixie thought surviving was just wishful thinking, until he was chosen by the doors.
The terrifying world of the doors was perhaps an awful sort of torture for many, but for Cheng Yixie, it was a blessing of mercy from the heavens.
When he entered the first door he wasn’t even sixteen, and looked completely out of place in the pack of adults.
His first door was very difficult. Cheng Yixie believed that he would die inside, but his fortune was good—he met a veteran who’d passed through many doors. That veteran opened the door, and Cheng Yixie successfully left that extra-dimensional world.
After coming out from the door, Cheng Yixie’s physical condition began to swiftly get better.
The doctors called it a miracle. They were getting the same medicine and the same treatments, but Cheng Yixie’s body was getting better and quickly approaching normalcy, while Cheng Qianli’s was getting weaker.
Cheng Yixie knew why this was happening. He tried telling this absurd yet genuine truth to his parents, but both parents thought he was joking.
In everybody else’s eyes, Cheng Yixie had only sat on his bed and spaced out for a bit. He hadn’t gone anywhere. Everything he said was probably just a child’s imagination. How could they take the imaginary as truth?
Cheng Yixie was smart enough to know that the adults would never understand. This matter had already gone beyond explicable bounds, and he had no evidence to prove the existence of the door.
Then what about Cheng Qianli? Cheng Yixie thought. What about his little fool of a brother?
Before Cheng Yixie had an answer, he entered his second door. And in his second door, he met Obsidian leader Ruan Nanzhu.
Ruan Nanzhu had been in a dress at the time, and called him kiddo with a smile.
Cheng Yixie only shot him a cold look, not bothering to respond. What good was any of this talk? In his first door he’d seen plenty of adults who acted all arrogant and coy one second end up dead the next.
Cheng Yixie figured the same would be true of Ruan Nanzhu. But then he discovered that Ruan Nanzhu didn’t seem to be as he’d thought. Ruan Nanzhu was good. Cheng Yixie was keen enough to pick this up after observing Ruan Nanzhu’s following actions.
As Ruan Nanzhu got ready to leave, he gave Cheng Yixie a way to contact him, telling Cheng Yixie that if he wanted to know more, he could get in touch.
Cheng Yixie looked at that contact point and memorized it silently.
After leaving the second door, Cheng Yixie got in touch with Ruan Nanzhu and learned about the existence of Obsidian.
“Do you want to come to Obsidian? Maybe you can live for a bit longer here,” Ruan Nanzhu said.
Cheng Yixie agreed. He didn’t even get his parents’ permission before leaving the hospital. He flew to the city where Ruan Nanzhu lived that night.
This was actually quite the risky gamble, because Cheng Yixie couldn’t be sure if Ruan Nanzhu actually had any good will toward him. He was just a helpless kid, and if Ruan Nanzhu really wanted to do something to him, he had no chance of even resisting.
But Cheng Yixie could only make the gamble, because Cheng Qianli didn’t have much time left.
There was an obvious contrast now that Cheng Yixie was getting healthier. Cheng Qianli was like a plant approaching winter; life was flowing out of him at a rate visible to the naked eye.
After arriving at Obsidian, the first thing he asked upon meeting Ruan Nanzhu was, “can other people get the doors too?”
To his question, Ruan Nanzhu was silent for a while, before saying, “yes, but I’m not telling you how.”
“Why not?” Cheng Yixie asked.
“Because you pay with somebody else’s life,” Ruan Nanzhu said. “Can you do such a thing?”
Cheng Yixie was silent.
Ruan Nanzhu didn’t continue the topic, only gave him a simple introduction to the doors. He told him about the hints, about Obsidian, and about some other things. Of course, from start to finish, he never once told Cheng Yixie how to steal somebody else’s door. He only warned Cheng Yixie to hide his identity inside the door, or else there would be danger.
Cheng Yixie paid close attention. As he listened, however, he kept thinking about Cheng Qianli. He was thinking that even if he did steal a door for Cheng Qianli, would Cheng Qianli be able to make it out?
The worlds inside the doors were so scary, and didn’t suit the naive Cheng Qianli at all. Even if he stole the doors for Cheng Qianli like Ruan Nanzhu said, would it be just another form of torture for Cheng Qianli?
He was so small, and so scared of the dark. He was so completely different from Cheng Yixie. He was just a normal kid.
That night, Cheng Yixie sat in the garden by himself for a long, long time. It wasn’t until dawn emerged over the horizon that he rubbed his dry eyes and went impassively back into the house.
What Cheng Yixie was thinking, nobody knew. Since that day on, he never once returned home, and he never once contacted Cheng Qianli.
Is it because your brother’s too stupid? So you don’t like him anymore? someone asked Cheng Yixie once. Cheng Yixie didn’t say anything in return, just shot that person an icy look.
The reason he didn’t go back and didn’t contact Cheng Qianli was because he was scared. He was scared that he wouldn’t be able to control himself, and he would do something out of bounds.
He didn’t even dare try to think about Cheng Qianli dying. The moment he thought about it, many terrifying thoughts would surface in his mind.
Cheng Qianli was the calamity in Cheng Yixie’s life that he could never escape; he knew that for this brother of his, he could cross even the lowest lines.
And when he became conscious of this, the only thing Cheng Yixie could do was reduce the influence Cheng Qianli had on him—even if the reduction process was tantamount to cutting out a part of himself by brute force.
They were twins. Twins linked by blood. A single glance, a single look, and they could understand what the other was thinking; even a thousand miles away, Cheng Yixie could feel Cheng Qianli growing gradually weaker.
Cheng Yixie thought everything would end like this. But one afternoon, he got a call from Cheng Qianli.
To this very day, Cheng Yixie could recall the weather then.
It was a drizzling spring day, and the shrubs in the yard were lush with greenery. Everything was filled with the breath of revival. And Cheng Qianli’s voice came from the other end of the line, sniffling and a little bit weak. He cried, “Ge, Ge, I’m so scared—”
Cheng Yixie, “what’s wrong?” He’d sensed something, and his voice couldn’t help but tighten in alarm.
“I went into a door.” Cheng Qianli spoke in frail stutters. “There were so many ghosts inside. I finally came out. Am I dreaming…When are you coming back…I miss you so much…” It seemed he was growing unconscious, slowly beginning to mumble nonsense.
As Cheng Yixie listened, however, he began to laugh quietly. He laughed until tears came out, and said, “don’t be scared. Gege’s here. Wait for Gege to come back.”
Gege will protect you.
And so, Cheng Yixie understood that he’d never escape Cheng Qianli the calamity. He would use every single method at his disposal to protect Cheng Qianli’s life. He would see him grow up, marry, have children. His children would have children and he would definitely live on and prosper.
Author’s Note:
Here’s the long-awaited twins extra!
[Extra: Shameless Couple(2)] | [Extra: Twin Lives, Twin Deaths(2)]
