Sleep didn't come.
Jiang Yue lay in bed for an hour after Wei's footsteps disappeared, staring at the ceiling like it owed him answers. The darkness pressed in. The silence pressed harder.
It doesn't protect me.
The words looped in his head, relentless, wearing grooves into his brain until they stopped sounding like words and started sounding like a heartbeat.
He rolled onto his side. Then his back. Then his stomach.
Nothing helped.
His chest felt too full. His skin felt too tight. His room felt too small—four walls that knew too much, a desk covered in corrections written in someone else's handwriting, a door he hadn't opened when he should have.
At 1:47 a.m., he gave up.
He sat up, swung his legs off the bed, and pressed his feet against the cold floor. The shock helped. Cold was honest. Cold didn't pretend to be something else.
He stood.
He didn't know where he was going.
The kitchen, maybe. Water. Air. Anything that wasn't this room and this silence and the memory of Wei's voice through wood.
He opened his door slowly, carefully, the way you move when the house is asleep and your mistakes can't afford witnesses.
The hallway was dark.
He stepped out.
And froze.
Wei was sitting on the hallway floor.
Back against the wall. Knees drawn up. Head tilted back, eyes closed.
Not sleeping. His breathing was too uneven for sleep.
He was sitting outside Jiang Yue's door like he'd never actually left.
Jiang Yue's throat closed.
For a second, he couldn't move. His body locked, caught between the instinct to retreat and the desperate need to stay.
Then Wei's eyes opened.
Dark. Tired. Unguarded in a way Jiang Yue had never seen—not at school, not at the table, not even during the fever night.
Raw.
Like Wei had spent all his control during the day and had nothing left for 2 a.m.
They stared at each other in the dark hallway.
Neither spoke.
The apartment hummed with the refrigerator's low drone. Their parents' bedroom was silent, the door closed. The world outside the windows was black and still.
Just them.
Just this.
Jiang Yue lowered himself to the floor.
Slowly. Carefully. Like sitting down was an irreversible decision.
He sat against the opposite wall, facing Wei, their legs almost touching in the narrow hallway.
The distance between them was less than a meter.
It felt like nothing.
It felt like everything.
Wei watched him sit, eyes dark, expression stripped of every mask Jiang Yue had ever seen him wear.
Jiang Yue's voice came out rough, barely a whisper. "How long have you been here."
Wei's throat moved. "A while."
Jiang Yue's chest ached. "Why."
Wei didn't answer immediately.
His gaze dropped to his own hands, resting on his knees. His fingers were slightly curled, tense, like he was holding something invisible.
Then he said, voice low, "Because your door was closed and I couldn't sleep."
The simplicity of it broke something in Jiang Yue.
Not dramatically. Not with a sound.
Just a quiet, internal collapse, like a wall falling in slow motion.
Jiang Yue pressed his back against the wall, hard, as if pressure could keep him together.
"I was trying to do the right thing," Jiang Yue whispered.
Wei's eyes lifted. "By disappearing."
Jiang Yue swallowed. "By protecting everyone."
Wei's gaze stayed on him, unblinking. "Everyone except us."
The word us echoed in the dark.
Jiang Yue's eyes burned.
He wanted to explain. He wanted to lay out every reason—the photo, Shen's warning, Tang Ruo's note, his mother's fragile happiness, the thin apartment walls, the school that watched them like prey.
Instead, what came out was, "I don't know how to do this."
Wei stared at him.
Jiang Yue's voice cracked slightly. "I don't know how to be near you without wanting more. And I don't know how to pull away without feeling like I'm dying. And I don't know how to protect my mom and protect you and protect myself at the same time because there's not enough of me for all of it."
The words poured out, quiet and devastating, the most honest thing Jiang Yue had ever said.
He pressed his palms against his eyes.
Silence.
Then Wei moved.
Not toward him. Just a shift—uncrossing his arms, letting his hands drop to his sides, palms flat on the floor.
Like he was bracing himself.
Wei's voice came low, rough at the edges. "You think I know how to do this?"
Jiang Yue looked up.
Wei's jaw was tight. His eyes glistened slightly in the dark—not tears, not quite, but close. Closer than Jiang Yue had ever seen.
Wei continued, each word measured. "I've spent my entire life knowing the right answer. Every test. Every expectation. Every rule my father set. I always knew."
His voice dropped. "And then you moved in. And suddenly nothing I know works."
Jiang Yue stared at him, heart hammering.
Wei's gaze held his. "You make me want to be wrong."
The confession landed in the hallway like a bomb that didn't explode—just sat there, live, vibrating.
Jiang Yue forgot to breathe.
Wei looked away, jaw working. "And I don't know how to want that and still be the person everyone expects."
Silence.
The refrigerator hummed.
A car passed outside, headlights sweeping across the ceiling for one brief second before disappearing.
Jiang Yue's voice was barely audible. "So we're both lost."
Wei's eyes returned to him. "Yes."
Something about that—the shared admission, the mutual helplessness—made the ache in Jiang Yue's chest shift.
Not lighter.
But shared.
Jiang Yue let his head fall back against the wall. He stared at the ceiling.
"I can't keep pulling away," he said. "It's killing me."
Wei was quiet.
Then: "I know."
Jiang Yue turned his head. "And I can't be reckless. Not with my mom. Not with your dad. Not with—"
"I know," Wei repeated, softer.
Jiang Yue's eyes burned again. "So what do we do."
The question filled the hallway.
Wei was silent for a long time.
Not avoiding. Thinking.
Jiang Yue could see it in his face—the same careful processing Wei applied to everything, except now it was being applied to the one thing that couldn't be solved with logic.
Then Wei spoke, slowly.
"We don't pretend," Wei said.
Jiang Yue blinked. "What."
Wei's gaze was steady. "We stop pretending nothing exists. Between us."
Jiang Yue's pulse spiked. "And then what."
Wei's jaw tightened. "We don't act on it. Not now. Not while we're here, under the same roof, in the same school."
Jiang Yue stared at him. "That's torture."
Wei's mouth curved slightly—bitter, tired, almost amused. "Yes."
Jiang Yue laughed softly, the sound broken and raw. "You're proposing we just... acknowledge it and suffer."
Wei's eyes held his. "I'm proposing we stop lying. To each other."
The words settled between them like something fragile and important.
Not a deal this time.
Not rules.
An agreement to be honest about the impossible.
Jiang Yue's throat ached.
"What about everyone else," he whispered. "School. Parents."
Wei's voice was careful. "We're careful in public. We study together because it makes sense. We don't give anyone more to see."
Jiang Yue swallowed. "And at home?"
Wei paused.
His gaze dropped to the space between them—the narrow hallway floor, the less-than-a-meter gap.
Then he said, very quietly, "At home, we're honest."
The word honest sounded different at 2 a.m.
It sounded like a lifeline.
Jiang Yue exhaled, long and shaky.
"Okay," he whispered.
Wei nodded.
They sat there in silence for a while.
Not the heavy silence of the past week. Not the charged silence of the party hallway.
A different kind.
The kind that came after something had been named but not yet understood.
At some point, Jiang Yue's head grew heavy.
His eyes started closing on their own.
He didn't fight it.
He let his head tilt sideways against the wall, eyelids dropping.
Through the blur of exhaustion, he felt Wei shift.
Then a whisper, barely there.
"Go to bed."
Jiang Yue mumbled, half asleep, "You first."
A pause.
Then, so quiet it might have been imagined: "I will."
Jiang Yue forced his eyes open one more time.
Wei was still sitting against the opposite wall, watching him with an expression that was neither calm nor controlled.
It was tender.
The most unguarded, terrifying, beautiful thing Jiang Yue had ever seen on Wei Nianzhan's face.
And then Jiang Yue's eyes closed.
When he opened them again, he was in his bed.
Morning light seeped through the curtains.
He blinked, disoriented.
The last thing he remembered was the hallway floor. The wall against his back. Wei's face in the dark.
He sat up.
His blanket was over him. His pillow was under his head.
Someone had carried him to bed.
Or guided him, half-asleep, back through the door and onto the mattress.
Jiang Yue stared at his blanket.
His throat tightened.
He got up, opened his door, and looked at the hallway.
Empty.
Clean.
No sign that two people had sat on the floor at 2 a.m. and admitted the truth.
But the truth was still there.
Invisible and permanent.
And when Jiang Yue walked into the kitchen and found Wei already at the table, eating, calm, expression neutral—
Wei looked up.
Their eyes met.
And for the first time in a week, the distance was gone.
Not because they'd closed it.
Because they'd finally stopped pretending it was a choice.