He hadn’t. He hadn’t noticed a single terrible thing. Xiao-Xiao was only the cute younger brother who was irrationally jealous of the attention Xingyu was receiving, who didn’t understand the real world, who didn’t understand what their father was putting Xingyu through.

But it was worse for Xiao-Xiao. It had always been worse for Xiao-Xiao. When Xingyu reached the end of his rope, he fled. When Xiao-Xiao reached the end of his rope, he tried to die.

Xingyu reached out and took Xiao-Xiao’s hand. Xiao-Xiao immediately tried to pull away, but Xingyu held tight.

“I’m not going to abandon you ever again,” he said.

“Sure,” said Xiao-Xiao, rolling his eyes, “and you also said you’d never hurt me again when I was six years old. But really, don’t worry about it I’ve long since given up on believing anything you say.”

“It doesn’t matter whether you believe me,” Xingyu said. “I’m never going to abandon you again, and I’m never going to hurt you again, and I’m going to do that even if you hate me.”

“I don’t care,” Xiao-Xiao said. “I really, really, really don’t care.”

“That’s okay. Just…know that I love you. I can never make up for what I did to you, but I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying anyway.”

Weiran was outside the room when Xingyu was done, chewing on a mantou27 and scrolling through his phone. He looked up as Xingyu exited.

“What did you talk about? The room seemed really tense.”

Xingyu shook his head. “It’s not really my place to say. I just found something out about him that I didn’t know and wanted to ask him about it.”

“Something about—is something wrong? Is he hurt worse than we thought?”

Xingyu stopped to glance back at Weiran. He really was in love with Xiao-Xiao. Xingyu wondered then—selfishly, he knew—whether, if Weiran had loved Xingyu so openly like that, Xingyu would have been able to love him back. If he would’ve been able to find the ability to love like that somewhere within him.

But he wouldn’t. Couldn’t.

“No,” he said. “He’s just as bad as we initially thought.”

Weiran sobered. “We need to figure out where that fucker is hiding.”

“I know.” Xingyu grabbed Weiran’s elbow and pulled him toward the exit. “I figure we have at least until they get a few more arrests before they start looking more closely into who sent them this information. We need to find Bai Xue before that happens, otherwise he’s going to rebuild everything and this will have all been pointless.” They got to the elevator and Xingyu waited until they were both alone and the door was closed before he continued. “I want you to know that I don’t plan on putting him in prison.”

Weiran looked at him.