【凯源】Mountains and Rivers [GCA2019X]

第一章 // Chapter 1

"I do not want beaches, an island, a carriage or a castle 我不要沙滩小岛马车和城堡

I do not want ardent crowds screaming my name 我不要人山人海热情的尖叫

I do not want colourful 我不要五光十色

Resplendent lights shining 灿烂辉煌的灯光在闪耀

I only want to, one day, make you proud 我只想有一天你能为我骄傲"

The first time Junkai met Yuan was when he was running for his life.

It was dark and silent in the alleyway, a perfect place to think and worry about important things. His steps were light, quick - but not overly urgent.

His surroundings were black as ink, dark in the rather disturbing night scenery. There were no lights on in any houses and no sounds came from them.

It was... seven thirty? Seven forty-five? A time where you would hear the clinking of forks and spoons coming from warm and lighted houses, a time where you would see students carrying school bags walking home from their respective tuitions, a time where businessmen carrying briefcases would walk home from work to their respective families.

Now those families were the ones huddled under unstable roofs and locked doors. It was as if Shanghai was a ghost town, but Junkai knew better. No one should be out after half-past seven during the war.

As it was, he slowly began to think of things: the invasion, the killings he'd seen, the golden sand in the beaches in Outer Mongolia, the missions he had received, the mission he was on now, the thick white Siberian snow, Shanghai, China, everything under the sky, the dangerous topic of life and death...

The silence of the night was broken when someone jumped down from the sky.

Looking back, that person had probably jumped from the second storey of the block of flats that were to Junkai's right. The impact wasn't large enough for him to have jumped from the sky.

The person landed even-handedly, two paces to Junkai's front. It had been a long time since he was scared by such a performance, people jumping from the sky, so he didn't stop his steps in time and took one more stride in the direction of the mysterious person.

One hand gripped his wrist and flipped Junkai so he was facing the way he came, and a second later he felt someone's leg slide underneath him and he was on the floor, flat on his back and too shocked for words.

He grasped the leg of his attacker before he managed to move away. "Comrade, let's talk nicely... don't be so rash..."

The person shook off his slack grip but stood there, wobbling precariously as if he was on a tightrope. Junkai stood up slowly, without making a sound, thanking his years of military training.

Junkai relaxed his mind, letting his senses flow. He imagined he was a river, stretching his consciousness out, imagining that if he went far enough he would be able to somehow find the reason who his attacker was, why he was here and what he had done before.

The other person, somehow sensing the change in mood, stiffened, as if making to move.

Their attention was both diverted when the wails of police sirens cut through the tranquility. Black alleyways, jumping off a building (and seemingly landing without a scratch, even), a person running for his life, police sirens near them... Junkai could guess 70 - 80% of what had happened just then, and who this person was.

The other person's breathing was unsteady, taking in air with large, gulping breaths. His chest heaved with every breath.

Suddenly, the clouds shifted and a ray of moonlight shone through the thick greyness, bathing part of the street an unearthly silver glow. Junkai borrowed that weak, thin ray and, as his assailant raised his face, grabbed a look at his face.

If he was an assassin, his face definitely didn't fit the occupation. His face had a sort of magnetic pull to it, strong enough that you would never want to look away again. This wasn't a face that would (want to) be forgotten easily, especially with that pair of black eyes. The whites of his eyes were very white, thank you very much, but his pupils were black until they shone, like the brush of ink against rice paper, like the black of sky against the crescent moon, clear and distinct, warm, naive, similar to the ice on top of a volcano, where snow meets sunlight and melts, sparkling water into transparent vapour, being whisked away by the wind at a moment's glance.

His face was too out-of-the-ordinary, too different...

too pretty.

Junkai had seen his fair share of handsome and beautiful, men and women alike, but he had never yet been so enchanted by a pair of black eyes, never seen those flecks of gold that danced about in those midnight pools. He couldn't help but think, but wonder, that this... that separating this pair of eyes from absolute perfection was the sky, the clouds, the mountains, the looming seas.

Other than that, nothing.

It was such a pity that, at the moment, that pair of eyes were filled with horror and wariness, such restlessness and uncertainty -- not so different from a wounded wolf's, sleek and majestic, but with eyes filled with suspicion and worry, fear that if one should choose to attack it would have no means of defending itself.

But in this world, in this war, there are many things that are a pity, such as Shanghai's probability of falling into Japan's hands, such as China being invaded by Japan, such as the situation Junkai was in now. There's nothing anyone can do other than ignore it, stay careful and move on.

That person looked at Junkai fleetingly, silently, carefully, suspiciously. His face was silhouetted by the building, so only a part was exposed to the weak light.

Then he turned and ran off, his steps elongating from quick and fast footfalls to long, occasionally-unsteady strides. Many a time he stumbled and fell down, but quickly stood up again and continued his painful run down the alleyway.

Hmm. Maybe he had landed with a scratch -- or a gunshot.

Because of the buildings on either side of the alleyway, Junkai couldn't see far into the darkness. Seeing the other leave lit a spark of a reminder in his mind. He might have missed his curfew home.

If his memory was reliable, if his sources were reliable, the house above Junkai would be the home of the young general the Japanese had just sent to Shanghai, the one who boasted that he had many connections in the government. And the red and orange flames licking at the window panes would have been set by...

Junkai gazed off in the direction of his attacker, but he was long gone, a shadow swallowed up by the darkness, another mere passerby in his life.

Wang Junkai 王俊凯 began to think that when he first met Yuan, he was debating about life, death and the fate of Shanghai, and Yuan had just jumped off from the second storey of a building, nearly risking his life then... which isn't quite a happy thing to think of, so he rarely came across this thought.

And so in the long months after he first met Yuan, he began to debate on larger and more important matters, because Yuan had already given him the answer to his biggest question, that it was much bigger than his life and his death, much bigger than life and death in general, much bigger than quite a few things.

Perhaps there were some things that were coincidences, and some things that were fate.

Junkai just couldn't find the difference between the two.

Such as, there were a thousand and one alleyways in Shanghai, and he just had to go into the one Yuan had jumped into.

Fate.

Such as, there were thousands, millions of people living in Shanghai now, and that if he was slower by one step, or faster, Yuan wouldn't even have jumped down in front of him.

Coincidence.

Such as, if there hadn't suddenly been that weak ray of moonlight shining from the overcast clouds, he wouldn't have seen Yuan's face, he wouldn't have remembered it -- and kept it in the frontline his mind constantly until today, taking it out and studying it whenever he had the time.

He thought, At that moment I still didn't understand, didn't know that I would meet you again, didn't know that life would twist and turn like a never-ending labyrinth, didn't know that to have fate, the price is never having redemption. A chance to do it again.

I wouldn't have understood that I loved you.