Chapter 68: Rose Fragments (6)

Tan Zhao did not sleep well last night, and Wen Mingwei fared little better.

A long-unvisited nightmare lingered throughout the night, with countless old acquaintances calling his name in dreams. Their voices were gentle or fierce, pouring out love or hatred. Wen Mingwei’s limbs were bound by countless threads, hanging lonely high in the air. Looking down, he could not make out anyone's face.

He could neither break free nor utter a sound.

In the final seconds before waking, he remembered calling out "Tan Zhao" in his heart, but Tan Zhao seemed absent from his dream.

This nightmare had repeated for several days, persisting until his birthday arrived.

On the second day after they arrived on this island—which was also the second day of Tan Zhao’s failed attempt at a deep, earnest conversation with Wen Mingwei—Tan Zhao had been frustrated for a long time, spending almost the entire day without taking the initiative to speak to Wen Mingwei.

Wen Mingwei sat in the single armchair on the terrace, reading the science fiction novel Tan Zhao had mentioned earlier.

The young master was indeed true to his word; he preferred thrilling and suspenseful plots, and aside from that sensory experience device which was technically nearly impossible to realize, he remembered nothing else of the content.

Yet unexpectedly, the parts forgotten by Tan Zhao happened to suit Wen Mingwei's taste.

The story was brief, with a peculiar writing style. Lacking strong, clearly structured plot progression, it read more like an excerpt from the male protagonist's life:

One summer, he broke up with his girlfriend and used a garbage disposal to grind up a holographic rose she had left behind.

The text described the characteristics of holographic imaging technology: "If you pick up any single fragment and illuminate it, every piece will present a complete image of a rose." The male protagonist, who frequently used sensory experience devices to "experience" the lives of others, felt he was just like that rose—"Every single fragment of him reflected a whole of which he was completely ignorant," referring to the lives of others.

This led to the insight: everyone is a fragment in the lives of others, briefly growing close before drifting away, incapable of ever understanding each other fully and truly.

While Wen Mingwei was reading, Tan Zhao was answering a call in a room two walls away.

It seemed to be a work call. After hanging up, Tan Zhao turned off his phone, suppressing his untimely frustration—this was Wen Mingwei's birthday holiday, they had come to celebrate, and they needed to be happy—and finally took the initiative to walk over and say to him, "Why don't you turn off your phone too?"

"..."

Regardless of whether Wen Mingwei agreed, Tan Zhao spoiled him with a forceful kiss, snatched his phone away, and locked it inside a suitcase along with his own. Turning back for another kiss, he said, "Let's spend this holiday just the two of us, shutting out any interruptions. All right?"

Every sentence he uttered was phrased as a question, yet it did nothing to soften his dictatorial actions. Wen Mingwei was kissed until he grew drowsy, indulgently murmurring an "alright" and leaving the arrangements to him.

Tan Zhao's arrangements were extraordinary.

Wen Mingwei had never experienced such a lavish birthday.

Starting from the stroke of midnight on January 1st, the entire island took on a completely new appearance—

The towering buildings remained, as did the brightly colored neon lights, but the electronic screens on every shop and the holographic projectors at every street corner were broadcasting content related entirely to Wen Mingwei.

It was as if only one voice remained in the entire world: Happy birthday to Wen Mingwei. Only one emotion remained: profound happiness at his birth.

In the dead of night, they strolled through the streets.

On the first day of the year 2156, there was no rain. Tan Zhao held Wen Mingwei's hand, asking if he liked it. Wen Mingwei smiled with a trace of subtle reservation, "Very much your style."

"..." Tan Zhao felt this hardly sounded like praise, but at least the birthday boy was smiling. He explained, "I've always celebrated my birthday this way since I was a child. Back then, my grandfather coaxed me by saying that a birthday is the most important day of the year for a person, and those who love him should make him feel that his existence is supremely important, worthy of celebration and cherishing by the whole world."

Thus, the grandeur, the extravagance, the countless projections of Wen Mingwei, and the roses blanketing the entire island were all designed to make Wen Mingwei feel loved, valued, the sole center of the world, making his existence the entirety of this day.

Tan Zhao kissed him outside a coffee shop.

The light cast from the storefront window illuminated two humanoid dolls placed on the outdoor table and chairs—one wearing a diamond stud earring, the other with hair cascading down to its waist. Tan Zhao pressed Wen Mingwei into the chair, and during a deep kiss, casually picked up the doll of "Tan Zhao," mischievously aligning it with Wen Mingwei's face to imprint a kiss from the miniature doll.

Then, the little doll slipped inside his clothes, creating mischief at his chest. Wen Mingwei could not stop laughing, scolding Tan Zhao for being childish. His entire body collapsed limply into the chair, unable to muster any strength. His lips were bitten with several tooth marks, his tongue rendered numb and tingling from the kisses, and his throat could produce only oxygen-starved gasps.

Across the street, a birthday song personally recorded by the young master was playing.

Wen Mingwei was momentarily distracted, listening to a few lines, and felt the voice was slightly distorted; Tan Zhao had most likely autotuned it after recording. This realization made him laugh even harder. When the man on top of him finished kissing and pulled away, he asked with feigned casualness, "What tuning software did you use? It sounds a bit unnatural."

Tan Zhao froze for a moment before processing the words, feeling a slight flush of annoyance as he offered a thoroughly unconvincing clarification: "...I didn't use any."

Through one night and one day, they remained utterly inseparable, the furthest distance between them being less than five meters, and never for more than five minutes.

Tan Zhao never once brought up the unpleasantness from the day they arrived on the island; for the birthday, keeping the birthday boy happy was paramount.

The gift he prepared for Wen Mingwei was a rose crafted with his own hands, utilizing an expensive, newly developed material—a synthetic metal capable of absorbing and storing light beams over a long period.

Tan Zhao polished the metal fragments himself, each piece serving as a petal that had absorbed various types of light from different times of day: sunlight, moonlight, starlight, neon lights, and the diamond radiance reflected from the stud in his own ear... Finally, they were pieced together with gold thread to form a complete rose of light.

This uniquely ingenious gift made its brilliant debut at the very last moment of Wen Mingwei's birthday.

Tan Zhao asked, "Do you like it?"

—He had already asked this question countless times today.

"I like it." Wen Mingwei nodded sincerely.

"Its glow will slowly fade, but it will easily last until next year. I'll make another one then." Tan Zhao showed not a shred of impatience. Having said that, he lit the candles on the cake one by one and asked Wen Mingwei again, "What is your birthday wish?"

"I..." Wen Mingwei wanted to say that he hadn't made a wish in many years.

He fell silent for a few seconds, looking at Tan Zhao. The other man's expectant gaze was even brighter than the metal rose of light. Under that intense gaze, Wen Mingwei finally clasped his hands together, closed his eyes, silently reciting a wish that had suddenly surfaced in his mind, and then blew out the candles, announcing that he was done.

Tan Zhao was burning with curiosity: "Aren't you going to let me hear it?"

"Guess."又是这句。

Tan Zhao guessed: "It couldn't possibly be something cliché like wishing for good health and smooth sailing in all things, could it?"

Wen Mingwei smiled mysteriously.

Tan Zhao guessed again: "Does it have anything to do with me?"

Wen Mingwei remained silent and began cutting the cake. Before Tan Zhao's next guess could leave his lips, a large dollop of frosting was smeared across his mouth.

No matter how Tan Zhao probed, not a single syllable of the birthday wish Wen Mingwei wished to keep secret could be dug out.

That night, they finished the cake together and went to sleep quite late.

They engaged in a fierce bout of lovemaking before bed. Wen Mingwei was pinned to the mattress, thoroughly possessed all over—the moment the new day's midnight struck, he himself became Tan Zhao's gift, practically taken apart piece by piece.

He dimly sensed that this was part of Tan Zhao's "extraction," so from start to finish, he offered very little resistance.

They stayed on the island for half a month.

Afterwards, they made love almost every day.

In bed, on the sofa, on the terrace, in the bathroom, and even in a semi-open-air spot—that had been the most thrilling time of all: they were inside a glass greenhouse by the sea. The structure had glass on all four sides, three of which were one-way mirrors; the side Wen Mingwei faced looked out onto the street, where island staff members occasionally passed by.

He was stripped bare by Tan Zhao, shielded only by Tan Zhao, who remained fully clothed and pressed him against the glass wall, lifting his legs from the front. The slightest shift in position would expose him entirely.

Starting from a certain night, Tan Zhao had picked up some inexplicable dirty talk. He was terribly bad at it, his ears turning out of control whenever he spoke to Wen Mingwei, yet his expression was rigidly feigned to look the part, as if he were exceptionally practiced and ruthlessly domineering.

Wen Mingwei intentionally played along, acting the part of the obedient, disciplined wife being disciplined by her husband, but he simply could not suppress his laughter. On several occasions, he laughed so hard he lost all sensation, while the young master, still unsatisfied with playing the strict husband, insisted on forcing him to beg for mercy.

On January 13th, the prolonged birthday holiday finally came to an end, and they departed from the almost isolated island, setting off on their return journey to the capital.

The return trip retraced their original route, boarding the same yacht they had taken upon arrival.

It was only after boarding the ship that Wen Mingwei retrieved his long-neglected phone, plugged it in to charge, and powered it on.

Humans are easily influenced by their environments; the moment he turned on the phone, he almost forgot who he was, as everything outside had been drained from his mind for so long, stripped of all meaning. The entire world was reduced to just Tan Zhao, and the sweet kisses that filled his days and nights.

It was a clear day. Wen Mingwei let the mild sea breeze wash over him, radiating the languor and dullness of deep relaxation. Brushing a stray lock of hair from his line of sight, he looked down at the accumulated new messages on his phone.

Tan Zhao was opening a bottle of champagne nearby and casually poured a glass for him.

Wen Mingwei did not take it. He was slightly startled by an unexpected piece of news, but before he could read the text in detail, Gu Jing's call came straight through.

"Mingwei, you're finally coming back."

"What's going on?"

Wen Mingwei walked a short distance away.

Gu Jing extracted the key points from recent major events and reported them concisely: "The People's Party officially announced its list of candidates last week. The Marshal, as the primary frontrunner, held his first public speech, choosing the border district as the location."

Wen Mingwei was unsurprised.

Once an election year began, both parties would hold public events to canvass for votes. Zheng He's transition from military to political office lacked mainstream popular support, but the border environment was chaotic, and his military background could provide local voters with a sense of security, making it relatively easier to secure votes.

Gu Jing said, "The speech initially went smoothly and received a good response, but near the end, a terrorist attack occurred in the square."

"..." Wen Mingwei paused. "Is it serious? Who did it?"

"Not particularly serious," but given that it was a political event, the implications for security were significant. "It's uncertain who did it; no one on our side made a move."

Without Wen Mingwei's command, of course no one would act arbitrarily.

"The city where the Marshal gave his speech is near the southeast. The perpetrators are suspected to be a certain overseas faction, and the weapons they used are from the batch of guns we unloaded." Gu Jing finally reached the crux of the matter. "I followed the trail and checked; things have been turbulent overseas lately. It seems a certain faction has taken over Wen Mingzhe's remaining forces, backed by unknown financial sponsors, and they are rising very rapidly..."

Almost instinctively, Wen Mingwei raised his eyes to look at Tan Zhao.

Holding a champagne flute, Tan Zhao seemed oblivious to what he and Gu Jing had been discussing. He pressed close with clinging affection, kissed him with a breath scented with champagne, and asked, "What is it?"