Edited – Self
Jiang Ye was completely stunned by the man’s sudden kneel.
He hopped off the tombstone and crouched beside the man, peering forward. The photo on the stone was clear, and the inscription—Jiang Ye’s Grave—was written in a neat, unmistakable script.
Jiang Ye’s mind raced. Was the man too drunk? Or had he simply pushed his brain to the limit? How could he possibly mistake the tombstone for his own?
The man knelt for a full night, and the rain fell for a full night.
Jiang Ye went from crouching to sitting, then to circling the tombstone, and finally, out of sheer boredom, hopped back up onto it.
If the man hadn’t lifted his head, Jiang Ye would have thought he’d fallen asleep.
June was hot, but no amount of heat could withstand a day and a night of torrential rain. The night wind swept in, bringing waves of chill.
When dawn broke, the air had turned cold.
When the sky clears and the sun comes out, Jiang Ye thought, the Big Boss will finally snap out of it, right?
The sun did rise, but the rain showed no sign of stopping.
The man lifted his head. His eyes were bloodshot, filled with a bottomless, suffocating void.
Jiang Ye’s internal monologue ceased.
He wasn’t stupid.
The Big Boss couldn’t have misread the inscription. And had he… been crying?
That kind of despair—the kind that made your heart tremble just by being near—felt as if he had been abandoned by the world, suddenly stripped of all faith. He was like a walking corpse, devoid of all life.
The man remained motionless, his eyes closed, kneeling in the downpour. This made Jiang Ye anxious.
Even I, a dead man, feel like my spirit is about to dissipate after several days without sleep, Jiang Ye thought. This living man has been kneeling in the rain for two nights. Is he trying to get himself killed?
Jiang Ye started pacing in circles again, his efforts utterly useless…
The third night, the fourth night, the fifth night…
The only constants were the still-unpredictable and foul weather, the man’s unwavering figure before the tombstone, and Jiang Ye, who had become a statue-like figure, squatting blankly in front of him.
Over the past few days, Jiang Ye had no time to be afraid of the dark, the thunder, or ghosts. He rested his chin in his hand, staring at the man before him.
The man’s eyebrows were partially hidden by wet, stray hairs. His closed eyes concealed his expression, his nose was straight and sharp, and his thin lips were a bloodless white.
Every detail of his face seemed to have been carved with surgical precision. While Jiang Ye marveled at his stunning looks, he also worried the man wouldn’t survive this.
He had run through countless theories over the last few days. Could this Big Boss actually be a fan of mine?
He refused all interviews. The few photos that leaked were death-defyingly snatched by paparazzi. Because his looks were so stunning, they swept the internet in a second, spreading faster than any amount of money could suppress.
Who would believe that such a man would obsess over a minor celebrity—and a minor celebrity at that—to the point of kneeling for days and nights without regard for his own life?
Even Jiang Ye himself didn’t believe it.
On the seventh night, the thunderstorm finally ceased, and a sliver of the moon lazily peeked out.
The moonlight fell upon the man’s unrealistically pale face. Jiang Ye’s eyes were fixed on him, his gaze desperate. The Big Boss had been gone for days—why hadn’t anyone come to collect him? If something were to happen right here in front of his own grave, wouldn’t the rest of the media and those gossip blogs, who were just waiting to milk his final affairs for all they were worth, weave some cringeworthy, melodramatic tale about his soul transforming into a butterfly and fluttering away?
Just when he thought the man was about to turn to stone, he moved.
But the movement was a bad sign. The man suddenly pressed his left hand to the ground and his right hand to his chest. His pale, cold face contorted with a slight frown, and his thin lips were pressed together in silent agony as he bowed his head.
Jiang Ye instinctively reached out to support him, but the man leaned forward. A mouthful of blood sprayed from his heart, landing on Jiang Ye’s transparent body before dripping to the ground.
Jiang Ye watched as the hand clutching the man’s chest abruptly fell. The man’s body swayed forward, his knees scraping the ground, leaving a deep gouge mixed with mud and rainwater as he crawled to the inscription on the tombstone.
Jiang Ye was truly terrified.
Not for himself, nor for the man’s life or death, but by the sheer, suffocating despair and sorrow that seemed to have no outlet, even without a known cause.
He turned his head and saw the man’s blood-stained fingertips. After the name on the tombstone, the man began to write, stroke by stroke, with unwavering resolve: Eternal, Beloved.
Jiang Ye: ???????
The hype had faded, but the protagonist remained.
Jiang Ye sat cross-legged on the sofa by the floor-to-ceiling window in the most expensive, most sought-after office in the city, watching the man work.
Outside, the sun beat down fiercely, as if the apocalyptic torrential rains of the previous few days had never happened.
Bored, Jiang Ye glanced back and forth between the man and the sky.
After that day, when the ambulance arrived, the man on the stretcher lay motionless, his eyes tightly shut. In his anxiety, Jiang Ye had forgotten he was a ghost bound to the scene. He ran a few steps, desperate to see what was wrong, and somehow followed them all the way into the ambulance and then to the hospital.
No one could see him, and he couldn’t touch anything, but his spirit had gained a new kind of freedom.
The man remained unconscious for three days and three nights. Jiang Ye kept watch, driven by a mix of gratitude, guilt, and a curiosity the size of the universe.
When the man was discharged, Jiang Ye simply followed him home.
“Cough.”
Hearing his Boss cough, the assistant outside knocked and entered.
He held a small packet of medicine, but before he could speak, the man’s cold glare silenced him, and he immediately retreated.
Jiang Ye stood up and walked over to inspect the pills. Fever reducers. He glanced at the documents on the desk, their stack thicker than a movie script.
Knowing the man couldn’t see or hear him, Jiang Ye perched on the edge of the desk and began to ramble idly. “Look at this guy. Fame and fortune are all fleeting. If your health goes, you’ve got nothing left. Take me, for example—a prime young man, loved by all, a blooming flower in the entertainment industry that lit up half the sky. When I died, didn’t I lose everything too?”
“And look at you. When can’t you process these files? How long does it take to swallow a pill? If your body collapses, all this wealth will just line someone else’s pockets. You’ll lose your money, your house, and your wife will remarry. Who’d want to stay with a sickly invalid?”
Jiang Ye was simply chatting to himself, mimicking the nagging tone of a village auntie he’d played in a role. His gaze drifted boredly out the window.
Xie Chen stopped, pressing a hand to his temple.
Faint, intermittent hallucinations seemed to echo in his ears—a voice, just as playful and talkative as he remembered.
His eyes, devoid of light, stared out the window.
The innate coldness and nobility of the man seemed to vanish from his body in an instant, leaving behind only a hollow sense of helplessness and despair.
Ela ~~ Releasing the first 3 chaps and then once I edit my already ready chaps, I will post daily till the chaps are done. It’s a short novel. So should be done in 60 days!
Just a fujoshi who got into editing and translation
