A Place to Call Home

Gentle and devoted Wen Qi, the pursuer x Sun-loving Su Wang, the pursued

The villages of the south are always steeped in soft, damp mist.

The old kapok tree at the head of the village had stood tall and broad for twenty-five years. Its branches spread out like silent hands, sheltering countless changing days and nights. In the depths of its shade, a slender boy sat year after year.

His name was Su Wang.

Wang meant both looking into the distance and longing. He gazed toward a home whose door would never open for him, longing for a tenderness that had crumbled to dust in his childhood. His father's scolding was part of daily life, and his grandmother's osmanthus cakes were his only comfort. This kapok tree was the secret place where he hid every breakdown and tear. When the tide of his emotions threatened to drown him, he would stumble over and press his forehead to the rough trunk, silently pouring out his heart again and again.

He thought it was just a monologue between him and a tree.

Until that rainy day.

He had a huge fight with his father. Ringing ears and imagined voices exploded in his mind, and the world spun around him. As if grasping at his last lifeline, he threw himself beneath the kapok tree, digging his nails into its bark as tears mingled with the rain and struck the ground.

Just then, a voice spoke.

It was soft and gentle, like snowmelt in early spring, flowing down the trunk and into his chaotic thoughts.

"Don't be afraid. I'm here."

Su Wang looked up sharply. The branches swayed in the breeze, but no one was there.

He thought his condition had worsened, that the voice was just a hallucination. But it remained by his side, patient and persistent, listening as he spoke of the grievances no one else knew and his almost greedy longing for warmth.

He began to crave this "hallucination." Whenever his chest tightened, he ran to the kapok tree, as if hurrying to a secret rendezvous. He didn't know who the voice belonged to, or why it only appeared when he was at his saddest. He didn't know, either, that every time he "woke up" beneath the tree, it wasn't a dream.

The voice had a name: Wen Qi.

Qi meant a place to roost, a place to call home.

He was the spirit of the kapok tree, a silent guardian who had watched over this land for twenty-five years, and the person destined to give Su Wang a sky where he could finally rest at ease.

Their meeting beneath the kapok tree began with a lonely soul's cry for help, and a gentle guardian's response.

As fantasy and reality intertwined, and pain and healing walked side by side, they would find the way to a place called "home" in each other's eyes.

This is the story of "Qi" and "Wang."

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