After Kissing My Sleeping Beauty Nemesis Awake

[Homophobic Bottom + Turning a Straight Man Gay + An Old-Fashioned Setting Where Homosexuality Is Not Accepted]

Mei Shiqing is a fake prince. He doesn't dare kiss awake the sleeping beauty named Chen Xian, because he himself is the poisoned spindle that brought on the sleep.

They used to be so close they shared a drinking cup. When people teased them, saying, "Your cleanliness obsessions only disappear for each other," they would just exchange a knowing smile.

But when they were mocked as gay, Mei Shiqing said without hesitation, "He was the one who made the first move!"

From then on, Chen Xian became the only target.

Those people held down his disheveled hair and forced him to swallow foul, bitter soil, calling it purification. They locked him in a dusty storeroom, triggering an asthma attack that left him curled on the floor, gasping in agony... Mei Shiqing ignored Chen Xian's pleas for help the whole time, keeping his distance from him.

Then, during their final cruel prank, things went too far: Chen Xian was held underwater for too long and lost consciousness.

When the ambulance siren rang across campus, Mei Shiqing's ears began to buzz. He reached for Chen Xian, but only managed to catch his limp arm.

Chen Xian was rushed in for emergency treatment, but he never opened his eyes again.

He was left in a vegetative state.

*

Mei Shiqing watched helplessly as Chen Xian lay unconscious, and as his parents' hair turned white from worrying over him.

Every night, Mei Shiqing dreamed that Chen Xian, covered in blood, dragged him into the water and called him a murderer.

Tortured until he could no longer sleep, Mei Shiqing only got the chance to make amends and pay the medical bills to keep Chen Xian alive after a fire destroyed Chen Xian's home and killed his parents.

Ten years later, Chen Xian woke up.

He looked around and saw that his home had been reduced to ruins by the fire, and his loved ones had become silent gravestones. He couldn't even kneel before them, because he had lost all feeling in his legs and was now completely helpless.

On the crowded streets, he was someone abandoned by both past and future. Only the pair of hands he hated most gripped his wheelchair and pushed him home, leaving no room for argument.

He hated Mei Shiqing, yet was forced to depend on him in humiliating ways.

Fortunately, it wasn't long before he came up with a brilliant plan:

He stopped speaking coldly to Mei Shiqing. Every day, he leaned on his cane to meet him after work, let his dependence on him slip out in his sleep-talk, and even risked his life to save Mei Shiqing when he was kidnapped. At last, with those bright, anguished eyes, he burned through Mei Shiqing's supposedly impenetrable "principles."

They fell in love.

Just as Mei Shiqing truly wanted to spend his life with Chen Xian, he met Mei Shiqing's mother, who had come from out of town.

Without saying a word, she slapped him first.

The next moment, he saw a series of indecent photos on his mother's old-fashioned phone.

They were of him.

And the sender's name contained just two familiar characters: Chen Xian.

The poisonous spindle had destroyed every sincere feeling the moment it pierced his finger.

Yet one foolish soul still dared to hope, only to return defeated in the end.

Mei Shiqing stared at Chen Xian, panting heavily. He pinned him against the wall and raised a fist, only to let it fall helplessly.

"So it was all revenge."

Chen Xian stared back coldly, his eyes red too. "Didn't you owe me all of this?"

Mei Shiqing laughed bitterly. "Have you had enough revenge? Was getting me arrested enough?"

Their eyes met at close range, like two flames slowly burning to ash.

Mei Shiqing was the first to look away. In a hoarse voice, he said, "Chen Xian, let's never see each other again."

He stumbled at the doorway, then left for good.

But leaving wasn't the end. The spindle's thread would lead Chen Xian to Mei Shiqing, no matter where in the world he went. He kept appearing again and again, savoring the pain in Mei Shiqing's eyes.

Mei Shiqing finally snapped. "What do you want from me?"

Chen Xian bit through the corner of Mei Shiqing's lip, finally tasting the bitterness of their ten years of entanglement.

He said, "I want us to destroy each other."

Theme: Hold on to your self-respect. Learn to love yourself before loving someone else.