A Letter from the Wilderness

Yan Ting x Jiang Zhi (the order of the names matters)

A cruel, brooding top x a bottom who is mute due to post-traumatic effects

To be honest, Yan Ting didn't want to come to the village his grandmother had cherished most. He should have picked up a kitchen knife, killed his heartless father, then turned himself in and spent the rest of his life in prison.

Oh, and if they sentenced him to death by firing squad, he'd accept that too.

He'd already planned where to strike.

The neck?

No, that wouldn't do. The bastard would drop dead in an instant. That'd be letting him off easy.

But before his grandmother, who had raised him from childhood, passed away, she held his hand and rambled about her mother, her mind already muddled. That's when Yan Ting realized that his grandmother, who had poured all her heart and soul into raising him, had once been a child who deserved to be cherished and loved, too.

As Yan Ting left the crematorium carrying his grandmother's ashes, he heard that his father had been hit and killed by a car.

Ha. Apparently, he'd been drinking and hadn't watched for traffic while crossing the road.

And so the owner of the crematorium saw the young man who had left with an urn of ashes just the day before return with a corpse.

A few days later, after hastily taking care of that man's funeral, Yan Ting carefully brought his grandmother's ashes back to the village surrounded by mountains.

Unfortunately, he arrived just as the students were on holiday. The rural bus back to the village had only twenty-four seats, but somehow fifty people had crammed aboard, not counting the driver and the ticket lady.

It was severely overloaded. Whether he made it back alive was up to the King of Hell and whether he felt like boosting his numbers that day.

But that was fine, too. Someone like him would only be wasting air if he stayed alive.

When the tall guy beside him bumped whatever he was holding against Yan Ting's head for the fifth time, Jiang Zhi finally looked up.

The young man across from him looked "calm" enough. He simply tightened his hold on the backpack in his arms.

Thud!

The sixth time.

It was obvious that a red bump had appeared on Jiang Zhi's forehead.

"..."

"..."

The solution was to let Jiang Zhi hold the backpack containing the urn. It sat quietly in his arms for the rest of the ride.

After they got off and started walking into the village, Yan Ting learned that the boy lived in his grandmother's village too. When the village chief led him to his grandmother's house, Yan Ting found out that the boy lived barely a person-wide passage away.

A few days later, Yan Ting learned that the boy was called Jiang Zhi, and that he was mute. His personality was just as "mute": far too quiet. No matter how people treated him or what they said to him, he seemed indifferent, never expressing anything and hardly ever getting angry.

Whether he really was hard to anger is another matter. Our top contender, Yan Ting, soon set a new record, making him angry twice in three days.

Amitabha. How kind.

Yan Ting decided he should earn some good karma for his grandmother, so she'd have an easier time in the afterlife. He went up the mountain on his own to gather firewood for the boy.

He'd seen Jiang Zhi cooking on a stove, and the chimney next door always sent up smoke around mealtimes.

This teaches us that if you're going into the mountains for the first time, you should go with someone who knows the way, especially if you have no sense of direction.

Dusk fell. Yan Ting, who had lost count of how many circles he'd walked, crouched beneath a tree and silently fiddled with the lighter in his hand.

If smoking hadn't been forbidden in the mountains, there would have been a pile of cigarette butts at his feet.

In the end, Jiang Zhi found him. Getting out of the mountain wasn't difficult at all. You just had to walk in a straight line.

That made Yan Ting even quieter.

When they reached the village's paved road again, the boy walking ahead suddenly turned around and nearly collided with Yan Ting, who was still carrying two bundles of firewood.

"...My family uses a gas stove. And if we ever burn wood... we've got a whole room full of firewood."

Yan Ting raised an eyebrow at him. It wasn't because he was stunned that he'd wasted his afternoon. He was thinking:

Well, well. So this idiot isn't mute after all?

Later, he asked around and learned that Jiang Zhi's "muteness" was connected to the bullying he'd suffered in middle school. Back then, he hadn't been as withdrawn as he was now. At least he could still talk to people.

Yan Ting had thought he was just a poor little thing.

"But those guys got what was coming to them later. The Jiang family's kid fought back and beat them up badly. One of them almost didn't make it."

Good for him. If it had been Yan Ting, he would have thrown them straight out of a window.

After returning home, Yan Ting mulled it over. He pulled a lighter from his pocket and was about to light a cigarette when he saw Jiang Zhi staring at the pack in his hand.

"Want one?"

Yan Ting shook the pack. There were only two cigarettes left.

Jiang Zhi said nothing, just watched him quietly.

"If you want one, why not come a little closer?"

Once Jiang Zhi really did come closer, Yan Ting tossed the pack of cigarettes aside.

He suddenly realized there was something more interesting than smoking.

In the cramped, suffocating space, an indescribable emotion took root in Yan Ting's actions and grew wildly.

The moment Jiang Zhi hugged him back, Yan Ting became even more certain of what he wanted.

The story is mostly healing, with a little comedy.

There's not much plot. I just want to write about the push and pull between the two of them.

A rural, pastoral setting with some fictional elements that may differ from reality.

Theme: Find a quiet place in the fast pace of life