fleur de saison

It’s an autumn evening, just brisk enough to feel the nip of the chill. Punished to stand outside the house for breaking a vase, Yixing waits to be dismissed for the day. Inside, just beyond the high steps leading up and into the mansion, stand three boys. They’re all dressed shabbily. Two of them are crying. One of them, the one being observed most closely, isn’t. He looks younger than Yixing – about twelve. His hair is fairer than the others’, even in the dark flicker of the candlelit room. Yixing thinks he likes him, too. Pale, like the delicate, early peony blossoms, his skin gleams despite being covered in dirt. His small hands are balled into tight fists at his sides. Later, when Yixing leads them to their quarters in the shed with the chickens, the boy curls up in a corner like a starved animal; all grime and bones and fatigue. The other two boys stay close to each other and fall asleep whimpering.




There is a wisteria vine that crawls all along the southern wall of the brothel. All three of them, Yixing, Zitao and Yifan, have been set to weed the yard and clean the pond. Scooping out wet leaves from the small, pebbled fishpond, Yixing sweats in the sun. Safe in the shade of the house, on the deck overlooking the yard, Lu Han sits sprawled along the wooden floor, reading from a book. He has drawn the legs of his pants up to his knees and his slim calves gleam in the bright sunlight.

“What are you staring at?” Lu Han calls and Yixing drops the basketful of dead leaves. Lu Han grins, eyes alight with mischief. From somewhere behind Yixing, Zitao snorts quietly.

Yixing studies his hands; they’re dirty with grime and raw from the weeding. The earth has gotten under his fingernails, thorns have pricked dots of red along his wrists and his throat is parched. He decides he deserves a break, even at the risk of a whipping. He can feel Zitao and Yifan bore holes into his back as he starts for the house. Swamped by an island of papers and books, Lu Han smiles invitingly at him.

“Exhausted.” Yixing tries to conserve his breath, but it leaves his lungs in a rush as soon as he sits down. His feet ache. His back aches. Even his jaw aches from gritting his teeth so hard.

Lu Han’s palm is cool and soft against the burn ripening along the nape of Yixing’s neck. “What is that tree?”

Yixing follows his gaze and finds Lu Han staring at the barren wisteria. “It’s not a tree. It’s a creeper. It should flower, but it hasn’t for the past two springs.”

“Is it dead?” Lu Han asks and the look on his face is deep and faraway. It’s an expression Yixing has assumed to mean concern, or sadness, depending on the situation. And there’s something about the look that terrifies Yixing a little. Attempting to really decipher it makes him feel like he’s trying to wade into a deep, still lake full of lotuses, into the thick twine of flexible, deadly stalks trapping and eventually, drowning him.

Staring at Zitao and Yifan bent over the yard, struggling in the heat, Yixing says, “Not yet. Dying, probably. I doubt it’ll flower again.”

“That’s a shame,” Lu Han sighs, but then he smiles again, clear and beautiful, resting his chin on his palm. “I guess I’ll never know what they look like.”




Yixing discovers the hole in the wall within his first six months. He’s left to rot in one of the rooms on the mostly unused upper floor as punishment one evening. From the lone, high window, he could see the street outside and the full moon heavy in the dark night sky. The room had been unfurnished, except for a large chest pushed against the western wall. He opens it and finds it disappointingly empty, save for a few silk robes and a cracked hand mirror with an ornate jade handle. He steps into the chest. Then sits down, facing the wall. Tired, hungry, sad and homesick, he draws his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around himself.

Then, distinctly, he hears a door open. The walls, he knows by now, are thick enough to muffle most sounds, but Yixing hears the voice of one of the kitchen maids quite clearly. Then another voice, lower this time. A man. He presses his ear to the wall-side of the chest, groping blindly – until he comes across the peephole, fingers slipping smoothly inside it. He presses his eye to it and finds that he can actually see.

He can see. Everything.




People working and living in the mansion fall into clusters. The maids usually band together. Some are loyal to the girls they wait on. Yifan and Zitao become inseparable. They’re protective of each other and wary of Yixing until Yifan befriends him over the time they steal tangerines from the kitchen. Some of them were rotten, but it didn’t matter. It was the thrill of it. Lu Han is never part of anything with anyone. Except the men who pay, perhaps.




The first man is moderately tall, dark, handsome and a foreigner. He pays heftily. Watching, without quite being able to breathe, Yixing freezes, transfixed.

Lu Han is a blade of grass, bending in the fierce wind, his back stretched to breaking point, ribs impressioned against the fragile skin like fingers trying to tear their way through him from the inside out. Still clad in silk, in another man’s arms, Lu Han lets his head loll back lifelessly. He jerks like a lifeless doll on a string as the man tugs his clothes loose and the robe teases along the slopes of his shoulders like a second skin, bright, blood red against pink. The whisper of fabric against skin is like the slither of a snake wading through the grass. The room smells like thick, oily perfume. Yixing watches, heart in his throat as Lu Han wraps a leg around the man’s waist, watches as the man presses ugly kisses to the china-fine bones wrapped and kept safe. Watches as Lu Han’s fingers like the tender tendrils of a vine wind in the man’s hair. A deadly cobra rising to strike, thick and sinister, wet and hard, the man slides into Lu Han and at that moment–

Lu Han opens his eyes even as he’s being devoured to look over his lover’s – no, Yixing corrects himself fiercely, customer’s – shoulder and straight at Yixing.

Yixing shrinks in the darkness, unable to tear his eyes away, burning, shriveling, going mad– with shame and envy and something terrible he can’t quite name. He wants to scream or cry, but Lu Han smiles at him, eyes dark and eyelashes lowered. There’s a whirl of movement and Lu Han makes a broken noise. They’ve turned so Lu Han is pressed flat against the opposite wall. Arms wrapped around another man’s throat, being fucked to within an inch of his life, Lu Han takes a moment to press a finger to his lips. Something within Yixing shatters. And it calms him.

Later, when he comes in to clean up, Lu Han stares at the ceiling, eyes glassy. His leg is bent at an angle that looks painful. Blood dots the sheets like a string of rubies from a broken necklace. Lu Han doesn’t move. He lets Yixing tidy him up and lies in bed, folded in on himself.

Alone in the yard, Yixing carefully makes it on tottering, unsteady feet to the compost and vomits into it.




In the beginning, he’s small and defenseless, dressed in clean, stark white. Ready for a funeral. The neck of the robes form a deep valley. From within, like a river of moonlight, a swathe of skin leads up to the gently sloping shoulders, to the graceful stalk of his neck, to his face, serene and calm. His eyes are closed, his lips slightly parted. A maid is dusting powder along his high cheekbones. Yixing busies himself with readying the clothes. He sits at Lu Han’s feet feeling pitiful.

“– But it’s a toad!”

“It’s a gold toad. With diamonds for eyes.” Lu Han pins the brooch on his shoulder, staring into the mirror, mouth set in a firm, determined line. “He’s my little lucky friend. No one will notice.”

The maid looks unhappy, mouth wilting in a frown, but she says nothing.

In the minutes before Lu Han steps out, Yixing stays with him. Lu Han straightens the pressed folds of silk carefully. His long sleeves drop to the floor, but he’s not uncomfortable. For someone who came out of seemingly nowhere, Lu Han looks like he was born to be decked in silk and jewelry, to be admired and touched like a particularly fancy hairpin. Yixing remembers him when he was a sickly bag of bones struggling to be brave two years ago. Today is, strangely, not much different.

Lu Han appears to read his mind. “Funny thing about an illusion. The truth behind it is always disappointing.” His voice breaks a little. “And sad.”

It’s dark but he can see the water brimming in Lu Han’s eyes. Lu Han clutches Yixing’s hands and they’re cold and clammy, nails sharp points against his veins.

“I don’t think so,” Yixing whispers, without knowing why. “I find the truth far more beautiful than the illusion.”

Lu Han shakes his head and every jewel crusted on him tinkles and whispers. He bows his head, resting his cheek against Yixing’s hand in his own. Yixing’s breath catches in his throat. He curses his fate for the fact that he’s more worried about leaving a streak of dirt on Lu Han’s perfectly made up face than he is about getting caught. He knows if Lu Han could see his face, the truth about how Yixing felt would be written on it, clear as day. The first wailing note of the erhu echoes through the room and Yixing squeezes Lu Han’s hand, feeling the air finally course through his lungs. It’s time.

“No, that’s not true.” Lu Han lifts his head, looking much more put together than before. Every hair in place, his profile – the smooth outline of his silhouette kissed into being by the ambient light from the stage beyond the passage– is perfect. “No one likes the truth.”




Yixing never stays to watch him dance. It’s too terrible a sight for him. Lu Han, graceful, ethereal like a cloud and fragile like a shimmering mirage. And those men, reaching for him with their cruel claws, their sharp beaks open and foaming with spittle, their beady eyes rolling madly, like birds of prey.




“Ah, my mendicant medicine man.”

Intoxicated and still half-naked, the red from his lips smudged onto his left cheek – Yixing remembers seeing it happen, the man pressing his fingers into Lu Han’s mouth until he’d choked – hair in a disarray, Lu Han pulls his legs together, struggling to keep from keeling over.

“Look at what I got,” Lu Han slurs happily, pressing the hairpin into Yixing’s hands. It’s a wisteria. The jade petals fall and glitter, fragile and beautiful, a perfect mimicry of the flower drooping in a gentle breeze. True mastery of craftsmanship. It must have been very expensive.

“It’s very beautiful,” Yixing mutters, swallowing a sick, hot wash of anger as he wiped the floor clean of spills.

Lu Han leans closer, vulnerable in his current state of undress, the picture of coquettish vanity. “Like me.”

Somehow, Yixing finds it in him to brush Lu Han's hair back gently and smile.




In the warmer months of summer, the servants sleep in the backyard. The maids take the meager luxury of the wooden deck. Zitao, Yifan and Yixing lie in the grass and listen to the cicadas chirp into the darkness. It’s been four years for Yixing, three for the other two.

Yifan nudges Yixing in the side. “We’re going to run away.”

Yixing sighs deeply. “You’ll starve to death. There’s nowhere to go, remember?”

“No, we won’t,” Zitao whispers indignantly. “We’re going to find monks and live with them and train to become fighters.”

They’re serious, Yixing realizes. “It’s a nice dream but you haven’t even seen the end of this street.”

“It’s not impossible.” Yifan sits up. He presses a big, callused hand on Yixing’s shoulder. “We could become bodyguards.”

Yixing thinks of life beyond the sick, lonely cycle of trading in pleasure and flesh. Of watching Lu Han shatter a little more each time. Of not being able to say anything to him. Of having to watch forever, unmoving in the sidelines, as Lu Han surrenders to faceless strangers, all the while staring at Yixing over the immeasurable rift of silence and distance between them. He can’t save Lu Han from this. They’d never make it out alive. He thinks of the emptiness of his life, like the beautiful, vacuous emptiness of Lu Han dancing and he knows he can’t leave.

“Won’t you be saying goodbye to Lu Han?” Yixing asks, though he’s pretty sure he already knows the answer.

Yifan shares a look with Zitao and shrugs. “There won’t be enough time.”




Lu Han doesn’t even notice their absence. He just smiles at Yixing and the warmth of it keeps him warm through the loss of his friends. Alone at night, he thinks some more of Lu Han, like he's finally allowed to. Of his soft hands and sweet lips. Of his lilting laughter and of his quiet loneliness and of his transparent unhappiness and of all the parts of him that will never be Yixing’s.




It’s a wet monsoon evening when Lu Han tries to seduce him. This time of year the customers trickle to a stop as the water pours from the open skies. Lu Han is dressed casually, playing checkers with Yixing on the deck behind the house. The deck was, by now, no man’s land, shared by servants and prostitutes alike. In a show of frustration, Lu Han rolls the sleeves up his arms. His fine, slim wrists spidered with veins turn in the soft light by the lamp.

“Are you letting me win, Yixing?” Lu Han proffers a coy smile.

Yixing rubs out an itch along his spine. “I don’t get as much practice as you so, of course not.”

At that Lu Han’s smile fades a little. He reaches across the board and presses a warm palm to Yixing’s knee, squeezing into the flesh. “You know. Sometimes I wish you’d tell me I don’t have to do those things.”

“I can’t tell you that,” Yixing says, finding the words dry and brittle clogged in his throat like fish bones. The nausea hits him gently this time.

“I know,” Lu Han says reasonably, sliding the board out from between them away and inching closer. “I just wish you could. I wish we could. I’ve loved you since I knew you but I know you don’t think me beautiful. I wish you’d say you wouldn’t share me with anyone. I just wish. Wistfully. Like a wisteria.”

Yixing finds he’s clenched his hands into tight fists. “I can’t.”

Lu Han closes off, shutters drawn over his eyes. They glitter like onyxes, black and shiny wet, boring holes into Yixing. If the child Yixing remembers struggling to keep from crying is still within him, he's so far away, or so diminished that it terrifies Yixing a little. He withdraws his hand, folding the sleeves demurely back down. “You’re right,” he says tightly, “We can’t.”

"You've changed," Yixing manages, swallowing thickly.

Lu Han shrugs coolly. "People do that."

From beyond the deck, the water drips ceaselessly, maddeningly, like a clock ticking. Yixing thinks of how he’ll have to scrub the moss away and chop wood to replace the rotting timber beneath the house. Thinks of himself, crumbling under the weight of it all (his broken heart and Lu Han's broken heart and all their shared broken dreams), as Lu Han danced above his head, graceful and blissfully ignorant.




Everybody else, Lu Han believes, is boring. As everyone else learns it, Lu Han is willfully vain. He’s sweet as persimmons, obeisant to his seniors, compassionate with the servants, beguiling to customers, and alone, dull as a mute bird in a cage. No, as Yifan put it, one hazy summer day, Lu Han is like a goldfish: aesthetically lovely, but inedible, too many bones and meagre flesh that tastes like it’s rotting. And that’s how Yixing starts to fall out of love with him.