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Xia Fei is eleven studying at Bahati when he realized for the first time that people care about looks.
He doesn’t understand it fully, only becoming aware when boys his age begin to sprout up in height and their voices become a color deeper. He belatedly notices how the girls’ hair go from tight bows to low ponytails and how their eyes wander over in his direction. It becomes impossible to ignore amid the chorus of cheeky giggles and immature, snide comments from all around—
“Liang! Are you serious? You like like him?!”
“Oh my gosh, no way you do! He’s quiet and he’s such a nerd. Is that your type?”
“Wh- nuh-uh! I do not have a crush on him!”
“He’s super cute, and he is one of the tallest in our class. I can see it.”
“Liang’s got a cruuush!”
Xia Fei, after lots of frustration, learns to tune the endless chatter out. He can’t find it within himself to care about lovey-dovey nonsense, and his older cousin has told him that girls have cooties, anyway. He also does not have time to waste; he knows much more than anyone realizes, including his parents, and he’s aware of how sending him to Yingdu for schooling is an increasing burden on their shoulders. His mother willfully (and perhaps, arrogantly) sets aside her financial constraints in order to provide her son with some of the best education money that she does not necessarily have can buy.
It’d be dumb for him to play around and entertain his classmates’ behavior when his parents put so much on the line for him to even be here.
So for now, he quietly shrugs off the comments and keeps his face within the books.
As Xia Fei turns sixteen, gossip over grade school crushes inevitably matures into something else.
Secondary school has him realizing that it’s possible to feel isolated yet invaded upon at the same time.
His relocation back to Beijing due to a lack of funds only further motivates his studies. Where his mother is unable to support him financially, she encourages him to dwell over every assignment, project, exam— anything to bring him one step closer to his end goal.
Academic pressure, however, is not the only thing that looms over Xia Fei’s shoulder; he finds himself prone to mulling over almost every whisper about him. Immaturity turns into nasty jealousy in his male classmates. They always point their aggression to different parts of his appearance; his tall stature, his pale skin, his face.
His pretty face.
He hears it come up often enough, usually in more vulgar variants. Boys his age smear his name with a multitude of insinuations— “with a face like that, he could get some from just about any girl in this school. Pretty thing, isn’t he.”
“Oh, so it’s like that? I guess you can’t underestimate the quiet guys, huh.”
“You’d think a guy with a mother like his would have more respect, no?”
It all clings to his skin in deep, ugly patches. After a long night of revising physics in his bedroom until mere moments before daybreak, Xia Fei forces himself out of his desk to look in the mirror for any eyebags.
His eyes linger on his reflection for a moment too long, until a nauseating sensation begins to brew in the pit of his stomach. Unease breaks out across his skin, and he sluggishly tears his eyes away from the mirror. He drags himself to his bed, fighting for any reprieve and for some sleep.
When he wakes up less than an hour later, he throws a blanket over the mirror in his room. A couple days later, he gets rid of it entirely.
“You’re actually serious about moving back to Yingdu for university?” Xia Fei’s aunt asks when she comes over one spring afternoon. His mother is brewing tea in the kitchen, and he remains in the living room with his aunt, seated politely across from her with a cordial smile on his face.
“Yes, āyí. Yingdu University has one of the best applied physics programs in the world. I’m glad that I’ve been admitted, and I would love to return to Yingdu for a little bit,” Xia Fei replies.
Xia Fei’s aunt tsks. “You young boys and your ambition. What’s wrong with remaining in the country for university?”
“Chun-jie,” his mother interjects mildly. “Fei has certainly been working very hard to make it to Yingdu since we’ve moved back. He’s been very diligent with his studies, and it must have not been easy for him to not get distracted since coming back to Beijing, especially with his female classmates fawning over that face of his.” She teasingly smiles at her son. “Why, It’s a good thing he didn’t lose focus.”
His aunt bitingly laughs, and it nips at Xia Fei’s skin. “Ah, you’re right,” she says, looking back over to Xia Fei. “Very well. You must remain focused on your studies in Yingdu. It won’t be a challenge for a handsome man like you to gain attention wherever you go, but your only intention there is to succeed in your studies. Understand?”
The sensation of something revolting crawling all over his skin returns, invasive and all too familiar. When he sees his silhouette in the reflection of his aunt’s slender eyes, he plasters a smile on his face.
“Of course, āyí,” Xia Fei says. His throat tightens, and as his aunt looks away from him to continue talking to his mother, his vision goes unfocused.
Xia Fei is twenty when doubt settles deeps into his bones. It nestles itself somewhere nobody can reach, and as much as Xia Fei scratches at his skin, he can never rip the feeling out of himself.
Yingdu isn’t the same as it was when he was younger. He never remembered the constant eyes on him, the phantom pressure on his shoulders, and the fight to reach standards that are impossible to obtain ever being this bad.
Before the turn of the year, he’s definitely faced it all; pushy classmates, hecklers at bars, patronizing professors, and bitter men and women.
He would never admit to his mother or to anyone back home that he’s uncertain that he’ll continue with his applied physics major. It disturbs him, because it’s beyond newfound disinterest, it’s a fatigue that plagues him in day-to-day life. Exhaustion wears at him, and his grades begin to suffer, too.
He searches for the cause in mirrors and window reflections; the body in front of him is blurred, and shapeless— he wishes he could mold it to his own desires and not those from everyone around him that just always has something to say.
He sets aside his personal wants for the time being, because money is running tight. Financial aid is insufficient at best, funds are short for him, and the end of the semester is nowhere in sight.
One evening after a phone call with his mother, Xia Fei returns to his dorm room to his drunken roommate on the floor, no doubt babbling about some girl that’s broken his heart again. Mere moments pass by before his roommate’s grimy hands are on his face, the smell of booze heavy in his breath as he mutters about “a job for fast cash that’s definitely looking for pretty faces like yours.”
Disgust pervades his senses, and in an instant his fist tightens around his roommate’s collar. He barks out a threat in defense, lined with revulsion—“you better watch what you say next,” —and his roommate immediately backpedals, explaining himself profusely: Modeling.
Modeling.
For some time, the idea appalls Xia Fei; to play into him selling himself out there for money or advantages or anything based off of his looks. But when his pockets become alarmingly empty, he reasons with himself— There’s nothing illegitimate going on here— and he takes up his first ever gig: a poolside photoshoot.
Modeling.
The camera lights flicker in rapid succession, and Xia Fei feels regret, discomfort, and desperation all at once.
“You’re a natural, Xia Fei,” the photographer comments with a smile on her face. “Take a moment to familiarize yourself with the pool, we’re doing an underwater shot next.”
It takes all of Xia Fei’s will for him to give her a single curt nod with a smile on his face. He feels overexposed; his shorts show too much of his long legs that amount to his height, and the sleeveless shirt reveals too much of his arms under the Yingdu sun. He feels like an item, something pretty to look at, but the discomfort inside of him gnaws his stomach hollow.
He excuses himself to go over to the pool, and he stares at its clear blue waves. His reflection ripples before him without the slightest disturbance.
It’s unsettling. It’s him, but beyond the image being warped, it doesn’t look right.
He eyes himself for a moment longer. He doesn’t recognize himself as he jumps in.
Vein is maybe the weirdest person Xia Fei’s ever met.
The man is unabashed with his eccentrics; his mannerisms and the way he dresses couldn’t be any more out of the ordinary. He’s direct, yet ever so elusive; Xia Fei could hardly describe how the man thinks, yet his boss is ever so present in his life, always being a call away when Xia Fei needs him most, and sometimes showing up before he could even consider relying on him.
Another thing interesting— different— about Vein is that despite him employing Xia Fei under his modeling studio, he has never once come off as overtly focused on Xia Fei’s appearance. His looks are a fleeting thought often, only being relevant when it comes to business and the casual reminder to stick to his diet and not overeat— not that Xia Fei struggles much with the latter anymore. It didn’t take too many jobs before the hunger no longer disturbed him. Rather, Vein keeps him around not to look at him, but to see through him; he finds humor in just about every tangent Xia Fei goes off on, regarding schoolwork to modeling work to anything nonsensical.
Xia Fei doesn’t know why Vein seems to find him so amusing, but it makes for the most unique dynamic he’s ever had with somebody, and maybe it’s just what he’s needed this whole time. To feel observed, seen. Not merely watched.
“It looks like your recent photoshoot was very well-received,” Vein says, haphazardly abandoning a magazine on his desk with Xia Fei’s face as the cover.
Xia Fei tracks the magazine with his eyes, scrutinizing every inch of what seems to be his own face staring back at him, then noncommittally hums.
“It’s like I can’t go anywhere with seeing my own face now,” he muses. He glances down again. In his peripheral, he sees Vein raise an eyebrow.
Xia Fei recognizes the face printed on magazines, posters, and billboards as his own, but it increasingly becomes harder for him to make that connection. It certainly doesn’t help that the picture perfect version of him has an English name— Felix— on top of it, removing it even further from who he ever intended to be and becoming the splitting image of what other people want from him.
This time, he doesn’t look away from the photo as quickly; despite how long he stares at the magazine, the cover never morphs into something more akin to the Xia Fei that shied away from his own reflection as a teenage boy; this version of himself, if he can even consider it that, is pristine, unblemished; disconnected.
Xia Fei figures, if this is what the public wants from him; a Felix that is so pliable to everyone’s gaze, an image easy to exploit and ready to market— as long as it continues to keep him financially afloat, he starts to think that he’ll be able to manage.
Xia Fei’s heart races as his mouth goes dry. The taste of wine is heavy on his tongue and it clouds his senses. He’s made a mistake.
He should’ve known better; the client would not leave his side once throughout the shoot, clinging to him with an overzealousness that, to anyone not utterly exhausted, would have raised red flags. The insistent small-talk led to conversation within the dressing room coerced out of him, a bottle of wine presented on the glass table before him, a small sip or two—
A slender, frigid hand forcefully reaches for his waist, and Xia Fei flinches, trying to deflect it.
“No,” Xia Fei mutters, his voice small and uncertain. “No, stop.”
The client grins at him, pressing against him until Xia Fei’s back hits the cushion beneath him.
“You’re prettier off camera, Felix,” the client murmurs. “ Come on. Don’t be so cold.”
No. “No,” Xia Fei cries out with a fervor, “Get off of me. Get—”
The client grabs him, and Xia Fei’s arms fly up to block him. He squirms under the weight of the client.
The client sighs; not with resignation, but with contentment.
“Relax, Felix. All you gotta do is learn just how far a nice face like yours can get you, okay?”
The client is heavy above him, a hunger in his demeanor that is predatory and primitive. The way Xia Fei fawns is instinctual.
Xia Fei turns his head in protest, shame— and the wine bottle comes into his line of sight. He blinks once, twice, and the image of them reflected on the bottle is warped and vile; but his gaze locks onto the orange eyes glaring back at him, wide and full of terror.
His heart plummets, the look of fear— his own fear and defenselessness— staring at him, the image permeating into the bones in his body, situating next to nauseating amounts of doubt and disgust.
It carves something out of him and into him. He can’t ignore it. He can’t look at it any longer.
The second that the client’s callused palms begin to reach under Xia Fei’s clothes, he shoves him off with a burst of adrenaline. Before the client can be knocked onto the floor, Xia Fei grabs the wine bottle in one motion and brings it down over the client’s head.
Glass and wine burst forth everywhere. The client lets out a yell in agony before he hits the carpet, glass shards following him. Each shard reflecting fragments of the broken scene and his torment.
The sound of Xia Fei’s panicked breathing fills the space, and he hurries onto his feet and stumbles to the far corner of the room. His hands fly onto the walls for support, his clothes to make sure they’re decent. Each frantic brush of his fingers across his own body stings; his hands sting.
The moment the acrid smell of wine and blood hits his nostrils, Xia Fei staggers out of the room.
The bedroom is silent, and Xia Fei winces as Vein wraps the littered wounds on his palm. Vein’s piercing red eyes flicker up from the gauze, and Xia Fei nearly shrinks from how much fury is held within them. They soften momentarily.
“Hold still,” Vein says, gently tightening his hold on Xia Fei’s wrist, making the latter grit his teeth. “Don’t you need the injury wrapped?”
Xia Fei nods; coy, pathetic. “Sorry, laoban,” he says meekly.
Vein doesn’t verbally reply. He stops for only a beat, then continues delicately wrapping the injury.
Xia Fei bites his lower lip, hard, until the first tears begin to form in his eyes. He blinks them away. There’s only so much Vein would be willing to cover for. Xia Fei let it all go on for too long, he went too far— he’s made a mess of things.
Vein can only help him for so long until enough would be enough.
“I’m sorry,” he says again. His voice breaks, and the indelicate crack is a resounding reflection of all that had happened.
Vein pauses, as if trying to quell his lingering anger before looking up at Xia Fei.
“If anything,” Vein starts squarely, red eyes seeing right into him, “you should have done worse to him.”
Xia Fei’s breath hitches for a second. He averts his tearful gaze back down to the gauze on his hand, then to the velvet bedsheet beneath him.
“But it doesn’t matter at this point,” Vein continues. He rips off the remainder of the loose gauze, then carefully places Xia Fei’s injured hand in his lap. When Xia Fei’s own hand comes into view, he dares to look back up at Vein, whose stare holds certainty; security.
“I’ve made sure he’ll never be a problem again.”
Things don’t necessarily become easier, but they do change.
It becomes photoshoot after photoshoot for Xia Fei; to him, the flawless image of Felix is plastered on just about every surface in Yingdu possible. Every time Xia Fei comes across yet another one of his works, he takes a moment to examine it. The half-lidded eyes in the photos are flat and unreflective, and it becomes impossible for Xia Fei to see through them.
It feels… hollow. As if Felix is a shell.
If it gets him where it needs to get him, Xia Fei is willing to be superficial, nothing more than a pretty face and body for others to look at for their own contentment, even if the burden of it all settles deep inside of him.
People still talk.
“I’m almost sick of seeing that Felix just about everywhere.”
“It’s annoying, isn’t it? He literally came out of nowhere with that stupid face of his, too.”
“Maybe that’s why he’s doing so well. There’s no way he just showed up and got so far without doing something dirty for attention. That face and build of his definitely had to have gotten him something.”
“Oh my gosh, yeah! Have you seen how all those old guys are always after him for their shoots? He’s such a tease, how disgusting.”
“Gosh, he’ll do anything for some money and fame! I knew he wasn't as innocent as he looks."
People have always talked, Xia Fei reasons with himself. Rumors emerge, word goes around the agency, it’s nothing new.
He learns that there’s no point in wasting every breath trying to defend himself from people’s cruel words. He instead starts to smile in the face of those that harass them, and flaunts himself with an air that’s confident, haughty, and well-choreographed.
Rumors unfortunately give people ideas. Few people have tried anything inappropriate with him; he always stops their wandering claws with a firm hand and a strained smile.
Every once in a while he catches a glimpse of himself, away from the cameras. In the moments where the unrest thrumming under the surface of his skin becomes too much. For as long as he can remember, deep-seated guilt smears his reflection: the raw, assailable image of Xia Fei.
He never notices when his breath first becomes uneven and his skin becomes clammy when he looks at himself for too long. With a deep breath, he does his best to shift back into the mirage everyone is expectant of him to be.
He runs around more often with Vein now; and Liu Xiao, a man so evasive and off-putting in nature, pushes him towards more dubious business, such as spying on Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang. The mental toll of it all, no doubt weighing on his moral compass (or whatever it is that he has, Xia Fei often muses to himself), becomes easier to move past as time goes on.
Or maybe just easier to set aside. Easier to ignore.
When Xia Fei is uncertain of the person reflected in his mirrors, he clings onto what he has. He clings onto his job. He clings onto trying to complete his degree. He clings onto Vein.
Vein has been there for him a countless amount of times. He’s quick to reprimand him when Xia Fei’s thoughts and behavior threatens to lead him astray, yet he’s always the first to protect him. Provide for him.
“I wouldn’t know what to do if you weren’t here,” Xia Fei confesses to him many times in many places; studios, offices, dark alleyways, bedrooms with nobody but the two of them. Sometimes, Vein would find humor in the situation at hand, ruffling Xia Fei’s hair and flicking his forehead in amusement; other times, Vein hums an intimate melody as he holds him close.
Many times, Vein does neither and says nothing; he settles on continuing to be a presence for Xia Fei.
Time and time again.
Until that evening.
At Xia Fei’s feet lays a corpse being zipped up inside a body bag. When it comes into sight— he doesn’t want it to, but it does, the sliver of bright red hair being tucked away with the rest of the dead body by paramedics— he can hear his own heart break into fragments, and he feels how his chest hollows out with each piece of it. His skin runs ice cold and his vision becomes tunneled as he lunges forward, crying out as paramedics carry the body away.
Not a sound comes out of his throat. The pain is raw and guttural regardless.
The weight on his shoulders is insurmountable as he dredges through the routine condolences and the half-assed sympathies from people within the agency. Those that even have time to spare on him amid the wild scramble to figure out how to carry the agency past Vein’s death hardly lend him a phony I’m sorry for your loss.
Xia Fei barely manages to pull himself together to see Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang off at the airport. He does his best to smile, wanting to leave them with an image that doesn’t attest to his current state of mind. The look of absolute pity in Cheng Xiaoshi’s eyes reflects that he didn’t do a good enough job.
It’s raining the evening that the pair flies out of Yingdu. Xia Fei calls a taxi to take him back to his apartment from the airport.
When he enters, his shoes leave tracks from the rain outside. He does not bother to dry them off. He also does not bother to remove them and place them next to the abandoned pair of black loafers at the doorway.
He stands in the walkway of his apartment, the room dim and devoid of any sound, vacant of any presence besides his own.
After a while, he finds himself wandering into his bedroom. He flicks on a light switch so he can see, and he fixes his eyes on his bed. It has not been dressed since the last time Vein was in it.
Slowly, he approaches the mirror.
He makes note of different things in his appearance: the knots in the end of his hair that he somehow missed and yet went out in public having. The dark under eyes that are only half concealed.
His dull, orange eyes.
It creeps up on Xia Fei like a tide; it’s sudden like the snap of a thread. An ugliness blooms all over every inch of him: it’s repulsive, and yet he can’t tear his eyes away from it. The mirage shatters before his very eyes, and he cannot pick up its pieces. In the mirror, he’s disfigured with an amount of shame and nakedness that surpasses anything he’s experienced before.
There is no more running away from his own harrowing reflection. He cries in the mirror, and he watches how each teardrop leaves a salty trail on his skin. His cries turn into sobs, coarse and unrestricted, nothing of which he is supposed to be— and he crumbles onto the floor of the bathroom, his fingers digging into his own scalp, tugging at the hairs on his head. His legs curl to his chest, and the very movement is agony to him.
There is no illusion for him to hide behind. There is nobody to uphold him to a standard so that he would be forced to uphold himself. He’s confronted with the unsightliness he’s fought for so long to avoid, yet to no avail.
Here, beyond his porcelain skin and a pretty face, Xia Fei lies vulnerable.