Chapter 1: The Boy Across the Street

Chapter 1: The Boy Across the Street

The ink bled, a black spiderweb spreading across the fragile rice paper. Li Wei’s hand froze, the wolf-hair brush hovering over the ruined character. His breath caught in his throat. Another failure. From downstairs, the faint, maddeningly perfect notes of a piano sonata drifted through the floorboards—Chopin, played with a precision that was less human than machine.

That was Yueming. Of course, it was.

Li Wei lived his life in the shadow of the boy across the street. Yueming, the golden child of Yanjiao, a manicured suburb where success was the only accepted currency. Yueming, whose name was a constant refrain in his parents' mouths, a benchmark he could never reach. “Yueming won the national math Olympiad.” “Yueming’s calligraphy was exhibited in the city museum.” “Did you hear? Yueming is fluent in French now. So diligent.”

Li Wei slammed the brush down, spattering black ink across his desk. He was diligent too. He studied until his eyes burned, practiced the guzheng until his fingers were raw, and traced calligraphy strokes until his wrist ached with a dull fire. But his diligence was a frantic, desperate scrabble up a cliff face. Yueming’s was an effortless ascent to the heavens.

His tired eyes, ringed with the faint purple of sleepless nights, drifted to his window. Across the street, Yueming’s house stood like a pristine temple to achievement. Perfect lawn, gleaming windows, a silent testament to the perfection within. Sometimes, Li Wei would see him. Yueming would be in his yard, practicing Tai Chi with a slow, fluid grace that was unnerving, a serene smile fixed on his handsome face. He moved like a doll, every gesture flawless, every angle considered. It wasn't natural. It couldn't be.

A vibration in his pocket jolted him from his thoughts. A text from Lixia.

<Arcade. Now. Skip cram school. I dare you.>

Li Wei’s heart hammered against his ribs. Desire, sharp and sweet, cut through the fog of his exhaustion. Lixia was the antithesis of Yanjiao. She was a burst of chaotic, joyous color in his grayscale world. She laughed too loudly, wore brightly colored hoodies, and believed grades were a poor substitute for living. She was everything his parents warned him against. She was everything he wanted.

The obstacle was the two-ton weight of expectation pinning him to his chair. Cram school was in an hour. His mother had laid out his books, a silent command. To defy it was unthinkable. It was a betrayal.

But the ruined calligraphy on his desk, the phantom notes of Chopin from a house that wasn't his… they were a betrayal too. A betrayal of himself.

Action. With a surge of reckless adrenaline, Li Wei typed a reply.

He slipped out the back door, his movements furtive, like a thief in his own home. The air outside felt different, charged with the thrill of rebellion.

The hour he spent with Lixia at the arcade was the only time Li Wei felt like a real sixteen-year-old. The cacophony of sirens, explosions, and electronic music was a glorious balm to his frayed nerves. Lixia beat him soundly at a fighting game, her laughter echoing off the flashing screens.

“You think too much,” she said, bumping his shoulder as they left, the scent of popcorn and cheap sugar clinging to them. “You’re always calculating the next move. Just hit the buttons. Have fun.”

She looked at him then, her bright, perceptive eyes seeing past the model student facade. “Your parents are riding you hard again, aren’t they?”

He couldn’t answer, only offered a weak shrug.

“It’s because of him, isn’t it? Mr. Perfect across the street.” She rolled her eyes. “My mom tried that on me once. I told her I’d rather be happy than perfect. She didn’t bring him up again.”

If only it were that simple. For Lixia, it was. For him, it was a cage. They walked in comfortable silence for a while, the setting sun painting the sky in hues of orange and violet. For a moment, standing there with her, the pressure vanished. He could breathe. This was the life he craved, a life measured in laughter and shared moments, not test scores.

The illusion shattered the moment he walked through his front door.

His mother and father were waiting for him in the living room, their faces etched with a cold, quiet fury that was far more terrifying than shouting. His cram school bag sat untouched by the door.

“Where were you, Li Wei?” his father asked, his voice dangerously low.

“I… I wasn’t feeling well,” he lied, the words tasting like ash.

“The cram school called,” his mother said, her voice sharp as glass. “They said you never arrived. We called Lixia’s parents. They said she was with you.” She held up his phone, the screen lit with his text exchange. “An arcade? You disgrace us with this… frivolity? While Yueming is at home preparing for his early admission interview to Tsinghua?”

There it was. The name. The hammer that always fell.

“Yueming isn’t my keeper!” The words burst out of him, raw and resentful. “I don’t care what he does!”

His father’s face hardened. “You will care. You will learn discipline. You are a reflection of this family, and right now, that reflection is flawed. Pathetic.”

The punishment was swift and absolute. He was grounded for a month. His phone was confiscated. Internet access was cut off. His only permitted activities were school and study, all to be conducted in his room. The door to his cage slammed shut.

That night, Li Wei sat in the dark, the silence of his room a crushing weight. The brief taste of freedom made his imprisonment a hundred times more bitter. His resentment for Yueming was no longer a dull ache; it was a festering wound, a toxic obsession. It wasn't fair. No one could be that perfect without cheating. There had to be a secret, a shortcut, a devil’s bargain.

His gaze was fixed on the house across the street. A light was on in Yueming’s bedroom window, a simple, warm yellow square against the encroaching night. As Li Wei watched, nursing the dark coal of his hatred, the light flickered.

Then it changed.

It wasn't a flicker, like a bulb dying. The warm yellow light was eclipsed by something else. A faint, sickly glow bloomed from the center of the room, a light that seemed to drink the color from its surroundings. It was a deep, bruised purple, shot through with veins of blackness that writhed like living things. It pulsed, slow and rhythmic, like a diseased heart beating in the dark. It cast long, distorted shadows that danced on the walls in ways that defied the laws of physics.

Li Wei’s blood ran cold. He pressed his face against his window, his breath fogging the glass. That was not a lamp. It was not a computer screen or a television. It was something alien, something wrong.

The unholy light pulsed again, stronger this time, and for a split second, Li Wei saw a silhouette against it—a figure, impossibly still, standing in the very heart of the glow. It wasn't the graceful, poised shape of Yueming. It was something… thinner. Gnarled.

Then, as quickly as it appeared, the glow vanished, and the warm, normal lamplight returned. The room across the street was just a room once more.

But Li Wei had seen it. The secret to Yueming’s perfection wasn’t diligence. It wasn't genius. It was something monstrous. And Li Wei knew, with a terrifying certainty that settled deep in his bones, that he had to have it.