Chapter 9: The Closet

The prop closet on the Hall's top floor had no window and one hanging bulb.

Ye Ming was reaching for a box of incense when the door clicked shut behind him.

"Don't turn around yet," said Sang Ruo.

Ye Ming turned around.

Sang Ruo stood against the door with his arms behind his back, in a pale shirt open at the collar.

His left ear was bare tonight, and he was breathing quickly.

"I wanted to say it somewhere private," said Sang Ruo. "You're always with someone, and the someone is always a lamp."

"Say what?"

"That I think you're the most beautiful man I've ever seen, and you never once look at me."

He came a step closer.

Ye Ming did not retreat, because retreating was how you taught a man to follow.

He stood with his back to the shelf and looked at Sang Ruo, flat and quiet and a little tired.

"You've said it," said Ye Ming. "Move, please."

"That's what I mean. You say please and it stings." Sang Ruo laughed shakily.

"Everyone at the Hall wants you to look at them. I thought if I stopped trying to be liked, you might."

He lifted his hand and laid two fingers along Ye Ming's jaw.

They were warm and smelled of cologne, and they shook slightly.

"Come to dinner. I'll protect you from Master Lu. I know things. I'll look after your sister's scholarship."

"No," said Ye Ming.

"Just one dinner."

"Take your hand away."

The bulb above them went out.

Ye Ming heard his own breath in the dark.

Then the cold came, hard and heavy, and it filled the whole closet.

The shelves rang.

Frost crawled across the incense boxes, and the door behind Sang Ruo became a sheet of white.

Sang Ruo's breath came out in clouds.

"What's that?" he whispered. "Ming-ge, the temperature."

A hand closed on his wrist.

Ye Ming saw it in the thin gray light from the door crack.

A long hand with a hard grip was pulling Sang Ruo's fingers away from his face.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Fake Medium Hooked a Real Ghost from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.