Li woke up to impossibly skinny arms and legs strewn all over his bed, all leading back to a twisted mountain of silk sheets with a ruffage of tinted hair poking out. Li was a sturdy man- but a lean one, every aspect about him curved gently. Groggily examining this whirlpool of sheets and skin that must have been last night’s lover, he was genuinely surprised to be faced with a man slighter than himself. He thought of himself as kinda short, but the shrimp next to him was definitely a grown man.

Li's stomach abruptly interrupted his capacity to think. Food.

Li reaches for the bell cord that would bring breakfast but shifting his weight causes the mattress to bow. The human cacoon-mess of bed sheets started to slide slowly to the very edge of the bed. Li reached, and grasped.

Like a sailor bringing a rowboat up to the lip of the ship, Li was indelicate and efficient in pulling his sleeping bedmate out of jeopardy. But somehow, the skinny swirl of blankets did not awaken from being man-handled so. Instead the arms, the legs extended lazily toward Li. When Li dropped his grip, the arms fell easily to land on his chest.

When Li sat further up, the hands slid lower, the body drew closer, and arms began to encircle Li’s waist- revealing that his bedmate had long toned arms and delicate wrists and hands.

Birds sang outside. Footmen marched and saluted, sunlight slowly wandered farther into the room. Li wasn’t sure how long he sat there- stupefied. He does not quite remember when he folded back the blankets to reveal the young man. But minutes slipped away as he studied the beautiful boy; mocha skin, soft rounded eyes, straight nose, long black lashes that betrayed the vivid Auburn tint to his undercut hairstyle to be fake. Was he mixed? He was of those who are unique, distinctive in their beauty and completely unplace-able in terms of race or origin. It was like a piece from another world had fell from the sky and landed in Li's bed. Simply speaking, the boy was using Li’s stomach for a pillow, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. And quite plainly, who does that?

The boy murmured into the flesh of his own arm and snuggled deeper into Li’s stomach. Li’s heart swelled with something bitter and sweet. His stomach tightened, he was still hungry, but he didn't dare move.

How many years has it been since somebody touched me like this?

He used to share a bed with some of his siblings all the time when he was younger. Especially when he was around 5. Li had always possessed a big imagination... and he often scared himself with imagined monsters. But he had never worried because he was the youngest of 5 brothers and two sisters, all of whom were much stronger and braver than he was. No monster would dare bother any of them!

The hallways between his bedroom and the others always seemed like vast oceans of darkness and danger. But Li would go, he’d hold his breath as he ran across the space- afraid monsters would hear him breathing. Whatever door he found first, he would open. And a pair of arms was always there to groggily pull him into bed and tuck him into the blankets with them.

In the days when his siblings were all going to a local private school, they used to have homework parties- everyone helping and in some cases cheating their way through copious amounts of assignments. On nights like these Li would open door after door looking for his siblings, only to find all of them passed out together in one room, laying on top of each other like cats in the sun. And all Li had to do was pick someone’s lap or arms and he would burrow himself in with them.

Li felt tears roll down his cheeks and he saw the tear fall on the call boy’s forehead. Yet it took Li a long moment to realize he was crying. He sniffed, and quickly wiped his tears. That was such a long time ago. Today was different. Back to reality. He wiped the fallen tears off of the boy’s brow. But as he was erasing the evidence of his vulnerability his fingers got sidetracked in the light brown hair. The texture of damaged hair between his fingers somehow conjured a name. Koharu. This young man’s name was Koharu, he was 23. He loved photography and painting. But he hated actually doing both. He believed in omens and in the Zodiac, but still believed astrology and palm reading were a loads of huff. He was crazy about Orange slices dipped in chocolate.

Li felt himself frown, tension rising in his lower back and creeping up his spine. He somehow knew all these snippets of trivia about Koharu, but he didn’t remember the actual conversation that must have taken place for him to learn all this. And what troubled him deeper was the knowledge that he must have shared himself with Koharu. He must have traded some of his own secrets for this trivial knowledge. Pieces of himself had been given. They must have or Li would not be in this situation. Secrets, vulnerabilities could have been spilled from his lips and in his intoxication he carelessly scattered them into the night. And the worse part, he had no memory of what had been said.

I cannot let this be.