On days when his parents and siblings were away, Fa Muzhi spent his time in this ordinary manner. Each day, he spent most of his time either with his colleagues or with Su Huanliu.

A week later, when he could finally perform the thirteen-minute crane boxing routine without collapsing from exhaustion, the crane boxing competition opened as scheduled. On stage, Fa Muzhi delivered a breathtakingly fluid crane boxing performance; below, Su Huanliu contributed a masterful pipa recital. 

Their collaboration proved so spectacular that the modest, little-known crane boxing tournament unexpectedly gained some traction. The most discussed element, however, was the opening crane boxing performance. Everything from the mysterious fighter, the accompanying music, the performer, and the flowing, elegant costume worn by the fighter became hot topics of discussion. So much so that outsiders unfamiliar with crane boxing later mistakenly believed this costume was the official crane boxing attire. Later, those who followed the trend to learn the art hadn’t even mastered the techniques yet, but everyone had already acquired a similar set of martial arts attire to wear first.

This was precisely the kind of thing Fa Muzhi wouldn’t pay attention to.

Su Huanliu, however, did pay attention. As the designer of the new crane boxing uniform, he had been fully prepared. By the time people started searching online for crane boxing uniforms, his store already had them stocked in every color imaginable, and they sold like hotcakes.

Afterward, he even treated Fa Muzhi to a lavish meal, saying it was to thank him for the publicity.

Fa Muzhi: ???

During this time, Fa Zhizhi had returned briefly. She came and went in a hurry, taking with her the egg and Life-Saving Pills their brother had brought her last time. She left behind a jersey top and a group photo with her teammates.

Fa Muzhi pinched the jersey between two fingers and sniffed it cautiously. After a moment, he frowned.

A jersey reeking of sweat like this—did his little sister leave it on the bed to make him wash it? Or…

Fortunately, he was a meticulous fellow. After noticing this jersey was completely different from the team uniform his sister wore in the photo, he examined it more closely. This time, he spotted an inconspicuous signature.

Alright then.

He bought two pieces of glass, placed the jersey inside, then used some wood he had at home to carve a frame. He secured it and placed this display case in his sister’s room.

During this time, another incident occurred—one that left Fa Muzhi feeling chilled to the bone, nearly convinced he’d been exposed.

It happened while he was still working on the wood.

To make his home appear normal, whenever he returned to the mountain house, and his parents and siblings weren’t there, he’d do things he’d normally do on the other side of the tree branch—like reading or woodworking—in the “school district house.”

He was sitting on the floor sanding a wooden plank when his phone suddenly rang. He turned it on to find a video call request from Su Huanliu.

“Hello?” His hands were dirty, and it took him a while to find a wet wipe among the things cluttered. Fortunately, Su Huanliu’s calls were always long; by the time he wiped his hands, the call hadn’t ended. Then, when he finally got his hands ready and accepted the video invitation, what appeared before him wasn’t Su Huanliu’s face, but a black bird with three heads.

When Fa Muzhi appeared on the other end of the screen, all three heads of the black bird turned to look at him simultaneously. The six red eyes atop those three heads fixed their gaze squarely on him.

The intense stare made goosebumps rise on Fa Muzhi’s back.

“What is this?” he asked blankly.

Then, the six red eyes instantly vanished from his view, replaced by Su Huanliu’s face.

Dressed in a robe Su Huanliu considered casual but which made Fa Muzhi look tired just at, he sat leisurely in a home where even the wall paint was meticulously chosen. Perched on his shoulder was a tiny black three-headed… little bird…

Alright, so it wasn’t a big bird but a little bird after all. Judging by its trembling appearance, it was most likely a bird that had hatched not long ago.

Wait a minute—

Though nearly wiped out, one had survived, hadn’t it? Fa Muzhi had seen newborn chicks before. Comparing it to the memory of a cockerel hatching before his eyes, he felt increasingly familiar with this three-headed bird. The colors were completely different, and it had two extra heads, but—

“Is this… a chicken?” he hesitated.

Then he saw Su Huanliu, across from him, clap his hands with rare “exuberance.” Smiling, he reached out and ruffled one of the heads on the chick perched on his shoulder. “It is a chicken!” Su Huanliu declared.

“And this chicken has something to do with you!”

Hearing this, Fa Muzhi’s heart skipped a beat as an ominous thought suddenly flashed through his mind.

Before he could dwell on it, Su Huanliu continued cheerfully, “It’s the chick that hatched from the egg you gave me, Zhizhi. Hehe, it gave me quite a start when it first popped out!”

“Sorry to startle you, but honestly, I was startled too. Never imagined the chickens my parents keep back home are three-headed chickens—” His mind in turmoil, Fa Muzhi was trying to figure out how to explain next when Su Huanliu had already provided the explanation for him.

“Is it a mutation?” Cradling the frail three-headed chick in his palm, he pondered, “Deformity is essentially mutation, but personally, I prefer to call this a variation—a life form sensing environmental shifts and exploring possibilities to reshape itself for adaptation. Hmm… Is this little one just testing the boundaries of its species? Thinking of it that way, it’s a great pioneer…”

No, not a pioneer. It just looks like it’s mother—Fa Muzhi’s heart silently replied.

Though he didn’t know his parents were raising a three-headed chicken over there, they had indeed mentioned that their little rooster had found a local wife. Now that he thought about it, could that so-called local wife have three heads?

Mom and Dad, you must’ve suffered. Seeing a three-headed chicken for the first time must’ve scared you silly, right? But what’s even more shocking is how resilient their only surviving little rooster is, huh… Facing so many heads of a wife, resilient indeed.

And…

No wonder he’s into life sciences… investments. After working over there for so long, does he even talk like a normal person anymore?

Thoughts flashed through his mind like lightning, but in the end, Fa Muzhi was already at his lips. He only managed a “Hmm,” which Su Huanliu took as full support for his conjecture.

He had no choice. He couldn’t refuse. If he didn’t support the other’s idea, where would he find a better excuse to fool him?

Fa Muzhi nodded numbly.

His original plan was to bluff his way through for now, but in Su Huanliu’s eyes, it seemed to carry another meaning—

He stroked the little chick with one hand, his gaze growing increasingly tender. Finally, his eyes sparkled as he looked at him, and then, Fa Muzhi heard him say:

“I knew you were special, Zhizhi.”

“You can accept all kinds of uniqueness with such ease.”

Fa Muzhi: …No, actually, I haven’t fully accepted it yet.

This time, however, Su Huanliu didn’t seem to share his telepathic connection.

Completely unaware of Fa Muzhi’s inner thoughts, Su Huanliu merely smiled faintly. After a moment, he even apologized: “Sorry, Zhizhi. Actually, I’ve been hiding something from you.”

Huh?

Before Fa Muzhi could process it, Su Huanliu had already stood up. Somehow, the video feed began pulling back, the camera zooming out until the entire wall—previously just a patch of dark wallpaper—filled Fa Muzhi’s vision.

Thus, what appeared on the screen before Fa Muzhi was Su Huanliu holding three small birds, along with the full view of the dark display wall behind him!

The moment he recognized the exhibits on the wall, Fa Muzhi’s heart skipped a beat.

He recognized this room. Every video call with Su Huanliu had taken place here. Yet, during his visits to Su’s home, he’d never set foot in this particular room. On video, only a fragment of the wallpaper’s pattern and color had ever been visible; the bulk of the frame was dominated by Su Huanliu himself. He’d never truly seen anything.

But now, thanks to Su Huanliu’s deliberate display, he could see every detail of this room.

This was… a peculiar room.

Its ceiling height was nothing like an ordinary home—it was exceptionally tall, and entirely black.

The ceiling was black, the walls black, the carpet black.

Against this vast black backdrop, one painting after another was displayed, alongside sculptures and even taxidermy specimens.

Each artifact was distinct, yet at first glance, Fa Muzhi recognized their common thread—multiple heads.

Nearly every painting and sculpture featured multi-headed subjects: plants, animals… even humans. The taxidermy specimens followed suit. Like the three-headed chick perched on Su Huanliu’s shoulder now, every collection piece possessed at least two heads!

In short, it defied all normal human understanding.

As the camera moved, Fa Muzhi’s gaze was forced to sweep past one collection piece after another. After surveying all the items, the lens finally returned to Su Huanliu standing in the room’s center. The moment Fa Muzhi saw Su Huanliu with just one head, he couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief.

Then, he heard Su Huanliu lower her eyes and speak softly, with a hint of embarrassment: “This… is the hobby I’ve always kept hidden from you…”

“When I was little… I found a small creature. It was a two-headed animal. Maybe it was abandoned by its mother because of its appearance. Or perhaps the mutation itself was imperfect—its body was so frail… I raised it for years, but I couldn’t keep it. In the end, it left me…”

“And that’s how I developed this… hobby…”

“They… the people in my family know about this hobby. They all say I’m a freak… that if others found out, they’d despise and reject me… so…”

“So I never dared tell you, Zhizhi, about this hobby…”

“But now that you’ve accepted this three-headed chick and seen all my other collections without flinching, Zhizhi… could it be… could it be…”

…you’re not disgusted or ashamed of me?

He didn’t voice that last question aloud, yet Fa Muzhi saw the query in his eyes.

Those familiar, starkly contrasting eyes. That familiar, elegant, and beautiful young man. If you replaced the heads in the background with flowers, he’d be the very friend who’d accompanied him for twelve years. Yet—

His friend’s peculiar tastes were real, but so was their shared history. Their friendship was real.

Facing this, Su Huanliu, what could Fa Muzhi possibly do?

After a moment’s thought, he forced himself to glance once more at the paintings of multi-headed beasts on the wall. Hmm… He stared intently for a few more seconds before turning his head to meet Su Huanliu’s expectant gaze. “Actually,” he said, “after seeing them so often, they don’t bother me anymore.”

Su Huanliu merely collected them. His parents raised three-headed chickens daily! He himself had eaten their eggs for twelve years, and most of his tuition came from selling those eggs. From this perspective, he had absolutely no reason to fear three-headed chickens. If he wasn’t afraid of them, what reason was there to feel disgust toward other creatures with extra heads or missing ones?

Wasn’t it a bit unfair to pass judgment on someone just because they looked different?

As he pondered this, Fa Muzhi even reflected on his own behavior.

So, the gaze he directed at Su Huanliu grew calmer.

Su Huanliu, sensing his friend’s emotional shift, instantly relaxed and smiled faintly. He lifted his head, only to find his friend still staring intently after a long moment. This time, it was Su Huanliu who felt uneasy under the gaze.

“Um… Zhizhi, you’re looking at me like that—is there something you want to ask?”

He hesitated.

Without nodding, Fa Muzhi cut straight to the question—

“So… did you fake it all? Liking flower viewing, crane boxing, all those instruments… was it fake?”

Through the screen, a pair of dark, narrow eyes stared at him with unflinching calm. Here it comes, here it comes—that feeling of being locked in by those eyes…

Meeting the focused gaze of Fa Muzhi, Su Huanliu’s pupils dilated slightly. A tingling, prickly sensation ran down his spine. He wanted to laugh, but laughter felt utterly inappropriate at this moment.

So he suppressed the urge, quietly enduring Fa Muzhi’s scrutiny. After a long pause, he replied, “It wasn’t fake. My love for those things was real, too.”

“Good. I was worried those past moments were just you keeping me company.” Fa Muzhi nodded, raising an eyebrow at him. “Anything else?”

“Um… no.”

Fa Muzhi simply nodded. “Alright, I’ll get back to my woodwork. See you tomorrow.”

With that, his hand reached out, a single finger pressing to sever their connection.

Su Huanliu was left alone in the vast black room, staring at the phone screen displaying the restored chat interface. He froze for a moment before bursting into laughter.

The connection between them had been severed. Had Fa Muzhi still been there, hearing that laughter, he would surely have thought his dear friend had been replaced.

━━ 🐈‍⬛ ━━

Author’s Note:

Fa Muzhi—

Staring at the scrap wood in his hands, he pondered: If he were to make a feeding bowl for the newly hatched three-headed chicken, should he craft one large bowl or three small ones?

Dilemma!