Male God fanfic: Rong Si’s Parents Part 1

maripaz: Hello! For any Male God fans out there, here’s a fan-fiction about the origin story of Rong Si’s parents. Fair warning that this is not a fluffy, light-hearted tale like Male God was, but if you were intrigued by protagonist Rong Si’s mysterious family, read on for one interpretation of what might have happened!

Full disclosure that I’ve never written anything before, and this is so late because while I fully intended to finish writing this right after we finished translating Male God, I basically procrastinated until this year, when I resolved to take it off my to-do list. The story is told in first person, with Rong Si’s dad telling the first two parts and Rong Si’s mom telling the last two parts. A final, small epilogue caps the story. Enjoy~~

Part 1: Rong Cheng

“If there is a love that has no chance of being reciprocated, how long can that love survive?”

When Rong Si had asked this tonight out of the blue, I had been startled. But now, I found the corners of my mouth curling up in a wry chuckle.

His sudden questions about love and relationships had brought back memories that I normally repress or lock away, but I knew what the truth was. The beautiful times I had with her, his mom, were magical and momentous, and in my life, the meager few of them were enough to sustain me.

I first met her in high school. I was fresh off a summer where I had had a wicked growth spurt and was only just getting used to the idea that I was conventionally “handsome”. I was in school to study, so I never really took much notice of the opposite sex, but everyone knew who Lin Feiyun was. Beautiful Feifei.

She was exuberance itself. Brilliant, but in a fragile way. She lived as if on another plane, occupying a dimension more fabulous than the one the rest of us were on, but without any haughtiness or sense of an “untouchable other”. One got the impression that she would gladly hoist us onto her plane but that before she could lift anyone up, she would have flitted on to and been distracted by the next endeavor or person.

She charmed the teachers with her pliable wink and smile. She joked with the guys as if they were buddies with her and without any of the awkwardness and hesitation that other girls our age had towards the male sex. She drew in the girls with her hush-hush air of confiding in them and making them feel listened to, cared about and special. On paper, it seemed like it would be fairly easy for people to hate her, but no one ever did.

On that day, I was unlocking the door to the rooftop when she came up from behind and said, “Please, can I join you?”

Mutely, I nodded.

It was early to mid spring, where the sun was bright but the wind was cold. We situated ourselves outside, in the shadow of the walls enclosing the stair entrance. I remember standing awkwardly because I was unsure if I should sit like I normally did or stand and engage her in conversation.

Of course, she piped in herself. “This feels like kind of the perfect time and place for a smoke, huh?”

I stared at her, and she laughed. “I’m kidding! I’ve never smoked in my life!! Haha! I just feel like we’re isolated, we’re on the rooftop, the sky is blue, the wind is clear, and it seemed like the thing to say. Although I guess if it were windy, the smoke would blow back into our faces, right? Haha, I don’t know!”

I didn’t either. What to say?

“So what are you doing here?” she asked and stared at me with her earnest eyes.

I turned the question around and asked her, “What are you doing here?”

She laughed again. “I’m hiding. There were two boys downstairs who were waiting to ask me out. Normally I’m OK just turning them down nicely, but this time I overheard them talking about how they were making a bet to see which one I’d say yes to.” She made a face. “I don’t really like that, and I saw you sneaking up here again, so I thought I’d just… see what you’re up to!”

I must have just stared at her because she continued, “haha, I’m not trying to be vain or arrogant or anything. It’s just a fact. A lot of guys ask me out, and I try to be as nice as possible, but really, this situation is kind of awkward and actually…kind of makes me angry, which I don’t like, so I thought I’d come up here and blow it off.” Pause. “You know, you’d be in the same boat too if or when we girls have more confidence. You know all the girls in this school have a crush on you, right?”

I was stumped. How do you react to someone like this? What do you say?

She laughed. “I know, I know. You come from a family of educators and probably don’t have time to date or think about girls. But, you know, one of these days, they’ll all come out of the woodwork.”

How did she know about my family?

“What’s it like to know what you’re going to be doing?”

“Huh?” I finally said.

“What’s it like to know exactly what path you have to go on, exactly what you have to do, to have your life planned out so you don’t have to think about it?”

This time, I deliberately didn’t answer, and it wasn’t because I didn’t know what to say.

“Or do you not like it?”

Again, I had no reply.

“I guess I thought it would be nice to know exactly what you have to do and just do it because the rest of us have to spend time thinking and being uncertain about it, but if you don’t like it, I guess it would be pretty stifling.” She paused and asked with all sincerity, “Do you want to be a teacher?”

“No,” I replied.

She stared at me and then moved on. “So what do you want to do?”

I blinked. “Write,” I had said, before I had even had a chance to register what I was saying.

“Write what?” she asked, and I remember the words spilling out.

“I don’t know. I don’t really write anything. I write some manga sometimes because that’s all I know, but the drawings are terrible and…they don’t quite feel right. I like crafting stories, but I like describing scenery and situations better. I like having an image in my head and putting it down on paper. The words fly out and I have to piece them together like a painting being painted stroke by stroke.”

I looked at her with what I felt even then was probably a crazy expression, but her own was so earnest and open that I just continued. “One time, I saw a museum lecture with an artist describing his painting process. He had a row of ink, and then color by color, stroke by stroke, he put down on the paper the image that was in his head. I saw it coming together, and I could feel that rush when I saw more and more of the drawing being uncovered and revealed to me, and at the end, there was a satisfaction that he and I, we knew exactly what he was thinking, exactly what was in his head. I want to do that with words. I want people to read what I write and know exactly what I was thinking, imagining, seeing, feeling.” I smiled. “I don’t know. Short story, poems, travel writer?”

And just like that, I fell down from my reverie. The light left my face. I looked at her and could feel my face settling into that mask I was beginning to learn to craft for myself. “Anyway, that’s why I come up here. To write.”

She looked at me, said, “Is this the most you’ve ever talked before?” and laughed gaily.

I know I blushed, but she just continued. “So write,” she said, very matter-of-factly.

“I can’t,” I sighed.

“Why not?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could say anything, I suddenly felt like I could see what her rebuttal would be to whatever I said. I could see how the words wouldn’t make sense to her and that they carried weight only because I let them. “Filial piety.” “Family pride.” “Because.” “This is what my family does.”

I processed all this in a second, and the next moment, I don’t know why, but I suddenly felt light. I smiled at her. A genuine smile.

“I guess you’re right. Why not?” I remember feeling like I wanted to giggle but wasn’t sure how. I’m a guy and had never giggled before.

Instead, I flashed her another smile. “Want to see my manga?”

What a pickup line! But I wasn’t trying to get with her. It was exhilarating finally relieving myself of what felt like a shameful secret, and I honestly wanted another person’s opinion of my writing.

Of course, I forgot that Feifei was an artist so when I showed her my crude drawings, she couldn’t help but laugh. But it didn’t matter. I could see her get absorbed in my words and story. Her face was always so open that I could read her every reaction as she whipped through the book.

When she finished what I had written so far, she turned her face to me with eyes that looked straight out of a manga – large and luminous. Maybe it was puberty hormones, but I knew then that I was done for. I had found the love of my life, would have no other, and she was unattainable. It was a feeling of both doom and thrill.

---

After that encounter, we somehow found more time together. I don’t know if she put herself in my path, but we eventually wound up writing and drawing mangas together. It was a relief not to have to see my words paired off with my amateurish drawings!

She slowly drew me out in these sessions because it was perfectly acceptable to talk about the characters and how they were affected by the plot. The stories could be as wild and inexplicable as possible, and it didn’t matter. With her, I could be myself. In fact, I think I even shocked her with some of my ideas and storylines, but she took it all in stride, and her honest feedback instilled in me a confidence I still have today.

In one session, we were doing one of our marathon exercises, where I recount the plot, she draws a few panels, I put in the dialogue, and we go back and forth as fast as we can. It was a completely incongruous scene with two monsters attacking each other, and when I received the panel, I sketched some long hair on one of them and in the other dialogue box, I wrote, “Will you be my girlfriend?”

She took the panel, stared and then actually seemed to control her emotions for the first time. I saw her fighting down a smile, take her pencil, sketch something quickly and then hand the book back to me with an inscrutable expression.

The smile had to have been positive, but the rest of her demeanor was a mystery. I looked at the paper, and the two monsters were in a grotesque hug with a heart in between them. She had drawn the same straggly long hair on “her” monster, and in the dialogue box, she had written: “ <you’re the writer. Insert something witty here.> “

When I looked back, her eyes were laughing, and then the rest of her face caught up. “Thank you for asking,” she said, almost shyly. “I was going to ask myself in a few months, but this is much more romantic.” And then she gave me a smile that I would forever classify as my special smile, the smile I had never seen her give to anyone else before or after and that she would continue to shine my way in the years to come. Or, for the next few years, anyway.

---

Of course, student dating was not allowed. I was a school prefect, and I know everyone thought I got away with it because of my status and standing in the school. However, it was all her.

Teachers would catch us or confront us and somehow be beguiled by her guileless words and air. One time the teacher was known to be extremely strict and stern, and she completely sidestepped his questions! She started talking about some paintings he had in his room, and by the end of our “disciplinary session”, the teacher had actually smiled and patted her head, like some kind of doting uncle.

Under her influence, the freedom that she had already unleashed within me grew like wildfire. We skipped classes together and spent blissful days taking random bus routes to the countryside and then praying like mad that we’d catch the right bus back in time for the end of school. She never seemed to want to go home so I found myself skipping cram school and then having to come up with creative non-truths but also not quite lies to tell my parents.

We didn’t do any of the things most people think about when students skip class, nothing degenerate. We just explored life in new ways.

We strolled through fish stalls and grocery markets, bought random ingredients and tried to grill something edible out of them. We climbed a private but abandoned building, broke our way onto the roof and gazed up at the pollution-filled skies and imagined stars. One time we followed a line of ants and spent the whole day narrating what we thought was going on in the ant colony.

When I graduated high school, I envisioned a life spent just as those days were. Long hair whipping in the wind while we go on “adventure” after adventure, and as adults, there would be no more obligatory static classroom scenes that had to be intercut. Surely, it would only get better.

My family had already slowly been coming to terms with the fact that I would not be following the family path. I lucked out in that the university I finally chose had a top writing program. My parents could console themselves that if their son was going to be a writer, at least he’d be a damn good one.

In reality, I chose the university because it was in the same city as the one Feifei would be attending. I had no idea, of course, that our best days were already behind us.

My whole life afterwards would be spent looking for that Feifei from when we first met and wondering if she was still in there or if she was hiding and hiding only from me.

---

maripaz: Poor Rong Cheng. Part 2 describes the unfortunate downturn that happens next (and the birth of Rong Si!).

[Table of Contents] [Part 2]