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“It’s alright son, pour out all of your worries to Him.”
Xiao wonders if it’s really alright. If God would really forgive him or hear him out at the very least. This was one of the many times he wonders if God really was with him, and if He really was, would he think what he did was a sin?
It didn’t feel right, nothing felt right. The guilt was knocking on his door every morning, whispering to him as he lay supine in his bedsheets. It was heavy. So, so heavy he didn’t know what to do. And so Xiao thought it would be alright if he let it all out. After all, the priest swore confidentiality. So he said, “Forgive me, Father, for I have loved.”
That was it, right? He was able to let it out. He told someone about his sweet, sweet sin. “What is wrong with loving, son? The Lord wants you to love.” Or maybe that wasn’t it. It wasn’t his sin. Loving wasn’t his sin.
“No, father, I,” Xiao doubts, if he reveals this, what would happen? “...I loved a boy.” Oh. Loving him was the sin.
Xiao never really knew Venti. For he was like the wind, one minute he was there, and then the next, gone. Xiao didn’t know how he managed to fall for someone like him, considering that he was always bound by the rules, bound by what the Holy Book says, bound by what the church says.
Back then it was fine, they were acquaintances, it was fine. Until it wasn’t.
Until touches linger, and words started to grow double meanings. “Xiao, would you like to elope with me?” Venti always says, and Xiao has always considered just doing so.
But it was scary. They didn’t know anything about the world outside their small Christian village. They were young and clueless and naive. Xiao wonders if they had met in different circumstances, would they be so scared?
Xiao remembers about Zhongli, his quiet and lovely Zhongli, taken away by a foreign man and never came back to the village once again. He only wished to live happily and quietly, no matter how strict and harsh it gets, it was home and he wants to keep it that way. He never understood why Zhongli went and traded his life to go with someone he has only met for only a month. He didn’t understand how Zhongli just decided to go and leave him. But if that driving force, love, made people go batshit stupid, Xiao wonders just how powerful it could be.
But then he didn’t need to wonder anymore. He understood just by looking at Venti’s refreshing facial features, he understood whenever their lips meet for a couple infinite milliseconds, and oh just how sweet Venti’s lips tasted like. Like strawberries dipped in the finest cacao, but at the same time so, so bitter that it physically hurts him whenever their tongues clash. But it was alright, because he wasn't alone. For some time it felt fine that they were committing a grave sin, for there were the two of them, together drenched in the bittersweet agony of their fall from grace.
You are not to have sexual relations with a man as you would with a woman. It is detestable. - Leviticus 18:22
You see there is something wrong with love. Just as the world is cruel, it is as well. It doesn’t give you a choice. Once you love, you love and there is nothing that is able to pull you out from your eternal fever dream. Love is so, so, so cruel, so cruel that it felt so good.
The guilt was unbearable. Xiao felt like there are thousands of knives stabbing his poor heart whenever they sing songs of praises, whenever his mind drifts away to sacrilegious thoughts while praying to the Lord God, and then healed once again whenever Venti smiles at him, and the process repeats.
It was foolish of them. To love. To be able to embrace each other, knowing the consequences of their selfishness.
And it was foolish of them to think people will accept how they feel.
“He forgives you. Atone for your sins and never repeat the same mistakes once again.” Xiao really thought he was forgiven, and he was (not) ready to stop loving his other half.
“Yes father, thank you.”
“May the Lord bless you, son.”
It was funny. Funny how the word started to spread, how in only three days everyone was looking at him and Venti like they were mere trash, like they were some pest that needed to be annihilated. Xiao didn’t know what to do. Surely the father didn’t spread about his confession. Right?
Wrong.
It hurted. Like hell. But it hurts more when he thinks about how his lover stood beside him, bearing the same pain he does. Xiao wishes he didn’t go to the confessionary that day. Or he wishes Venti didn’t feel any pain because it was fine if it was only him, as long as the latter was fine, as long as the latter smiles at him once again.
He asks the Lord, if he was really watching, why He gave them such complex feelings only to be rejected by every single person he once trusted. He asked why he let them feel happy and secured and fine with love, only to wipe those feelings away with lots of pain and suffering.
It felt as if they were burning in the depths of hell, like their ashes were merely dust that scattered around hopelessly.
Just before he lost sight of it all, his memories with Venti started playing on his head, he remembered the tunes Venti played for him to make everything go away, the way Venti teases him whenever he felt like it, he remembered Venti saying he loved him most. And it made everything worth it.
It made him feel like it was fine even if he burned at the stake again and again and again, if each time these memories are the ones he sleeps to.
Once more, he asks God, once more he wants to feel Venti’s warmth.
And God gladly adhered. God adhered in the way they held each other as the fires dug through their bodies and seeped the life out of the young lovers.
At least for once, their love was no longer a secret.