#abandon your yaoi brains and accept the truth

[wizardnaturalist]

people who depict angel devil as a subby little uwu boy...imbeciles

he and aki are perfect contrasts not because aki is stoic and severe and angel is soft and sweet, but because aki is wound tighter than a bowstring at all times and angel could not give less of a shit if he tried (which he wont)

[notthatiwilleverwriteit]

I don’t usually give these kinds of deeper analyses on the chapters because people who are way better at deciphering how I feel but just can’t put into words usually beat me to it (@casually-inlove and @call-me-ala to name a couple). Writing analyses can also be exhausting, and I tip my hat to those people who take the time and energy to answer all the asks and whatnot. But ch 297 just wouldn’t let my brain rest, so I decided to gird my loins and give you my thoughts.

Yesterday I answered an ask by @i-got-these-words about what was my favorite 19 Days quote, and even though I will stick to my answer, a very strong contender might have come to challenge my original pick. What He Tian said about Mo Guan Shan - and essentially about himself - just keeps on giving the deeper I dig into between the lines. It felt like HT and Tianshan have somewhat come a full circle.

“I chose you because there’s something I admire about you.”

What a nice callback to ch 138 and the origin of Tianshan in general:

HT “picking” MGS is an interesting aspect of their relationship. After the fight with ZZX, MGS’s palpable disdain of HT is surprisingly enough met with HT saying he admires MGS for that exact reason. Imagine finding someone respectable because they look down on your character. And not only that, you choose to pursue that person. I think that says a lot about HT’s struggle to distance himself from his “destiny” and the heritage of his family.

For that, we have to go even further back, all the way to when we just started to see other sides to HT. Why HT is living by himself in his uncle’s empty apartment isn’t fully clear to us. He said it’s more convenient because of school but judging by how tense his relationship with his father is, I bet there’s more to the housing situation. My headcanon is he’s living alone as a truce to ease the atmosphere at home. I also suspect He Cheng had something to do with it. Maybe it had gotten so bad he suggested HT lived by himself and used the school as an excuse to persuade their father.

Be that as it may, the obvious bottom line is, HT doesn’t agree with his father and the world his family is involved with. He’s been raised according to certain principles, but the older he grew the more they sickened him and the more stubbornly he wanted to defy them.

Before HT got involved with the fight between MGS and ZZX, he seemed to be somewhat of a lone wolf. Sure, he had his horde of fangirls but no one knew the real him. This, I think, is especially apparent in ch 115:

It’s as if he’s living a double life. His destined place in the world is in the shadows. The shady underworld he despises so much. But at the same time, the shadows seem to serve as a refuge of sorts. It’s a familiar place. From there he can observe people, deep in thought, and be himself. Out in the open, we rarely see him that serious but rather he often plasters a fake, outgoing smile that doesn’t scare off his classmates.

He doesn’t seem to have any real friends. JY and ZZX appear to be more of acquaintances, maybe something more, but they don’t know much about HT either. The way HT is with JY and ZZX makes me feel like he’s “above” them. He knows more about the world and life in general, he’s not a teenage boy they are despite often acting like they do. The difference becomes clear when JY bumps into MGS and HT steps in to effectively put an end to it. He has the confidence to take on delinquents without hesitation, even openly look down on them.

But he’s not doing that just out of the goodness of his heart. It’s true he wants to help his friend but he’s also on a mission to become something better than his father and brother. He Cheng told him to grow strong, but HT wants to use his strength for good instead to exploit and submit others. The more he will not become like his brother the better he will feel about himself and like he’s not a part of that shady world. His goal is both admirable and selfish.

MGS becomes a project of sorts for HT. Someone for whom he can be the hero he so desperately wants to. But also a living, breathing beacon of light to remind him to not give in to the darkness and use his strength for good. And no one is allowed to corrupt or snuff it out.

But that kind of relationship is quite one-sided. To be a hero and constantly strive to better oneself is exhausting, and in time, HT’s armor appears to have more and more cracks for MGS to see. He can’t just power through of it all by himself and see MGS, who is a person with his own will, that passively. Without necessarily even realizing it, MGS is forcing HT to admit certain things to himself and acknowledge them.

“You are not fake or sneaky, and you don’t cheat.”

For this analysis, I’ve used the translation by @yaoi-blcd and it seems they’ve used the word “fake”. I’ve seen a couple of others which had translated it as “hypocritical” (I don’t speak Mandarin, so I can’t say which is more accurate). I suppose there isn’t a big difference between the two but I find “hypocritical” quite interesting.

It reminds me of She Li in ch 294:

SL isn’t wrong in saying that HT and MGS are from different worlds. Or rather, they’re from the opposite sides of the same world; the villains and the victims. MGS’s family has suffered greatly by the hands of people like HT’s family. The connections between those two families aren’t clear but I don’t believe it’s far fetched to think MGS’s father might have been mixed with some shady people. For example, maybe he had had to borrow money from them and then had trouble paying back. And it’s from this injustice and the hardships that followed that MGS’s disdain of HT and people like him ultimately stems.

SL obviously doesn’t recognize HT’s efforts to befriend MGS because he doesn’t believe in that kind of approach (but that’s a whole other story). So, to take out his frustration on something, he goes with the truth even HT can’t deny and reminds HT of his “destiny” and place in the world.

HT might see himself as a hypocrite for trying to play a hero for MGS when he’s in fact meant to be the villain. Does he have the right put himself into the victims’ lives when his side of the world is the problem? This becomes even more of an issue if HT’s family was directly involved with what happened to MGS’s father.

Either way, words like “fake, “sneaky”, and “cheat” yet again speak loudly about the kind of world HT lives in and the kind of people he’s surrounded by. The opposite of those words is what he admires in MGS but is he also admitting those words describe him? Does he already see himself in them?

Which leads me to “You aren’t afraid ‘darkness’.“

This was probably my favorite part of the quote. Obviously, HT isn’t just talking about plain darkness although it’s another nice callback to HT being afraid of the dark.

One of the many things I love about Tianshan is that the power dynamic is actually more balanced than meets the eye. HT might be physically stronger and often push MGS’s buttons but MGS is in no way weak. HT can be quite forceful in his affections, so he needs to be paired up with someone who can push back and hold his own. In MGS’s case, all of that comes down to his pride and not wanting to depend on anyone (which is also mentioned in some of the translations instead of “cheating”).

“Darkness” can refer to the violent criminal world in which HT grew up. Interestingly enough it’s the common denominator in both of their lives. They might be from different sides of the darkness, but it’s still the same darkness they’re both familiar with. And MGS won’t back down when it comes to holding his ground, so he’s tough enough to survive in that darkness.

Also, HT needs someone strong enough to handle him at his worst. The latest case in point, ch 295:

It took me a while see behind that behavior. My initial reaction was to be disappointed because I thought we had gotten past HT being like this already. I didn’t like the way he barked orders and was physical without the usual mischevious undertone. Then I realized that despite being mature for his age, HT isn’t really good at using words. Instead, he often chooses action. It was obvious SL’s threat had upset and unsettled him. And it made him even more uneasy when MGS seemed oblivious to the danger. But he wasn’t being forceful and possessive but in need of reassurance.

He literally went from “bad mood” to promising to kill anyone who gives MGS trouble before we finally got to the root of the problem: he’s worried about losing MGS.

Now, he can’t be that way with the girls or his classmates. With them, he couldn’t act out every time he’s upset about something. Ideally, he will grow out of it or at least work on it, but in the meantime, he needs someone who can handle him at his worst.

It’s also obvious HT carries a lot of darkness in a form of trauma, as in his inner darkness. MGS isn’t a stranger to that either given that he’s also been through traumatic experiences at a young age. HT’s nightmares might scare him but he didn’t run away. Instead, he offered what clumsy comfort he could. This is connected to my earlier point of HT not just seeing MGS as someone who needs protection but also as someone he can rely on when it becomes too much. In the process, HT is “forced” to deal with his problems when he can show them to someone.

As an interesting side note, HT is kind of looking down when he talks about the “darkness”. Is he ashamed of being afraid of the “dark”? It’s a weakness, and I’m sure something that wouldn’t be accepted by his father.

“Don’t abandon me.”

HT finally ends his confession of sorts with the kind of plea we’ve never heard out of his mouth. It’s his greatest fear that’s always been in the background and the motivation to his actions but something he’s never said out loud. Not to mention while openly facing MGS like that.

Obviously, that line is heartbreakingly sad in and of itself but take a moment to really think about it. Imagine if the worst happened and MGS wasn’t in HT’s life for some reason anymore. What would he have left at that point? To go back to lurking in the shadows and fake smiling through his days? His goal of a better person would become that much abstract again, and he’d lose the one thing that grounds him in this side of the darkness.

It’s a very thin thread for HT to cling onto. I think @mestizo-efp had a good point in their answer about HT looking defeated. He’s used to being ready for anything and everything and is also asking for MGS to keep his guard up. In that light, HT’s plea is almost unfair. Anything could happen, and realistically speaking neither HT nor MGS could do anything about most of those scenarios.

Also, given HT’s somewhat difficult personality and shortcomings, it can also be read as a plea for MGS to put up with him. As in “I know I can be an ass but don’t give up on me”. It’s the fear of MGS losing hope in HT which could be even a worse punch than losing MGS some other way.

So, yeah. This might, in fact, be my new favorite quote.