The Fake Son Wants to Live [BL]

Chapter 277: Chapter 277 - It’s not me

Li Wang gazed into the distance, his hand slowly tightening into a fist until his nails dug painfully into his palm.

I’m not gay.

He repeated the words inside his head, almost mindlessly, as though saying them enough times would somehow make them true.

I’m not into men.

Yet the moment the thought settled in his mind, another voice rose from somewhere deep inside him.

”Gay men go to hell!”

The shrill, scathing voice cut through his thoughts with such clarity that Li Wang’s entire body stiffened.

His mother’s voice.

It was a voice he had heard countless times throughout his childhood, a voice that had once filled their home and followed him into adulthood. No matter how many years passed, no matter how far he moved away from that house or how much he tried to forget the past, that voice had somehow remained buried inside him.

Li Wang closed his eyes tightly, trying to force the memory away.

He didn’t want to remember.

That woman was gone.

She had been gone for years.

There was no reason for her words to still have such a hold over him.

And yet, somewhere deep inside his mind, he could still hear her.

”Men who like men are sinners.”

”Your father abandoned us for a man.”

”Don’t ever become like him.”

”God will punish people like that.”

Li Wang’s breathing gradually became heavier.

His fingers dug further into his palm, but the pain barely registered.

He remembered being a child, sitting quietly while his mother spoke about his father with an expression filled with bitterness and hatred. At that age, Li Wang hadn’t understood what homosexuality meant. He hadn’t understood why his father had left or why his mother seemed to despise an entire group of people because of it.

All he had understood was that his father had abandoned them.

And that his mother hated him for it.

His father hadn’t left for another woman.

He had left for another man.

That single fact had become the center of his mother’s anger, and eventually, it had become something she talked about relentlessly.

Whenever homosexuality came up on television, she would sneer.

Whenever she heard someone mention a gay man, her expression would immediately darken.

And whenever Li Wang happened to say anything that she considered even remotely suspicious, she would look at him with that same frightening seriousness.

She had made sure he understood one thing.

Men were supposed to love women.

Anything else was wrong.

Anything else was shameful.

Anything else was a sin.

Li Wang had been too young to question her.

She was his mother. She was the person who had remained after his father left. So he believed her.

He absorbed every word without realizing that those words were slowly becoming a part of him.

Then, as he grew older, he began noticing things about himself that frightened him.

At first, it had been something so small that he could easily pretend it meant nothing.

His eyes would linger on certain boys for a little too long.

His heart would beat strangely when one of them smiled at him.

Sometimes, he would find himself thinking about another boy when he should have been thinking about something else entirely.

Every time it happened, he would immediately force himself to look away.

It’s nothing.

I’m just admiring him.

I’m curious, that’s all.

I’m not like my father.

Eventually, he learned to stop the thoughts before they could even finish forming.

He buried every strange feeling before he could understand it. Whenever he felt himself becoming attracted to another man, he would immediately deny it, suppress it, and convince himself that there had to be another explanation.

Because accepting the truth meant facing everything his mother had spent his childhood teaching him to fear.

It meant admitting that perhaps there was something inside him that she would hate.

Something that would make him no different from the man she had spent years cursing.

So Li Wang did the only thing he knew how to do.

He hid.

He hid it from everyone around him.

And eventually, he learned to hide it from himself.

Even now, after all these years, that instinct had never disappeared.

I’m not gay.

The thought came automatically.

But this time, it didn’t bring him the certainty it usually did.

Instead, another image appeared in his mind.

Celaus.

Li Wang’s expression tightened.

He remembered the way the man had looked at him earlier.

The gentle smile.

The quiet concern in his voice when he told Li Wang that he had removed all the flowers from his room because of his allergy.

The fact that he had gone to their medic and asked about finding a cure without making a big deal out of it.

He remembered the moment he had walked away from him.

More importantly, he remembered Celaus’s expression when he did.

That brief flash of sadness in those usually cold eyes.

Li Wang’s chest tightened.

He hated that he remembered it so clearly.

He hated even more that seeing Celaus hurt seemed to hurt him too.

”I’m not...”

His voice came out quietly.

He swallowed and tried again.

”I’m not into men.”

But the words no longer sounded like a simple statement.

They sounded like something he desperately needed to believe.

Because deep down, Li Wang already knew the truth he had spent years running from.

He wasn’t afraid of men.

He was afraid of what loving a man would mean.

He was afraid of becoming the person his mother had taught him to despise.

He was afraid that accepting himself would somehow make him like his father.

A sinner.

A disgrace.

Someone who had destroyed his family.

And perhaps that was why Celaus frightened him so much.

Because for the first time in his life, Li Wang couldn’t simply convince himself that his feelings were meaningless.

He could joke about them.

He could deny them.

He could insist that Celaus wasn’t his type and that he wasn’t interested in men.

But every time that man looked at him with those gentle eyes, something inside him betrayed every lie he had spent years building.

Li Wang slowly opened his eyes and stared at the empty road ahead.

For a long moment, he said nothing.

Then, almost desperately, he whispered to himself,

”I’m not gay.”

The words disappeared into the silence like a plea.

A plea to himself to keep believing the lie he had been living with for so many years.