Jiang Xun had never seen Shen Wangjing like this.
What those eyes had held down all these years was too heavy, so heavy that any emotion sinking into them was swallowed at once.
When Shen Dayong's belt had lashed countless bloody welts across his back at five years old, he hadn't cried.
When the mine roof collapsed and rubble crushed his chest, leaving him buried for more than six hours and covered in blood when they dug him out, he hadn't cried either.
His tears had long since run dry in that drafty adobe house in Shiban Village, buried in the earth along with his dead mother.
Yet now those eyes were frighteningly red.
Bloodshot veins spread from their corners to his pupils, making his black irises look even deeper, like two wells steeped in blood, their surfaces trembling faintly while seventeen years of silt churned beneath.
Tears floated on the very surface, a thin layer that never fell, spreading a damp brightness across his eyes.
In that sheen of water, Jiang Xun saw the hospital bed, the IV stand, and the half-window of daylight streaming in.
And himself.
Small and blurry, wrapped in that bright film of water, steeped right at its center.
As though Shen Wangjing wanted to nurture him back into his eyes.
Suddenly, Jiang Xun couldn't say a word.
The curses lodged in his throat, the scores he hadn't settled, the tantrum he wanted to throw-all of it had been soaked soft by those eyes, too soft for him even to pick up.
Shen Wangjing moved another half inch closer, the hand cradling the back of his head tightening slightly as his fingertips stroked the short patch of shorn hair at the edge of the gauze.
That touch made every hair on Jiang Xun's body stand