Qi Rong stood outside in the quant gentle snowfall of December. His breath created a visible plume just past his lips, though he did not feel the cold. It was quiet for a while, standing outside the doorway of his house. He'd forgotten what he'd stepped outside to do.

A child crying alerted him. It was night, and his eyes widened as he scanned the streets for a sign of Guzi. He saw him just down near the street corner, shoved into the road by another screaming child. Seeing this quarrel, Qi Rong immediately raised his voice, hollering at them so they'd stop. Realizing they'd been caught, the other kid quickly ran off and Guzi quickly turned to run back to Qi Rong.

"The hell was that?!" Qi Rong demanded.

Guzi, possibly fourteen or fifteen, kept his head low. "He was insulting you."

"Well I'm quite dishonorable so that's nothing to get all puffed up about!"

"I know you're weird! But he mentioned Xianle!"

Qi Rong sucked in a breath. "Did you beat him real good?"

"You saw the end of that fight."

"Oh yeah yeah whatever. Get your ass inside already, you look like a damn icicle!"

Guzi bowed his head and stepped inside, Qi Rong following. Guzi didn't look like he wanted to talk at all but it was clear something was bugging him. A curiosity.

"I haven't told you about Xianle, did my worm cousin poison you with his family's side of the story?!" Qi Rong asked snappishly. Guzi was curling up near the heater which was a piece of shit, hardly giving much of a response. "Did he?!"

"He only told me a little. He said you'd tell me when it was time."

"Good. Cause it's not in his place and he doesn't know the half of it!"

"... so what is the Xianle family?"

"Your scrap collecting trash Gege and I's blood. Except I'm only half of it. That's part of the reason it's such a tight subject," Qi Rong clicked his tongue as he spoke, "I'm a bastard son, you know."

"I didn't know that..."

"Mother was Xianle," Qi Rong said, "got fucking bagged by my fuck ass dad who ruined her life. She got called a slut for something she didn't want and then I was born. A very fun and charming story."

"Why would that kid just now have known about that..."

"Oh, it was everywhere some thirty or so years ago... wait how old am I... thirty...nine... never mind," Qi Rong said with another click of the tongue, "the Xianle family was a rich elite class with supposedly pure and untainted blood. My bitch cousin was a perfect son to them and as such he was basically their prince. Then my mom go accused of being a whore for sleeping with some jobless dirt poor guy and when I was born they thought an infant was so disgraceful they tossed my mother and I away!"

"Oh."

"But my mother came up with a plan to come back to the family eventually," Qi Rong said. "... do you have a mother, kid?"

Guzi shrugged and said nothing.

"I see. Well, my mother was wonderful," Qi Rong said, "but most who knew her only knew her by rumor so many people accuse me of being the son of a prostitute. She was no whore. Those Xianle fuckers were whores! I swear they were so horny over the dumb idea of their elite status they were probably gonna incest all over the place if the family didn't fall apart eventually. Thank fuck that's over."

"Gross."

"VERY GROSS! EXACTLY!" Qi Rong cackled, "I hated those assholes. They'd suck anyone's dick to get more money I'm sure."

"Ew."

"VERY EW! I AGREE."

Guzi leaned away from the heater as he finally started warming up. Despite Qi Rong's vulgar story, he seemed to be listening well, though well reserved. He observed Qi Rong with quiet eager eyes.

"My mom called me her sweet boy," Qi Rong admitted, "though I'm the furthest thing from sweet. I'm the taste of eating rotting strawberries, whatever you'd call that."

"Fermented."

"I'm a fermented bastard," Qi Rong cackled. "She had no idea what life she was paving for me. I don't blame her for anything that happened. She tried, and had no idea she was feeding me to get butchered."

"I don't wish I knew my mom," Guzi admitted, "if she was anything like what I remember my dad being at least. And besides, it's not like I miss her. I don't know her to begin with."

"Well that's good being I'm better than her. And next time someone brings up the Xianle family, beat em to death!"

Suddenly, Guzi had slid up to Qi Rong and hugged him. Qi Rong was quite startled by this, not understanding what was happening. He looked down and found Guzi appeared numb. And for a moment, Guzi appeared to be dead.

The world around him instantly melted away in that instant and he suddenly stood on a pearly white street leading to giant golden gates, taller than the sky. Beyond those gates was a paradise. A golden city that could only be described as an empire.

Heaven...

Qi Rong returned to his fantasies quite sharply in an effort to forget all that he'd just done and in turn, the gates of Heaven and those pearly streets vanished.

Qi Rong was in a bar. That stupid bar that he hated. Next to him, he just witnessed a drug drop. And across the bar, Guzi was playing and singing with his guitar. Gross bar, delightful moment.

Gathered there were many veterans from war. Qi Rong was wearing his uniform and felt like a clown in it, being in public. But more than half the men here were dressed the same so he blended in seamlessly. Qi Rong looked to the man sitting at the bar next to him. There was no life in his eyes.

Casually, Qi Rong ignored the peculiarly dead man and got up, leaving him there carelessly without a word. He weaved his way through the crowd of veterans like a needle and thread to get close to Guzi on the stage, beaming up at him like any proud father would. When he reached it, he discovered Guzi collapsed the same way he had been when he'd been discovered dead. Qi Rong's gut churned and, if possible, this disturbed him when not much else had before.

Qi Rong couldn't believe he'd shot himself with that gun. He couldn't believe he was dead now.

Now, instead of seeing the gates of heaven, Qi Rong's now witnessed a vision of the entrance to Hell. It was far out of reach and had a complicated path leading to it. And Qi Rong was stuck where he stood, unable to wander down to Hell nor climb up to Heaven.

Both visions he'd seen—not of Heaven or Hell—had been glimpses into a possible future of things hadn't gone astray. If Guzi was still alive and Qi Rong hadn't just killed jimself...

Qi Rong returned to earth now. He wasn't exactly there presently yet somehow he was. He was... a ghost. He couldn't interact with anything or be seen but he was still there, not noticed as all wandering souls would be.

Everything he believed was wrong. He didn't need to be happy for Guzi's sake and he certainly didn't need to kill himself for it either. And now what? Was he supposed to just rot to death in his own house while not starkly being alive or there? He could see his own askew body across the house, nearer the door, brains blown out.

"FUCK!" Qi Rong screamed but no voice came out at all. He wanted to kick something but again, he didn't actually exist. His body was right there just a few feet away. He wished to reanimate that and get him to kick something because he was so beyond angry right now. Scratch that, take that dead body and dump it in the sea so that it has to get bloated and gross, then later wash up on the shore somewhere random to terrorize locals.

Qi Rong knelt over his own dead body. Never had he felt so pathetic. He really just gave up because some kid died, was that it? Was he so weak?!

The door of his house creaked opened and someone stepped inside extremely slowly, as if afraid they'd get caught. Qi Rong could only watch. At first he thought surely it was Xie Lian because there was no one else in his life who tried to tolerate him ever. But this was someone else...

Lang QianQiu!

That rat bastard! Qi Rong wanted to spray him with rat poison immediately! Lang QianQiu poked his head inside, not yet seeing the body his door was about to get backed by. Qi Rong folded his arms, already annoyed.

"..." Lang QianQiu said as he finally noticed the body. He opened his mouth, hesitating to talk to himself. "I guess you did it for me."

WHAT!? THAT BITCH!

Lang Qianqiu crouched over the dead Qi Rong and studied the wound blasted through his skull. "He never belonged to you," he whispered to the dead body, "Guzi, sweet boy. I'm sorry I had to kill him."

WHAT?!

WHAT THE FU—

A/N

I love this song an unreasonable amount.

Also if you're reading this that's wonderful because I NEVER POST TGCF CONTENT AND NONE OF MY FOLLOWERS ARE FANS SO I AM WRITING THIS FOR THR VOID. Literally at this point I have like one singular view and NORMALLY when I post a fic I get nearly 1k at this point in IM SO PATHETIC GUYS THIS WAS AN EXPERIMENT GONE WRONG. I love TGCF so much I want to write more fics BUT NO ONE FOLLOWING ME EVEN KNOWS WHAT IT IS RIP

Reference key:

-"A husband waits outside"
He ain't a husband but that established where Qi Rong is

-"A crying child pushes a child into the night—"
Guzi's conflict

-"She was told he would come this time— (and in)"
Qi Rong's mother

-"to enact the perfect plan"
Trying to get back in the Xianle Family

-"one more sweet boy—" (what his mom calls him) "to be butchered by men" (she's naive about what happens to him)

-chorus
He sees heaven

-"A grandmother smuggling meds"
Old lady drug drop

-"Past where the god child-soldier Setana stood dead
Qi Rong's vision of a dead solider

-lyrics following that are for Qi Rong approaching the stage

-chorus 2
He sees Hell

-final
He returns to earth as a ghost (not in the cool Tgcf way)