Fenglian Week 2026

Feng Xin is stunning, all powerful, sinuous muscles and graceful lines. His archery posture is perfect, his back ramrod straight, a look of pure concentration on his face.

Gods, Feng Xin is even more handsome now, if that were possible. He's truly grown into his looks, filling out his frame properly, tall and muscled and gorgeous. 

Xie Lian's chest feels like it's coming alive and dying all at the same time. A powerful wave of raw, heartrending longing chokes his throat, leaving him defenceless, helpless against it.

A hand to his sternum, a tear tracing his cheek.

The strongest urge washes over him, to leave the stands, to cross the field, to throw his arms around Feng Xin, to feel Feng Xin's chest against his, Feng Xin in his arms —

But he can't.

It's been six years since the day Xie Lian drove his ex-lover out the door.

In that time, who knows what has come to pass? Feng Xin is successful now, has a new life now as a professional athlete, brilliant and glorious and dazzling, a life without a broken husk of a man to drag him down like deadweight. Probably even has a new lover, someone who can care for him the way Xie Lian failed so terribly at.

How could Xie Lian bear to ruin that, to ruin Feng Xin’s life?

After everything Xie Lian has done, what right does he have to show up in Feng Xin's life again, like a malicious ghost, a horror, a haunting?

In the deepest, truest part of his heart, the truth is that he would give anything just to be able to hear the sound of Feng Xin’s laughter again, echoing in his ears and in his chest like music, like a song that never ends.

Except that song has long since ended. It never will sing again.

And Xie Lian knows better than anyone that it’s for the best.

******

Xie Lian hadn't initially planned to stay in Shanghai.

It was just supposed to be a temporary visit. To pay respects at his parents' graves, laying white lilies on top of their tombstone.

But from the moment he first saw Feng Xin on the screen of his TV that night, he was like a man possessed. To hear his dear A-Xin again, after five years of silence —

The gash that it ripped in his chest then, a Feng Xin-shaped gash, very nearly sank him to his knees, his hands grasping blindly at the screen, his fingers meeting smooth plastic instead of Feng Xin’s cheek.

Days after, Xie Lian finds himself making preparations to remain in Shanghai. Finding a part-time job isn't too hard, thankfully. There are always restaurants that need more hands, and rich kids who need more tutors.

And as he waits tables by day and tutors kids by evening, all the while, the sight of Feng Xin on that screen refuses to leave his mind’s eye, as if it’s been burned onto the back of his retinas.

His childhood best friend, his former lover, that tall, handsome silhouette so achingly familiar, the glint of that familiar grin — all of it pulses in Xie Lian's heart like an old bruise.

He doesn’t know why he does it, but he keeps going back. Month after month, he sits alone in the stands, watching Feng Xin shoot bullseyes and clinch gold medals.

It feels like a way to have him again, after so long. To have him like this, a tiny figure on a screen, a tiny figure on the archery field; to have him so close and yet so far, is all that Xie Lian is allowed.

(It’s all that Xie Lian deserves.)

I've thought about Feng Xin with a buzz cut for a while. And about him being Xie Lian's drummer, pining for him in secret, unaware that Xie Lian asked him to be in his band because he wants to spend more time with him. You could say this is set in the same timeline as this other art, although that one takes place later, after they get together for real.

I'm not very creative when it comes to naming things (as you can tell from my username), so the band is called Xianle. Heheh, I was not planning that Xie Lian's sleeve would cover one of the characters, so you can only see the 乐, but it's quite fitting.

Another little thing: I was struggling so much to draw the drums, so I traced over some, to get the general idea, even though I didn't want to get them all detailed.