Casper buries his face in his neck and all Shang Qinghua can do is hold him tighter, hopefully not so tight that he's doing any actual damage. "You're not a monster." He feels extremely unqualified to actually help with this, but he definitely feels strongly on that point. "And--they can't make you be one. If-- even if you're forced to do things you don't want to, if it doesn't make me a bad person, it doesn't make you one either." Turnabout is fair play, right? "If some stupid fate or something thinks it has ideas about what it wants from your family, that's not you, and it can go fuck itself to the greatest extent possible. If you were... bad people don't want to protect people. Most good people I've met aren't--willing to get hurt for other people's sake, even innocents, much less someone like me." Notable exceptions include Zhangmen-shixiong, but Yue Qingyuan is like, preternaturally virtuous, and had patience with Shen Qingqiu's original goods, so really, nobody else can be held up to that standard. And maybe it's easier to be virtuous when you can fight Tianlang-Jun to a standstill, than it is for someone like him, even if he wasn't forced to be the betrayer.

"You-- I don't know. You do the best you can, I guess, even if... my best isn't very good. I think yours is better. But if you don't want to be like them, then that--that matters. That makes a difference." He desperately wants to believe that what you want matters, even outside of what you actually do, when your hand is forced. Casper makes Shang Qinghua want to believe it's possible for him to not be scum. "I don't believe anyone who has been as kind as you, someone who wants so badly to help people, is... doomed to be an uncaring monster. I don't, and I can't. You... you even make me want to try to be better than I am, and I gave up on good a very long time ago."