Chapter Text
The campus of Dragon City University was eerily quiet when Shen Wei arrived there.
For one, it was about an hour past curfew, and so a great many students had retired to their respective rooms. As for the teachers, most of them had also deserted their classrooms and offices, and only a few windows here and there twinkled against the dark expanse of the different buildings. As he walked past the Three Maidens, now twisted and deformed, Shen Wei noticed that the statufied female student had been removed, and he briefly wondered what had become of her and what the school would tell her parents. Shen Wei couldn’t relate—he had no child of his own, nor parents for that matter—but he had had a brother, at one point, so he thought he could understand a little.
Shen Wei wished the school had removed the original monument, and he made a mental note to bring up the matter to the principal the next time they met. The students did not need a grim reminder of what had transpired today.
Needless to say, the Three Maidens had lost all their charm.
Shen Wei closed his eyes and summoned a bit of dark energy to help him locate Zhao Yunlan. If Shen Wei had had to describe it, he would have said that, more than his scent, it was like he was following the trail of Zhao Yunlan’s aura. Most of the time, Shen Wei had a pretty good sense of where Zhao Yunlan was, what he was doing, and how he was feeling, but his own feelings for the man tended to get in the way, and it was hard to focus right now. Within seconds, Shen Wei had pinpointed his exact position in the geographical map of his mind, and set course for it without pause.
When he passed in front of the university gardens, the old science building loomed darkly against the starry sky and, considering the recent progression of events, Shen Wei was stunned to find that this wasn’t where he was being led to. The farther away he strayed from the main campus, the bigger Shen Wei’s worry grew, and his surprise made way for shock when he finally stopped in front of a small annex located on the West end of the grounds that he hadn’t even known existed. Not only did the trail continue into the building, but Shen Wei could once again make out the traces of dark energy that he had picked up earlier the same day.
Zhao Yunlan was here—Shen Wei was sure of it.
Shen Wei barged inside with his heart in his throat, knowing not what to expect and afraid of what he might find.
“Zhao Yunlan?” Shen Wei called to the dark, empty room, which was illuminated only by the moonlight streaming through the shut blinds, and which showed the murky outline of buckets, brooms, brushes and bins, as well as a wide array of cleaning supplies. The place looked like a storage room of some sort.
On the surface, it seemed like his question had been met with silence, but in actuality, the answer came to Shen Wei right away, almost deafening to him as it resonated in his mind.
Shen Wei—forget about me! Don’t come here, please!
Forget…? For ten thousand years, not a day had passed when Shen Wei had ceased to think about Zhao Yunlan.
It wasn’t like he could have started now, even if he had wanted to.
Resolute, Shen Wei abandoned the room in favor of the stairs, and he all but hurtled down without a hint of hesitation in his step. The basement was plunged in pitch-black darkness—the upper level had been bright in comparison—but Shen Wei could see a thin stripe of light filtering under a door in front of him, and he ran up to it and seized hold of its door knob, which did not budge an inch under his hand. Undeterred, Shen Wei rattled the door knob with all the force that he could find in him, but all he managed to accomplish was to make a lot of noise and alert potential, nearby enemies to his presence. As if that wasn’t enough, the door knob began to melt against the door right under his eyes.
Shen Wei felt a sudden chill at the familiarity of the scene.
“Zhao Yunlan!” He shouted in the hopes that the other would give him some kind of a hint as to his current state, or suggest a way for him to enter the impenetrable fortress where he was being kept, but not a sound pierced the heavy silence punctuated by Shen Wei’s fumbling and harsh breathing. “Zhao Yunlan!” Shen Wei cried again as he began to slam his palms on the door and pound it with his fists. In his mind’s ear, Shen Wei heard again Zhao Yunlan’s pleas that he turn back and leave him, but Shen Wei couldn’t do that, not now that he had finally found him again in this life.
“Zhao Yunlan! Zhao Yunlan!”
Unable to bear this any longer, Shen Wei took a few steps back in order to gain momentum, then broke into a sprint and rammed his shoulder into the stubborn panel of wood, which shattered off its hinges and toppled over onto the floor, sending the dust flying up through the air. Wincing at the acute pain, Shen Wei nursed his dislocated shoulder gingerly and let his hand hover over it until the bones had been set back into place, then moved his arm tentatively, scanning the room until his gaze fell on the person closest to his heart—his entire life’s purpose, for as long as he could remember.
Shen Wei slowly made his way across the room, his eyes darting this way and that as he listened for signs of a threat, but as he got closer to Zhao Yunlan who lay unconscious against the wall, Shen Wei saw how the floor under him was slowly sinking as if Zhao Yunlan had been sitting on top of quicksand. What was more, a thin, silver film was starting to spread across his skin, crawling over his arms and legs and creeping up his chest.
Seized with panic, Shen Wei rushed over to his side and threw himself onto his knees. “Zhao Yunlan?”
Though Shen Wei’s cries had fallen on deaf ears until now, Zhao Yunlan slowly emerged from his stupor and blinked owlishly as his eyes adjusted to the light, his dilated pupils shrinking in size when he recognized the person crouching in front of him, though he made no attempt to reach for him. “‘hen... we..?” Zhao Yunlan mumbled as the cement continued its ascent, closing around his neck and moving up towards the face that Shen Wei so loved—barely conscious, from the looks of it, and unaware of what was happening to him. Zhao Yunlan’s rich baritone voice sounded faraway and alien, and Shen Wei feared that his nervous system might have already been affected.
“Yes, it’s me,” Shen Wei whispered, bringing his fingers up to graze his cheeks, where the skin was still mercifully soft and warm under his fingers, and gently pressing his lips to Zhao Yunlan’s numb ones. He would have to act fast, lest Zhao Yunlan wind up like that poor girl. Shen Wei wasn’t sure how, but he had to try something—anything—before it was too late. “Hang in there... you’re going to be okay,” Shen Wei said softly, trying to swallow down the thick lump in his throat, and willing himself to calm down for he knew that panicking would get them nowhere.
Closing his eyes, Shen Wei pressed a hand to Zhao Yunlan’s cold, rock-hard chest where he knew his heart must still be beating, and he summoned all the dark energy that he could muster, searching deep within himself and drawing from every last reserve that he could find. So deeply focused in his task was he that Shen Wei barely registered the floor continuing to shift under his feet as it moved onto Zhao Yunlan’s helpless form.
Eventually, as he worked, Shen Wei thought he could feel a weak shiver under his hand, as if the rock was beginning to retreat, but it was too little, and too slow. There was no time. “Don’t be scared,” Shen Wei whispered soothingly as he redoubled his efforts, though he was gradually choking up with emotion as the fatigue combined with the despair that he felt at the prospect of losing Zhao Yunlan.
His eyes stung with unshed tears.
Don’t be scared.
It was almost as if the words had been meant for himself. Perhaps Shen Wei’s own fear was greater than Zhao Yunlan’s.
What was he doing wrong?
This should have been nothing to him, so why wasn’t it working?
“...please…” Shen Wei whispered as his voice finally faltered and broke, but still he continued infusing his dark energy onto Zhao Yunlan’s solidified body, even as he felt his reserves start to run dry.
“...you can’t die…”
Soon, white flashes began to dance behind Shen Wei’s closed eyelids as he strained, but he fought the urge to pass out and escape from the searing pain he felt. To Shen Wei, death would be sweet if he left this world knowing that he had perished protecting the one that he loved. Enduring while his beloved passed on, however—that he could not bear.
Zhao Yunlan, Shen Wei thought, having not the strength to move his lips anymore.
You have to live... please.
Balancing on the brink of consciousness, Shen Wei let out a strangled sob and made a last, desperate attempt, drawing into the depleted pools of dark energy until his head felt like someone was pressing a red-hot branding iron to his brow.
Live for me.
“Shen Wei.”
Despite his weariness, Shen Wei’s drooping eyelids snapped open, and his gaze fell on Zhao Yunlan’s warm brown eyes which were staring right through him with a mix of mute wonder and realization in them—alert, and very much alive.
I knew it, they seemed to say, only there was not an ounce of arrogance or malice in them.
It was neither judgment nor opinion, just a fact.
The truth. Finally.
“You’re okay,” Shen Wei murmured, as his eyes began to swim, blurring his vision again. “You’re okay,” he repeated, like he couldn’t believe the words coming out of his own mouth. He had managed to stop—no, reverse—the process. Only the slightly uneven floor under them was left behind as evidence that they had cheated death.
Overjoyed at seeing him, yet sluggish from exhaustion, Zhao Yunlan cupped his face and leaned in, ghosting his lips over Shen Wei’s for a fleeting kiss before crumpling against the wall in a boneless heap.
“Take it easy. Save your strength,” Shen Wei advised, squeezing his eyes shut as he too suffered the aftereffects of exertion and overuse of his powers. Never before in his life had Shen Wei been weakened to within an inch of his life, and yet he would do it again in a heartbeat if Zhao Yunlan’s safety were on the line. “Come,” Shen Wei said as he struggled to stand so that he could help Zhao Yunlan to his feet. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Mm. Yeah... let’s—”
Before Zhao Yunlan could take Shen Wei’s hand, a sudden noise behind them made Shen Wei whirl around to search for its cause until he caught sight of a person. Shen Wei sucked in a sharp breath as everything pieced itself in his mind.
All this time.
All this time, and he had been there right in front of him.
Standing by the doorway was none other than the school’s helper—the face behind the luxuriant gardens of Dragon City University, in which Shen Wei had taken many a pleasant walk, with Zhao Yunlan or by himself. Shen Wei had been blindsided by the man’s gentle demeanor and approachable air, and failed to see what was so close at hand. He felt… oddly wronged. Betrayed, even.
“It was you,” Shen Wei said incredulously. “All along, and I didn’t realize…”
Tonight, without the light of the sun to soften the lines of his rough tanned skin, the man’s face looked dour and vicious, and when he smiled at Shen Wei, his lips twisted in a horrible rictus.
Without a sound, the man pointed with his finger. Up.
Shen Wei was almost too slow to react.
“.........!?”
Driven by the adrenaline despite the bone-deep ache in his limbs, Shen Wei made a dash towards Zhao Yunlan and mustered an inhuman strength to pick him up and drag him off to safety, but upon realizing that he wouldn’t be able to move them out of harm’s way in time, he tackled him to the ground and covered him with his body as parts of the ceiling collapsed over their heads.
The two men coughed and hacked as they breathed in the dust-laden air.
“Zhao Yunlan, are you okay?!” Shen Wei asked Zhao Yunlan, who nodded weakly in the affirmative.
“...m’alright.”
Before he could roll off of him, Shen Wei suddenly felt the rubble around them stir to life and start to crawl over his back in an attempt to bury the two of them alive. Seething with anger, Shen Wei effortlessly shrugged off the debris and told Zhao Yunlan to take refuge where he could while he took care of things. “Leave, quickly,” he choked out.
Having said that, Shen Wei leaped to his feet and concentrated the dark energy—sparse as it was—that had begun to build up in him again, lifting his opponent up in the air with a flick of his wrist, and focusing the dark wisps of smoke around his throat in a vice grip. “You… You dared to oppose me… You dared to touch Zhao Yunlan… Nobody is allowed to touch him...” Shen Wei growled, using his dark energy to choke the man and squeeze the precious air—and the life—out of him as he gladly would have done with his bare hands. “How does it feel to suffocate, huh...?” Shen Wei roared, beyond himself with fury. “Shall I bury you in cement next?!”
“Shen Wei, don’t! Please, stop!” Zhao Yunlan’s voice suddenly pulled Shen Wei out of his angry trance.
Shen Wei’s head whipped back towards the sound. “Zhao Yunlan! I told you to run away! Why are you still here?!”
Gurgling sounds came out of the handyman, who was rapidly turning purple as his lungs emptied of their oxygen, and the man tried to hurl another attack at Shen Wei as he hung limply in mid-air, drained of his energy, but to no avail.
“Let him go, please! This isn’t who you are!” Zhao Yunlan exclaimed in a tearful tone, refusing to budge from his spot. “Shen Wei, you’re a good and righteous man... not a killer! You know this won’t solve anything!”
Shen Wei let out a dry laugh. “...a man,” he muttered under his breath.
But even though Shen Wei knew that the picture painted by Zhao Yunlan was inaccurate—Zhao Yunlan didn’t know to what lengths he would go for him, to what lengths he had already gone—Shen Wei was grateful for his unfaltering faith. Frustrating though it may be, Shen Wei knew that Zhao Yunlan was right on all counts. Slaying offenders wasn’t the Black-Cloaked Envoy’s style, nor was it his ideal of justice. He had let his personal feelings hamper his judgment again.
Shen Wei reluctantly lessened the grip around the man’s throat and lowered him to the ground.
As the helper stood coughing and wheezing, and clawing at his abused throat, Shen Wei quietly walked up to him, his expression still and calm as the sea, yet more frightening than it had been in his ire. Before the man could realize what he was planning to do, Shen Wei whipped out his hand to strike the acupressure point on his shoulder and make him go limp at once, then caught him, but only because he wouldn’t have been of use to Zhao Yunlan with a concussion. After setting him down on the floor, Shen Wei loosened his tie and pulled it off, then wrapped it around the man’s wrists, weaving some dark energy in with the cloth to make it impossible to shake off.
Zhao Yunlan slowly made his way over to Shen Wei, plopping down on the floor next to him to watch.
Once Shen Wei was satisfied with his handiwork, and certain that their captive wasn’t going to be able to free himself, he rolled the bound man onto his back and gave an inquiring look to Zhao Yunlan, who was studying him carefully.
Zhao Yunlan smiled at him, then said: “The missing students… I know where they are.”
******
Though nothing could have excused the helper’s actions, Zhao Yunlan had to admit that the man had had it pretty rough.
Born to a Haixingese mother who had perished not long after giving birth to him, and taken from his Dixingren father who had been captured by Zhao Xinci more than twenty years ago, when the former Chief of the SID was in his prime, the caretaker had already seen his fair share of orphanages and foster families at a tender age, and suffered a great amount of abuse at the hands of those who should have been protecting him. Growing up, he had never been able to find his place in society, and had spent his adolescence and early adulthood doing odd jobs and trying to get by with his meager salaries until he had been hired at Dragon City University for a permanent position.
From that point on, the man had seen countless numbers of young men and women passing him by every day, with a bright spark in their eyes and a spring in their step, grabbing opportunities handed to them on a silver platter, and as time passed, envy and jealousy had gradually bubbled up in him, slowly eating away at his heart until he had decided to act against those who possessed what he had never had a shot at—a future.
Evidently, when the helper had discovered that the son of his sworn enemy—the cop who had robbed his life from him and sealed his fate when he was a child—was on his tail, he had been terrified at the prospect of getting caught, and had resolved that the only way to retain what little freedom he still had would be to get rid of Zhao Yunlan altogether.
No matter what I do, I always have to clean up after what my old man did in the past, Zhao Yunlan thought bitterly.
He may have loved his job, but sometimes he regretted following in his father’s footsteps.
“Chief Zhao, do you need us to take him off your hands?”
“Oh, no… no need. My good friend is on his way to pick him up as we speak,” Zhao Yunlan waved a dismissive hand, throwing a knowing, sidelong look at Shen Wei, who gave a weak smile before his lips curled down into a frown again.
Zhao Yunlan joined Shen Wei on the bench where he sat near the loropetalum, and the pair watched as the junior officer saluted and rushed back to join a group of policemen who were assisting the missing students out of the old science building where they had been found—dehydrated and traumatized, but miraculously alive.
“Two cases for the price of one… I think we just set a new record! Pretty sure that old fart has never pulled that off,” Zhao Yunlan grinned at Shen Wei, who was recuperating his strength while he kept a close eye on their captive, now sporting proper Dixing power-canceling handcuffs in place of Shen Wei’s improvised restraints. Indeed, the man had admitted to the mysterious series of burglaries which they had been beating their brains out over for several days, under the pretense that he had been looking to make extra cash to help make ends meet.
Zhao Yunlan thought the man was rather pitiful, but knew he shouldn’t let himself be moved.
Crime was almost never justified.
“Thank you for showing him mercy,” Zhao Yunlan told Shen Wei, who made a non-committal sound, keeping his eyes trained on the criminal and refusing to meet his gaze, and although the professor wouldn’t say what was on his mind, Zhao Yunlan thought he had a pretty good idea what was bothering him. “Shen Wei ah,” Zhao Yunlan breathed softly, reaching over to take Shen Wei’s chilled hand on the bench and intertwine their fingers. “You know I don’t care about these things, right? I mean, I wish you’d told me who you were before, but I get why you didn’t... couldn’t,” Zhao Yunlan said barely over a whisper, tightly squeezing Shen Wei’s hand in his as he thought of how Shen Wei must have suffered, living for countless years under the cover of anonymity, and trying to blend in with the crowd when his sole existence as a living legend in this day and age was extraordinary.
Shen Wei turned his head to face him, and Zhao Yunlan felt a pang to his heart upon seeing his tortured expression.
“You don’t understand,” Shen Wei murmured. “My enemies are numerous. I, myself, am a threat. If you’re with me—…”
“I’ll be safer than if you go away. After all, don’t I have a knack for getting into trouble?” Zhao Yunlan finished for him with a sheepish smile, dismissing Shen Wei’s self-debasing words before they could see the light of day. “Shen Wei... Does what happened tonight not suffice to prove to you that I need you? What you say you are—or what you claim to have done—isn’t going to change what I think,” Zhao Yunlan said resolutely, hoping that his eyes conveyed even half of what was in his heart. He had never been skilled with words, but he knew himself well, if nothing else. What Shen Wei stirred in him wasn’t anything that he had ever felt before, and he’d be damned if he let someone like this pass him by.
As Shen Wei remained silent, a sea of crimson washed over the whites of his eyes, giving him an almost feral look, but Zhao Yunlan was not afraid, for he knew Shen Wei, too. “No matter what you choose,” he continued, “I’m not going to leave you alone. If you hide from me, I’m going to comb through every inch of the city until I find you. And even if you return to Dixing, I’ll find a way to track you down and bring you back. You can bet on it.”
“Such a stubborn man,” Shen Wei reprimanded him, stroking the back of his hand with his thumb.
“Hey, have you seen my father? They say the apple never falls far from the tree,” Zhao Yunlan chuckled.
Pausing as he turned over Zhao Yunlan’s words in his mind, Shen Wei slowly raised his hand and let his fingers travel down the other’s stubbled cheek, his touch cool and light as a ghost’s kiss.
Shen Wei sighed. Smiled. “Then… I guess I’ll stick around for a while.”
After all, for one who had lived as long as a hundred men, this was tantamount to a lifetime of happiness with his one—and only—love.
The end