Chapter Text
Chenle was not one to be quiet.
On his first day of school, he had managed to drive his teacher into hysterics, after singing his rendition of Itsy Bitsy Spider for the fifty-seventh time in a range that threatened to break glasses, including the one that his teacher was drinking a suspiciously familiar red drink from.
Of course his mother had assured him that it hadn’t been his fault, and that Miss Wu had just filed for a divorce that summer and had been on the edge since then, so ‘You shouldn’t feel guilty about her quitting, darling. You were just being sweet and tried to cheer her up. Such a shame that she was too far gone.’.
A teary nod. A warm smile. And a kiss on the head.
That’s what Chenle knew growing up. Warmth and loudness.
So when he stirred awake in his room’s cold and eerie darkness, he felt as if he had been submerged in a foreign world.
The boy was quick to kick off his sheets, fumbling in the dark to find his iPhone charging atop the nightstand.
121 unread messages. 26 missed calls. 25 voicemails.
Chenle’s eyes widened, quickly unlocking his phone with trepidation. He had left his phone on mute before crashing on his bed, something that his parents would surely berate him for when he manages to get ahold of them.
But the phone kept dialing. His father not picking up, despite him being the last missed call. His mother, who had never missed a call, hadn’t picked up either.
A sudden boom rattled the room and Chenle whipped to face the large sliding doors that led to the balcony.
He wasn’t prepared to see a large plume of smoke rising into the night sky after opening the blinds, the smoke engulfing a section of the Shanghai city skyline in a slow and lethargic dance.
“Chenle!” A muffled voice stirred Chenle out of his stupor.
He didn’t even have to open the door before a young man burst into the room with ferocity. Kun’s familiar face, albeit paler than usual, greeted Chenle. The younger couldn’t even tease his cousin for his disheveled appearance, as he could see that his cousin had been shaken up by something.
“What’s wrong, gege ?” Chenle flinched at how small his voice sounded, even in the silent room.
“Chenle, we ne-need to go. Every-everyone left and—”
If Chenle hadn’t been alarmed then, he was now. Kun had never been anything but the calm, dutiful, and respectable son of Chenle’s uncle.
Something was terribly wrong .
But Chenle wouldn’t get to see the cause of the terror that wrought Kun’s face, as he was whisked off by the older man who had persisted with composing himself for the sake of his younger cousin, despite having driven past so many desperate souls trying to escape the overrun city.
Chenle could only glimpse the aftermath of the terror, sitting securely in a private plane amidst familiar faces, looking down at the glowing city.
The familiar city that he had known, glowing with fire..
The worst part of the sight had been the specks of dots he could only assume were people, clamoring over each other in their desperation. Chenle swore that he had even some leap from the windows of buildings. And he swore that some of them had kept moving even after making impact.