Chapter Text
It had been decided by the powers that may be, and no one could do anything about it; the world was going to end on a Tuesday. A Tuesday! Out of all the days… a Tuesday was just a little too mundane for something like that. If it was a Tuesday morning, that would mean the last full day every little Earthling could celebrate was a Monday . And Tuesdays were always just filler days, meant for leading to hump days in the middle, or preparing for something for the end of the week.
No one ever had an important assignment due on a Tuesday, or scheduled a meeting they couldn’t miss.
“And, you know, for all the days, it should have totally been something declarative for a real statement. Like Friday, so everyone could be out drinking, or a Sunday and we could all act like this is the end of one week and the start of a new one. Ah, I’d like to eat a big dinner, like in those American movies, where the whole family gathers around, and they pray and eat an entire turkey.”
Wei Wuxian was walking along the road as he spoke, one foot in front of the other as he traced the edge of the curb, his hands crossed behind his head.
“A Tuesday. I can’t believe it.”
Next to him, Xiao Xingchen only smiled in response, because, realistically, he couldn’t either. Had he not sat and watched Wei Wuxian do the maths, he would refuse it entirely. Maybe if it wasn’t all happening before his very eyes, and his teachers were still asking for him to work hard for the maths quiz they were having tomorrow, and the city wasn’t blowing joyful flyers through his window every night, and he could just have a second to collect himself and breathe, then he would. Maybe if the political staging of the whole thing wasn’t reverberating around the plastered walls of every room he walked into, and he could live through another unappreciated moment of ignorant bliss.
Their salad days – his teacher told them to call them what they were – should be full of that.
And yet, as it turned out, mankind did not have much of a say in the affairs of the world. If the universe wanted the end to happen, then it would. They could cry and analyse it as much as they wanted and conjure up a thousand escape plans to reach the heavens or build a tunnel down and pray that the asteroid wouldn’t split the Earth in two – but that didn’t mean the universe was going to listen.
The asteroid was, of course, little more than a mound of rock and rubble flying through space. But so was Earth, really, tugged along by the pull of its Sun. And how lucky they were, some scientist had said on the radio the night before, that their planet had that. How lonely this asteroid must be, and how lucky it was to have found them. Even though it is our end, our horrible, sad, irreversible end, it is still a sign of two things finding each other.
“Kaboom!” Wei Wuxian threw his arms back suddenly, caught in his own theatrics and jumping in the spot. Xiao Xingchen, a couple of steps in front of him, jumped at the noise and turned to him, laughing. He watched his friend, classed in the grade below him and technically his nephew, bring a hand back to his head and brush back the strands of hair that framed his face, laughing with his own sad twinge. “Like a mushroom.”
/
The news broke on a Friday moments before the morning rush could peek up from the plush white covers it was hiding underneath, and the slow pitter of feet wrapped in black leather had barely thundered through the door. His boss, an avid conspiracist, had been glued to the national broadcast for a month or so now.
“If they don’t act soon, it’ll be too late,” he had muttered once, when Xiao Xingchen tried to offer green-honey tea to soothe his shaking hands. Suddenly, his voice raised: “Didn’t you do the maths back then?! It’s getting too close for failure now… Maybe they’re never going to tell us!”
He stood up abruptly, eyes wide in terror. “Tomorrow. We’re all going to die tomorrow!”
This was a year ago, back when the end of the world was something to be left to the hot-shots in the corporate world, and not the customers all watching him now in the corner of the coffee shop. Conspiracists like this weren’t new by any means – every street corner was topped off by someone handing out flyers now, promising that after the end, some God will save their souls – but they weren’t a great thing to be.
Xiao Xingchen laughed lightly and held his boss by the shoulders, offering more empty comforts, and another joke. “If the world ends tomorrow, I’ll take you out at the end of the week for kobe.”
But that was then, and this was now. His boss, caught in his nervous tics, had pulled out each hair of his eyebrows and eyelashes, skin picked and scabbing. He turned the radio up for the whole store to hear today’s Jin-Lan update.
“And now,” it began, and the entire store seemed to lean in. This was the long-awaited announcement, signposted across the week with trickling backwater from each tabloid cornerstone. “We have received an update from Jin Guangshan regarding the final attempt at re-pathing Chénmò.”
Rather ironically, that name always managed to make everyone stop where they were standing. It didn’t matter that the line was long and stretched outside the front door, or that the coffee machine had been slightly burning the beans with its age. He had spent the first half of his shift trying to figure out why the machine, Shuanghua, had suddenly decided to act up, and only watched now as each cup held onto too much sour darkness. He looked away from the warming cup in his hands – triple espresso.
A beat of silence – save for the cry of the machine as she released the third shot. Xiao Xingchen quietly lamented the distant line that the radio drew between them and the reporter, blind to the visual cues of them looking so nervously up and down, from paper to camera.
“The Jin-Lan company’s Mission Possible, the conjoint realignment plan, has failed. Chénmò continues on her path towards earth. Researchers now have released a statement clarifying the situation moving forwards.”
The constraints of a radio broadcast meant he couldn’t watch the reporter’s attempt to hold a steely expression, but he could see the way A-Qing’s hands were shaking over the cash register, a nameless paper cup in hand with an unsheathed pen next to it. He could see the line of suited shoulders leading out the door drop all at once, and their mouths fall open too.
“—believe that we have eight months, up to a year, before the asteroid enters our atmosphere.”
Shuanghua stopped crying, and he lidded the cup. He could smell the burnt shots of Columbian roast espresso as he passed it onto the bar. The cash register beeped as the customer held his card close enough for the reader to lick each number clean off it. Another customer reached out a hand from the crowd to pluck the finished cup from the waiting point, and another turned the page of the newspaper they were reading. The long sweep of one of his regular’s hair was tied back behind his head today – it was a Friday, which meant crunch day at the office.
He smiled secretly to the boiling jug of leftover milk as the rosette he had so carefully poured was hidden behind a plastic lid, waiting to kiss those lips that only briefly quirked upwards in thanks. A Guatemalan latte with a pump of vanilla and an extra espresso shot.
The world, so destined to end, turned onwards.
/
The Jin-Lan cooperation wasn't always joined by their double-barrel of a name, but when the nouveau riche threatened old money, they always needed to anchor themselves onto something. That something just so happened to be each other. The first knot, he imagined, was tied back when the Jiang family adopted a fresh face. He, barely 4 and still sitting in the dirty clothes they found him in, shuffled around enough numbers to pour more into sewer-development than both of them had combined.
Then the water muddied, and it was harder to keep up with. A secret marriage between a Jin son and the Jiang daughter, blown out of the water by an overly keen planner who couldn’t hold himself back from talking. Suddenly everything was so eagerly public – and eagerly in multiplicity too. Such major events never existed in one form. In some versions, Jiang Yanli had threatened the family to hand over their son with blackmail. In others, the Jin son was just covering up for the mistress he already had. But these ugly variations didn’t mean much to a public desperately looking for the sun after the ghostly memory of the Wen’s still haunted the city after so many years.
And the Nie family, sitting on the outskirts of tabloid nonsense, moved to fill any corner they could. And four, really, sounds so much nicer than three – and so the Mighty Four spread their wings wider out into the empty space where the Big Five had been once.
But neither the Jiang family nor the Nie family offered much to the space-race – that was left entirely to the Jin-Lan families instead. They, too focused on the material embitterment of the city, failed to catch the shadows behind every corner waiting, pushing towards the inevitable decay of the whole world.
The hierarchy was established then. The Nie-family could serve the city, the Jiang-family could guard them, and it was a privilege for every civilian to be led to the future behind the blue and gold coattails of the Jin-Lan leaders.
Which, realistically, was fine. Though the hungry teeth of popular online commentators shook their heads at it, and every small business held their purse a little closer to their chests now, it was fine.
The living city underneath them all, the one that shook waves of discomfort to those connected closest to it, didn’t stir. That’s all that mattered. Usually, these things were kept to the leading families, unless something threw the balance off entirely. When the Wen family had been ousted, half the city collapsed on their knees. Thousands of people suffered from strokes as the air-pressure jumped, and one of the oldest fountains crumbled in on itself.
I suppose we too are under the thumbs not just of our rulers, but of our city too, MM had once written to their audience. MM had only started growing in popularity a year or so ago but had somehow become a loud voice in the space of political discontent – which was probably why they were only MM too.
A-Qing asked him once, reading out their article on fisheries one quiet morning, what kind of person he thought they were. He had raised an eyebrow – “That’s something I would ask if I were them, you know.”
/
The next Monday, his favourite regular came in as the running stream of news updates echoed and bounced around the room, reverberating off every wooden wall back into the open air, smothered over tables and lounged across chairs. They were all inconclusive and vague, and the radio made space every day each morning and night for some official to come and push around more empty air between stereo speakers.
Early today, Xiao Xingchen thought to himself with a small smile. Then he noticed the bags under his eyes and his short order – “a double espresso, please” – and could put two-and-two together easily enough.
The regular walked along the bar, opposite to where he stood behind the machine. “That’s not the face of someone who spent the weekend celebrating or mourning,” he teased, pulling a small paper cup off the pile. “You’re not telling me your boss is making you forward emails to people who’ll never open their work inboxes again?”
His regular gave him a look, quirking a curious eyebrow.
“Ah,” Xiao Xingchen looked at his machine, pulling the neck of it closer to the mouth of the cup to stop it from spilling. “While everyone is out chasing their last dreams, someone still has to make sure all those papers get signed.”
The regular’s expression softened, and Xiao Xingchen wished he had a name to put to that face. He sighed, accepting the drink as it was handed to him. “They’re happy about this, I’m sure of it.” He threw the coffee down his throat. “It’s what they’ve always wanted, this mad dependency. The only downside is that the whole world has to burn down for it to happen.”
He absolutely did not mean it as a joke, but Xiao Xingchen struggled to bite down his laugh anyway. It was true, sure, absolutely even, but what a dramatic way of phrasing it.
“They’re in for a rude awakening when they realise our exchange rates don’t count for alien currency,” his regular added, then nodded his goodbye. He hurried out through the door at ten minutes to the hour, briefcase in tow.
Only when Xiao Xingchen heard the soft shut of the door behind him, and the white ceramic cup was warm under the running hot water, did he realise that his regular customer had made a joke. A joke! The stony-faced familiar that A-Qing was so terrified of, and he had grown so fixated on, and who split the store like an ocean had made a joke about aliens , no less.
Oh, the world really was ending.
The rest of his day rolled into the rest of his week, peppered with Jin-Lan sentiments that all edged closer to clarity. They had to start making up for lost time, obviously, and it was no easy feat preparing for the end of the world when most of your money had been pushed towards stopping it. The idea of a contingency plan was a new one – yet repulsively difficult to escape from.
Xiao Xingchen supposed that this was what made these updates so much more exciting – or something adjacent to the feeling at least.
As Monday arrived, he supposed he must have listened to all of them as they came to pass. Jin Guangshan, well-groomed and back straight, spoke directly through the camera to every curious onlooker. To the late-week audience in the coffee shop, seeing him now in glorious detail (thanks to one feverous donation from some long-time regular who had already quit his job, moving far away to the Northern mountains), split themselves between listening to the broadcast and staring into their cups like waiting characters for a poke into action. Waiting. Waiting for something – an email to come through, or a text to spur them off into otherworldly adventure, or just the blaring echo of the same news stories, minimised for their phone screens instead.
Jin Guangshan cleared his throat, nonetheless.
“It is up to us today to guide the future of tomorrow. Without extensive, thorough, and proper planning, our human race and history fades into time itself. As such, the Jin-Lan cooperation had made the difficult decision to pull out funding away from outstanding projects, and instead to conserve resources towards preserving a selection of humanity’s finest instead.”
He wanted to laugh. Behind Jin Guangshan, the blue and gold flag fluttered in the January breeze, the new year shying into the frame. Surely, this was taking a spoonful of sand from the beach and hoping it represents the whole thing. In reality, it couldn’t even compare. One grain of salt from the shaker, one strand from the head – there were too many memories, far too small to be held just there.
“We have curated a short-list of people we would like to guarantee a seat for on our safest, completed rocket ship. Those gifted with the ticket will be tasked with the work of saving the memory of humanity, guarding our knowledge and research on a shuttle to the stars. These seats are for great young minds, and for those whose greatest contributions are not yet complete. They will be for the scientists, the entrepreneurs, and the change-makers who have helped shift the living memory of our society.”
It was a rehearsed script, sure, but the message was clear. No tickets for the penniless who counted the corners that huddled against them each night, nor for the lonely mothers who carted their kids between couches during lunch breaks, nor for the faceless baristas who waved off each whimsical changemaker namelessly behind the bar.
The greatest young minds – or the ones born with a foot holding the door open for them. The ones who licked residue strawberries off from silver spoons.
He sighed. There was little left for him to do now but decide what he was supposed to do with what time he had left. The crowd of customers caught in their own reflection dispersed in confusion, as though they too were caught wondering the same thing. His boss in the back room spoke loudly on the phone, and he plucked the cup out of the hands of the soft-spoken teenager standing at the cash register today.
The world was going to end – really and truly end. Every attempt to stop it had failed, so the world was going to end. Humanity couldn’t push back against the determined push of time, so the world was going to end. Earth itself, still so young, chubby hands clad in baby fat still hammering on the table, was weak against the pulsating rush of multitudes of decadent universes thundering around it. The world, so weak on its knees and easily persuaded, was going to end.
Though they were still in the deepest throes of winter, their days had already started to stretch out like a yawning cat. As the sun later began its slow descent downwards, he finished deconstructing the coffee machine to clean it, and switched off the screen. The bottom of the TV was smooth, still fresh from its boxed prison and nailed to the wall. How lucky their boss was to have a regular who thought of them so kindly in their spiralling, fulfilling one last, sick wish fulfilment. His boss, who had grown so bony over the past year, his mind decaying with urging worry, pulling each hair out of his head as it grew and let Xiao Xingchen rub oils into his hands as if he was his son, and who looked so kindly upon him too.
He swallowed the thought as soon as it came, untying his apron and swiped his card to clock out. The sun was setting, now dipped in egg-yolk orange and smeared across the world around it. The step of concrete outside the store was the same as ever in the dim light – smooth around the sides, accented with the footprints of a long-passed bird that had run over the wet cement once.
So many years of his boss telling him that would be replaced, only for time to run out. Better now for that money to go towards something else, like some bucket-list desire, and enjoy the financial freedom that came with no forward planning. The weighty anchors of rent and bent and taxes were essentially cut loose – sweet honey-comb freedom, enough syrupy goodness to call over singing hummingbirds, was all they had now.
Right, he reminded himself. He had promised his roommate that they would make fruit syrup the other week but didn’t have time to drop by the store since then. The isles were wiped clean of toilet paper and rice, and all things frozen, but he was glad to find that the fresh produce was largely untouched.
How lucky, he smiled to himself, taking hold of a netted bag of limes. Someone walked past him with an armful of shampoos, and he avoided their eyes. As the world was due to end, and their leaders had commanded a future where only a handful of them were given the kind gift of living beyond the rest, he could stay thankful for the limes alone.
Outside, he could hear a wild, crying chaos already. He was thankful all the same.
/
“Oh, you got limes? I was thinking orange instead.”
Xue Yang had thrown himself over the stained couch, half-dressed and scrolling through his phone. Behind him, the long window was lit by cars racing around below, and the city lights breathing into the night’s darkness. From when they had first moved in, Xiao Xingchen knew he loved the view of the living city. From the ground you could only feel it, like you were stepping nervously on someone’s pulsating heart, but only from a height like this could you see it properly.
“You should have replied to my text then,” he laughed, locking the door behind him. “And these limes look too good to waste.”
His measly barista pay-check couldn’t cover this sort of extravagance, but whatever Xue Yang did during the day seemed to put meat on the table. The front-door opened to their shared space, a collapse of a kitchen-living room situation, while their bedrooms stood opposite on either side.
Xue Yang rolled his eyes, throwing his phone somewhere else and stretching to a stand. “Whatever,” he started, arms reaching high above before falling to his sides. “Your nephew is totally getting a ticket, isn’t he?”
Xiao Xingchen, coat still hanging to his shoulders and the plastic bag now sitting neatly on the kitchen counter, thought to himself for a moment. “I haven’t asked him yet, but probably.”
Wei Wuxian, lucky enough to have fallen in love with Lan Wangji and have it reciprocated too, definitely had a ticket with his name on it, if not literally encrusted into a gold bar and delivered to him along with a bottle of wine, and maybe a lobster too. There really was no need for him to ask, but maybe he should anyway, if only to connect dotted lines.
Xue Yang interrupted his thoughts, circling around him and jumping up to sit on the kitchen counter. Thankfully, he was wearing underwear and a vest, but Xiao Xingchen could see the drying blood on his arm either way. Xue Yang reached to take a lime out of the bag, probably to eat the whole thing raw, and Xiao Xingchen found a cloth to clean the wound with, as he always did.
“Lots of people are mad about it though, you know.” He smiled down to Xiao Xingchen, the difference in their height reversed. “Asking the Jin family to release a list of all the names they deem worthy, and all the reasons why they’re being saved.”
He didn’t look angry about it himself. Rather, he looked like he was relaying the plot of some poorly strung together and wholly melodramatic daytime-drama.
But he didn’t wince when Xiao Xingchen pushed the cloth, wet with the antiseptic and definitely due to sting a little, against his wound, wiping up the dried blood and preparing it for a bandage. Xiao Xingchen never had quite the attentive skills to catch the finer details of whatever job it was Xue Yang was knee deep in now, but it was no less concerning to see him like this, whether or not he showed it. When the bloody knives clanged into the sink each night for him to wash the next morning, and the clean shirts Xiao Xingchen left out for him each Saturday turned into ones painted red instead, he reminded himself to probe just a little more.
Don’t get too comfortable like this, when something is so clearly wrong . It was like he could hear his old temple-master speaking to him now – like she was whispering to him through the winds of the city.
Just be happy he has a job , A-Qing had told him instead, making a sour expression at the very memory of his roommate. In all fairness, though, he was an acquired taste.
“What about you?” Xiao Xingchen smiled, fingers peeling apart the back of a long, white bandage. He brought it over the clean wound, spreading his palm wide to press it smooth to Xue Yang’s arm. “Are you upset you didn’t get a ticket?”
“Ah,” Xue Yang replied with, almost teasingly. “Who said I didn’t have a ticket?”
Xiao Xingchen laughed, because if there was anyone who was going to cause public distress over ticket ownership, it would definitely be Xue Yang. He pulled away and went to wash his hands instead, grabbing a bowl too for the limes to bath in and lose their waxy shells.
“Well, whatever,” Xue Yang continued, hopping off the counter and dropping his stolen lime in amongst its brothers. “I don’t have one, but my boss could pull some strings, so it’s not like I have to go around begging.”
His boss. That elusive boss who seemed to control all of this. Xiao Xingchen’s eyes darted quickly to today’s sink-knife he hadn’t brought himself to inspect yet. A small pocket knife that didn’t fold, so it probably had a cover somewhere, and the handle was made with cheap plastic, and the blade was mostly blunt.
It was bloody though, that was besides the question. Obviously, it was bloody – why else would it be in the sink? To play?
Xue Yang had never given his boss’s name, but never failed to mention how he seemed to have a fish swimming around in every pool imaginable. If he didn’t know any better, he’d have poked the sleeping lion and asked him a little more about him, but he could see the tension in Xue Yang’s knuckles every time the topic blushed into existence.
“I hope so,” he joked instead. “I’m curious as to what alien species you could live amongst.”
“You read me wrong,” he shot back with mock hurt, walking to the space on the floor his phone laid on and peeking out the window at the speeding cars. “I would need to rule over them or kill them instead.”
To that, Xiao Xingchen could laugh. Xue Yang’s fantasies of grandeur were concerning sometimes, but funny the rest. The limes bobbed against each other in the clear glass of their bowl, and Xiao Xingchen hung his coat and arranged their sitting shoes.
How thankful he was that the week hadn’t ended yet, so he still had another day of work. A fresh Monday, and the rest of the week smiled back at him as he looked forwards. How Tuesdays had terrified him since one instance all those years ago, and Wednesdays were always so horrifically long, and Thursdays leaned too close over the edge, and Fridays always erupted into something else. How the weekends were little more than waving fetters, binding him to his bed, immobile and watching his bedroom ceiling if he wasn’t called in for duty. How happy he was that it was a Monday. A Monday! A beautiful, blooming Monday that the world was beginning to end.