Chapter Text
Everyone knows that you shouldn’t let someone with a broken heart (and obviously drunk) have access to their phone because the consequences can be, if not fatal, at least embarrassing. However, this premise only applies when you are among a large group of friends in charge of taking care of you, leaving those who, like Jiang Cheng that cold autumn night, are alone, to their own devices.
"One more," Jiang Cheng says, hitting his glass against the wooden surface of the bar to get the bartender's attention. It's Friday and the club is full of college kids trying to shake off all the stress of the week to the beat of electronic music and reggaeton, so no one, not even the bartender, pays attention to the thirty-year-old man with hunched shoulders in a corner of the bar. “One more!” Jiang Cheng yells to be heard over the laughter, music, and close conversations. This time, he brings down the glass hard enough that it seems about to break.
"Vodka, sir?" asks the bartender, turning to look at him with a fake smile. He would love to kick that drunkard out of the establishment just to avoid his bad mood and with eyes that are red from drinking so much, but since he’s not really bothering anyone and usually leaves good tips, he has to comply.
Jiang Cheng offers him the glass in response and as soon as it is full, he drinks it in one gulp, not minding that half its content spills down his chin. Of course, he doesn't miss the disapproving look of the bartender but he doesn’t give a fuck. So what if he looks pathetic? For once his looks reflect how he feels inside: destroyed, tired, and alone.
“More!”
“Are you sure?” The bartender asks, glancing around him. “Wouldn't you rather get a taxi? Or maybe you came with someone?”
Jiang Cheng laughs derisively. The only person who could accompany him on a Friday night, Wen Xu, broke up with him a few hours earlier via text message. Jiang Cheng had already been expecting it, his friends had even warned him of the Wen heir's tendency to change partners every so often, but Jiang Cheng hadn't wanted to believe it until the end. What had started as a very intense (and especially physical) relationship, soon turned into something, in Wen Xu’s words, monotonous, which was why he had decided to end it.
"Moron," Jiang Cheng hisses, with such anger that, although the bartender can’t hear him due to the noise around him, he still recoils from Jiang Cheng's expression.
The young man is about to fill Jiang Cheng's glass once more after convincing himself that it’s none of his business what the drunkard does with his life (even if it means that he will end up in a ditch covered in his own vomit) when Jiang Cheng stands up. His pace is not stable—how could it be after drinking a bottle of vodka by himself?—but even so, the bartender prepares to press the emergency button located under the table that will call a couple of guards to his rescue in a matter of seconds.
There's no need. Jiang Cheng has no intention of hurting anyone. The only thing he wants is to get out of that place, get away from the music rumbling in his ears, go back to his apartment and take a long shower. Jiang Cheng takes a handful of bills out of his pocket and places them on the table, not stopping to wait for change. He then staggers toward the exit, letting the people on the dance floor push him to the door.
Outside, the cold wind tangles his hair, urging him to light a cigarette.
The sidewalk is as crowded with college kids as the interior of the club, but it's easier to distinguish the people around him when there are no strobe lights and loud music. Most are taking a smoke break, just like him, but Jiang Cheng can also see a lot of couples making out in dark corners, ready to take the party to the next level. If he wanted, he could also get something for the night, after all, he’s quite handsome, despite looking depressed and reeking of alcohol, but Jiang Cheng decides not to.
He’s tired, not only from his long workday, the emotional pain from the breakup with Wen Xu, and his excesses of that day. He’s also tired of the story repeating, of how his relationships never come to anything while all his friends and acquaintances live happy lives. Of course, Jiang Cheng is aware that he doesn’t need to have a boyfriend to be happy, but on nights like that, when he feels alone in a sea of people, logic is useless.
Jiang Cheng stubs out his cigar and takes out his phone to call a taxi. While he waits for it to arrive, Jiang Cheng entertains himself by looking at his friends’ and co-workers' posts on social media, though that only makes him feel worse. His older sister, Jiang Yanli, smiles at him from a manor house where she’s spending her vacations with her husband, Jin Zixuan. Jiang Cheng's best friend Nie Huaisang shared a photo of a bubble bath and a glass of wine next to it with the text spa night an hour earlier; Wen Ning, one of his co-workers, uploaded a photo watching children's movies with his nephew A-Yuan, while another co-worker, Wei Wuxian, brags about his new, but secret relationship with the cryptic image of two people holding hands.
Jiang Cheng boards the taxi with his phone clutched in one hand. The alcohol makes him want to cry, turning his voice into an annoyed screech as he instructs the driver to follow the route marked by the app before sinking into the seat with his arms folded.
The neon lights of bars, clubs, and other nightlife venues disappear quickly when the taxi enters the dark streets on the outskirts of the city, where there’s not a single soul. The yellow light from the streetlights seems depressing to Jiang Cheng, like everything in his life, although he assumes that he deserves it. It took him years to assume his identity as a bisexual man, years of living in denial and hiding his interest in men, hurting more than one person in the process.
However, that night Jiang Cheng's mind focuses on the first person he made cry. Even now, almost fifteen years after the event, Jiang Cheng feels guilty for the pain he caused Lan Huan by rejecting him so cowardly. Lan Huan had been very brave to confess his feelings, but Jiang Cheng hadn’t even rejected him face to face, but through an intermediary, so that no one would know what happened. Lan Huan's pain, Jiang Cheng's guilt, everything had been kept a secret that even now eats away at him.
Jiang Cheng can't take it anymore. He needs to tell someone, exorcise the demon that he’s carried on his back for so long. So he unlocks his phone, searching through his chats for someone willing to listen to him (and maybe forgive him for what he did), but he can’t find anyone.
Jiang Cheng could tell Jiang Yanli about it, but he doesn't want to disappoint his sister, and besides, it's too late to bother her with his drunken thoughts. Nie Huaisang? It might be an option, perhaps his only option, but Jiang Cheng also doesn't want to ruin his friend’s night by forcing him to contain his existential crisis. And yet the need to confess it to someone is so pressing that Jiang Cheng is about to start yelling at the unsuspecting driver.
In the end, Jiang Cheng decides to throw his sins away, protected by the anonymity of the internet. He opens his Twitter account that he rarely uses (he has twenty followers, many of them as inactive as he is) and begins to write. His story flows with ease, turning into a thread in a matter of minutes. Talking about what happened, about his guilt and his regret is so simple, so cathartic, that the driver has to tell him several times that they have already reached his destination to make Jiang Cheng take his eyes off the screen.
Jiang Cheng continues to write as he rides the elevator and only pauses to find his keys and open the door. When he’s done, he tweets the long thread without even checking it for misspellings, finally feeling free from the mistake that has haunted him since he was a teenager. Jiang Cheng feels so at ease that he immediately falls asleep, with no idea that while he’s resting peacefully, his thread is going viral.
.
Jiang Cheng wakes up with a crooked neck and a sore back not knowing exactly where he is. His phone keeps ringing, the sound drilling into his head—which already hurts from the inevitable hangover—and his clothes are damp. Jiang Cheng struggles to get up, slipping each time until he finally manages to grab the armrests on either side of his body and stand up. He then realizes where he spent the night and how close he came to dying from his carelessness. After sending his sad story into the void of the internet, Jiang Cheng had tried to take a shower before going to bed, only to fall asleep inside the bathtub with barely two fingers of water in the bottom. His drunkenness had prevented him from keeping the faucet open, saving him from certain but stupid death in his own home.
Jiang Cheng can imagine the tabloid headlines that would have graced the newspapers once the neighbors had found his body, perhaps after several days of rotting alone. ‘Neighbors reported a putrid odor in an apartment complex. Police officers discovered the body of a thirty-year-old man drowned in the bathtub.’ What a way to gain fame. At least his common sense has saved him from a senseless death, though Jiang Cheng didn't have enough to put his cell phone on vibrate before he lost consciousness.
“Shit!” Jiang Cheng yells at the bathroom walls, which echo his voice a couple of times, making him immediately regret having raised his tone.
Jiang Cheng locates his phone halfway between the bathtub and the door, the screen lighting up every few seconds from a new notification. As he carefully exits the bathtub, clutching the sink on one side and the shower curtain on the other, Jiang Cheng hopes it's not someone from work, because he doesn't feel like dealing with incompetent people with a hangover.
"Damn, it's Saturday, can't you just leave me alone for a day?" he asks, bending to pick up his phone with a grunt. He doesn’t understand what’s so urgent to bother him at eight in the morning on a Saturday, but the possibility that something has happened to his family makes Jiang Cheng's anger subside a bit.
However, when Jiang Cheng unlocks the phone, he realizes that all his notifications come from Twitter. Some of his followers must have liked his sad nocturnal ramblings, although that doesn’t explain the flow of messages that continue to appear in his notifications tab.
JupiterwithDiamonds liked your tweet.
kyotcat liked your tweet.
starsintherain liked your tweet.
The likes follow one after another until Jiang Cheng loses interest in tracking them down, although among his notifications several small envelopes indicate that he has unread private messages. Jiang Cheng frowns, wondering what the hell is going on—as he rarely uses Twitter and when he does, he barely gets a couple of likes—when his phone starts ringing from an incoming call.
“Yes?” Jiang Cheng asks dryly.
"I see you woke up on the wrong side of the bed," the person on the other end of the line says cheerfully.
"What is it, Nie Huaisang?" Jiang Cheng asks, massaging his nose bridge to try to fight his headache. “Is it about work? Because if so, you can wait until I shower and sleep for a couple of hours.”
“What? You don’t know?” Nie Huaisang asks in a shrill voice that makes Jiang Cheng hold the phone away from his ear.
“I think that's obvious. What is it about now?” Jiang Cheng asks, sitting on the toilet. He doesn’t feel like hearing the latest office gossip, but he’ll give his best friend a chance before hanging up, turning off the phone, and locking himself in his room with the blinds closed until he feels a little better.
"You went viral!"
"I did what?"
Jiang Cheng knows what the word means, what he doesn't understand is what catapulted him to fame and how viral he went, after all, Nie Huaisang tends to exaggerate. Immediately, Jiang Cheng begins to run through his actions in the last twenty-four hours, trying to find something that he said or did while drunk that could be doing the rounds on Twitter and Weibo. He can't think of anything.
“Your story! The one with the kid from high school?” he says, noticing Jiang Cheng's confused silence.
“What? I don't even remember what I wrote, how did it go viral?” Jiang Cheng stands up to leave the bathroom and heads to the kitchen, where he plans to make himself a strong coffee. “Shit, it’s too early for this. How viral did it go?”
"Why don't you check it out for yourself?" Nie Huaisang asks and his tone tells Jiang Cheng that he's smiling. “But don't hang up! Put me on speaker so I can hear your reaction.”
"You're having a lot of fun with this situation," Jiang Cheng complains. “Okay, give me a moment to make coffee before I tackle this shit. And don't worry, I'm not hanging up. You're on speaker,” Jiang Cheng announces after placing his phone on the counter and turning on the coffeemaker.
"Open Twitter while the coffee is brewing," says Nie Huaisang.
"Okay, just because I want to end this once and for all," Jiang Cheng says, leaning against the counter as the smell of coffee begins to fill the kitchen. He can't believe his friend is making such a fuss over a couple of tweets that are probably unintelligible or misspelled because he was beyond wasted when he wrote them. Jiang Cheng expects to find around fifty likes and a couple of retweets; nothing could prepare him for the numbers that he’s about to see, nor reading his testimony—clear and nostalgic—about something that happened half a life ago.
The first tweet has 52.6K retweets, 13.3k quote retweets, and 157.9k likes and the numbers are increasing right in front of his eyes. At first, Jiang Cheng cannot believe that he wrote that, but his profile picture, in which he’s wearing a suit while looking to the side, and his username tell him that it’s true.
“Jiang Cheng? Are you still there?” Nie Huaisang asks, breaking his concentration.
“What? Yes,” Jiang Cheng says absentmindedly, putting the phone aside, although that doesn't make the images that his words have brought to his mind fade away. He hasn’t thought about that incident—as he likes to call it to mask the fact that it was downright homophobic—in a long time, having buried it deep in his memory out of shame. Yet, to his surprise, his drunken mind has recalled it with ease, so much so that every time he blinks he goes back to being a fifteen-year-old behind the school watching the lonely figure of Wen Qing in the distance.
"Don’t forget your coffee," Nie Huaisang says to break the awkward silence.
"Right," Jiang Cheng says, moving once more. His impeccable kitchen brings him back to reality, reminding him that fifteen years have passed since the day he broke that boy's heart, long enough that he, too, might have faded from that young man's memory. “Ok, I went viral, so what? I guess I'll have to silence the tweet and get on with my life. It's not like I've suddenly become the president or something,” he says, sipping his coffee at the kitchen table.
“Check the trending topics.”
“Huaisang, you're having too much fun with this. Can't you tell me what's so funny instead of having me figure it out on my own?”
"I think you'll understand it better if you see it, believe me."
Jiang Cheng sighs. The notification bell shows him a 99+ and the same happens with the private messages tab, but he ignores them in favor of touching the magnifying glass that asks him to explore the trends of the moment. And there, at the top, is one trend that almost makes him choke on his coffee.
"Find Huan-ge?"
“Yes. They want to find the love of your life.”
"He's not the love of my life!" Jiang Cheng says, opening the trend to look at what people are saying. Most are memes, but there are also fancams, people quoting his tweet with all kinds of comments and the same phrase, repeated over and over again, asking the world to find Huan-ge so they can finally meet after so many years and continue their story. “He was... I hurt him, Huaisang, I was so stupid, unable to accept myself while he had already done so. I'm sure he doesn't want anything to do with me, why should we meet again?”
"So you can apologize?" Nie Huaisang says shyly. “You sound pretty sorry for what happened. Maybe if you do, you can leave it all behind once and for all.”
"It's already in the past," Jiang Cheng says stubbornly. “There’s nothing I can do to make it right anymore.”
Silence.
"Okay," Nie Huaisang says finally. He knows Jiang Cheng too well to tell that his friend won’t budge, no matter what arguments he gives him, and decides to drop the issue. “I just wanted to warn you so it doesn't catch you off guard. I bet your friends and family will ask you about the subject, this way you’ll be prepared to face it with your excellent tact.”
"Huaisang," Jiang Cheng says in a warning tone.
"I’ll let you sleep. Bye!”
Nie Huaisang hangs up before Jiang Cheng can say anything else, leaving him alone with his coffee and the endless sound of his Twitter notifications. Thanks to the coffee, he’s no longer sleepy, so instead of going to his room, Jiang Cheng reopens the thread that he doesn’t remember writing and continues reading. There must be something on it that has given Nie Huaisang the impression that he feels regretful enough to mobilize the internet community to find a man whose last name he can barely remember.
Jiang Cheng continues reading from where he left off, feeling sorry for the person who wrote that confession.
By the time Jiang Cheng finishes reading, his eyes are brimming with tears, which soon fall on his phone screen. He now understands why the story has resonated with so many people and why Nie Huaisang suggested that he tries to meet Huan-ge, but Jiang Cheng doesn't think it's a good idea. Why open such an old wound? If he were Huan-ge, he wouldn't want to do it, not to make a boy who hurt him feel better.
Jiang Cheng types a new tweet:
Jiang Cheng sends the tweet before he can regret it, then turns off his cell phone and heads to his room to bury himself under the blankets, protecting himself from the sunlight, although he can’t escape from his memories of Huan-ge in the dark.
One year his senior, Lan Xichen was the embodiment of the model student that Jiang Cheng's parents wanted him to be: Lan Xichen was not only the student council president, he also had the best grades of his generation and was a member of all kinds of committees, clubs, and associations that would look great on his resume for college. As if that weren't enough, Lan Xichen also ranked first on the list of the hottest boys in high school, coveted not only for his jade face, though semi-hidden by thick black-rimmed glasses, but also for his affable character.
Jiang Cheng hadn't been able to help but notice Lan Xichen when he entered his high school freshman year, although he explained such interest as that of a rookie admiring his accomplished senior. But now, fifteen years later, Jiang Cheng can stop lying to himself. He liked Lan Xichen a lot. It drove Jiang Cheng crazy to see Lan Xichen come out of the school pool dripping water and stroking his hair, imposing as a sea god, and the dichotomy of his serious face one moment and smiling the next. If someone noticed how much time he spent watching the swimming club train, no one ever said anything.
Lan Xichen had not only been his sexual awakening, but also his first love and if Jiang Cheng hadn't been a coward, perhaps he would also have been his first kiss and his first sexual experience. But in the end, the long years of hearing homophobic propaganda had been stronger than his feelings, causing Jiang Cheng to reject his first chance to be happy.
In the darkness of his blankets, warm as a hug and halfway between sleep and consciousness, Jiang Cheng imagines what might have been if he hadn't broken Lan Xichen's heart.
Of course, they would have been teased by some of their peers and Jiang Cheng's mother would have turned as livid as she did years later when her son finally admitted his sexuality, but there would have been a lot of good things too. Jiang Cheng closes his eyes to imagine being in his old school, strolling through the gardens holding Lan Xichen's hand or sitting next to him on the grass with his head on his shoulder, enjoying his company. It would eventually have ended, like everything else (especially considering that Lan Xichen was older and had to attend college), but Jiang Cheng knows it would still have been worth it.
His regrets, however, are fifteen years late and there’s nothing he can do to mitigate them. There’s no use crying over spilled milk, Jiang Cheng tells the fifteen-year-old who made Lan Xichen cry that fateful day and also to the thirty-year-old man who wrote a pathetic confession on Twitter about it.
There are no ifs in life.
Jiang Cheng abandons himself to the darkness of sleep.
.
Jiang Cheng only has to endure the endless sound of new notifications that day and part of the next, until finally, his life returns to normal when people move on to something else—to a celebrity scandal or a funny meme—letting his story with Huan-ge get lost in the void. By the time he shows up at work on Monday, Jiang Cheng is once again a boring office worker with nothing special to tell and with no hope that his life will change. He doesn't feel like talking about Wen Xu with their breakup being so recent.
Jiang Cheng considers himself too old to believe in magic, miracles, and nonsense like that, but that’s precisely the force behind the notification that appears on his phone screen that morning. At first, Jiang Cheng doesn’t pay attention to his cell phone, as he’s busy working and he’s become used to receiving sporadic notifications about his tweet getting retweeted, but when he finally unlocks it to make sure that it’s not an emergency, he spits out his coffee onto his computer screen.
“Jiang Cheng? Are you okay?” Nie Huaisang asks, peering through a gap in the door. “Jiang Cheng!” The man yells, running to his side when he notices that Jiang Cheng is choking on coffee.
“Shit!” Jiang Cheng says between violent coughs. His eyes fill with tears and he can vaguely feel Nie Huaisang hitting his back until the coughing fit almost completely ceases. “Shit,” he repeats, seeing the mess on his desk. The screen is dripping with dark droplets, the keyboard is wet, and he will have to reprint all the reports he had on his side. But while all of that should take precedence, as soon as Jiang Cheng remembers the cause of his fit, he forgets about his work completely to go into a second panic attack.
"May I know what's wrong with you?" Nie Huaisang asks, looking at Jiang Cheng's desk in disgust before taking a seat across from him. “Did Wen Xu text you or something? Does he want to get back with you? Because that’s a terrible idea.”
“No! It's not about Wen Xu, it's... You better see it yourself,” Jiang Cheng says, looking around until he locates his phone lying on the ground face down. Luckily, it’s not broken, so after cleaning it a bit with the sleeve of his now useless shirt, Jiang Cheng hands it to Nie Huaisang.
Jiang Cheng is sure that everyone in the office can hear Nie Huaisang's surprised cry after reading Lan Xichen's message.
“Wait, is it really him? Your Huan-ge ?”
"He's not mine, but I think he is the one," Jiang Cheng says, starting to clean his desk just to have something to do.
"Oh my, he's very handsome," Nie Huaisang says, opening Lan Xichen’s profile picture and zooming in as much as possible. “He’s a lawyer? He doesn't tweet a lot or have a lot of followers, but he seems like a nice guy. Although considering your standards, anything would be better than Wen Xu.”
“Huaisang.”
“What? I'm right and you know it. Anyway, when are you going to meet with him?” Nie Huaisang asks, handing Jiang Cheng his phone back even though he would love to keep browsing Lan Xichen's profile. Maybe see if he has an Instagram account linked to his Twitter and if so, investigate it thoroughly to prevent his friend from falling into a new toxic relationship. Jiang Cheng may take everything Nie Huaisang says as a joke, but God knows he’s very serious: Jiang Cheng has self-destructive tendencies when it comes to his partners.
"I'm not going to see him," Jiang Cheng says, but contradicts himself when he stares at Lan Xichen’s profile. He hadn’t had time to do it until that moment due to his surprise and his little accident with the coffee, so he gets dazzled by those features so familiar and different at the same time. Lan Xichen no longer wears glasses (or at least he didn't for the photo) and his face is more angular now, although that doesn't diminish the kindness his eyes and smile convey.
“Why not?”
“What for? We have nothing to talk about.”
Jiang Cheng's tone indicates to Nie Huaisang that it’s his last word on the matter, making his friend shrug. Nie Huaisang doesn't think that's true, but he doesn't plan to fight his friend this early on a Monday morning. Furthermore, there are other methods to outwit Jiang Cheng's stubbornness, although Nie Huaisang will have to act secretly to avoid the wrath of his friend, and the sooner the better.
"Ok, if you don't need anything else, I'm going," Nie Huaisang says, standing up. “I'll see you at lunch.”
Jiang Cheng doesn't even have time to say goodbye when Nie Huaisang has already left his office. However, because he's already used to his best friend's eccentricities, Jiang Cheng doesn't pay much attention to his outburst and goes about his day, first leaving his office as pristine as it was when he arrived and then working on his pending work, absorbed in them until the very moment in which his cell phone begins to ring non-stop.
“What the hell?” Jiang Cheng asks in a low voice, reluctantly looking away from his computer screen. His tweet has continued to receive likes and retweets throughout the weekend, although very scarcely, but now his phone is once again a vibrating machine that doesn’t stop chirping. “Please, not again,” he complains when he notices Twitter notifications appearing one after another on his screen.
astrep liked a reply to your tweet.
kiser liked a reply to your tweet.
nigou retweeted a reply to your tweet.
Jiang Cheng had received similar notifications in his first tweet, but never in that capacity. In the end, out of curiosity to know which answer is causing such a stir, Jiang Cheng opens his notifications only to see that Lan Xichen's answer (if it’s him) is gathering the same numbers as his.
Those are some of the many comments with which users quote retweet Lan Xichen’s response, who must be suffering the same hell that Jiang Cheng went through the weekend at that precise moment. Worst of all, having responded directly, Jiang Cheng is also getting the notifications despite his determination to forget about the matter.
"Jiang Cheng!" Nie Huaisang says, entering his friend's office without knocking on the door.
"I know," Jiang Cheng says with an angry face, picking up the phone that keeps ringing.
Nie Huaisang can't help but smile.
“So? When are you going to meet him then?”
.
Jiang Cheng is saved from answering Nie Huaisang's question thanks to the timely arrival of their boss, who had ignored Nie Huaisang’s behavior the first time but has no patience left for slackers. The man breaks into Jiang Cheng's office to yell at them to stop wasting time, urging Nie Huaisang to return to his post and allowing Jiang Cheng to be alone with his thoughts at least until the workday is over.
Jiang Cheng manages to run out of the office as soon as his clock strikes six and doesn't stop running until he's several blocks away. Then his cell phone lights up with a new notification, this time from one of his contacts. Jiang Cheng can't help but smile when he reads Nie Huaisang's message:
Jiang Cheng doesn't bother answering. Instead, he heads out to do his evening shopping, hit the gym, and after finishing all his household chores, he sits down to a random movie on Netflix just like any other day. However, even though Jiang Cheng is trying to focus on the screen, he keeps looking at his phone, which keeps showing him the little Twitter bird every few seconds. Nie Huaisang exaggerates when he says that Jiang Cheng should meet with Lan Xichen, but he’s right; Jiang Cheng should talk to him, if only to apologize for getting him into such a mess.
But not now, I'm busy, Jiang Cheng tells himself. I must not sound too enthusiastic, he thinks as the movie ends and he goes from room to room putting everything in order, although it’s not necessary, since he’s always been very clean and tidy. I'm going to read a bit to calm down and then I’ll do it. This is his next excuse, even though he can't focus and has to re-read the same sentence over and over again before managing to make sense of it. I’ll brush my teeth and put on my pajamas and I’ll do it.
By the time Jiang Cheng is finally ready to send a message to Lan Xichen, it’s too late. The alarm clock on his bedside table shows him that it’s past eleven, an inappropriate time to bother someone with whom he hasn’t had contact in fifteen years. Tomorrow, Jiang Cheng tells himself, aware that as soon as his alarm goes off, he'll be too busy getting ready for work and then working, and he won't have time for it until late afternoon. And that is if he doesn’t get distracted, like that day.
Jiang Cheng stays awake for a long time, staring into the ceiling until he can't take it anymore. He feels that if he doesn’t send a message to Lan Xichen right then he’ll realize that he hasn’t changed in fifteen years and that he’s still the same coward who didn’t even allow Lan Xichen to confess his feelings face to face. So, to prove himself wrong, he sits up, takes his phone, and opens Twitter.
Locating Lan Xichen's response among the thousands under his thread takes a while, but when he does, Jiang Cheng doesn't bother to open his profile but chooses to send him a direct message instead.
Jiang Cheng sends the message without reading it, his heart beating so fast that when he gets back under the blankets it feels like he’s in the middle of an earthquake. Yet knowing that he has finally taken such an important step is so liberating that as soon as his heart calms down, he falls into a deep sleep. Now he can leave everything in the past.
Or so he believes.
.
The next morning, Jiang Cheng has a direct message from Lan Xichen waiting for him in his inbox.
Jiang Cheng panics first thing in the morning and he goes to work in that state.
"You look horrible," Nie Huaisang says by way of greeting when they meet in the company’s elevator. “What happened? Did you fight with Wen Xu again?” he asks, sipping his matcha latte with no compassion in his voice, unlike the first few times it had happened.
“Lan Huan asked me to meet him. He wants us to go for coffee, but I don't know if it's the best idea,” Jiang Cheng says hastily, happy to get rid of a bit of the anxiety in his chest since he read the message. After all, he's still a coward. “I already opened the message and if I don’t reply, he will think that I left him on read. Which is true, but I don't know what to say. Should I see him?”
“Wait what?” Nie Huaisang says, raising his hands to stop the torrent of words leaving his friend's lips. “Tell me everything more calmly. Are you talking about the response he left to your tweet?”
"No, I sent him a direct message last night and..."
The elevator doors open before Jiang Cheng can continue his explanation, showing them the familiar office entrance hallway, already swarming with employees, all with coffee mugs similar to Nie Huaisang's. Jiang Cheng is immediately silent. He’s never liked mixing his private life with work, or giving rise to gossip among his co-workers (although his best friend seems to be the best informed of them all), so when he exits the elevator he makes a gesture indicating to Nie Huaisang that they will talk about it later.
"Wait, you can't leave me like this!" Nie Huaisang says too loudly so his voice follows Jiang Cheng to the corridor and draws the attention of everyone present in the process.
The first to approach is Wei Ying, who wraps an arm around Jiang Cheng's shoulders, stopping him before he can lock himself into his office. They don’t have a lot of time, soon the boss will realize that they’re slacking instead of working, but he won’t be at ease until he knows the latest gossip.
"I didn't know you were dating," Wei Ying says, dragging Jiang Cheng over to Nie Huaisang.
"We're not," Jiang Cheng says, jerking out of Wei Ying's grip.
"Good, because I would have felt very foolish for showing Xichen-ge your thread otherwise," says Wei Ying.
"Do you follow me on Twitter?" Jiang Cheng asks, raising his voice despite himself.
"Do you know this Huan-ge person?" Nie Huaisang asks in turn.
"He's my brother-in-law and yes, I've been following you on Twitter for years," Wei Ying replies with an amused smile.
"Well, now I need explanations from both of you," Nie Huaisang says, putting his arms on his hips so he’s about to spill his drink on the carpet. “What's going on? I'm not leaving until I know everything.”
“Are you sure?” Jiang Cheng scoffs, raising an eyebrow. He can already hear the heavy footsteps of their boss heading straight for them.
"You will not escape, Jiang Cheng," Nie Huaisang says, pointing at him with his half-finished drink. “You have to tell me what’s happened in the last twelve hours. The same goes for you,” he adds, pointing at Wei Ying. “See you in the company’s cafeteria for lunch, okay?”
Nie Huaisang rushes away to lock himself in his office. He’s very efficient when he puts his mind to it, so Jiang Cheng doesn’t doubt that he will finish all his tasks in time to listen to his (and Wei Ying's) story. Seeing his friend’s determination makes Jiang Cheng smile despite everything, so even though his problem is not yet solved, he feels reassured knowing that he will have someone to talk to when the time comes. The only thing that worries him is what role will Wei Ying play in all this, but he won’t find out until noon.
"See you later then?" Jiang Cheng asks, turning around in his office’s direction.
Wei Ying gives him a peace sign in response and both leave the place, so their boss only finds an empty corridor. Luckily, the man has nothing else to complain about during the morning, allowing them to leave freely once it’s time for lunch.
“Well?” Nie Huaisang says once they are in the dining room line, waiting for their turn to be served their food. His gaze is fixed on Jiang Cheng, who in turn looks at Wei Ying.
"I think Wei Ying should explain himself first."
The man shrugs.
"I saw your thread early Saturday and the name seemed familiar, so I showed it to Lan Zhan... Lan Zhan is my boyfriend, by the way," he says, after noticing Jiang Cheng's confused face. “The character ‘Huan’ seemed familiar to me, and he told me that it was the same character as his older brother’s name, so I showed it to Xichen-ge and he thought it might’ve been about him. That’s all.”
"That is all?" Jiang Cheng complains, feeling his heartbeat speed up again. “He messaged me!”
"Yes, just a tweet," Wei Ying confirms. “I was there when he typed it,” he explains, noticing the suspicion in Nie Huaisang's eyes. “Lan Zhan and I spent the weekend at Xichen-ge’s penthouse. He was very moved when he read the story and said that he wanted to let you know that he didn’t hold any grudge against you for what happened.”
"Lan Xichen has a penthouse?" asks Nie Huaisang.
"Is that what you care about?" Jiang Cheng asks, rolling his eyes.
"I have to make sure he’s a good match for you."
"How funny," Jiang Cheng says.
"What happened next?" Nie Huaisang asks, not giving Jiang Cheng a chance to divert the topic of conversation once more. “You were panicking in the morning and I don't think it was because of that tweet. Did Lan Xichen contact you again?”
Jiang Cheng looks down before answering.
"I texted him last night."
"Oh, how daring, A-Cheng," Nie Huaisang says, elbowing his friend on the ribs. “What did you say? That you still love him? That you haven't stopped thinking about him in all these years? That he’s the love of your life?”
"Don't be ridiculous," Jiang Cheng replies, unable to help but feel as embarrassed as when he was in high school.
His friends had scoffed at the letters he had received back then, glancing at all the girls who approached Jiang Cheng with the slightest excuse, wondering which of them all believed that his eyes were as beautiful as a summer storm, whatever that meant. However, he’s no longer in high school and although Nie Huaisang sounds amused, Jiang Cheng knows that he’s not making fun of him like his supposed friends back then. That makes him decide to do things differently.
"You’d better read it yourself."
Jiang Cheng hands his phone to his friends and turns around to order his meal. Then, once seated at one of the many tables in the company dining room and with trays full of food, Jiang Cheng prepares to hear their verdict.
"Do you want to see him?" Nie Huaisang asks, handing him the phone.
“I don’t know. What for? It’s already in the past.”
"For you maybe," says Wei Ying, who’s been silent until then. He doesn't know Jiang Cheng very well and so he doesn't feel like he has any right to tell him what to do, but his brother-in-law is a completely different case. “I was there when Xichen-ge read your thread and I can say that for him it’s not just something that’s in the past .”
"It could be a good opportunity to close that cycle and leave it all behind," Nie Huaisang says, supporting Wei Ying's argument. “But if you don't feel comfortable with it…”
Jiang Cheng shakes his head. His friends are right. He is, once again, putting his feelings first, just like when he was in high school. Back then he hadn't even allowed Lan Xichen to confess to him face to face, ending the matter without talking to him, and now he’s trying to do it again. Jiang Cheng wants to show himself that he’s changed.
“I will do it.”
“Well said. Everything will be fine, A-Cheng,” Nie Huaisang says, patting him on the back before turning his attention to Wei Ying, thus allowing Jiang Cheng some privacy.
Jiang Cheng opens his conversation with Lan Xichen and after a while, he writes:
It’s a brief message, but at the moment he has nothing else to say. Jiang Cheng prefers to look Lan Xichen in the eye before saying all the words that he’s kept to himself so far—it will be better this way. Calmer after pressing the send button, Jiang Cheng immerses himself in his friends’ conversation, confident that Lan Xichen will take a long time to answer and that he will have enough time to prepare to see him, probably during the weekend.
He’s very wrong.