Chapter Text
君埋泉下泥销骨
我寄人间雪满头。
-Bai Juyi
For his friend, Yuan Zhen
There was a photo tucked in the back of Cheng Xiaoshi’s bookshelf, between the pages of a collection of short stories, that only Qiao Ling knew about. Sometimes she wondered if Cheng Xiaoshi even remembered it was there; sometimes, when he wasn’t looking, she would sneak the book from its place and check the pages for an interruption. It remain wedged in between the pages of a story about a dying mother traveling into the future to have more time with her child. By the looks of it, Cheng Xiaoshi never read to the end.
If she was feeling particularly emotional, she let herself look down at the photo. The face of her little brother met her, only three years old. Round-cheeked, shocks of his black hair floating like thick fog over his scalp, a toothy grin as he was bundled in the arms of a woman that Qiao Ling was beginning to no longer recognize, even though she shared Cheng Xiaoshi’s eyes.
Qiao Ling’s stomach fell. She closed the book quickly as if she stumbled upon a diary page, which in a way she had. But she held the book close to her chest, just as she had caught Cheng Xiaoshi do countless times before. On the nights when her parents finally convinced him to come home with them–just for one night, Cheng Xiaoshi insisted each time–he brought neither blanket nor stuffed animal, but this photo to hug to his chest when he couldn’t sleep.
She was little, too, and once complained to her parents how Cheng Xiaoshi insisted on a night light, but it was her room and she didn’t want one. Her mother had bent down to her eye level, stern and sturdy, and put her hands on Qiao Ling’s cheeks.
Lingling, she said. Cheng Xiaoshi doesn’t ask for your computer games. He doesn’t ask for your bed. He doesn’t even ask for your stuffed animals. He just wants somewhere safe to sleep tonight. Won’t you give him that?
Qiao Ling’s head hung low with all of her few years. It had never occurred to her that anywhere she laid her head might not be safe. After every scary movie or nightmare, even if she shivered in her blankets, she knew her parents were just down the hall, and they didn’t lock their door. For the first month since his parents’ disappearance, Cheng Xiaoshi refused to leave his home in case they might come back. She wondered, when summer storms shook the windows or when the darkness grew thick on the other side of his bedroom door, if the photo of him with his mother was the only thing he had to protect himself.
That night, her father tucked them in and plugged a night light underneath Qiao Ling’s desk. Cheng Xiaoshi drew the blankets over his head and didn’t make a sound, but as Qiao Ling lay like a starfish in her sheets, daydreaming about being a wuxia heroine as she was wont to do at nighttime, she heard him sniffling.
Qiao Ling turned towards him. With the help of the night light, she could see his silhouette shaking. She sat up, her little brow pinching with worry.
“Cheng Xiaoshi,” she said, “are you cold?”
Cheng Xiaoshi buried his face into the pillow.
“No,” he mumbled. “Leave me alone.”
Qiao Ling pursed her lips. Her parents had told her not to bother Cheng Xiaoshi with questions about his parents. Better to not remind him of what he already keenly knew, and let him live normally, as if it was normal that his own mother and father were not tucking him into bed or that he came home from school to an empty room. And Qiao Ling thought that she had done a particularly good job at that, considering the squabbles she picked with him about computer time and how much she humored him by playing with his action figures. But maybe she hadn’t, if Cheng Xiaoshi still cried at night.
She slipped out of her bed and tip-toed to his cot, taking her stuffed bunny with her which she claimed to have outgrown but always kept within arm’s reach. She prodded him on the back.
“I said leave me alone,” Cheng Xiaoshi said, muffled.
“Can you sleep with me?” Qiao Ling whispered.
A beat. Cheng Xiaoshi peeked out from under the sheets. His eyes were swollen, and his cheeks were red after he had furiously scrubbed them dry with his blanket. He looked up at Qiao Ling and her plush rabbit with embarrassment and need.
“Why?” Cheng Xiaoshi asked.
“Because,” Qiao Ling said. “My friend told me a scary story and now I can’t sleep.”
Cheng Xiaoshi stared at her, taking his time to decide whether or not he would believe her. By the way that he quietly slipped out of the cot and followed her to her bed without making fun of her once, Qiao Ling assumed he didn’t. Although his little body full of sharp angles that got on her side of the bed, she thought that even if she was telling the truth she wouldn’t have minded.
“Do you want a stuffed animal?” Qiao Ling whispered.
Cheng Xiaoshi shook his head. It was then that Qiao Ling noticed that his thin arms were wrapped protectively around his chest, pressing a photo frame to his heart. Suddenly, she was too sad to say anything else.
He tucked his head close to hers. He was a little too close for Qiao Ling’s comfort, who never had to share her space with any little cousin or sibling, but she did not shy away from Cheng Xiaoshi. She put her arm around him and closed her eyes. He had stopped shaking, after all. If he was going to sleep, she would rather it be next to her, so that she knew he was warm.
-
Qiao Ling remembered Cheng Xiaoshi’s death against her will.
She would be brushing her teeth, eating out with friends, going on a run, and she would stumble into that dread with a sudden fear of gravity. It made her breath catch in the middle of her throat like a fly to flypaper. His bloody clothes, his ashen face, his faded eyes–they set off in her mind and like a tender wound made her want to curl away. Like when someone would say something so vulnerable and sad that she would remember it years later, images of his death crept up on her and made her weak in the stomach.
Qiao Ling stopped short in the middle of her morning jog, instantly winded. Her lungs heaved for air as she placed her hands on her head to calm her numbing heartbeat.
Why was she remembering it as if it happened?
Why was Lu Guang remembering it as if it happened?
She didn’t want to remember, but she needed to know. She didn’t want to understand, but she needed assurance. If she was overthinking it, she wanted someone to tell her that. But she couldn’t bring herself to tell the boys–naturally. If it was all in her head, the last thing she wanted was to scare them, after all the excitement they had already been through.
If it was true–
She didn’t want to think about it.
She didn’t want to think about it.
Cheng Xiaoshi was her little brother.
She didn’t want to think about it.
She needed to see the boys. That would ground her. She needed to see Cheng Xiaoshi, probably making a mess in the kitchen, and Lu Guang, likely making a fire, and she would laugh with them and scold them and she would feel so silly for being so afraid.
So she took a shortcut from her usual route to the photo shop, making up an excuse in her head about looking for checking the property for any mail addressed to her, and entered the shop unannounced.
“Anyone here?” she called out.
The shop was quiet. Qiao Ling stamped down on the thoughts as soon as she felt them bubble up. Qiao Ling tightened her grip on the cup, raising her voice so that she could hear her worry all the clearer.
“Cheng Xiaoshi?” she said. “Lu Guang?”
A muffled in here coming from the living quarters loosened her lungs to let a sigh of relief through. She stepped out of her shoes and into her favorite indoor slippers as she headed up the flight of stairs to the boys’ apartment. She pushed open the door, a little more forcefully than she had intended.
“Unannounced inspection?” Cheng Xiaoshi said. “You…you really are a harsh landlady!”
His teasing words were muffled under his bedsheets, under which he curled up in his bunk bed. He was still in his sleep shirt, shivering feebly underneath the several silk comforters. His pale face peeked out from the pillow, eyes half-lidded and a soupy smile shivering into a grimace.
Qiao Ling’s stomach swooped.
“What’s the matter with you?” she said.
Cheng Xiaoshi’s face faltered. He tried to pull the comforter over his head. Lu Guang, who was standing over his mattress, grabbed the blanket and tugged it back down.
“He’s been like this all night,” Lu Guang said.
His face was stony and disarming. He towered stiffly over Cheng Xiaoshi, fists frozen at his sides. The shadows that often pressed themselves under his eyes were stormy and thick.
Qiao Ling hurried to Cheng Xiaoshi’s side and pressed a hand on his forehead. Cheng Xiaoshi closed his eyes, pained groan buzzing behind his lips.
“You’re warm,” Qiao Ling said, trying to keep her voice and nerves level. “Why are you using so many blankets? Are you really that cold?”
“Mmm,” Cheng Xiaoshi mumbled.
Qiao Ling sighed heavily, trying to leave room for air in her progressively tightening chest.
“That’s not all,” Lu Guang said. “He’s in pain.”
“Stop it,” Cheng Xiaoshi whispered. “You’ll just worry her.”
“What do you mean?” Qiao Ling demanded.
Lu Guang turned away sharply, raising his phone to his ear.
“Lu Guang–” Cheng Xiaoshi began.
“Shut up,” Lu Guang said sharply. “I’m calling an ambulance.”
Cheng Xiaoshi pulled a face of extreme distaste.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said.
“Fever.” Lu Guang held up his fingers to Cheng Xiaoshi’s frowning face as he counted down. “Chills. Pain. There’s no color left in your face–”
“I’ll sleep it off if you would just shut up and let me.”
“These are sepsis symptoms,” Lu Guang said. “You need to go to the emergency room.”
Cheng Xiaoshi flinched. Qiao Ling stepped in between the boys, forcing herself into the worry that had been dogging her footsteps all day.
“Sepsis?” she said. “He was recovering well from the surgery–”
“Then he didn’t take proper care of the wound,” Lu Guang said. His expression was strained, as if his face would rip in half on its own. “Did you, Cheng Xiaoshi?”
Cheng Xiaoshi stared up at Lu Guang with a mixture of irritation and hurt.
“I did,” he said sharply. “I’m not a kid. I’m cleaning it and caring for it just like they told me how to. I know how to take care of myself.”
“You don’t,” Lu Guang snapped.
Qiao Ling shuddered. She couldn’t help but think of Lu Guang in the subway tunnels, the one who screamed like a wounded animal when Cheng Xiaoshi had been shot. The one who would kill with his bare hands if he could, and he tried. There was a rip in Lu Guang’s voice that never healed over since that night, and it was tearing wider now.
“I’ll go to the doctors,” Cheng Xiaoshi said coldly. He tried to push himself into a sitting position, slouched underneath the weight of his comforter. His face was pallid and pained. “But don’t call the ambulance just because you don’t have any faith in me.”
“How are you going to make it there in this state?” Lu Guang demanded. “And what if there’s a wait? Do you know how long it takes for a doctor to see you when you don’t have an appointment? You should have gone to the emergency room last night, but you’re so stubborn–”
“Lu Guang!” Cheng Xiaoshi sank back into the pillow and pressed his hands against his eyes, his teeth clenched. “I swear, if you don’t leave me alone–”
Whatever threat he had in mind never made it to the surface. Cheng Xiaoshi’s hands drooped miserably from his face, which looked nothing short of sick and miserable. Lu Guang’s face faltered to let a smaller and more frightened expression come through. He moved closer to the bedside, but Qiao Ling held up her hand. She met Lu Guang’s weary eyes–a sharp fear cut through her chest.
What do you know?
Even worse, what have you already seen?
“If Cheng Xiaoshi is awake enough to argue, he doesn’t need an ambulance,” she said. “I can call a cab and take him to the doctors. It doesn’t have to be sepsis.”
Lu Guang’s jaw tightened. A hurtful distrust sharpened in his eyes, but even though she was in its way she knew it wasn’t aimed at her. Strangely, she did not think it was aiming for Cheng Xiaoshi, either. As if Lu Guang was stepping into a mine field with no guide, and every move he might make to the right or to the left could detonate.
“I’m in favor of that,” Cheng Xiaoshi said, raising his swaying hand.
Lu Guang closed his eyes, a canyon creasing between his brow. He did not protest, however, so Qiao Ling took it as a victory. She made the first move between them by invading Cheng Xiaoshi’s side of the closet and fetching a pair of joggers and his hooded sweatshirt for him to wear to the doctor’s. Cheng Xiaoshi dragged himself into a sitting position, pausing briefly to press his palm against his cheek to steady himself. Lu Guang watched.
“I’ll close the shop,” he said.
“And lose us business?” Cheng Xiaoshi said. He swam into the joggers that Qiao Ling tossed to him, his movements muddled and slow. “I’ll be fine. It’s just a stupid cold with the weather changing.”
“You don’t–”
“Do you really believe that I can’t take care of myself?” Cheng Xiaoshi demanded.
Lu Guang clenched his teeth for a millisecond too long. Cheng Xiaoshi’s shoulders hunched, embarrassed and offended. He pushed himself off of the bunk bed, a little too quickly for anyone’s taste.
“Thank you, Qiao Ling,” he said in muted tones. “I’m ready to go.”
Qiao Ling shifted uncomfortably in her place as Cheng Xiaoshi rummaged through the desk for an extra face mask and hair tie. She felt innately like she could have done something to have ended the conversation better, even though she knew she had barely been a part of it. She glanced nervously at Lu Guang for some sign of reproach, but he wouldn’t look at her. He wouldn’t look at either of them.
She called for a cab and poured hot water in a travel mug for Cheng Xiaoshi to drink on the way to the doctors. Cheng Xiaoshi trundled here and there in the kitchen as they waited for the water to boil, needlessly wiping down the rice cooker and trailing after Qiao Ling like a bemused duckling. That was her first indication that he really was feeling miserable; on any milder circumstance, he delighted in hamming it up and wouldn’t have spent a minute vertical.
“The DiDi car is around the corner,” Qiao Ling said as she checked her phone. “Let’s wait outside.”
Cheng Xiaoshi nodded wordlessly. He strapped on his face mask and followed her out the door. Just as she was closing the door behind them, Lu Guang finally emerged from the top of the stairs. His mouth moved, something confessional and pleading forming between his lips, but the car had just pulled up to the front of the store, so she turned away.
Cheng Xiaoshi rested his head on top of Qiao Ling’s during the drive. He was warm and weighty, like a thick blanket of familiarity, and he didn’t say much. His unhappiness emanated from his fevered head.
There was only a brief wait at the doctors, as the two of them sat in the back of the room while the doctor took care of the two patients ahead of them. One was getting their prescription for both western and Chinese medicine to address their migraines, the other having an appointment for their ailing mother. As they listlessly overheard the conversations between doctor and patient, Qiao Ling pressed her shoulder against Cheng Xiaoshi’s, who was still tense with self-consciousness.
“Don’t be angry at Lu Guang,” she said. She kept her voice low as to not bother the other appointments. “He’s just anxious after everything that’s happened.”
Cheng Xiaoshi breathed in deeply, defeated by her attunement to his mood.
“I get that,” he said. “But I didn’t forget to clean my wound. I’m not stupid.”
“Of course not,” Qiao Ling said earnestly. “We know that.”
“Lu Guang doesn’t feel that way.”
“That’s not your fault. And it isn’t his, either.”
Cheng Xiaoshi dipped his head. He wrapped his arms tightly across his chest as he sank lower in his seat, until his head was almost level with Qiao Ling’s.
“He worries too much,” he mumbled.
Qiao Ling thought of the way her stomach knotted earlier, when she walked into what seemed like an empty photo shop.
“Have some sympathy,” she said, a little more harshly than she intended. “Or did you forget that you were shot?”
“And he got–” Cheng Xiaoshi stopped himself just as the guilt drilled instinctively into Qiao Ling’s gut. He must have seen the look on her face because his eyes widened and he held up his hands worryingly. “Never mind. Forget I said anything.”
Qiao Ling couldn’t, but she didn’t know how to change the subject. No one blamed her for Lu Guang’s stabbing except for her own hands, which could still feel the tightness of his drying blood.
“And he got stabbed,” she finished. “So you can imagine how I’m feeling after all this.”
Cheng Xiaoshi sighed. He let his hands fall tiredly onto his lap.
“Sorry, Qiao Ling,” he said.
Qiao Ling pressed her lips together. It wasn’t his fault. And yet–
His head against hers had been warm and heavy, like it had been in Lu Guang’s memory, when he cradled Cheng Xiaoshi in his arms.
Her hands shook.
“Oh, no,” Cheng Xiaoshi said helplessly. “Ling jie, I really am sorry.”
“It’s not you,” Qiao Ling said, but her voice shook. She gripped her hands into fists. They couldn’t hold anyone when they were fists. “It’s not your fault.”
She cleared her throat to chip away at the lump forming in the middle of it. She couldn’t think about her little brother dead. So she wouldn’t.
“I’m sorry,” Cheng Xiaoshi said.
She opened her mouth to tell him to shut up, but she looked up to see a pensive, mournful expression in Cheng Xiaoshi’s face before he looked down, lost in his own thoughts.
The doctor scribbled a prescription for the current patient on a pad of paper, rattling off instructions about taking the pill with a meal every morning. Qiao Ling resisted the urge to put her hand around Cheng Xiaoshi’s wrist and squeezing it until it hurt them both.
“I think,” Cheng Xiaoshi said, “I’m burdening Lu Guang.”
“Now you’re being stupid,” Qiao Ling said.
“I’m serious,” Cheng Xiaoshi said. His voice snagged on a stray emotion. “I don’t know how to help him.”
Qiao Ling’s blood ran cold as he continued.
“When I went back in time into his photo,” Cheng Xiaoshi said. “I got all of his memories, and thoughts, and everything. I couldn’t think about it, didn’t have time to really know what any of them are, but–he had all these thoughts. Thoughts about me…”
“Dying?” Qiao Ling whispered.
Cheng Xiaoshi turned to her, perplexed and with trepidation. Qiao Ling dug her fingernails into her lap.
“What kind of lucky guess is that?” he asked.
“Go on,” she said, terrified.
Cheng Xiaoshi raised an eyebrow, but he acquiesced.
“He must have worried like crazy when I went down to the precinct,” he said. “I mean–he was worried enough to come up with a backup plan. And I get it. But–it just felt so vivid. As if he had really thought it happened. I felt how terrified he was.” His voice shrank. “I don’t want to make him feel that way ever again.”
He closed his eyes, his brow pinching slightly as a fresh current of sickness washed over his senses. He didn’t see the way that Qiao Ling paled, or the way her eyes widened and her stomach turned with a sick that she had been running away from.
Whatever hope she had that everything had been her imagination was banished. That fear, which had for the past several weeks lingered at her doorstep like an unwelcomed guest, had now broken in and destroyed the hinges. Something was wrong, and she didn’t understand why. Something was wrong, and Cheng Xiaoshi was in danger.
She opened her mouth, her tongue dry and sticky with dehydrated dread. Should she tell Cheng Xiaoshi what she had seen as well? Would it frighten him, would she only serve to worry him?
Would it protect him, if he knew?
“Young man, young lady, you’re next.”
Qiao Ling swallowed hard as the present forced itself upon her, just as the previous patient rose from his seat and ambled out of the doctor’s office. Heart still racing with the terrifying almost, she took Cheng Xiaoshi by the elbow and helped him off the chair. Even when the two of them settled in front of the doctor’s desk, while Cheng Xiaoshi mumbled his symptoms, she could not bring herself to let go.
-
Lu Guang only noticed that he had been crouching on the floor, hands buried in his hair, teeth cracking against each other, when his knees began to hurt.
He was wheezing for air, but nothing was wrong with his lungs. He could feel strands of his hair plucking from his scalp under his grip, but once he let go nothing would look amiss. His face was screwed and hidden in his knees but he knew that a flight of stairs and a closed door stood between him and the front of the shop, so as soon as anyone would walk in he would have a moment to stand up, straighten himself out, and appear like nothing was wrong.
Because he didn’t have any other choice.
Slowly, he let go of his hair and let himself sit back on the floor, his knees aching as soon as they relinquished his bodyweight. Exhaustion crackled in his brain like static, and for a moment no other thought had any room to enter. No more anxiety, no more paranoia, no more constant dread that time, fate, and unchangeable nodes were catching up to him. He was just tired, and he was beginning to think he would never be anything else.
I don’t know what to do.
The vulnerable, fearful thought made his chest constrict. He felt weak, even pathetic, slumped on the ground like a ragdoll that someone grew bored of. He felt, against his wishes and will, like a child.
I don’t know what to do.
He dragged his head to turn and look towards the bunk bed, with Cheng Xiaoshi’s mussed blankets. Despite his tiredness, Lu Guang’s head pounded with puncturing accuracy, as if sharp pain was drilling an escape hole through a prison wall. It made his entire being feel sick, and no matter how many times he tried to take in a deep breath and count to seven, trust in Qiao Ling and risk to trust in Cheng Xiaoshi, he knew that the only thing that would settle his stomach was Cheng Xiaoshi walking through the front door, alive.
Slowly, he got onto his feet. A better part of him wanted to curl up on the ground, but he wouldn’t let himself. Everything was better now. Cheng Xiaoshi was alive. He had survived the gunshot wound, he had survived Li Tianchen’s sickening game, he had survived everything. He was still alive, which was everything that Lu Guang ever wanted, and Lu Guang was never going to stop being afraid of when all of that might change.
He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, counting to the correct number of seconds before letting it go. Anxiety stretched with each breath like poor stitching, but he was still in control of himself, and that was good enough.
Until his phone buzzed in his back pocket, and the sheer pressure of not knowing what came next made his hand fly for it and open WeChat before he could even read the message’s preview.
QIAO LING: Getting tests done, but doctors are confident it’s not sepsis. Probably that nasty illness that’s going around this season. Should be back in an hour.
Followed by another message–
CHENG XIAOSHI: Sorry for snapping at you earlier, and making you worry.
Lu Guang’s throat tightened. He tried to fight down the wave of emotion that he could see approaching him at alarming speed, as he always did, but he was alone now, with no one to discover the truth, and so he let out a small whimper.
It wasn’t Cheng Xiaoshi’s fault. None of this was. He was allowed to get sick and cranky, the bastard.
But he wasn’t safe, and it wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t fair that Cheng Xiaoshi had died. That after everything that Cheng Xiaoshi had gone through, everything he lost and suffered, that after every good and kind thing he ever did for others, he had died afraid and in pain.
Lu Guang’s thumbs hovered over the phone screen to reply, but all assurances and apologies jammed in his head, too many to count and too few words to fully say them. I’m sorry, he wanted to say in return. I’m sorry for everything.
Instead, he responded: Don’t apologize. I should have been more patient.
He worried if he ever will be.
All this time, he had pictured Cheng Xiaoshi’s safety as a promised land that he could guide and guard him to reach, like Sun Wukong journeying with Tang Sanzang to the west. Was there such a place for them, when Cheng Xiaoshi would be truly and irreversibly safe?
“Boss, greet the door!”
The door chime shook Lu Guang out of his stasis. He stowed his phone back into his jean pockets and adjusted his face so that he betrayed no tense emotion. Cheng Xiaoshi had enough to deal with, besides a looming danger that only Lu Guang knew. Lu Guang couldn’t burden him with anything more.
He left the bedroom and headed down the stairs, expecting to see Qiao Ling with their friend in tow, when he stopped halfway in surprise.
“Oh, good,” said the young man. “I was a little worried you might have been closed.”
In retrospect, Lu Guang should not have been surprised. The photo shop was still open, after all, and an hour had not yet passed. But the young man who stood at the doorway did not seem like any of the other clients that Time Photo Studio served. For starters, he reeked of money. It coated him in thick, impenetrable swathes of the black that brimmed his head in the form of a wide hat, and the long jacket he wore despite the mild temperatures. His smile was well-practiced underneath his designer glasses–evenly polite, suggesting approachability without overpromising it.
“How can I help you?” Lu Guang asked.
The young man didn’t answer until Lu Guang made it down to the foot of the stairs, but he didn’t take his gaze away from him.
“I just wanted to develop some photos,” he said. “I’ve been traveling abroad, so I’ve got plenty to print.”
“Ah.”
Despite being a partner in the Time Photo Studio, everything related to the actual handling of film was entirely Cheng Xiaoshi’s wheelhouse. Lu Guang had picked up knowledge here and there, but he was better off balancing checkbooks than being entrusted with a customer’s holiday photos. Lu Guang absentmindedly straightened his shirt and posture for some semblance of professionalism, although he still felt frayed.
“It may take a little longer for us to develop them,” Lu Guang said. “My partner is sick.”
“I’m in no rush,” said the client. He placed a unmarked, yellow envelope onto the counter, which bulged softly with film. “I’m still a little old fashioned, so I don’t mind a wait.”
Lu Guang pursed his lips. He moved around to the other side of the counter to fill out a customer form for the stranger. Swimming through his anxiety to stay afloat came quickly to him, albeit not naturally. He muffled the low hum of worry in his stomach as he scribbled the date and order number on the form, moving through autopilot.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“You can put it under A Xiao,” said the client. He smiled until his eyes formed generous crescents when Lu Guang hesitated. “Truly, I don’t mind.”
“Xiao, as in…?” Lu Guang echoed.
“Like the bird,” the client–A Xiao–said.
Lu Guang watched him for a beat before relenting to write the lonely character onto the customer form. A Xiao laid a folded wad of RMB next to the envelope as payment instead of taking out his phone. Lu Guang had gotten so used to most of their clients paying with WeChat that he hadn’t even unlocked the money box yet.
“We can mail the finished photos to you in two to three weeks,” Lu Guang said. “If you give us a mailing address.”
“No need,” A Xiao said. “I think I’ll come by in person to pick them up. It does me well, to have a walk in this side of the city.”
Lu Guang’s pen hovered over the paper. He forced himself to look up at A Xiao’s face, his left hand silently searching underneath the counter for something–anything–just in case. But A Xiao’s eyes were dark as anyone else’s, albeit distant and often wandering. His smile creased in the wrong fold.
“I’ll need a phone number,” Lu Guang said in a chilled voice. “To call you when they’re ready.”
A Xiao hummed.
“I’ll come on Thursday,” he said.
“My partner is sick,” Lu Guang retorted. “It might take him some time before he can work.”
“Understood,” A Xiao said. “Although, developing photos is only half of your services here, isn’t it?”
Lu Guang’s fingers twitched.
“Depends on what services you’re seeking,” he said cagily.
“I’ll be a little more direct, in the interest of time,” said A Xiao. “So please do not take offense if it turns out I’m wrong.”
He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. For a half second, Lu Guang could have sworn that his eyes flashed violet. His heart leapt to his throat, but the light was gone as soon as it came.
“The internet claimed a sorceress,” A Xiao said. “Although I wouldn’t say you fit the conventional description of one.”
“It’s just an exaggeration,” Lu Guang said. He prowled around the topic, his nerves crouching and ready to pounce. “What are you asking for?”
“I’m asking,” said A Xiao, “for an opportunity to set things right in the timeline. And I don’t think you disagree.”
Lu Guang’s frown deepened. He instinctively took a step back, with nothing but a drying pen in his hand.
“I don’t know what you’re talking–”
“Wouldn’t you like,” A Xiao said, “for your efforts to save your partner to not be in vain?”
Lu Guang’s ears suddenly hollowed out. All sound and balance was replaced with a deafening ringing, blood pumping, his own jagged, faulty breaths hitching against the sides of his skull.
“Relax, my friend,” A Xiao said. “You and I want the same thing.”
“Who the hell are you?” Lu Guang hissed.
A Xiao flicked his wrist; between his fingers was a black, minimalist business card. There was only a simplified graphic of an owl printed against the backdrop, and a cell phone number. He placed it on top of his envelope of film.
“I’m just someone like you,” A Xiao said. “But unlike you, I don’t see before. I see ahead.” He gave his business card a gentle pat. “Sleep on it. I’ll see you on the twenty-ninth.”
He turned away. Lu Guang tailed after him, ready to bolt the door shut behind him as soon as he left. He couldn’t explain to himself why. But before they could reach the door, A Xiao spun towards him once more.
“You wouldn’t happen to have any black sesame porridge, do you?” he asked.
Lu Guang stopped dead in his tracks. However way he thought the next three seconds were going to go, he was sorely off the mark.
“What?” he demanded.
“Just thought I would ask,” A Xiao said. “Until the twenty-ninth.”
He touched the brim of his hat before exiting the store. Lu Guang stared incredulously at his retreating back as A Xiao looked both ways before crossing the street and walking away, lips pressed into a jaunty, distracting whistle as he did. Lu Guang was left in the empty store once more, with only a packet of film and a roll of money for which he had not counted change.
As soon as A Xiao was out of sight, Lu Guang dove into the envelope of film. The winding, sleek strips were loosely coiled inside like a drowsy snake. Lu Guang pulled them out of the bag and held it up to the light. The images were unclear, nothing but the shape of shadows, but Lu Guang could make out cityscape and scenery smudged onto the film. As far as he could tell, they were truly travel photos and nothing more.
He let his hand drop down as he groaned inwardly and rested his forehead against his wrists. He couldn’t afford to be this on edge at every moment and movement, but as much as his mind scolded him for it, his racing heart and shaking nerves overruled him. After all, it had been a hard month.
It had been a hard–everything.
He dug his fingernails into his scalp, took in a deep breath, and stood up straight again. There was enough to think about, other than a disarming client. The least he could do was handle customer service.
His phone buzzed. He pulled it out and opened the message from Qiao Ling. As he read it, his stomach flipped.
QIAO LING: Have we any instant black sesame porridge? Cheng Xiaoshi says he would like some.
-
Liu Xiao placed a small carton of black sesame soy milk on the table before Li Tianchen. He had already inserted the straw.
Li Tianchen didn’t look at it. He stayed rooted on the sofa–some sleek and leather import from Italy or some other place that he could never imagine no matter how many photos of it he saw or stories of it he heard. He didn’t have the appetite for nostalgia right now.
Liu Xiao slung himself back into the nearby loveseat, sucking on his own carton of soymilk. They sat in the apartment that Liu Xiao kept on the edge of downtown when he couldn’t stand being around his family, which was a majority of the time. It was modestly sized, but luxurious in its smooth, marbled flooring and wide windows that let the light in. Li Tianchen belonged inside of this place as much as a rat would, so he sat as frozen as one.
“Nice shop,” Liu Xiao said blithely.
Li Tianchen snorted, but said nothing. He stared at the Vitasoy carton, trying to ignore the condescension of such a childish drink, trying not to think of Li Tianxi.
“As you had said,” Liu Xiao said, “he really is a mess.”
“Naturally,” Li Tianchen said. “He’s trapped in a net of his own past.”
Liu Xiao tilted his head in agreement.
“Who isn’t?” he said.
Li Tianchen lifted his face. Liu Xiao had one arm draped over the top of the sofa, the other swilling his soymilk like it was something expensive. After all of these years, despite having traded his boyish scrapes for silk, his childhood friend–if that was the term for it–still carried around that unaffected air, as if he was floating weightless above the earth. Burdened by nothing.
What a perfected mask.
“I don’t understand,” Li Tianchen said.
Liu Xiao faced him openly, silently inviting the question.
“The other one is more powerful,” he said. “He can actually go back and change the past. This one–all he does is see it. If you wanted to get anything done–”
“I wouldn’t discount seeing,” said Liu Xiao. “I’m less interested in changing the past. I need someone who is willing to tame the future.”
He shifted his glasses. His eyes, in the trick of the light, flashed violet. It was almost enough to distract Li Tianchen from the grimace that ghosted Liu Xiao’s face.
“What did you see?” Li Tianchen asked.
He knew that his friend saw things that Li Tianchen couldn’t understand, although the same could be said for the reverse. The future barged into Liu Xiao’s vision unbidden, until reality was at times incomprehensible.
“A goddamn headache,” Liu Xiao said flatly.
He reached out his hand and let it hover in midair. At first, Li Tianchen thought it was for nothing–maybe to catch a speck of floating dust, if any could be found in such a pristine apartment.
“One promising thing,” Liu Xiao said, “is that I see Lu Guang joining us.”
Li Tianchen gritted his teeth. He wanted nothing to do with Lu Guang. If it weren’t for Lu Guang and his immovable principle, he wouldn’t have influenced Cheng Xiaoshi to remain idle in the past. Li Tianchen knew enough about Cheng Xiaoshi to know that if left to his own devices, he would have gotten Li Tianchen and Xixi away from that bloody, doomed apartment, and that bloody, doomed man—past and future be damned.
If it were up to Cheng Xiaoshi alone, they could have been saved.
So no, Li Tianchen did not want to count Lu Guang.
“He won’t be of any help to you,” Li Tianchen said hollowly. “I told you. He only cares about one thing.”
“And you?” countered Liu Xiao gently. “How many things do you care about now?”
Li Tianchen had nothing with which he could argue back. Liu Xiao leaned back in his seat and let his head fall back.
“That’s all a person needs, anyway,” Liu Xiao said. “Just one reason to wish they were God.”