Work Text:
In the royal house of Xianle had been out on a busy trip, except the two youngest. Xie Lian and his cousin, the terroistic little devil, Qi Rong. Qi Rong had been warned about skipping his classes or he’ll have severe punishment by his father, so as the good little boy he was (lying) he attended his classed but he didn’t understand what was going on. He came back with a slam of the door and the sigh of Xie Lian.
Qi Rong put down his backpack and felt terrible as he grabbed the folder that contained true hell. He pulled the paper out of the packet and stared at it with a pencil in his hand. He looked at the instructions and thought he understood it. But soon the numbers felt they were in twining with each other and they began looking like a different language. Xie Lian walked into the kitchen, and looked at the focused Qi Rong and smiled.
“Hello, Qi Rong. What is it you have there?”
“Nothing!” Qi Rong replied with an annoyed expression as he wrinkled the paper with his excessive erasing.
“Okay, Okay.” Xie Lian has dealt with Qi Rong since he had been a child, he was used to his snappy tone when he was upset. He smiled softly and left him alone as he opened the fridge to grab some oranges as he sat on the living room couch, the kitchen was open and next to the living room so Xie Lian heard Qi Rongs rushed scribbles and counting as he became more and more stressed.
“Would you like some help?” Xie Lian asked calmly, observing Qi Rong’s face go through the colors of the rainbow.
“NO! I am FINE.” Qi Rong shouted slamming his hand on the table as he stared daggers at the inanimate paper that had crumbles and tears from his repeated writing and erasing. Qi Rong decided to angerly email his math teacher; “Dear Mr. Qingqiu, OBVIOUSLY i need some hepl! I havent been in shcool for a while!!!! Please tell me how to do our homeowkr…” He was typing so furiously that he misspelled multiple things and made it as passive aggressive as one could. As he waited for a response he stared down at the paper, his past equations and inequalities on the paper were like ghosts that you could see, one question had asked whether one number was less then another with weird symbols that reminded him of pac man, he never remembered things like these. He looked at the numbers and decided to circle to biggest one instead of putting the symbol to make himself less confused. But he felt it was wrong and erased again, and again, and again….and…again.
Xie Lian saw show much Qi Rong was struggling but didn’t want to enflict himself with Qi Rongs wrath. But he soon saw something he thought would never be possible in even 800 years, he saw Qi Rongs shoulders began to tremble and sharp breaths expelled from his mouth as his eyes began to water. His crying wasn’t pretty, but crying was crying. Qi Rong crying is a sight to be seen, he saw the tears begin to fall onto the paper and wooden table. Xie lian sat up and walked over to him.
“Qi…Rong..?” Xie Lian was hesitant. He never knew how to comfort crying people, and for a person he didn’t quite care for was something foreign. He placed his hand on Qi Rong’s shoulder only to be shrugged off. He pulled up a chair next to him and sat in it, looking at his messy work and sighing. He picked up the pencil and noted things on the paper. “Don’t cry… here I’ll help you”
“No, fuck off!”
“Don’t act like a baby now, let me help. I don’t want to see my baby cousin crying…” Xie Lian tried his best to stop Qi Rongs tears. “Here I’ll explain the work and help you, okay?”
“Fine…” Qi Rong said begrudgingly as he wiped his tears and sniffled, while taming his breath. His shuddering shoulders drooped as he listened to his cousin explain the math, it seemed so much simpler now, what those odd simbols were, why you subtract this number over the other, but not why Susan had 56 fucking apples or 78 oranges.
For the next hour Xie Lian calmly explained to Qi Rong how the math problems worked, it wasn’t as confused or scrambled in Qi Rongs vision now. They weren’t another unknown language, and he could do some by himself. The two’s parents finally came home and saw Xie Lian and Qi Rong sitting at the kitchen together. This was new, and never before seen, they smiled and laughed to themselves. Qi Rong finally understood math.
-end