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Why does Lu Guang’s memory contain the scene of Cheng Xiaoshi’s death?
Qiao Ling balls her hands into fists as she sits in the Time Photo Studio, anxiously awaiting the arrival of Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang. She’d spent the day preparing for their discharge celebration party, flitting here and there setting up decorations and running to the store for snacks and drinks. After the intense heartache and trauma of the past month, she took it upon herself to lift their spirits and celebrate their return.
The velvet of her skirt bunches up between her fingers as she wills away the image that has burned itself into her memory. Cheng Xiaoshi bleeding out, calling out for Lu Guang with his dying breath, a shaky plea in his voice as life drains out of him. That horrid image leaves her hollow and aching, and Qiao Ling suddenly feels the emptiness of the photo studio around her.
She checks her watch. Officer Xiao said that they’d be here any minute. Her gaze drifts to the cake and to the three Triple Star Warriors figures embedded in the chocolate ganache. A small smile finds its way onto her face. The studio had become achingly quiet in her friends’ absence, and she is more than excited for them to bring the shop back to life. The Triple Star Warriors of the Time Photo Studio would be reunited once again. She will no longer have to politely turn away customers looking to use their time-leaping skills. This studio will no longer be so empty. And maybe, just maybe, having the three of them altogether will banish that cursed image from her mind.
The events of that day are a tumultuous blur for Qiao Ling. The tunnels. The gunshots. Desperately trying to save Li Tianxi, cradling the girl in her bloodstained hands, woeful elation as Li Tianxi spoke to her, voice wobbly and soft, before suddenly being flooded with memories so unbearable Qiao Ling couldn’t sleep soundly for days. She bites back the bitter onslaught but one image remains, as always– Cheng Xiaoshi, dying.
The doorbell hums to life, cutting off her train of thought.
Maybe I’m just overthinking it.
Qiao Ling immediately gets up and ushers them in, overjoyed to see them healed and out of the hospital. The two of them are bantering, as per usual, before Cheng Xiaoshi spots the party setup and immediately bolts for the living room.
“Officer Xiao, would you like to have some cake?” Qiao Ling gives the police officer a polite smile.
He gives a slight shake of the head while he rolls his shoulders back. “While that sounds nice, I really should be heading back to the hospital. I promised Wang Juan I’d get her some soup from the restaurant down the street.”
“Ah, I see. Give her our well wishes!” Qiao Ling bids him goodbye and rejoins the celebration. She sets out three cans of cola and settles into the comfortable rhythm that the three of them have established over the years– Cheng Xiaoshi talking, Qiao Ling adding onto his thoughts, and Lu Guang providing an occasional quip here and there. The conversation comes naturally to them, as if Lu Guang and Cheng Xiaoshi had only been gone for the afternoon instead of for the past month. The three of them launch into a debate over which cake flavors deserve merit when Cheng Xiaoshi glances over to his left.
“Hey! Lu Guang, why aren’t you eating?”
Lu Guang pauses for a beat too long before looking down at his plate. “Oh,” he says, examining the chip he took exactly three nibbles out of. “I’m not very hungry.”
Cheng Xiaoshi gasps. “What are you talking about? The kind landlady got us all this food to celebrate! You barely ate anything when we were discharged earlier today. What, don’t tell me you liked the bland hospital food!”
Qiao Ling sighs. “Cheng Xiaoshi, be nice. Not everyone is a human vacuum like you!”
Lu Guang pokes his fork into his slice of cake, watching the ganache drip down onto the plate. “The hospital food wasn’t as tasteless as you’re making it to seem,” he offers.
Something seems off about him. He’s quiet, but not in the Lu Guang-typical manner of quiet. An idea springs into Qiao Ling’s mind. “You know what I remembered just now? We have to take a picture to celebrate our special reunion! I finally dug out the tripod from storage. Lu Guang, can you grab it? It’s in the darkroom.”
He gets up a beat too quickly and gives her a nod before leaving the room. She watches him with keen eyes while she takes another bite of cake.
“Qiao Ling,” Cheng Xiaoshi leans over and gives her a grin, “what do you say? Wanna get hotpot for dinner tonight?”
She rolls her eyes. “You’re already thinking about dinner? It’ll come out of your paycheck if you want hotpot.”
“What? How cruel!”
“I’m just kidding. I have hotpot ingredients already in the fridge!”
He gasps. “Qiao Ling, did you read my mind? Hmm…maybe you developed powers of your own?” Cheng Xiaoshi inspects her face. “Maybe you developed mind-reading powers recently…”
Qiao Ling waves him off. “Powers of my own? How silly!” she laughs, trying not to remember the onslaught of memories from Li Tianxi’s death.
Lu Guang reenters holding the tripod, and Qiao Ling positions them from behind the camera. “Alright, I set the timer to seven seconds…be sure to smile!” She darts back to the couch and flops down next to Cheng Xiaoshi. “3…2…1..!”
The flash goes off, and she zips back to retrieve her phone. “Perfect! The Time Photo Studio is whole once again!” she announces, clapping her hands.
Cheng Xiaoshi stretches, wincing just a little at his mostly-healed wound. “Thank you for the festivities! I think I deserve to go and play some games for being such a good patient.”
“You depleted the hospital of their applesauce supply and every nurse hated taking your vitals,” Lu Guang retorts, his voice dry.
Cheng Xiaoshi clutches his chest. “How rude!” he gasps. “ Those nurses loved me. I’m going upstairs to get my win streak back.” He stands up with a hmph! and marches to his room.
Qiao Ling lets out a fond sigh as he bounds up the stairs, glad that the studio’s already beginning to feel more alive. “Are you done, Lu Guang? I’m going to start putting things away.”
“I’m finished. Here.” He straightens up and immediately begins to clear the table. They work in a comfortable silence, with Qiao Ling putting the leftover cake back in the fridge and Lu Guang tossing out empty soda cans.
“Thank you for helping, Lu Guang,” Qiao Ling grins, wiping away the crumbs left on the table. “I’m glad the two of you are back to help me around the studio! Your presence is nice, too, of course.”
If she squints, Qiao Ling can see the faintest hint of a smile on Lu Guang’s face. “Glad to be back,” he says.
“Having both of you back here in one piece is a miracle! I was really worried about you two, you know. Ah, Cheng Xiaoshi…he always seems to be getting into trouble.”
Lu Guang shakes his head. “A terrible habit of his.”
“Tell me about it! But he means well, right? You know, when we were little, I was the one who had to stand up for him when he was bullied by his classmates.” A giggle manages to escape her lips as she reminisces about their childhood. “As soon as I stood in front of them and started shouting, they ran away like scared little chickens!” Qiao Ling reenacts the scene, stretching an arm out in front of her. “Leave him alone! Unless you want me to beat you up!” She glances over at Lu Guang with a twinkle in her eye. “Intimidating, huh?”
“Very.”
With a sigh, Qiao Ling drops her arms and lets the facade wither away. “I was scared, you know,” she mumbles. “I couldn’t protect him this time. I’m glad you jumped in. Thank you.”
“No need.” He gives her another faint smile before checking his watch. It’s been a habit of his for as long as Qiao Ling has known him, but there’s an uneasiness in his eyes as his gaze flits across the screen.
Something in Qiao Ling’s gut tells her to push further. “Lu Guang,” she says, louder this time. “Can I ask you about something?”
A strange look clouds over his face. He nods.
“I didn’t tell you this before since I didn’t want to stress you out while you were recovering,” she starts, her voice dropping to just above a whisper. She takes a spare chip clip and fidgets with it. “When Li Tianxi passed, I…saw something.”
Lu Guang steps out of the kitchen momentarily to clean up the plates left at the table. “What did you see?”
Qiao Ling clamps down the clip on her index finger. “I think I saw her memories…and the memories of everyone Li Tianxi possessed.”
His brows furrow slightly. “It must be her power,” Lu Guang reasons. “I have reason to believe that powers can be transferred after death if the two people are touching at the time of death.”
“Reason…to…believe…?” Qiao Ling can’t help but mumble. Lu Guang shifts, her words falling on deaf (or, intentionally ignorant) ears. She wants to push it more, ask him if she has Xixi’s powers now, ask him how he knows this, but she’s cut off.
“Was there anything of note in those memories?” he asks.
With a wince, Qiao Ling rifles through the images she’s tried so hard to forget. “I…well…When you were kidnapped, we had no way to find you. But with Xixi’s help… she was able to possess you and give us some critical information about where they were keeping you.”
Lu Guang’s eyes widen. He drops the plate he was holding, crumbs spilling out onto the tile. “She possessed me?”
Qiao Ling gives him a solemn nod.
His face falls. “And…you…”
“I didn’t see everything,” she butts in, attempting to mitigate the damage. “I didn’t see everything, but–”
Lu Guang inhales sharply. “Qiao Ling…” he mumbles, taking a step back.
Qiao Ling fixes her gaze on him, attempting to be stern and authoritative, but that horrific image breaks down her resolve. “Lu Guang…what… was that…? What does it mean?” She can’t bear to be specific, lest she speak it into existence.
His expression darkens, and he looks away. The choked silence between them steals every bit of oxygen from the room, and each second feels like a millennia as Qiao Ling waits, internally begging for him to speak.
“What exactly did you see?” he asks, still avoiding eye contact.
She exhales. “It was Cheng Xiaoshi. He was lying on the ground, and he was bleeding. You had blood all over your hands and…he was calling out to you. He was dying.”
Lu Guang flinches at her words.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know what to do when it happened, I wasn’t sure what was happening, but I haven’t been able to get that thought of my mind, and–”
He shifts, and immediately she falls silent. Qiao Ling watches with bated breath as he turns away, his movements rigid. Silently he crouches down to pick up the dropped plate, sweeping the spilled crumbs into his palm like the secrets he tried so desperately to keep locked away.
“Were those really your memories?” Qiao Ling can’t help but ask, silently pleading for forgiveness at the knife she’s twisting into his heart. “How can that be possible?”
“It’s…not.” Lu Guang’s voice is uncertain. “It can’t be.”
From the way his voice wavers, Qiao Ling wonders if he’s trying to convince himself of his words more so than her.
“Does it have to do with your abilities?” she asks carefully. Lu Guang is a man of many secrets. The specifics of his power are still a mystery to her, and the way uncertainty flickers in his eyes makes her think it’s a mystery he’s not willing to give up so easily.
After a moment, he relents. “In a roundabout way,” he says as he stands up.
She pushes her luck. “What do you mean?”
Lu Guang’s eyes briefly shift to the room upstairs before settling back on Qiao Ling, a silent agreement shared in their expression. Don’t tell him.
Keeping secrets from Cheng Xiaoshi never sat right in Qiao Ling’s mind. Little white lies here and there were fair game, but anything to this degree is almost unthinkable. The last time she hid something this important was when they were little: Auntie Shao’s plea of never letting her son go to Yingdu. The guilt tore her up inside so badly that she swore to never keep secrets from him again. But the heavy weight of Lu Guang’s silent plea makes her clamp her mouth shut. She nods.
“For certain important nodes, I am able to see further into the future than 12 hours. I still don’t know the specifics as to why.”
She blinks. “W-What? How can that be? How far into the future? Did you see anything else?”
Lu Guang shakes his head. “I don’t understand how it works,” he whispers. “There seems to be little rhyme or reason.
How is that possible? Every single power that Qiao Ling knows of has some sort of restriction. Whether it be duration or physical touch, twelve hours or a clap of a hand, every ability has boundaries that cannot be bargained with. What was it about Lu Guang’s power that made him different? Her eyes narrow as she studies the man in front of her. Lu Guang, the overthinker, the most meticulous person she’s ever met, is at a loss for an explanation.
His words are so outlandish Qiao Ling can’t help but be skeptical. Qiao Ling is so anxious that she wants to believe him anyways.
“So…what I saw in your memories didn’t actually happen?”
“That’s right.”
Cheng Xiaoshi never died. The “memory” never truly happened.
Right?
A question sits at the tip of her tongue, one that she can’t help but ask. “Will it?”
He draws a shuddery breath and finally raises his gaze to meet Qiao Ling’s. “I will do everything I can to prevent it, I promise.”
There’s a knowing look in his eyes that Qiao Ling can’t quite place, one that tells her that’s all the information he’s willing to give at the moment. No matter how much she wants to pry the locks of his heart open to expose the bare truth, she can’t. For her sake, for Lu Guang’s, and, most importantly, Cheng Xiaoshi’s.
Lu Guang crosses his arms over his chest and steals another glance at his watch. He has always been by Cheng Xiaoshi’s side from the moment he entered the picture. Lu Guang laid his life on the line for him that fateful night in the tunnels. Qiao Ling has been Cheng Xiaoshi’s guardian angel all her life, but if Lu Guang is speaking the truth, there are horrors that she does not know about, danger she cannot predict. She holds Lu Guang’s gaze, her eyes gleaming in determination.
“So will I,” she vows.