Work Text:
Blood is pooling from the wound they forced on her frail body. She is morbidly thankful they only killed her and not...
Not
Not desecrated her.
But foolishly, her life truly flashed through the corner of her eyes, drooping in a false... No... True sleep...
She wakes up from the desk of her room, textbooks unfortunately still unfinished as far as she could see.
Her phone was turned on in the last half-hour she got a quick nap from school, waiting for her to turn the next chapter on the super trashy novel her friend recommended. A waste of battery and time, all the girl remembered was the harem drama and courtly intrigue within some sort of state, Zhou or something to that effect.
The outfits were pretty, she'd give it that. But still slop.
“Ma Chunchun!”
The way her speed felt like breaking the sound barrier to change herself into an academically inclined student had to be marveled. As it was, her mom, cleverly hiding her creaking joints with a stern glare, entered.
It was simply a normal afternoon, their kumquat tree at the backyard doing the heavy lifting from preventing most of City A's harsh sunlight from burning them all to a crisp. Heck, the fact that her mom merely looked at her, clearly aware she hadn't finished all her homework, was so... usual.
But.
But they both were startled at the hiccups coming from
From
From her...?
Ma Chunchun only had a second of blankly looking at her mother before she was instantly wrapped in a hug, smelling onions and apples and that cheap floral shampoo+conditioner she kept trying her mom to change because there were better options. It was awkward and weird, but she gave zero... fu... she didn't care.
She just burrowed deeper into her mom's arms, weeping out the dull ache of sadness that firmly settled in her bones. She thinks she got so loud, she feels another set of arms, another presence, this time smelling like wood shavings, burnt chicken and...
Her mom, her dad, all wrapped around her.
They don't pry, but she acknowledges to lay off the phone for a while, maybe because of it she got teary eyed.
Then the rest of her years passed by slowly and surely.
Objectively speaking, this is the most awkward makeup session she ever received from someone that weren't her girlfriends.
Her skills are actually quite good, but she truly believed they had been ____ people before. The redness of her cheeks, at her embarrassment at scheming hard at people who understood still remained on her cheeks, long after the blush placed by the admittedly beautiful older lady.
She glanced at the mirror to avoid sinking further into a spiral of embarrassment.
Then.
Ah.
She... She looks so modern.
She wakes up from a college room, eerily similar to that afternoon oh so long ago. Few more years, and she'd be graduating.
Ma Chunchun waits at the inevitable wave of sadness after the end of each and every nap she's gotten before. But this time, it doesn't sink in.
She feels... lighter? Not to the degree the weight has completely lifted, but it seemed like suddenly, her heart has room to beat, her lungs finally have the space to breath.
It's quite nice actually.
A few years have passed, then Ma Chunchun becomes an office drone, surprisingly still keeping up with friends and family. True, the office is deeply exhausting, but somehow, somehow, she's clinging to a thin thread of a social life.
She doesn't want to risk it. But then she's in the subway going home to her lonely and cold apartment. It has become a frighteningly mundane thing to open her phone and pick the next brainless palace intrigue novel, nothing quite like nobles scheming for the throne hit her fancy. She was actually too invested between the argument with the forgotten Empress and the beloved Noble Consort when a stranger accidentally dropped their paper bag beside her.
Ma Chunchun, deep in her heart, cherishes a romantic way to meet someone who will be her love, her darling, hell maybe her husband if she wanted to push her delusions further with her drunk friends one good Friday night for relaxation. She'll blame the high expectations on the equally trashy American movies her mom finds a way to send to her.
Why had she suddenly thought of first meetings and such? Well, it was because she picked up the deceptively light paper bag and was face to face with the man with the worst eye bags she'd ever seen on a person's face, unhelpfully emphasized by glasses as round as the dark circles. The eye bags took so much of his appearance that she barely noticed the stethoscope placed on his shoulders like some kind of medical shawl, or his very flattering gray collared shirt.
He thanked her profusely, and she'd probably never see him again... If she hadn't gotten a bit sick months later and needed medicine at the dead of night, which he was in front of the counter of the nearest pharmacy to her place.
“Uh... nice to see you again?”, she hoarsely croaked at the befuddled man.
“Same to you, uh... I recommend this one, it's the fastest among the options,” he pointed to the one with a hot red container, a tiny runner raising his thumb at them both.
She nodded her thanks and learned his name when he began prescribing more remedies for her coughs, ending with them sharing their WeChat.
Xiao Tian Cai, her newest contact in her phone.
If she thinks hard enough, she can feel the palpable hollowness within the man just from the way he looks at the pharmacy when she decides, on a whim, to visit him again, and again.
A year and a half passes, and still she visits him (much to the teases of her friends). She looks at his face and sees herself whenever she sees pretty girls wearing ancient robes, flowy fabrics, elaborate styles.
A sharp, almost faint, flinch in herself. Her chest constricts at the beautiful sight.
Somehow, he understands. That was why he couldn't work in the hospital, he mumbles in the late nights she finds herself spending with him, a quick detour from the subway to her place. An aching sadness remarkably different than the grief that comes from losing a life, made all the more stronger always after—
“Taking a nap,” she mused.
He only had to look at her before he covered her hand with his. She turned her hand so that they were clasped together. The life of the city, the sirens, the chatter, the lights, the food, all faded in the sync of their heartbeats. She hoped.
“Ma Chunchun?”
“Hm?”
“Do you...” He stopped as she gently began caressing his thumb, flinching ever so slightly when she reached a sensitive spot.
“Yes.”
“H-Ha?”
She looked at him dead in the eye, heart thundering in her ears.
“I have spent a year and a half in this pharmacy together with you. Surely we deserve to walk through the city as lovers?”, she asked weakly.
She only spoke the last word before she was hugged fiercely and tenderly by the man. It was the loudest answer she would ever get, and her smile threatened to never leave her face ever again.
She doesn't dream about anything again.
She's so busy because every morning she wakes up to a text from him,
every weekday she goes to work with a bit of energy to tackle on the slog of bureaucracy and paperwork,
every evening she gets to spend time with him doing anything,
every weekend sees them both at a museum or a shop or anything for them to be together or for them to catch up with friends or worried familial members,
and every tiny moment, Ma Chunchun keeps herself aware of the fact that she lives, that she has a beloved waiting for her, that the sadness had no audacity to creep into and wilt it.