Work Text:
“Blue is the colour of the sky,” Lu Guang’s teacher says, pointing upwards. His class is currently sitting on the field outside the school, pulling up grass and shredding it into pieces.
“I don’t understand the point of this right now,” he hears a girl whisper to her friend. “They’re literally all just different shades of grey to us. If Zhang-laoshi was to hold up a shade of red and a shade of blue, how are we supposed to know which is which?”
“I guess that’s the point of having this keychain with us at all times,” the friend replies, holding up the colour wheel.
His teacher coughs, glancing pointedly at them. “Girls, remember to save the chatter for after class.”
They blush in response, and though Lu Guang cannot see the pink, he recognizes their cheeks darkening. It’s only natural after years of observing others.
“Anyways,” Zhang-laoshi continues, “red is the colour of love because of its connection to the heart. It represents the affection and compassion someone feels for another person, and how passionate they are for that certain individual.”
Many years later, Lu Guang drops to his knees, tears streaming down his cheeks as he helplessly watches Cheng Xiaoshi bleed out in front of him.
Red, he thinks, after many hours of staring at himself in the mirror with crimson hands, is the colour of blood.
Lu Guang’s first kiss was in the photo studio’s darkroom, kneeling on the cold tiled floor with bloodstained hands. His second kiss comes the same way, the only difference being Cheng Xiaoshi’s raspy voice, struggling to enunciate words. It takes him five cycles to say “I love you.” It takes Lu Guang twenty more to accept that. And even then, he does not act upon those feelings, no matter how deeply he aches for it, for the unknown is too unbearable. For now, he will never tempt the thoughts to change something for once and not have the only time he ever sees colour be while kneeling in the ever-growing pool of blood.
By the fourty-something loop, he finally lets himself breathe for a day, Qiao Ling having begged him to sit down and just rest for a while.
They’re sitting on the couch, with Lu Guang’s hand on her back and she sobs, tears freefalling.
“I don’t understand,” she sniffles, “how could that happen?”
He looks back at her, eyes weary. “I don’t know either, but I promise I will find out.”
At this, she snaps up, fingers digging into his arm. “No, Lu Guang. Please don’t do that! You’ve already cried yourself sick all of last night and you’re constantly working yourself to the bone, even before he died! Just… take a break, ok? We have to mourn Cheng Xiaoshi properly.”
And Lu Guang stares at the floor in response. When was the last time he ever took a break? Every second, every minute he wasn’t doing something, he was sitting on the couch and going over all the ways he could mitigate the chances of a certain event.
A week passes by, washing over the two of them. Lu Guang goes out, does household chores, grocery shopping, and slowly starts to comb through Cheng Xiaoshi’s room. Qiao Ling stays in bed and cries all week.
But despite his seemingly productive use of time, Lu Guang can’t help but feel jealous. Qiao Ling is letting herself process her emotions and move on, but Lu Guang? It’s something he can never accept. Everything is just another distraction to him, used to take his mind off of Cheng Xiaoshi. He knows if it were Qiao Ling who received the power, then she would make good use of it, doing what Cheng Xiaoshi would’ve wanted. But Lu Guang is selfish, so incredibly selfish. He glances at his watch, a birthday gift from Cheng Xiaoshi all those years ago, and back at the picture frames of them on his bed. Then, he raises his hands and claps.
“Look!” Cheng Xiaoshi points eagerly, the excitement evident in his voice. He waves a photo in Lu Guang’s face. “We just got a commission so the client can say something to their soulmate!”
Lu Guang raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean by that?”
“The client is an old lady who wants to say a few last words to her husband. He passed away a few years ago, so she’s asking if we can tell him for her.”
He thinks about it for a few seconds, before shrugging. “Sure. I don’t see why not.”
Cheng Xiaoshi giddily jumps into the air, clicking his heels together in joy. “Yippee! Thank you, Lu Guang!”
He jumps up once more, but slips on the carpet and lands on his ass, screeching. Lu Guang stifles a chuckle as Cheng Xiaoshi looks up at him with a hurt expression.
“You’re so mean, you poopy head! Not even trying to help me, just laughing in my face!”
Suddenly, another voice interrupts them.
“What’s the commotion? Did Cheng Xiaoshi do something stupid and break his foot again?” Qiao Ling asks, hands on her hips.
Cheng Xiaoshi pouts in response. “I just slipped and fell ok? Wasn’t that big of a deal…”
“That’s what you were screaming about? I thought you broke a bone or something!”
Lu Guang has broken a lot of rules, but he will not break this one. He’s too afraid of what might happen if he does, too afraid of all possible changes and of unpredictability. But then he stops himself. Because that’s what life is supposed to be, full of the unknown. And Lu Guang has been diving back for so long he’s forgotten what it feels like to actually experience it. Even the smallest of changes causes him to overthink, racking his mind for a solution and forcing the timeline back into place. It’s hypocritical of him, really, to be willing to change everything but this. Refusing to kiss Cheng Xiaoshi shouldn’t come as unnaturally as it does, with a burning heartache that never goes away. But Lu Guang persists. It doesn’t matter if they’re soulmates right now, because what if, just what if, in the next loop, they’re not?
“Lu Guang,” Cheng Xiaoshi whines, tugging on his sweater sleeve. They’re sitting on the couch, waiting for the right moment to dive.
“Yes, what is it?” he responds, the words already forming at the tip of his tongue like second nature.
“I’m kind of scared.”
“Why?”
“You know why!”
“I don’t, but please do inform me.”
Cheng Xiaoshi huffs, annoyed, but straightens back up with a serious look on his face.
“Well, cause I’ve never seen colour before.”
Lu Guang raises his hand to pat Cheng Xiaoshi’s shoulder. “I haven’t seen it either, so you better tell me what it’s like.”
Cheng Xiaoshi perks up at his words, previous worries forgotten. “Don’t worry! I will!”
Twelve hours later, Cheng Xiaoshi lands back onto the couch beside Lu Guang, his mouth blabbering a thousand words a second and his eyes shining. Lu Guang tries to swallow the dry, sandpaper feeling down his throat, and forces a smile that he doesn’t feel.
“I’m sure you’ll find your soulmate soon, Cheng Xiaoshi.”
“Me too!” Cheng Xiaoshi replies, before his eyes widen. “Wait, I meant like I hope you find your soulmate soon too! Like, you know what I mean?”
Lu Guang’s smile turns real, turns bittersweet. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
Lu Guang forgets and forgets and forgets. Eventually the details of long-gone cycles are erased from his mind, scrubbed clean and blank like a palimpsest. He can’t recall how many loops there have been, nor what Cheng Xiaoshi’s smile looked like in the first one. Are they all the same? Were they ever different? Lu Guang can’t remember anymore. He doesn’t want to.
Liu Xiao smirks over at him, the look in his eyes smug and mocking. “You always could just kiss him before he dies, you know.”
Lu Guang clenches his jaw, glaring back at him. “I won’t. I can’t! Because you never let me!”
At this, Liu Xiao grins a little wider. “And whose fault is it for that?”
Thousands of kilometres away and several loops later, Lu Guang raises his arm, jerks once, twice, before crushing his fingers together into a fist.
No. Lu Guang will never accept it. Not until Cheng Xiaoshi’s death is truly prevented, when he doesn’t die tragically young and full of love. Then Lu Guang will tell Cheng Xiaoshi the words he’s been wanting to say for years.
"I love you too," he whispers as he hugs the still warm body, the colour of red staining his vision.