Chapter Text
Normally, Lu Guang didn’t let his act slip up. He was very meticulous about pretending like this was his first time living through the timeline, and the notebook where he had carefully logged every single event that had occurred in his previous dives was his most guarded item. So imagine his surprise when one afternoon, he entered the room he shared with Cheng Xiaoshi, only to find his notebook scattered on the floor, with Cheng Xiaoshi’s back to the door as he was leaning over the pages.
Lu Guang froze. Fuck, this wasn’t meant to happen, this is so bad and it has never happened before and it will most likely affect the timeline terribly and- “Cheng Xiaoshi,” he spoke up instinctively before he could think it through.
Cheng Xiaoshi jumped, turning his head towards Lu Guang, clearly panicked at Lu Guang discovering him. He slammed the notebook shut and started sweeping the pages that had fallen out of it into a pile as if to pretend he hadn’t been reading them. “O-oh, Lu Guang! Your notebook, it er, fell from the shelf and made a huge mess so I wanted to pick it up…”
Lu Guang waved him off hastily, making his way over to where Cheng Xiaoshi was sitting on the ground and trying to ignore his heart beating so fast that he felt like it would jump out of his chest at any moment. “Leave it and go downstairs,” he said coldly. Cheng Xiaoshi made no effort to move, but looked up at Lu Guang instead, his expression full of questions Lu Guang really did not want to have to answer, but he doubted Cheng Xiaoshi would let him off without an explanation. Lu Guang sighed. “We’ll talk later, okay? Just… give me a moment.”
Hesitant, Cheng Xiaoshi finally stood up and lingered in his spot for a moment longer until Lu Guang got close enough to him to gently shove him in the door’s direction. “Lu Guang, if this is what I think–“
“Cheng Xiaoshi,” Lu Guang glared at him. “Give me a moment. Please.”
Seeing how upset Lu Guang looked, Cheng Xiaoshi nodded and finally left the room, closing the door behind him quitely. As soon as he did, Lu Guang sank to the floor, clutching his head.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck–
And that was that. This timeline was as good as done, because there was no way he was going to lie his way out of this situation. He felt his eyes starting to burn as he began collecting the pages and papers that had fallen out of his notebook. It had originally seemed like a good idea to log everything that was going to happen in the timeline to keep himself on track, but after tens of attempts, he barely even looked in it anymore. During his first dive, the notebook was one of the first changes he’d made in the timeline, and he’d kept it up in all following attempts in order not to disrupt the timeline further. But he hadn’t considered it to be a change of much importance, and it truly hadn’t been one, until now. If he hadn’t been on the brink of tears, he would have had to laugh at the irony of his obsession with control being the very thing that made this timeline teeter on the edge of chaos.
What was he even going to say to Cheng Xiaoshi? ‘Sorry, you died because of me, and I can’t live without you, so I broke all of my own rules to go back in time and try to reverse your quite possibly irreversible death, the only consolation so far being able to see you again?’ Yeah, something like that was guaranteed to make Cheng Xiaoshi freak out.
In one of the previous timelines, he had tried telling Cheng Xiaoshi what was going to happen, but that just made Cheng Xiaoshi try to defy his fate by doing the exact opposite of what should have happened – to no avail. And so, Lu Guang had never tried again, keeping his biggest secret to himself.
Until now. Realistically, Cheng Xiaoshi would be able to figure it out even if Lu Guang kept him in the dark about most of it. He might not be able to piece together why something happened, but he would get the general gist of it. So, maybe it was time for Lu Guang to try to be honest with him again.
Hopefully Cheng Xiaoshi didn’t get to the pages about the day of his death, Lu Guang thought, closing the notebook and placing it back on the shelf it had fallen from. At least the fact that none of the pages that had fallen out of the notebook contained mentions of Cheng Xiaoshi’s death was reassuring. He couldn’t fathom what could’ve possibly made it fall, but he decided not to dwell on it too much, as he had bigger issues to deal with right now. Maybe the light summer breeze slipping in through the open window knocked it over.
Unfortunately, regardless of when in the timeline he messed up, Lu Guang was always forced to live it out until the moment of Cheng Xiaoshi’s death, as he wouldn’t be able to enter another timeline otherwise. The only way was forward, and right now, that meant an unavoidable conversation with Cheng Xiaoshi which could make all of Lu Guang’s efforts in this cycle pointless. He took a deep breath, the hand on the doorknob shaking slightly.
I can still fix this.
Once downstairs, Lu Guang found Cheng Xiaoshi in the sunroom in the back of their studio – sat on the right side of the couch, he pocketed his phone when he noticed Lu Guang walking in, letting him know that he had his undivided attention.
Lu Guang sat down on his left, shoulders turned slightly towards Cheng Xiaoshi.
“I guess you have questions.”
Cheng Xiaoshi nodded, his gaze piercing Lu Guang with a whole set of question marks. “You bet. Unless you’ve just gained the ability to see the future as well, I’m a little confused how an entire log of future events ended up in our room.”
“Well… no. I can still only see what happened in the past. However, I’m from the future, so the events recorded in the notebook are my past.” And present. And future.
“Huh?” Cheng Xiaoshi echoed, his brows furrowed in confusion. “No, but… you’re my Lu Guang. Like, not an alternate version, no?”
“Technically, yes. I am a future version of him–of me, and I dived back into a past moment on my timeline. Naturally, you shouldn’t have found out because you knowing about it can make the timeline divert from its original path. The notebook was mainly meant to be a guide for me, to make sure I’m doing everything in accordance with when events occurred in my past.”
Cheng Xiaoshi cupped his forehead with his hands, trying to wrap his head around it. “So, you're from the future, and you… went back in time to do what exactly? Wait, but you said you can’t dive back in time yourself, so how–“
How do you tell your best friend, whom you’re tragically in love with, that the reason you were here right now is because he died in your arms? And that you abandoned your own principles and travelled back in time to try and change the timeline for him? Lu Guang did not know. But he was going to try to break the news as gently as possible.
“I shouldn’t be telling you, because once again, it can affect the timeline.” A glance at Cheng Xiaoshi, however, revealed that that was not a satisfactory answer. Lu Guang shook his head dejectedly. “One thing at a time. Do you remember Li Tianxi?”
“Well, yeah. But she could only see what was happening, just like you, I don’t think I follow…“
“What happened to her power when she died?”
“It was passed onto Qiao Ling, but what has it got to do with-“ Cheng Xiaoshi paused mid-sentence, the gears in his head taking a few more seconds to click, and then his eyes widened with absolute terror as he realized and stared at Lu Guang in panic.
“Lu Guang, tell me it’s not what I’m thinking.”
Unfortunately for the both of them, if Lu Guang’s hints were any helpful, it was exactly what Cheng Xiaoshi was thinking. Lu Guang stared at the ground.
“Am I going… to die?” Cheng Xiaoshi sobbed, and his cries could shatter Lu Guang’s heart into pieces all over again if witnessing Cheng Xiaoshi's death over and over again had kept his heart intact. He didn’t look up but gently reached for Cheng Xiaoshi’s hand to hold it in his.
“Not if I can prevent it,” he said quietly, giving Cheng Xiaoshi's hand a light squeeze. “That’s the reason I went back in time.”
Cheng Xiaoshi looked at him, teary-eyed, as he tore his hand away from Lu Guang's grasp. “What? You… you can’t do that! ‘Past or future, you let them be’, remember? Those are the rules you set for my dives, regardless of what happened. When I thought that you’d…” Cheng Xiaoshi’s voice cracked, remembering the time when Lu Guang narrowly escaped the grasp of Death himself, “out of respect for you, for your rules, I didn’t dive, no matter how much I wanted to. Don’t you think that, maybe, you should follow your own rules as well?!”
Too late, Lu Guang thought. “I’ve got it under control.“
“Then why is your diary stacked with entries?!” Cheng Xiaoshi looked pissed now. “This isn’t even your first attempt at saving my life, is it?”
Lu Guang felt his mouth go dry. It was most likely a mere educated guess on Cheng Xiaoshi’s side, but Lu Guang hadn’t really planned to discover the details of his previous attempts with him.
“Guess I’m right, since you’re not correcting me,” Cheng Xiaoshi continued. “How many times has it been?”
“Cheng Xiaoshi, I don’t think that matters…”
“How many?!”
“I… I lost count after fifteen.” That was a horrible thing to admit. Okay, maybe he didn’t have it fully under control, but he still made sense of most of the timeline, so it couldn’t possibly be that bad.
“F-fifteen?!” Cheng Xiaoshi cried, burying his hands in his hair in a feeble attempt to soothe himself. “Over fifteen dives, you’re insane! My life is not worth nearly as much!”
“Don’t say that!” That was the first time Lu Guang raised his voice during the entire conversation. “You mean so much to me, and to Qiao Ling, and to people around you. I can’t just give up on you like that. And besides… All the timelines turned out the same. No big change to the fabric of time was done.” Although the little changes he’d caused were making his life increasingly more difficult with every passing dive, he chose to omit that part as it definitely wouldn’t help his argument.
Cheng Xiaoshi’s eyes softened, a tear rolling down his cheek. He sat silent for a while, before speaking up again. “Well, if you’ve tried fifteen times, and weren’t succesful once, don’t you think that it might be impossible to save me? Maybe… it would be better if you stopped playing God and let it go.”
“I can’t. Not anymore, anyway. Me diving back in time to save you is now an immutable point in my timeline that has to follow if you die. If I’m right, then the only way to break the cycle and not cause a major paradox is to prevent your death. If you don’t die, then I won’t have to go back, and the two fixed points in the timeline not occuring should hopefully cancel each other out.” Just like multiplying two negative numbers makes a positive. At least that was Lu Guang’s theory.
Cheng Xiaoshi shook his head in disbelief. “But what if you’re wrong?”
“Have I ever been wrong?”
“Seems like you’ve been wrong at least fifteen times about preventing my death,” Cheng Xiaoshi sighed, taking a deep breath before getting up. “I need to get some air. Or I’m gonna break something.” Just before he made the first step towards the door, he felt a slight tug at the sleeve of his jacket, prompting him to look back down at Lu Guang, who looked slightly panicked.
“Hey. Just don’t do anything stupid, okay?”
“Just need to think for a while.” Lu Guang’s grip on his sleeve stayed firm. Cheng Xiaoshi sighed, “I won’t, don’t worry. I… I don’t blame you. I just need to be alone.”
Lu Guang let go of his jacket.