Work Text:
Wang Qing has realized:
The rest of the world snaps photos as if they mean nothing.
They’re easy memorabilia—a statement that you recognize you’re enjoying yourself, or you want the people following you on social media to believe that’s the case. No one else can conceptualize the power a single photo holds; they do not realize each snapshot is a moment of time frozen and preserved.
It’s something she only learned through Shao Yuanyuan; a secret pressed to her heart alongside fingers ghosting over her skin. She believes she will never find another soul who understands the weight a photo holds.
And then—
She meets Qiao Ling.
Qiao Ling, with her bright smiles and haunted eyes and a charm dangling from her phone. She hip checks Cheng Xiaoshi and pokes Lu Guang playfully, and she looks at Wang Qing with something like pity.
Over coffee, she asks, “Did she leave you stranded too? Like she did Cheng Xiaoshi?”
“Stranded,” Wang Qing repeats, the word foreign and settling wrong on her tongue. Stranded where? In Bridon?
In time?
Maybe she has been stranded. Who’s to say. Maybe Shao Yuanyuan will never achieve her goals, and maybe both Wang Qing and Cheng Xiaoshi will have to learn to accept that. Or maybe Qiao Ling is spouting uninformed bullshit. Does it matter?
Wang Qing let herself sink too deep to escape a very long time ago.
When they step outside, into the late spring evening, Qiao Ling pulls her phone from her pocket. She asks a passerby to take a photo of them, then throws her arm around Wang Qing. They pose cheek-to-cheek, too close for comfort, Qiao Ling’s grin tangible and warm.
The camera flashes. The moment freezes.
(Afterwards, Qiao Ling tells Wang Qing: “Be careful what you use that for.”)