Chapter Text
Lu Guang waited patiently at the table with Cheng Xiaoshi, Qiao Ling, Li Tianchen, Li Tianxi, Xia Fei, and Vein. They were still waiting on Liu Xiao, who had just texted the group chat letting them know he got held up. Nothing serious, he should arrive soon.
Lu Guang was waiting for everyone to arrive to start eating. Vein and Cheng Xiaoshi, however, were not. As he watched the two of them decimate the food in front of them, he listened to the others chatting idly around him. The sound of everyone’s calm voices prattling on set his mind at ease. The group tried to get together for hot pot at least once a month, and he always looked forward to these outings. It was nice to be able to see everyone together like this, and a great way to relax after a long day. He still struggled with eating in front of others, but having a table full of people who understood his struggle made things a little easier. Even if he didn’t end up eating anything, no one ever made him feel guilty for it.
Lu Guang looked over to Cheng Xiaoshi, gearing up to tell him to slow down or he’d make himself sick, when the other man pointed across the room. “There’s our guy!” He raised his hand and waved at Liu Xiao from across the room, and the other man smiled and waved back as he walked towards the table.
“About time you showed up.” Li Tianchen crossed his arms in mock disappointment, “What took you so long?”
Liu Xiao took the empty seat between Vein and Xia Fei, his usual spot. “Sorry about that. I lost my keys! Had to turn my whole apartment upside-down to find them.” He pulled his keys out of his pocket and waved them around as he spoke, as if to accentuate his claim.
Lu Guang raised an eyebrow slightly. Aside from himself, Liu Xiao was one of the most obnoxiously organized people he’d ever met in his life. He found it difficult to believe his fastidious friend had actually lost his keys, and after all the years they’d known each other he could usually tell when the other was lying. He threw a glance over to Vein and Xia Fei, who shrugged slightly and sighed subtly in response.
Obvious lie though it may be, nobody at the table would press the issue. Liu Xiao never lied to his friends without a good reason, and usually the reason involved preventing the others from worrying about him. It didn’t happen frequently, and they trusted him to tell them if something was truly wrong. So, he lost his keys, and had to turn his apartment upside-down to find them. He arrived safely, and now everyone was together again. That’s all that truly mattered, at the end of the day.
They spent the evening catching up, eating good food, and relaxing together. Even after everyone said goodbye for the night and went their separate ways, they still had the group chat to keep up with each other, which Lu Guang usually had to silence when he went to sleep because at least two of them would be up texting at odd hours. With Xia Fei, Vein, and Liu Xiao spending so much time in Bridon, that was inevitable. And even without that, someone would occasionally be up at 3am asking how much money it would take to get each of them to spend a night alone in a cemetery, or something equally out of left field. If the topic was novel enough and he was unable to sleep, he would even sometimes chime in himself.
They’d all been close like this for years. If you asked some of them how long they’d known each other they would exaggerate and say “Our entire lives!” and despite the exaggeration, part of him felt that was true, in a way. Lu Guang couldn’t imagine what life would be like without these people, the little ragtag family he’d found himself adopted by. They’d given his life color and shape and form in ways he found nigh-impossible to express. High-stakes poker games with Liu Xiao, Vein dragging him to hot pot with Xia Fei basically every time the other men got within a mile of him, competitive game nights with the twins, days spent at the photo studio with Qiao Ling and Cheng Xiaoshi. These people were his whole world, and without them he had no idea where he would be.
No idea. No form, no color, no shape. What would his life be without them? A sudden darkness, and a blazing heat. Flashes of memories seemed to fly past his vision, fading in and out like a poorly-made slideshow. Laughing faces, food, blood. So much blood. Cheng Xiaoshi’s face, twisted into a pained grimace. Suddenly, very clear, a vision of Liu Xiao rushing to the front of his field of view. “Don’t try to go back, you know you can’t fix this. You know death is an irreversible node.”
He woke up on the floor, screaming, having sat bolt upright. Sweat drenched his entire body. He looked down at his hands first, vision still blurring out occasionally from the bout of fever that must have taken him earlier. He was disoriented, confused for a moment. He had just laid down in his bunk after a night out with his family, hadn’t he? No. No, that was a vision, an old memory from lifetimes ago. He looked around the dark room and put his hands on the cold floor to try to ground himself. Put his hand on his forehead. Burning up.
Slowly, he started to stand up, dizzy from the fever. Third time this had happened this week, and it never got easier. It never got easier. As he started to stand up, he doubled over on the floor again, sobs wracking his entire body. He missed them. God he missed them all so much. He wanted nothing more than to go back to that night, back to what they had before. But he had to find a way to fix this. He had to find a way to reverse the irreversible.
“I’m sorry, everyone. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.” He bowed his head to the floor as if repenting, and continued to sob. The moonlight filtered through the windows at the back of the studio and illuminated his broken form crumpled on the floor, casting his face in shadow.