Chapter Text
“Do you think we can stay like this forever, jiejie?”
The air is cool, the dense heat of the incoming summer in the city rapidly losing face to the cold chill of spring still blowing in from the north. It blows across Wei Ying’s alcohol-hot cheeks, makes her skin rise with goose pimples and a minute shiver run down her spine. She tightens her fingers on Lan Zhan’s, wrapped around them like the stubborn, invasive vines coiled on telephone poles she used to see all the time back in Yunmeng.
She’s too hot, and eagerly welcomes the cold. She’d been at drinks-turn-karaoke-turn-more-drinks with Nie Huaisang and Jiang Cheng and Wen Qing, and had severely overindulged. It was something of a tradition for them, though it had used to be just to let go of the stress of the semester. More and more, as Wei Ying is loath to admit, she’s been using the outings as a distraction, a way to ignore the pit in her stomach that seemed to have no intention to stop growing any time soon.
(Nie Huaisang has been hounding her for the real reason for her recent bouts of stress and melancholy. He asks all of his questions with a knowing look in his eyes, the same way he looks when he asks her about her continued singledom, like he’s privy to some sort of information that even she has not yet learned. It’s as frustrating as it is disconcerting. He has the same unconscionable look when he’s asking about Lan Zhan, though those questions are fewer and less vague than they used to be. He asks knowing questions, pointedly. In the back of her throat, it makes Wei Ying’s gorge rise a bit, because she just doesn’t know, she doesn’t know, and she’s not sure if she’s ready to admit that there is something about Lan Zhan that she isn’t an expert in.)
“Lan Zhan?” she asks quietly into the night air. She can hear Lan Zhan breathing lightly next to her, can feel the tickle of her sparse arm hairs against Wei Ying’s own skin. Even with the din sounds of traffic so many metres below in the streets, Wei Ying thinks she’d be able to discern the smallest of Lan Zhan’s noises, the minutest of movements. Wei Ying thinks that she might be able to hear Lan Zhan blink from how closely she pays attention to her.
“I wish we could stay like this.” Lan Zhan’s voice is quiet, not sombre or lethargic, but lacking in energy. It might be the late hour, or the early near-summer insects buzzing away somewhere far below, where the rest of the world is still wide awake. Wei Ying stares up at the underside of the upstair’s neighbour’s balcony. Months ago, when Lan Zhan had been indulging in Wei Ying’s fantasies to stargaze together, she’d haphazardly taped cheap glow-in-the-dark stars there. The placement is hardly perfect, and Wei Ying had by no means been claiming to be an astronomer, but that night had been the first time she and Lan Zhan had had one of their beneath-the-stars picnics. It had been the highlight of her semester.
Now, the stars are dull and dim, barely visible through the light pollution that still festers this high up off the ground. She wonders if she’ll have to replace the stars next year. If Lan Zhan will even still live in this flat, or if she’ll go somewhere else, closer to her uncle and brother — farther away from Wei Ying.
“You really wish so?” Wei Ying asks. Her eyes steadily stare at the biggest star on the ceiling, willing it beyond will to shine brighter. She wonders if making a wish on this star will be granted, or if she’d be cosmically ignored the way her childhood wishes had been ignored.
Lan Zhan tightens her fingers, squeezing Wei Ying almost uncomfortably. The bones in her fingers grind together painfully, and if it were anyone else she would have pulled away already. “Mn,” Lan Zhan hums affirmatively. Familiar and comfortable and warm. Just like she always is.
Wei Ying’s not sure what overcomes her in that moment, but she feels the heat of tears beginning to sting behind her eyes. She’s never been a crier — dramatic and the type to overreact to any and all situations she’s put in, sure, but never the type to cry real tears. The weeks and months must be catching up to her, she thinks as she shuts her eyes. The weight of Nie Huaisang’s questions, the heft of the pit she carries inside of her, weighing down like a stone in her stomach. Her words wobble on her lips more than she would like as she utters out, “Let’s stay together, then. Just the two of us.”
“I cannot,” Lan Zhan says quietly. Wei Ying’s eyes snap open, her head turning to stare directly into Lan Zhan’s as her best friend stares back. “Football practice in the morning,” she explains.
Wei Ying stares dumbly, disbelief colouring her face as the ghost of a smile flutters over Lan Zhan’s lips. The reaction is late, but Wei Ying can’t contain her unreserved laughter as it bubbles out of her. “Lan Zhan! You’re not allowed to make jokes like that!” she says as she tapers off into a giggle. “Ah, jiejie, this is why I love you. You’re the best; my absolute favourite, you know that? You must know, right?”
Lan Zhan doesn’t answer for a moment. She squeezes her fingers against Wei Ying’s again, painfully sharp, letting her eyes close. Her face is tranquil, at peace, the same way that she looks when she’s sleeping. Wei Ying wants to reach out, to cradle her face, to press their foreheads together and rub noses. Her heart clenches — she wants Lan Zhan so damn badly, but she doesn’t even know if she knows what she wants. She’s not even sure where these feelings had come from, isn’t sure if she’s allowed to have these feelings. A nervous laugh bubbles out of her, uncontainable, shaky, out of control. Too loud, too much.
“Shh,” Lan Zhan mumbles quietly. “You’ll wake the neighbours.”
Wei Ying hums as her laughter breaks off. Closes her eyes, lets the cool air chill her body, and ignores the stone in her stomach that feels heavier with the words they’d spoken.
Wei Ying and Lan Zhan had met in her last year of secondary school, the first time.
Wei Ying had been sixteen, and she’d been sent to the same private preparatory school that her foster sister Jiang Yanli had attended years prior, in an effort to make her the best version of a young Jiang representative that she could be.
Gusu Academy for Girls is known for many things — a strict dress code, bland food that wasn’t anywhere near as exciting as the local cuisine would suggest, and an alumni of the best of the best to pad out their records. Wei Ying was sure that there had never been a stain on the spotless reputation of the school before she’d got there.
The first time Wei Ying had seen Lan Zhan her hair had been pulled back from her face in a severe, tight plait. Her uniform was prim and proper and buttoned all the way up her neck, held tightly in place with a necktie, half-Windsor knot perfectly centred between the lapels of her blazer. She’d been the picture of everything Wei Ying had imagined that Gusu Academy for Girls, well, girls would look like — save for one thing. The second thing that Wei Ying had thought at the time was wow, she’s so pretty.
It hadn’t been right away that they’d become friends, either.
Wei Ying had intended to try that first day, had wanted to make conversation with the pretty girl sitting right at the front of the classroom, and had fallen flat on her metaphorical face.
“Hi,” Wei Ying started, beaming with the biggest smile she had, the same charming way Jiang Yanli always giggled at whenever they went shopping and Wei Ying flirted with the shop boys. “I’m Wei Ying!”
“You’re wearing your uniform wrong,” pretty-girl said, tone flat, and her eyes resting on the tops of Wei Ying’s thighs that had been exposed by her rolled up skirt.
“Ah — well, that’s just because it’s cuter this way.” Wei Ying turned side-to-side, let the pleats of her skirt dance around her legs. “Don’t you think so, jiejie?”
“I will be writing you a detention slip. Please arrive promptly at the library after your last lesson of the day.” Wei Ying had a piece of paper, written down with the details of her infraction, thrust into her hands before she could even think of a retort. The girl looked severe, yes, but Wei Ying hadn’t actually expected her to be severe. She hadn’t even noticed the silver button pinned to the lapel of the girl’s blazer, identifying her as a prefect.
“Wait, it’s my first day!” she exclaimed as the pretty prefect-jiejie started walking away. Her breath caught in her throat when she turned.
“I expect you should take this lesson seriously, then,” she said, and walked off. Wei Ying didn’t even have a chance to ask her for her name. When she showed up for detention that afternoon, pretty prefect-jiejie hadn’t been present.
She ended up learning that pretty prefect-jiejie was actually called Lan Zhan the following day, after having made sure her skirt wasn’t rolled up as she made her way to her desk, and heard the girl’s name called out from the roster. It had taken another three days after that to have a proper conversation, one that wasn’t simply to hand her a detention slip — no running in the halls, no excessively loud conversation, and, most ridiculously, no black socks.
“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying whisper-shouted, quiet enough in the library that the strict librarian didn’t shush her, and so Lan Zhan in all her prefect perfection couldn’t slap her with a detention for causing a distraction. “Is this where you go every lunch hour? To hide in the library and study?”
“Studying is important.”
“More important than eating?”
“I eat.”
“When?”
“Before I come to the library.” Lan Zhan shut her book with a little puff of dust rising into the air, visible in the beam of sunlight. Wei Ying watched as her nose didn’t even twitch, and wondered if Lan Zhan even breathed.
“Is it true you play on the football team?” Wei Ying asked instead, still quiet enough that there were no reprimands from the librarian. “I’ve never played on a team. I’ve done tennis with my sister, but never a team sport. Oh! Swimming, too, since I’m originally from Yunmeng, but my brother always says I’m just there to distract him whenever he trains so I’ve stopped going with him and haven’t been in a while.”
Lan Zhan looked at her, face blank, not saying a word. Wei Ying flashed a smile at her, the same big smile she loved to wear so much. “Aren’t you going to tell me about yourself?” she asked finally.
“No,” Lan Zhan said as she pushed her chair out from the table. The book she’d been reading was easily placed in a return cart, and she turned away from Wei Ying, making to leave the library.
“Why not?” Wei Ying asked, following her close on her heels. Now that she’d finally gotten the chance to speak to Lan Zhan, she didn’t want to waste it. “I know you play football; tell me about that.”
“I’m on the team with fifteen other students. Feel free to ask any of them about it.”
“Lan Zhan, so mean!” Wei Ying gasped. “You’ll let me talk to your friends, but not to you? Is it because I’m so pretty, you can’t stand the thought that you’ll have competition as the prettiest? Worried I’ll win, jiejie?”
Wei Ying watched Lan Zhan look back at her with the poise of porcelain, like she didn’t even have to try hard not to roll her eyes at Wei Ying’s antics. “Shameless,” she said.
“Yep, that’s me!” Wei Ying giggled with a bounce in her step. “Shameless and pretty Wei Ying, stealing your spot as prettiest jiejie around. You know, if you let me give you a different hairstyle and you unbuttoned a few buttons, you might not even have to worry about me stealing your number one spot.”
Wei Ying watched as Lan Zhan gave her a once over, as if assessing if she really had any competition, as if taking in the words Wei Ying had and weighing them with grave consequence. Then — another slip of paper. Another detention.
“I would suggest wearing your skirt at the standard length as outlined in the code and ethics guidebook to avoid further detentions.”
Wei Ying didn’t have a chance to snap back, dismissed by the end-of-lunch bell warning.
Becoming friends with Lan Zhan had been a lot of nothing for weeks, and then everything suddenly and all at once.
It started with Wei Ying, who had been told by some girls in her class that there was a party over the weekend, and it would be so cool to see you outside of school, and the call of acceptance and the desire to be wanted was too great to ignore.
And then, Wei Ying had run into Lan Zhan — had run into, of course, being something of an exaggeration because despite Lan Zhan’s cool and aloof demeanour toward her, she still did her best to annoy Lan Zhan into a friendship with her. Thus far, it had not worked, but she had weedled herself into Lan Zhan’s schedule enough that it felt only right to invite her along to the party, too.
“You need to come to this party with me, Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying said, nearly bouncing in her seat in the library, quiet enough not to be scolded but loud enough to get the scornful eye of a few other students.
“I do not go to parties.”
“Come on, this will be fun! There will be music, and food.” Wei Ying waggled her eyebrows suggestively, “There will even be boys.”
Lan Zhan’s grip tightened on her book, knuckles a shade paler than they usually were. Wei Ying knew this, of course, because she had been paying particularly close attention to Lan Zhan’s hands since she’d injured herself in football practice the week prior and had worn an elastic bandage wrap around her sore wrist for a total of four days, weekends not included and Wei Ying had insisted on helping Lan Zhan with ensuring optimal wrist health. She’d done very little other than put Lan Zhan’s library books back on the return cart, but Lan Zhan hadn’t stopped her and that had felt like progress in their quasi-friendship.
“I am not interested.” Lan Zhan spoke quietly, clipped.
“Ooh, is there already a special someone? You need to be a good wingman for me then, Lan Zhan! Help me vet a good boy, will you?”
“There will be none,” Lan Zhan said.
“I can assure you that there will be boys. I have intel from what I believe to be a reliable source,” Wei Ying said as she winked exaggeratedly.
“There will be no good boys.” Lan Zhan turned the page of her workbook, and started writing anew, copying some text from the thick textbook she had next to her. Leave it to Lan Zhan to do homework in the middle of the day on a Friday, Wei Ying thought. Once the words registered, Wei Ying gave out a fake, exaggerated gasp, drawing the attention of the librarian who looked at her with ire.
Wei Ying ducked sheepishly before returning to blabbering at Lan Zhan. “You can’t generalise, Lan jiejie,” she said dramatically, splaying her arms or in front of her on the table they shared. “Though, now that I think of it, the peacock my sister is dating is nothing short of a rotten, spoiled brat. And Jiang Cheng never lets me have the bigger youtiao when we get breakfast. You know what, Lan Zhan, I think you’re right — boys aren’t shit.”
Lan Zhan fixed her with an austere look, eyes almost comically pained, like she had some deep knowledge Wei Ying simply hadn’t learned yet. It made Wei Ying burst out with laughter, even more so when she caught sight of Lan Zhan’s pinkened ears. When she was kicked out of the library, it was worth it, even if she didn’t get to confirm with Lan Zhan if she’d be coming to the party or not.
The party was nothing special, much to Wei Ying’s disappointment.
She has been expecting more, if she was to be fully honest with herself. The girls that had invited her had boasted of good music, good food, and good alcohol. They’d spared no details when telling her about all the fun parties hosted by the Wen’s were — be it the older brother who would bring cute university boys, or the younger who always seemed to have a good supply of alcohol that he legally shouldn’t be able to buy, but no one says no to the Wens, you know. The girls said it with a knowing wink, an airy giggle, and a tickle against Wei Ying’s wrist like she should know, too, like the familiarity was something she was meant to understand inherently.
The party, though, was not as expected. This one was held by the younger brother, apparently, with house music that was just this side of too loud rumbling the floors with the trembling of its bass. The alcohol was flowing — that hadn’t been a lie nor an exaggeration. Wei Ying had downed two beers and a glass of what some girl called Wang Lingjiao had been calling the cocktail of the century, though it tasted to Wei Ying like watered down cranberry juice with too much sugar and not enough hard liquor to get her anything past slightly buzzed.
Perhaps, Wei Ying thought as she sipped idly at the lukewarm concoction, heated from the warmth of her hand through the plastic cup, the party would have been better if she’d come with friends. She wasn’t so naive as to believe that the girls who had invited her — girls who, really, she didn’t even know the names of — were her friends. She barely even talked to them. She wondered what it would have been like if Lan Zhan had come with her.
She’d gotten her answer easily enough about whether Lan Zhan would come to the party. After an hour and a half of looking back at the door every time it opened only to be slightly disappointed that it was never the tall, pretty prefect coming through, Wei Ying had stopped looking. She wasn’t even sure what it was she was disappointed about, was the problem. She and Lan Zhan weren’t friends, they were barely even acquaintances, and Wei Ying was sure the only reason Lan Zhan hadn’t decked her yet in the weeks they’d known each other was simply because she was a prefect and had an image to uphold.
Something about the perfect and straight-laced Lan Zhan drew Wei Ying in like a moth to flames, though, made her want to know so much more, to break through the shell that Lan Zhan wore like armour and dig around to know every little secret that was hidden beneath. Perhaps it was that she was so guarded that made Wei Ying want to know so badly. She’d always made friends easily, from when she’d been little and met her foster brother and sister and had won them over for the first time, to when she’d started her first classes at school and had shucked the chrysalis she’d kept safe in to become the social butterfly she was today.
Lan Zhan was truly the first person to be so completely resistant to Wei Ying’s charms, and it made her skin crawl like fire ants with the desire to dazzle Lan Zhan and change her mind. Wei Ying wanted to see the stony coldness of Lan Zhan’s stare crack into a smile, and there was no logical explanation for her obsession.
She sighed dejectedly, swirling her cup around in a circle the way she’d watched Auntie Yu do with her expensive red wines the times they’d eat at a restaurant for Jiang Cheng or Jiang Yanli’s birthdays. It didn’t have the same effect, the sloshing red of the cranberry juice sticking in fat droplets to the plastic walls of her cup, but it gave her something to focus on, a distraction away from thoughts that weren’t party vibe appropriate.
“What’s a pretty girl like you doing, sitting all by herself with no one to talk to?” Wei Ying heard from beside her, the sofa dipping as the boy who spoke sat down next to her. He was barely passably handsome, the kind of guy that could use a good makeover in the chick-flicks Jiang Yanli liked to watch with Wei Ying, cuddled under the covers on her bed late on Friday nights. His hair was slicked back in a bun with either too much product or simply the natural oiliness of his scalp, the strands framing his face stringy and limp. Overall he made for an unattractive character, despite the nice clothes he wore.
Wei Ying had seen him earlier — Wang Lingjiao had been clinging to his bicep and simpering at him and striving for even a sliver of his evidently divided attention. She’d rolled her eyes at them then, and she barely resisted the call to roll her eyes now, utterly unphased by the attention he was paying to her.
“Weren’t you with Wang Lingjiao before?” Wei Ying asked, her eyes focusing back on the waves she was making in her juice.
“She doesn’t matter. I’m with you, now, aren’t I?” he said. “Wen Chao,” he introduced, holding his hand out like he was expecting her to shake it. She didn’t, just continued swirling her cup.
“Do you have a name?” Wen Chao prompted, his voice losing some of its false friendliness as he became obviously annoyed at her refusal to engage.
“Wei Ying,” she answered curtly, flickering her eyes to look at him in a way that she hoped conveyed her lack of interest. She shuffled in her seat, Wen Chao having moved ever so closer to her, crowding into her space to watch the swirling of her cup’s contents.
“Wei, huh? Don’t think I’ve met any Weis. You’re new around here then? I can show you where we like to have a good time, if you’re interested.” He didn’t wait to move his hand to the scant space between them on the sofa, fingers edging eerily close to one of the large rips in her jeans, just a hair’s breadth too close for comfort.
“I have friends to show me around, thank you.” Wei Ying moved to stand, unsteady on her feet as the alcohol she’d consumed hit her all at once now that she was no longer sedentary. She stumbled, losing her footing, only for Wen Chao to reach out and steady her as he, too, stood up.
“If you wanted me to hold you so badly you could have just asked,” he said, winking egregiously. The stringy bits of his fringe swayed along his forehead, and Wei Ying was almost positive that the strands genuinely left a streak of greasiness along his forehead and that it wasn’t just a trick of the light. She wasn’t entirely sure whether the queasiness she felt in her stomach and the back of her throat was from the alcohol she’d consumed or if it was because of the gross sound of Wen Chao’s mouth opening again wetly, as if he was going to say something else to her.
She didn’t wait to find out, pushing him away harshly as she felt more and more like she wanted to be violently ill. When she looked around she realised that not only was the room shaky in her vision, but she realised that no one — not a single party-goer, not a single one of the girls who had invited her to come in the first place — was paying her any attention. There was no one around who cared enough about her to come to her rescue, to come make sure that she was all right and safe and didn’t need help. The realisation made her heart drop to her stomach, resurfaced a bone-deep ache that she had buried deep inside of her so long ago.
She remembered the first time she felt the ache of being all alone, of having no one who would ever go out of their way to chase her down and patch up her scrapes and bruises. She’d been only young at the time, fresh to the Jiang family, and had made some minor mistake or another that was so miniscule that she couldn’t even remember where it was she had gone wrong, but it had been enough to send Auntie Yu into a spiral. She’d yelled at Wei Ying, her voice nearly hoarse from how long she’d spent scolding her loudly. Wei Ying remembers Jiang Yanli, barely a preteen at the time, passing around dishes of food as if to ease tensions. Jiang Cheng had spent the lot of the time looking into his bowl of rice, resolutely refusing to make a sound. Worst of all, Wei Ying had felt in the moment, was how Jiang-shushu hadn’t looked at her once. There had been no attempt at comfort.
It wasn’t the same sense of discomfort in the moment, though, because she had come to terms, to a certain extent, with the standoffish and subservient natures of her aunt and uncle respectively. She had grown never to expect them to respect her or care for her the same way they did their own children, and had since grown close with the Jiang siblings. While there was no relief in the moment, at least she knew if she made a mess of things there was a hug from her jiejie waiting for her before the night would end. In that moment, though, with no one around that really knew her, she didn’t have that same comforting thought.
“Don’t touch me,” Wei Ying finally snapped, showing her teeth like an angry animal. She didn’t care if she looked feral — all the better to deter Wen Chao and his filthy hands, she thought.
“You’re drunk,” Wen Chao said. He slid an arm around her waist, staring at her with a look that was nothing short of a leer, lecherous and distasteful. “I can’t risk a pretty girl like you going home alone, let me take you upstairs. Make sure that someone is looking after you.” He slid his arm around her waist, fingers dipping close to her hip, where the waistline of her jeans dug into her skin in an uncomfortable pinch. She wanted to crawl out of her skin, to turn around and hit him and scratch his eyes out from the sheer audacity to look at her the way he had, but she froze, afraid of what would happen if she did. She couldn’t afford to make trouble for Auntie Yu again.
“She has someone looking after her.”
Wei Ying’s head snapped to the side so quickly she nearly lost her balance from it.
There stood Lan Zhan, as tall and as imposing as ever. She gave off the same authoritative air that she did in school, despite the lack of her neatly pressed blazer and shiny prefect pin to adorn her breast. She was the best thing Wei Ying had ever seen.
“Miss Lan,” Wen Chao sneered, saying her name like an insult. “Not already home in bed?”
Lan Zhan ignored him, holding out a hand for Wei Ying to grasp on to, and grasp on she did. Once she was out of Wen Chao’s grasp she breathed easier, like she hadn’t even realised she’d been on the brink of drowning, and Lan Zhan had pulled her out of a riptide she’d been swept away in without notice.
“Are you all right?” Lan Zhan asked quietly, her eyes roving over Wei Ying as if to check for any damage that Wen Chao might have caused. Wei Ying wasn’t sure if she had it in her to explain that any damage was entirely emotional, that she was perfectly fine so long as Wen Chao never looked at her again with those same beady, salacious eyes. She nodded her head instead, not wanting to say anything quite yet.
“She’s fine,” Wen Chao said, and the roll of his eyes was almost audible, though Wei Ying still refused to look at him to confirm her suspicions. “We were having fun. She wanted me to take her upstairs.”
“Wei Ying, would you like to go home?” Lan Zhan asked. There was a rumble in her voice that Wei Ying didn’t recognise, something akin to disgust or anger that she’d never heard before, for all the time she spent teasing Lan Zhan and getting on her nerves.
Wei Ying nodded as Lan Zhan let go of her hand, steady enough on her feet finally. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, looking toward the door and avoiding eye contact with Wang Lingjiao who was watching from the door frame to another room.
“You can’t just come into my party and steal my guests,” Wen Chao argued, and his hand reached out to snatch Wei Ying’s wrist. He only had a grasp on her for half a second before he stumbled back in shock, the hand that had reached out to grab her now groping at his face.
Wei Ying whipped her head around to look at Lan Zhan, bicep taut as it retracted from its extended position, having just decked Wen Chao directly in the face. Wei Ying felt her jaw slacken in shock — prim and proper Lan Zhan, who had never displayed an ounce of violent aggression toward another person, had just hit someone. Had hit someone for Wei Ying.
Wei Ying couldn’t close her mouth from the shock.
Wen Chao gripped his nose, blood slipping over his lip to drip down onto the rug at his feet. “She was fucking flirting with me, you fucking dyke bitch,” he shouted, swinging his free hand wildly toward Lan Zhan like he was trying to grab her blindly. “You’re going to regret this so much. Someone call the cops!”
Wei Ying didn’t have time to catch her breath and shout back a retort, lionhearted and brave now that she felt like she could fight back, but — her legs were moving without her conscious thought, her wrist grabbed tightly in the grip of Lan Zhan’s strong hand. She didn’t hear the music anymore, couldn’t make out the faces or the words of the people around them, didn’t register the horror and shock on Wang Lingjiao’s face, as they all but ran from the front door of the house and into the quiet of the street. The neighbourhood was fairly residential and relatively deserted, the houses just spread out enough that the slapping of their shoes against the asphalt didn’t echo around them.
It felt like an eternity passed as Lan Zhan dragged her, running down odd streets and taking hidden alley turnarounds until they had spent so much time running Wei Ying wasn’t sure they were even still in the same neighbourhood.
When Lan Zhan finally slowed to a stop and dropped her wrist, Wei Ying doubled over, bracing herself on her knees to catch her breath. Her breathing was no longer shaky, instead coming out in huge, heaving breaths and working her diaphragm like the piston of an engine.
She was barely able to focus, but her eyes drifted over to Lan Zhan like a magnet to the North Pole. She realised, as she gasped for breath still, that it was her first time seeing Lan Zhan in anything but their school uniform and her tight plait. Her hair was loose, now, framing her face delicately, most of it hanging down her back, and it made her look so human, so much younger than she looked at school. She was so pretty, Wei Ying thought, enough so that it might make catching her breath even harder if she didn’t look away.
“I didn’t know you could run like that,” Wei Ying huffed out finally after what felt like an eternity of catching her breath.
“Football,” Lan Zhan replied. Her breathing was also heavier than usual, though not nearly as frantic as Wei Ying’s own.
“Didn’t know you could punch like that, either.”
Lan Zhan did what could be considered a shrug only to her, the action so minute that on anyone else it would have amounted to little more than a twitch. Her voice was steady as she said, “My uncle taught me how, as a precaution.”
The laughter that bubbled out of Wei Ying felt way too loud, way too crass for the moment. It started quietly, like she wasn’t actually allowed to make noise so late at night, with only the distant sounds of trains and far away traffic to remind her that she was in the land of the living, and that the world existed outside of her and Lan Zhan in that moment. Then her laughter turned into great sobs, the guffawing making way for hiccoughs to burst out of her chest. Lan Zhan stood quietly still, close enough that Wei Ying could reach out and grab hold of her if they needed to run again, but far enough to give her the space she may need. It was oddly touching, in a way, though Wei Ying would be hard pressed to explain why.
It was only after her tears had dried up, her sniffles disappearing along with the heavy breaths that she had been taking, that Lan Zhan spoke again.
“There is a twenty-four hour convenience store a block away. They have food and iced tea.” Lan Zhan stared at her, waiting for an answer.
“Do they have ice for your knuckles?”
“I believe so, yes.”
Wei Ying giggled, reached her hand out to the one Lan Zhan hadn’t used to punch Wen Chao, and clasped their palms together. “Let’s go, then, Lan Zhan. I can even hold your tea for you while we get that hand on some ice.”
Lan Zhan’s eyes smiled, sparkling and dazzling like the stars above them, though her lips stayed firmly pressed together. It was enough for Wei Ying — the weight she had been carrying in her chest lightening significantly. She smiled back, careless of the fact that she felt like an absolute mess of tears and snot and the lipgloss she’d been wearing at the party. The call of cheap canned sodas and cheung zai bao from under too-warm heat lamps just couldn’t be ignored, and she smiled at Lan Zhan.
“Lead the way?”
“Mn,” Lan Zhan said, pulling her along by her hand.