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Wei Ying had been missing for two days. Not noticing his absence was impossible. At least for Lan Zhan it was like that. He had to revise his idea when he realized that during the roll call the professors passed over Wei Ying's name without much ceremony ("Wei Wuxian? Ah, one more absence"), the rehearsals of the orchestra proceeded without the most brilliant flute ("He'll be able to quickly recover what he lost") and Jiang Cheng belittled the question ("He must have gone to die in some hole with his fucking motorcycle. I don't give a shit anyway – whatever I say, he still wants to do whatever the fuck he likes, okay?").
Lan Zhan's response, in all three cases, had been a polite nod and a directly proportional increase in his search speed. Despite what others said, disappearing without a trace was not part of Wei Ying's usual behavior. Not when he knew he would drop responsibilities and leave people to worry. The only possible solution was that Wei Ying had encountered some unexpected event that had prevented him from communicating his position.
He must have gone to die in some hole...
Lan Zhan quickly pulled out the smartphone and tried again to get in touch with Wei Ying. The fact that he did not answer him was almost comical (and then Wei Ying scolded him for not having a sense of humor ...) since, in the first uncertain times of their friendship, it was Lan Zhan who did not answer Wei Ying. Ignoring the coldness in his bones that grew hour after hour, Lan Zhan saw the line of bunny and heart stikers that Wei Ying had sent him three days ago, most likely to provoke an irritated reaction in him.
'Where are you?' he wrote. Then he erased it.
'I'm looking for you'... he deleted it.
'Why do not you answer?'. Again deleted.
'What happened?' was replaced by 'If you have a problem ...', which was eventually changed to 'Wei Ying'. He hit enter without giving up hope. He absently ran his thumb over the raised bunny sticker Wei Ying had stuck to his phone case. Ever since he'd discovered his penchant for those pets, Wei Ying hadn't given him a break.
Lan Zhan slid the strap over his shoulder and walked across campus to his next class. His feet moved by themselves, everything around him was veiled as if his head was wrapped in a plastic bag. He spent the morning floating in a state of noisy mental confusion. As much as he tried to concentrate, and he did so with all his strength, shards of images and sounds continued to buzz inside him.
The roar of a motorcycle. Him taking off his helmet. A terrific smile, Do you want to have a drink? You don't you drink, really? Nothing at all? But how can you do it? I would go crazy! His laugh that time Lan Zhan points out the split lip. You know, I find it pretty nice. That you don't drink. Swollen knuckles and a sleepless night. A voice behind the classroom door that makes something shake in Lan Zhan, You don't even deserve to clean Lan Zhan's shoes. If you dare to say something about him, anything once again, if you just dare to even say his name... The long fingers that caress the flute. That soft, heartbreaking, lonely whistle that gets lost in the wind and comes out of the music room when Wei Ying believes no one is listening.
Do you want to be my project mate and play with me at the year-end recital? Lan Zhan... Are you serious? I mean, that score you composed... Oh, Lan Zhan... that score ...
His black eyes shining with a joy that illuminates him from within.
Do you really want it? Could I, really... ?
-
"Wangji." His brother still hadn't taken off his immaculate gown. He must have gotten quickly out of the hospital. There was no need for him to rush picking Lan Zhan up and take him home, especially as Lan Zhan had no intention of staying there for that day. But Xichen must have done it for a reason. There was never anything random about a Lan's behavior.
"You're not OK. What's wrong?" Xichen asked. Perfect center, an arrow shot by the most elegant archer.
The car remained enveloped in the gentle breath of the engine. Lan Zhan stared at the headlights of the other cars as they faded into the hastily darkened sky. A flash lit the black ocean that rested across the bridge, waiting.
Lan Zhan tightened his grip on the khaki fabric of his trousers. "I'm fine."
"Wangji." A faint note of humor in Xichen's voice. "You put the sweater on backwards."
Lan Zhan had tried. He sighed. A few moments passed before he managed to move his lips and say, "Wei Ying is gone. Nobody has seen him since two days ago."
"Do you think something has happened to him?"
Lan Zhan lowered his eyelids. The sack around his head had now solidified into an ice press that had hooked his forehead, nose, and neck.
"The Wens?" Xichen asked.
Lan Zhan had feared him right away.
Dealers, bad guys criminal records of all kinds, bikers, his uncle had sentenced one evening returning from the police station. Lan Zhan had taken a moment to absorb the fact that Lan Qiren equated 'biker' to 'drug dealer'. In his head the image of Wei Ying flamed for a moment, his long body stretched out on his modified and bruised but carefully polished motorcycle – "Her name is Little apple, Lan Zhan! Do you see this apple here? I drew it! Cool, huh?"
(Biker, Lan Qiren would have scorned. But maybe that was what happened when you were the police chief. Maybe that was what happened when your brother jumped on a bike, left two frightened children behind and dumped them on your doorstep.)
The Wen, Lan Zhan thought. The name had been hammering at his temples for two days. Wenwenwen...
Wei Ying had an open animosity with the Wen gang. Since Wei Ying had taken Wen Ning and Wen Qing under his wing, getting them out of their horrible family control and moving them to his home, not a week went by without Wei Ying bearing the signs of some physical confrontation with that group. Worms.
Had it been just plain thugs, Lan Zhan could have used the connections of his family, which he otherwise would have abhorred, and smoothly resolve the situation. But it seemed there was a lot more to it than that. And Wei Ying, Lan Zhan thought, pierced by a painful sting in his side, refused to talk to him about it.
There were many things Wei Ying didn't talk to him about.
Oh? It's just that I have such a boring life, Lan Zhan... It's not even worth talking about me.
"Ah, Wangji," his brother said quietly. "I can't see you like that."
"I'll adjust my sweater as soon as possible." Lan Zhan had tried again. He knew that escaping Xichen's scrutiny was impossible, but for a strange, difficult mixture of feelings and situations, he found more difficult than ever to confide in him.
And then he also had the nerve to think Wei Ying wouldn't open up.
You noble Lan family, pinnacle of moral principles and honesty... Why do you look at me like that, Lan Zhan? Is that a smile?
No, not a pinnacle of honesty. Hypocrites. Hypocrites Lan.
"I know Wei Wuxian is very important to you ..." his brother began again.
"Xichen." He wasn't going to be able to hold that conversation. Not now that worry was eating him to the bone. But he would never tell a lie either. From his mouth came the most honest and concise version of what Wei Ying was to him. "He is my partner. In the composition project for the recital." Even a pause made a difference.
"I know."
"Without him, there is no project," Lan Zhan concluded.
Another soft sigh came. "I'll make some phone calls, too."
"I would be very grateful to you."
“And… Wangji. Take the umbrella. A downpour is about to come down. "
-
The tip of the umbrella dripped to the red floor of the Burial Mounds. It was not yet opening time, so in order to enter Lan Zhan had pushed in with a shoulder a henchman of the Wen and together with him had pushed the door, which had opened with a sinister creak. The place was badly lit, everything seemed covered with a sticky film. Some chairs were overturned on the floor, there were broken glass in a corner and a terrible stench of vomit stagnated in the air.
A man had spread some money in messy piles on the pool table in the middle of the room. He jumped, his nostrils wide. "Who the fuck ..."
"Boss, I couldn't stop him!" gasped the guy that Lan Zhan had swept away with a shoulder.
"Are you stoned? Couldn't you fucking stop it? He's a dandy with moccasins on his feet and a school bag on his shoulders!"
The other rubbed his arm where Lan Zhan had pressed. "Yes, but..."
Lan Zhan scrutinized the place carefully, looking for exits and hiding places. His uncle had said that months ago they had been caught quietly trading drugs in their pub. They did not seem to have a network of contacts so wide as to guarantee more secluded trades, or they simply let won the arrogant awareness of being mostly unpunished. There was no need for the Wen gang to leave home.
Lan Zhan ah, Lan Zhan. Yiling suburbs are rotten. The world is not all like Gusu. It is so unfair that Yiling is ruined by these rats. Lots of good people live here, Lan Zhan. There are children. There is a child who still...
Lan Zhan stepped forward, the soles of his shoes sticking to the uncleaned remains of the previous evening.
"Who the fuck do you think you are?" The man behind the pool table pointed his finger at him and when he saw that Lan Zhan made no move to stop, he reached into his jacket.
Lan Zhan froze.
"Well," said the other, pleased, "I see that-"
"Wei Ying!" Lan Zhan yelled.
"What the fuck-"
"Wei Ying!" Lan Zhan called out with all the breath in his lungs, he felt something burn in his throat, he had never screamed like that. He had never screamed, ever. "Wei Ying!"
The man behind the pool table snapped and a gun fired into the ceiling, and there were screams.
"What the fuck-"
"Wen Chao, you idiot, do you want to kill us?"
Suddenly another person emerged from the darkness. He was wearing half gloves and had the impassive expression of someone ready to get their hands dirty without letting it be noticed. (So there was a door there.) "Master Wen Chao."
"Zhuliu, get rid of this jerk!"
Zhuliu caught Lan Zhan's gaze, assessed the situation for just a moment, and then headed for the juekebox. Sweet 1950s music blasted out, thundering through the filthy walls and projecting the venue out of time. Lan Zhan felt his throat harden.
Wen Zhuliu advanced towards him, a guard dog who had aimed at the intruder, and Lan Zhan stood perfectly still, tightening his grip on the umbrella just a little. A few steps from him, Wen Zhuliu stopped.
"What would your uncle say if he saw you here now, young master Lan?"
Lan Zhan felt shaken as if a blow had been struck on the back of his head. How could they know...?
"We are many, sir. Outside the room, secondary entrance. You have not seen it, but I can guarantee it. "
Lan Zhan believed him. He wasn't the type to speak just because. It wasn't Wen Chao. He was as honest as perhaps not even the best of Lan could say of being.
"I'm not going to ask what you came here for. I will just give you time to leave. I assure you that not a hair of yours will be damaged."
A thousand thoughts fluttered through Lan Zhan's head. Disturbing questions and forebodings about Yiling's condition and the role of the police in keeping it that way threatened to bring Lan Zhan closer to an impending meltdown – but first of all, first of all.
"Is my friend here?"
No one answered. Not a muscle moved on Zhuliu's face.
"Is Wei Wuxian..." you took him, what did you do to him, where you keep him, give him back to me, give him back to me, if you touched even a hair of his, you are not even worthy to pronounce his name, give him back to me, "… here with you?"
"... Eh?" grunted Wen Chao. "Are you kidding me? This little piece of shit thinks he can come here and-"
"Go away, young master Lan," Zhuliu said, his voice velvety. "Now."
Lan Zhan felt a vein explode in his neck. He couldn't do anything, he couldn't – if they knocked him out now, then Wei Ying...
He left.
On the way home he did not open the umbrella again. He didn't have the strength – or, perhaps, a part of himself hoped the water would slide all his inability out of his body like a slime, together with all the Lan hypocrisy, a legacy that he carried like a shadow.
-
It continued to rain all night and the storm lasted until the next day. Lan Zhan was returning to his apartment after a new, grueling search tour. No messages, no news from his brother or the police station (the police, Lan Zhan thought, the police). Not even Jiang Cheng had deigned to answer, sparking a wave of hatred in Lan Zhan that for a moment overwhelmed his feelings for the Wen. Wei Ying's two young Wen friends were also untraceable. Only...
The motorbike. Little Apple. It had been found in a gutter, in pieces. Lan Zhan had insisted with his uncle that all that was left of it was kept away, safe. For a tremendous moment Lan Zhan thought he was giving instructions for a corpse preparation. He had had to suppress a retching.
"We'll search the river," his uncle had said.
No, Lan Zhan thought. No.
And then he'd searched all the places he'd been before and then he'd done it again and again, and then he'd scoured the ones he hadn't considered, and then retraced his steps to Wei Ying's favorite places. The free study rooms, the bakery, the pet shop, the stall that makes that wonderful soup, Lan Zhan, Yiling alleys, the dark corners, the bins. The bins.
Lan Zhan hadn't even gone to class and just looked around the campus, driven by a tremendous force that moved him like a puppet in suspension. He hadn't eaten, he had hardly slept for two days. So, when he climbed the last step to his apartment and saw a figure crouched against his door – so this he stopped, softly, as if his spring-loaded charge had gently slipped away, leaving him helpless.
"Only you can manage to remain immaculate in this rain."
The adrenaline rush came suddenly and merciless. His hold on the umbrella became iron. Wei Ying was slumped on the landing. His clothes were damp and frayed, as if he had waited there long enough to dry them on. He held his arms tightly to his chest in a vise. Locks of black hair had escaped his ponytail and stuck to his face. He looked so frail, a faded, shivering ghost.
Lan Zhan had to make a tremendous effort not to rush to take him in his arms and carry him home, safe.
"So, where have you been?" Wei Ying asked. Even as he tried to sound witty and relaxed, Lan Zhan could sense that the voice was a tightrope. "Lan Zhan ah, Lan Zhan, it's not like you to disappear like this... have you been around having fun, mh?"
Lan Zhan barely opened his fingers, then slipped the umbrella from his hand and placed it in the umbrella stand. Mechanical actions, one thing at a time, maximum control exerted on muscles. A distant memory surfaced, yellowed and warm. One whit the bunnies housed in the gardens behind Lan Manor, a bunny wounded, his soft dark coat stained with blood, little Lan Zhan trying to grab it to heal its wounds. The terrified bunny kicking in his grip, wriggling. The sense of guilt for having dropped it, a thud in his heart as if a stone had been thrown into it...
"Okay, okay, I'll stop joking ... eh eh ... your face is so scary."
Wei Ying's voice reached him as if muffled. He saw that Wei Ying had risen and that his thin body like a flower in the storm was twitching in small spasms.
Wei Ying noticed that Lan Zhan had seen, his eyes became huge and then he tried to mask the tremor behind a gymnastic exercise. Lan Zhan could no longer contain himself. He started to grab his elbow but Wei Ying backed away quickly before Lan Zhan's fingers brushed against him. A flash in the sky illuminated Wei Ying's face, emaciated and marked by deep dark circles. His tight smile had slipped away. They stood looking at each other for a few silent seconds, both dismayed. It had been a long, long time since one of them had refused physical contact with the other.
Wei Ying licked his dry lips, ready to unleash one of his brilliant and deadly grins as if he was absolutely not hiding something from Lan Zhan.
"Listen, I need a place to stay for a few nights. Sleeping with Jiang Cheng has become impossible, you don't know how much he snores lately... "
Lan Zhan felt his expression shift under a sharp frustration that molded under his own skin. At that moment he found everything unbearable: Wei Ying in that state, the situation, himself.
"Well, not for a few nights, for tonight. Just for tonight," Wei Ying said, completely misunderstanding his reaction.
God, Lan Zhan would have exploded. "Wen Ning is not available?" he said, opening the door to his apartment.
He felt his heart pounding in his ears, covering everything. He felt his body stripped and made of electric cables exposed to the rain. He needed to find out what was happening. If Wei Ying didn't want to answer a direct question, Lan Zhan would have to get the truth out of him by walking around it.
Wei Ying might have tried to hide something, but his face was a painting, a wonderful painting Lan Zhan knew by heart. He knew every crease around his black eyes, every inflection of his beautiful brows. Even now, for Lan Zhan, Wei Ying's face was clearly disappointed with what he thought was his refusal.
"Come on, Lan Zhan. I know you can't stand me, but getting to the point of throwing me out in the rain... "
I know you can't stand me.
This was what Wei Ying thought of Lan Zhan. Panic swept through him like a sudden snow storm. He wanted to scream but the snow covered every sound. "I would just like to know..." he tried, breathlessly, still hinting a step forward.
Wei Ying stepped back, inconsistently bringing clenched fists behind his back.
Finally Lan Zhan sighed. He forced himself again to keep his mind clear. The important thing now was to get Wei Ying to safety, but even covering those two steps that separated them from his apartment seemed like a feat, although Wei Ying himself had come to him for that purpose. Wei Ying had come to him for help. Wei Ying had come to him, had come back to him.
Let me help you, Lan Zhan thought.
"Come in," he said softly. Why was impossible to find a voice for his thoughts? He wanted to tell him so many things...
Wei Ying was gray in the face, his giant shiny eyes closed his expression in a dim wary light. They hesitated and both ended up moving at the same moment, almost touching each other on the door.
"Ah..." Wei Ying drew back abruptly, again. His every small aborted gesture seemed to take him miles away from Lan Zhan. "Ha ha. It's just that I hurt my arm, so I tend to jump as soon as I'm touched. I hit it against an edge. Nobody ever imagines how sharp the edge of drawer can be."
Without further comment Lan Zhan switched on the lights in his apartment and waited for Wei Ying to enter and move a considerable distance before closing the door.
Wei Ying was still babbling nonsense about how he had hurt his arm, but Lan Zhan's attention was focused on his gait. He limped.
"You need to see a doctor," he said sepulchral, tossing his shoulder bag on the sofa.
Wei Ying whirled around, his soggy ponytail whipping his face. "No! Absolutely no." A light laugh followed. "What makes you think it?"
Lan Zhan looked at him sideways.
"Listen, do we have to talk now without having at least a hot drink? I thought you were a better host" Wei Ying added quickly in what was undoubtedly a final attempt to mislead Lan Zhan.
With martial method Lan Zhan then proceeded to put the kettle on the gas, turn on the heating, retrieve some towels and go to his closet, all without letting his gaze slip towards Wei Ying. It was very difficult but he knew he had to do it, both to give Wei Ying the time he seemed desperately asking for, and to make sure he had everything he needed. While selecting suitable clothes (his only pair of sweatpants and one of the sweaters stacked on his collection of various light shades sweaters), he tried to ignore the rumble in his ears so he could pick up even the smallest sound from the living room. When he returned to Wei Ying with a cup in his right hand and the rest in his left, he found him curled up on the sofa. The look Wei Ying gave him, naked and lost just the time of the blink of an eye, made Lan Zhan's heart tremble with a fear he had never felt before, almost primal. A fear that was a laceration in the night that left him stunned, then confused, then furious.
Lan Zhan deposited everything on the coffee table next to the sofa with a dry, cold gesture.
After a few moments Wei Ying grabbed a towel and threw it on his head without much conviction. Eventually he also took the steaming cup, but merely turned it over in his hands without hinting to take a sip. Even dry clothes were not worthy of more attention.
Lan Zhan sat on the other end of the sofa, his back stiff. He did not seek further contact with Wei Ying. He wanted to give him space, yes, but he needed it himself. He felt himself bubbling up, he was very close to losing control, and that would have been unforgivable. He wanted to help Wei Ying so badly but couldn't understand how or whether Wei Ying really felt the need, and Lan Zhan didn't know how to break down the wall that Wei Ying had raised, nor the one that Lan Zhan himself had built inside, stacking bricks of silence year after year.
He did not know what to do. He hated finding himself helpless, now more than ever.
"You've been gone for days," he finally tried. Feeling on the edge of the unknown made him unwary.
Wei Ying's hands stopped twirling the cup. "I thought you wouldn't even notice," he said mockingly. But he had waited too long before answering.
"Without you there is no project," Lan Zhan said mechanically.
"Ah ... it's true, the composition project. I forgot it. Be understanding, Lan- "
"I sent you some messages."
"Oh?" Wei Ying adjusted the towel around his head, massaging his hair and hiding his expression. "I didn't receive them."
"Lot of messages."
"Maybe there was no signal and they wasn't sent."
"I called you. It rang but you didn't pick up. "
"Ah, yeah, I had the sound off."
"I've called you over fifteen times."
"Damn... you know, I really think I lost my phone." A dark eye and the tip of the nose emerged from behind the towel. Wei Ying's gaze flew to the hands that Lan Zhan had made into a fist clutching the fabric of his trousers.
"But what do you want from me?" Wei Ying finally said, exhausted, throwing away the towel. "It's clear that I was wrong to come here, I cannot ask you..."
As he started to get up, Lan Zhan sprang to his feet, walking back until he touched the wall. The last thing he wanted was to scare him. He never thought he could scare Wei Ying, but Lan Zhan's inner turmoil must have come out of him like a mud poultice and had gotten to Wei Ying, suffocating him. "Please don't go," he told him. The implication was 'I will stay at a distance'.
At that moment Wei Ying's mouth made a strange thing, a grimace that Lan Zhan had never seen him in all those months in which they had studied and played together, and walked and watched movies and communicated with a look, without need for words.
Wei Ying's lips parted as if a small, very small sound had come out, but Lan Zhan had not heard it. Wei Ying looked at his hands.
"What's happened to you," murmured Lan Zhan, who had an immense need to take those peeled hands in his and squeeze them tightly, but who knew that such a gesture at that moment would break Wei Ying.
"Nothing. Absolutely nothing happened to me."
"This is not like you."
Wei Ying slightly raised his head towards him. "What's not like me, Lan Zhan?"
Lan Zhan was afraid of the way he said it, as if Wei Ying didn't know what 'like him' even was. Then Lan Zhan spoke.
"You wouldn't miss composition lessons without a good reason. You love composing and playing music more than anything else because it gives you a sense of freedom. You continued your studies at a private school run by people you despise just to get to this point. Consequently, you would not make a risky absence. Nor would you harm your band mates by not showing up for rehearsals so close to the final recital date. You wouldn't bother someone else on your own whim. And... you'd reply to me in two minutes, unless something serious happened to you."
Word by word, Wei Ying had slowly raised his head, his pale lips had parted, his eyes had widened. He hung slightly forward like a little bird hovering on the far edge of the nest, hands agonizing to close around something invisible.
"Wow... To hear you like that, it almost seems you care about me," he said, hinting witty tone even he didn't believe in.
Lan Zhan would have wanted so badly for Wei Ying to just stop it, stop it and run to him, he was so close to his embrace, he was so out of reach. "I care about you," he told Wei Ying.
Wei Ying suddenly turned his face, blinking fast, as if he had received a slap. He seemed to become grayer in the face, he seemed to withdraw into himself, shrinking. Then he looked up at Lan Zhan again, ready to shield himself with new lies and new nebulous excuses, but...
He saw something on Lan Zhan's face, and whatever it was seemed to shame him with a whole new power that blocked any will to mislead Lan Zhan. He leaned his back against the wall wearily. He ran his thumb against his dry lip. "There was... something, okay?"
His frail admission, the confidence with which he was handing it over lit Lan Zhan. "A fight with the Wen gang," Lan Zhan said, to help Wei Ying.
A long silence and then ... Wei Ying's admission with a silent nod.
There were no more doubts, it was useless to continue like this, Lan Zhan had understood everything there was to understand. "You do need a medical check-up. Let's go to the hospital. "
Wei Ying sprinted towards him, arms outstretched in reflex, and shouted "No, please!" and Lan Zhan too had stretched out his arms, and when Wei Ying saw this he froze as if he had hit an invisible obstacle in the middle of the room. But then Lan Zhan went on and joined him, arms outstretched, hands leveled with Wei Ying's elbows, not touching him.
Wei Ying rolled his wet eyes to the sky. Fed up with himself, involving Lan Zhan in that understanding game, oh, impossible Wei Wuxian, annoying Wei Wuxian, we know, don't we? I know it, too.
"I have an iron skin, I have recovered so many times from far worse things..." but lightly, slightly, he was swaying towards the space of Lan Zhan, "You can't imagine how a whip hurts if used by someone with Madame Yu infallible aim..." lightly he pushed himself in the circle of Lan Zhan's arms, without being squeezed, without contact, but there he was.
"Wei Ying." The sound came out broken, as Lan Zhan felt at that moment. With utmost caution he placed his fingertips on Wei Ying's leather jacket – which was there, under his fingers, it was right there. "Where did they hurt you?"
Wei Ying was shaken by a single, strong tremor. "Everywhere," he said, and then added with a swooning air, "Oh, everywhere, I feel like fainting..."
And then Lan Zhan, frightened, closed his hands on Wei Ying's arms to support him.
The other smiled guilty and weary. "I'll just... rest on the sofa a night," he murmured, placing his palms in turn on Lan Zhan's arms to loosen his grip. His small, cold palms on Lan Zhan's sweater pressed and stayed on the wool that second too long, then slowly came off, inch by inch, with difficulty.
Yes, Lan Zhan thought, we are here, both of us. That's enough for now.
"Use the bathroom," he told Wei Ying. "You can wash yourself. There are medicines in the drawer next to the mirror. Ointments and pain relievers. But you shouldn't take it without consulting a doctor if you realize it's something serious."
"It is nothing serious."
The automatic speed with which he answered alarmed Lan Zhan. Wei Ying was always so good at diminishing the extent of his own difficulties and needs.
"Lan Zhan, do you ask for a medical examination even before taking aspirin for a headache?"
Lan Zhan sighed. He would try again later. For now, he was heartened by the fact that Wei Ying seemed to be fine – that Wei Ying was there. With him. He would keep Wei Ying safe, it would be all right because as long as Lan Zhan could see him under his roof, Wei Ying would be safe.
Lan Zhan would not let him go.
"You already know where the bathroom is," he told.
"Thank you," Wei Ying said quietly, his twisted sad smile gently rolled his eyes down. "Lan Zhan, thank you."
-
In case Wei Ying got hungry, Lan Zhan had prepared a light meal. He was arranging dishes on a tray when he heard a sudden noise from the bathroom. Had something dropped? He quickly reached the door and knocked nervously, taptaptap.
"Wei Ying, are you all right?"
No reply.
"Do you need help? Can I come in?"
Still silence on the other side, but then... a very small sound, like a muffled sob. Lan Zhan threw open the door, it couldn't happen, something couldn't happen to Wei Ying while he was next to Lan Zhan, under his custody.
The steam from the hot water had clouded the shower walls. Wei Ying was on the ground, curled up on himself, the jet of the shower aimed at the cascade of black hair that hid his face and part of his shoulders. On the very pale skin there were patches of color that turned Lan Zhan's stomach upside down – purplish areas and vertical streaks on his arms, a fresher, brighter red, as if the skin had just been nearly flayed off. Wei Ying was so small and thin, as if he had worn out in the few days he was gone.
"Wei Ying," Lan Zhan called in a faint voice.
The other's head snapped up – his eyes were two dark and distant pools, and then he returned to Lan Zhan as if he had just taken a journey to a dark and far away place, and his expression twisted into distant pain.
"No... don't look at me, please... don't look at me like that," he said with a resigned slowness, biting his lower lip until it disappeared.
Lan Zhan immediately looked aside, mortified. He never wanted to humiliate Wei Ying, but at the same time he had to offer Wei Ying all the help he could. Feeling the blood drain from his face, he methodically retrieved his robe and towel and walked over to Wei Ying trying to look only at the tips of his own slippers. Fear had thrown his heart into his throat. He hadn't felt any greater fear even before, when Wei Ying was gone. Selfish, selfish Lan. Before there was a chance that Wei Ying was fine, that he would pop up somewhere screaming 'Surprise! It was just a joke,' but now Wei Ying was similar to the sea monsters that come out of lakes at night and to seize the souls of those they hated – and Lan Zhan feared he would find hatred behind those abandoned pupils. Hate for Lan Zhan and for Wei Ying himself.
"I closed my eyes. I'm not looking at you," Lan Zhan said, holding out his bathrobe. "Take it. Let me offer you my help."
For an interminable handful of seconds the only sound was the splashing of water on Wei Ying's battered skin. His beautiful skin, swollen like a flower pressed with too much force.
Lan Zhan felt blinded by a new, overwhelming wave of anger. Behind his lids glowed red and white lights, as elusive as the city lights he had seen in the car with his brother.
"Wei Ying. You have to accept help," he said, and this time he wasn't asking for permission.
The harshness in his voice (or perhaps the desperation) worked. Lan Zhan felt Wei Ying lift his tired body, the water ceasing to flow, the weight of the bathrobe being lifted from his hands. He felt the warmth of Wei Ying's body so close to him, he felt his tired and soft breathing.
"I covered myself up. I'd rather you didn't watch anyway."
Lan Zhan nodded. He remained motionless. At that point it no longer depended on him.
A long sigh that declared defeat and eventually Wei Ying's palms rested on Lan Zhan's forearms, pushing him, giving him permission to help. Lan Zhan suddenly released the breath he had been holding, too. He supported Wei Ying to take him out of the shower and then into the kitchen, where he placed him on the sofa. He did it all by giving Wei Ying the privacy he asked for, looking straight ahead. But Lan Zhan still wanted to sit on the sofa, too, at the other end.
The clock on the wall ticked with an out of place lightness. Every now and then a drop fell from the the sink. Outside, a few cars sped away in the rain. The room was half-dark except for the light over the stove and the purple city glow that came in through the windows.
"Say it. Come on, say it," Wei Ying suddenly said with exaggerated, nasty submissiveness.
Lan Zhan, sitting upright without touching the back of the sofa, slowly clenched the fabric of his trousers in his fists. There it was again, the shameful, unworthy fury he had never known before he had within him. The fire that burned Lan Zhan inside, that made him feel alive, wrong, without restraint, that corroded the walls of his stomach from the desire to keep Wei Ying. There. With him. Shield him from the world, protect him – hide him.
The blind fury because he was so stupid that he didn't hold Wei Ying before, that he didn't stop all that from happening to Wei Ying – because he should have known that Wei Ying was going too far, he should have stopped him before it went wrong, grab him by the shoulders and pull him towards Lan Zhan, safe in his home, in his heart.
"Tell me who did it."
Wei Ying melted on the sofa with a dry laugh that came from his nose. He spread his thin legs casually, as if waiting for his order from the bar. "What if I don't?"
"I'm going back to the Wen lair," Lan Zhan replied immediately, and Wei Ying gave up all pretenses.
"And what will you do?" he snapped, his eyes bulging, reaching just a little toward him – yes, Lan Zhan thought, come here, come, "Will you hit the first one that comes your way?"
Lan Zhan thought back to the filth that the Burial Mounds were soaked in, to Wen Zhuliu who had knocked him out just by leveraging the specter of a connection between the Wen clan and the police. "I'll beat the first one and all the others. One after another," he said.
"You're crazy Lan Zhan, they are serious!" Wei Ying raised his voice. "They are organized, don't mess around! You don't know what they are capable of."
"You know it?"
Wei Ying hardened his face into a controlled expression. "You can't go there and take the law into your hands" he said.
"That's exactly what you did," Lan Zhan said, and to his horror he saw his words making their way one after another into Wei Ying and being greeted and then considered with a frightening calm.
"Anyway, it's different," Wei Ying said, practical. "I had nothing to lose. Who cares what they did to me, right? You have a future ahead, a brilliant musical career already smoothed out, an excellent reputation, connections. You have a decent family made up of people who love you, Lan Zhan." His eyes sparkled in the purplish half-light of the room as Wei Ying spoke with clear confidence. "You can't afford to be ruined."
"Did they ruin you?" murmured Lan Zhan, and the image of Wei Ying's battered skin shone in his head like an exploding device. Before he had been too afraid to dwell on what he had seen. How coward could he be?
"They haven't ruined anything that wasn't already ruined," Wei Ying said, and although he didn't look down, making Lan Zhan feel weak and guilty, he grabbed his own arms in a gesture of protection. "Now you look at me like this, with those eyes of yours... So honest, and virtuous. I... I haven't lost anything, after all. Maybe just…" Wei Ying casted a quick glance into the space between them and then another fleeting glance into Lan Zhan's face. "But no. No," he finally decreed, shaking his head.
Lan Zhan stood up. His stomach felt completely turned inside out. The memory of Wei Ying prostrate in the shower, of Wei Ying slumped outside his door, his bruises, his fresh scratches, him avoiding physical contact – no, it was too much, no, it was a thought of gigantic magnitude and he felt so full of it that he could have exploded. He couldn't do it alone. He needed someone to help him.
"What are you doing?" Wei Ying said, fidgeting on the sofa when he noticed Lan Zhan had pulled out his smartphone.
"I'm calling my brother. I really think you need a medical opinion..."
"Lan Zhan, no!" Wei Ying interrupted, and his voice, which had never sounded like this, froze Lan Zhan. "Please... please! Do you want me to ask you on my knees?"
He was frozen by horror of the realization that had made its way into Lan Zhan now, only now that he had Wei Ying safely beside him. He couldn't even turn around but he sensed that Wei Ying had moved, that he had left the sofa.
"Here," Wei Ying said, "you brought me to my knees. Are you satisfied now?" There was something bad about the distant way he spoke. "You brought me to my knees too, finally. After all, that's what you've always wanted, isn't it? From the first days of classes, you always felt superior..."
Lan Zhan finally found the urge to turn to Wei Ying. "That's not true," he said whit force.
Superior? Never. He had always recognized a pure talent in that boy who dared to answer the professors and who improvised during rehearsals, stepping outside the rigid confines of textbooks, giving a personal touch to each note, infusing a new meaning in each score until something completely different came out. Envy, if anything, this is what had pushed him to an initial antagonism: an immoderate desire to possess the same creator and vital instinct that Wei Ying had – or to be possessed and overwhelmed by it, even for a little while.
"If you don't want to humiliate me, why do you insist like this?" Wei Ying said, still kneeling in front of him. "Why don't you give me peace?"
Lan Zhan lowered himself until he reached the same level as him, then sat cross-legged, palms on his knees, to demonstrate that he was there, vulnerable to any attack, but waiting, and that he would not move. "I want to help you. Allow me to take you to my brother, please."
Wei Ying lowered his eyelids. "The great first violin" he murmured at last, "reduced to asking permission to take me to a doctor. I must be a real disaster."
Lan Zhan waited.
And he waited.
"All right. But then, if you throw me out of the house…" Wei Ying began.
"Not gonna happen. I'm not lying to you."
"Yes I know. You never lie." Wei Ying gave him a small, very tired smile. "But you'll change your mind."
"No," Lan Zhan only said.
-
Lan Zhan stared at the tea he held in his hand, motionless in front of the vending machine. The warmth had dissipated now, leaving the impersonal sensation of cold plastic against his sweaty palm.
Twenty hours.
Someone coughed at his side and Lan Zhan moved with a nod to the woman who was just waiting for him to get out of the way. Lan Zhan sat in the blue chair next to the vending machine. Twenty hours, most of which apparently spent staring into the void outside and inside of him.
When the night before Wei Ying had been received by Xichen, who was on duty in the emergency room, Lan Zhan had found himself with plenty of time to absorb everything that had happened in the last few days. But for the entire night a thick layer of white noise had prevented him from doing anything other than mechanically functioning. Once Lan Zhan received reassurances about Wei Ying ("We are running all the tests, Wangji. We will keep him under observation") and went home to get a change of clothes, he froze in front of the entrance to his apartment, where Wei Ying's footprint seemed to have remained against the wall like the trace of a ghost. It would never go away, branded in Lan Zhan's memory.
Then he had finally allowed himself to think:
I could have seen him again as a corpse. I might not have seen him at all.
And:
I could have found him with his mind broken.
And:
He'll be fine, right?
The last time Lan Zhan had experienced such devastation was during his mother's illness. Her slow descent into pain and stillness of body and spirit had been too much for Lan Zhan to bear. When she was finally taken away from him without him being able to see her one last time, Lan Zhan had locked himself away in a remote place inside and hadn't spoken for months. Perhaps he had never fully gotten out of it.
The thought of Wei Ying suffering unspeakably and then disappearing into thin air, snatched from Lan Zhan without him knowing, without seeing Wei Ying for the last time, a reality he had almost touched, paralyzed his brain. Anger at the Wen, who had tried to annihilate what Lan Zhan held dearest in the world, anger at Wei Ying, who would not allow Lan Zhan to help him, and at himself, who had been foolish and incapable, now lay latent under blankets of frost.
He felt... so empty.
"It could be the shock, Wangji," had said with gentle care Xichen, who had also wanted to ascertain Zhan Zhan's condition. He added: "Taking again the drug might help. Only for this occasion."
Lan Zhan hadn't done that. Now he lay like an empty bag in the hospital waiting room, waiting for Wei Ying to finish his IV and then... what? Take Wei Ying back to his house and lock him inside?
Yes, it wasn't such a bad option for now.
A muffled voice whispered a different truth to him, but it was too far away, covered by snow in his conscience.
Eventually Wei Ying emerged wearing Lan Zhan light blue sweater. He seemed to be swimming inside that sweater. His fingers just stuck out of the sleeves. The sight gripped Lan Zhan's heart.
Wei Ying looked at him in silence, and in front of his dark circles and his face still vaguely waxy Lan Zhan felt completely lost. All he found was the strength to nod and lead Wei Ying out to the parking lot. When Lan Zhan started to rummage in his pocket for car keys, he realized he still had the tea in his hand. He turned and held it out to Wei Ying with an aborted move.
Wei Ying seemed pierced by a revelation. He sadly accepted the plastic cup and hugged it to him in complete silence. Throughout the journey he remained turned towards the road, his forehead resting on the window.
The city lights dimmed by the night rain, Wei Ying's bare nape.
As soon as they got back into the house, Lan Zhan stupidly remembered the plastic cup still in Wei Ying's hands. He made a gesture to ask but didn't realize they were so close, so he backed away, pulling his arm back – and then Wei Ying exploded.
"Your brother told you, huh? He told you what they…" He stopped suddenly, angrily, pursing his lips. "Now you know and you can't even look at me."
"Wei Wuxian," Lan Zhan said, feeling himself flush.
"Yes, the professional secret. Xichen would never break it. Forgive me, I shouldn't have tarnished the purity of the Lan name by raising such a doubt, but I thought that, given the unorthodox situation ... "
Lan Zhan shook his head. "I figured it out myself," he said softly.
Wei Ying's beautiful mind, his beautiful body. A splendor in full view like a lantern for a night moth. Anyone who wanted to harm him would immediately rush into Wei Ying's light with the intention of turning it out.
Take his light away from him. Do violent acts to him.
"Lan Zhan, ah, Lan Zhan, I'm just the worst, huh? Instead of thanking you..."
"There's no need," he said immediately.
Wei Ying nodded. "You are right. You're too noble to put me in a position to make me feel indebted."
Lan Zhan could have screamed. "You don't need to thank me. I did it without thinking."
"Oh?" Wei Ying cocked his head to the side like a curious pet. "Your noble soul goes as far as this. What a perfect knight you are."
Lan Zhan let his shoulders rise and fall heavily. He took the plastic cup from Wei Ying's hand and went to throw it in the bin. "You're provoking me on purpose," Lan Zhan told.
"I can't do anything else!" Wei Ying said.
Lan Zhan rested the tips of his fingertips on the sink. He was hanging by a thread now, and it wasn't fair – Wei Ying was the only one who had the right to be upset. Then Lan Zhan heard is name be called.
"Lan Zhan. I'm sorry." Wei Ying had covered his face with his hands. "I'm so sorry, for all this, for everything... You are so good... You made me get used to it and now I am..."
Scared. Lan Zhan was very, very afraid – even though Wei Ying was there with him. He was so afraid of seeing Wei Ying slip away.
"You're safe here," he told Wei Ying to convince them both.
Wei Ying spread his fingers, bringing out the glint of his white teeth and an amused eye in the purple lighting of the apartment. "I am?" he said.
-
Night entered Lan Zhan's apartment through the large panoramic windows. It was like being in the rain, suspended on the top floor of the building. The nearby skyscrapers dotted the darkness with lights and the horns were lightning flashes that lit up the dark hours of who defied the arrival of dawn.
A wealthy neighborhood, not far from the nightlife streets, very far from Yiling alleys where instead everything was silence but just to opening a door would make whispers, rustles, moans, tears escape.
Lan Zhan stared at the ceiling with open eyes, one arm under his head, stretched out on the sofa. He couldn't calm down. He thought of the useless police force led by his uncle, its role in covering up the Wen's shady circles. He thought of the businesses that had had to shut down because of the Wen's retaliation, and how everyone knew and no one did anything. He thought about how many other people the Wen had done what they had done to Wei Ying. And then he thought of the innocent, stained only by the wrong surname.
And the child. Lan Zhan had met him only once. He was very sweet. He clung to Lan Zhan's legs, and then Wei Ying picked him up and it was all so right, and so wrong, because the Yiling neighborhood was once different, it wasn't immersed in slime and tainted with the disease of a criminal gang who held it hostage to make it the background of the gang's games. Lan Zhan had always believed that the police were doing what they could. But where was the justice in all of this? And the child – where was he? Lan Zhan wished with all if himself that the child was well. Any other version of reality was inconceivable.
If only things had been different...
How could he have been so blind before? How could he have continued to live where he lived, attend the expensive school he attended, while all this was happening just a few steps away? And Wei Ying had always known this, had even tried to involve Lan Zhan as he clung to what little justice remained in Yiling – irresponsibly, yes, taking risks, and yet ...
Lan Zhan wondered if what Wei Ying did was worth the risk, given what he had scarified. The darkest part at the bottom of Lan Zhan's heart now saw only Wei Ying's well-being. But there was something that united Wei Ying, Yiling, the child, the innocent people, the injustices suffered, a thread that was Wei Ying's beating heart and that Lan Zhan had just begun to pull.
Every muscle was waiting, as if everything Lan Zhan was made of was waking up now and wanting to make up for years lost in a great sleep.
And then:
"LAN ZHAN!"
Wei Ying's broken and desperate voice made him snap like never in his life, in a moment Lan Zhan was already in the bedroom, scared to death. Wei Ying lay shaking on the mattress, the blankets thrown aside. His face was glistening with sweat, his lids flapping thickly as if he were hanging on the border between sleep and wakefulness. Lan Zhan had never seen him like this. He sat down beside Wei Ying carefully because he feared he could tear Wei Ying apart even just touching him.
"It was a dream, Wei Ying," he said, choked.
Wei Ying lifted his chin uncovering his throat. His chest rose and fell in a deep breath. "A dream. Sure," he croaked, and then made a sound like a hideous giggle.
Lan Zhan's hands were so close to Wei Ying's elbow, his side, his thigh. "It's okay now," he said, wishing only to sink next to Wei Ying, hug him, feel the skin of his neck with his own skin, tune his breath to Wei Ying's, like when they played music together.
Wei Ying covered his eyes with his arm. "Yes," he whispered.
"It's over," Lan Zhan said.
A faint moan came out of Wei Ying's mouth. "It's amazing how identical you sound..." he muttered. "Is it still the dream? Or I'm still delirious... "
He could not help it: Lan Zhan rubbed his fingers on Wei Ying's sweaty and a little hot forehead. A very slight contact, just hinted, careful to avoid Wei Ying's hand that was right there to cover his eyes. Wei Ying jumped, forehead raised, and Lan Zhan murmured his name like a prayer.
Let him be well, let him be safe, let him forget.
"How beautiful it is when you call me that..." Wei Ying said softly. "Can you sing me a song? I know you won't say no to me, Lan Zhan." But he didn't even give Lan Zhan time, and kept talking, carried by something far away that enveloped him. "I have a confession to make: I imagined your music. I'm so sorry I did it, who knows what I was thinking... But the only reason I didn't completely freak out... while they broke me... your... your music..."
Lan Zhan felt a sting press behind his eyes. The extent of what Wei Ying had just told him was unimaginable. He brought his right hand to Wei Ying's chest, above his heart, and had time to hear his heartbeat, as fast as that of a terrified creature, before Wei Ying jumped up and fully awake.
"You better not touch me, please," he said in shock, as if he had been caught doing something forbidden.
Lan Zhan was an idiot. Why did he keep making mistakes, always, always? "I'm really sorry. Did I hurt you very much?"
"You...?" Wei Ying gaped at him but immediately slipped his eyes to the side and squeezed the sheets. "I am the one who can hurt you. Do you understand?"
Lan Zhan shook his head.
Wei Ying hurting him... But if Wei Ying had brought with him only beauty and joy since he entered Lan Zhan's life! Wei Ying had no key, hadn't even knocked, but had thrown the door open and grabbed Lan Zhan's arm and dragged him back into the world – and Lan Zhan had just begun to blossom.
Lan Zhan slid to the ground and dropped his weight on his side, leaning against the bed. He closed his eyes and stood there, his cheek and hands on the mattress.
After a few moments he heard a rustle of fabric and the bed lowering under a weight. Wei Ying lay down again.
"Oh, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan… you are very bad. I thought you were good, but instead..." he said sadly. "If you do like that, you make me want to be selfish."
Be selfish, Lan Zhan thought. Take me away with you, wherever you want to go.
-
It was a sleep of long waits in front of closed hospital doors, of large windows crystallized with snow. Skyscrapers emerged from the haze, and far away a dim light pulsed like a jewel in the ice storm. He was alone, on his knees. He hadn't even said goodbye.
Lan Zhan woke up sobbing. Below him, the floor was frozen, but somehow the sheets had landed on his shoulders. The bed was empty.
He ran, almost slipping. Kitchen, living room, study – there was no one. He was gone.
The Wen gang. They must have managed to break in there and take Wei Ying away and... no, impossible. Without any noise, without any trace? So... Wei Ying must have gotten some kind of threatening message and...
Lan Zhan took the stairs without wasting any more time. The rain was falling more aggressively, huge cold drops crushed his hair in front of his eyes. The slight slope above which his palace was built made the foaming water drain away. Lan Zhan looked around, feeling his breath fail. He took a random direction and felt distinctly that if he stopped, his body, which had been strained for days, would betray him and stop working. He thought of Xichen and was about to contact him when he saw in the distance a light blue sweater. He walked up to him and yanked and turned him, oblivious to the fact that he was touching him – whether Wey Ying hated him now, whether Wei Ying hated him too.
Wei Ying's hatred was better than being left without a word.
"What were you thinking?" Lan Zhan shouted.
Wei Ying didn't seem surprised to find him there. He escaped Lan Zhan's grasp and then brought the umbrella over Lan Zhan's head, swinging it slightly. "You see? I'm also an umbrella thief now. But I thought it wouldn't make much difference to you. It's an umbrella like many others, it's not even in good condition. If you train yourself not to think about it anymore, you won't even miss it."
Lan Zhan was out of breath. Taking hold of the umbrella handle, he directed Wei Ying to shield them both from rain.
"Oh, no, Lan Zhan. You're just trying to screw it up," Wei Ying murmured, almost to himself. He was much less pale now. His eyes were clear and bright, his brows a firm line. "I'm giving you another chance, understood?" he said carefully, as if explaining a math problem to a very young child. "I was weak. I came to you when I never should have, I took advantage of your sense of duty..."
"It's towards you," Lan Zhan replied. "My only duty."
It was the wrong thing to say.
Wei Ying's expression changed drastically, as if he couldn't take it anymore. "Let me go!" he said, pushing Lan Zhan back with a sudden blow to his chest.
Taken aback, Lan Zhan backed away, leaving Wei Ying in the rain.
"Do you think keeping me in your house is the solution, Lan Wangji? Do you think that's enough?"
Lan Zhan felt stabbed.
He... wasn't enough, was it? He wasn't enough for Wei Ying now?
Already drenched in rain, Wei Ying tucked his hands under his arms. "Why don't you let me sink?"
"I could never stand it," Lan Zhan gasped. An alarm rang in his brain. It was all wrong, he didn't understand anything anymore, it was all terribly... "Even just the idea..."
"Let's just give you an idea and see if you can handle it. Let's see if you still want to look for me after hearing that," Wei Ying said, lifting his chin. The dim light of the alley cut his features into sharp sections, turning him into another Wei Ying.
"I got a message from Wen Ning asking for help for himself and his sister," he began. "He said they were prisoners, that Wen Chao eventually got fed up with the blackmail and captured Wen Qing. I wanted to free them, but when I got there they weren't there. It was a trap from that bastard Wen Chao. "
At that point the clinical tone with which he had begun to speak cracked. "Those people got me. They made me do… they made me…" Unconsciously he ran his hands over his arms, quickly. "They had weapons. They said they would use them on my friends." He looked straight into Lan Zhan, a desperate steadfastness that made him suddenly almost hallucinated. "What should I have done? Maybe anyone else would have protected their dignity. Any Lan would have fled and reported immediately to the police. But run the risk that Wen Ning and Wen Qing were really in danger?"
Suddenly Wei Ying's head dropped and he stared at his shoes. Wei Ying seemed both reluctant and eager to tell, as if a feverish urge had taken hold of him. "So they took me and for a long time… I don't know for how long… they did what they wanted with me. My body..." his palms were neuroticly rubbing the sleeves of his sweater, "My body under unknown hands. Lan Zhan, have any ants ever walked on your skin...? A thousand ants, Lan Zhan, and all thousand of them bit me and..."
Wei Ying let out a strangled sound, then nodded. "And that's not the worst part, no. Listen well." He looked back at Lan Zhan. "I wasn't me anymore. I felt I was going crazy. I felt that, if I managed to somehow escape, I could kill them all," he said with the sepulchral calm of someone who has considered the thing from every point of view, ending up finding it the only logical choice. "I would have killed them all, Lan Zhan, and in the cruellest way, to make them pay for what they were doing to me and what they had done to Wen Ning, Wen Qing, Yiling, all of them. I would have passed over their corpses." Here his shoulders hunched. "But in the end I was too broken to do anything but crawl out of there. Literally. And if before I could still have a shred of humanity in me, Lan Zhan, I lost it all when I started crawling. Exactly how they wanted."
When Wei Ying was done he stood up slowly, as if his shoulders were lighter. If he had wanted to, he could have reached Lan Zhan under the umbrella, but he still preferred to stay away from him, the sweater clinging to his slim figure. "What do you have to say now? Do you still think that keeping me under your close surveillance will solve something?"
Lan Zhan had been so stupid.
Lan Zhan was so useless.
He believed that hiding Wei Ying would save him. The only thing Lan Zhan was trying to hide from his eyes, however, was Wei Ying's pain.
Young master Lan, who lived in a luxury apartment and attended a private institution and believed he had the power to heal someone else's wound just because he had the will. The suffering Lan Zhan had felt, not just in the last few days but throughout his life, seemed like a lie.
Then something happened that he did not expect: the resentment, the cold neurosis, the challenge, everything slipped away from Wei Ying's expression as he left the dim light, and his face returned the face of the Wei Ying that Lan Zhan knew – no, it had always been the same face.
"Well... this is just an unfair move," Wei Ying said, stepping under the umbrella until he was half a step away from Lan Zhan. "Crying in front of me now that I've done my best to disintegrate your stupid sense of loyalty... it's unfair."
Lan Zhan let out a sob. Tears upon tears accumulated and put away now came out with ferocity. Once again powerless in the face of suffering. He had not been able to prevent it, he did not know how to remedy it, he could not communicate his own, and he was ashamed to feel it in front of the immensity of Wei Ying's suffering.
Wei Ying who was now looking at him with tenderness and care, as if what Lan Zhan was the one who had it worse.
"Is it really that important to you... to finish our group project and play at the year-end recital?" he said, hinting at a joke.
"Wei Ying."
"I know, I know. I'll stop it," he said. Perhaps he knew Lan Zhan's heart better than Lan Zhan himself, or perhaps he didn't understand anything at all, or they were destined not to meet, to do each other both good and bad.
Wei Ying's lips curled in a sad smile, then his right foot rested against the inside of Lan Zhan's shoe and the tip of Wei Ying's nose brushed Lan Zhan's shirt, and his hand softly approached Lan Zhan's hand around the umbrella handle, and his cheek was against Lan Zhan's cheek, soft and moist.
"You seem to be looking forward to being dragged down," Wei Ying said.
Lan Zhan held his breath, saw nothing more. There was only one skin rubbing against the other's skin, cheekbone to nose to cheek. He exhaled.
-
"Can I hold you?" Lan Zhan said.
Wei Ying, curled up on the bed beside Lan Zhan, faced him. His hair was a dark cascade of soft waves between them. They shared the pillow, their breaths mixed, and looked at each other as if one were on the platform and the other already inside the moving train.
Can I hold you? Or, can I keep you with me? Or, can we pretend you can stay with me? Can we pretend you want?
Wei Ying said, "I don't know."
It didn't stop hurting.
"I'm sorry – I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It's not you, Lan Zhan, it could never be you, it's just... I can't get it out of my head. The way…" Wei Ying sighed wearily, hiding his face in the pillow. "I feel so... disgusting... I am disgusted by... my skin..."
Unacceptable. Of all the reactions, it was the most inconceivable and the one Lan Zhan was least forgiving to let Wei Ying have. He felt that his job was to get Wei Ying out of that nightmare and that he wasn't succeeding, letting them both down.
"Wei Ying, you don't have to – you don't..."
"Lan Zhan," he called, almost amused.
"Forgive me please."
A frustrated sound escaped Wei Ying's lips as he lay on his back, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. "It's crazy that you're apologizing."
Shouldn't he? It was Lan Zhan who hadn't arrived in time, who didn't know how to help Wei Ying now, who couldn't find the right thing to say, who insisted on not understanding.
Not wanting to understand.
The night seemed so short, morning would come and Lan Zhan just wanted to cling to that bed, at that moment, with every ounce of strength he had, and not let it go.
Hypocrites Lan, to the end.
"I don't want to make you feel bad, Wei Ying," Lan Zhan told him, and at least that was so true. "I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable. I would just like to be close to you."
The lines of tiredness around Wei Ying's eyes softened like when he ate soup or when he played his flute, or invented something, or like the time he took the child in his arms.
"I understand that being touched causes you discomfort," Lan Zhan said, measuring his words. "If you want, you can hold me. I'll stay still."
Wei Ying let out a small, incredulous, precious laugh out of his nose. The sound broke softly on Lan Zhan's skin. He wished he could put it in his pocket.
"Could you sleep completely still?" Wei Ying asked him.
"Like a mummy," Lan Zhan nodded.
"Ah, Lan Wangji, it's this funny side of you that always gets me..."
They closed both eyes and remained silent until Lan Zhan lulled himself into the lie that they were both sleeping peacefully, safe in the same bed, the rain ticking softly against the glass, like music.
"Doesn't it bother you to know that this skin has been ruined?" Wei Ying said after a long time. "Doesn't that make you want to jump out of bed and scream? Don't you feel overwhelmed with disgust?"
Annoyance. Disgust.
He could not even find the strength to answer, he could not find the order of words suitable to give the idea of what it was causing him to know the torment Wei Ying had suffered. What he managed to say was:
"I would do unimaginable things to whoever did this to you."
"Mh, would you make them pay for ruining me?" Wei Ying said, giggling without any joy.
Lan Zhan was about to tell him that they hadn't ruined anything, that everything could still be fixed, that Wei Ying was still Wei Ying – and then, then, that Lan Zhan was serious, that he would really do it, Wei Ying could believe him, he had to take him seriously.
"My good Lan Zhan, my noble Lan Zhan, the defender of purity," sang Wei Ying. But he added quickly, completely changing his tone: "I'm not kidding you, I'm not belittling you, I really do think so. You're so... like this."
Lan Zhan furrowed his brows. How was it 'like this'?
"But don't get any strange ideas, okay?" said Wei Ying. "You are good. You are right. You are clean. Revenge does not belong to you. You are not me. Stay like that, at least you, stay like that. Stay still, Lan Zhan." Wei Ying was a fawn in the night. There, with his head close to Lan Zhan's on the same pillow, he had never been more beautiful and further away. "Close your eyes, Lan Zhan. Stay still. Sleep now."
Lan Zhan, as always, did what Wei Ying wanted.
And this time sleep was a caress on his hair, shy, and a trembling touch that traced all the contours of Lan Zhan's face, causing him to burn slowly, and a sweet pinch on his cheeks, a reverenced stroke around his eyebrows, a touch to the shape of his ear, something lingering on his lips again and again, never really dwelling on it.
-
At the crack of dawn, Wei Ying was gone. He was gone with the night, taking the rain away. In his place a note scribbled in haste and left by the door:
I think I know where Wen Ning and Weng Qing are, I will go to them for a while.
We will be safe away from here.
I'm sorry.
Thank you.
That day Lan Zhan left home toward the music school for the last time. There would be some paperwork to deal with and documents to sign. After all, his uncle had always wanted Lan Zhan to enter the police academy. For that year it would have been impossible, but Lan Zhan would not have wasted the time available. He would resume training as before, even more than before. Martial arts, polygon. And then, of course, he would study for the entrance exam.
Pushing him forward was the engine of the new, subtle quality of self-contempt he harbored. His inability to save Wei Ying coupled with his gigantic stubbornness in not understanding that Wei Ying didn't want to be saved, not as Lan Zhan intended. Grab his arms, keep him safe, limit him, what had he ever thought of? His father's bad blood that Lan Zhan had always feared emerged, eventually revealing a man unworthy of Wei Ying.
But perhaps, a man who could improve. The road was long and narrow, but the idea, strangely, did not scare him. He didn't feel alone on that narrow path. And if the Burial Mounds, Wen Chao, Wen Zhuliu, were giving him strength... on the other side there was Yiling. The child. The beating heart that connected everything. The dream of returning everything to its right state. The goal of giving Wei Ying a place to return to where he would be truly safe.
Lan Zhan was not the man Wei Ying deserved.
But he could become one, and he would do it.
-
That day Wei Ying had left the house before dawn turned completely red over the city. He had made the greatest effort of will of his entire life, and he did it before breakfast.
Lie.
Stop being a clown when there's no more audience to entertain, Wei Wuxian.
In fact, he had already made up his mind when he heard Lan Zhan calling him from upstairs in the Burial Mounds, shouting his name three times, while Wei Ying cried and bit his lip, without screaming, because otherwise he would put Lan Zhan in mortal danger.
Exactly at that moment he understood: the darkness of Yiling's slums had entered his bones and there would never be any place for him next to the splendor of Lan Zhan.
Revenge did not belong to Lan Zhan. But it belonged to him.
Wei Ying said goodbye to the city lights going out one by one as the bus he was in slowly drove away. He repeated to himself that he was leaving to come back stronger, so that what had happened to him never happened again, so that Lan Zhan could have a place to be truly safe.
After all, he had lost nothing. Wei Ying had never been the man Lan Zhan deserved.
He could recover, and then, by giving time to time, he could bring justice back in his own way to that world that had forgotten even what form justice took. And he would do it.