Status: Closed
This round has closed. It remains open for fills, comments and remixes, but prompts are no longer accepted.
About
"Someone will remember us, I say, even in another time."
"How inconvenient to be made of desire."
"It's me, hi, I'm the problem its me."
Calling all readers, lovers of poetry and music, screen and stage. Quote collecters and lyric hoarders, unleash your archive. For this round, every prompt must contain a quote - you can combine them, add commentary, link to articles, do whatever. Steal from a literary classic, or copy WeVerse drama.
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[FILL] 再一次
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: time travel, like very mildly implied future character death
Permission to remix: Yes
***
Junhui is twenty-five and Minghao is twelve. Junhui is twenty-five and Minghao is twenty-four. Junhui is twenty-five and Minghao is thirty, forty, fifty, sixty.
If he had had it his way, Minghao would’ve never known. As it is, one day Junhui finds himself thrown into the bushes outside of a house he’s never seen before. It’s colder than Shenzhen, colder than Beijing. The wind smells vaguely of salt when it bites at his skin through the silk pajamas Minghao had gifted him for his birthday last year.
A boy comes out of the house with a face Junhui recognizes from pictures only, but he laughs the way Junhui knows when he sees Junhui crushing his mother’s flowers. “Shushu,” he says, “it’s too cold to play outside like that.”
Junhui pushes himself upright, trying to comb the twigs out of his hair. “I’m not that much older than you,” he says. “You can call me ge.”
Minghao, only one year younger than him in the present day, has never called him ge. This Minghao does, though, and quite readily too. What a polite kid. He always has been, though, as long as Junhui’s known him.
“Are you coming inside then, ge?”
Junhui wants to tell him that he shouldn’t invite strangers to his house, but Minghao is looking at him like he already knows him. He feels the pull, though. It’s only a matter of time before he’s gone again. “Not this time,” he says.
“Next time, then,” Minghao says authoritatively, eyes flashing with a childlike demand. “Promise?”
---
The next time he opens his eyes, Minghao is already awake, propped up on one elbow and eyes heavy on his face like he’s been watching him for a while now. The lines in his face are tight with unhappiness, maybe, and something else Junhui can’t quite decipher. “I’m sorry,” says Junhui.
“You didn’t tell me,” Minghao says quietly.
“I,” Junhui starts, and doesn’t know how to finish. There’s no use for excuses, not with Minghao. “It’ll always be like this,” he says instead. “I don’t… I wouldn’t want to burden you.”
Minghao makes a small, displeased noise in the back of his throat. “If I was going to leave, then you wouldn’t have shown up when I was 12.” Their hands find each other in the sea of bedsheets. “Just… I have one request.”
“Anything.”
“Don’t tell me what happens next,” he says. “Not when I haven’t lived through it yet.”
---
It’s the same house as the first time, but this time Minghao is taller by a few years’ worth of growth spurts, and the nametag on his school uniform reads Xu Minghao, High School 1st Grade, Class 1. “You must study really hard,” Junhui tells him when he sees it. “I was in Class 10 when I was in high school.”
“You can still improve your marks if you study more,” Minghao says matter-of-factly, like it isn’t already too late. Like Junhui still has all the time in the world.
“Sure,” Junhui agrees. “Will you tutor me, then?”
“I’m only a first-year,” Minghao protests. “I’ve never even dated anyone.”
“That has nothing to do with academics, though?” says Junhui. He understands, though, the high school urge to have everything right now right away as soon as possible. For him, it’s a trap that’s all too easy to fall into and a luxury he can never have.
“Have you, ge?” asks Minghao, ignoring that. “Dated anyone? Are you dating someone right now?”
Junhui pauses, tries to figure out what to say. In the end he just goes for it. “I have a boyfriend,” says Junhui. “I think I’m going to marry him one day.”
To his surprise, Minghao seems upset at that. Still, he takes his time to gather his thoughts and figure out what he wants to say. It’s funny, to Junhui, that he’s always been this way. Junhui lets him piece the words together in his head. “I know I’m young,” Minghao says finally. “But won’t you wait for me?”
Junhui laughs, startled. I do, he thinks, I did. Minghao is cute when he’s angry, though, so Junhui says, “Shouldn’t you find someone your own age? Gege is very old, you know.”
“You were the one who said you weren’t that old the first time we met,” Minghao mumbles, sullen. Junhui laughs again and ruffles his hair.
“Just wait a few years,” he says. “Then you’ll see.”
---
He ends up in Minghao’s university dorm room, this time. A quick look at the calendar Minghao has been dutifully marking off tells him that the date is just two weeks before they actually met for the first time in his original timeline.
He’ll turn 19 soon, then. He definitely looks it, baby fat still on his cheeks when he lets himself into the room and sees Junhui standing there, staring at the pictures pinned up on the wall. Junhui turns to look at him and opens his mouth, but Minghao beats him to it. “What took you so long?”
“I don’t remember you being this impatient before,” Junhui teases. Minghao doesn’t rise to the bait, just slings his backpack onto the ground and marches up to him.
“I’m not a child now,” says Minghao. “I won’t even call you ge anymore.”
Then he kisses Junhui.
Junhui can’t help but kiss him back, cupping Minghao’s jaw in his hands and tilting his head just ever so slightly. This Minghao is younger, more timid, less familiar with Junhui’s body, but something about the way he kisses at almost 19 is still so startlingly reminiscent of Minghao at 24. Junhui almost envies his younger self, the one who will meet Minghao in two weeks. You can only meet someone for the first time once.
“The person you’re going to marry,” says Minghao, breathless. “I figured out who it is.”
---
Junhui has a few rules for himself. The first is to get out of the bushes as soon as he can. The second is to avoid running into anyone else from his life that might recognize him and ask questions. The third is to keep himself from overstaying his welcome.
The last and most important is to never, ever ask where his other self is.
It was hard enough when he visited Minghao at 80. He hadn’t even asked. Minghao had only looked at him, and Junhui had known. “Stay for a little bit longer, this time,” Minghao had asked. He had never asked that before.
When he came back, Minghao had been frying eggs in the kitchen. He turned the stove off as soon as he saw Junhui’s face.
Somehow he must have known, because Junhui has never seen him make that expression again.
---
“It’s not a good time,” Minghao snaps at him when he sees him, but softens immediately after. “Ah, you’re still so young.” As if Junhui has only gotten more annoying with time. He wouldn’t be surprised.
“I’ll go soon,” Junhui promises. “As soon as— is that a dog?”
And a cat, too, slinking into the foyer from the kitchen and winding around his legs. And the thin, high-pitched voice of a young girl yelling from upstairs, “Baba, when is Diedi coming home?”
“So you’re baba, and I’m diedi?” asks Junhui.
Minghao presses his lips into a thin line, trying to hide his amusement. He should know it’s useless by now, really, but Junhui supposes it’s still a matter of principle for him. “You can’t meet her now,” he says. “Not like this.”
“She doesn’t know yet, then,” Junhui says softly, and Minghao bites back a curse.
“Sorry,” says Minghao, rubbing at his eyes. “I’ve been slipping up recently. We both have.”
Junhui feels a bit lost, then, floundering for words. Like he’s had his fun but now it’s starting to unravel, and if he says the wrong thing now he might just be pulling at the one string that’ll make the whole thing fall apart.
But this is Minghao, and Junhui knows Minghao. He takes both of Minghao’s hands in his and Minghao lets him, wrapping thin fingers around the backs of Junhui’s knuckles. “Remember what I said before,” says Junhui, not even knowing specifically what he’s referring to but knowing in his gut to trust his past self. “It’ll be okay.”
Minghao’s eyes crinkle at the corners when he offers Junhui a small, close-lipped smile. “Is it your turn to call me ge, then? Since I’m older this time?”
It’s the kind of cheesy thing that Minghao hates, but Junhui means it with his entire heart when he says, “Can I call you qin ai de instead?”
---
Junhui misses Minghao’s twenty-fifth birthday. It’s awful because he’d planned everything down to the minute only to wake up on the sidewalk outside an apartment building he couldn’t even buzz the right unit for. It’s awful because he’d only spent a few hours with thirty-two-year-old Minghao but when he’d come back, a day and a half had already passed while he was gone. It’s awful because for everything that he gains in another time, he loses so much more in the present. And so does Minghao, as collateral damage.
Minghao is outside on the balcony, drinking straight from the bottle, on his second day of being twenty-five. Junhui sneaks a peek at the label—it’s the oldest, driest red in their fridge. “It’s not your fault,” he says, apropos of nothing. Still looking out at the city below. Junhui stands behind him, balanced precariously on the screen door frame, feeling the white plastic dig straight grooves into the soles of his feet. “But I hate this.”
Junhui would beg forgiveness, but he doesn’t think it’s fair for Minghao to have to keep giving it to him. “It’s okay if you hate me a little for it.”
Somehow he knows Minghao is crying without even seeing his face. “I can’t stop you from going,” he says, the words slipping back down his throat, soap suds washing down a sink drain. Outside, the air is still and windless. Junhui’s glass heart hangs off the edge of the railing, under Minghao’s careful watch. “Just come back.”
---
“Qingdao,” is what Minghao tells him when Junhui finds himself in another house he doesn’t recognize. “We moved because the weather here is better for your old bones. See, I kept telling you to eat more collagen when you were young, but you never listened to me.”
“It doesn’t taste good,” Junhui protests.
Minghao snorts. “Not even knowing the future can change you, can it?”
Junhui won’t stay long this time. He can already feel it. Minghao watches him carefully, the lines in his face growing deeper. “Let me show you around, then,” he says. “Before you have to go back.”
The house is smaller, this time. One storey, because stairs are more trouble than they’re worth now. Minghao doesn’t take him to see the bedrooms, but the hand soap in the bathroom is the same lavender scent he’s liked for the past five—fifty—years now.
Junhui stops them in the hallway to the kitchen, looking at the photos on the wall. He can feel Minghao watching him, but neither of them say anything.
Finally, Minghao taps the frame on the far left. A wedding that has yet to happen. “This one is my favorite.”
---
It’s late when he finally comes back—almost dawn, really—but Minghao is still awake. Over the years, it’s weighed on him as much as it has on Junhui, but this time when he looks up from his book, glasses halfway down his nose and reflecting the light from the bedside lamp, he’s smiling.
“How was it this time?” he asks, when Junhui climbs into bed next to him.
There is so much happiness waiting for us, Junhui wants to tell him, but Minghao had already made him promise not to. Instead he says, “Let’s be together for a long time, okay?”
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p.s. the exchange below just made me feel some type of way :')
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