Work Text:
Qiao Ling was never alone.
It wasn’t such a bad thing—if she really wanted some privacy, she could retreat to her room at home, skip a visit to the Time Photo Studio and look at her phone a bit less that day.
Not that she did this very often. She liked being with Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang. She enjoyed their company, however she may deny it sometimes when they were being particularly annoying.
In the end, there was no one else she’d rather spend her days with. It had become what she had known: the photo studio, her younger brother, his best friend. The place and people closest to her heart. She would protect them with her life, and protect this world of hers.
When Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang almost died, her world fell apart.
The peace was torn from her chest and an aching wound was left behind.
Her heart beat out of her chest more calmly once they recovered, slowly replacing their hospital gowns and slippers for clothes that fit them, were theirs. Her heart was no longer constantly tight with the unbearable tension of not knowing whether her boys would live or die. Their bickering and casual conversation and laughter and snoring and sharing meals eased the tightness in her chest, and her wound closed slightly.
There were moments, though, when Qiao Ling’s heartbeat sped up again. As if her world were once again spinning on its axis at breakneck speeds while the present slowed to a stop, and she was forced into a time that she knew didn’t exist, that wasn’t real, not anymore.
A loud noise would startle her and make every hair on the back of her neck stand up pin straight, and it would take her a while of concentrated breathing to calm herself down again. A nightmare where Cheng Xiaoshi or Lu Guang or both of them died in front of her, or out of her sight, or both, would wrench her from sleep with an iron grasp that left her body shaking with labored breaths and sweat beading down her face.
These occurrences had started some time after their final night in the subway. Lu Guang had suffered critical damage to his stab wound, Cheng Xiaoshi had been shot, and Li Tianxi had died in her arms. And, when Xixi’s small hand gripped hers with her last ounce of strength, Qiao Ling felt an overwhelming rush of energy throughout her entire body. It was like a gust of wind from a hurricane came barreling through her lungs, shooting into her bloodstream and electrifying every nerve.
A movie played over her eyes then, too, this one lightning fast. A painful array of scenes spilled into one another as they bled into Qiao Ling’s memory, feeling entirely too real and raw and intimate. One moment, it was like ice water flooded her veins, chilling her to the bone and shocking her system cold. The next, she was slumped on the ground against Li Tianxi’s bleeding body that she couldn’t save.
These moments that made her heartbeat louder in her ears still happened sometimes, even when she knew that she was safe, Cheng Xiaoshi was safe, Lu Guang was safe. They were safe. But her body, her mind remembered these unpleasant things when something called to it, and she had no control over it.
It was frustrating, but not her biggest concern. In the end, Qiao Ling knew that the moment would pass, and her boys would be right there, alive and well and just as she had left them, alive and breathing and real and loved and safe.
Qiao Ling’s life became a mix of her real friends beside her, warm to the touch and helplessly annoying, and the visions she had of their doppelgangers, cold and fading, against her eyelids. She was never alone, because she was either tearing through the terror of the image of her friends dying helplessly in another time, or she was grounding herself in the realness and warmth of their presence in her live, breathing body.
So, Qiao Ling had grown accustomed to these unexpected intrusions from the life she was afraid of, endured them by knowing they weren’t real. These visions of her friends dying weren’t real, they hadn’t happened. They couldn’t have, because she was here, in this time, with Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang at her side, just as things were supposed to be.
These moments, while unwelcome, were proof that they had all survived. They had all lived through the hardest time in Qiao Ling’s life together, and had come out the other end still there, still alive, still together. It was a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things. She could withstand the inconvenient manifestations of her anxiety because it was proof that those things were not real, she was not living them.
Qiao Ling convinced herself of this.
It worked, for a while. Moments passed in anguish were surrounded by the more comforting reality that her boys were right there beside her, just like they should be.
But then, the moments that suddenly rendered Qiao Ling breathless were not the visions and feelings she had grown familiar with. Eventually, moments slipped in where the dread she was seeing and feeling was not her own. And this was more unpleasant than her own torment had been.
It seemed to happen randomly. She couldn’t predict what might set it off, not like her own visions.
Without warning, she would find herself watching a scene unfold before her, like a movie projected directly into her retinas. The scene would blend into the present, time mixing like watercolor on a glassy pane. Whatever Qiao Ling had been feeling the moment prior would fade, paused, and someone else’s emotion would fold over her body like a coat draped over her shoulders until it settled into her bones. She felt suspended from her body in the present, the moment she was truly living in, and was instead transported to some dimension where time slowed enough for a movie scene to play in her mind over her own sight.
The first time it happened, she had arrived at the photo studio with her arms full of boba tea.
They had recently graduated from university, and Lu Guang hadn’t officially moved into the Time Photo Studio yet. But the rhythm of things was so right with him there, Qiao Ling expected Lu Guang to be at the photo studio when she came by, and was always delighted to see his white head of hair and quiet figure behind its doors.
“Come greet guests!” rang from the overhead bell as Qiao Ling gently kicked the door to the studio closed behind her.
“I come bearing gifts!” she mused proudly, hearing the shuffle of footsteps from beyond the door of the dark room.
She placed the cups down on the counter with careful grace, smiling smugly over at Lu Guang across from her. He continued wiping the lens of a camera he was holding when Qiao Ling entered, but he watched her now with a subtle curiosity.
“Hi Lu Guang!” she chimed, full of energy. She was preemptively celebrating her triumph.
“Hi, Qiao Ling-jie,” Lu Guang replied sedately, as he always did.
Lu Guang was quiet and careful with his words where Cheng Xiaoshi was loud and impulsive—Qiao Ling never tired of watching the two of them together. Somehow, they balanced each other out. And somehow, they had room for her, and Qiao Ling had been granted this safe haven in a world that had cursed so many others, given so many innocent people unhappy endings.
In a world where Xixi lay dead on the subway tracks, Qiao Ling got to live, and Lu Guang and Cheng Xiaoshi got to live, too, and they all got a second chance at life together.
Life could be so unfair.
But for all its unfairness and bitterness, there was always good.
Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang had taught her that.
Sometimes this goodness came in the form of boba tea, which always tasted better when shared with friends.
“Were you guys busy today?” Qiao Ling asked, grabbing a strawberry-flavored milk tea for herself. Two cups with different flavors sat on the counter, condensation beading along the plastic.
“Not really, just the usual tasks,” Lu Guang replied, a vaguely interested gaze still cast towards the counter in front of Qiao Ling.
She took the first sip of her drink and was met with a delicious rush of cold, sweet strawberry flavor. She relished the taste and was going to remark on it just as Cheng Xiaoshi appeared from the dark room.
“Woah, landlady! You brought us milk tea?”
Cheng Xiaoshi’s excited voice drifted through the photo studio with ease, and Qiao Ling let herself smirk again as she watched her brother trot over to the counter beside her.
“That’s right! And don’t you forget it, okay?” she hummed, pleased with herself.
If Cheng Xiaoshi was bothered by her tone, it was overwritten by his glee at his sister’s gift of surprise boba.
“Thank you jie-jie!” he exclaimed, a bit dramatic, but this pleased Qiao Ling. She tilted her chin up, satisfied, feeling warmth rising in her chest. It mixed wonderfully with the cold strawberry milk tea.
“Lu Guang, which flavor do you want?” asked Cheng Xiaoshi, looking fervently over the two cups left on the counter between them. One was a light brown color, presumably brown sugar, and the other a soft green, which Cheng Xiaoshi guessed was melon. He was practically bouncing with excitement.
Lu Guang set the camera and the cleaning cloth down now, tucking them safely away beneath the counter. When he straightened, he looked over the cups of milk tea with careful eyes.
Qiao Ling watched as Lu Guang beheld her gift with unfamiliarity. By now, she was more attuned to the subtle changes in Lu Guang’s mood, able to sense the miniscule shifts in him that barely gave his emotions away. Still, she was surprised to see him evaluate the cups of milk tea so hesitantly, as if it were something he were judging for the first time.
“Whichever one you don’t want is fine,” he said, and the pensive look on Lu Guang’s face was gone just as quickly. If Qiao Ling hadn’t been watching, she might have missed it, but the image of Lu Guang staring down at the cups of boba tea like he had no idea what to do with them was now clearly imprinted in her mind.
Cheng Xiaoshi seemed to pick up on something strange in Lu Guang’s behavior, too. This made Qiao Ling feel warmer.
“What, do you not have a preference? You’re usually so picky!” Cheng Xiaoshi accused, tilting his head over the counter as he leaned on it.
For all Cheng Xiaoshi’s playful beaming, Lu Guang looked at him calmly, if not a little irritated. This was typical, and it, too, felt warm and familiar to Qiao Ling.
“I am not,” he retorted, restrained. Lu Guang stood over the opposite side of the counter now, staring thoughtfully at the remaining cups of boba tea.
Qiao Ling watched him with interest while a frown pulled at Cheng Xiaoshi’s lips. From his resting place against the counter, he glanced briefly at his sister, who met his gaze with a careful expression. It was quiet for a brief moment, and dust filtered through the light in the photo studio.
“Do you… not like milk tea, Lu Guang?” Cheng Xiaoshi asked gently.
“No, I do,” Lu Guang answered quickly.
“…I think,” he added more slowly.
Cheng Xiaoshi and Qiao Ling blinked at each other, then at Lu Guang.
“You think? Wait—Have you never tried boba tea?” asked Cheng Xiaoshi, his tone rising with disbelief.
Qiao Ling watched Lu Guang’s jaw tighten ever so slightly, his gaze falter, as if he couldn’t look at his friends in this moment.
“Um… no,” he admitted quietly, a little awkwardly. Or maybe it was the sheer incredulity of the statement that made Qiao Ling and Cheng Xiaoshi feel that way.
“What?!” Cheng Xiaoshi shot up straight. “You’re kidding! You’re kidding, right, Guang-Guang?”
He leaned over the counter now, body craned towards Lu Guang, who was turning away slightly, like he was embarrassed.
“Stop it,” he ushered, folding his arms across his chest, almost indignant. Qiao Ling thought his face was slightly flushed.
“No, I’m not,” he said finally, and Cheng Xiaoshi and Qiao Ling stared at each other once more.
“So, whatever flavor you want is fine. I’ll take the other.”
Lu Guang’s voice had regained its usual composure, but Qiao Ling couldn’t help but think he still seemed a bit awkward.
Seeing Lu Guang disgruntled or disturbed by something that wasn’t Cheng Xiaoshi and his antics was unusual, and it stuck out in Qiao Ling’s mind.
Why was Lu Guang so shy about sharing milk tea with them?
How had they known each other for so long and never gotten milk tea with him?
A guilty feeling stirred in Qiao Ling’s stomach as she watched Lu Guang. Her dark eyes faltered, feeling embarrassed herself.
The feeling was interrupted, however, by a familiar voice in her ear.
“Come greet guests!” sang the overhead bell. Qiao Ling let the tone play before she called out.
“Boys, come see and praise your boss!”
Her voice carried through the studio, disturbing the specks of dust that drifted through the streams of afternoon light from the windows. She heard the creak of the floorboards overhead, and when she heard Cheng Xiaoshi’s rushed footsteps descend the stairs, she paused.
Suddenly, Qiao Ling was acutely aware of her own body. It was like suddenly gaining sentience, except she found herself in her own, familiar body. She was unsure of how she could have been or felt anywhere or anything else. Yet the feeling lingered, as if she had been a stranger to her own body, like her consciousness had just now slipped into the present, even though it should have been there the whole time.
Where did she go? Why did she feel like she had stepped out of her own existence? How long had that lasted? What was this feeling creeping up behind her?
“Woah, milk tea? The landlady is being nice today!”
Cheng Xiaoshi’s singsong voice from the stairs brought Qiao Ling back from her thoughts, into the moment she was most definitely experiencing.
Of course she was here, she was at the photo studio with milk tea to share with Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang. The cups were still cold and sweating in her grasp, tying her body to this moment, so she couldn’t have been anywhere else.
Cheng Xiaoshi reached for a cup between his sister’s folded arms, but she swiftly turned away. His face fell dramatically and she waged her finger in front of his face.
“What do you have to say?” she asked, bemused by Cheng Xiaoshi’s pouting expression.
He let out an exaggerated groan, then answered. “Thank you, jie-jie,” said Cheng Xiaoshi begrudgingly, taunted by the boba tea just out of his reach.
“Thank you, Qiao Ling-jie,” echoed Lu Guang, who had by now appeared beside Cheng Xiaoshi.
Qiao Ling let out a triumphant humph, evaluating the boys before her with playful satisfaction. She extended her arms, holding out the milk tea towards them.
“Hooray!” Cheng Xiaoshi exclaimed, quickly grabbing hold of two of the remaining cups. It was strawberry for Qiao Ling, of course.
Cheng Xiaoshi handed a cup of brown sugar flavored milk tea to Lu Guang, who took it smoothly. They all stuck their straws through the lids and took a delightful first sip together.
“Are you sure you don’t want to try mine, Guang-Guang? We could share,” mused Cheng Xiaoshi. The mischievous glint in his eye said that he already knew the answer.
“Absolutely not,” Lu Guang said flatly, taking another sip of his own tea defensively.
“Aww, why not?” Cheng Xiaoshi pressed, waving his light green drink in front of Lu Guang temptingly. The ice rattled with the movement, stirring the liquid around inside.
“Because melon is disgusting.” Lu Guang wore a disgusted expression to match, to which Cheng Xiaoshi whined and drooped his head.
“You’re so mean! It’s really good.”
“It’s really not.”
Cheng Xiaoshi shot him a grumbly look, but Lu Guang just stared at him over his cup of milk tea, his expression tauntingly even.
“Whatever. It’s good!” Cheng Xiaoshi insisted, giving up and taking a long sip of his melon boba with his eyes closed and lips pouting.
Qiao Ling was about to smile when a rush of air tickled her spine. It seized her, capturing her attention and freezing her in place. It was uncomfortable, especially since no one else seemed to feel it. The singularity of it was startling, and Qiao Ling felt hyperaware of her own body.
All of a sudden, she could feel exactly where she stood in the photo studio, exactly where every fold of her clothes rested, where the condensation from her cup trickled down her hand, where every strand of hair fell on her shoulders. As if she were being made aware of all of the physical sensations of her own existence for the first time.
It was very strange. It left her feeling, for a while, like a stranger in her own body. That on its own would have been unsettling, but even more than that was the feeling like she was returning to her own state of being. Like her own mind and consciousness and awareness were being carefully replaced in her own body, like a serum carefully transferred from one vial to another with a minute medicine dropper. Qiao Ling felt like her own self was sliding into the present, filling her body until she was fully there, just like she should have been in the first place.
It was very, very strange, and extremely unsettling.
What had just happened? And why?
“Qiao Ling-jie, are you alright?”
It was Lu Guang’s voice, low with gentle concern. It crashed against her consciousness like a suddenly breaking wave, and snapped her into the present, where she was sharing milk tea with her boys.
“What? Oh, yeah, I’m fine.”
Cheng Xiaoshi looked at her curiously. “Is it not good?” he asked.
“No, it’s great.”
“Are you sure? We could share mine.”
“No thanks, I’m fine.”
“Of course she doesn’t want your gross melon boba,” added Lu Guang pointedly. He then sipped his own drink like he had said nothing at all, even while Cheng Xiaoshi pointed an accusatory finger at him.
“How dare you! Qiao Ling can decide if she wants to share with me on her own, Lu Guang.”
With an indignant puh, Cheng Xiaoshi sipped his drink more forcefully than he needed to. “I can’t believe I’m surrounded by a bunch of melon haters. How did my life come to this?” he bemoaned, sighing when he released his straw.
“That is entirely of your own volition and horrible taste,” Lu Guang replied sedately.
“Hey! You take that back!”
Lu Guang sipped his brown sugar milk tea thoughtfully. “It’s questionable at best.” Cheng Xiaoshi sighed again, groaning in defeat.
Qiao Ling was no longer a spectator when watching this scene. But she was still adjusting to the sensation of returning to her own body, her own feelings. And when she looked at Lu Guang’s quiet smile over the straw of his milk tea, a realization dawned on her.
She hadn’t been watching that scene before from her own body. Not her present body, not her body in the past, not at all. Her consciousness was removed from the scene entirely, suspended somewhere beyond, like watching a video projected in front of you. That scene mixed with the present, keeping her hovering between the then and now like a spirit, trapped by the vision of something she wasn’t really experiencing.
…But she had experienced it, hadn’t she?
The scene was familiar to her. Walking proudly into the Time Photo Studio with her arms bursting with milk tea carefully selected for her friends, excited to share them and the afternoon together. Seeing Lu Guang when she walked in, working behind the counter on cleaning a camera and greeting her politely. Taunting Cheng Xiaoshi with the promise of milk tea in the way only siblings could.
She knew these things had happened, she was sure of it: she could recall such a scene in her own memories. It was the first time the three of them had shared boba together, the time she learned that Lu Guang had never tried milk tea before.
But this wasn’t that.
Qiao Ling had experienced this scene, but it wasn’t playing out from her own memory.
She had been merely watching, removed from the scene entirely, as if in a private audience to the vision unfolding before her. She watched passively, experiencing something real, but from the past, and realized that the feelings in her subconscious were not her own.
The scene had been real, but she only knew this because she was watching a version of herself in the past as it played out, and because she had such a memory in her own recollection.
Then why was she removed from it now? What was she feeling, and whose feelings were these? Did they belong to anybody in the first place? Or was she stuck in limbo somewhere, caught in a movie of her own memories but forced to watch like a spectator?
Qiao Ling looked between Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang. They had each resigned to sipping their drinks, surely relishing their childish exchange.
She resorted to swirling her own cup mindlessly, hearing the ice slosh around and feeling the sweat drip down the side of the cup. She was grounding herself in this moment even as the realization washed swiftly over her like the tide.
“Lu Guang, you…”
Her voice trailed, aimless from the moment it had left her mouth. She had muttered the words without thinking, as if they propelled from her lips automatically with the thought that preceded them.
It was Lu Guang.
Lu Guang was the one who had that experience. It was his memory, his feelings that crept into Qiao Ling’s system in that scene.
She understood it inexplicably. The realization did little to settle her, because it only raised more questions.
Why had that happened? What just happened?
Why was she watching Lu Guang’s memories? Why was she a spectator, even when she was there in the memory itself? And—
…Hadn’t something like that happened before? In the subway?
“Hm? Lu Guang what?”
It was Cheng Xiaoshi’s voice this time, peaked with curiosity.
Qiao Ling scrambled to compose herself, feeling suddenly embarrassed. Like she had seen something she wasn’t supposed to.
“He has good taste,” she said quickly, taking a swift sip of strawberry milk tea.
Cheng Xiaoshi’s mouth hung open in betrayal. “Come on, jie-jie! Since when were you such a melon hater, too?!”
Qiao Ling said nothing. Instead, she sipped her drink for dear life, reckoning with the realization that had so seamlessly broken over her but left her so rattled.
She watched Lu Guang from over her cup, and he gazed at her in turn. Any suspicion in his eyes was overshadowed by the wading concern that shaped his face, creasing the pale skin between his eyebrows slightly as he sipped from his own straw.
Qiao Ling wanted to meet Lu Guang’s eyes on her, as if looking at him more closely might give her answers to something she didn’t yet understand. But she couldn’t hold his gaze. She felt too heavy with guilt for something that she hadn’t asked to happen, too sheepish to meet her friend’s eyes in the wake of it.
Her gaze fell away, her head turning needlessly to the side. She took an assured sip, as if strawberry milk tea could anchor her to this moment and remove the shame she felt at something she didn’t understand.
“Lu Guang’s right, it’s gross,” she said calmly, which only invigorated Cheng Xiaoshi further.
She couldn’t meet his eye, but Qiao Ling felt Lu Guang’s careful gaze still following her. It wasn’t distrustful, angry, or anything but worried for his friend’s suddenly strange behavior.
It only made her stomach clench more tightly, and that day, Qiao Ling tried very hard to subdue the strange feelings lingering in her body with sweet strawberry milk tea.