A/N

night six!

to be honest, i've been feeling off and overwhelmed by work, so i'm updating earlier to take a longer break this weekend. still, i hope you enjoy it nevertheless :)

take care,

krissy

❂

N I G H T   S I X

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DECEMBER 27, 2016

Wen and Mei are sixteen

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MEI'S HEART CAN'T stop pounding.

She's been standing outside Wen's apartment door for long minutes now, shifting nervously from foot to foot, chewing her lip. Fingers knotting and unknotting.

The past year has changed a lot of things. For one, Mei look entirely different. She's exchanged the tell-tale ponytail for shorter hair that barely brushes her shoulders. Rather than black, it glimmers a rich dark brown in the light. She wears clothes that cling to her figure and a big knit cardigan that keeps it all warm underneath.

It seems like after Mei began paying frequent visits to Lijun's apartment last winter, he'd misinterpreted her actions as the opening of a new door. His lips grew impatient. His fingers grew eager. When she stepped inside, he kissed her neck before meeting her eyes. But she knew better than to give him what he wanted, and when she came home late one night to see her father passed out drunken on the kitchen floor, it hit her how selfish she had been, to seek out distractions as if she was only one bearing their consequences. Do you think you're the only one that's hurting?

She hasn't talk to Wen in a year. Hasn't even seen him for weeks. Before they broke up, Lijun told her they switched schools a month ago, for whatever reason. Though her dad must know more about where they live now, she's too afraid to ask more. To face the twisting guilt gnawing her insides...

Until now. Hopefully.

Her hand rises to the doorbell in hesitation. Her face contorts in a wince, not even sure what she'll say. How he'll react to the friend who abandoned him when he, too, was grieving for a mother lost.

She's about to press it when a voice cuts in.

"Can I help you?"

Startled, she turns to see Mochou. The woman, now well into her thirties, is short and curvy with thick waves of hair tossed up in a bun, swarmed with bags of groceries and jangling bracelets, an unlit cigarette in her mouth. She eyes Mei warily.

"Uh--" Mei swallows. "Um, I'm just here to see..."

"Wenkang?" Mochou approaches the door unsteadily with her groceries, and Mei rushes forward to help. As she unlocks the gate with a noisy clang, she lets the cigarette drop onto her free hand. "Don't know what people told you, but they moved out last week."

Her heart stops. "What?"

"Mhm," she says, then rolls her eyes and pushes open the door. They both hobble in--Mei's head spins at the sight of emptied apartment, like a hollow shell devoid of all the youthful life Wen and Wangmin once had sprawling over the stained carpets and furniture. "But they left some lap sap that I'd be happy for you to take away for me. Maybe give it back to them."

Shock is written all over Mei's face. "Where did they move to?"

"Somewhere in Kowloon. I don't know. They just wanted out of the Island." She tucks away hair with a clink of her rusted rings, then tosses me an impatient glance. "What? You didn't know?"

"Oh, no, I knew," says Mei quickly, then smiles and moves forward awkwardly. "I'll just...check out their rooms..."

Mochou nods, sticks the cigarette back in her mouth, and disappears into the kitchen with the groceries.

Releasing a sigh of relief, Mei across the cold, dark floor and into Wen's room down the narrow hall. When she stops at the doorway and sees its front stripped of the gaming posters and that were once plastered across it, a nostalgic pang hits her chest.

The doorknob cools her skin and squeaks open with the barest twist.

It looks like a ghost, Wen's room. Maybe the ghost of his childhood, because she can see him and his things littered across the now empty floor, the dusty and abandoned furniture, the single moldy-edged window at the end yawning open for tired sunlight. She sees the uneven wooden panels and remembers Wen's mattress, how he used to flop down on it with a pout of his lips and roll himself up in the comforters after a bad day. She sees the empty desk and remembers him bent over math homework as she laid idly across his mattress, playing Pokémon on his Gameboy. She sees the hollow drawers and remembers how she tidied up his clothes when they were all strewn across his floor. She remembers his laughter. His frustration. His smile. How shy he used to be. How his eyes softened for the slightest moment when he pulled his jacket tight over her shoulders.

And then she thinks of all these other things about him. Like the frown pulling his brows whenever he worried for Wangmin. Or how he offered to run errands for Mei's parents at night, like picking up over-the-counter drugs from the auntie down the block or washing dishes. Or how he bought golden pears to ease the tension after a bad argument.

And suddenly she can't stop thinking of him. Of how he accompanied her to and from the hospital. How he smiled so warmly at the crinkle of her mom's eyes and her weary jokes. How he sat with Mei's dad on a quiet evening. How he brushed tear-soaked hair out of Mei's eyes in the hospital stairway and brought her tissues and water when she couldn't stop ugly-crying. How his soft voice stirred her awake when they reached their stop on the subway train. How he sought people out, looked after them, hoped in them, giving them so many chances, like all the nights he'd urged her to come home early from Lijun's place.

In the haze of memories, her gaze bumps across a scrunchie lying on his desk.

She frowns, takes it into her hands. It's white, now faded into a kind of ivory-yellow. Small, as if for a child. She stretches it, then slips it onto her wrist. The echo of their laughter as children sings into her ears. I'll marry you, she remembers saying.

Her eyes sting.

I promise.

Her mind spins. Before she knows what she's doing, she's patting her pockets for her phone. Seconds later, it's in her trembling hands, the screen coming alive in the dark. Contact names fly past her.

Wen.

She doesn't stop. She just dials.

For what seems like an eternity, the call goes on, its dragging beat a stark contrast to her pounding heart. She bites her nails. Short of breath. She's not entirely sure what she's doing. But that ghost of a memory has returned, resurfaced as a new voice that's bolder, stronger, more insistent. I want...

"Mei?"

She freezes. The voice is lower. Puzzled. "Wangmin?"

"Hey." It carries surprise, and it's deeper, more mature. She hasn't talked to Wangmin in ages, sure that Lijun told him terrible things. But he sounds only pleasant. "I haven't heard from you in a while."

"Yeah." She swallows. "Why do you..."

"...have Wen's phone? I don't, really. It was just lying on the table. He's in his room."

Her mouth feels clumsy. "Okay."

"Look, I hate to say this, but can you call back later? Wen's busy right now."

"Sure. Yeah." She scrambles for a joke to hide her disappointment. "So schools in Kowloon are tougher, huh?"

"Uh..." Wangmin laughs--it's a breath of a laugh, the type he uses when he's uncomfortable. "Yeah, I'm not supposed to say this but...he's with a girl."

The words hit her like cold water in the face. "Oh."

"I'll tell him you called, thou--"

"No, no, no, it's okay," she says quickly. "Um, I'll just call him some other time. Or meet him."

Wangmin hesitates but gives in, never one to think much. "For sure. Look, Mei, I'm sorry we never said goodbye to you before moving. It's just Wen couldn't handle the situation with Mochou and school and..."

Her mouth feels like a machine. "It's really nothing, don't--"

"You should visit, Mei. Wen's been so unhappy. I think it'd help if he saw you even--"

"I don't think that's a--"

"--if he's too much of a wuss to show it. I mean, this girl...what he's in right now reminds me of how I was a few years ago. Just fucking around, you know, and she treats him like absolute shit. But anyways. I miss seeing you around, Mei. Visit."

She lowers her head, realizes her cheeks are wet and wipes them hastily. "I'll think about it."

"Mhm. Well, let me know."

"Yeah."

The call ends. She stares at her own reflection in the dark screen. It would be so easy, she thinks, to ask for Wen and Wangmin's address and seek them out. Rekindle something.

But how much of a hypocrite would she be, demanding that Wen listen to her after she spent years with Lijun neglecting him?