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cw: discussion of past child abuse, toxic family dynamics, & current racist comments on social media.
Most of the time, Lianli felt perfectly content to ignore the fact that Huang Zhìháo had ever existed. He’d left Boston behind when he’d moved down to Destiny City with Hayden. He’d left his old house key and no means of contacting him. All he’d left for anybody was a letter for Xiùyīng, his da-jie, explaining that he considered none of this—none of the reasons he needed to get out of there and away from the utter nuclear s**t-show that fate had forced them to call a family—her fault. She’d always done her best for him, her unsatisfying perpetual ******** er-di. Tried to protect him from their parents’ garbage as much as she could’ve done. Encouraged him to be himself, even if Xiǎo Yùlán and Huáng Yìchéng would never appreciate that.
Most of the time, things worked out alright, ignoring Zhìháo or the fact that he’d existed……but other times, one of Liánlí’s old videos—no, one of Zhìháo’s old videos; his, and not Liánlí’s—had gotten resurrected and started going viral on TikTok.
It had been one of the first things staring Liánlí in the face on his For You Page this morning, when he’d opened up the app to post a video with some new music he’d been working on over clips of Táotáo. Specifically, the old clip had come from Zhihao’s old Youtube account (for which Liánlí still had all the login information, though he hadn’t used it in about five years; at that, he’d only logged in to change the password). Taken wildly out of context, the clip featured Zhìháo, sitting in his and Hayden’s old dorm in Wigglesworth not long after his 17th birthday, going off about some argument he’d had with his father. To Liánlí personally, the content felt more hilarious than anyone resharing the clip on Tiktok seemed to realize. Zhìháo had gone down that road while gabbing on and on, for the dozenth or so time, about why Santana Lopez off Glee was the most important character and had done nothing wrong ever, especially not when she’d slapped Finn Hudson across the face after he’d gotten her outed.
Earlier, Hayden had told Liánlí to stop looking at the clip, to stop watching the remixes, to stop subjecting himself to every video of some white teenager badly lip-synching along with him. Although he’d acknowledged the good advice here, Liánlí hadn’t listened.
Most of the people passing the clip around Tiktok seemed to regard Zhìháo as an object of pity. Some thought they were being funny with comments to the tune of guys like him make me understand homophobia, as if people hadn’t said worse back when Zhìháo had first posted the video. Plenty took the chance to spew racist s**t about “Asian parents” this and “Americans would never” as if Huáng Yìchéng’s Chinese heritage had ever had anything to do with him deciding that the best ways to discipline his offspring involved tugged hair and thrown books (literal), regular sneers about how someone’s stupidity defied description or how he lacked a proper response to another’s selfishness in thinking they hadn’t deserved to get outed to the family before they’d been ready for it, and locking the children into various enclosed spaces around the house.
As if one of the people who’d understood best hadn’t been Hayden, whiter than Elmer’s glue, who’d been taken in by his grandparents because his parents and Huáng Yìchéng would’ve gotten along great.
Watching those comments roll in felt like slime against Lìanlí’s skin.
Keeping his mouth shut—well, keeping his fingers to himself—felt like he wanted to scratch his skin clean off.
He understood Hayden’s point about staying the ******** out of things, if he really didn’t want any of Zhìháo’s old videos catching up to him, getting Liánlí connected to who he used to be in the minds of people other than himself and Hayden. He completely got it, the concept that he needed to put all of this out of sight and out of mind.
Liánlí simply couldn’t deal with it, quietly pretending he didn’t know damn well that people were saying things, things that they could connect to him, however much he’d worked to make that unlikely.
He couldn’t be around his computer and his recording equipment right now. Waiting and telling himself not to get on social media made his apartment walls close in around him like a coffin, made his rib-cage threaten to impale his lungs from clinging too tightly.
So what if it was late? Desperately, Liánlí needed fresh ******** air.
wc: 750.
