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 Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2023 3:18 pm
Quote: The Meteor Shower (3) : It wouldn’t be a star festival without a meteor shower! Right on time, a beautiful array of shooting stars graces the night sky. This time of year is unnaturally clear and it’s incredibly easy to see the stars. Most meteor fragments appear to be little white or yellow lights streaming across the sky, but if you watch closely enough you may find that some of them seem to be a whole rainbow of colors. The scientists have reported that it’s just different components burning up as they enter the atmosphere, but there’s something undeniably magical about it.
…………What even would act like catnip for the Negaverse’s assorted agents running around the city? Kaifeng didn’t know, and honestly, the question was probably best saved for some other time.
Either way, humming provided him a nice balance—he thought—between the need to stay as safe as possible and his own aversion to things being quiet. The humming made noise, so Kāifēng’s mind would not wander back into places where it did not belong, such as certain hallway closets in Boston that had never been any place for children. But the humming did not make so much noise as singing, so hopefully, it would be safer for Kaifeng and less likely to attract any notice from potential malefactors.
Selenga was also supposed to do that, tonight. This particular city park sat nearish to his and Qi-jie’s place, and he and Kaifeng were supposed to meet up by the old weeping willow in the center of the park. From there, they could patrol together, keep each other safe so Qi-jie wouldn’t need to worry so much about hir favorite cousin getting himself stabbed again, or hir husband getting energy-drained and attacked by some very rude Dark Mirror senshi (not the one Encke-ge and Pendour-jiejie were friends with, Kaifeng felt pretty certain, but still, one of his teammates and one very much in need of a talking-to about their bad behavior).
Taking his civilian phone out of his subspace, Kaifeng checked the time (almost time to meet Selenga! he needed to get moving to their spot!)—and as he went to put it back in the safe holding spot, he happened to glance up. Ohhhh, it seemed to have started raining again, but not water, this time. No, instead of actual raindrops, a rainbow of meteors came raining down from the sky. For a moment, Kaifeng stood there entranced, but fortunately, the sound of somebody’s dog barking roused him back around into the present moment.
Spirits high, Kaifeng hopped down into an alley and landed on a dumpster. Another hop down, then he darted across the street, into the park, and over toward the willow tree. All the way, he kept humming, Belle Marie Antoinette—love the pearls! They’ll make a great tourniquet!……
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Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2023 4:00 pm
Before coming out to patrol, Ming had dinner with his wifesband. There wasn't much he could do to lie and get out of it—say he would get food with Lianli on their patrol—because it would be too easy to get accidentally checked on that, if Qiye asked hir cousin how the night went and Lianli didn't mention dinner at all. At least he was able to rush out after dinner, giving Qiye a kiss and a promise to come home safely, and vomit in an alley not far from home. He grimaced, wiping the back of his mouth with his hand and powering up into Selenga. He took his toothpaste tablet and mini brush from the subspace and cleaned up quickly so that he wouldn't have the taste in his mouth—he would not make that mistake again, in case he ran into that awful Dark Mirror Senshi again. A shiver ran down his spine at the thought and he moved along quickly, heading to the willow tree. The moment he spotted Kaifeng, he waved. "Hey, gege," he greeted as they got close. "No trouble getting here, I hope?"
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Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2023 4:15 pm
As he rocked up to the weeping willow and spotted Selenga there, Kaifeng grinned. “No trouble at all,” he confirmed, slipping his folding fan out of the sash around his waist. Even though said fan was primarily meant to serve as a weapon, the heated air had yet to cool down any from how much sunshine they’d had today—understandable, since the liminal purples and blues of twilight surrounded them, but night had not yet fallen properly—so, for the moment, Kaifeng didn’t mind using the fan as an actual fan.
After giving himself a little breeze, he angled the fan toward Selenga and shared some nice fanning with him as well. “Dunno what it is about parks in this city,” he said pensively, looking around. He couldn’t feel any auras besides himself and Selenga, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t show up. “But I swear, so much of the trouble I ever run into, it’s in some city park? Like, you’ll find Negaverse officers draining people, youma trying to eat people or whatever they do—” Kaifeng, admittedly, was still a little bit ignorant as to what youma actually did, aside from causing problems and making a mess. “—and Dark Mirror senshi whose parents clearly didn’t teach them any manners.
“Still……” Using his free hand, Kaifeng gestured to the sky with a smile (utterly ignorant to anything that Ming-er might have done to himself, or that he was at all struggling with anything). “Couldn’t ask for a nicer omen than a rainbow meteor shower. Shall we?”
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Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2023 4:38 pm
Selenga refrained from laughing when Kaifeng used his fan weapon as an actual fan—mostly because, as he hoped would happen, Kaifeng spun it towards him to give him a little relief from the heat as well. "Thanks," he said, spinning his lotus around his fingers. "This doesn't exactly do much, heh. Pretty, though." He hummed in agreement, looking up at the sky in surprise. Wow, that was pretty. Oh, he hoped Qiye looked outside tonight. The sky was so beautiful, streaked with the rainbow meteors. He felt halfway curious about the cause, but ultimately, did not care all that much, given that it seemed pretty harmless and it was probably something magical that wouldn't be explained anyway. It did remind him that he knew so little about this magical world he'd been thrust into. Well, maybe he'd ask Feng-gege some questions as they walked around. "What do you think my Wonder will look like? I looked it up online; it's a river somewhere in Mongolia."
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Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2023 6:59 pm
“Mn, very pretty,” Kaifeng agreed about Selenga’s lotus blossom. In addition to being quite pretty, the flower suited him in plenty of other ways—not least of which was the way that Ming-er’s family name literally meant “lotus.” Still, the way that his flower didn’t do much gave Kāifēng some pause to think (which he used to look around the park as they walked, to see that nothing seemed out of order at the moment).
“I think our little trinkets will get more powerful, the more we keep at things,” he said after pondering it for a few moments. “Like the Cosmos Knight who was at the battle where I got stabbed? He had a neat-looking cane. And Pendour-jiejie has an ocarina, which doesn’t seem like a very strong weapon? But the magic she channels with it is very powerful. Then, this Saturn-gege, Michel? Ran into him during a thunderstorm recently. He’s got a whole staff shaped like a giant clock-hand. So……I think we just have to keep at it, even if it’s difficult right now, y’know? But hard work will yield nice rewards.
“Sort of like the ******** gym,” Kaifeng acquiesced with an overly dramatic sigh and more than his fair share of whining. The entire premise at the heart of his argument was, not to put too fine a point on it, ******** ridiculous. All of what he and Hayden had been doing at the gym, practically every day since getting a doctor’s clearance that it wouldn’t mess up Liánlí’s stab wound? That was mostly Liánlí’s fault. Even after acknowledging that maybe Hayden had had a point or ten during the past almost-thirteen years that he’d spent telling Liánlí that cardio, swimming, and yoga would only do so much for him, Liánlí had not necessarily needed to ask for Hayden’s help. He could have gotten an actual trainer or worked at learning things off the Internet on his own.
But he had asked for Hayden’s help. So, he really had no grounds for whining about any of it, and Kāifēng knew that. Still, though……that run-in with the Dark Mirror senshi who’d drained him had upset Selenga pretty badly. Even if he seemed to be in good spirits today, Kāifēng wanted to offer Selenga something fun and silly to try and make him laugh. And hey, maybe show him that it was okay to not know everything yet, because Kāifēng didn’t know everything either.
“Like, honestly? Hayden’s sooooooo mean to me at the gym,” Kāifēng said in the most needlessly piteous voice he could manage, pouting at Selenga like an extremely wounded puppy and meaning exactly none of this. Not least since Hayden had traded numbers with Qi-jie and Ming-er, so if they wanted, they could all text each other to confirm that Liánlí/Kāifēng was being ridiculous and figure out why. “You remember all those, like, evaluation tests from gym classes? Did you have to do anything like that? Like, starting and ending each semester with s**t like a timed mile-run, how many push-ups and sit-ups and whatever can you do in X-much time, and so on? All of that?”
Siiiiiiiighing like the Most Deeply Aggrieved balloon full of hot air, Kāifēng held up one of his arms. To help illustrate the point of his feigned fragility, he let his wrist go limp and his hand flop forward (even though this was more affected than his whining; as a musician, he always dutifully tended his hands and wrists, trying to keep them in the best condition he could). Anything to help Selenga—an actual athlete who, Kāifēng was certain, took very good care of himself and his body—feel like he had several legs up on someone (which, in Kāifēng’s mind, Selenga almost certainly did), so he might feel better about his potential as a Knight of Ida. One nasty incident with one rude loudmouth Dark Mirror senshi did not make Selenga a failure as a Knight, and Kāifēng would not stand for his cousin-in-law thinking of himself like that.
“Nyehhhhh, it was so embarrassing,” Kāifēng went on, squishing his face between his hands like a teenager who’d gotten called out on their not-so-secret crush. “I mean, my mile-run time was great, actually? I haven’t timed it since I started undergrad and got away from high school gym class forever; I thought Hayden was absolutely shitting me with the time. But all the other numbers that Hayden subjected me to getting for him, though?”
Stretching his arms over his head (and working out a knot of tension in his back while he was at it), Kāifēng made a hyper-exaggerated, piteous moaning sound. “Absolutely pathetic, Leng-di. Simply the most in absolute pathetic-ness. And you know, I keep journals?” Actually, it occurred to him as soon as he said so, there was a strong chance that Selenga didn’t know that. “Well, if you didn’t know? Now, you do. Mostly they’re dream journals that I keep, but a lot of real life stuff gets written down in them too, as part of the self-analysis part of dream-journaling?
“And I went back to check some of the ones I kept in high school after Hayden was soooooo mean to me with his fitness test nonsense, right?” Kaifeng paused so he could put on the silliest, sparkly-eyes-ing-est pouty face that he could manage. “Zhìháo did better than I did. At the beginning of his last year in high school, too. Not at the mile-run; his parents were bullshit about letting him do any cardio, so his time was garbage, there.”
Beneath the playful grin he flashed Selenga, beneath all the antics he was trying to welcome Selenga into tonight, Kāifēng did feel his heart twist at the mention of that. He remembered feeling like he’d never finish that mile-run, like he was lucky he didn’t pass out and die. But he wasn’t done playing up this ~*feeble and pathetic*~ schtick, so he snapped his face back into the wibbly pout that threatened to burst into dramatic, theatrical baby tears at a moment’s notice.
“Everything else, though?” He hmph’d, flourishing the wrist of his free hand, then pressing the back of that hand to his forehead as if he would swoon from ~*The Vapours*~ and simply die—just EXPIRE and outright PERISH, even!!!—of his own shame. “It was sooooooo humbling and embarrassing, okay? Zhìháo was, like? A hundred-twenty pounds heavier than I am now? And all his numbers at pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups, and all that? Sooooooo much better than mine. Humiliating, right? This b***h put in all that work losing weight and carving out the body I wanted? Only to get outdone by a fat fourteen-year-old, eeeeuuuuggggggh……”
As much as Kāifēng was hyping his upset over the situation up into the realm of nonsense, the base story had the benefit of being true: Hayden had kicked his a** with assorted fitness tests on their first gym day together, to absolutely pathetic results and a massive (well-earned, extremely well-deserved) “I told you so” from Hayden. Then, after licking his wounded ego and consoling himself with promises that at least he’d probably done better than Zhìháo ever had, Liánlí had gone home, dug up his old journals, and had his face sorely rubbed in the fact that, even at his highest weight, Zhìháo had actually quite soundly surpassed Liánlí at everything but the timed mile-run.
Moreover, Kāifēng had the benefit of a genuine heart to the story. Taking a deep breath, he folded his arms over his chest, then spoke more soberly and seriously: “So, like, obviously, I have a lot of work to do? And Hayden can be kind of a taskmaster about making sure I actually do any of it? Plus, he figured out what passcode I was using on my phone that week and set up daily calendar alerts telling me to eat so I can’t get wrapped up in something and forget? And when I was like ‘How do you know I won’t just turn them off,’ he was like ‘Because you may be the most ridiculous human I’ve ever met in my life but you don’t actually want to disappoint me or disrespect the work I’m doing to help you, and if you know that I’ll be very disappointed if you turn them off,’ and just……”
Kāifēng trailed off into yet another sigh, this one uncertain whether it wanted to be genuinely tired or dramatically exaggerated.
“But still,” he said, slipping easily back into an earnest mode, “it’s worth all the trouble so I can be a better Knight and not get myself killed or something, y’know? Hard work for good results. Same as we’re gonna see with our weapons if we keep working hard and getting stronger.”
Performance/hopefully motivational story-time hour finished, Kāifēng let his eyes drift back up to the sky and the rainbow of falling stars. “Uhhhh,” he said, cheeks flushing with genuine embarrassment, “what was Leng-di’s other question? I, uh.… I forgot? Sorry?”
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Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2023 9:00 pm
The more Kaifeng ranted about how unhealthy he was and how terrible he was at doing anything physical, the more a strange anger rose up in his chest. It gripped him hard and he bit the inside of his cheek to not go off immediately on him. The fact that Kaifeng had someone he could trust like this, that would be fully accurate and honest with him about how terrible his physical condition was, made him want to scream. Shouldn't Kaifeng be better than this? As he said, he'd done away with that fat fourteen year old, and looked quite fit for someone who was so apparently terribly out of shape. What kind of exaggeration was this, huh? Just to make Selenga feel better? Because Selenga himself was <******** fat, too heavy for Lianli to lift without being Kaifeng, who was stronger by virtue of ******** magical bullshit?His nails dug into his palms and he exhaled hard. He'd have to work harder, if Kaifeng was noticing these things about Selenga. He refused to lose his job. To be treated the way that Zhizhao had been, back then. "I only asked one question," he said a bit snappishly, "and you didn't even answer it." He frowned hard at the sky, stopping in his tracks. His throat burned with the words of an apology for being a brat, for acting like they were fifteen again, but they wouldn't come out for some reason. Maybe he didn't feel sorry. But then why— Why could he feel wetness on his face, on a clear sky night? Was he that sensitive? That... that jealous? That Kaifeng could just forget to eat so easily, yet for Selenga, it was impossible not to think about food all the time? To feel starved for it, to nearly break and to definitely break his diet multiple times, and need to punish himself for it?
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Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2023 11:12 pm
……Okay, that had not been the reaction that Kaifeng had wanted to hear.
For one thing, as his brain caught up to everything, Kaifeng realized that he’d been the only person laughing at his own antics throughout the entire performance, which?? No?? He was being silly? Just a silly lil’ guy? Specifically, he was Selenga’s silly lil’ cousin-in-law guy? But……Selenga wasn’t laughing.
Next, Selenga was snapping at him like a pissed off turtle. Like they were teenagers all over again, going off at each other in the middle of Qiye’s sweet sixteen. That?? But?? Things were supposed to be different now?? And Kaifeng didn’t want to guilt-trip anybody, but he could feel his eyes genuinely going wide and his smile falling into a pout of genuine upset because?? But?? Ming-er had told him that things were different now, right??
Before giving himself any time to question his own impulses, Kaifeng broke step with Selenga. He darted forward, trying to block his path so they could stop and ******** talk about this. ********. Selenga was crying.
Kaifeng’s eyes went wider still at that sight. His heart sank, twisting guiltily. His breath snagged in his throat and didn’t feel like it wanted to come unstuck. Even standing nearly a foot taller than Selenga, Kaifeng felt about two inches tall right now.
Because seeing those tears, seeing Selenga’s face contorted like it was, it made him feel like Zhìháo in all of the worst possible ways. Like the Zhìháo who snapped and bit and lashed out at Ming-er because he was hurting and scared and couldn’t lash out at anybody else. The Zhìháo who punched Ming-er in the face and refused to say more than “I’m sorry that Ming-er believes he deserves an apology.” The Zhìháo who would have looked at Ming-er crying like this, because of something that Zhìháo had said, and then insisted that he’d done nothing wrong because Ming-er deserved it.
Zhìháo (extremely derogatory).
“Hey,” Kaifeng said gently, earnestly, desperately needing to be better than the selfish idiot loser who he’d been before. “Selenga, what’s wrong? I just…I was picking on myself? Like, all of it was true, but……with the exaggerating—it’s me picking on me, so it’s okay to laugh? That was all I meant, are—are you okay?” As soon as Kaifeng said that, he kinda hated himself for asking when the answer was OBVIOUSLY NOT, YOU ******** MORON. “What’s wrong? What did I do?”
Left unspoken, but still deeply felt: the follow-up question, “What can I do to apologize and fix it?”
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Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2023 11:40 pm
When he looked back down and realized that Kaifeng had placed himself in front of Selenga, he bit his lip hard, clamping down on the impulse to be mean again. Kaifeng was trying to apologize. He probably didn't even know what he'd done wrong. He couldn't get caught. He couldn't. If Kaifeng had no clue, Selenga wouldn't give him any. "You...." He exhaled. "Nothing. It's just..." He wanted to scream. Wanted to shove at Kaifeng and ask him where the ******** he got off. Wanted to stomp off and never talk to him again. But that was all overreacting, he knew. <********, he really needed to go puke. He knew it would make him feel better, give him clarity, but that would just expose him. He'd been lucky so far, anything else he pulled with puking in front of Kaifeng at this point would definitely be categorized as suspicious. But talking up how he'd done all that work only to be outdone by the fat fourteen year old he'd been previously, working hard to obtain the body he wanted, just felt like such a ******** slap in the face to Selenga, and he didn't know how to come down from this agitation. "Don't talk about yourself like that," he finally growled out. "You deserve to be nicer to yourself. And your past self deserves that gentleness, too. If it weren't for him, you wouldn't be here." There. That should be enough to get Kaifeng off his case, right? The anger still simmered beneath the surface, but he didn't want to acknowledge it. He couldn't. If he did, he might slip and ruin everything.
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Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2023 12:51 pm
That……didn’t really sound like the actual explanation. Not to Kaifeng, at least.
Not at first.
At first, what Selenga said sounded like an obvious lie. Like Selenga reaching for something to cover up what was really going on for him. Like Selenga playing this situation exactly as well as he played a weiqi board and shoving Kaifeng’s face into something he couldn’t possibly dispute, not without putting himself in the position to either argue something nobody else would side with him on, or do the exact opposite of what Selenga was asking and undermine the entire apology.
For example, Kaifeng could’ve pointed out “Zhìháo literally punched Ming-er in the mouth and refused to apologize, in what ******** universe does that borderline feral closet-gremlin deserve any gentleness, sympathy, or whatever the ******** you think you’re going on about”—which, while completely true, was not something most people would want to be caught agreeing with because it might be considered rude. Would’ve technically fulfilled both points of contention here, too. Would’ve been harsh and cruel about Zhìháo when Selenga had told Kaifeng specifically not to do that. Which, in turn, would’ve undercut the ostensibly contrition by a considerable amount.
But……all of that, it wasn’t just like Selenga to be that way.
Zhìháo’s parents? Sure. His ******** grandparents? Absolutely. Qiang-er Qiang-ge Da-ge QIANG-ER……? Yeah, he could play those kinds of wicked b*****d head-games when he wanted to. But Selenga……?
No way. Absolutely not. No, sir.
Even when they’d been teenage idiots with a wicked force of pain and anger, lashing out for days and picking each other for it because they couldn’t stand each other? Even when Selenga had thought to judge everybody else from behind his family’s vermillion gates and dismiss them as fish eyes instead of pearls? Even back then, Selenga hadn’t ever played those kinds of games with people; he’d just openly owned the fact that he’d been a ******** p***k.
All of which meant that……Selenga had to be getting straight with him. Which, no, did not make a damn bit of sense to Kaifeng, as he stood before Selenga—wide-eyed and fidgeting with his fan, turning it over and over and over in his hands as he turned Selenga’s words over and over and over in his mind—but…… Whether or not Kaifeng entirely understood the connection here, something about Kaifeng picking on himself had to have somehow hurt Selenga. Maybe……maybe it reminded him too much of how he’d been a bully when they were younger? Had Selenga ever said anything to Zhìháo like Kaifeng had said in his performance? Like, maybe he had? They’d argued and snapped at each other so many times before, though, and under the stress of the present moment, Kaifeng didn’t remember for the life of him whether or not Selenga had actually ever said anything like that to him?
Maybe he was trying to be gentler to himself and Kaifeng was ******** that up for him, making everything that much harder by doing the exact opposite and talking about himself like a joke?
Maybe a lot of things—but maybe all of the “maybe”s didn’t really matter, not right this moment.
“Well, this is all gawn tuh frickin’ Chelzea,” Kaifeng said, flipping his fan open again, then closed again, then slipping back into turning it over and over and over.
Even without Hayden around to thwap his shoulder, hiss “Southie” at him, and remind him that he sounded like some beat and basic reject from a New Kids On The Block tribute band, Kaifeng heard that nauseating, humiliating accent rise up from the depths to which he usually smothered it. Kaifeng decided that he didn’t care………well. He didn’t care in a way where he absolutely cared, because talking like this sounded <******** stupid—more accurately, sounded Zhìháo (extremely derogatory)—but no matter how much he hated it and did not want to sound like this, Kaifeng didn’t currently have the option of caring because he had to say <******** something.
Because he couldn’t apologize if he didn’t start <******** somewhere. Because Selenga was hurting, and he deserved more from Kaifeng than his idiot cousin-in-law standing quietly in front of him, playing around with his folding fan for want of something to do with his hands, and looking wounded as if he wasn’t clearly and obviously The ******** in this situation. Because the ambient noise of the city wasn’t enough to make the silence between him and Selenga stop shredding his nerves and squeezing in around his throat like it wanted to throttle him.
“Selenga, I—I’m sawry,” he went on, internally cringing at both the pronunciation and that accursed, Bostonian inflection that angled itself upward without completely sounding like a question. But if Kaifeng focused on reining his diction, he wouldn’t get any proper apologies out, and Selenga would probably (rightfully) storm off, thoroughly sick and done with Kaifeng and his garbage. With a small shake of the head, gripping his fan so tightly that it dug into his fingers, Kaifeng said, “I didn’ mean—nawt a single—nunna that, I swear.”
He kinda wanted to punch himself for not only the unnecessary upward inflection, but also letting himself drop the R and pronounce the last word like “sweah” instead of saying it like somebody who knew how to speak ******** English in a way agreed upon by anybody who didn’t come from ******** Boston. But too much violence—even, or perhaps especially, if it was self-inflicted violence—might have undercut the sincerity of the apology as much as Kaifeng failing to say anything because he decided to obsess about his accent instead of getting the words said. Even so, Kaifeng’s impulses screeched like tires squealing to a stop that wouldn’t come, pricked at him to stop holding them back so much when really, they could offer him relief like nothing else could do.
Kaifeng took a deep breath. Slapped his own cheek. No theatrical artifice of overselling the pain or wailing about how badly he wanted Selenga to please, be okay and please, let him help and please, forgive Kaifeng for shooting off at the mouth so much.
Just a crack of skin on skin, and Kaifeng’s face briefly turning away, pushed there by the impact.
But he looked back to Selenga before telling him, “What I said? I didn’ mean it like any’uh that about nawt bein’ gentle with myself. Nawt. One. Bit. I jes’ thought……aftah everythin’ with that Dahk Meeruh senshi last time?” Maybe he’d believe it more if you could say “Dark Mirror senshi” like a normal person who knows how to pronounce the letter “R,” Kaifeng internally hissed at himself, but pushed the thought aside to deal with later. Or maybe never. He’d see how he felt. “I jes’ thought……I didn’ mind bein’ the joke—or makin’ the joke outta myself—if it, I dunno, helped? ‘Cuz you wuz—you were—” He thwapped his cheek again, but lighter and somewhat more playfully this time, in a burst of short, feather-light little bats. “Ugh! I swear, if I could slap the ********’ Southie outta my ********’ mouth…”
The sigh that burst out of Kaifeng next was more dramatic than he liked. But this was also the longest he’d allowed himself to talk like this without being s**t-faced in, uh………a while. A pretty long ******** while.
At least his pouty face at Selenga remained earnest. “I’m sawry. I nevuh meant t’hurt you or upset you by makin’ a joke outta myself. An’ even that? That all, I meant as ‘Hahd wuhk is impaw’tent an’ wuhth it in the end’?” <******** sakes. “Hard work is important and worth it in the end.” You know how to pronounce the letter “R,” Kaifeng! It’s not like it’s that ******** difficult! “An’ maybe I don’ get why’s it upset you so much? But I don’ need tuh. An’…”
In a brief instant—just a flash—his lips pursed themselves of their own accord. Nominally, acquiescing that maybe Selenga had a point sounded so easy in theory? But not when the point was—“Maybe y’do have a point about me nawt bein’ kind enough to Zhìháo, it……” Kaifeng huffed, feeling very much like a disobedient kitten who was getting punished with a bath-time he Did Not Want. “……It’s cawmplicated. But y’didn’ deserve t’ge all caught up in it like I gotcha caught up in it by runnin’ off my damn mouth.”
And if Kaifeng didn’t stop. ********. talking. like he’d just rolled out of the gutter outside Midway Café back up in the JP, he was gonna ******** strangle himself.
“It’s—y’don’ hafta fuhgive me yet if y’don’ wanna,” he said, following an impulse that promised to maybe nick two vultures with one arrow. “But……would some tea help? Or, like, some space? There’s a cawffee-shop right ovah there. I can—y’know—run ovah there, get yuh some tea, give yuh some room t’breathe……? If y’want?”
And hopefully get back to talking like a normal ******** person instead of some wasted, Southie guttersnipe by the time I get back.
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Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2023 8:37 pm
Ah, s**t. Selenga had actually gotten Kaifeng upset. That wasn't supposed to happen. He swallowed. He couldn't believe Kaifeng had completely bought the lie—it really wasn't like Selenga was known for being good at lying, either—quite the opposite, really. It made him feel worse. Because now he was actually good at lying. Covering up for his stupid problems by making up new ones. Even if there was a grain of truth in there, that Lianli being mean to Zhihao for existing hurt, it was a small grain and not a very affective one. He didn't want to do this anymore. The lies piled up and up and up and now Kaifeng was upset and apologizing for something completely unfair. He'd worked so hard on not being a jerk, and yet, he still managed to pull something like this. He needed to stop. He couldn't stop. Someone had to make money, and Qiye deserved to have the housespouse life that he'd dreamed of for so long. "Hey," he said softly, or tried to, ignoring the way his voice cracked as he stepped forward and folded Kaifeng into a hug. "No, it's okay. You don't need to say anything like that. I just..." He took a deep breath. "Think we need to be kinder to who we were when we were fifteen, you know? We were fifteen, we didn't know anything. We were hurting in ways we didn't understand. It's better now." At least this was true. Not what he'd been talking about a minute ago, but it was true. "Tea sounds nice."
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Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2023 11:41 pm
The hug caught Kaifeng entirely off his guard, but he returned it without hesitation or reservation. Whatever all was really happening right here and now—and truly, Kaifeng was still very fuzzy on, uh, most of the details and the logical connections that he felt like he should have gotten—both of them had gotten themselves some flavor of upset right now. Kaifeng wanted the hug for himself as much as he wanted to comfort Selenga, to reassure Selenga that it was okay—or at least, if some things weren’t okay right now, then they would be, because they could make them okay—and to reassure Selenga that Kaifeng knew that he, Selenga, was different now.
“Yeah, yer righ’,” Kaifeng acquiesced, giving Selenga a gentle squeeze. “And for the tea? There’s a bench ovah there. Why don’ you go sit and I’ll go fetch? Y’want chammahmiel? Or something else?”
Whatever Selenga did while Kaifeng ducked into an alley, powered down into Lianli, and went for the tea………well. Kaifeng-Lianli cared about whatever Selenga was getting up to? Both in general—because Selenga was family and what good was a magical knight who couldn’t keep their family safe—and because of the specific situation tonight? But as Lianli waited in line at the coffee-shop, forcing himself to breathe deeply and mentally reminding himself of all the rules he’d worked to hard to drill into his impenetrable, Southie guttersnipe skull (R’s are important; try pronouncing them properly.…… You don’t need to turn O’s into AW sounds; it’s okay to let them be themselves.…… Stop doing that upward inflection; even if people can’t peg it as a Southie Thing, they know that it sounds ******** weird.…… PaRrrrk the caRrrr on HaRrrrvaRrrr YaRrrrd.……)?
As Lianli rocked back and forth on his feet, from heel to ball, no longer humming but instead hitting his brain with proper diction like Catholic school nuns whacking knuckles with their rulers, he couldn’t help thinking about the whole situation that he’d unwittingly started tonight with Selenga.… Part of it, he thought, maybe might have been something to take up with his doctor during his quarterly med review appointment next week. Lianli’s normal, extended-release Adderalls had reliably worked wonders for him since he’d first gotten diagnosed and properly medicated: sixteen years old, a Harvard freshman, who nearly died from shock when he got an email to meet with a professor instead of his TA because that professor had looked at one of his essays for the class and somehow smelled the ADHD in his wandering thought processes and mile-long footnote-commentary.
But his current dose had gotten drawn up before all of the magical knight business had started, and before Lianli had needed to worry about impulse control while patrolling in the hours after his Adderall had worn off. So……maybe? There was something to be done there? Maybe some kind of smaller, more immediate release dose that could help even him out somewhat while he was trying to Do Kaifeng Things? And who knew—maybe it could’ve helped him get stabbed less often, too? (Well. In fairness to himself, he’d still only gotten stabbed the one time? But he also got the sense that, in Ming-er’s, Qi-jie’s, and Hay-Hay’s minds, one round of Negaverse-related stabbification was probably more than enough?)
On the other hand, though……Selenga/Ming-er really did have a point. Lianli didn’t want to admit that his cousin-in-law had a point, because the most obvious response to said point nagged at his mind in the most obnoxious fashion, teasing at him because the little b***h knew that he’d need to acknowledge it at some point. For all Lianli generally felt justified in not being very kind to Zhìháo—because seriously! Zhìháo was dead! gone!! and everybody was better off for that!!! nobody missed him!!!! why would they, honestly? Zhìháo was a rancid, arrogant little brat who lashed out at people who didn’t deserve it and didn’t do anything good for anybody, really!!!—well……if not being retroactively kind to Zhìháo was going to hurt Lianli’s Ming-lenga in this way, then……?
Still two spots off from the front of the line, Lianli sighed. He made a point of only ever treating therapy like exactly what it was—namely: a necessary evil to get his Adderall because his doctor refused to prescribe ADHD meds without patients regularly seeing a therapist—but if the other option was hurting Ming-er………eeeeugh.
Once he had the tea in-hand—chamomile for Selenga and green tea for himself—Lianli powered up again in the same alley where he’d powered down. Making his way back over to the bench where he’d left Selenga, Kaifeng hummed a new tune, one that he hadn’t gotten sick of yet, even if a lot of the world seemingly had: Seven-foot frame! Rats along his back! When he calls your name, it all fades to black! Yeah, he sees your dreams and feasts on your screams……
He only paused along the way because he spotted a star-charm in the grass: sparkly and shiny like all the others, but this one came in a rainbow gradient, and ohhhh, Kaifeng simply had to keep it, please and thank you.
For a long moment after handing over the large cup of steeping chamomile tea and sitting down, Kaifeng said nothing, just bowed his head and kept humming (We don’t talk about Bruno, no, no, noooo! We don’t talk about Brunooooo~!)—but before he could let himself chicken out, Kaifeng blurted out (blessedly free of his godawful Boston dumpster fire accent), “Thank you.…… Know Leng-di said this Kaifeng didn’t need to apologize? But I…… I think I needed to hear it? What you said about it all? And, uh.”
Pausing and pursing his lips, Kaifeng made a grumbly, discontented sound. A large part of him really didn’t want to admit this, but he probably needed to: “My doctor, right? She won’t write my scripts for my ADHD meds if I don’t see a therapist regularly? But I’ve been going to the same one since Hay-Hay and I first moved here, and it’s not as if I’ve gotten nothing out of it? I just……treat the appointments as a necessary evil to get my meds instead of really taking them seriously—which Hay-Hay is regularly on my case about, and in telling you, I fully expect that you and Qi-jie are gonna join him in that—rightfully so, if you do, I just……”
Kaifeng siiiiiiiighed, but at least he refrained from rolling his eyes. “I really, really like who I am now. I like the ways I’ve changed from when we were stupid teenagers, and I like not being angry and miserable and horrid all the time. And it’s been long enough that it doesn’t feel weird to like myself anymore. Significantly weirder for me to feel down on myself, like the big, pouty baby sulk-fest I actually had about Hay-Hay’s ‘let’s see what we’re working with’ tests? Sure, I was laughing about that, but it was upsetting to know that I did badly on them, hope I’d get some consolation out of doing better than Zhìháo at fourteen, and then not getting it. Hay-Hay had to deal with me moping in the dark with Táotáo and a sad playlist on ‘cause it wasn’t ******** fair, I mean?”
Shrugging petulantly, Kaifeng wrinkled his nose and made a big pouty baby face at Selenga. “The logic seemed really simple to me, right? I weigh a lot less now than Zhìháo did then. I worked really hard for that. Sure, some of it was just getting away from ******** Huang Yicheng and Xiao Yulan, and their stupid-a**, paranoid, ******** garbage about ‘Oh, Zhìháo must. always. eat everything we say, even if he’s full, even if he gets sick from it, even though he’s gaining, like, a lot of weight and it makes him cry even without all the bullying he gets at school about it, which only makes everything that much worse. Oh, oh, if Zhìháo doesn’t do this, then he is an arrogant, disobedient child who doesn’t respect his parents, and doesn’t love his siblings, and obviously wants somebody from the DCF to come take him and his siblings away to a terrible, horrible foster home. We’ve told you what happens in foster homes, haven’t we?’
“But just not getting all that flack wasn’t enough. And I run every day. I swim regularly. I do yoga. And I lost weight, so it just seemed obvious that I should’ve done better than Zhìháo……but I didn’t.” He blew an exceptionally disheartened raspberry at nothing in particular. “So, we got back from the gym, and after I got a shower, Hay-Hay had to deal with me moping about all that. Which he let me do for a while, but then it was all kinds of ‘Oh, not to say I told you so, but yeah, I totally did. This is what happens when you lose weight without keeping up your muscle tone. But it’s not the end of the world, so nyeh nyeh nyeh, you have until I’m done making us dinner, you feral spice-goblin. Then, you’re gonna be done moping because I said so, and we’ll talk about where to go from here.’”
Which was………a lot more babbling than Kaifeng had meant to throw out there at Selenga. Which really emphasized, for Kaifeng at least, that he really needed to talk to his doctor and figure out something to do with his Adderall so he wouldn’t be quite as all-over-the-place while working the night-shift at the magical knight job. “Anyway,” Kaifeng said, “my point is that……you were right. To call me out. On not……being nice……y’know. To Zhìháo. And it’s……maybe kind of a bigger mess than I really wanted to admit. Which means I probably needed to hear you say it. So………thank you. For caring about me enough to be so honest instead of just letting me have my way all the time.”
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Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2023 9:48 pm
Selenga wasn't sure they should stay powered up to get tea, but... if Kaifeng didn't think they should power down, maybe he should just follow suit. He sat down, stewing in his thoughts—he'd lied to Kaifeng, and he felt awful about it, but he had to protect himself. And his lie... it had affected Kaifeng, somehow, and he felt even more awful about that! It was supposed to be something they could both just move on from quickly, but... He wanted to groan, roll his eyes, throw his head back, maybe flap his hands. Something to shake the emotional build up out of himself. But he didn't need to draw any extra attention to himself, so he stayed quiet and attempted some deep breathing. "Oh, I'm in favor of proper therapy, you dolt," he said when Kaifeng came back and started talking. He wrapped his hands around the tea cup and let the warmth burn his hands—the best punishment he could take in that moment for making Kaifeng feel so bad he felt like he owed Selenga an explanation. An Explanation, capital E, because what the ******** was wrong with Kaifeng's parents? He swallowed, then took a hasty sip of hot tea to cover his blatant shock at being called honest.Hah. Yeah, right. If Selenga had been honest, they wouldn't be having this conversation. Kaifeng would still... be committed to hating himself. And Selenga would be in hot water like the tea leaves if he'd told the truth—losing his job and all that comes with admitting to someone who cares about you that you have an eating disorder. "You're a good person, gege. Of course you needed to hear that," he said, throat burning not from the hot tea but from piling on top of the lies. "Care about yourself. All your selves. I'm sure future you will have gripes about now you, and would you want him to be a huge d**k about it, or try to help? I think Zhihao deserved more kindness in his life back then. More hatred would have just made him feel worse, no?" Maybe what he was saying now wasn't exactly lies, he did believe it, it just... was not where the conversation was meant to go. ANd it felt so incredibly dishonest to say these things while doing nothing like it for himself.
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Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2023 10:35 pm
At being called a dolt, Kaifeng could only nod. Yep. Yeah. He probably did deserve that in………a lot of people’s minds? Other than his own? Because personally, he still did not really feel like it was that important to make Such A Big Thing out of therapy, aside from how people he cared about got so upset over the idea of him not taking it as seriously as they thought he should have. Even just sitting here on the bench, with Selenga and their tea, Kaifeng could picture how Qiye was probably going to look at him when she heard about this. Of course, he would deserve how guilty the look on her face would inevitably make him feel, because his actions would have inspired her to make that sad face in the first place, but still……
Kaifeng sighed, and continued nodding. “That all……makes sense, yeah. And—you’re just right all over the place tonight, honestly? More anger wouldn’t have helped Zhìháo at all…… Might need to see if there aren’t any magical therapists in town, though? Trying to keep track of all the vaguely plausible lies about magic stuff would just drive……me………huh……”
Looking up at the sky again, Kaifeng trailed off.
One of those meteors looked a particularly entrancing shade of violet—not entirely unlike some of the violet shades on his outfit. Moreover, it didn’t seem to burn up in the atmosphere. Vaguely, Kaifeng recalled that most meteors wound up doing that, because they didn’t have enough mass to withstand entering the atmosphere or whatever? Maybe he’d seen it on The Magic School Bus or Bill Nye The Science Guy as a kid? But this one, Saturnine-looking violet meteor not only made it into the atmosphere, but it also crashed down into the grass, only a few meters away from Selenga and Kaifeng.
Tilting his head at where it had landed, Kaifeng puzzled over the sight for a moment? Weird. Not something you saw every day, for sure. But as he went to take another drink of tea, he almost choked on it.
“Is……” He squinted at something that had seemed to appear out of nowhere, right above where the meteor had fallen. “Do you see a little wispy white light dancing above that meteor?”
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Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2023 10:42 pm
He nodded along at first, thinking that a magical therapist would make the entire thing so much easier— But then a small meteor crashed near them, and he leapt up at the noise, launching himself over the back of the bench and hiding for several moments before Kaifeng's question registered. Slowly, he peeked back over the top of the bench and watched a little ball of light come dance around Kaifeng and bounce over his lip. "Uh... Yeah...."
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Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2023 11:24 pm
Selenga leaping away from the noise……honestly probably made sense? He got overwhelmed sometimes, and noise seemed to be a pretty significant trigger for him like that. But Kaifeng also didn’t have too much time to think about it.
The little wispy guy had, indeed, come over to him and started making themself at home. First, bouncing around Kaifeng’s lip. Then, whizzing around his head as if it had the zoomies, the way that Táotáo sometimes got right after they came back from a very long walk. Kaifeng giggled at the little guy’s antics, and that, of all things, seemed to get the wisp to settle down. Silently, it perched on Kaifeng’s shoulder and nestled in close against his neck.
“Awww, do you want to come home with me, then?” The wisp vibrated in a way that felt like nodding. “Okay, but you, me, and Selenga have to finish our tea and this patrol first.”
Huh. Maybe there were rewards to be had for opening up to people.
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