I'm thinking today about Lu Guang's next best friend. The one he meets, after Cheng Xiaoshi. How in the beginning of their friendship, they notice how Lu Guang gets anxious around the idea of autumn. They hear him mention how September is his least favorite month, and it takes several years of assuming it's to do with the weather before they find out the real reason why. Or how he has a precise eye of how to take a photo, and he tells them that his best friend taught him how--his other best friend, no, you've never met him. He passed away, two years ago. Thanks, man. We don't have to talk about it.
I wonder how long it took before this new best friend saw Lu Guang cry. I think when it happened, it was when Lu Guang least expected it. Because he thought he was doing fine, and then something twists, reality twinges, and Cheng Xiaoshi's ghost is visible even to them before they even knew his name.
I wonder how the best friend worried about Lu Guang. Knowing that there was a grief and sorrow that they did not understand, did not know how to care for just yet. They loved through trial and error, awkward and clumsy and earnest. They feel like they could have done more, but they didn't know how.
If Lu Guang had a new best friend--and he would, he has many years ahead of him, and so much love to spread around--he would learn to love things he hadn't indulged in before. Maybe his new best friend introduces him to Korean food. Maybe they share a tradition, like exchanging homemade dumplings during the holidays, or hiking a new mountain every summer. Maybe they teach him about species of jellyfish, or the history of the Smurfs, or how to say curse words in Russian. I think it would happen so slowly, so naturally, he doesn't realise how new it all is to him until he sits back and wishes he could tell Cheng Xiaoshi about all of it, because he misses sharing a life with his friend.
Maybe they met on the basketball court, but I don't think so. I don't think Lu Guang has touched a basketball in a while, and his new best friend is a bit asthmatic so it all works out. But at one point they'll be passing a court and a couple of kids ask them to throw back a runaway ball. Lu Guang will shoot it across the chain link fence with surprising arm and ease, and his new best friend would say, I didn't know you could play basketball!
Not for a while, Lu Guang would say. My friend and I used to play a lot when we were in school.
The new best friend would have an inkling that he means the one who died, the one whose name Lu Guang mentions only to his intimates, and it'll take some time before they are included.
It might take a year or two to learn the name of Lu Guang's deceased friend. Cheng Xiaoshi. Lu Guang shared it as if it were made of gossamer glass. He missed saying it as much as he missed hearing it as much as he was terrified that he would fall apart as soon as he said it. But once he said it, he starved to tell his new best friend again, and again, and again. Cheng Xiaoshi. His name was Cheng Xiaoshi. I had a best friend named Cheng Xiaoshi.
They're a little nervous to say it, sometimes, because there are little opportunities to need it. They never met Cheng Xiaoshi before. They have no mutual friends except for Lu Guang. It feels shy, almost unearned, and yet the first time they say Cheng Xiaoshi's name (my old roommate--oh, was it Cheng Xiaoshi?) Lu Guang's heart skips a beat. He was here, Lu Guang remembers. He was here once, and he existed, and all of this missing isn't just my imagination.
(Do you have a picture of him?) Tons. Well, stupid ones. He liked taking photos more. Um. Here. You can scroll around.
(He looks so joyful.) He was. ...you know, this one time, he and I went on a trip and...
(He sounds like such a funny guy.) You have no idea. He used to always laugh at this joke about a cucumber that...
(You really love him.)
(I wish I had gotten to meet him.) I wish you did too.
Remember how I said I'm not done yet with the world of 'courage of stars'?
I couldn't help but write about a little one's origin story from the fic...a little Cassini, shall we say.
Spoilers for stars below teehee.
-
Cheng Xiaoshi was hiding something, and Lu Guang took a little too long to realise that maybe he was trying to be obvious about it.
He lay bundled up in his hospital bed, still attached to various tubes (albeit significantly fewer tubes and wires compared to a month ago), but he fidgeted clumsily with restless energy. In his hand was an oxygen clip on one finger and a birthday card in another, which he was eagerly shoving into Lu Guang’s hand.
“Happy birthday, Lu Guang!” he sang.
Lu Guang’s birthday had begun with Qiao Ling orchestrating an entire day out for him–breakfast with her parents, a morning at the art museum, a birthday lunch with Xu Shanshan and Dong Yi, and a nap back at the Qiao household before visiting Cheng Xiaoshi in the hospital. Qiao Ling was determined to spoil Lu Guang as if he was a ragdoll housecat, which meant that she let him use her precious fleece throw blanket during his nap, a privilege even Cheng Xiaoshi never earned.
Lu Guang was never one to want fanfare for his birthday. In part, due to the fact that for several timelines it was neither his first nor his last time turning nineteen, twenty, or twenty-one. After getting stabbed on his birthday at one point, he found it even less enjoyable. But when September crisped and cooled into October, Lu Guang felt as if he had finally seen the other side of an ocean for the first time, after an Odyssey lost at sea. It was an October identical to any other–dipping temperatures, bank holidays, persimmons–but all of a sudden Lu Guang thought it was the most miraculous of months and seasons. It was October, and Cheng Xiaoshi was alive.
He began to look forward to his birthday.
Although Cheng Xiaoshi was still bedridden in the hospital, he and Qiao Ling had apparently planned the day together. Qiao Ling had arranged the art museum tickets, and Cheng Xiaoshi had convinced her to let Lu Guang take a nap halfway through instead of going to a cafe (it was the most glorious nap that Lu Guang had taken that week), and now Lu Guang and Qiao Ling were stopping by the hospital to spend time with Cheng Xiaoshi, who quickly demanded to hear in full detail everything that had happened thus far.
“What kind of art did you see?” Cheng Xiaoshi asked. “What food did you eat? How much money did Qiao Shushu and Auntie Qiao give you in red envelopes?”
QIao Ling flicked Cheng Xiaoshi on the nose (she had quickly learned to restrain herself from her typical, more violent acts of reprimand in this time). “You nosy brat! That’s none of your business.”
Cheng Xiaoshi snickered. His voice was still breathy and he could only be out of bed for several minutes at a time as his body slowly got used to surviving. He looked a little worse for wear, admittedly–paler than he normally was, chronically drowsy, and was routinely struck with a painful tightness around the chest and shortness of breath that the doctors had yet to fully treat, but he was breathing and smiling and bantering with Qiao Ling. He was alive, and there were no more caveats.
So Lu Guang regaled Cheng Xiaoshi with his day, as he often did whenever he visited. Cheng Xiaoshi had struggled in the first several weeks of recovery after awakening from his coma, stricken with pain when he wasn’t under the heavy fog of medication and haunted by the memory of being killed twice. Yet he smiled every time Lu Guang visited, tired but genuine, and when he did not have enough breath to ramble he eagerly listened to Lu Guang fill the void, something that Lu Guang was not entirely accustomed to but grew to appreciate as he talked about the shop and recent soap dramas and his petty feud with a neighbor. He ran the pad of his thumb over the hollow of Cheng Xiaosh’s pulse on his wrist absentmindedly, and Cheng Xiaoshi listened with a faint smile on his lips, and neither of them remembered their pain.
“So, you’re heading home after this, right?” Cheng Xiaoshi said. “No other plans?”
He asked it in such an artificially casual way, like a helium balloon bouncing against the ceiling. As fairly decent he was at pretending to be other people in his dives, he was helplessly transparent when he was himself.
“I think so,” Lu Guang said, looking to Qiao Ling for confirmation. “We don’t have anything too special planned after this. Probably dinner.”
“Dinner sounds like a good idea,” Cheng Xiaoshi said lightly.
Lu Guang raised an eyebrow. Cheng Xiaoshi’s eyes darted to the side nervously to Qiao Ling.
“I would think so,” Lu Guang said. “We generally do it every day.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Cheng Xiaoshi said, waving a hand. “A birthday dinner…that will be special. You know, I think you should wear sandals for it.”
Lu Guang stared at him.
“What?” he asked, aghast.
Cheng Xiaoshi shrugged innocently.
“I’m just saying things,” Cheng Xiaoshi said. “Just…might be a good idea!”
“it’s the end of October.”
Cheng Xiaoshi hummed. Qiao Ling, in lieu of slapping him in the back of the head, pinched her nose bridge instead.
“Why should I wear sandals to dinner?” Lu Guang asked.
“Aiyah, don’t pepper me with questions,” Cheng Xiaoshi said. He turned his head away from Lu Guang to sink lower into the pillow. “I’m vulnerable with painkillers! I’m talking nonsense!”
“You’re such an idiot,” Qiao Ling muttered.
Cheng Xiaoshi turned to her to grin. Lu Guang resisted the temptation to roll his eyes.
“I told you,” Lu Guang said. “You didn’t have to get me anything for my birthday–”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cheng Xiaoshi said breezily.
“Idiot,” Lu Guang said with relish.
But he smiled, because Cheng Xiaoshi looked sheepish, mischievous, delighted, and above all else, he did not look in pain. He knew that underneath the hospital gown was a bandaged scar running down his sternum, twice opened–once to end his life and once to save it. But Lu Guang felt no compulsion to fix his eyes on it, like it were a beast or a rival he could not turn his back to. Cheng Xiaoshi’s laugh was enough.
“Surely you’ll have noodles, won’t you?” Cheng Xiaoshi said. “And not those instant noodles, although I would commit crimes for some cup ramen right now. The food here is so flavorless. I feel myself turning into an old man!”
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Qiao Ling said. “This is probably the most vegetables you’ve eaten than what you usually have in an entire year.”
“Why are you nagging me when Lu Guang eats the exact same meals as I do every day?”
Qiao Ling flashed a grin at Lu Guang.
“Because Lu Guang would just nod and say I’m right, and that’s not as fun,” she said saucily.
“What?” Lu Guang said, aghast. “I’m not a pushover!”
“You are a little,” Cheng Xiaoshi said cheekily.
Lu Guang huffed, but he didn’t know how to argue back when not that long ago, Cheng Xiaoshi had convinced Lu Guang to sneak a sesame ball into the hospital for him.
They spent the rest of the hour teasing and talking, with Qiao Ling perched on one side of the hospital bed and Lu Guang sitting cross legged on the foot of it. When visitation was over and Cheng Xiaoshi needed to rest, Cheng Xiaoshi beckoned Qiao Ling to come to his bedside and then, whispering loudly enough for Lu Guang to hear, said, “Don’t forget ot make sure he brings a soup spoon in his back pocket.”
“You’re an idiot,” Lu Guang said loudly, to which Cheng Xiaoshi sniggered. He squeezed Cheng Xiaoshi’s ankle. “Thanks for the card.”
Here, Cheng Xiaoshi’s mirth softened to wistfulness.
“I wish I could celebrate with you,” he said.
“You did,” Lu Guang said assuringly. “Now get some rest.”
“See you tomorrow?” Cheng Xiaoshi said hopefully. “Wait, no, no, you don’t have to. You might need some extra time at home.”
“Extra time for what?” Lu Guang asked.
This time, Cheng Xiaoshi’s sheepishness looked genuine.
“Never mind what I said!” he said hastily. “Happy birthday, Lu Guang.”
Lu Guang shook his head exasperatedly, bursting with gratitude. He and Qiao Ling bid Cheng Xiaoshi goodbye before heading back to the studio.
Lu Guang didn’t actually know what sort of dinner plans they would have; Qiao Ling insisted that she would plan every minute of the day, which was very generous if not extremely intimidating, but she had not made any indication of what dinner might be. He did notice, however, that she had been almost entirely glued to her phone during the entire visitation with Cheng Xiaoshi, frantically texting someone until her wrist hurt. She spent the bus ride flexing her hand, wincing.
“So,” Lu Guang said. “Do I really have to wear sandals and bring a soup spoon?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Qiao Ling said innocently.
Lu Guang narrowed his eyes.
“What is he planning?” he demanded.
“Don’t listen to him,” she said. “He’s on heavy medication.”
Her lips twitched into a muffled smile. Lu Guang let it slide with blossoming affection in his chest.
When they made it back to the Photo Studio, the sun had already begun its autumnal routine. Daylight dimmed into dusk as streetlights twinkled on in preparation. The photo studio stood out on the street with its lights shining through the wide glass windows, which struck Lu Guang oddly because he didn’t remember turning the lights on when they left that morning.
Beside him, Qiao Ling was starting a video call.
“Qiao Ling,” Lu Guang said. “What’s going on?”
“Hold on,” said Qiao Ling. “Gosh, what’s taking him so long–there we go!”
Cheng Xiaoshi’s face brightened her phone screen, his excitement fighting past his drowsiness.
“Are you there yet?” Cheng Xiaoshi said excitedly. “Are you home?”
“Almost,” sang Qiao Ling as she pulled out her landlady key. Lu Guang could see through the glass window that QIao Shushu was in the sunroom, crouched over the coffee table to put some finishing last touches on something. It must have been a birthday cake, and Cheng Xiaoshi called in to sing–Lu Guang fought down the instinct to scold Cheng Xiaoshi for not resting as he as overwhelmed with a wave of love.
“Lu Guang, do you have your sandals?” teased Cheng Xiaoshi.
“You’re such a child,” Lu Guang said, wishing for nothing less.
Cheng Xiaoshi beamed. Qiao Ling unlocked the front door and held it open for Lu Guang. Lu Guang walked inside as Qiao Shushu spun around quickly, shielding whatever was behind him from view with his proud grin.
“Back already, you two?” he said.
“Qiao Shushu, are you joining us for dinner?” asked Lu Guang.
“We’ll bring dinner here,” said Qiao Ling. “I think you might be inclined to stay home for the rest of the day, after all.”
She was grinning with all her teeth, and Cheng Xiaoshi in her hand was practically bouncing despite being propped up in a hospital bed.
“Happy birthday, Lu Guang!” Cheng Xiaoshi said again, as if he could never have enough of it. “This is my present to you–with the help of Qiao Shushu for setting it up and Qiao Ling for keeping you out of the house. Hurry, hurry, I want you to see!”
“You really didn’t have to–”
Qiao Ling hurried several paces ahead of Lu Guang so that she could turn the camera to face Lu Guang, just as Qiao Shushu stepped out of the way.
Lu Guang stopped dead in his tracks in the sunroom as he stared down at a cozy, bedecked glass tank on top of the coffee table. A wetland biome fit itself neatly in the glass box, complete with water, mud, rocks, and greenery, with a sun lamp shining down into it.
And in the middle of it all, content to mind its own business, and no bigger than a teacup, was a pale blue Amazon milk frog.
“Surprise!” Cheng Xiaoshi squealed.
Lu Guang didn’t realise his jaw was hanging until he noticed his tongue going dry. He knelt down so that he was eye level with the tank, his head buzzing into numbness with disbelief. The frog’s webbed feet were folded neatly underneath it, basking in the heating lamp’s ray with satisfaction.
“Do you like him?” Cheng Xiaoshi asked, his light voice lifting slightly with nervousness.
“You got him for me?” Lu Guang said quietly.
“I spent weeks trying to find one,” Cheng Xiaoshi said. “And Qiao Ling was helping me make phone calls to different shops all around China. Your yeye told me that you liked the milk frogs the best when you were little–”
“My yeye was in on this?” Lu Guang blurted out.
“Yep!” Cheng Xiaoshi said proudly. “He even got your dad to send me the name of the place you got the frog the first time–”
“My dad was in on this?”
Incredulity heaped itself on Lu Guang with every turn, but he could hardly summit any of them as he stared at the frog in the tank. It looked just like Milk Toast had, all those years ago, when his childhood frog would patiently wait for him to come home from school. This frog was a little bit smaller, slightly fewer warts, but it looked healthy and happy and Lu Guang couldn’t believe that this was meant to be his.
Emotion bundled itself in the middle of his throat. He blinked rapidly, moisture catching on his lashes.
“Thank you,” Lu Guang whispered. “I really like him.”
Cheng Xiaoshi pumped his fist on the screen. Qiao Ling was glowing with delight as she crouched next to Lu Guang to show Cheng Xiaoshi a closer view of the frog. Lu Guang leaned in so closely that the tip of his nose nearly touched the glass.
“What are you going to name him?” Qiao Ling asked.
Lu Guang had not regained his composure enough to make a decision such as that. He was fighting back the dampness on his cheeks and a laugh at himself that he, at twenty-two (twenty-two–it will take some time to get used to), would be weeping over a new pet frog like he did when he was a child. That seven-year-old boy, it turned out, was not as far behind him as he thought.
“I don’t know,” he said in a watery voice. “What do you think, Cheng Xiaoshi?”
“Me?” Cheng Xiaoshi said, flabbergasted.
Lu Guang nodded when his throat closed up with an overload of sentiment. Cheng Xiaoshi blinked before his lips stretched into a tentative, hopeful smile.
“What about Cassini?” he asked.
It came so naturally to the tip of his tongue that Lu Guang could only imagine how long it had already been sitting there before he had asked Cheng Xiaoshi for his opinion. It was a bold name, surprising in its grandeur, and somehow it seemed to fit neatly in this little frog. Lu Guang nodded, brushing his cheeks with a swipe of his thumb.
“I like that,” he said. “Cassini.”
-
It wasn’t until two months after Cheng Xiaoshi returned from the hospital did Lu Guang ask the question. By then, winter was already making room for spring, and a second Amazon milk frog had joined the glass tank. Cheng Xiaoshi had discovered that Amazon milk frogs were social creatures who needed friends. Lu Guang knew this about the frogs but kept that to himself, until Cheng Xiaoshi called him suddenly from the hospital sobbing.
“I didn’t buy him a friend!” he wept inconsolably, which tipped Lu Guang off that he probably received a generous dose of painkillers. “I ruined his life!”
“Cheng Xiaoshi, it’s fine,” Lu Guang said, but Cheng Xiaoshi cried over it until his heart monitor went up and the nurse had to check on him. After Cheng Xiaoshi went straight to sleep, Lu Guang thought that was the end of it. Naturally, when it came to Cheng Xiaoshi, it wasn’t, and after secretly selling some of his collectibles he purchased a second Amazon milk frog to the ecosystem. At this point, Lu Guang knew that it was less for him and more for Cassini’s sake, of whom Cheng Xiaoshi had requested daily photos of every day until he had been discharged.
So Cassini and his new friend, Huygens (per Cheng Xiaoshi’s request), both became Time Photo Studios’ resident frogs. While they were not the sort of animal to play with each other in obvious, mammalian fashion, Lu Guang couldn’t help but get the sense that Cassini was happier with a tankmate. He wasn’t surprised, considering what he knew about frogs.
What he was surprised about was the choice in names.
“Why’d you pick their names, by the way?” Lu Guang asked.
It was a lazy weekend evening, after dinner had been put away and Cheng Xiaoshi had taken all of his necessary medication. He was sprawled on their new sofa, playing a game on his phone while Lu Guang was snapping endless photos of the frogs on his phone as they politely sat on top of the log together.
Cheng Xiaoshi turned his head towards Lu Guang, his hair flopped over his forehead carelessly.
“Because you asked me to,” he said.
“No, I mean, why did you pick those names?”
Cheng Xiaoshi perked up. He set down his phone.
“You don’t know about the Cassini-Huygens probe?” he asked.
Lu Guang furrowed his brow.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “The names sounded familiar. I just thought they might have been one of your video game characters.”
“No!” Cheng XIaoshi sat up sharply. “It was a space probe that took tons of photos of Saturn! All of its rings and its moons and it sent them back to Earth and scientists learned so much about Saturn and–”
He stopped, suddenly pale, as the sudden rise of movement and energy was too much for his heart to take at once. He swayed on the sofa, and Lu Guang immediately beelined to the sofa to gently guide Cheng Xiaoshi back down to rest.
“Idiot,” Lu Guang said. Cheng Xiaoshi’s sudden drop caused an equally sudden spike in Lu Guang’s blood pressure, one that he had not fully learnt to let go of just yet. He cradled Cheng Xiaoshi’s neck as he lay him back against the pillow while Cheng Xiaoshi’s grimace grew sloppy with dizziness. “You get so overexcited.”
He sat by Cheng Xiaoshi’s side as Cheng Xiaoshi pressed a hand against his forehead, waiting for the dizziness to subside. Lu Guang unconsciously kept a hand on Cheng Xiaoshi’s other wrist, guarding his rapid pulse until it eased. Cheng Xiaoshi hid his eyes from Lu Guang, still not entirely used to this new state of being and thus self-conscious about it. Lu Guang said nothing else, instead running his hand gently over Cheng Xiaoshi’s forearm. It was, in some ways, more for himself than for his friend.
“They taught humans so much about Saturn,” Cheng Xiaoshi mumbled again, after a stretch of silence. “And then–and then, after twenty years, they couldn’t bring the probe back to Earth, so it self-destructed in Saturn’s atmosphere so that it wouldn’t accidentally hurt any of the moons.” At this, Cheng Xiaoshi’s voice tightened. “I just really liked it. “
Lu Guang softened. He let his hand fall away from Cheng Xiaoshi.
“I didn’t know that before,” he said. “That’s really interesting.”
Cheng Xiaoshi nodded. He went strangely quiet. Lu Guang teetered on the precipice of curiosity.
“How’d you first hear of it?” Lu Guang asked.
Cheng Xiaoshi hesitated.
“My mom,” he said. “She liked to read up on it, before…” Cheng Xiaoshi swallowed hard. “I don’t think she really knew what happened to it, though.”
Lu Guang hummed. He had come to learn Cheng Xiaoshi and what he needed most when the topic of his parents came up, before their deaths. Cheng Xiaoshi preferred to bring them up on his own, because the moment anyone else did he couldn’t help but assume they meant so accusingly and would automatically get defensive. And perhaps that was fair of him–neighbors assumed the worst, Qiao Ling’s parents avoided talking about them, and Qiao Ling followed suit. Lu Guang learned to take their example.
But what about now, when the grief was finally defined? The day Cheng Xiaoshi finally saw Cheng Yinhe’s ashes for the first time, he wept without restraint, releasing all the tears he had denied himself for fifteen years. Nothing technically changed, and yet his grief was fresh and unfamiliar, now that death made their absence final. Lu Guang knew even less what to do to help, if anything would. But if there was something he knew about Cheng Xiaoshi, it was that his best friend always wanted to share the things he loved with others.
“Did she tell you a lot about astronomy?” Lu Guang asked.
Cheng Xiaoshi sniffed heartily before nodding.
“She always talked about the moon,” he said. He dragged his wrist over his eyes and blinked blearily at Lu Guang. “She told me all sorts of things about it.”
“Like what?” asked Lu Guang.
“Like…did you know that the moon shakes?”
Lu Guang blinked.
“It does?” he asked.
Cheng Xiaoshi cracked a smile.
“Yeah,” he said. “It vibrates. Because it goes super hot and then super cold all of a sudden all the time, or something like that.”
“Huh.” Lu Guang tilted his head so that he could look out the sunroom glass. The moon was rising early, its crescent arc peeking through the treeline. “I never knew that.”
“Cool, right?” Cheng Xiaoshi said.
“Yeah,” Lu Guang said earnestly. “So the Cassini-Huygens, it studied Saturn’s moons?”
“Yeah,” Cheng Xiaoshi said. “Saturn has tons of moons. Not as many as Jupiter, I think, but…I don’t remember how many.”
“Let’s check,” Lu Guang said as he pulled out his phone. “I’d like to know more.”
It's here! The end of the fic is finally here. Oh my gosh, I cannot believe it. I'm so thankful to have gotten to write this fic and share it with you. Thank you for joining this journey with me, and for enjoying this story enough to want to read the behind the scenes. I'm really excited to shout obsessively about the thought process that went into this story, to the point where this commentary is +3k words rip.
Of course, major spoilers for the story ahead:
Original Inspiration
After finishing ‘spinning silk,’ I knew that I wanted to write a story about Cheng Xiaoshi and his mother. It took me some time to settle on how that story would play out, but the one thing I knew for sure I wanted, because this was the image that kickstarted my desire to write about them, was the idea of Cheng Xiaoshi diving into a photo and then stumbling into his mother, equally diving, who realises he is there and goes, “Little rabbit, is that you?”
I also knew that whoever Cai Liangxing embodied would have a birthmark on their forehead, which I will get into later.
Initially, I was going to make it a story that drew loose inspiration with the Magic Lotus Lantern story, which is about a demigod boy whose mother is stolen and trapped underneath the mountains by her godly brother, and he had to go on a quest to eventually be capable enough to break open the mountains and save her. In this story, his mother would have had some kind of photograph-related curse instead of abilities that fell upon her somehow, in which at random and uncontrolled moments, she would look upon a photograph and suddenly be sucked into it, and into the person within the photograph (not necessarily the photographer). She wouldn’t have control over it, which means it could happen at random, she can never go forward in time but backwards. Cheng Xiaoshi would have to keep diving into different photos further and further back in time to look for her, which would have led the narrative to explore different decades in Chinese history until he would find her. At one point, they would have agreed that whenever she was and whoever body’s she was in, she would bite her finger and place a small bloodied dot on her forehead so that Cheng Xiaoshi could find her.
Slowly, though, I realised I didn’t want that to be how the story went. The dot on the forehead is in reference to a Chinese legend that I wanted to explore, and I realised that if I wanted to explore it to its full potential, the story had to go differently. So I scrapped the tumbling down into time idea and leaned more into this legend. This is how the legend goes: there was once a young prince who loved his partner, but something arose (intruders, I think) in which she was fatally wounded. As he held her in his arms and wept, she bit her finger until it bled and painted a small dot on his forehead and said, when I’m reborn, I will have this birthmark on my forehead. I will find you again. And then she dies.
Many years passed, and the prince became the king. As king, he one day met a young man with a birthmark on his forehead and realised that this was his lover reincarnated. Of course, the young man did not retain any of those memories, but the king showed him great favor and took him in as his own, and eventually the young man grew to become the king’s trusted advisor. However, this young man slowly became corrupt, his allegiances were elsewhere, and it eventually became evident that he was a traitor to the kingdom and to the king. With a mournful heart, the king ultimately executed this young man.
I wanted this idea of someone Cheng Xiaoshi loved being in the body of someone else, but who is losing themselves entirely until they are someone who causes Cheng Xiaoshi harm. I replaced reincarnation with the Cheng family’s photo hopping abilities, and eventually (and might I say, through tremendous and late-night efforts lol) developed SUn Yihan, the one who really had to carry the story’s stakes. I also knew that I still wanted this story to be deeply tied to Chinese modern history, and so Sun Yihan’s backstory was the way it was.
There were three scenes I knew for sure I wanted to write, that really propelled the direction of the story:
1) “Little rabbit, is that you?”
2) Cai Liangxing, knowing of Lu Guang’s abilities, speaking to him through a photograph, and
3) the scene in heaven of Cheng Xiaoshi and his parents, “Oh, Yinhe, he’s so beautiful.”
I just knew I wanted to keep these concepts in and write them in whatever way possible.
I also would be remiss if I didn't mention the song from which the title of the fic originated. Also, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that its music video left an indelible mark on me, and is probably from where the imagery in the final chapter drew inspiration!
Epigraph
The epigraph for this story is one of the most famous poems from Li Bai, a Chinese Tang dynasty poet. It’s so famous, in fact, that I hesitated to use it because it’s famous to the point of cheesy. Elementary school children recite it, it’s one of the first poems you will learn in any Chinese language class. It’s very simple, and yet the themes just felt fitting.
Here it is again in Chinese:
床前明月光
疑是地上霜
举头望明月
低头思故乡
Here is its English translation:
Before my bed lies a pool of moon bright
I could imagine that it's frost on the ground
I look up and see the bright shining moon
Bowing my head I am thinking of home
The moon is such a crucial symbol in this story, and Chinese literature/art is FLUSH with moon imagery. This one I felt to be really fitting because I felt it reflected Cheng Xiaosh and Lu Guang all at once. Cheng Xiaoshi’s relationship with the poem a little more in its literal meaning, in that his mother had told him in the beginning of the story to look at the moon when she is gone because Mama Rabbit is always looking after him. And how, as Cheng Xiaoshi walked to the forest to his death, he looked at the moon and saw it for what it meant, rather than what it was, to draw courage from it.
Lu Guang’s relationship to this poem is more tied to its context. Li Bai was writing this from a place of reflecting on filial piety. The inspiration from which he wrote it was imagining a Confucian scholar in the employment of the emperor who misses his hometown on Mid-Autumn Festival. It’s almost a little too on the nose for Lu Guang, isn’t it? Haha.
Sun, Moon, and Stars
When I first wrote the opening of “courage of stars,” with Cheng Xiaoshi and his parents stargazing on their last night together, I honestly expected that to be the extent of celestial bodies’ presence in the story. All I had asked from it was for the stars, representative of his parents, to reflect that myth of stars being long dead but their light still reaches us. In this scant use of the motif of the heavens, light still represented love.
In fact, the mention of Mid-Autumn Festival aligning with CXS’ death scene was just for my fun, since his death might coincide with Mid-Autumn on any given year (albeit not any year that the story could logically take place, but we’re assuming that they live in an alternate earth anyway hahaha). It felt like it would be fun to make the slowly filling moon reflect the passage of time that draws closer to CXS’ death day. In short, the sun and the moon were really meant to be somewhat melancholic motifs, and not much more.
Also, I liked to draw a through line between Cai Liangxing and Chang’E, the legend of the moon goddess. In order to protect her husband’s magic, Chang’E consumed a magical pill that a cruel man was trying to steal, which made her levitate all the way up to the moon. She kept the villain from taking the pills, but in turn she was trapped on that moon with no way to come down for the rest of eternity. Much like…
But the more that I wrote, the more that my appreciation for the moon and what it could symbolize really took root, particularly in the moment where CXS and LG reconcile after their painful conflict. Chapter 7 is really precious to me because I wanted to write a reconciliation between best friends that showed them in all their messiness and earnestness. I wanted these two best friends to be confronted with the shortcomings and pitfalls of each other and their own ability to love, and to still be able to comfort each other. I think for me, I err on the side of writing a friendship love in an idolizing way, putting it on a pedestal as the Ultimate Source of Love, when that isn’t really sustainable. CXS and LG aren’t going to be perfect friends to each other. They’re going to be messy and selfish and their love for each other will not be complete. But it is still precious.
So when I wrote the last scene of them in LG’s bedroom, forgiving each other, the moon motif struck me. I thought about how the moon, in its pearly luminescence, is really reflecting the light of the sun. It glows, it is gorgeous, it is the stuff of poems and music, and it is in truth a reflection. My writing is really guided by my faith, and I often think of the line from the musical Les Miserables: “To love another person is to see the face of God.” My experience with love and with faith has often been best described as that we people are riverbeds, receiving and outpouring love to one another whose source is the Living Water. So when I wrote about the moon, it just…clicked. Ah, it’s a fountain. From the sun, to the moon, to the earth. Light as water as love. Cheng Xiaoshi shines with love to Lu Guang, but he doesn’t have to have the pressure or the burden of being Lu Guang’s only source of it. They are both joyful, earnest riverbeds, whose imperfections are not enough to stop the flow of love coming to one another.
After that, it really guided me in my writing, especially as we reached the climaxes, and Mid-Autumn approaching. The filling moon, and the holiday, still held this ominous tone to them because they do still indicate Cheng Xiaoshi’s coming death day. But, much like the memories of other motifs in this story, painful imagery also live alongside hopeful and encouraging ones. The full moon that terrified Lu Guang is also the moon that lit Cheng Xiaoshi’s way and followed him, symbolically, when he was afraid. We all go through journeys in life where none of our loved ones can follow us all the way, physically or emotionally, whether because they leave or because they simply cannot. Only we can feel the heartache in our own chest, even when someone is holding our hand. In that moment, as loved as Cheng Xiaoshi is by his friends, he must take this journey to his death alone. His own mother had literally forgotten him. But the moon, sunlight reflected, this story’s motif for love and courage and mercy, followed him every step of the way.
Frogs/Corpse Pond
Frog Guang has become such an icon from this fic that I feel like I must make a little section for the frogs!
When I was writing ‘spinning silk,’ there was a moment where Lu Guang is reliving his childhood and there’s a moment where he is with his grandfather, and he’s showing his grandfather a fat frog that he found. It was a throwaway line, and I do not intend for the universe of silk to be the same as stars (for the most part, I intend for each of my fics to all be of different universes, not even different timelines, but they simply cannot coexist), and there are differences in each Yeye’s backstories. But that throwaway line did plant that idea in my head that Lu Guang loved frogs, to carry over into ‘stars.’
I’m not a frog aficionado myself, although this headcanon has made me a lot fonder of them. I am ever thankful to Rulos who knows much more about frogs than me and told me frog facts and types to flesh out Lu Guang’s favor for them. But I do have an echo of frogs in my own family history. When my grandmother was pregnant with my father, this was during the famine years and she was like, 36kg/81lbs. There just wasn’t a lot of food! So she ate frogs that came from the pond in her neighborhood to supplement her nutrition. That was a story she told us and it stuck to me ever since, especially because said pond is one I am very fond of in my own life. For, of course, very different reasons than hers. Which leads me to my next subsection…
Hunger
The motif of hunger vs abundance came almost naturally, as a result of the frogs. One of my readers (I see you Juno) aptly noticed the juxtaposition between Lu Guang having a love for frogs that his grandparents ate out of desperation, and I was so excited that they saw that because that’s exactly what I was trying to capture. Hunger vs abundance. Starvation in Yeye’s anecdotes, and even Sun Yihan’s adulthood (for my parents’ generation, it was indeed so rare to eat chicken that it would only ever be eaten on New Year), compared to Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang basically having tons of snacks and meals in every chapter. And then, the way that hunger can really make people go impulsive and reckless and foolish. I know I make some dumb decisions when hungry just to fill my stomach. Anecdotes of people in horrible situations, be it in war or genocide or famine, hurting or killing others just to have a small bite to eat. Cheng Xiaoshi was so, so hungry for want of his mother that he betrayed Lu Guang. Sun Yihan/Ye Ci, starving for lack of a father figure and a sense of belonging in the world, betrayed his mother. Remember that you have been hungry, too.
Names
I was very excited about the fact that I could make each chapter name of ‘stars’ correlate to a name, or to a meaning of a name/name-adjacent, because names really do play such a big role in this story. For one, plot-wise it is what put Cheng Xiaoshi in so much danger. Cai Liangxing and Cheng Yinhe’s names being oh so symbolic. Cheng Xiaoshi’s and Lu Guang’s childhood nicknames become almost motifs in and of themselves. And of course, Sun Yihan’s chosen name marking him as a punishment versus his secret, lost birth name of Ye Ci (which shares a character with the word ‘mercy.’)
Also I want to emphasize that whenever he talked about him, Grandpa Lu always referred to Sun Yihan by the family name (Sun zai) because I didn’t want him to really interact or acknowledge his self-given name of Yihan. As he always said before, Grandpa Lu has no regrets meeting SYH, and he wishes SYH would not either.
And I do love when a name is thematic. Cheng Xiaoshi naming Lu Guang’s new frog ‘Cassini’ is so important to me.
Alternate Scenes/Ideas
Yeye was originally going to have abilities! His abilities would have something to do with being able to see a room in the past, so time traveling within a confined space of a room. He would have been able to use the traditional art of paper cutting that, if you pin it onto the wall, you would be able to see what had occurred in the room during the past (although, not necessarily able to interact with it). I did want to try to create a power for him where one could interact with the past, but then realised it would get messy and also would be very ironic of Lu Guang to be so adamant about his time scruple. The wall art magic would have been the original way that LG and CXS find out about CXS’ father’s death–witnessing it, not so much living through it. Sorry, CXS.
Lu Guang initially was supposed to be able to talk directly with Cai Liangxing while she was in the past. So LG was actually going to be the person to tell CLX that CXS has an unchangeable death node, and they would have come to some kind of agreement that they would do everything in their power to save him. Something about his abilities combining with Yeye’s would have made that possible, however I scrapped it because I couldn’t think of a way to do it elegantly, and that would stay true to the rules of the magic/universe.
Qiao Ling at one point would have tried to use her abilities to look into a photo of Cai Liangxing, and would notice that when she peeked into Cai Liangxing’s mind, it would be exactly the same as when she would try to peek into Sun Yihan’s, thus emphasizing that the two have molded into one person.
Sun Yihan was actually going to be something of a serial killer. He would have murdered young men with the surname Cheng in order to absorb Cheng Xiaoshi’s abilities, albeit he doesn’t know if he found the right Cheng Xiaoshi or not. Scrapped because I realised that would lean him towards villainy, which wasn’t what I ultimately wanted for his character, so…serial kidnapping.
On that note, Cheng Xiaoshi would hae been recruited by Captain Xiao to dive into the photo of one of the victims to find out who the killer was. Upon discovering that it was SYH, LG would have panicked at him to get out and that would be how they realised SYH is hunting CXS down and for what reason he was killing all these young guys. I ultimately took all the tension I wanted from such a scene and put it into CXS diving into his father.
CXS was initially going to get kidnapped by SYH (no Lu Guang as bait) and forced into experiments, which would lead him to dive into SYH’s mother at one point. He would inherit her emotions towards her son. I scrapped it when I reasoned that she probably would not have had any chance to take a photo between getting accused and getting killed.
Fanart
I am so blessed to have artists share fanart of the fic with me. I wanted to put them all in one place, and will continue to add to this doc as I know one of my commissioned pieces from Sunny will be posted sometime later today. Thank you so much for everyone for sharing their imagination and vision of this little world with me. I'm so touched. Everyone please please please feast your eyes on these arts and show the artist love!!
PM_Paint
@sailboat-sparrow 1, 2
Blepps
@quarriart Quarri
@sgdlr-asdfghjkl Niebo
intothefrisson (sunny)
Thank you...
I just want to dedicate this space to say a HUGE thank you to my wonderful beta and dear friend, @fluffy-rulos. Rulos was cheering me on as I wrote this monster of a fic, tracked the mystery for me, gave me suggestions and feedback that helped me make the fic better, and of course, gave me all the frog facts for Frog Guang. I am so thankful for her and this story wouldn’t be the same without her. This story took about five months to write, writing for almost every single day of the week, and I don’t know how I would have made it this far without her encouragement and excitement. Thank you for joining me on this adventure my friend!!
And thank you to everyone who stayed with the fic from beginning to end. I really hope you liked it and enjoyed reading the behind the scenes. I'll miss you all <3.
(a drabble from the universe of my fic, courage of stars)
-
Lu Guang had proudly named his pet frog Milk Toast. He cultivated a comfortably damp environment for him in his enormous tank and added new leaves almost daily for wont of something to do to spoil his new friend.
The first day he went to school after his birthday was the most he ever spoken since the beginning of the school year. He told everyone who was willing to listen that he had a new pet frog. The girls shivered until he told them that the frog’s name was Milk Toast, which made them coo. The boys demanded proof of the frog’s existence, and then bombarded him with so many questions that he almost regretted telling them anything. What color was his webbed feet? How long was his tongue? Does he eat flies? Does he ribbit? How high can he jump? Ten centimeters? Fifty?
He rushed home from school every day to spend time with Milk Toast, which usually took the form of reading books out loud to him. Lu Guang read his frog books out loud, in case Milk Toast was curious what humans liked to say about his kind. He charged Yeye and Maamaa to let him do all the feeding, so that he could choose the best-looking crickets to set into the tank. The crickets were a considerable match for Milk Toast, and Lu Guang stared approvingly as his tiny frog hunted viciously for the insect larger than the size of his head.
During art class, Lu Guang drew pictures of Milk Toast every time. Whether they used crayons, marker, colored pencils, watercolor, or cut-out pieces of colored paper, Lu Guang created rendition after rendition of Milk Toast. Even when the art teacher asked if Lu Guang would draw flowers, he added Milk Toast on a leaf. When tasked to draw a portrait of little Mei, his desk mate, Lu Guang snuck Milk Toast onto her shoulder, which she did not appreciate as much as he thought she would.
After school, Lu Guang showed the drawings to Milk Toast through the glass of the tank, as he was fairly certain that at least Milk Toast would appreciate the effort he put into his art pieces.
“That’s you,” Lu Guang said helpfully as he pointed to the blueish blob with bulging eyes. Milk Toast stared ahead, his little throat puffing rhythmically.
“This is you too,” Lu Guang said, showing another drawing. “And this is me.”
He pointed to a drawing of himself, who was roughly the same size as the frog and with skinny lines as limbs. Milk Toast shifted in his place, which Lu Guang took as interest. He propped it against the glass so that Milk Toast could continue to admire it.
“This is you with Qi Mei,” said Lu Guang, showing him the portrait of his classmate. “I asked her if she wanted to keep it and she said no, so I think you should have it instead.”
“Guangguang, it’s dinner!” Maamaa called out. “Hurry and wash your hands.”
Lu Guang added another new leaf into the tank as a treat before shuffling off to dutifully wash his hands while his grandmother set the table. He toddled to his usual place, next to Yeye, and saw that the table was set for three.
“What about Ma and Ba?” Lu Guang asked.
“Ma and Ba are very busy at the library right now,” Maamaa said. “They’ll eat dinner later.”
“Can I eat dinner with them?” Lu Guang asked.
Maamaa pursed her lips as she scooped a mound of rice into Lu Guang’s bowl.
“They won’t be back until you’re getting ready for bed,” she said with a sigh. “Come on, before it gets cold. I worked hard to cook you a good dinner.”
Lu Guang hid his disappointment by shoveling rice into his mouth. Yeye stroked the back of his head, his hand strong and ticklish.
“Come on, have some fish,” said Yeye.
He scooped a large portion of fish onto Lu Guang’s bowl, and a healthy helping of garlic pea sprouts. He tactfully did not offer the frog legs that Maamaa had cooked for the grown-ups, and Lu Guang avoided eye contact with them. He was convinced that Milk Toast would be able to see whatever Lu Guang saw through his eyes, and he would be sorely disappointed if he knew what was going on in the dining room.
“When will Ma and Ba be done going to the library every day?” Lu Guang asked.
Maamaa’s eyes flashed with pity.
“When you go into the fourth grade, little one,” she said.
Lu Guang’s shoulders sank lower. Fourth grade felt like an eternity. The fourth graders towered over him in the playground at school. They were so big and mature and they knew what fractions were. Lu Guang was right now in the first grade. Was he never going to have dinner with Ma and Ba again?
Maamaa, snapped her chopsticks as she added tomato egg to Lu Guang’s bowl.
“Eat more, Guangguang,” she ordered.
He obeyed. After eating more than his fill in dinner, Lu Guang sat at his desk to finish his homework while Yeye walked him through the mathematics. Milk Toast had changed positions during dinner time, which cheered Lu Guang up. He spied on Milk Toast while the frog basked in low light. For the rest of the night, he rested his head in his arms as he watched Milk Toast up close, starry-eyed.
Even when Maamaa ushered him to bed and switched off his lights, Lu Guang crept back to the tank and spied on Milk Toast, watching the frog breathe, sit, and occasionally swim. By the time Ma and Ba came home, and Ma peeped open his bedroom door to spy on him, she found Lu Guang fast asleep at his desk, cheek pressed up against the glass.
The place where Li Tianchen hated most in his childhood home was the dinner table.
Or, to know your mother is to sit at her table.
A SGDLR Gotcha for Gaza prompt fill!
Rating: G
Characters: Cheng Xiaoshi, Li Tianchen, Lu Guang, Qiao Ling, Li Tianxi
Relationships: Li Tianchen & Cheng Xiaoshi, Li Tianchen & Lu Guang
Tags: Family, Grief/Mourning, Mother-Son Relationship, Food as a love language, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Found Family
Excerpt:
Cheng Xiaoshi was steaming a pomfret. He reminded Li Tianchen of Ma, and Li Tianchen hated him for it.
First, Cheng Xiaoshi hollowed out the pomfret of its insides. He reached his hand into the small slit by its belly and clawed out the remaining guts. His hands stank of fish blood as he rinsed the pomfret’s insides. When he was finished, he poured a spoonful of sugar onto his palm and scrubbed his hands with soap. It was just like how Ma used to do it–it helps keep the fishy smell from sticking on me, she had told Li Tianchen once when he watched her cook. He always assumed that it was a kitchen secret that only his mother cracked, but evidently it wasn’t.
Next, Cheng Xiaoshi sliced ginger and scallions into thin strips. He was sitting on a barstool at the counter as he did so, because he had stood long enough all day and his leg was not the same as it used to be. It hurt on rainy days like today, and he couldn’t run like he used to. He had been balancing gingerly on his other leg while he was working, and now it was too much. He said nothing about it when he pulled up the bar stool and perched on it while cutting ginger. Even when Li Tianchen lingered in the room, aimless and purposeless, he did not complain or sigh in pain.
Ma used to do something like that. She cooked with fresh bruises on her face or puffed lips that weren’t there when Li Tianchen had left for school that morning. Ba said nothing, and Ma said nothing, and so Li Tianchen and his sister learned not to either. Make a fuss about it and it will start an argument at the dinner table. Start an argument at the dinner table and sooner or later Ba will flip the entire table on the edge and stand over Ma, shouting and spitting in her face with a mouth full of her cooking. So they all sat primly instead, silent over bowls of white rice and kai lan with oyster sauce, pretending that it was no strange thing to see Ma with a nosebleed dried on the front of her shirt, because it wasn’t.
To see recent shenanigans of these two, I advise you just watch the clips I link below. TL;DW version: at the end of the 'sofa quarrel song' the trio stands on a coffee table. During one performance LG shoves CXS off of it (pic 1). Another day CXS has his revenge (pic 2,3).
Qiao Ling tries to mediate but fails. Intense rock, paper, scissors battle ensues...
My guess is, since Cai Qi as CXS has a history of cheating in this game (according to a script LG should win with paper) he tried to win this time again but 5d chess-ed himself. He prob thought LG would expect him to cheat (CXS using scissors to win with paper) and would change his hand to stone. So CXS picked paper to win with stone that was supposed to counter scissors that cheating CXS would pick to win with paper. y-yeah.. Anyway Lu Guang still followed the script and they ended up with a draw ><
I'm so invested in this encore-exclusive 'Rock, paper, scissors' Arc. Words cannot express how shiguang this silly bit is.
⬆ how Cheng Xiaoshi saw himself in rps battle (insert 'L's theme')
Good time travel stories are inherent to the genre of science fiction as a whole. I also find that in Chinese/Chinese-American sci-fi, time travel appears significantly. I think perhaps because so much Asian storytelling muses on the loss of tradition/past to an unfamiliar modernity, or overwhelming history being unresolved to this day. Other times I think simply put, time travel is about love and family and what artist doesn’t like to ponder that? Anyway, some Chinese/Chinese-American stories about time travel that I would love to recommend…
The Man Who Ended History by Ken Liu
This story is not for the faint hearted. It deals heavily with Japanese war crimes against the Chinese during WWII, but it does remind me a little of Cheng Xiaoshi’s abilities because the story muses on a hypothetical technology that can enable people to intimately experience historical events only once, to devastating effect. Truly, this story is haunting (the kind that leaves you in a funk), but feels eerily reminiscent of Cheng Xiaoshi's timehopping potential. It is also serving as some inspiration for a potential CXS-centric fic idea I have brewing so if that does come to life I gotta give credit where it’s due.
What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear by Baoshu
This isn’t strictly speaking time travel as it is a speculative and unconventional travel through time, which in some ways imagines China’s modern history to have happened backwards. If you’re familiar with Chinese modern history, it is honestly pretty devastating to read, especially because in some ways one can see how it is reflecting reality despite being somewhat opposite of history. While I can’t find a copy of it online, it’s available in English in the anthology of Chinese sci-fi Broken Stars.
Memories of my Mother by Ken Liu
okay this post is low key a Ken Liu works appreciation post in disguise but if anyone has read my fic spinning silk , this is the short story whose pages imagine in which Cheng Xiaoshi would keep his mother’s photograph.
if you know of any more that you would recommend please share!!
theartofmadeline
2087
stormborns
prguitarman
areudirty
janainaart
