the thing about people like cheng xiaoshi is that they love everything. lu guang was aware of this from the very beginning, and he has the sufficient reasoning to match the claim.
it's not simply because cheng xiaoshi is unbelievably nice or far too empathetic for his own good; it's because anything he can make look beautiful through the camera is something that he cherishes. but seeing as everything cheng xiaoshi takes a photo of is somehow transformed into something worth seeing, lu guang deducts that he must be in love with everything to some extent.
no one can envision the universe so favorably and not be somewhat in love with it. lu guang can be glad, at least, that the universe seems to return the love of cheng xiaoshi in kind.
when it comes to cheng xiaoshi taking photos of anyone, he manages to make them look as good as everything else, as lu guang supposes that general people are also grouped under the umbrella term of the universe. and so cheng xiaoshi loves everything, highlights the good and almost makes lu guang fall a little in love too.
actually, scratch that, not almost and not a little; lu guang falls all the way in love with cheng xiaoshi, definitely a bit too much.
which would be fine, if it weren't for that fact that every photo cheng xiaoshi takes of lu guang makes it seem like he is in love, just a few degrees more than lu guang can deal with. but he's sure that it's nothing personal, because cheng xiaoshi has always been like that in his photography, painstakingly in love with the subject.
it sucks since lu guang is pretty sure he'll only ever love cheng xiaoshi sincerely out of everything else.
but there are set foundations to the infinite timelines lu guang intercepts. in each timeline, cheng xiaoshi is genuine above all else and lu guang is a liar, a fool. in each timeline, cheng xiaoshi loves everything else whilst lu guang only loves him, maybe exclusively and probably forever. in any case, lu guang cannot escape his own distaste for the world itself, or the fact that cheng xiaoshi does love him amongst everything, perhaps even more than most.
lu guang is sure this has all happened before. he is sure that he's lived the part where cheng xiaoshi confesses through their photoshoots in which he manages to make lu guang look anything but a miserable product of grief and mourning and absolute hypocrisy.
lu guang wants to ask cheng xiaoshi how he manages to love the universe which will bring him to a cruel end and let him go. it asks lu guang, begs him through everything, to let cheng xiaoshi go.
lu guang knows that much, and yet, he remains with time at his fingertips and a photo of himself taken by cheng xiaoshi in his palms. he doesn't think he'll ask the question, because he has eternity to do it. he doesn't think he'll confess, to all of it whether love or lies, because he's pretty sure it wouldn't matter anymore.
though as much lu guang wants to say none of it matters anymore and everything is now nothing, derailed by time, he knows it's not true. lu guang knows, because he still wants cheng xiaoshi every time he's gone and he always fails to reconcile with that end.
doing this over and over again is as inevitable as cheng xiaoshi's love for everything, as inevitable as his untimely death, as inevitable as it was when lu guang first set eyes on him and should've known. but even if he did, he doubts he'd have done it any different, and still he continues to prove that there's only one thing to make it so;
the thing about someone like lu guang is that he loves cheng xiaoshi above all else, and even that little piece of everything, he'll never quite have. but he's always been aware of that, and despite it, he still tries.
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