For all the roaring and anger and death he’d caused, Mengyao finds that an afterlife stuck with Nie Mingjue is surprisingly boring.
Almost tortuously so.
Time passes strangely in the afterlife. Mengyao can’t tell if it’s been days or years or mere seconds. All he knows is that the afterlife is dark, boring, and…
Lonely.
Nie Mingjue doesn’t speak to him – doesn’t even look in Mengyao’s direction. And Mengyao can’t seem to get any closer to him. No matter if he walks or runs or jumps – Nie Mingjue stays just out of arms reach.
Too far to touch, too close to ignore.
They spend a millennia like that, or maybe just a few hours. The time doesn’t matter. All that matters is that it drives Mengyao insane.
He screams at Nie Mingjue. Yells horrible insults, cutting accusations. He begs and pleads with him too. Asks for forgiveness. Begs for mercy. Just one look – one glance. Anything to let Mengyao know that he’s not alone in this darkness.
Anything so that Mengyao could know that he was still… something… someone.
Finally, after a hundred more years, when Mengyao’s soul has torn itself down in desperate pieces to beg for some sort of reprieve from this oppressing emptiness, Nie Mingjue finally relents.
Maybe it’s pity after watching Mengyao rip his own soul to shreds.
Maybe it’s the question Mengyao asks in a fit of desperation: “Why couldn’t you just love me?”
Whatever it is, Nie Mingjue finally – finally – turns to look at him.
The darkness covers Nie Mingjue’s face. Mengyao can see nothing but the tip of Nie Mingjue’s chin, but after a millennia of only seeing the back of his head, it feels like salvation.
He doesn’t really have a body in the afterlife – he’s just a soul after all – but he trembles just the same.
“Does it please you to see me like this?” he asks, desperate and angry and humiliated. “How much more shall I suffer here before you are satisfied?”
Nie Mingjue doesn’t move, but after a moment he finally speaks. “Do you not like it here, Mengyao?” he asks plainly.
Nie Mingjue’s voice rips through Mengyao’s soul like a sword. It’s altogether the same as Mengyao remembers and so different that it pains him to hear his name.
Mengyao.
Mengyao.
How many years did he dream of Nie Mingjue saying his name again?
“Why would I like it here?” Mengyao replies, grasping at his sides in a futile attempt to put his soul back together.
Nie Mingjue cocks his head to the side in question. “You built this place for me. Are you not happy with what you built?”
He built this place?
Mengyao?
He opens his mouth and he means to say, ‘I didn’t,’ but what comes out is, “I didn’t mean to.”
Mean to…
Like he didn’t mean to kill Nie Mingjue, he just meant to make a fierce corpse out of him.
He didn’t mean to lose Nie Mingjue’s trust, he just wanted the humiliation to stop.
He didn’t…
“I didn’t mean to,” he says again, strangely unable to stop himself. “I didn’t mean to – I didn’t mean to. I didn’t… You don’t understand. I had no other choice!”
When he was alive, he often wondered if he really did not have a choice, or if it was just an excuse he told himself to take the edge off the guilt.
As a soul, the answer is clear to him now.
He didn’t have a choice.
Or well… he had choices, but he was only allowed to choose the wrong ones.
Maybe someone else could have made the right choices – but not him. Not Mengyao.
So… it’s not an excuse.
But somehow the guilt stays just as heavy. Somehow, it stays just as sharp.
“I didn’t mean to,” he says again, his voice coming out in a pathetic whimper. He knows there’s no chance that Nie Mingjue will believe him. But he wants Nie Mingjue to believe him – he can’t help himself. He wants Nie Mingjue to know that….
That….
That Mengyao missed him.
That he regretted everything he ever did to him – the good, the bad – everything.
“You don’t understand… I had no choice.” He finds that he can’t even bring himself to look at Nie Mingjue’s chin anymore. Shame and humiliation keeps his gaze glued to the floor of the prison that he built.
Maybe Mengyao had spent a millennium in this hell, but Nie Mingjue had spent twice that.
As Mengyao tries to ebb the growing horror of the realization that he had forced Nie Mingjue to spend an eternity in this prison alone, a pair of booted feet enter his line of sight.
It’s mere instinct that pulls his gaze upward, and he regrets it the instant he moves.
He doesn’t want to see Nie Mingjue’s face.
He doesn’t want to see Nie Mingjue’s eyes filled with hatred and contempt as he looks down at him.
He…
He looks up and looks at Nie Mingjue’s face for the first time in…
“Mengyao,” Nie Mingjue says, “Being too weak to fight against your fate. Do you think I don’t understand that?”
Mengyao doesn’t really understand Nie Mingjue’s question. He can’t really tell if Nie Mingjue is calling him weak or letting him know he understands or…
He doesn’t know.
But what he does know is that…
Is that…
Is that Nie Mingjue’s eyes as he looks down on him are…
They’re so…
Kind.
They’re so kind that they tear Mengyao’s soul apart in a different way.
They’re so kind that even as Mengyao’s soul falls apart, he can’t look away.
“I didn’t mean to trap you here,” Mengyao whimpers, sorrier than he can ever remember being. “Believe me – please. I didn’t mean to kill you. Just – I just… I just wanted…”
He can’t even stand to say it out loud anymore.
Nie Mingjue doesn’t say anything for a long while – or maybe just a few seconds – Mengyao can’t tell.
All he knows is that this time, Nie Mingjue’s silence doesn’t hurt him.
“I would have died with or without you,” Nie Mingjue says after some time. “I was destined for it. Just like how you were destined to ruin yourself for glory.”
It sounds like absolution.
Mengyao finds himself strangely terrified – both of Nie Mingjue’s words and the kindness of his gaze.
“I wanted you to…” The words dissolve in his mouth. What wants to com eout is the truth, and Mengyao can’t even say it anymore. He wanted Nie Mingjue to choose him. To love him. To forgive him. He wanted…
“I did,” Nie Mingjue says like he already knows what Mengyao meant to say. “I broke all my own rules for you.”
Mengyao’s soul trembles. It aches. It’s too painful to admit. Too painful to acknowledge.
But Nie Mingjue is right, isn’t he?
Who else did Nie Mingjue ever break his own rules for? (Who else ever asked that of him?)
Nie Mingjue sighs and turns from Mengyao. “This is the last time I let you go, Mengyao,” he says. “Be… good.”
Mengyao just stares at him in confusion.
Let Mengyao go?
Go where?
He doesn’t understand until he looks down and sees a path of yellow bricks slowly being laid around him.
He looks back up at Nie Mingjue who is still surrounded by darkness and who suddenly looks farther away than Mengyao can ever remember him being.
“Da-ge!” he shouts, scrambling to his feet. “No – no! Don’t make me go alone. Da-ge!” He runs desperately towards Nie Mingjue, but it’s no use. Yellow bricks meet him with every step he takes. “I can’t – I can’t—“
No matter how fast he runs, the distance between him and Nie Mingjue doesn’t close. It only keeps growing and growing and growing until Nie Mingjue is engulfed by the darkness and Mengyao only has a yellow brick road ahead of him.
He falls to his knees.
“I can’t be good,” Mengyao sobs, pathetic and embarrassed and so sorry that he doesn’t know what to do with himself. “Not without you. Not without…”
