#s;tamina

[rklandon]

░▐ ★_to the beautiful you 、

《 ★ rkjisoo 》 it’s new to him. yixing has given flowers to exactly three kinds of people in his life: teachers, girlfriends, and family, with meiqi counting as family. since arriving in seoul, he’s added a fourth kind: actresses he admires. the first was seolhyun, his courage to do so mustered up mostly because he now knew her. a friend made through a language app, he felt at ease bringing her flowers whenever he went to her plays now but it wouldn’t be right to deny that he’d gone to a fair amount of shows at the university already because he’d grown fond of another’s acting. jisoo, that’s what he found out her name was. since she began school there, he became a fan (that too is knowledge he got from an inside source, the inside source being a friend of his who volunteered for the stage crew). 

a pretty name to match a pretty face. 

eventually, his curiosity bloomed into admiration and that shows in the blooms of peach roses gathered in his hand. petals of peach and pink that make for a color combination he admired as well, what better choice of flowers to give her was there! a situation that should be awkward isn’t because when yixing sets his mind on something, his confidence is infallible and unmatched. he really ought to develop a sense of shame but his nainai jokes that yixing was somehow born without one. the only sense of shame he has comes from her, with a certain look, he knows when to stop in motion. without her around in seoul to scold him for anything, his shame truly knows no bounds. 

more than a sense of shame, it’s better than his grandmother raised him to be a gentleman and a cautious one at that so he makes sure it’s an area with a decent amount of people around before he approaches her. no man ought to approach a woman alone with flowers when it’s later into the evening, the end of the show the reason for why people spill out of the theater building. “hello! my name is zhang yixing oh, if yixing is too much, you can call me lay. these are for you!” the bouquet is held out eagerly with a beaming smile to match. “your performance was stunning tonight, as always. aa, i mean...” he laughs, cat’s out of the bag now. “i’m a fan of yours. it’s nice to finally have a chance to speak to you. i hope you don’t mind!” 

[rklandon]

❝ adventure is out there ;

rkmeiqi:

it’s never really a hassle to be in seoul without a driver’s license. that is, it’s never really a hassle until she has to lug around a metric buttload of balloons and cause general discomfort for the other people who are on the same subway car. (though, to be fair, even if she had a license, the balloons would be blocking her view, and it would still be a hassle). still, it’s a hassle well worth undertaking when it’s the one day out of the year she gets to be the one to take care of him, of her best friend.

she never gets to say it out loud, though, or else he’ll deny it to high hell.

there are twenty-one large balloons in total, and she carries them off the subway car, up the stairs and onto the sidewalk, where even the gentlest of breezes causes her to wonder if it’ll sweep her away and up into the clouds, making the short walk feel ten times longer.

finally, she settles herself in front of the officetel where he lives and struggles with her phone for a few minutes before finally sending the series of messages. once sent, she places the phone back into her satchel, choosing to ignore whatever messages may come in as a response. instead, she remains perfectly still, hands gripping the strings of the balloons, making sure her face isn’t visible from the front. a birthday surprise should still be a surprise, right? 

he’s no stranger to how they spend birthdays: with each other. spending it with anyone else felt wrong, it’s why when she left to seoul, it didn’t take him too long to follow. there was no way yixing could let a single birthday of theirs pass without being by the other’s side. if he was pretending to be in denial, he could say he knew his feelings for meiqi the second he saw her packing her bags, she hadn’t told him yet but he knew. things were going to change and it’s ironic that he was scared of them changing for so long only for the change to come about in a way he didn’t expect. studying korean with her didn’t draw the connection that she would really go without him. 

that day was the first day yixing wondered, “what am i to her” and it became the day he confirmed, “a knight is only a knight.” no sense in being foolish. 

things are still different. a different city, a different language, a different job, a different family he’s found in seoul with the friends he’s made, new and old, but the thing that gets to him most is that they no longer wake up in the same house. it’s a little lonely but he’d never say it. with all the cheesy lines he says to any other girl, including meiqi, he couldn’t admit that he misses seeing her face in the morning and eating breakfast with her before leaving together. 

his officetel is nice, roomy for a small space and what he expected for living alone, but it’s not home. home is when he opens the door and sees the large arrangement of balloons on the sidewalk. she hides her face, cute, but he knows every inch of her. there’s no denying his ability to spot the girl who’s had his heart since they were little and she kissed the wound on his hand when he fell while climbing a tree on her family’s property. “wow! look at this special delivery! do i get to thank the deliveryperson? is this a singing gram? do i get a dance? show me, show me~” 

[rklandon]

░▐ ★_cabaletta 、

《 ★ rksxngji 》 he thought it was admirable of baekhyun to begin teaching singing lessons. yixing just wasn’t sure that what baekhyun could do with his voice could be easily taught. hard work gets you far but can it truly get you what you want if you set your goals that high? maybe it’s blind flattery of his best friend but hey when you’ve been best friends since childhood as they had been, yixing thinks he’s allowed to be a little blind. but if you ask him, he’s not being biased. byun baekhyun has talent head to toe and yixing thinks he’s transparent when it comes to his best friends, both baekhyun and meiqi. his praise isn’t foolishly given or given only out of loyalty but it’s earned, deserved, and merited every step of the way so he’s glad his friend is getting paid for his talent. grateful as he is for baekhyun’s acknowledgment, because he’s sure it does wonders for the other’s confidence, he’s cautious of the institute itself. 

yixing is more used to dance studios than... what kind of building does one teach singing lessons in anyway? he’s unsure. whatever doubt he may have doesn’t last long (because it is zhang yixing after all and he’s always spilling over with confidence that edges its way into arrogance in a snap❗ ) and his helmet is dangling by its strap from his backpack as he opens the door. “ah, i think i ask for... nightingale? wow, this feels like a secret spy meeting. is there a secret entrance too or do i walk through?” 

[rklandon]

░▐ ★_under the same sky 、

《 ★ featuring rkmeiqi 》 seoul is nothing like beijing or changsha. yixing remembers nothing of his birthplace but he knows the customs, the cuisine, traditions his grandmother passed onto him even in the household of another: meiqi’s family home. food lines the table, end to end, corner to corner, not a single spot unaccounted for and yixing’s relieved when meiqi has the resolve to try and eat it all. she can’t but he appreciates the smile on her face when she sees it all and how cute she is when she realizes she can’t go on. it’s a feast fit for a princess, for his princess. the only princess in his life and she doesn’t even know how special that makes him to her. 

“do you miss the castle, princess?” 

she doesn’t truly answer but yixing doesn’t mind it. what he cares about most is right in front of him. the princess’s happiness is key to his own and his grandmother is a mere phone call away. it’s not perfect but it’s enough for him to feel content. the duck doesn’t taste exactly the way his grandmother makes it, the mooncakes are store bought (a shame because his grandmother makes the best ones but no one could ever replicate that or find the time like she somehow does), but the crab is all his doing. it has been for years, a tradition yixing insisted on mastering on his own from a young age and, now, he’s perfected it. 

his grandmother isn’t there but he finds comfort in the small things like that, in food, in old traditions merging with new, in a lavish apartment in apgujeong filled with the scent of their beijing home, in a person. the princess is who makes her apartment feel like the castle they grew up in together and the thought that they’re all under the same sky reminds him of one thing: love.

[rklandon]

░▐ ★_escape 、

《 ★ rkmeiqi, cont. from here 》 he’s off to her rescue again and it feels like the old days. schoolboy days of venturing from his own school walls to those of hers, searching her out and defending her from whatever came her way, even something as small and simple as a splinter. yixing promised when they were little, tiny pinkies interlocked and an innocent kiss to the cheek, that he’d be the knight that protects the lovely princess. the moment the princess tried to heal the scar he got from the first time he climbed the tree that coincidentally brought him right outside her bedroom window, he knew he was hooked, destined to live a life serving the princess as her most loyal servant. the irony is that he does serve her. his grandmother a live-in maid in the palace that is her family home and yixing sent to live with her. 

whatever she studied, he studied. wherever she went, so did he. 

their own little fairytale, but the knight never ends up with the princess and he didn’t entertain thoughts of it happening one day. he wasn’t naive; okay, more like he wasn’t naive all the time. 

she left to seoul and he joked to his grandmother that meiqi took his soul with her. a harmless joke that his grandmother didn’t believe with such an empty laugh. it’s moments like this that yixing believes it was the best choice he could’ve made to follow her to seoul. because the princess still needs the protection of the knight and he can’t let her be alone, like how he won’t let her be alone as she runs away. 

he knows her better than he knows himself and that says a lot with such a large ego as his, one that he acknowledges but insists is well deserved. weaving and bobbing through cars as he steers his motorcycle still feels too slow compared to the time he might be losing because he knows the princess will escape but when she’ll be able to is uncertain. the certainly only lies in that he wishes to be there for her. unfaltering, infallible, undefeatable. the knight will take on any obstacle for the princess, isn’t that how it should be? the engine isn’t turned off once he reaches the curb outside her apartment building, lowered to a soft hum as he balances himself, reaching into his sidebag for her helmet. it’s one he keeps as a spare but decorations give it away: that the helmet truly belongs to one meng meiqi. she’s the one who can’t wait to escape but he can’t wait to see her.