有缘千里来相会。
remorse is a violent dyspepsia of the mind, but it is very difficult to treat because it cannot even be defined / because everything is not gold that glisters and everything is not a tear that glistens » a starter for @sgnxiaoli
absence manifests itself in several ways.
whilst some blank spaces get filled with time, people and new memories–- like time healing old wounds. then there are those apertures that are like constant voids: like nothingness in a shape of a person. it is said that memories grow sweeter with time, perhaps–- but some tend to grow edges as sharp as knives. yibo has a fair share of memories like those on his own, but some things cannot simply be categorised. some are plainly just those: memories.
seoul is not beijing, and seoul isn’t luoyang either, but sometimes he thinks that he catches glimpses of him; a familiar face in the crowd. but before he realises it–- before he could reach out his hand, he seems to slip through the crevices of his fingers like sand, and yibo is left with only dust in his grasp. during these times, he isn’t completely certain if he had just mistaken another head of brown hair to a picture of xiaoli he has in his head. it’s been years, after all.
this time, though, he is chasing a chance. both foreign and familiar at the same time, as if it was something the mind had forgotten, but the skin still remembered. however, there was no chance for yibo to have forgotten, even if they aren’t fourteen and naive anymore.
the first time, it’s like only his lips are moving, no sound coming out. panics, few syllables messily pieced together in accented korean. “wait!” and he reaches his hand, almost afraid that if he didn’t hurry, xiaoli would be gone already, and yibo would have another handful of nothing to hold.
“xiao-ge?” there is nothing more natural as the old name slipping between his lips in his native language, but it’s tasting both homely and distant and bitter. he kind of hates how his voice seems to break when he calls him brother, how his grip on xiaoli’s sleeve is nothing if not careful and hesitant. and he is suddenly at a loss for words. throat dry and his tongue tied. there are lots of things yibo wants to say, things he has to say but what he finally manages is neither of those but a relieved confession. “i knew it was you.”
(you still remember me, right?)
