Soul Fire (GUARDIAN BL)

Chapter 17. "Midnight talks ..evil scent"

The Golmud Hotel is one of the most luxurious hotel in the whole of Golmud city. Zhao's room was huge and didn't look like a hotel room at all, more like a guest suite in a palace. The bed was king-sized with pure white, Egyptian cotton sheets. He had his own desk, a thirty-six-inch TV with DVD, a sprawling soft leather couch, and, on the other side of the floor-to-ceiling windows was his own private balcony. And the bathroom. As well as the power shower, there was a bath big enough for a football team. Everything in marble and handcrafted tiles. The millionaire suite. Shen Wei shuddered to think how much it might cost a night since Zhao is the one paying for all of it costs.

It wasn't the decor that made the hotel so exciting to Zhao, he found it clean to the point of sterility, it was the people he always met with. It was the one place his scattered friends could be together, to be the people they were before "life" took a hold of them. They were boys once more and each one of them wore the grins of their youth under hair that was more grey than coloured.

The ventilation system inside could fine-control the temperature, so that blankets would not be required. It was more efficient that way; washing alien sweat and skin cells from cloth was costly in ways that Zhao could not support. The chilly temperatures that the people in Golmud were accustomed to didn't suit Zhao at all.

The air is so brittle it could snap, and if it doesn't, he might. No-one speaks, what is there to say? Platitudes won't cut it right now. Zhao keeps humming, anything to ease the terrible burden of worry. But now he's coming down, either burning up at this moment or safe in the room, dead or alive, like the damn Schrödinger's cat. He's in both states.

In this suspended horror silence that will have to end and to last an eternity at the same time. It's been an couple of hours since the comet hit the city. What was supposed to be an eventful night for SIU had turned into a cruel twist of fate for them which only Zhao and Shen knows about.

It's like the hotel building serves as an emergency shelter and is filled with them being the survivors sitting on a large gray mats laid on the floor next to Zhao's bed.

They both sat there, with their backs on the side of the bed cage. Zhao sat so stiffly and with such a straight back that gave off the impression of being a particularly strict school dean, an impression not helped by the way he wore his hair pulled back severely into a tight and twisted bun.

Shen Wei straighten up, pushing his shoulders backwards and the small of his back upwards and in, sitting taller, more erect, someone like who didn't want to wind up as some hunch backed old man in a few decades time, but within a few more minutes of sitting he had forgotten and resumed his slouching posture.

Contemplating what had just happened in the last hour. Shen Wei felt an overwhelming amount of guilt for breaking the news to Zhao. The situation had become even more complicated.

Shen Wei nerves were frayed to the quick. In this building anxiety he constructed elaborate rationalizations for why everything would turn out alright, but still the nagging voice in the back of his mind spoke of nothing but doom ahead.

Shen Wei grumbled as he lowers his head and stares at the floor. The water champagne sits cooly in the glass before him, condensation beading the outside. He run his delicate finger around it as if slicing the top off and watch the transparent "blood" drip to the pristine mirrored tiled below. In this white on white room of feminine perfection that the hotel owner has created he want to paint the walls red, but he was forbidden to drop even a crumb lest spoil.

Shen Wei never drink but he had to make an exception tonight. He need alcohol in his system just to relax his nerves for the night.

Pouring himself a drink and bringing the alcohol to his lips. The burning sensation pouring down his throat, creating a warm feeling deep inside of his stomach. He would just have to wait for someone entertaining to arrive.