this one's unedited. let me know if i made any mistakes!
hope you enjoy this fluffy chapter :) and as always, thank you for reading ♡
with love,
krissy
❂
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N I G H T F I V E
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DECEMBER 19, 2017
Wen and Mei are seventeen
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AT NIGHT, THE twisting shopping lanes of Langham Place in Mongkok glow golden with wintry warmth.
Mei tucks her hands into the pockets of her fur-lined coat as she weaves through displays of Christmas-themed LINE Friends and plump Bare Bears with drooping Santa hats. Mongkok's famous shopping mall is swarmed with seas of shoppers old and young. Towering white vortexes of glimmering glass arch over an escalator filled with shoppers. Above, families rein in giggling children across tangled shopping aisles above.
The sun has long dipped beneath the horizon, washing the mall in deep tones of burnt honey. After a rather dull blind date set up by Yingyue, all Mei wants to do is go home. It doesn't help that when she passes teenagers collapsing with laughter over failed selfies and sees a smiling woman brushing whipped cream off her toddler's nose at a starlit café, she feels an ache in her stomach.
It's a familiar pain. After all, she's lived for two years with this ache. She's happy, or at least she thinks so, even as time makes her mother's warmth clearer than the details of her face. She can talk to her dad about how she doesn't talk to Wen anymore without feeling a lump catch in her throat. And she can make him smile, even as the loss pulls at his shoulders.
Time heals all wounds, she thinks. But she doesn't fully believe it. Because when it comes back, it hurts.
The escalator takes her up into the glittering lights of a dozen storefronts. She's so lost in thought, feet carrying forward, that she collides right into someone else around the corner.
She jumps back with a yelp.
"Woah--" says a voice, reaching for her. Eyes wide, Mei scrambles for balance, ponytail swaying, until a hand latches around her wrist and pulls her to him. She winds up in the curl of his arm--for a split second, at least, until the boy pulls away with a laugh.
