mental note to self | meteor garden [REVAMPING]

09 | 吹

One time, when she was eight years old, she had opened the door to her parents' bedroom unannounced and found her Ma crying on the floor beside the bed. She never found out why, but that didn't stop her from being shaken to the very core at the discovery of the carefully hidden cracks in her mother's walls of calm composure. 

She always knocked before entering rooms after that.

Seeing Lei doing a handstand next to his bedroom window gripped her heart in a rush of déjà vu.

Hours before they were scheduled to send Jing off at the airport, she walked into Lei's bedroom without knocking. He had left the door cracked slightly open for her. He was doing a handstand next to his bedroom window. Her heart thudded in a rush of déjà vu. He wasn't crying per se, but he might as well have been. The invisible hand around her heart squeezed tighter at the sight of his expression. 

Her silky periwinkle pajama pantsㅡin her rush, she hadn't bothered to changeㅡbunched around her as she sank onto the plush white carpet beside him. Not a word was uttered, but as always, it felt like everything was being said.

A while later, they were both laying down with their legs dangling off the side of his bed, staring at the shadows cast on his ceiling by the waning moonlight.

"Should I be putting up more of a fight? Begging her not to leave?" he asked, voice magnified by the silence that always accompanied the early, still-dark hours of the morning.

"We both know tell her not to do something makes her even more stubborn." They both chuckled at that, each recalling different events of the same essence.

"Shancai keeps insisting I should. She even tried to persuade Jing herself."

"Well, we all have different priorities. Jing has always put following her dreams before anything else. She's always wanted to change the world," Yuxin said with a sad smile. "What are yours?"

He gave it considerable thought. The melody of the crickets filled the air once again. The moon was bright. The mist from his humidifier smelt of cedarwood.

"I don't know," he eventually admitted. "But if I do know something, it's that I want her to be able to chase her dreams without being confined by me, or anyone else. But I still... A part of me wants her to stay so we can try this... thing we have. After all these years of pining after her, I thought we were finally on the brink of something important." He paused, swallowing thickly. "Am I that easy to leave?"

Everything in Yuxin expanded and softened, and she pulled herself up on one elbow so she could look at him properly. "No. Lei, you know it's not like that."

He said nothing, just kept staring at her. Or through her, she wasn't sure which.

"For what it's worth, I think you're doing the right thing by not forcing her to stay," she said quietly. "This city has never been big enough for her. She has to leave." 

"She has to leave," he repeated, almost dazedly.

"But..." Yuxin pursed her lips and sat up fully, felt his eyes burning a hole through her back. "From what I've gathered, it sounds like there's a lot of loose ends you two haven't had the time to address."

"What are you saying?"

Yuxin ran her fingers through her hairㅡsomething she always did when unsure of herself—untangling both knots and jumbled thoughts until she arrived a coherent sentence. Jing was always better at this kind of thing. "I'm saying," she said slowly, carefully. "That she needs leave, but that doesn't mean you have to stay."

‒∙◇❀◇∙‒

The airport speakers crackled to life. A feminine voice announced the boarding of the Paris flight and cut their goodbyes short.