[Completed]
As choices, rules, timeless deeds, and beginnings attract then push Zhan away between two peaks of bliss, he learns: It's easy to fall, but harder to love. It's one thing to spend a star-aligned winter, but something else to bear the war...
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WE WERE ON one of those painfully quiet breaks between a run-through, and Yibo was outside on the usual checkup call from his sister; which I caught him considering for quite a moment before picking up. Seems like it's one of the bad days.
Tracking the days of Yibo's moods began naturally when we started spending almost every day together. He's usually fast-witted, positively spontaneous, the sort of the person who's unbothered by the negativities that go around him. I've sensed him being affected only once: after his impulsive confession. When his gloom fed on my own guilt.
The thing is, I don't know when or why I feel guilty. Sometimes it comes in the middle of a run-through. Sometimes when we take a break. Sometimes when I reply to a text from Feng. It's catastrophically unrelated, swaying between facts my brain can't put together.
Feeling it rising up my body again, I force my eyes to my own phone, to the caption of a picture in Feng's photography blog; '<repost> beautifully complexed to never find an answer. Or was it simply denied?'
The same old tree, the same tiny figure of me; a strange overwhelm. A frustrating craving to know what he means, the sort you'd get when you're stuck solving a puzzle.
In the midst of that, I realize, Yibo's taking longer than usual. It was cold on my way here and it usually grows colder, but Yibo only wore a crew neck. I breathe out everything in my head, wiggling into my jacket, and grab one of his from the hangers.
Yibo was, in fact, not on the call when I go out. He had his phone gripped in one hand, nails of the other stuck in his mouth, seated on the top stair of the porch with a bumping leg. A non-contextual hurry. A bad day.
I drop the jacket on his head. "What's going on?"
He jolts. "Nothing." His reply is flat, cuddling the leather between his arms, almost like an anxious gesture.
"Wear that. It's cold."
"It's fine."
His eye stubbornly stays fixed on the road ahead. I sigh. "You being like this worries people, you know."
Yibo stretches a silence lacing his fingers together on his knees. "Really?"
I nod, aware that he can't see. "You're usually not . . . this."
Yibo's shoulders rise with a heavy breath. "I doubt that."
"What?"
He shrugs. "That's rich coming from a person who makes me 'this'."
Of course, it's about that. "I thought we agreed to pretend nothing happened."
Yibo scoffs. "Look how successful that is."
I glance down. His hands were clutched tight together, but they trembled in the slight seconds he let them loose. That's when I realize that I misread him. He wasn't anxious. He was angered in a way I haven't seen before. Not directed at me, at least.
