All That We Held Dear - YiZhan (COMPLETED)

Arc VI - The World In Between - Part 1

Xiao Zhan and Chiyou didn't speak during the flight, but he felt her gaze on him several times. He resolutely kept his eyes on the seat in front of him to avoid giving her the opportunity to engage. He didn't see any point in discussing what had taken place and her role in it. It wouldn't change the outcome, even if he did.

When she began reading something on her phone, and it became clear that she'd understood that he wouldn't open up no matter how much she stared, Xiao Zhan attempted to sleep. However, he soon found that each time he closed his eyes, the previous night's events would replay in his head. Although this private projection didn't elicit any of the emotions it should have, it was still enough to make him anxious and prevent him from falling asleep. Switching gears, he then tried to distract himself with a movie, but no matter how many times he scrolled through the in-flight entertainment system's menu, nothing caught his attention enough to tempt him. In the end, he chose something at random, if only to have something to focus his eyes on. However, by the time they landed in Beijing, he realized that although he was sure he hadn't dozed off, he couldn't clearly remember the film's story nor the majority of the time he'd spent on the plane. In fact, he was slightly baffled when the flight attendant came to take away his cup; he didn't recall having drunk anything. Had this not been the stuff of fiction, Xiao Zhan might have believed he'd ceased to exist for a moment. The same thing happened when the driver picked them up and took them back to his place. Although, according to his phone, they'd been in the car for about an hour or so, when they pulled in front of his building, he could have sworn they'd left the airport minutes ago. He didn't think anything of importance had taken place during those missing bits, but he worried if, on top of his emotions, his temporal awareness was also being affected. Of course, it was also possible that he was just tired. Regardless, it left him in a strange state of mind.

Although he was exhausted, once he got home, trying to make himself cry and release the painful emotions he'd repressed was at the top of Xiao Zhan's agenda. His level of anxiety was lower than it had been when he'd discovered he couldn't feel anything, and he was beginning to wonder if he wouldn't lose his ability to feel that as well. For some reason, after having had a lot of time to think during downtime on set that day, he'd come to the conclusion that he had to find a way to initiate the grieving process before this last emotion disappeared as well. Otherwise, he might never be able to feel again. Had he been asked to explain why, he would have been hard-pressed to do so.

Based on the last time he'd experienced emotional numbness, it stood to reason for him to assume that he hadn't been able to make himself cry yet because he hadn't had access to a safe location. True, his apartment in Seoul was private, but with the entire Wang family having found ways to intrude on him unexpectedly, and the fact that Chiyou also had a key, it was clearly not a private space. After Auntie Wang had made him promise not to see Yibo anymore, he'd only broken down once he'd gotten home; logic dictated that the same thing would happen again this time. Unfortunately, unlike then, he didn't have the luxury of an empty schedule which was why his manager had followed him home, making him ask himself if he shouldn't have talked to her on the plane to get all that business out of the way. Regardless, if he ended up breaking down, by that point, it wouldn't matter if it was in front of her or not.

Although he'd been gone for less than forty-eight hours, when Xiao Zhan turned on the lights in the dining area of his apartment, the place looked odd to him, as though he was seeing it for the first time and could perceive all the flaws of his decor choices. Even though he knew why they were arranged this way, some displayed items simply didn't fit together. He wondered if this was how the rare people who visited his place felt when they looked at his things. It was definitely interesting, and he would have liked to know if Yibo, once he went home, would feel the same when seeing his own things.