From The Start

To meet you again, under the crimson shaded umbrella

II

Hua Cheng remembered.

He remembered feeling weightless as he plummeted down the terrace. Life had never been precious to him, so why should he have cared if he did fall to his death or not. Did his unwanted existence not pain his beloved mother so? All things considered, he should have welcomed the fall. But being selfish as always, his traitorous heart resisted. 

He remembered not wanting to die. Inch by inch as he neared the ground, his eyes closed and all he could see was the youthful figure of a boy adorned in all white. He had never yearned to know someone as much as he did then. Yearned enough to want to live again. Stupid. Selfish. You don't deserve it.

Deserving or not, that very boy had caught him and saved his life. As if Hua Cheng was something precious, as if he was someone worth saving.

He remembered his own tears when he was treated with such undeserved kindness.

He remembered feeling so warm and so comfortable in his embrace. It was a sensation he had long forgotten. He clutched on to his saviour with all his might, he wished to never let go.

He remembered his own one eye transfixed on the beautiful face of the boy. Like a man possessed, it was as if he could no longer see anything else.

He remembered an odd, warm feeling igniting hot and fierce like flames, spreading to every part of his being until he was all giddy and lightheaded.

And over everything else, Hua Cheng remembered Xie Lian, and his beautiful smile.

*     *     *

II. To meet you again, under the crimson shaded umbrella.

Meeting Xie Lian had changed Hua Cheng's life. It was not like his fortune had suddenly turned a hundred and eighty degrees; his life was still quite pathetic and miserable. Perhaps, even more so now that his only pillar of support, his mother, was gone. The grief was unbearable, the guilt unspeakable. Her absence almost felt like it was a living, solid being that clutched on to Hua Cheng, tearing him apart and devouring him whole. He often found himself replaying all the golden memories that he had with her in his mind. Before they could ease his anguish, his mind would stray over to her last words, and thus breaking any illusions of comfort.

Only if you had never been born.

These... words, and the sentiments behind them were not alien at all. After all, Hua Cheng had spent the entirety of his short and meager existence hearing them over and over. He ought to be immune to it by now.

His birth had been a rather unusual one. Ever since the day that he was conceived, it was like disaster had plagued the household. Throughout the pregnancy, his mother had remained dangerously ill. His father was not saved from this sudden spell of misfortune either. He had lost his job, driving the family to the horrors of poverty.

His father had never sported an agreeable temper. He was a capricious and foul tempered man, bitter all the way down to his bones. Their predicament only drove him over the edge.

One day, a few days before Hua Cheng's birth, a wandering Daoist priest happened to be passing by their house. He stumbled around in his drunken haze. A pack of cards, which he had spent the entire night playing with, heavy in his pocket. It was then that he heard sounds of screaming and anguish. He located the source of the commotion and rushed in through the open doors of the house to placate the fight.