I'm the moth and you're my flame. I'll fly to you even if I get burned.
--------------------------------------
Wei Ying
Visiting the studio has always been exciting and emotionally draining at the same time.
It felt like meeting an old friend to whom soon you'll have to say goodbye. The familiarity is nice, recalling memories is nice. But the farewell takes a good proportion out of the cheerfulness, the mixture of emotions is . . . weird.
Since I came for a quick stop, I park my car on the other side of the road. I get down, freezing with the temperature drop of the coming winter.
When I looked around, something makes me feel cautious as if someone was watching me.
I push my hands into my pockets and take quick steps across the road, taking shallow breaths to avoid the sharp pain in my nose. I rush through the glass double doors; the warmth in the reception was welcoming. I deeply inhale; finally, a warm breath. The uneasiness was gone. Maybe it was my imagination after all.
I greet the receptionist and I proceed further into the studio.
As soon as I open the soundproof door of the control room, a bass tune falls into my ear. I didn't have to look to know that Wen Ning was crucially staring at the computer screen behind the console as if he was going to blow holes through it. Of course, he doesn't notice me coming in.
"Staring doesn't make the hearing better, you know?" I comment and he almost jumps out of his seat startled by the sudden presence.
"You scared me." He stammers, massaging his chest with his hand.
I chuckle at the reaction. "What are you mixing?"
"A bass backup I recorded today," Ning says. "It's not blending with the kick."
"Let me see."
He complies, letting me listen to the track. "Hmm. Try a high pass filter on the kick."
It takes him a while to try it, and I take a seat on the couch at the back of the room till he's done.
Our former band broke up a few months after my graduation when our drummer and the vocalist decided to leave the country, leaving Ning and I and our pages of bass-electric duet compositions with no clear purpose. By that time, my passion was slowly disappearing, and Cheng was begging me to accept my position at Jiang Corp; I realized that I should do it for him.
But for some reason, I wanted to build this studio. So I saved for it.
By the time I was done with the work, Ning was a broke college dropout. Qing wanted to take him in at the club, but he always had a dream for music, so I offered him a job to manage the studio. Then, helped him form another band with a few clients who came here.
Ning plays the track again and smiles at the outcome. "Yeah. That's nice," he says. "Thanks."
"Anytime. That trick comes out handy." I reply. "Where are the others? Aren't you guys supposed to practice today?" I ask.
"No. We rescheduled it to tomorrow." He says. "Is it okay, Mr. Wei?"
"It's Xian, goddamnit! Just what the hell happened to you?"
After offering the job, Ning, who grew up with me through most of my childhood, started treating me like some kind of a master. Even after years, I still haven't been able to make him call me Xian. Well, at least, Mr. Wei is much better than 'Master'.
Scratching the back of his neck, Ning gives me a sheepish smile. I groan, massaging the bridge of my nose.
"Uh . . . Mr. Wei," he says. I sigh—I'm not getting used to this. "Did Jie and Cheng tell you something?"
"Nothing except for yelling at me on a daily basis. Why?"
"Oh. No, it must be nothing," he says. "They're just worried about you."
I sigh. "I'm fine, Ning." I groan.
Ning turns around to look at me, and smiles, rather compassionately. "If you say so, Mr. Wei."
Only that, later, I found that it was indeed nothing at all, and I was, by all means, 'fine'.
I was trying to shift my mood with a coffee, as I blankly stared at the dying sun getting close to the horizon through the window of my apartment.
I've been having this weird feeling since morning; something that kept on shifting between anxiousness and excitement, keeping me at the edge all day. Added to that, what Ning said this evening kept on bothering me.
Why would he ask if Cheng had told me something? Was it something serious?
To my despair, the coffee only made it worse. Still, I kept on sipping it out of habit.
Habits... Sometimes I feel like I've made myself a prisoner of my own dailies. In a few hours, I may sleep; then wake up; then work; then visit the studio. Come home. Then I'll have another coffee on another day. And repeat. But this routine and its sense of continuation had become the only thing that keeps me going.
The doorbell blows off bringing me back to Earth. I leave my mug on the coffee table with a sigh and proceed towards it.
I open the door and—what the—I blink, but still, the person I hadn't seen for seven years was standing in front of me.
Those stunning eyes, the silky hair, sharp features that made me stare all the time, the lips that once drove me insane—He's standing there wearing a long brown coat and over his white shirt with a scarf around his neck with his usual inexpressive face as if he does this daily.
I've pictured him in front of my door too many times. So I stare till I'm sure that this is not a mere illusion.
"Lan Zhan?" was all I could mumble
No, I feel nothing for him. I tell myself. But that was after my arms worked on their own to wrap around his neck. I blink away the tears that formed with no explanation.
This definitely is not how I should be greeting my ex-boyfriend who left and I don't want anything with, but then he hugs me back, letting out a small chuckle before burying his face into my shoulder.
"You're not supposed to be here," I mutter as I pull away, but still let him in and close the door.
I could only stare at his eyes when he comes close to me and puts his arms around my waist, pulling me close to him. His face was only a few inches away from mine, and it did not help the raging feelings I had inside—fuck, no, I did not have any feelings inside.
"Why—what are you doing here," defeated, I mumble.
"I want you, Wei Ying." That's the first thing he says to me in seven years, and I give in like a fool.
All the desire that I carefully bottled up in all these years comes out gushing like water from a broken dam.
I couldn't help it when I crash my lips to him and wrap my legs around his hip, making him push me against the wall. Neither could I help it when I remove his scarf and part his coat and proceed to his shirt to unbutton it.
I could only keep on telling myself that we should stop, as I got lost in the relentless bliss he made me feel in his arms.
No conversations, no explanations, we were lost in the feelings we never moved on from. I was releasing it all on him, and I wasn't supposed to.
But what can I do when I've got what I craved, what I missed, this close to me? It's a hunger that never stops, but so is the pain that comes after.
I was lying on my bed with my back facing Lan Zhan, clutching the sheets in my hands, constantly swaying between emotions of two far-away ends.
"Wei Ying," I hear Lan Zhan say behind me. I quickly close my eyes pretending to be asleep.
I could feel the press on the mattress when he shifts his weight to his hand to look over me. With a sigh, he kisses my ear and lies down again. But this time he wraps his hands around my waist in a gentle embrace.
"I love you." He whispers and my eyes flutter open, along with the tear that escaped them.
Extra:
credits: mmungnothing on Twitter
Here go the first two chapters!!
Please do let me know what you think about it
Till next time...