Xiao Zhan is like a zombie as he bursts out of the room and bounds down the stairs, completely lifeless and apathetic.
At some point, his knees crumble and only his vicious grip on the railing keeps him from falling to the ground.
"Xiao Zhan!" he hears Mei Li's panicked call from behind him, but he ignores it. Instead he picks himself up, and just then his friend appears at the doorway.
"Hey," Xiao Wu says, but this is all that registers. He pushes him out of the way despite Xiao Wu's violent grip on his wrist to stop him from dashing through the bar.
"Xiao Zh-" Xiao Wu nearly yells out but catches himself just in time.
"Fuck!" He curses under his breath and goes after him.
Xiao Zhan runs into two people on his way, and due to his haste nearly sends them both to the floor. There are a few gasps around him in response but he ignores them all, and soon the flat of his hand connects to the bar's glass entrance.
He shoves the door open and in no time arrives at his minivan. He dives towards the glovebox to retrieve his phone, however his hands are shaking so terribly that the moment he tries to turn it on, it falls to the floor. He lowers to retrieve it but in the dark of the car, it becomes a merciless game that the night taunts him with to find it.
"Fuck!" he roars murderously, and by the time he eventually retrieves the phone, he is near crazed with trepidation.
He is too close to losing his mind, so he forces himself to inhale a deep breath as he leans back to turn the phone back on.
His friends soon appear and crowd the open door.
"Xiao Zhan what's happening?" Li Ping asks, his eyes wide with worry, but Xiao Zhan barely hears him. The phone soon powers on and the barrage of notifications once again hit the screen.
He feels the first bout of tears well up in his eyes as he realizes now what they were about.
They had had nothing to do with the earlier released statement by the director, but instead were about how Yibo had been grabbed by the collar and forced to kneel down before the entire world by his own father.
He cannot believe it.
He still cannot believe it.
Immediately he dials Yibo, his breath struck in his throat and the moment it begins to ring, the bout of tears begin to roll down his face.
"Xiao Zhan," he hears a breathless, shocked call by his side but he ignores it. Instead he looks away into the darkness and to the seat beside him, a single prayer in his heart.
Please pick up... please pick up. I beg of you.
The call rings to disconnection, and a choked sound escapes him.
He tries again.
And again.
And again.
"A'Zhan," Mei Li calls softly, and it is only then that the chill of the night registers.
"I have to go," he says to the three worried faces by his side, and instantly grabs the handle of the open door.
"No!" Li Ping seizes it. "You're not driving in this state. I'll take you."
"Move!" he growls, his eyes blazing red however it is impossible to push Li Ping out of the way.
"He's right," Xiao Wu's hand clamps down on the door. "You can't drive in this state. We'll take you. Get down."
Xiao Zhan reaches out to shove him out of the way but to his surprise, his wrist is caught and instead, he is the one that is jerked down.
He hears a pained gasp as he falls to the ground, and would have landed face down onto the asphalt if someone had not lowered to catch him.
He explodes in fury. "I'm going to fuckingkill you!" he roars, pushing Xiao Wu off him but both men eventually end up on the ground.
He scrambles back up to his feet, leaving Xiao Wu still laid out on the ground in exhaustion and it takes everything inside of him not to kick him.
"You can go now," Xiao Wu heaves as he pants. "Li Ping will take you."
In the few moments it takes Xiao Zhan to glare at him, Mei Li retrieves his phone that had fallen away during their tussle, and hands it back to him.
"A'Zhan, please calm down," she pleads, and at the fear in her eyes, he is forced then to seek for some semblance of calm. Suddenly the vehicle roars to life so he turns around just in time to see Li Ping poke his head out of the window.
"Get in!"
More tears pour out of his eyes as his chest heaves, and Mei Li softly touches him.
"You can call him in the car," she says. "You won't be able to do that if you're the one driving."
His legs regain strength after hearing this, so he rounds the vehicle and in no time is in the passenger's seat.
"Where are we going?" Li ping asks and he only has one word in response.
"Home."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
As they set out on their way, Xiao Zhan focuses all his attention on calling Yibo.
He redials his number again and again, and although it keeps ringing, Yibo refuses to pick up.
For a few seconds he gives into the despair, his legs tapping nervously against the floor, but then he finds that as a result he cannot breathe. So he rolls the window down, and takes in a deep, and almost desperate whiff of the cool night breeze.
He gazes at the myriad of cars that are zooming past, and truly wonders how he is going to survive this.
How the both of them... are going to survive this.
He thinks to call his father, but he holds himself back, his current priority before anything else to get in touch with Yibo so that he can confirm that they are okay. And that they will be okay.
He returns to redialing Yibo, and it is only after the third unanswered call that it occurs to him that perhaps Yibo had left him a message on WeChat.
Berserk with hope, he hurries over to the app and indeed meets that a slew of messages are awaiting him. Before he can search through for possibly one from Yibo however, a call comes in.
At the thought that it is Yibo, his heart nearly gives out.
However he finds that it is Nini.
He declines the call to continue with his search and to his equal relief and terror, he finds that there are indeed two new messages waiting for him.
From Yibo.
His palms turn sweaty as he hesitates in opening them, but then as it dawns on him that he no longer has any other options, and that this is the only way that he can currently hear anything at all from Yibo, he taps the message and goes into the chatroom. His eyes immediately settle on the first.
"Ge, I have truly disappointed you, and I am done making excuses. Whatever decision you make... I'll respect it."
He checks the time and sees that this message was sent in the afternoon, about two hours after they had last spoken.
With his heart in his throat, he moves on to the next and final, and sees that it had been sent about two hours earlier. Just as he had arrived in Chongqing, and before the debacle with his father.
"Zhan ge," it reads."I don't know if things will ever go back to the way it was between us, but... I want to let you know that you are crucial to me. That your welfare is crucial to me. I know that it is hard for you to believe this now but if you give me just one last chance, I swear that I will prove this to you. And I will willingly bleed... until you're able to believe it."
Xiao Zhan rereads Yibo's words over and over again, and it doesn't even register that tears are rolling down his face until they begin to drop onto the screen. He brushes the puddles off, and then he heads back into weibo to reread the message that his father had publicly addressed to him.
Wang Yibo
Just a few weeks ago you were at our home, and we received you with kindness. What you might not know though is that in the last year, that was only the second time I was seeing my son, and it was all because of your visit.
You were in Banan for work, and to make sure that you felt comfortable, he flew all the way back from Shanghai.
When I asked him later on why he always treated you so affectionately, he said to me that 'Ba, Yibo is a great friend. I am always happy to see him."
I could not understand this so I reminded him of how absent you had been from his life during his hardest times, and how any small mistake between the both of you was once again going to put him back into helll. But he brushed this off, because somehow you have managed to convince that you are worthy of being his friend.
However, just as distance tests a horse's strength and time reveals a person's character, a true friend is never known until a man has a need.
Yibo, time and time again, and when my son could have used your help, you have kept silent and turned your face away, refusing to step even one toe out of line on his behalf. With this recent matter, you were the one who nudged him towards this script even after you had already auditioned for it. He told me that you did this out of kindness, but if this is the case, then why did you not provide any clarifications when the accusations of lobbying were brought against him. Isn't this removing a fly from your friend's forehead with a hatchet?
Wang Yibo, my son is not your spring board to success. He is not the repellent for all your misfortune. Every time he falls, all of the benefits come to you while he retreats back into a shell and struggles to keep his sanity.
Take it all, but I will not lose my son because of you.
Therefore this is my declaration to the world, that all ties between Wang Yibo and my son have been severed. I do hope that you all will respect this, and regard these boys as the separate entities that they are, from now on.
The first time he had read this with Mei Li's phone, he had instantly gone numb, unable to believe what he was seeing. Now, and as he reads it again, he finds that his hands are trembling so hard that they can barely hold on to the phone.
However, he hardens his grasp of it because once again, he has to read Yibo's response.
In just the space of an hour and a half, the post has already gotten about 350,000 likes and about 95,000 comments and at the crux of it all is the top comment, pinned automatically by the almost 20,000 replies to what Yibo had written to his father. He doesn't dare read any of them, but Yibo's he has etched permanently into his mind forever.
"Shushu, I wholeheartedly accept your criticism. I am deeply sorry."
Earlier in the day, Xiao Zhan had felt grief overwhelm him at the realization that Yibo during his hardest times had failed to contact him. It had hurt and disappointed him but right now, he realizes that what he had felt back then was nothing. Absolutely nothing compared to how wretched he currently feels.
Yibo apologizing to him in private was one thing.
But then having to apologize before the entire fucking world, for something that should have only concerned just the both of them?
His heart cannot take it.
He realizes now that he is the one that has disappointed Yibo.
He is the one that has stripped him bare, and exposed him to the world.
Yibo had given him his heart, and completely laid himself at his feet and yet he had failed to protect him. He had instead allow him to be so blatantly attacked in this way. He truly doesn't know how they will ever be able to move past this.
Unable to further contain himself, Xiao Zhan bursts into tears.
He remains silent as they stream down his face, and as he pulls up his father's contact. He presses the phone to his ear, his heart burning, and waits as it rings.
A few seconds later, the call connects and his father's voice comes through the receiver.
"Where are you?"
Xiao Zhan shuts his eyes, completely clueless as to where to even begin.
"Shouldn't you have arrived in Chongqing by now?"his father asks.
Xiao Zhan inhales and then exhales deeply, hoping to simply regain the ability to speak.
"Ba,"he breathes. "Take that post down. Right now."
At this his father goes quiet, but Xiao Zhan is well acquainted with his stubbornness so he waits for the resistance that he knows is coming.
"Why?"
Xiao Zhan's temper is instantly set ablaze!
There are a string of curses on the tip of his tongue that he is barely able to hold back from bursting out. Somehow however, he grips the phone excruciatingly hard and is able to hold himself back.
"Do you even know what you've just done?" he asks."Why would you attack Yibo like that on Weibo?"
"I didn't attack Yibo," he argues back. "I just merely stated the truth that all of the world has already accepted except you. That Yibo is not a good friend to have. And that he is not someone that you should be associated with."
A strangled moan escapes from Xiao Zhan at these continued insults against Yibo. They impale themselves so deeply into his soul until he feels as though he is being gutted, endlessly and mercilessly.
He is trembling violently now, but he manages once again to speak.
"Ba, Yibo has parents too. What if they'd attacked me the way that you just attacked him? How would you feel?"
His father scoffs in response. "And what could they possibly attack you for? For being too warm towards him? For being too susceptible? For being too unfortunate? I already warned you earlier that if things should go sour again because of Wang Yibo, that I wasn't going to sit back and-"
"Ba,"he cuts him off, his tone labored and anguished, but then he realizes that he has nothing further to say to him.
At least not over the phone. So he pulls the device away from his ear, and disconnects the call.
He is now completely enraged, and thus he feels a deadly chill begin to weave its way through him. But yet at the same time, his blood is boiling with so much fire that he feels as though he is about to implode.
They are soon arriving at the house now so before he has to confront his father, he tries again to reach Yibo.
Over and over, but it is all to no avail.
He doesn't blame him.
In fact he blames no one but himself, because he realizes now that he was the one that had given his father the permission to degrade Yibo on his behalf. By allowing his relationship with Yibo to be so blatantly and constantly criticized, he had inadvertently allowed Yibo to become a cheap target.
Wang Yibo... the one person that he claimed to love as much as his own soul. The one person in the world that owned his heart completely, and irreversibly.
Granted, these attacks and insults had come from his own father, and since it was under the banner of acting in concern for him he had never had his guard up. However he should have put his foot down a long time ago, and prevented anyone from thinking it acceptable to speak ill of Yibo before him, no matter the grounds.
He cannot believe now how careless he had been in protecting Yibo, and if there is one thing that Xiao Zhan knows with absolute certainty that he will regret for the rest of his life, it will be this.
Right now, he can barely even forgive himself for it but eventually he will. Because he didn't know any better. But this regret... it will linger forever because he should have known better.
Eventually they arrive and the moment he gets out of the car and starts to march towards the house, he wipes the tears off his face. It hasn't been able to stop falling, especially since Yibo is still unreachable and it is driving him crazy.
However, he is going to keep trying until he is able to reach him because there is just one thing that he has to say to him.
I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you.
Please. Forgive me.
He is starting right now, and he is so angry that he doesn't even bother ringing the doorbell. He pounds furiously on the door, completely accepting the pain that it is bringing to his hand.
"Ba! Ma!" he yells, and when the delay continues on he begins to kick at the door with his foot.
"Xiao Zhan!" his mother eventually answers from within, and soon enough the door swings open.
He storms in, nearly pushing her out of the way.
"Xiao Zhan!" she cries.
"Where is he?" he asks, every single second that passes by ticking like a bomb in his mind and heart.
"Xiao Zhan please calm down," she pleads.
He ignores her, and when he doesn't see his father anywhere around, he begins to head up the stairs.
"He's not there, he's down here," his mother says and he quickly returns.
"Where?" he asks, and sees her eyes filling with tears. She tries to hold onto his arm but he quickly swerves his hand and steps away.
Just then, he hears the door to his father's home office swing open. He spins around and turns to face the man that has done more damage to him than he will ever know.
"Have you lost your mind?" his father's cold, booming voice resounds across the room. "How dare you come barging in here like this?"
Despite how enraged Xiao Zhan is, he tries to remind himself of whom this man is to him. Despite his mistake.
So he takes a deep breath before he speaks.
"Where's your phone?"
His father stares him down. "Is this why you finally rushed down here? Even in the midst of your current crisis, is all you can think about still Wang Yibo?
At this, Xiao Zhan feels what little bit of patience he has left dissipate.
"My current crisis? Do you even know what you've done?"
"No, I don't," his father replies. "What exactly have I done to make you so mad that you cut the call on me? Because I 'attacked' Wang Yibo? And what's so wrong about that? Especially when he deserves it! What exactly has Wang Yibo done to make you unable to see that he is destroying you? What kind of spell does he have over you that you cannot even see that if you keep associating with him, he is going to ruin you?"
"So whatif he fucking ruins me?" Xiao Zhan explodes, and his mother jumps.
"Ba!" he cocks his head at him, his brows furrowed with horror. "You have just belittled Wang Yibo in front of the whole world. And do you know what's worse? He accepted it and apologized to you. In front of the whole world. Do you know what that means?"
His voice is trembling now. "It means that I have lost him. That from now on, whatever faith he had in me has been completely destroyed."
The tears pour from his eyes and he allows them to roll down his cheeks.
"It means that even if by some miracle, I am ever able to earn him back, I will have to spend the rest of my life making it up to him. Trying to convince him that no matter what..."
He chokes up then as his vision severely blurs, but he forces the words out through the pain.
"That no matter what... I will always be on his side. That I will never, ever, allow anyone to think that it is okay to attack him on my behalf."
"What have you done? You made him bow his head to the whole world and announce to them that he is not worthy, both as a human being and as a friend. When in fact I am the one that is not worthy of him. Do you know why he apologized to you, when he could have fought back? Or do you think Wang Yibo is docile?"
At this he cannot help but laugh, the sound bitter and devastating, and genuinely filled with stupefaction.
More tears pour down his face. "He did it because you're my father, and I am someone that holds a place in his heart that no one else does. So whether you were wrong or right was inconsequential."
"So what if he is destroying me? So what if he is going to ruin me? Was it your place to judge him? Was it your place to go over my head to attack him?"
"Who gave you the permission?"
He yells at the top of his voice. "Who gave you the fucking audacity?"
His eyes are now wide and bloodshot as he glares at his father, and a devastating silence settles across the room.
"Zhan Zhan," he hears his mother's sobbing from the corner.
However he ignores her, and begins to pound his hand furiously against his chest. "In this family, I am the only one who has that right. I am the only one that has the right to fucking judge him because he is mine. Do you hear me?"
His father doesn't say a word in response, so Xiao Zhan closes the distance between them until he is standing right before him. He raises his hand and points a finger at his father, his eyes blood red, and his face soaked.
"I'm going to give you the next ten minutes to think over everything I have just said. Delete what you wrote, and delete Yibo's apology to you too."
"And if I don't?" His father asks, unblinking.
"If you don't," Xiao Zhan continues quietly, "then consider me out of your life. I will no longer have a father, and you will no longer have a son."
"Xiao Zhan!" his mother wails.
He lowers his hand and takes a few steps away from his father.
"I understand that you did this out of concern for me, but I have tried to tell you that you have made the biggest mistake of my life and you have refused to listen to me. Me and Yibo were already standing on the edge, but I was never going to push him down. I was going to pull him back to me, but you took that choice away from me. You took that choice away, and shoved him down! How do you expect him to ever heal from this?"
"And if... if I lose Yibo, how do you expect me to ever forgive you for this? How do you expect me to ever forgive myself for allowing you to humiliate him on my behalf?"
"Because of what you've done today, I will forever have to hang my head down before Wang Yibo."
"Thank you."
"Xiao Zhan," his mother cries and once again tries to reach for him but he backs away. From the both of them.
"Ten minutes," he reminds his father with one last glare, and then he turns around and storms out of the house.
He slams the door behind him, however he finds that he cannot take a single step forward. Not without once again trying to reach Yibo. So he pulls his phone out of his pocket, and dials the number that he now only realizes that he knows by heart.
Once again, it continues to ring without a response, and his heart deflates.
He decides then that tonight he is going to fly back to Beijing, but as he begins to stride past their garden and towards the front gate, he suddenly realizes that the call has connected.
He immediately stops in his tracks, just as his heart slams into his chest.
The pain knocks the breath out of him, but none of it registers as he listens to the breathing that he swears he can hear from the other end.
He pulls the phone from his ear, almost too afraid to check but then he has to, before he is driven completely mad with delusion.
The timer on the screen registers that indeed Yibo has picked up his call, and that his time with him is now running.
His knees almost give out.
"Yibo,"he breathes, nearly choking with tears in relief.
"Yibo."
It takes him a few more seconds, but Yibo eventually clears his throat and proceeds to speak.
"Zhan ge,"he answers, and once again Xiao Zhan's eyes fill with tears.
He lifts his face towards the starlit sky, and sends up a prayer of gratitude from the depths of his heart.
He also sends one to Yibo.
"Thank you,"he nearly chokes on the barrage of emotions that are close to compeltely crippling him. "Thank you for responding."
His voice is trembling, as well as his entire body but there is nothing he can do about this so he ignores it all, and focuses solely on the person on the other end of the line. The person, that he now knows without the shadow of a doubt, is the love of his life.
"Yibo,"his voice softens to butter, however he doesn't know what to say to him first.
Where are you?
How are you?
Do you hate me?
I'm sorry.
Please forgive me.
I love you.
He cannot decide on where to start from, but thankfully Yibo intervenes.
"Zhan ge,"he calls again."How are you?"
Xiao Zhan can no longer remain standing, so he allows the strength to seep out of his legs and lowers himself to the ground. He hangs his head in soul deep exhaustion, and this posture instantly brings to mind the previous night, and how he had also found Yibo in a similar, desolate state.
Is this how he'd felt? Xiao Zhan wonders. So dejected and on the verge of collapse? Wrought with the fear that he was about to lose me?
He doesn't hold back anymore and immediately begins to apologize, for everything, and for ever making him feel this way.
"Yibo, I'm sorry." he says. "I'm- I'm sorry my phone was turned off. I- I only j-just found out what happened. My father, he's going to take the post down. Immediately."
At Yibo's complete silence however, he is forced to stop. His heart at a standstill.
"Zhan ge,"Yibo calls him for the third time, and every nerve in his body twists violently with trepidation.
"I'm here,"is the only response that Xiao Zhan can muster.
"I'm calling because... I don't want to leave things open ended between us."
Xiao Zhan feels his blood freeze over.
A few more seconds of silence pass between them, but just as Yibo is about to continue speaking, he hears the creak of their gate opening, and looks up to see as Li Ping intrudes.
"Xiao Zhan," he calls, and Yibo seems to hear him from his end because he remains silent.
Xiao Zhan can do nothing but stare at Li Ping without seeing him, and it is only a little while longer before his brain finally registers why. He quickly jumps to his feet then, an almost numbing relief coming over him.
"Yibo,'" he says into the phone."I'll call you back. Something urgent just came up."
And with this, he disconnects the call.
Then for good measure, he shuts off the phone. He finds that he is unable to stop there however, because he then turns around and violently smashes the phone into the wall.
"Holy shit!" Li Ping howls, as the device shatters into pieces.
It is too dark for Xiao Zhan to clearly spot the parts, now scattered all over the grass, but he doesn't care to. Instead, he shuts his eyes, and allows himself to take his first proper breath in the last hour.
Afterwards, he turns to meet Li Ping's still thunderstruck gaze.
"Let's go," he says, but Li Ping's mouth instead drops open.
"What the fuck is going on?"
Notes:
It is a miracle that I was able to connect this chapter with the prologue in chapter 36. Since that prologue, the plot of this novel has been hijacked from me by these two boys and changed several times, so I was terrified and sure that I had put my foot in my mouth.
But my God, it connected!
For one, there was originally no road trip to Chongqing and everything that happened during, and you all know how eventful that trip was.
Granted, there are some slight edits to the prologue now in chapter 36, because my dears I underestimated Xiao Zhan's fury, but unless you have reread that chapter within the last day or two, you won't notice a single change.
Either way, this is a miracle to me so I am satisfied. Damn. Enjoy. xo.