As soon as Luhan opened the door, Xiumin rushed over to engulf Lay in a hug. “I was so scared,” he mumbled, voice quivering. “I thought you were gone. Just like that. I would hate myself forever.”

Lay's guilt immobilized him, weighing him down so he couldn’t hug his brother back, couldn’t push him away. The explanation was stuck in his throat.

But Luhan had that covered with a quiet, “He was kissing Shixun in the library.”

The arms around Lay fell off as Xiumin retreated several steps. Whether in shock or disappointment, it made no difference.

“Should’ve guessed it.” Kris’s dry chuckle forced Lay to keep his head hung low. “If we couldn’t find him, he was always with the young master.”

“Did you forget about the meeting, Yixing?”

Lay finally looked up at his brother’s voice. Why were they all using the old names now? He couldn’t bring himself to. Those names belonged to the other world, the one dead to him. “No,” he insisted. “I even came here!”

Luhan furrowed his brows. “Then why didn’t you come in?” he asked in genuine confusion.

As he struggled to answer the question, Lay saw Kris’s face in the corner of his vision thought, you know what? it.

“Because,” he practically growled out, “I didn’t want to disrupt your discussion. About me.”

In the lapse that followed, Xiumin cast a withering glance in Kris’s direction while Luhan just looked uncomfortable and Lay stood there.

“I remember more now, I can piece things together, but my loss of memory wasn’t fake. Why would I ever-”

“No one ever said you were faking it,” Kris cut in with a sharp smirk. “What you’re doing now is duihao ruzuo. Or is it xinli yougui?”

Red tinted Lay’s periphery vision. “You are ing driving me crazy-”

“Both of you. Please stop.”

That tired voice could barely be heard, but it held enough power to silence the room. Even Lay’s agitated panting seemed to be on mute. The eldest of the group walked to a chair, the only moving thing there; Lay’s heartbeat was on hold, all emotion wiped away with a thumb.

Xiumin sank down, the wooden seat creaking. “I suggested this meeting because I wanted to help Lay remember.” He scanned the room, eyes sending an encrypted message when they landed on Kris and Luhan.  “This relationship with Shixun—or Sehun—won’t end well.”

Amidst the tension, the main character—the protagonist, the star of the show—remained emotionless. He was used to the attention, no longer felt butterflies at the prospect of the spotlight and had steeled himself against the criticism and debate that always followed.

His soul was floating above the crowd, one foot in another world. His shell was burning in hell while his mind floated in the clouds.

Lay was numb. The others were not.

Luhan cleared his throat, in a way much like Suho did during his recount of Lay’s past life.  He took Lay’s hand and gently pressed him down into a chair. It groaned at his weight. (Why did the chairs here always protest?)

“What do you know about your relationship with him?” Xiumin probed.

There was no point in holding back. There wasn’t much to hold back anyway. “Tao introduced us to him,” he recited, “but we became closer and we would hang out in the study and-”

“Of course,” Kris cut in. “You two were the only ones who were literate.”

Lay bit his lip, but brushed the comment off and continued. “Then Tao was forced to leave, but for some reason, his dad liked me and I went to live with them. I kissed him randomly once. That was what he reenacted. In the library just then,” Lay added, although it was unnecessary. Kris raised an eyebrow.

“Anything else?” Luhan prompted.

The man shook his head. It had felt like more, considering his feelings for Sehun, but what Lay truly knew was laughably elementary. Sadly minimal.

“His father,” Xiumin began in a grave tone that signaled something horrible was about to come. Lay braced himself in his own passive way. “The man who liked you and took you in . . . during one of his drunk bragging sessions, you learned that he was the reason why your family was killed.”

Drip

Drop

When Lay didn’t react, Kris helpfully explained, “He was successful but your father was more successful, and a mountain cannot hold two tigers, so he hatched a plan to eliminate your family. It worked.”

Luhan in a breath, while Xiumin stood up, ready to intervene or hold Lay in his arms. But the man in question didn’t scream, didn’t cry, didn’t yell. Only quiet shock and quiet, quiet denial. It was the most frightening.

“So . . .” An utterance finally dropped from his brittle lips. Xiumin’s eyes trained on him, ready to catch any other falling words. “He killed my family and I kissed his son?” Contemplated loving him? Tried so hard to love him?

It hurt.

The realization hurt. But what was worst was the whisper inside Lay’s mind that said it didn’t matter. Father and son were different people. Just as Tao could forgive Lay, he shouldn’t hate Sehun either.

But.

He was a traitor to familial love. He was a traitor to friendship love. He was a traitor to love.

But.

Xiumin shook his head sadly in confirmation.

“Even if things are different now,” he said, “you still deserve to know. Your life is full of conflicts and choices. We are from different worlds, and you are caught between the two.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Sehun . . .”

He presses his nose into the boy’s hair, his lips resting against the slim neck. “You smell good,” he mutters.

The boy emits a low whine and shrugs him off. “My dad’s right there,” he hisses.

Lay obediently scoots a centimeter away. He watches the man gesticulating in front of them, but his mind is still on Sehun. Their first kiss was yesterday, in this room, and he wants to reenact the scene.

A sharp pinch on his thigh forces him back. He glares at the perpetrator, but Sehun is taking notes on what his father is saying.

Mr. Oh points at a clump of figures on the wall. His voice floats over Lay’s head, but he vaguely grasps at snippets of phrases.

“We must eliminate the competition.”

Those words go straight into Lay, thudding in the back of his skull.

“By killing them?”

At his utterance, Sehun gives him a look. Lay shrugs.

Mr. Oh laughs, a hearty chuckle. It boomerangs across the room, bouncing off the walls, hitting Lay square in the face. His knee jerks in reflex and he kicks Sehun.

The boy shoots him another look. Lay doesn’t notice.

“No, no, of course not!” Mr. Oh assures.

“We are businessmen,” he explains. “We employ the right people and let them do the work.”

Lay takes note.

stuff kris said:

duihao ruzuo: 对号入座 - someone said something vague, but you defended yourself, making it obvious the vague statement was about you...smthing like that

xinli yougui: 心里有鬼 - (lit: ghost in your heart) guilty conscience

a mountain cannot hold 2 tigers: chinese idiom 一山容不得二虎. there can't be 2 powerful ppl, one will be taken out

someone help me i can't translate idioms aksd;fn.mxc

lay's coping method is basically getting rid of all emotion and not reacting at all

i'm procrastinating really badly because it's getting painful lol

also, lotto inspired me to write a word vomit mafia au thing. i might post it idk.....

anyway, please comment and thank you for reading!! <3

(ALSO CAN SOMEONE TALK ABOUT AGUST D WITH MEE)