a/n please read ending notes!

It feels much too distinctly different waking up early Monday morning, the blurred grey of the overcast sky dimming the natural light in his bedroom, and not having to get himself ready for work. Far too fresh of a divisive wound, Zitao simply turns over onto one side in his bed, his comforter pulled up to his chin as he sheds a single, measly tear which soaks itself into his dreary, gray pillowcase. That is all that his life has become now that he’s just about to have lost everything - dismal, bleak, and gray, not a single ounce of color up for grabs to splash passion and fire into his life, nor ignite the sparks of joy which bring forth the golden sunshine of prosperity. 

Still, he cannot blame him - Yifan had rules and stipulations that Zitao was simply forced to dance around, to shroud in wake of his personal needs so they blurred arbitrarily across moral lines. Yifan had a business to run, and Zitao had money to earn, which made it that much more difficult to stand in the way of the man’s success simply because Zitao was needy. Against all desires, he had been forced to break the rules and constantly run the risk of reaping what he had sowed, and, therefore, now must pay the price and face the consequences. 

Whimpering, Zitao can only bury his face further into his comforter and ignore the increasing aversion simmering in his gut as he glances at his bedside clock upon his nightstand, wishing he could, for once, just freeze time so that the day of reckoning would never come.

Eight thirty-two in the morning. He only has seven hours left. 

She had never before had a chance to be so hyper-aware of just how consumingly overwhelming aural changes can be, especially considering how massive the company grounds are in terms of square feet, and with that in mind, how far-fetched the idea of negative energy traveling that same incredible distance. 

The bitterness having seeped into every last crevice of the framework, radiating down the hallways thickly as everybody says not but two words to her, has her frowning and rooting herself down in her little kitten heels as she makes her way toward the left wing to her studio, hoping, praying, thoroughly begging the universe to paint the Recreation department in a more beautifully-pristine light than that which stains the Marketing wings. There was supposed to be a scheduled practice walk this morning, and she was supposed to be in charge of monitoring it and helping with cleaning up the presentation order for next month’s show, and she is certainly not about to allow the bizarre atmosphere to change that.

Surely somebody must be indifferent to the caustic depression that blankets the firm in dismal silence, because she had been told yesterday afternoon that the company shut-down was merely a rumor and not fact, so why is it so goddamn quiet in here?

It does prove minimally relieving when she pushes her way through the double doors which lead into the black-box theater and the Recreation girls are exactly where they are supposed to be, awaiting her arrival in the cushioned pews just overlooking the stage. The president is not yet here, but their seamstress is, and so is photographer Park, so she supposes that perhaps the president will be on his way down soon. After all, President Wu is never one to be even a second late. 

“Good morning, ladies,” she calls out flatly, indifferently, as she sips at her coffee through the little divot in the lid and sets her binder down on the edge of the stage. One thing she notices immediately, one thing that throws her off and into the abyss of discourse, is how silent the girls are - something they never are, especially in Recreation. 

Normally, as per typical feminine chatter, the girls are quite noisy and rambunctious, excited to tell each other the downplays of the past weekend. In her day, she has heard many a tale of drunken adventures on guileless Friday nights into Saturday mornings, some staking past the rigid hour of three in the morning, followed by how absolutely debilitating their hangover was that coming morning. It is very normal practice to hear such a thing, since they do not have to be awake for work on the early weekend mornings, but today, she hears not even a peep as she turns slowly on her heel and rakes her eyes over the girls in the pews. She pretends as though she was taking roll, mouthing every girl’s given name to herself as she spots them with her gaze, yet cannot help but notice that they are, indeed, talking, but are whispering into one another’s ears - gossiping, dare she say - and the thought that they could be gossiping about her threatens her blood to boil. Surely they are not talking about her. 

Confused, and more than plenty concerned as to just what is going on behind her back, she reaches over and nudges the seamstress with the ridge of her elbow. “Hey,” she whispers, practically hisses, keeping her voice down beneath the din of the other girls. “What gives? Why is everybody so… you know, quiet?”

The look in Amber’s eyes is a little bit shrouded and a little bit closed-off, as though she were mentally tired and as though it were a topic that she would prefer to not talk about, and her gaze takes on a more rigid edge as she crosses her arms over her front. “What, you didn’t hear?”

It causes her to frown, then, the delicate pads of her fingers having stilled their scraping against her coffee cup as her eyebrows arch downward. “Hear what?” She asks with a slightly bitter tone, no longer fond of struggling to keep quiet if everybody in this entire building knows something that she, all alone, does not. After all, she has always despised being held out from a nice, juicy secret. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, so nobody told you, huh,” Amber remarks with a raised eyebrow, her expression just as cool and placid as it had been seconds prior. “I figured that you of all people would have been right on top of something like this.”

Indignantly, she shakes her head with a brief little jerk of her coffee cup, physically outlining her confusion with pursed lips and an unforgiving expression. “You know, you could tell me sometime today,” she says as her tone threatens impatience, the caffeine doing very little to salvage what little patience she has left for today. Then again, her patience has been quite thin ever since being demoted to Recreation after injuring one very specific Marketing model, but in her own professional opinion, it was completely warranted. “I’m not really getting any younger over here. Besides, I have a meeting with Mr. Chan and Executive Yang today at ten-thirty before lunch, so I’d really like to hurry this along. Let’s get these girls going.”

“Yifan and Yingtao broke up.”

Her heartbeat stutters and very nearly stops as the urge to spit out the mouthful of her drink that she had just sipped up suddenly simmers beneath her skin as she forces herself to refrain, swallowing it down with a cotton-dry throat as her gaze sharpens, her insides flooding with cold. Just months ago, she would have been elated to hear such news, news that would have granted her complete freedom to swindle the president’s heart into her own palm once more, to have him all to herself the way she always wanted, but she no longer felt any of the joy she once danced with at this news. 

Now, her heart begins to ache and her blood begins to run thin with guilt, for she knew how much the president adored Yingtao - she knew how much he lived for her and was forced to see it day in and day out on company grounds against her will. 

“How?” She hisses quietly, once again concerned with keeping her voice down and not wanting the rest of the Recreation department to see her in a weakened state, altered beyond that which she normally dons. “Like - what happened? Are they…?” 

She watches as Amber’s gaze cuts away for a slow second, blanketing itself over the dozens of girls littering the lower pews as some of them watch them with equally concerned gazes, as others whisper and barter in widened ears as they spill the exact same news. “They had a fight,” she states simply, not wanting to delve too deep into the itty-bitty details of just what had transpired the day that Jessica had been forced to leave an hour late, having to clean up after their afternoon’s walk since the Recreation girls had outright refused to pick up after each other. “Yifan tried shutting down over the weekend like he did when Mochou passed, but we managed to convince him not to. So, yeah, you can thank us for the paycheck you’ll be making this week, ‘cause we were almost out of commission because of what happened.”

Pressing her lips together in a tight line, Jessica knows that she should feel undeterred by the news and should be excited, even, to know that Yifan is, once again, single, but she cannot seem to focus on the eminent satisfaction of the situation through the undistilled worry of just what had transpired to cause this. Yifan would never, in his right mind, have thrown Yingtao away like that, so something very serious must have happened, and if Yingtao, herself, had done such a thing, Jessica would never forgive her for hurting the very man that she had silently cared for over the span of several years in solitude. “I knew it,” she spits out between clenched teeth. “I knew that little cow would hurt him - and I even warned him about it!”

“Oh,” the seamstress comments softly, the folds of her blouse deepening where she bends over to rest her hip lethargically against the stage’s waxed edge, shifting her weight to the other foot. “It’s not what Yingtao did, but what Yingtao didn’t do. You really don’t know, do you?”

Sighing, Jessica has the split-second idea to crush the cup in her hands in frustration and swat the milky drops in the woman’s direction, frustrated and thin of patience. “Amber, I don’t have the time for games,” she frowns angrily, her countenance twisting in annoyance. Not wanting to show how truly concerned she actually feels, she decides that her best move would be to seek out the answer to this mystery herself by siphoning the information that she so deeply thirsts for from the original source. “Where is he?”

Softly, Amber snorts a little bit. “In his office,” she states, glancing down at the binder that the model had brought for instruction, “brooding away. We didn’t have time to tell you since you just got here, but he canceled his appearance at today’s practice, so you and I are in charge.”

“How could he do that?” She asks quietly with a finely-tuned tremble to her voice, still very much shaken by the news. “Forget it - I’m going to get him down here right now.”

She moves quickly to gather her belongings, hoisting the thick binder against her bosom as she repositions her fingers around her coffee cup in the same breath, before a hand is wrapping itself around her tricep and keeping her rooted exactly where she had been. “Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Amber chuckles bitterly, shaking her head and pressing her lips into a thin line as the model struggles to leave. “He’s not exactly in the greatest of moods, this morning - we’ve all been here for maybe thirty minutes tops and he’s already fired Yerim for pestering him about her paycheck, and threatened to void Soohyun for asking to schedule a private meeting with him about switching her birth control.”

“What?” Jessica spits out, her insides stuttering on the rebound, not having expected her to say something like that. In what world would Yifan fire somebody for asking him a simple question? Sure, questions like that are supposed to be directed to Treasurer Im rather than the president himself, but since when is it such an offense to him that it requires voiding a contract? “What the is wrong with him?” She bites harshly, all of the eyes in the theater training themselves on her form as her voice raises. “You tell me what Yingtao did right now, because this is not normal behavior for him, and you know that. What did she do?”

“She lied,” Amber grits out in a hushed tone, stepping forward as her temper flares. “You wanna know so ing badly? She was a boy the entire ing time.”

If her heart had struggled to suffice an even flow at the news of the president’s sudden break-up, it certainly took the cake, now, at how it suddenly intensified to a borderline-electric series of rapid thuds, her heartbeat noisily flooding her ears. No, there’s no ing way she lost out on a chance to date the man of her dreams to a ing man. There’s no ing way. “No,” she mumbles, staring straight ahead at nothing with her eyes cast down at the stage. “That’s impossible. Yifan would never have hired a boy for this job, that’s just - that’s not what happens here.”

Growing more and more fed up, the seamstress cannot help but sigh and roll her eyes as she sticks her tongue in the rounding of her cheek, as though wanting to simply forget all about the events which had transpired merely days before but had carved a very clear divide right down the center of the firm. “She confessed to the nurse and Yifan saw her , Sooyeon,” she states, and watches as the color in Jessica’s complexion pales in comparison to her crisp, white blouse. “Minseo was there to watch the aftermath unfurl, and Minseo doesn’t lie - you know that.”

She bites down on the gloss overlying her chapped lips, for, despite not having very much personal experience with Minseo, personally, she knows that the girl tends to be more devout than the rest, more honest, and therefore, more trustworthy. Ever since having been demoted, one would think that she would now have a better chance than before to get to know the girls of the Recreation department, but she simply has no interest, for why would a woman of her caliber want to mingle with less-commendable women? These girls are disgusting, the slop fed to the pigs of all women, undeserving of the attention that she used to receive when she had been in Marketing, so why, on God’s green earth, would she want to get to know them? 

Still, Amber would not have placed so much trust within a Recreation model, of all models, if they had not been deserving of it. 

And then there’s the underlying pain, the dulled ache that resonates low in her chest, for how is Yifan faring? How is he holding up, now having been forced to know that the person he loved had lied to him this whole time? It hurts, deep down inside, to know that Yifan surely must be suffering, must be hurting, and must be wrought with pain to the extent that he can no longer fulfill his corporeal duties and has to cancel them. 

“Jess?” She hears beside her, the tone of voice rather soft while remaining quite flat and warm, masculine as ever, as Amber glances at her with a curious, bated gaze. “You alright?”

She hadn’t realized that something was wrong until that one question seemed to snap her out of the reverie that she had begun to float within, her hands jerking as she registers, once again, where she is. Right - she was supposed to be conducting today’s practice walk in place of the president, with Amber’s help. It’s not the first time she’s done so.

She moves a little bit, to set her stuff back down and to abide by the rules of the company, when she registers a slight tacky weight upon her face, streaked down her cheeks and beginning to - dare she say - crystallize underneath her eyes, and with little manicured fingertips, it becomes all too clear that she had begun crying. The pads of her fingers that she pulls back to gaze at are glossed over with a transparent sheen, colorless and entirely unoffensive, a sign that, yes, she, of all people, had started to cry. Quickly, she wipes her fingers clean on the swatch of her rose-tinted tweed skirt. “I’m fine,” she states briskly, shying her face away in the event that any more ugly tears decide to make themselves known. “Let’s get the girls going.”

“Sooyeon,” the seamstress comments beside her, then, her tone forgiving. “It’s okay to hurt, you know. You don’t have to hide it.”

It’s honestly the last thing she really needs to hear, right now, not when that lying little cow in the Marketing department had taken her job, her rightful position, her hard-earned salary, and the man of her dreams all in the same breath, and she hadn’t been able to do a goddamn thing about it. The truth makes her absolutely furious, ignites a fire within her blood deep down to know that a man, of all types, had been responsible for her utter downfall, and she feels herself wound tight to the point that she could just hit something. Frustrated is not even close to a good explanation of how she feels, and aggravated would only be an understatement. “Can you shut up?” She spits out weakly, her voice beginning to thicken from the tears. “We can talk about it later.”

Amber quiets down, then, and takes the declaration as a sign to cut the conversation there. She had been idiosyncratically thinking of the woman all weekend, wondering how she had been taking the news and wondering if it had made her angry or upset, but the proof merely lies before her very own eyes of how devotedly she had followed the president for years and how quickly that cemented regime had been stolen from her. Yingtao had been special, but Jessica had been jealous. Yingtao had been enough to catch the president’s eye practically immediately, and Jessica had flitted around in the background, hungry for attention and yearning for even so much as an approving head nod. Amber knew, better than anybody else here, that their ual relationship had been the girl’s hunger for affection manifesting in the only way that the president would ever possibly reciprocate, and she had abused that to her own advantage and had skyrocketed up the charts and upward in a position far too stratospheric to call normal. 

She had abused it for her own benefit, and the knowledge that a girl - hypothetically, that is - could manage to accomplish the exact same thing with only a fraction of the effort, must have stung quite a bit. 

The girl clears beside her as she begins to speak, all of the faces in the pews raising at attention, but Amber cannot seem to focus on anything other than the tension radiating from her that grows thicker with each passing second, something so suffocating that she worries if she will even be able to so much as walk through it. 

It rains today.

Not a little bit, as though it were simply starting or may have even been considered a sunshower. It pours, soaks the earth right down to the dust upon its bones and saturates the lifeless soil beneath the gray skies, and coats the asphalt with a thick, glimmering sheen that wavers with each fallen drop. Rain in this area isn’t necessarily rare, per se, but is certainly rather uncommon, and Zitao cannot help but feel certain that this was surely a sign of dark times approaching, and he cannot say he even blames the universe for knowing. 

Dragging himself out of bed that day felt as though there were blocks of cement chained to his feet, keeping him rooted and immobile, as though he were tied down like a prisoner to his own growing depression. Forcing himself to eat something for breakfast had been like attempting to ingest a shattered lightbulb, sharp and far too electric for the throat, and it had only been a matter of seconds before he had dashed to the bathroom as the single swallowed mouthful had forced itself right back up. He had cried, sobbed, into the toilet basin as he was now dying all alone, was now dying universally hated, was now going to die having nothing. Having a best friend was beautiful, and all, was incredible to have just one person stand by him through thick and thin, but he could not manage, no matter how hard he tried, to convince himself that it mattered. 

Without anybody here to cushion the blow of today, Zitao had cried, alone, in his bathroom when he had gone to take his daily medication. The ugly black print had stared him in the face, had reminded him of just what was wrong with himself, and had reminded him of just how thoroughly Yifan hated him for what he did. Tortured deep inside, he had thrown the canister of pills against the shower wall, the capsules bursting forth from the bottle and tinkling down onto the shower floor like hail, as Zitao had slid to the floor in tears. It was no longer worth it to continue trying, to continue fighting when he had nothing to fight for. Who was he fooling? 

When he walks into the hospital that day, dressed as he usually is when he comes to visit in a rustic, indigo sweatshirt and a pair of slightly-ratty jeans, he feels like doesn’t belong. He had never, before, gone into the hospital to see his mother or to help out in the cafeteria in his Yingtao get-up, so why does he feel so in clothes that are so familiar? Why does it feel as though he’s missed a chance to do something wholesomely worthwhile? It could not possibly be the missed opportunity to introduce his mother to that side of him, could it? It hadn’t felt right to think of telling her, had made him ashamed, even, to bring it up in public as though someone would overhear, but had that been the right thing to do? Would he have felt any less ty if he had told her before he had lost his chance? 

The secretary at the front desk greets him with a standard, albeit slightly-sad, “Good morning, Zitao,” and he knows that she must know. He knows that she must be aware what today is, whether it be from premeditated knowledge or, perhaps, even the sullen cast etched across his features, and it does nothing to help how truly empty and tired he feels inside. He’s so tired.

He doesn’t respond with much as he signs himself in, peeking up at her with glossy, worn-out eyes, and her expression falters minutely with a twitch of her eyebrows, concern beginning to pool in her eyes. She seems to register just how not okay he truly is, and it does absolutely nothing to help him as he makes his way to his mother’s room with numb steps, as he gazes at her with a trembling chin and shuts the door behind himself when Nurse Lily casts saddened eyes upon him. It is the saddest day of all, today, and there seems not to be a single soul who knows otherwise. 

She is tired from so many years of trying, and so is Zitao. She is worn-out, having been pushed and pulled to the extreme, and Zitao sheds tears into her pallid, sallow skin and bulging veins, for he has no more energy to give her, either. 

Downtrodden, the nurse steps quietly over to the window with soft, clacking steps, and pulls the curtains inward to shut them. His mother did always hate the rain.

“I’m so sorry, Zitao,” the nurse announces in advance among the silence of the room, and Zitao really does not want to hear it. Even though Luhan gets out of work at two this afternoon, Zitao is not prepared for just how lonely he is going to feel after the procedure. Nobody - no matter what the firm thinks, no matter what any of the hospital staff think, and no matter what Yifan thinks - will ever be able to understand just how hard he tried to prevent this, how much he wanted to change the direction of fate’s sharpened arrow. 

His mother is just as sickly as she has looked for weeks, is just as bony and as hollow of a shelled being as she had seemed ever since collapsing, very much ghostly and simply inches away from death at any given moment. Although he cannot typically stomach the sight of her in such a state, Zitao knows that it would only be inhumane to continue torturing her like this. Although it is going to hurt to lose her, more than anything in the entire world, Zitao knows that she wants to be free. He knows that she wants to no longer be in pain. “Don’t be,” he mumbles empathetically, not an ounce of joyous bounce to his voice as he stares at his mother with dead, broken eyes. “It’s not your fault.”

It may not be the nurse’s fault, but it definitely feels like Zitao’s fault. If he had just tried harder in college, if he had just not developed an anxiety disorder, if he had just not been himself, his mother could have possibly still had a chance at living. If he had simply been more proactive in his lifetime and had fought harder to battle his own brain, maybe his mother would still be able to see tomorrow’s sunrise. If he simply had not done everything that he did in the past, maybe he would not be staring down, in the flesh, the formerly-tortured shell of his mother. 

“We had a request, by the way,” Nurse Lily comments softly where she had been perusing his mother’s intravenous bag, and Zitao lifts his head to glance at her with reddened eyes, his under-eyes darkened from lack of sleep and malnutrition. “For your sister.”

Hearing such a thing after having portrayed an imaginary woman for just under an entire year makes the crease between Zitao’s eyebrows deepen, makes him frown as he glances over his shoulder at the nurse. “What?” He finds himself mumbling out, not necessarily a confession of his thoughts, but rather an automatic reaction. “I don’t have a sister.”

He knows that he is being a little bit bitter to Lily, as she, above everyone else in this facility, has been there for his mother through thick and thin, consistently hovering around her like a shadow, but Zitao cannot find it in himself to be nice right now. “You don’t?” She asks softly, eyes a little bit wide in muted surprise. “But, I thought…”

He wants to sigh, really, because how is he supposed to explain to her that he had completely falsified a female alias of himself that he had painted as his sister for several months, just so he could support his mother’s healthcare needs? How is he supposed to explain to her that he did the most outlandishly plausible thing that anyone could think of, in order to keep his mother alive? “There was probably a miscommunication,” is what he says, although blandly, and the hand that Nurse Lily has stilled in the mid-air perimeter slowly closes as her nails meet the plush flesh of her palm. “I can look kind of feminine sometimes - it was probably a request meant for me. What was it?”

The nurse seems hesitant, as though she hasn’t, yet, finished wrapping her mind around her error in communicating information, and Zitao feels a little bit of sorrow beginning to pool in his heart at her honest mistake. She’s not technically wrong - Zitao does have another female in his life, but he is sure that Lily would probably faint from the surprise if he told her. “Oh,” she mutters softly, her bold, prettily-arched eyes blinking. “I, uh - we had a request put in around last week for you to be admitted for immediate mental health treatment after the surgery today. It’s… just in case you would need it.”

He sighs a little bit and rolls his eyes just a little more because he should have expected that kind of an answer. It must have been Luhan, because he knows that Luhan would never live with himself if he let anything happen to Zitao - or, rather, if Zitao were to do anything to himself. “Who said that?” He asks, eyebrows slightly furrowed in concern. He cannot think of anyone else, other than, perhaps, Doctor Kim, who would be concerned enough for his welfare to recommend him to a mental health treatment period before anything even happened. “It was Luhan, wasn’t it?”

She is silent for a moment, something that makes Zitao a little bit wary of where the truth may lie within her. “Well, no,” she says with an awkward, forced-for-the-moment laugh that curves the corners of as she glances down at her clipboard. “Actually, it was by Mr. Wu from down the hall.”

The mention of such a name used to bring him the genial fluttering of butterflies within his stomach, used to bring him happiness and joy to know that he was cared about and thought of persistently, but now it only brings him an intense discomfort that bubbles deep in his gut. The mention of that name used to have his heartbeat stuttering past solid beats, but the lack of patronage given to the he who is no longer Yingtao only serves to remind him that the president had been concerned about her, only, and not him. He had been thinking of Yingtao when he had put in that request and had wanted to get help for Yingtao; besides, why would he ever want to get help for Zitao?

Of everybody alive right now, in the entire world, Zitao should be at the very bottom of the list - marked last - in terms of who gets to receive and appreciate help from Yifan. So, with sorrow in his heart and a sullen cast painted across his features, Zitao is forced to shake his head and avert his eyes as he says, “Cancel it. I don’t want it.”

Zitao knows that he needs the help - as soon as possible, as a matter of fact - but he definitely does not want to accept help if it masquerades as such from a man who wants nothing to do with him and, rather, only desires to fraternize with his alias. If Yifan is not going to show him the gentility to allow him to take the help he had designated just for Yingtao, then Zitao does not want his help one little bit. The nurse swallows, then, something inaudible but quite visible, as Zitao watches work in her confusion, and he pities her, for they do all, truly, care about him. “We’re worried about you, Zitao,” she tells him gently, and he knows she is. He knows that everybody is worried about him, and it warms his heart - really, it does - but he doesn’t want help if it were not coming from them and were coming from someone who despised him down to their very bones. “We just want you to be okay, after today. We’ll help you every step of the way if you want it.”

“I’ll be okay,” he tells her with a glassy stare, lips pressed tightly together in an attempt at a smile, although it stings, aches, hurts more than anything else, but the responsibility to remain strong and brave the storm now weighs down on his shoulders. “Not today, but… I’ll be okay.”

Nurse Lily accepts the response, giving him a firm little nod as she forces a smile, as the storm begins to brew in the thickened atmosphere between them along the cracks in the ceiling. “Alright,” she comments tenderly and wraps her arms around her clipboard to press it to her bosom as she turns on her heel to face him. “I’ll see you… later. Okay, Zitao?”

The implication is deadly, for he knows that the next time he sees the nurse today, it will be time to wheel his mother away to the surgical ward, and she will be able to offer him the support and the hugs that he will need, but Zitao wishes that that one single moment would never have to come if he could help it. He nods, glancing back at his mother as he wraps his hands around one of hers, cold and lifeless within his palms, his throat working around a cottony swallow. 

Grimly, the nurse turns and bids herself adieu from the room, shutting the door quietly behind her and leaving Zitao in the lightless dim by his mother’s side for the last time, her eyes having begun to glaze over with tears. She knows Zitao better than he presents, knows him more thoroughly than he realizes, and that revelation really stings. He’s lying to her, even if he’s not aware that she can see through it, and she really wishes he wouldn’t lie. She knows he won’t be okay, even if he wants to pretend that he will be. 

Why does he have to lie?

However, after the nurse departs, Zitao reaches the internal conclusion that he cannot sit here in the dark with the husk of his mother beneath his fingertips for the next several hours - it will cause him to slip into a depressive state if he does, and it will cause him to grow self-hating and unsure of his next moves, and Zitao knows that his mother would not want him to brood away in his own helplessness for hours.

If he cannot salvage any of what he will soon lose, he knows that he must do his best to try to water the soil of what has been already lost and hope for brand new life to soon sprout from the fertile ground. 

In a split-second decision, he glances back at his mother with glossy eyes as he stands from his seat, his hands in his jacket pockets, as he fishes out the folded slip of paper with an address scribbled upon its crease. 

He’s still not sure if it is a proper move to make, but he knows that it definitely should be one of the most right things to do. He may not have true permission, but Zitao knows that he needs to do this.

The glossed plastic handle of the umbrella sticks to his palm as he kneels down, sinking down into a squat until his rear has hovered over the dampened earth from the blow of the rain as his eyes turn quite glassy. Upon the gravestone lays one single lavender rose, a heart-wrenching symbol of eternal love, faux in nature as it is entirely unwithered despite likely being aged. He does not even need to touch the flower to know from whom it had come. 

“Mochou,” he mutters quietly, his gaze scanning sadly over the inscriptions in her gravestone; Adored by all, the brightest flower in the bouquet. “I’m… I’m so sorry for what has happened to you.”

He knows the juxtaposition of both sides of the argument revolving around speaking to gravesites, one being that the spirit can no longer hear you and the other being that they can, that they grow lonely and weary, and Zitao has always leaned toward the second. Even if Mochou’s spirit could somehow hear him, he hopes that she would not be too confused about his identity, for they had never even met. “I’m going to bring you a friend, soon,” he tells her with a teary, weak smile. “You must be lonely, right? Being up there, in the sky, all alone…” 

The words upon the marble stele bore holes into his eyes, a reminder that the soul in front of him is one that has been lost, that he is staring humanity’s ultimate downfall in the very face. It is an acrid little reminder that this plane of immediate existence reeks of human sorrows, of the anguish of loss, of the very dissonance played across the hills of living. It is a reminder that Zitao is all alone here, and yet, is not alone at all.

Sniffling, Zitao wipes at his under-eyes with tender fingertips. “Yifan misses you a lot,” he croaks out with a weak, teary little smile as the waterworks begin to uncork. “He always talks about you, you know? He always wears your ring. He never threw it away.”

He does not know what she would have been like, whether tenderhearted or unfortunately apathetic, but he is sure that she would have cared to hear this. To have made Yifan so happy, she likely would have loved to know that his love for her had never gone stale, that he had never forgotten her memory. Zitao wishes that he could be given the same luxury.

“I can’t make him happy,” he confesses brokenly as a tear flits down his face beneath the pour of the rain and drips down the bud of his lip and into his mouth, salty and hot. “I really tried, but he’s really angry at me right now. I had to lie to him, Mochou, for my own sake. It wasn’t his fault. I just… I just wish I knew how to fix things. I wish I knew what to do to make him forgive me.”

Solemnly, he trails the pads of his fingertips across the cool marble slab, disappointed by the lack of response to his questions, but certainly not surprised and not sure of what he would have otherwise expected. There is a simple underlying answer that Zitao is far too painfully aware of, an answer that he chooses to turn away from time and time again, for the brunt of it is too sharp to bear: Yifan loves women. 

“Tell me, please,” he begs, soggy, as the sobs begin to crawl their way in and tingle beneath his skin as his breaths stutter and his chest convulses in gasps. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Mochou. Why? Why does he hate me like this?”

Today, of all unfortunate days, he will have to give his mother up and will have to hand her over to the land of the nonliving. Today, of all days, he will gift Mochou the gift of never-ending accompaniment, two beautiful, yet tortured souls, living on forever in eternal peace. Today, of all days, is the hardest day to do something like this on, yet Zitao knows that he has to do this. He has to make it clear that Mochou has not been forgotten because he would never live it down if his mother felt forgotten. 

He bears the brunt of the worst of it, shutting his eyes to stop the tears from flowing as he uses the edge of the cuff of his shirt sleeve to pat his cheeks dry as the rain slowly begins to let up. It continues to sprinkle, a delicate little shower, but Zitao no longer has to fear falling soaked truly to the bone without his umbrella, as he tentatively flexes the hand he has wrapped around its handle in discomfort. “But,” he begins again, once he has calmed slightly, “Yifan is working really hard for you. I mean it! His business is doing better than ever, he is - well… was - happier than ever, with me… so he is doing well! I promise.”

To promise her means that Zitao would never let Yifan become unhappy again, and Zitao knows that he cannot actually promise such a thing when Yifan is already unhappy because of him, but Zitao would never let it happen again. If he can fix things with the man and can, just maybe, ask to be taken back into his arms, Zitao would never let the flames of his mistakes burn him twice. 

“I will watch out for him,” he vows as he sniffles again, preparing himself to leave. “Please, rest well…” 

Against all desires, Yifan finds himself unable to stop glancing at the clock, in-between debating whether or not he should shove a fork in his eye to relieve the massive headache pounding at every crevice of his mind, all because Soojin will not stop her incessant ing.

He knows exactly what day it is, hates that he knows such a thing all because of a stupid girl, and definitely hates that two stupid girls will not leave him alone this early in the morning, on the one day of this month on which he would prefer to be alone. 

“Mr. Wu, I wouldn’t lie about this,” the girl with the long, tawny hair sobs in his presence with glistening cheeks and trembling shoulders - Miyeon, was it? - as she pleads for her own case over Soojin’s beside her. Yifan may not know her truth habits, but he knows one person who would never lie, would always be far too honest and brutally so until it came to Yifan’s heart. “I wouldn’t cut my own extension tracks - that’s silly.” 

“Well I wouldn’t cut somebody else’s,” Soojin accuses right back, tears glistening over her big, charcoal-rich eyes. “Besides, I wasn’t even anywhere near you! All this week, I was in the south wing with Minseo and Miss Jessica - you can even ask them! When would I get the time to cut your tracks up?”

The girl lets out a muffled little scoff, something that comes out slightly strangled through her tears, and Yifan digs his nails harder into the skin on the side of his head, creating thick, aching pinpricks of pain that do nothing to dull the headache. “How should I know?” Miyeon cries softly. “I don’t follow you around to know your schedule, unlike you who just has to know mine to know when I take them out and set them aside so that you could get your grubby little hands on them! Those were expensive!”

“Yeah, and why would I make you waste your money?” The dark-haired model responds quickly. “Not everything revolves around you, Mimi. I know you think that everybody in Recreation has the time of day to know what you do at all hours, but I, for one, have better things to do with my time.”

Aggravated, Yifan digs his thumb harshly into the divot of his forehead where the skin wrinkles, where the stress carves permanent marks into his countenance as every word out of their mouths etches itself into the layers of his skin like far-too-thick needles. This was the last thing he needed to deal with today - perhaps tomorrow would have been suitable, or even a robust little Wednesday, but certainly not today of all days. If they do not stop soon, he worries that he would go absolutely out of his mind. “This is not what was asked,” he states boldly, tone the obvious struggle of patience as he tries to quell the beast within him before it erupts, albeit his one and only salvation no longer within his reach. Eyebrows having drawn inward and downward, Yifan can only grasp at the strings of balance to keep himself leveled out. “I asked you politely, Miss Seo, to tell me exactly why you felt the need, and rather, the nerve, to attempt to sabotage Miss Cho before the Hunan show.”

“I didn’t!” Soojin retaliates with a crackling edge to her voice. “Mr. Wu, I swear, I wouldn’t do something like that.”

“Then who else would have?” Miyeon cries with trembling hands and glossy, blurred-out eyes. Yifan is very used to, and grows increasingly more used to daily, tears in his office, although none of the tears have ever gripped his heart the way her tears used to. None of the tears shed in his presence ever bring him sorrowful discomfort the way hers would. “Soyeon even saw you sneaking into my vanity! She saw you!”

“Are you sure that’s what she saw?” The model retorts with spite pouting her lips. “Soyeon’s been needing a trip to the optometrist for weeks now - how do you know it wasn’t somebody else that she saw?”

“Miss Seo,” he spits out along a flat tone, one that draws the girl’s eyes to him as she struggles to diminish the glare within her eyes, aiming it at the very wrong person. “I asked you specifically to give me exactly the answer that I am seeking - why would you do this to Miss Cho?” Yifan threatens her with a darkened gaze, dares her to respond to him sourly and refute her point once more. “I can check the cameras right now, Miss Seo, unless you tell me the truth. I am giving you the opportunity to be truthful with me unless you would prefer to do this the hard way.” 

Knowing his history of blissful ignorance within these walls, of showing very little resistance when it came to his models and the shenanigans that transpire each and every day in the comfort of his office, he does not waver when her expression changes to that of aggravation. He, of all people, is likely the most explicitly trained in the art of not giving a about the everyday tussles of women, and, therefore, is the least likely to work towards a resolution to their problem. Being that it is something that may draw concern toward demotion, Yifan is practically forced to give a , one that he does not want to give. Yet, to have somebody like Soojin - somebody who is not high up in the ranks and is, therefore, not of importance to him - challenge him and his intellect, fuels him with white-hot anger. 

“I already told you it wasn’t me,” Soojin spits out this time, her knuckles whitened where they have curled beside her hips. An eyebrow is raised, a challenge accepted, as Yifan awaits her each and every next move. “You don’t have the proof to judge me, so you can’t make an assumption like that, Mr. Wu. That’s not fair.” 

Alright, then, he decides. If it is a game that she wants to play, then a game it is that Yifan will play, too. “Are you challenging me, Miss Seo?” He growls out with a smirk ghosting across his parched lips, the first time in a while that he’s cracked anything remotely close to a smile, although her defiance is certainly amusing. “You, who had barely stepped a foot through the door of Recreation, has the gonads to raise your voice at me?”

“You don’t fight fair!” She shrieks, then, angrily as her voice runs shrill. The true heat behind her words attempts to ignite something within Yifan’s body, something that he had been trying so hard to keep caged up. “You always do this, Mr. Wu! You always take sides with who you favor more, and you know it’s because Miyeon has a better chance of being moved up to Marketing than I do - that’s not fair!”

Temper flaring, Yifan’s jaw tenses up as his gaze widens, sharpens, eyebrows furrowing downward in an attempt to quell the beast within him. “You are traversing very thin ice, Miss Seo, for I absolutely do not choose favorites around here, for, rather, I actually do my research when incidents occur, such as this. So, if you think that you, a smartass little brat, have the right to assert yourself to a power higher than me, then I suggest that, first, you explain to me what these might be.”

He does not beat around the bush any longer as he reaches for a folder upon the forefront of his desk, not even daring to break eye contact with her, and slaps it down onto the polished wood before her. The sound causes Miyeon to jump, startled by the power behind the motion, and Soojin’s glare entirely melts away as she glances down at the folder. She fears the worst, that it is a nullification form written out and, thereafter, endorsed by the president himself, and intakes a silent, but deep, breath as she pulls the flap of the folder back. Shocked, her eyes widen as her facial muscles slacken. 

In the folder are several photograph sheets, eight-by-elevens upon their standard printer paper, the president not have even had the courtesy to replace the paper with gloss-sheened photograph sheets, and Soojin’s heart thwacks against her ribcage as she studies the first photograph. 

“Is that enough proof for you, Miss Seo?” Yifan states flatly, his palms comfortably spread out upon his desk as he stares up at the girls with impartial eyes, a single lock of gelled hair having fallen over his forehead. “Or would you rather call me another name and insult my prowess once more?”

The photographs are black-and-white, albeit grainy, shots of her in studio seven, in the Recreation wing - the exact spot where Miyeon’s vanity was located. In the vanity were products meant for, and some purchased by, Miyeon, Shuhua, and the new girl, Tzuyu, who is almost always hanging around the vanities. The one day she was ill and had called out that morning, had stayed home in bed with a violent stomach bug, Soojin had found the opportunity to make a move. She had thought that it would go off without a hitch, would have been so simple to sneakily complete such an action, yet she hadn’t thought that the president would actually catch her. 

“How,” Soojin mumbles with a narrowed gaze, her manicured fingers traipsing the backs of the largely-printed photographs. “How did you get these?”

“Were you expecting a different outcome, Miss Seo?” Yifan asks her impartially, her glance turning upward at him as he speaks, and Yifan is none too happy about his recent discovery of events that has been eerily dancing within the far-sheltered crevices of his subconscious. “Did you, perhaps, expect the cameras to still be broken?”

Miyeon gasps audibly beside them, a soft little sound of pure shock that radiates across her face in surprise as Soojin stiffens. The girl does not immediately respond, rather shrinks back in her countenance as though the walls had suddenly begun closing in on her, and a sheen of dark, tempered anger begins to glaze over the president’s face. “You have some nerve, Miss Seo, laying your hands upon my belongings,” Yifan spits out harshly, his cheeks beginning to heat in anger as his temper threatens to flare. “So, I suppose that I can safely come to the conclusion that you had the assumption that I did not pay attention, correct? That I was stupid, yes?”

“No,” Soojin stammers immediately, waving her hands with one of the prints in her left. “No, it wasn’t that - ”

“Then who are you,” Yifan shouts at her, barking right into her face in a way that has her jolting backward in shock and has his eyebrows arching and lips curling back, “to not only attempt to sabotage one of your fellow staff, but to betray me and my cabinet? Who are you, Miss Seo,” he practically spits, fury soaking his voice, “to authorize yourself to a position where you had the permission to deface private property?”

He knew what Soojin had done all along; last Tuesday, Yifan had noticed that the surveillance system no longer held its once-clear connection to the seventh studio, the feed crackly and partially-disturbed and, some days, even nonexistent. Due to a loss of connectivity being such a rare occurrence, Yifan had suspected a possible internal interim, perhaps a rogue possum that had found its way into the building’s inner walls and had taken to gnawing at the wires streaking throughout the drywall foundation. His part-vice-part-secretary had gotten into contact with an electrician and had set up an appointment for that Thursday evening to come to look at the wiring. Friday morning, when Yifan had been more