‘And the winning team is… TEAM A!!’ the announcer yells into the mic and he hears her swear next to him.

He looks to his side to find her bothered, the tournament flag now a crumpled mess in her hands, her expression is a mix of anger and disappointment and her lips, a quivering mess. She sees him looking at her and turns away, tilting her head upwards in a bid to keep her tears from falling. The rest of the crowd was clapping as the winning team went ahead to get their trophy but he doesn’t break away from focusing his attention on her but does mechanically clap, joining the rest. Once the uproar dies and the instructions for the further events were relayed, she turns on her heels to leave away from the crowd and he watches her storm off helplessly.

‘Doesn’t take loss well, does she?’ one of the guys from Team A comes over to gloat and he is not amused.

‘Why don’t you leave before you make things worse?’ he snarls, angry himself but trying hard to suppress it towards his opponent.

‘Ooooohhhh so scary!’ he mocks him, laughing hysterically at his own joke. ‘Go, run behind your girlfriend before you lose her too.’ He laughs again and leaves him be.

Only Yixing doesn’t really have to run behind her to know where she is headed to.

He doesn’t need to know where exactly he needs to go as he opens the door to the café and heads towards the left out of pure habit. He finds her at their usual booth, her iced caramel macchiato melting away as she stirs aimlessly, looking out the window where the traffic is heavy and bustling. He slips into the booth, the seat opposite to her and watches her not react to his presence. He orders his drink and gives her a minute more before moving close to nudge her feet under the table.

‘I see you there.’ She replies robotically, still looking out the window and he knew he had a hard task at hand.

‘Then look at me.’ He says slowly and she finally gives in. ‘Spill it. I am here to listen.’

He asks although he knows and she sighs in refusal. He waits a couple of minutes in silence before nudging her feet again, prompting her to talk. Knowing how stubborn he can get, she decides to speak.

‘They cheated on the race.’ She drags slowly. ‘They played dirty…and we didn’t.’

‘And we didn’t…’ Yixing repeats calmly and it irks her to the core.

‘Why didn’t we?’ she spits out the words in rage. ‘Everyone did it! Everyone knows it too but no one bothered to stop it. I know that there is no rule forbidding this and they did clearly dictate that we can get to the finish line using any means possible but how is this fair? Where are the principles at? I mean, we were on an obstacle race and they blatantly stole the flags WE collected from our possession. We went through the hard work and they get the credit? And the way they pulled? One of us could have gotten hurt! This is a game for heaven’s sake! Why are they blinded by this unnecessary need to win?’

She slumps back on to her seat, sighing in exhaustion and Yixing is amused. He just looks at her being all riled up within; annoyed and he cannot help but smile. She looks over and notices this and her emotions begin to overflow again.

‘What is so funny?’ she props herself by her elbows on the table as she chews her words hard, scowling with annoyance.

He continues to smile and answers calmly. ‘It is like seeing a reflection of mine.’

She pulls back and stares at him blankly, realization taking over her suddenly. Being a year elder to her, he was her senior. So, of course he had participated in these games the previous way as well. She knows her core character, how he adheres to principles and certain rules that ensure a fair way of life, one of the main reasons that brought them closer. So when he said ‘reflection’, she could picture him disappointed just like her. What bothered her now was the fact that she was his reflection from the past and not their present.

‘How can you not be angered by this then?’ she asks him, doubt filled to the brim in her tone.

‘Who says that I am not?’ he settles as his coffee arrives and continues. ‘I am very much angry.’

‘I don’t see vapor escaping out your ears and nose like it does for me.’ She says and he almost spits out his sip of coffee laughing. He finds moments like these cute. He finds everything about her as cute.

‘Even if you are angry, you didn’t really fight back. The guy I know would have.’ She states, a thin trace of disappointment laced in her voice. ‘You know… the guy from the dance studio a year ago?’

Yixing’s brain pulls out images of that day, the first day that she had come into the dance studio he practices in. he had stood up for her against another dancer who had tried to cheat his way up the studio schedule for his own convenience by trying to swap out hers to a later hour. He had gone all out and reported him when he found out how aggressive he was and as a result that dancer was banned from entering the studio again when two other dancers stepped up to report against him. What he eventually remembers is how she had acted that day. Even before he had shown up, she had been arguing with full force, making her point clear and refusing to let go. It was that courage that attracted his attention towards her in the first place. So he decided to answer her question with a question of his own.

‘Then why didn’t you?’ he asks and she sits up in alert.

He sees her stir in her seat, expression spelling uneasiness as she turns to look out the window again. He could tell that she was ashamed; disappointed with herself for not fighting back and standing up for what she believed in but then he also knew that she understood the world they were living in. They were sailing in the same boat and he knew that she was feeling bad because they had only one boat and it was a small one at that.

‘Why don’t you think dirty? You are smart! You can easily cook up a plan to fool someone if you wanted.’ She continued questioning him, still in denial.

‘I would if I could…’ he says, sighing hard, accepting his inability to do so. ‘Why don’t you?’

‘I would if I could.’ She repeats and a smile takes over his face. It was funny how they two of them ended up together and here they were, grumbling over their inability to do something wrong.

Yixing flashes back to a year ago when he had first experienced this feeling during the games. It was a simple state tournament and people were rather overly motivated about it, including him. The prize money is a great motivator; people participating didn’t see anything past that. The fun for the game or the sportsmanship didn’t matter to the others as much as it did for him and when he did stand up against the people who had cheated to win the game, he had been laughed at. He almost gave up on the games when he realized no one really cared for these things that he held high in his life. If he hadn’t met her at the dance studio the very same night, he would have lost faith in people around him. He knows he shouldn’t be really sensitive to a world where everyone is running hard to make it somehow but it is how he is programmed and he was always wondering why until he met her and since then he has been asking the question ‘why not?’

‘You know I am going to end up alone right? She speaks after a long silence and he comes back to reality. The statement made no sense to him and he sat up, waiting for her to explain.

‘I am becoming spineless as each day goes by. I am becoming such a pushover.’ She starts and he doesn’t understand where she was going with this. ‘I am physically unable to say no to people. I am not able to be mad at someone for reasons genuine because then it will hurt the other person. I am not able to question people why they do what they do because I am outnumbered and everyone follows the easy way out and not the right way. That makes me stupid, foolish in a world that is running ahead of me every second. Here I am sitting, watching them run and wondering about principles and stuff that people have long forgotten. I am ancient; I tell you and no fun. I already have only 3 friends. Who knows when even they will leave? I can’t even cheat on a simple race. I am going to lose in life.’

The last couple of sentences catch his attention and his eyes open wide in astonishment. He doesn’t understand what makes her speaks this way. Well, he wasn’t her boyfriend to know what she is doing ever waking minute of her life and he had always made sure to keep a safe distance between the two of them, despite wanting to get close to her multiple times, despite being curious about what she is up to as well. He didn’t want to push her or even give the slightest hint to her about all of this because he knew that she wanted to take things slow because of the very reason she was worried about.

Very soon after getting to know her, he had understood that she was not ready to get close to people as readily as he expected. She had too many people leave her life and it had scarred her since childhood and the fact that the two of them were sitting there, knowing each other so well in itself was close to a miracle. So it hurt him to see her this way. As much as he wants to protect her, he is unable to because she won’t let him. He can’t help but wonder if her current mood was simply because someone cheated on the games or if it was something else all together. He didn’t know and it was killing him.

‘I am not really a people’s person as well.’ He starts, trying to comfort her. ‘I am a loner myself. I have a good bunch of friends though. I hang out with them and all but then again, there are like probably two of them that I completely trust. I am no fun either. I rather sit alone in a café like this, listen to music and while away my time and that is like the best thing I could think of.’

She looks at him from the corner of her eyes and sees the sincerity in his expression. He was telling the truth and a part of her knew it was right too. He was a loner, more like her. They were people who could find silence as a gift and solitude as a blessing. Music was all they needed to escape to a world of their own and those moments were the ones they cherished. She then recalls how they love to do that together too. He would bring in new music everyday they met at the café and they would share his head phones as they hummed along to the new tunes. She also remembers how they had spent countless evenings just sitting in silence, doing their own thing, each other not minding about the other but perfectly enjoying the time together. She wonders how two people could be so weirdly good together and wonders how he could make her feel so comfortable by just being himself and letting her be herself. She smiles at him, mostly in gratitude and props herself on the table by her elbows again, closing the distance between them.

‘You know… I think it’s just going to be you and me sipping coffee at the very same café, 50 years from now, just the two of us.’

He comes closer, propping himself the same way as her, the distance between their faces ridiculously close as he whispers to her. ‘Is that so bad?’

She feels her skip a beat and she stalls for a moment before she allows a smile to take over her face. She just sits there, unwilling to move, looking into his eyes and realizing the truth that she had somehow always knew. She moves a bit closer and feels him tense but sitting her without moving, waiting to see what she was going to do. She pecks his cheek with a soft kiss, her eyes closed as she settles back into her seat, fearing what his expression looks like. She finally gathers courage to peek through by opening one of it and finds him missing in the seat opposite to her. Before she could realize what was happening, he slips in next to her, arms around her shoulder as he pulls her closer to his chest. He holds her carefully as she hesitates a moment before resting her head on his shoulders. It fills him up, her gesture, her trust on him as she lets him hold her and he finally feel s calm. He finds happiness fill him as she reciprocates his intentions, by pulling him closer by the waist and he takes the chance to hold her head and pull it in closer to kiss her on the forehead. After a year of being good friends, he knew what she liked and what she didn’t and he knew for sure that she liked him now.

‘Hey…’ he coos and she hums sleepily in reply. ‘I asked you a question.’

He feels her smile against his chest and he understands her answer but still waits for her to declare it out in the open with her own voice.

She nods in disagreement and finally says the words he had been waiting for a year to hear from her.

‘No…’ she breathes, voice calm and happy. ‘It is not bad at all.’

He lets her go to finally see her face and he is satisfied with the smile that was dancing in all its glory there. He stares at her with a coy expression almost hinting as if he was asking her ‘Why it took so long for her to let him in?’ and she shrugs in reply almost as if she understood the question. He finds it funny how they had started off this conversation consoling each other about an unfair loss and how they ended up confessing to each other, making them clear winners of the day. In a fast moving world, he found it special that they took their time to gain what they got now and he was sure that this was going to last for a long time, no matter how fast the world decides to move past them.

He takes a final swig out of his coffee, forth forming a mustache over his upper lip as he looks at her, smiling his usual cheery smile at her. ‘Are you ready to go play the next round in the games?’

She moves forward and wipes the foam off his face and smiles sheepishly not really able to believe whatever had happened here and that she was able to do that to him now. She looks at him once more, drinking in all his beauty as she holds out her hand for him to hold. ‘Yes, let’s play…together.’

As he took her hand and started to lead them out, he got a definite answer for his own question from earlier.

No… it’s not bad at all~