A/N merry christmas from the Rice, presenting u with only the highest quality of garbage for u xoxo
 

“Open wide.”

Today’s lunch is a strawberry and flaxseed oatmeal with a bowl of boiled peas and a chopped pear, his mother’s favorite. She’s never been a huge fan of peas but Zitao doesn’t give her an option, because if Zitao needs to eat his vegetables, then so does she. 

His mother takes the mouthful with gratitude and beams up at him in pride, and it makes Zitao smile as he stirs her oatmeal.

“It’s a little sweet today,” she comments in her croaky, overly-tired voice, sepulchral in a way that is indicative of her physical state, as well, as she lays obligatorily in the cot, her pillow inclined at a specific twenty-five degrees, the blanket pulled tight across her where Zitao has tucked her in.

Stage-four ovarian cancer, her medical bedside tag reads. Zitao can usually not bear a single glance at it without drawing tears from the memories, but his mother is the strongest person that he knows, and he knows that she’s got a lot of fight left in her still. Although his mother can no longer come home with him to make him a homemade meal chock full of love for her only child, Zitao decided a long time ago to no longer shed tears for the inevitable, to not waste his misery in a place where his mother needs all of the support and laughter she could possibly handle.

“Is it too much?” He asks softly, genuinely concerned, yet - his mother simply shakes her head and gives him one of her delicate, tender little smiles.

“A little bit sweet is never a bad thing,” she recites slowly, surely, and Zitao prides her for her physical improvement over the last several weeks. When cancer spreads within her and makes her weak, sometimes she struggles to formulate full sentences, enough so that Zitao can count them on one hand. It’s a good day, he decides, because his mother is talkative today. “Though, I’d tell them to add just a dash of ginger and another spoonful of honey to build the robustness.”

“Did you sleep well last night, mother?” He asks gently as he carefully wipes the rim of her spoon on the lip of the bowl, leveling off another spoonful for her. She takes it, and he watches as works as she swallows it. “I told the nurse to double your nightly morphine and double your sleeping pills.”

“She wouldn’t let me,” his mother tells him dejectedly. “She said they’re not allowed to give me more morphine, but she did give me the pills. I slept fine, a little bit restless from the pain but - I lived.”

The spoon clinks against the porcelain bowl as Zitao scoops another mouthful for her, and his eyes sink down from her face to her hands, veiny and highly sallow, the intravenous tube trailed into the flesh beneath her skin and up her wrist, and he hates to think about the fact that his mother will live the rest of her life plugged-in and wired. He knows that his mother’s spirit is far too free and too uncharted to subject her to eternal restraint. Zitao wishes from the very bottom of his heart that he could wish his mother’s illness away and wake up and have it all disappear. 

“I’m sorry,” he admits as he draws the spoon back from her small lips. “I’m sorry that I can’t help you more.”

“Zitao.”

“I’m sorry that I won’t be able to save you.”

“Zitao, stop it,” she scolds him gently, and she stretches her arm a few inches in the limited space she has due to the intravenous tube, and lays her palm warmly across his knee. “You and I both know that I don’t have much time left, and none of it will be your fault. You know that.”

Zitao sniffles, a pathetic little noise as he brings a slender hand up to his nose to rub, “But I could have prevented it from getting this far. I could have been more proactive, I could have - I don’t know, applied for an internship or something.”

“Everything that will happen,” his mother coos gently, the beginnings of a smile sloping her lips upward, “will happen for a reason, Zitao. I could never blame you for this. If our God wanted me to leave you in his hands, he must have done so with purpose, my flower.”

“Don’t leave me, mother,” Zitao whispers, and she sighs, exasperated on her last hope. “I’ll - I’ll let you know when it’s okay. When I’m ready.”

“Oh, Zitao,” she shakes her head and gives him a weak little grin. “Silly little nit. How can you think you can control fate like that? You have to learn to let go.”

“I can’t,” he admits shamefully, dropping the spoon back into the bowl with a tinny clink. “I don’t know anything else. I don’t - I don’t know how to accept loss like this, mother.”

“The easiest way to acceptance is forgiveness, followed by consolation,” she tells him, and Zitao notices how her vision has shifted into something more focused and formed as if it’s not a matter to be discussed. “The forgiveness comes when your heart accepts that it wasn’t caused by your human insolence when you learn to let your inhibitions go. The consolation comes after you’ve forgiven yourself for the pain you’ve felt, and you learn to embrace others who have felt pain to the same degree.” 

“What are you saying, mother?”

“You will learn,” she repeats. “You’re young, still, and life has been kind to you, my flower. When the time comes, you will know what to do.”

“Don’t say that, please,” he whispers in return. “I’m nothing without you, mother.”

She smiles this time and rubs her thumb into the meat of Zitao’s knee. “You are everything, Zitao, and I wish you could see that. You’re a beautiful photographer, a marvelous boy, and a son that Norse Gods would kill for. Besides, a man is only as good as his mother raised him to be.”

“But… I’m not even in college, mother,” he admits and hangs his head. “I’m going to be twenty-three and I don’t even have more than an associate’s degree in photography. I only make so much money per print I sell, mother; it’s not enough to afford your treatments.”

“You could get a full-time job, Zitao,” she mentions, and Zitao rolls his eyes. “Don’t give me that smarmy look, young man.”

“I had a full-time job, mother. Remember? I got fired because of my panic attacks when you were admitted to the hospital.”

His mother is silent for a few long moments, where she breathes into the tight swath of her sheets and takes her hand off of her son’s knee and lays it over her lap, and flutters her eyes shut as if she were falling asleep, but Zitao knows her by now to know she’s merely thinking in a restful state. His mother tires easily when her body is under as much stress as it is these days when her skin is patchy and latticed with lesions from the chemotherapy and her bare scalp has begun to wrinkle - Zitao can see the exhaustion deeper than just her skin, can see the tiredness her eyes hold. She’s on her last wit and it breaks his heart to think that she could be dead tomorrow.

“Have you thought about modeling photography, Zitao?” She asks after her period of silence. “You know, professional photography where you shoot magazine covers and photograph at professional high-security events?”

“Mother, I don’t want to be a paparazzi.”

“Not a paparazzi, silly. Just a photographer. You have a degree, you could at least try. Besides, you have some kind of a portfolio for it, it’s not as though you don’t. Maybe start shooting people to see how well you do with it.”

Zitao sighs, however, and sets his mother’s food bowl off to the side where her tray is. She is eager as he hands her the pear and she takes it with her frail little hands, and he gives his mother the freedom to feed herself just for once. Whenever Zitao is not here, a nurse will feed her in his place. It saddens him, but this is the way of life. 

“Life is limited,” his mother tells him after biting into the soft fruit. “Do with it all that you can, my flower. Go out, live a little. Marry, have kids, donate to charity. Do only things that make you happy and always remember that no matter what it is, I will be proud of you, my flower.”

“Mother, you’re scaring me,” Zitao whispers shakily, but his mother merely shakes her head and hands him the body of the bruised fruit.

“Silly child, it is not my time yet. God will take me when he is ready, and I need you to be prepared for it, Zitao. One day you will grow old and your children will all become full-grown with grandchildren and you will need to prepare them for losing you, as well. Cherish what you have while you have it, Zitao.”

“Mother - ”

There’s a soft knock at the doorframe and Zitao jumps, startled, as he turns to the doorway to see the nurse padding in with her clipboard in her hand. “Good afternoon, Zitao,” she smiles at him and steps over to his mother’s intravenous bag, feeling the plastic bulge between her smooth fingers. “I apologize for sneaking up on you two unannounced but it is time for us to refill your IV, Ms. Huang. How was your lunch?”

“The oatmeal was nice today,” his mother says tenderly, and it makes him smile just a little bit. “Could you add a little bit more honey, next time? I like the robustness it gives the oats.”

“Of course, Ms. Huang,” the nurse giggles in her youthful tone as she closes the slot on the bag. “I’m glad you’re eating well. When was your last bowel movement?”

“Oh, this morning I believe - before my son got here.”

Zitao frowns and says, “Mother, you know you should wait for me to get here so I can help you to the restroom.”

“Shut your mouth, boy,” his mother smacks her lips and gives him a weak little shove. “When I have to go, I have to go. I’m not waiting for anybody.”

Then the nurse interrupts them by asking, “How much did you sleep, Ms. Huang?”

“Not a lot,” his mother admits, and the nurse sighs as she nods her head a little and steps over to the foot of the bed to mess with the small control panel, and begins to lower his mother’s pillow just a smidge. “Can I have a nap today, Lily?”

“You most certainly can, Ms. Huang,” the nurse says sweetly and Zitao realizes his time with his mother is beginning to wrap up for the afternoon. “Are you going to take your leave, Zitao?”

“Ah,” he startles as he stands and gathers his bag around his shoulders, and hands his mother’s food tray to the nurse for her to take, “probably, I - don’t want to make noise and wake her by accident. She needs her rest.”

The nurse - Lily - sighs, and shakes her head with a pretty smile gracing her pink lips, “You have such a nice son, Ms. Huang. So well-behaved.”

“Ah, he’s a wonder, isn’t he? He’s got a little mouth on him, though, be forewarned.” 

“Mother!”

He turns the key in the lock of his apartment front door and switches on the light, bare, cream-toned walls and drab carpet in dull mulberry greeting him, as he toes off his shoes and leaves them at the front door and drops his keys on the coffee table. Another day at the hospital means another day unsure of his next paycheck, which means another day unsure of his mother’s fate. 

He remembers the day she was diagnosed seven months ago - he had been at the restaurant that day with his best friend Luhan, and his mother had been with his father that day. He’d been in between rush hours, the drab hour of three in the afternoon uneventful and sleep-worthy. He’d been shooting the breeze with Luhan regarding unfair management when it came to their tips. Zitao had been telling him about the time he served two girls who seemed to be conversing intimately as though they were dating, and when they’d tipped Zitao for being courteous to the young couple, his manager had raised hell and said tips from gay people weren’t acceptable and Zitao had put his foot down in front of the young women and argued back. They’re people, he had told the manager. And you know what? I’m just like they are, so if you’re really not okay with having them in your establishment, then you might as well fire me because you hired a gay person. The young woman, unsurprisingly so, had begun to cry and thanked Zitao for his bravery and his manager had stormed off without a word, and Zitao had been allowed to keep both his job and his tip.

It had been when he was telling Luhan about the verbal tussle between the manager and the girls that the work telephone had rung, and Luhan had been the one to answer. After a few seconds, however, the phone had been passed to Zitao and the boy had nearly had a heart attack when the person on the other line introduced himself as Doctor Kim Joonmyun, hello Zitao, I am here with your mother and your father and I would like for you to come down sometime, I have something very important to speak to you about regarding your mother’s medical condition. 

Prior to his mother being admitted, she didn’t have a medical condition. She was always the picture of perfect health, all bright smiles and flourished cheeks. When he’d gotten to the hospital that day, to say that the looks on his mother’s and father’s faces were anything short of contrite would be an understatement. Doctor Kim, however, was startlingly chipper with him in a way that made his stomach twist, the friendliest bearer of bad news Zitao thinks he will ever see, and he’d given Zitao ample time to sit and breathe and say hello to his mother where she lay in a medical cot, physically and visually exhausted, and it broke Zitao’s heart to see her look so drained all of a sudden.

When he’d mustered up the strength to hear the prognosis, however, he’d completely shattered and doused the upper portion of his mother’s medical gown with his tears. 

Although it is in stage three, the chance of being able to completely reverse the damage and siphon it completely from your mother’s system has dropped exponentially, and there is a good chance it will come back. However, it is possible to stall it at this point in time and have it remain in remission where it will not wreak more havoc on her body, but the chance of killing all of the cells and bringing her back to full health again is very slim. 

Zitao’s father left them the very next morning - packed up everything he owned and vanished as if he’d never been in existence in the first place.

His mother didn’t cry much, but Zitao cried in her place over the fact that his father abandoned them when they needed him most. 

Since then, Zitao took up photography full-time and began traveling to take pictures of places his mother always wanted to visit but was no longer bodily able to visit them herself. Zitao, ever so willing and smitten by his mother’s affection, gladly went out of his way for her and has been screening full-size landscapes to bring her ever since. The last one she requested was a picture of the shores of Beihai, and Zitao had driven three days to take the picture and even brought her back one of Beihai’s famous pearls. She’d worn it around her neck on a thin, golden chain ever since. 

As his mother’s prognosis grew worse and transitioned into stage four, however, he stopped traveling in fear that something would happen while he was gone and he would return to find his mother dead. 

Which then brought him to the mail - his monthly radiology bills for his mother’s treatments, which took every single cent he’d earned from the restaurant and his photography that he had so little spending money that he actually sometimes had to have Luhan bring him food just so Zitao didn’t starve himself to death. God bless Luhan’s heart because Zitao doesn’t understand how anybody could be okay with spending that much money on their friend, but Zitao assumes it’s because he is employed. When rent comes around, Luhan typically has to pitch in for that, as well.

“,” he mutters to himself as he sinks onto the sofa and flips open this month’s radiology bill. Nearly twenty-thousand even after insurance? Jesus ing Christ, there is no way Zitao will be able to afford that this time and he cusses as he realizes the price has spiked because her cancer is spreading instead of receding. 

Zitao cracks out a pen and paper as he begins to add up his totals from his photography alone, now that he is technically unemployed under medical warrant for being “emotionally unstable” and manages to round out his daily, weekly, and monthly earnings from selling prints. I usually average one twelve-by-eighteen per day, and maybe two twenty-fours-by-thirty-sixes per week, so each week that’s about three-ten per week, so each month I’m only really making twelve-hundred dollars. Great.

He sighs and tears spring to his eyes because he’s going to have to borrow over ten thousand dollars from his best friend, again. He needs a full-time job so badly, but the problem is what job is going to pay him twenty-thousand dollars a month? Especially when his degree is in photography. He supposes he could get another waitstaff job but he only made tips, and even retail is just minimum wage which is less than a thousand dollars for a whole month if he were to work weekdays and save weekends to see his mother. Realistically speaking, he can’t do all three at once. He either has to sacrifice seeing his mother and possibly not be able to say his real goodbye, or spend all of his time with her and let her cancer rapidly progress until she becomes so violently ill that she can’t even bear to have him see her in such a state.

Dreadful, he sets the bill aside on the table and opens his laptop to scour his online blog to check his sales. He sold two prints today, both of which were twenty-four-by-thirty-six, which means he made another hundred dollars today. He supposes he should be happy that he made a hundred dollars by doing absolutely nothing, but the mere hundred seems like pocket change when compared to the twelve-thousand he’s due to pay. Then as a waiter, he was only making around three-thousand hourly per month, and about seven-hundred in tips so even that coupled with his photography wouldn’t even be able to pay for half of his mother’s bill. What he takes from this little mathematics lesson is that even if he were to begin working again, he still wouldn’t be able to afford to keep his mother alive, and that thought is what keeps him up at night with an aching heart and tears streaming down his cheeks. He’s going to lose his mother, and it’s going to be all his fault.

Why couldn’t he just have been like any other smart kid and gone to school to become a doctor or a lawyer? Even an apothecary would make more than a mere photographer who doubles as a waiter. 

He switches the tabs to look at his feedback to get his mind off of his monetary failure and smiles when he sees all of the new comments on his blog feed. People do really enjoy his photography, but sometimes he receives comments complaining about how high his prices are for just simply taking a picture of outside, and he tries explaining that it covers the cost of the camera, of the filters he uses, of the bokeh effects he sometimes likes to add especially on pictures of the sky or crystal-clear beaches. Other comments are more supportive and they tell him they will purchase one of his prints when they get the money. Although he enjoys receiving feedback, it saddens him that his following is only fifty-three. 

He’s not one to search for attention but sometimes he gets the desire to ask for it, to explain how his mother is dying and he needs the money to pay for her hospitalization - but then he remembers that that would be pleading and begging and the thought of doing so leaves a griminess in his mouth. 

He decides to upload this week’s round of pictures onto his computer by slipping the SD card into the side slot and letting the on-screen application process them. They’re beautiful captures of last night’s sunset, he thinks, all bright periwinkle melting into a warm pinky-peach reminiscent of sherbet and finally deepening into a pretty indigo towards the top of the sky. It was stunning, and he wasn’t able to resist snapping a few pictures, especially with the glimmer of the stars and the rows of fluffy clouds dusted in corally orange tones in the view, as well. He also decides to separately upload a picture of him onto his blog from the other day - one that Luhan had taken, where Zitao had posed in front of a wall and had Luhan shoot him - under Luhan’s request, of course - and when Zitao had actually looked back the picture, it wasn’t even half bad and he kind of liked it. 

His blog followers already knew what he looked like but it wasn’t often that he uploaded pictures of himself because he wasn’t trying to sell captures of his appearance - he was here to sell his landscapes. 

Truthfully, he’d heavily debated the time Luhan offered to move in with him just so he could help provide for Zitao’s mother and feed him without having to rush around all the time, almost as if he were Zitao’s partner, but Zitao declined and said he couldn’t drag him into this mess like that, especially when he would have to deal with Zitao’s moments of panic and his fits of relentless crying, which he really didn’t want anybody to see.

Luhan was a great friend, he really was, but Zitao absolutely loathed taking things from people, and even more so asking for things from people. He always believed that if he needed something, he should be able to go out and get it himself and that he shouldn’t ask others for favors. Now that it was his mother’s life at stake, Luhan had actually volunteered to help him pay for it and while Zitao had refused to take his help for a long time, when Doctor Kim phoned him with news of his mother’s condition progressing to stage four, Luhan was no longer asking. 

Zitao startles, suddenly, when his phone rings in his left back pocket and he stands up in a hunched-over position to remove it from his pocket. When he lifts it, he’s not at all surprised to see it’s Luhan calling him now. 

“Hey, Han,” he says breathlessly as he tousles his hair gently with his free hand and sits back on his couch.

“Hey babe,” his friend husks in his ear in a way that makes him cry out in faux agony and yank the phone away from himself. “Hey, hey! Enough of the screaming! I have ears too, you know.”

“Luhan, we’re not having phone for the last time, I know you keep asking but my answer is still no. Go get a boyfriend to do it with you.”

“Hey, listen here you, if it was that easy I’d be having vicious phone every day. Anyway, off-topic. I’m on the way to your place right now, grab a jacket.”

He frowns, “What? Why? Where are we going?”

“To the strip mall,” his best friend says, and Zitao rolls his eyes. “There are these new jeans I’ve been looking at online and I want to go in person to try some on, but I don’t want to go alone. Come with me, come and be my shopping buddy.”

“Han, I have no money to spend,” Zitao sighs, and his friend interjects with a nobody said you had to buy anything genius! “And don’t you dare buy anything for me, either. No shopping for me.”

“Fine, fine. Just please come with me? And bring your camera!”

He glances at the time and realizes it’s only two in the afternoon. To be honest, it is kind of a gray, cloudy day and he wouldn’t be able to take many pictures, anyway. Plus it wouldn’t exactly hurt him to get out of the house and away from the hospital for once, right? 

“Fine,” he agrees, “but you’re buying me a hot pretzel on the way back.”

“Oh? I thought you said no shopping for you?”

Zitao snorts as he wraps his hand in the cloth of his jacket and tosses it over his shoulder, and grabs his keys again to lock up the apartment as he heads outside. “I did, but if you’re going to take me out, you might as well buy me dinner, first.”

“So these are advertised as -enhancing jeans,” Luhan explains with his eyes locked on a stack of silver-woven dark wash denim, the guy’s dark blonde hair tied in a goofy little ponytail that Zitao still doesn’t understand the hype behind. “I mean, obviously marketed toward women but I like to refer to everything feminine as ‘for women and Luhan’.”

Zitao reaches out and touches one of the folded pairs with his fingertips, the swath tight and smooth, and surprisingly soft for denim. A cotton-blend, perhaps? “This seems like the kind of thing you have to actually be looking for - like, you don’t just accidentally stumble across a pair of -enhancing jeans.”

“They were in my Sunday newspaper, I promise!”

His best friend takes an armful of different pairs of jeans, some in multiple sizes and in different colors, and it’s right then that the guy wraps his hand around Zitao’s bony wrist and pulls him out of the clothing section, and Zitao immediately knows to where he’s taking him hostage - the dressing room, because if there’s one thing his best friend Luhan is, it’s a camera hog, and the aforementioned piece of equipment hangs heavily from his neck.

Although they are only friends, Zitao knows they’ve crossed the boundary of being near each other a long time ago, so when Zitao sits on the changing bench and Luhan yanks his pants down below his rear, Zitao’s mind is far from ually clouded even when the guy bends to shimmy out of them and hands them to Zitao to hold onto.

“Are those new undies?” Zitao asks to cut the awkward silence, and Luhan shoots him a humored look in the mirror.

“Yeah, actually,” Luhan laughs as he picks up one of his pairs of jeans to try on, his shapely behind facing Zitao nearly full-frontal in his tiny little creamy undies. “They’re my I kind of want to impress you but I don’t feel like trying that hard underwear. Like them?”

“I mean, I can definitely see why you bought them.”

The first pair Luhan tries on is the silver-stitched dark wash, stretched roundly across his behind with grommeted pockets and conforming to the shape of the guy’s hips. Zitao raises an eyebrow at the -enhancing happening before his very own eyes because he knows for a fact that Luhan’s is not nearly that rounded and prominent. 

“Good choice, onion ,” Zitao comments and Luhan slides his hands over the curve of his hips. 

“Thank you for your not-asked-for opinion, Tao-ya.”

“You’re welcome, babe.”

The next pair Luhan tries on is a gray acid-wash with tears up the front across the thighs, and the waistband on them is just a little bit wider which leads Tao to believe they’re not the same type of jean as the other one. Although it takes a full thirty moons for Luhan to truly stop being so indecisive and pick the pairs he is going to purchase, they leave the store with three pairs of -enhancing jeans and one pair of regular show-offy jeans when he’s feeling extra masculine. 

Luhan’s a chatty one, making continuous small talk which Zitao is always grateful for as it saves him from the crippling grasp of his anxiety, but Luhan knows about his panic attacks, as well, and although the guy has never seen one before his own eyes, Zitao had long ago given him instructions on how to care for him should he go into an attack in front of his best friend. Luhan, the ever-capable, had given him a boastful grin and told him never to worry when he’s in his care, and it had made Zitao smile.

Chatty, yes, but worlds more competent and fulfilling as a friend, in such a way where Zitao finds himself lacking remorse for having only one friend. There are days where he shuts down and wonders why he doesn’t have more friends and why people don’t like him, but Luhan is always there just a phone call away and he makes sure to stay on the line until Zitao has ceased his crying and has declared that he’s going to be alright. Luhan knows very well that Zitao will always be alright, that he is not one to threaten himself, but Luhan can never be sure especially with Zitao’s mother’s impending death. When the time finally comes, Luhan isn’t so sure that Zitao will be able to say he’ll be alright this time.

“Is there anything you wanna look at, kid?” Luhan asks him while he’s lost in his thoughts, and it snaps him out of his reverie and he looks over at his best friend. “Any stores you wanna browse?”

“Han, I told you no buying me things today.”

“I’m not,” Luhan insists with a little laugh, eyes crinkling in the outer corners. “But everybody likes to window shop, so I figured maybe we could kill some time and go look in some stores at some displays before we leave. It’s still early.”

“Why did you even have me bring my camera, anyway?” Zitao asks, slightly distracted.

Luhan just smiles, and it begins to creep Zitao out when he doesn’t stop. “Because I may or may not want to drag you into one of these stores and may or may not want to have you try some stuff on and pick something to get you for your birthday in a few months.”

“Han, no - ”

“Yes, Tao,” he argues, and Zitao realizes that they’ve stopped in front of one of the most expensive stores in the entire strip and his heart plummets into his stomach. 

“No, definitely not here! This place is crazy expensive!”

“Oh, shut it, you. All you have to do is look at stuff, please?”

And again, Zitao caves because he’s weak and Luhan is the only friend he has and although he’s wary that Luhan will sneak his credit card to purchase something for him, just having Zitao browse seems like it will be enough to make the guy happy. 

The store Luhan takes him through is extravagant beyond belief, walls lined with individual articles as though each one only comes in one style and one color, and Zitao can practically smell the money it costs to own any one of them. The store is well-lit and the floors are polished and reflective above the marble, chandelier light fixtures hanging from a high ceiling, and mirror columns placed throughout the floor.

“Jesus,” Zitao expresses as Luhan passes by racks of clothing and takes him to a back wall where there are mannequins littered with ornate tailcoats and gaudy poet shirts in several shades of pastel with uniquely accompanying layers of frills, breeches in varying styles and shades of plaid and cream lattice and even a designated footwear kiosk over to the left side, piled high in pyramid-format with shiny, untouched dress shoes and suede trouser boots.

“This is the men’s wall,” Luhan explains. “Back up there in the front is all for females, and I figured you’d probably be more comfortable with this kind of stuff.”

“I can literally smell how much each of them costs,” Zitao says exasperatedly, and it makes Luhan snort beside him. He can’t help himself but reach out and touch, trailing his fingers across each individual creation, feeling the knit of each fabric both rough and soft, both tough and pliable, and how well they go with each of the colors, as well. “God, these are beautiful.”

Luhan’s attention perks and he glances over to where Zitao is admirin