"A merciless airport of tears snatches away these happy times
Arrogantly letting these tears break out, unable to hold onto the grief of lovers
The sight of your crying makes me feel lost
And unable to wipe away the tears, I can only walk away"

"Tears Airport", Lay (Zhang Yixing)

"Tou zhe xing li xiang bei shang le bei bao, you yao ben xang— Ugh," Yixing exited the recording app on his phone and buried his face in his hand for the third time since his first attempt at recording the song. It was absolutely no use, he thought to himself, biting his lips to keep from bursting out into uncontrollable sobs. The lights in the Changsha Aiport restroom were as blinding as a great white spotlight while he sat on the toilet seat, alone in one of the stalls. A good twenty minutes must have passed by since the first of the lyrics to his song had been born in his mind, and he still had not passed recording the first verse. It was nearly 1 in the morning, and there was still an hour left before Yixing's plane appeared at the gate, poised and ready to take him far away from home. But for now, he was alone in the men's restroom near his gate and trying to record a song on his phone before the inspiration left him forever.

"... Tou zhe xing li xiang— ." He stuffed his phone back into his pocket and continued to breathe heavily, keeping his face covered with his hands. Thankfully, the restroom was empty for now and no one would hear him cry if he did happen to do so. Since arriving at the airport he had tried so desperately to keep himself from blowing over in emotion, but it wasn't until he had neared his gate and saw the planes flying away and people boarding them that it suddenly hit him: he was about to get on a plane that would take him thousands of miles away from all that he had ever know, and the he hadn't said goodbye to everyone yet. 

Yixing reached into his jacket and pulled out the thin piece of paper that he ripped out of a nearby phonebook and had written the first of the lyrics on. Recording the song would have to wait until he could sing without his voice shaking with every syllable. Right now, his words and intonations were too muffled by heavy feelings to sound like anything at all. 

"Ugh," he sighed into his palms, covering up with eyes, bloodshot and puffy from crying. "Why are you doing this to me?" His heart galloped away from him for a few minutes, traveling the distance between the Changsha Airport and his neighborhood, where he knew a lovely girl lay in her bed, sleeping with a heart as heavy as his. In his mind, he traced the outline of her form molded against the cotton blankets she slept on, looked over her hair, the softness of the skin on her eyelids, traced the outline of those lips he knew so well, and then promptly had to stop in order to choke back the tears. Remembering her was too painful right now, too heartwrenching, and if he dwindled on these thoughts of her for too long, he would never leave China.

But the song he had written was for her. The lyrics on the paper he'd written on were composed with her in his heart and in his mind, and it was a song about tragedy and loss and feeling helpless because of her. And yet he couldn't bring himself to love her any less because of it. Yixing could still remember the way she looked when she broke his heart, could still see how breathless and panicked she was, could still remember how she had been the first of them to start crying even though she was the one breaking up with him. He remembered exactly what she had said to him, too:

"You and I belong on two separate sides of a lever," she said, her words distorted by the violent fits of hiccups that came with her incessant sobbing. "And one of us has to put ourself down in order to raise the other one up."

It was this that troubled him the most, the knowledge that her decision to cut him off, to leave him alone, had been her attempt at trying to propel him forward, to raise him up even if it meant that she had to decrease and disappear. Singing, dancing, becoming famous was everything Yixing had ever dreamed about, and if living without him, temporarily breaking his heart, meant that he could have what he wanted so dearly then his precious girl would have done it in a heartbeat. Yixing had no idea how to even begin comprehending how hurtful (and yet wonderful) it felt for her to be on one end of the lever, putting herself down, and raising him up. 

And now he was leaving, maybe forever, and he may never ever see her again. And neither of them were to blame. 

There was no closure, no sense of completion with their separation. And the song he had written was meant to be a way of dealing with the open-ended conclusion they had been dealt. But alone in that bathroom it didn't feel like an answer at all. It felt more like a knife that he was plunging into his own heart as some type of punishment because he had been as stupid as to let her get away from him, a punishment for not seizing her and kissing her and saying he was sorry while he still had the chance, for not fighting for her, and for not making her see that she was all he wanted. And now she was pushing him away. She had cut off everything between them and left him gasping for a breath of the happy air he once breathed with her. Without her, Yixing suddenly felt alone again. 

He swallowed back the waves of pain that were beginning to surface, and he took out his phone. Gathering up as much courage as he could, he opened up the recording app once more, and tried the verse a fifth time.