Cheng Xiaoshi is working at the photo studio, manning the front counter as always. Lu Guang is running errands, so it’s just him in the shop.
Door opens, and the chime rings true as ever. Cxs raises his head to greet the customer but is taken aback for a moment. Huh. The middle aged man in the store looks so familiar. But he never met him before. He looks strikingly like Lu Guang, but, well. The world often has doppelgängers.
Cxs asks the customer what he can do for them. The customer is very quiet and pensive, asks if cxs can develop some film. He keeps it in his pocket (a bit sacrilege to cxs but he keeps polite) and cxs says he can get to work, should be ready by the next day. The man stays to chat a little, asks cxs about his day and shop. Cxs chats bc he likes to chat , and the man is quiet but pleasant. He really does remind him of lg. he makes a mental note to ask lg if he has any relatives in guidu. When the man finally leaves, he gives cxs a huge tip. He says thank you for the good chat. He never comes to pick up the photos the next day.
This seems to happened every now and then. An older man—sometimes middle aged, sometimes elderly grandpa—will stop by for a photo developing job that he will never come pick up in time. But always stays to have long and deep conversation with cxs. Always seems so tearful when he leaves but also is so thankful for the conversation. Loves to hear about cxs’ day and shares a little about his own life, the hardships and celebrations he had ever since he became an adult past his twenties. Cxs wonders if they are missing family, and becomes like a surrogate son/grandson to them. They like to spoil him, and also QL if she’s nearby.
They all remind him of lg. he thinks about telling lg about hjm, but he hesitates in the last second. He begins to suspect, but won’t tell a soul. He wants to let the old gentlemen have this. He knows it’s important to them.
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just this | a "courage of stars" in-universe CXS birthday fic
Two days before Cheng Xiaoshi's birthday, he received his third rejection email. It opened with flowery politeness, thanking him for his photography publication submission and for his evident passion, which immediately tipped him off that he had, once again, fallen short.
He tried to read each word of it carefully and bravely, but his eyes skipped ahead in search of the caveat. Unfortunately, we have decided to select other candidates—and that breath that he had been holding unknowingly for the past three months since he had first nervously sent the ZIP file of his proudest pieces to the publication finally fell flat with an anticlimactic silence.
ghosts with gold-flecked eyes | 时光代理人 (Link Click)
Summary:
The living haunt the dead, sisters betray their brothers, and Cheng Xiaoshi chooses mercy.
Excerpt:
It was summer in Guidu, syrupy and relentless, and Cheng Xiaoshi was trying to be the bigger person. The woolly humidity meant that the shop's air conditioning unit was rattling itself into exhaustion, and he and Lu Guang were huddled in the foyer sofa, trying to distract themselves from the sensation of their own sweat on the back of their necks with a two-player game on their phones. Cheng Xiaoshi was defending themselves against the dungeon's horde of monsters and mimics to reach the next level, buried deep within the bottom of the cave. Lu Guang, on the other hand, was testing his patience.
"Lu Guang," Cheng Xiaoshi said. "You've got to follow me."
Lu Guang was presently hunched up on the sofa, nose nearly touching the screen of his phone as he tapped away at his phone. Cheng Xiaoshi, physically, was sitting right next to him on the sofa, but in the world of the game, his character had cleared the abyss to the other side of the crevice. He had thought Lu Guang was right behind him as he discovered the key to crossing the abyss, but Lu Guang, evidently, was not any better at following direction as he was at giving them.
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I'm trying to get back into writing, so I used a writing prompt to do a bit of flash fiction. Enjoy!
Funerals were always so exceptionally dreary, Jeneva thought as the rain came down and bounced off her umbrella with a cliche plonk. How like it to rain on this day, when it was this woman being put to rest. She thought wryly that the sky would never have cried this way if the situation were reversed.
The grave had been filled in, and the flowers laid, and all the mourners had gone home to have their grim little casserole. It was a tradition Jeneva wasn't particularly keen on sharing. She was a transplant to this region, and anyway, the vast majority of those who knew Carolyn McCradie hated her guts.
She adjusted her white dress (black was, of course, traditional. But Jeneva had never much cared for tradition, much less for her) and her hair back into its coiffure before she bent down to the ground, knees getting smeared with mud. Abandoning her umbrella, she cradled the headstone of Carolyn McCradie as though it were the most precious thing in the world. And, for the first time that day, she smiled.
Demented, she knew. To embrace the tombstone of the woman she hated more than anything in the world. She didn't care. "It's what you deserve," she spoke to the slab of marble. "It's all going to be mine now, you know. Everything you stole from me."
Thunk.
The dirt jumped a millimeter. Jeneva ignored it. She stroked the letters in Carolyn's name with her ruby red nails. "I tried for so long to be the perfect little dilletante, then the socialite, anything to move up in this wretched country. Anything to get noticed." Thunk. "It was all for him, in the end. The man you stole from me."
She was soaked head to toe, so she thought it didn't matter when she laid on the bed of fresh grave dirt like a wedding bed, imagining Carolyn's head six feet under her own. "You were so charming. I had known since we were just girls. You had no ambition, but you were oh so kind. I remember when that was endearing." Thunk. Thunk. "Settle down, dear. You're going to ruin all the gravedigger's work."
She could swear she heard Carolyn's voice. "We were friends, once," it said.
"That friendship ended when you took what I was owed," Jeneva said, absently digging up the dirt, squishing it between her fingers. "I worked my whole life for what Henry offered. I cast away anything that didn't serve that end. You know how difficult it is, being a woman. He offered everything. Money. Power. Respect."
"I respected you," the ghost of Carolyn whispered. Jeneva tensed her fingers, clumping up the dirt in her hands.
"What would the respect of one other woman bring a girl like me?" Jeneva asked. "The things I wanted from this life were out of reach."
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk thunk.
"Let me have this," Jeneva said. "His wealth is wasted on you and your cloying sentiment."
"Love, not sentiment."
"Same thing."
Thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk—
Those old feelings, rearing their ugly head. Jeneva would not let Carolyn have another chance. Henry would be hers. Henry's fortune would be hers. As she laid in the mud, soaked through, she tried not to think of Carolyn's kind eyes widened in fear, palms bloody slamming against the casket, crying out for anyone to hear her. She didn't think about her, young, beautiful, and in damnable, damnable love.
________________
It was just about time to wrap up at the cemetery. The caretaker was just about to put out his lantern and head home when a crack of lightning lit the windows of the cemetary's chapel, and the double doors swung open. Standing outside, looking practically drowned, was a tall woman in a mud-covered white dress. The sight nearly made the caretaker jump out of his skin.
"H-h-how can I help you, uh, miss?" He said, stumbling over his words.
She looked downright murderous when she answered, "call the gravediggers, and get a shovel. The bitch is alive, and we're digging her up."
