Chapter Text
Queen – as Liu Yuwei – shouldn’t have reasonably been there. She could have thought of at least five alternative ways to give X back his shirt, each one not involving her physically showing up in front of his apartment in the middle of the evening. Unannounced, without notice, against any common courtesy and against her better judgment.
But she had promised she would have paid X a visit to give him back his shirt and get back her own, twice, and her rightfulness was now inconveniently binding her to her own words – why did she do that? She did need to give him back his shirt, but there was no reason to do it in person. At his apartment.
She should have never promised to pay him a visit, let alone twice.
And yet, Liu Yuwei was there now, her finger pressing on the doorbell next to the door, her feet taking a step back as if that could have preserved a distance that she was willingly shortening. Excusing her faux pas by telling herself it was just another step forward to take a further step back, removing from her apartment and her life that shirt that kept binding her to X.
She heard the internal bell chime from inside the apartment, heard the metal locks clacking open. Found herself face to face with a brown haired teen girl, surprise meeting surprise, followed by a sudden realization opening the girl’s eyes out wide in the span of a few seconds.
"Queen!"
That was surely not what Liu Yuwei expected. The young girl pointing her index fingers at her and standing her ground in a proud, challenging, somehow happy way was not what she expected – X’s ability to defy her expectations, even while not being physically present, was definitely going out of control.
"If you’re here to ambush Ahu, I’ll let you know he’s the strongest of the strongest and you will not defeat him!"
From outside the door, Liu Yuwei looked past the young girl. She recognized Ahu peeking out from the living room and then siting down in the hallway, frowning confused – was X seriously not joking, when he mentioned he had shared custody of Ahu?
"I’m not here to fight, I’m looking for..."
She hesitated. X had never told her his true name. She had never asked and he had never shared. An unsaid, hidden personal detail that was meant to keep them apart and that was now causing an awkward silence, her mind spinning with the very little information she had about him and about the girl standing in front of her.
"...the home owner."
Quite formal, not entirely inappropriate, perhaps unusual.
The young girl didn’t seem to mind her lexical escamotage though, turning around as said home owner walked towards the door from the living room. In his dark haired, unnamed civilian persona – was the girl aware of his other identity? - albeit in a casual attire that she had never seen him in.
"Xin Ya, didn’t I tell you to let me know who’s at the door before opening it?"
The girl - Xin Ya, wasn’t that the name of Ahu’s actual owner? - didn’t seem worried by X’s tired, not really rebuking tone. Not even remotely sorry.
"I know who she is!"
"That’s beside my point."
X heaved a deep sigh, stepping in front of the door and purposely placing himself between Liu Yuwei and the girl. Behind his back, Xin Ya moved further back by several steps but didn’t left. She remained there, in the entrance, loitering curiously. Ahu sat down at her side, eyes narrow.
Liu Yuwei looked at the dog, then at X.
"I thought you had shared custody of the dog."
Both her and X ignored Ahu barking “I have a name!”.
"My life keeps taking unexpected twists."
The exhaustion in X’s voice subtly begged her to not inquire further.
"I apologize for showing up without notice at this hour. I’m here to give you back this, as promised."
Liu Yuwei handed him over the shirt she had borrowed from him more than a few weeks before, dry cleaned, folded, packed into a plastic bag. Pretending she didn’t notice Xin Ya standing on tip toes and moving around, attempting to see what she was handing him out.
"Thank you, I’ll go take yours."
Taking his shirt back, X turned around and walked back inside his own apartment, an open TV in the background muffling the sound of his slippers on the floor. He didn’t invite her to enter and she didn’t try to cross the entrance.
She remained in front of the door, waiting, as if that could have still preserved the distance that she needed to keep with him. As if that could have spared her from elaborating whatever was going on between her and X to the young girl and the dog still staring at her from the end of the hallway.
X’s return with her own shirt - folded, cleaned, packed - and his body purposefully moving again between her line of sight and the house’s guests resolved a pause that was progressively starting to become more and more awkward.
"I went to a laundry that’s pretty far away from both here and my former job place. The elderly lady at the desk somehow didn’t seem to recognize me and assumed that my..."
An awkward pause.
"...my wife had sent me on an errand."
Liu Yuwei pretended to not have heard the sentence X had just uttered. For her own sake.
"I don’t think they will be able to trace you to it, or you to me."
She took her shirt from X’s hands and put it in the bag that she had used to carry his own, hanging on her shoulder. Pretending also to not notice Xin Ya and Ahu very puzzled expressions, eyes wide meeting and mouths voicing quietly their confusion.
X glanced at them from the corner of his glasses, for a moment. He sighed again, exhaustion and exasperation showing at the same time in his sagged shoulders. Turned his glance again toward her.
"Do you have some time to talk? Away from here."
"15 minutes, not any more."
It was a lie. Liu Yuwei had plenty of time to talk that night, nothing besides training waiting for her back home. It was a lie, an arbitrary, made-up time limit that was not set by circumstances but by her own restrains.
Because she needed to keep the distance between them unchanged, uncrossed, unresolved. Not giving him the time to further cross the wade between them, to place one more stone on the bridge connecting their shores, especially after removing the biggest ones still standing between them.
It was a lie but X accepted it, either oblivious or purposefully, wordlessly pretending to believe her. He fiddled with the side buttons of his smart watch and then turned it around, to show a timer quickly running down.
"15 minutes."
He agreed, walking inside to quickly grab the house’s keys, wear his shoes and then leave, the door shutting close behind him. X hand wordlessly extended toward her, Liu Yuwei placed her own on it with no hesitation, knowing what the gesture meant – and it should have worried her, frightened her, once more, how their unspoken, mutual understanding was still evolving, deepening. It should have worried her, frightened her, how she did not hesitate a single moment to let him hold her hand.
A snap of X’s fingers warped reality, switched the bright neon lights on ceiling into suffused light poles brightening the night into a small children’s park. As Liu Yuwei eyes adjusted to the abrupt change in brightness and the light dizziness from the switch dissipated, X walked away from the swings they were standing nearby. He reached a red, neon-lit vending machine located on the side of the road running next to the park, put some coins in, retrieved two canned drinks, came back.
"Do you have an advertisement contract with vending machine producers?"
X laughed, handing her out one of the canned drinks he was holding.
"No, it’s a hobby of mine."
Liu Yuwei accepted the gift, once again, unable to stop herself from smiling. She sat down on one of the two swings as X did the same on the other one, the metal clicking as they opened their cans.
"Xin Ya is Ahu’s owner. I’m sure you read about her before the tournament started. She brought me dinner and stuck around to make sure I would eat it."
X didn’t need to explain himself. He actually shouldn’t have explained himself. The window over his personal life should have remained closed, curtained, a screen behind which Liu Yuwei shouldn’t have ever peeked behind. Just like when she had refused to do so a few days before.
Yet she didn’t, again, her words slipping out from her lips before her mind could restrain them. Carried away by the misguided, illogical, comfortable familiarity of their late-night conversations.
"You...can’t cook?"
Between X mentioning before he had went out to buy himself dinner, and their only dinner together being at a food stall, the doubt was more than legitimate.
"I can, more or less. But she is convinced that since I am unemployed, and I’m living alone, I am going to either eat only instant noodles or starve myself to death. So she cooks for herself and Ahu, then occasionally bring me what she cooks and checks I am eating properly."
X took a sip from his can, his back slouched forward with an arm resting on his leg.
"Yesterday, she decided she and Ahu needed to go grocery shopping for me as well. I let her do it, told her I wanted some strawberry milk, among other things, and she assumed I would have liked some strawberries too. So she brought strawberries."
The detail about his likes was trivial, yet personal, dangerously pulling Liu Yuwei one step closer to him, one step inside his life. But she couldn’t help but smile, remembering Cyan and the Johnnies occasionally purchasing something they knew she liked during their shopping trips as well, even without her requesting it.
"That was nice of her."
X took another sip from his canned drink, looked forward unamused.
"...They were imported Nyohou Strawberries."
"You mean the Queen Strawberries?"
Liu Yuwei remembered those strawberries, a gift that she had received once by Cyan and Little Johnny – and the causality, the coincidence surprised her, concerned her. Like suddenly perceiving, confirming that the wheel of fate was spinning and weaving their threads over one another, tangling them, messing them.
She recalled them as juicy and tasty strawberries, enjoying them with her friends back then. Until her eyes had casually dropped on the price paid.
A very, very, very high price.
"I have never seen a grocery bill that high in my whole life."
X slouched forward, arms leaning on his legs, his head hanging down.
The hero at the top of the heroes ranking, the holder of the title for three tournaments in a row, possibly the closest someone had ever been to be a God after Zero, was in that moment mourning his grocery bill while sitting on a children swing.
An unexpected, absurd, surprising view that should have most likely not made Liu Yuwei chuckle. But it did, despite her attempt to muffle her laugh and hide her lips curling up with her hand – apparently, not even reality bending powers could win against financial irresponsibility.
"Laughing about my financial woes is quite rude, miss Liu."
It was, but she couldn’t help it. It was, but X was smiling too, amused, his head turned toward her. Liu Yuwei took a sip from her canned drink, looking forward, disguising the smile curling up her lip with the metal border of the can.
"Having children can be tiring. I can relate."
X hummed while sitting up and taking a sip from his canned drink. He looked at her from the corner of his glasses, his lips still curled up in a grin.
"I deserved that."
Liu Yuwei smiled satisfied, pettiness mingling with amusement.
"...but you just admitted Cyan and the Johnnies are your children."
She took another long sip from her canned drink, her petty gloating dissolving in the begrudgingly realization that X had once again turned upside down their standings, just like he had done at the tournament years before. She did not look at him, ignored the provocation, the teasing grating and blatant in his tone of voice – why had she not yet punched X in face, at least once? The question was getting more and more pressing each time they met.
"I hate you."
X laughed. Amused, unbothered, showing he knew her words were not matching whatever was warming and hurting in her chest.
Because Liu Yuwei did not hate X. She had hated him, after her defeat, letting grudges and blame fester in her heart while drowning failure, depression, sadness into burning wine. Obnubilating reality, emotions, making them fade in hatred. Until Cyan’s light had showed her the way out, until she had seen what grudges and hate did to Bowa.
So, Liu Yuwei had stopped hating X.
She accepted the canned drink he offered her, she accepted his invitations, she accepted his company, his kindness, his care, his hand holding her own. Carelessly yet naturally, letting the distance between them shorten, letting the shores between them connect, one stone at a time. Until sitting down side by side on swings in the evening, drinking together canned drinks in a deserted children’s park, felt comfortable, warm, lo...
The beeping of a timer running out stopped Liu Yuwei’s train of thoughts before it could reach its end, before it could mistakenly lift up the lid hiding whatever was lingering, persisting in her heart.
It remained shut, as it should have been...
"Time’s up."
X turned his wrist to show her the timer on his smart watch flashing 00:00, before lowering it and resetting it by pressing a button on the side. In his voice, she perceived disappointment, as if he still had something he needed to say and not enough time to said it.
"Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?"
"No, thank you for listening."
He smiled. She frowned.
Liu Yuwei really, really couldn’t understand X.
She could not understand why he was so persistent in gifting her canned drinks, she could not understand why he kept inviting her out to drink, to eat, to talk. She could not understand why he kept pulling her to him, one step forward, persistently – or could she?
Why he would willingly let her peek into his personal life when she didn’t even know his name – but Liu Yuwei didn’t want to know it. It was the last lock that should have never been touched, the one keeping the door shut, keeping the final wall between them still standing.
"...Sharing your personal woes with an opponent you’ll most likely face in the tournament is quite careless."
Liu Yuwei stood up from the swing, her free hand on the metal chains to keep it still – it was not like she was going to use this personal information in their probable fight. She was not accepting his company because she wanted to find his weak spot. But that was still not something that made sense to share with one of your possible, upcoming opponents.
X was either overconfident, or clueless, or…
"What about sharing them with a friend?"
X retorted, with a light, casual proposition.
Liu Yuwei’s heart dropped. In painful, agonizing confirmation.
X was not supposed to care about her. And she was not supposed to let him care about her. Yet he cared about her, stubbornly, persistently. And she had let him care about her, illogically, irrationally. Through casually gifted canned drinks, through late-night, comfortable conversations over drinks, over food, the tangled, garbled whatever between them had wrapped itself around Liu Yuwei’s feet, around her arms, her hands, around her.
And around him.
They were now both bounded, restrained by an emotional connection that could have smoothed the sharpness of her spear, that could have spilled his kindness into the uninterested, unbothered way X kept winning his fights. By an attraction that pulled them to one another not in a clash as it should have had, but in a perfect, comfortable balance. A misguided, mistaken bond that was now hindering them both on the path they should have followed.
A hindrance, that could no longer persist. That needed to be removed, quickly, coldly, like the tone of her voice in pushing back.
"We are not friends."
They were strangers that were not estranged, acquaintances that were not comrades. Not friends. They were opponents. They should have only been opponents. They needed to be only opponents. So that Queen could have fought X mercilessly, getting her revenge, ruthlessly removing the only hindrance between her and her goal. So that X could have fought Queen without concerns, seriously, legitimizing in a fair fight her win to the world, to herself.
"I don’t want you to see me as a friend."
They were not friends and should have never been friends. Just like the bond twisted, wrapped around them should have never been formed. They should have been disconnected, unbound, just opponents that were destined to clash. Nothing more, nothing else.
"We are opponents. Nothing more than that."
And yet, the words leaving Liu Yuwei’s lips tasted bitter, sounded even to herself like a deceptive truth, like a layered illusion.
In the quiet silence of the evening, X eyes looked at her. Past her harsh word, past her stern glare. Looking, searching, for something that Liu Yuwei somehow felt he should have not been allowed to see. Lingering in her heart, hurting, writhing, suffocated.
"Are we?"
X hand grabbed the metal chains of his swing to keep it still as he stood up, left his canned drink on the seat, turned to face her. His right hand in his pocket, his dark eyes bore into her, his words skirted closer to a clarity, to an understanding of whatever was going between them that she should have avoided. Now even more than before. Turn her eyes away from it, leave, just like all the previous times.
But this time, Liu Yuwei phone did not ring. This time, Liu Yuwei found herself without any excuse to divert her eyes away from it, to pull herself even further back than she already had.
This time, X did not take a step back.
"For having an idealistic, maximalist goal, the roots upon which you have built your aims have always been grounded on reality. On an empirical understanding, on a pragmatical acknowledgment of it. That’s what makes you a leader and not a dreamer."
X was doing it again.
Luring her back, right as Liu Yuwei had tried to move away. Pulling her back to him, as strongly, harshly, as she had just tried to get away. Stubbornly, persistently, making her heart feel comforted, making her long for that understanding, validation, acknowledgment that made her feel valued, appreciated, seen. Like she should have never wanted to, from him.
Slowly, openly, he extended his left arm, snapped his fingers. Reality twisted around them, washed the calm evening darkness in the familiar neon mattes, violet, yellow, orange, blue, bright and flashy. Erased the swings, the canned drink in her hand, the vending machines. Bleached his hair and his clothes white, painted orange his glasses.
The noises of the night city faded away in the silence, his steps as he closed the distance between them making no sound.
"It isn’t like you to twist reality. That’s what my powers do."
Across his glasses, his gentle eyes saw through her. They saw, knew, that Liu Yuwei had lied, while telling herself she had not. As if he had understood her, once again, like he should have never had. Like he was not supposed to.
"Don’t talk as if you knew me. You don’t."
X left thumb brushed her cheek, tenderly. The warm, soft touch of his hand resting on her skin burned, lovingly and painful. His lips smiled, kind.
"Would you like me to?"
Liu Yuwei knew she should have pushed back. Swatted his hand away, stop him from mending the threads between them that she had openly, forcefully attempted to tear just a few minutes before. Stop him, before the mutual, misguided, comforting understanding between them could let him see further through her lies, even the ones she kept telling herself.
Not let him know what she didn’t want him to know. About her. Not as a hero, but as a woman.
Yet, she didn’t. Yet, another voice inside her heart that sounded like her own whispered, muffled, trying to get itself be heard across her pride screaming – just once. Only once.
The voice sirened, alluring, to let X touch her. Just once. To let him pull her closer, across the lies he had already seen through. Only once. To let the doomed spark flickering between them consume the wax until the last drop, to let it consume the remaining desires.
If what she wanted was to rip, tear, remove the bond between them, then she should have let it burn. Burn the unnamed longing, the yearning, the crave coiled around them, restraining them, until only ashes would remain.
A green flash, lighting up the truth, on the horizon, before the sun sank below it.
And Liu Yuwei listened to it.
Knowing, accepting, bargaining that it was just once. Only once, to burn it down. She opened the lid, let what she had kept suffocated in her heart, what she didn’t want to name and define, burst out. So they could burn, with the step she took toward him.
Erasing the distance between them, like she had never done before, like she would never do again.
Liu Yuwei’s left thumb touched X’s lower lip, stroke it, slowly, softly, feeling its warmth under her fingertips. Slid on his cheek, her hands moving to rest at the back of his neck, goosebumps on his skin below her fingertips. Her other hand lifted his glasses at the top of his head, with care, baring his confused black eyes to her gaze. Moved to rest on his face.
She leaned in, lips and noses just brushing, and then pulled back, slightly, unsure.
X did not withdraw, leaned forward ever so slightly. He waited, letting Liu Yuwei completely close the distance still remaining between them. Let her pull him towards her, lean in, finally, pressing her lips on his, firmly, kissing him for perhaps the first and last time.
Her first kiss, their first kiss, that X did not reject. He leaned into it, and kissed her back.
His left fingers moving up to thread through her hair and cradle the back of her head warmed her, the heat between their bodies pressing together as his arm behind her back kept her firmly against his tall frame melted away any remaining hesitation.
In her, lips moving and searching, heart bursting and body burning, breathing in his scent behind closed eyelids. In him, a thrill running down her spine as his tongue slipped between her parted lips. A soft moan slipped from Liu Yuwei’s mouth as her fingers behind his head gripped strands of white hair, pulling X mouth closer on hers, letting her indulge into their heated kisses, deeper, longer.
Until the longing, the yearning, the crave in her heart felt sated, burned, spent. Until they parted, breathless, flustered, lips moistened and skin flushed.
Until her pride roared, outraged, furious, in her mind, above the ashes remaining at the bottom of her heart.
It deafened Liu Yuwei, loud, overbearing, as her head leaned on X’s shoulder, as her eyes closed when his arms wrapped around her. As the other voice inside her heart went silent, as the flame faded out, just like she wanted – and yet it hurt, it hurt so, so much. Like a flame dying down, like the sun setting, leaving a cold, lonely night, shrouded in pitch black darkness.
"Yu..."
"No."
Liu Yuwei collected her breath, pressed her hands on X’s chest. Then pushed him away, firmly, taking a step back. Then another one, further back, widening the distance between them.
Straightening her back, hiding her still thundering heart behind a cold voice.
"Let me go."
Queen’s orders could not work on X. Despite her frustrations, the gap between their trust values shielded him from her powers and trapped her into his own – it was just a fact, it was just how reality was. The one she had always acknowledged, just like he had remarked.
Liu Yuwei knew that X could have just refused, keep her there in his twisted reality, forcing from her a clarification that his confused, lost eyes were searching.
Yet X didn’t, closing his eyes and lowering his glasses again on his nose. Snapping his fingers and sucking the colours into the night, into the warm light of the light poles casting shadows into the children park, into the black shades of his hair and his eyes. Yielded to her, understood the hidden request in her words, just like he had always done – and Liu Yuwei wondered, agonized, how different things could have went if fate had not brought them together in that way.
"Thank you for getting my shirt cleaned."
Liu Yuwei bowed her head, turned around, walked away.
Behind her back, X did not stop her, did not call out to her.
For the final night, the distance between them widened. It stretched, more than it had ever did, tearing. The bridge connecting them crumbled, the stones composing it sinking into the stream, carrying them away.
Whatever was going on between them snapped.
Crushed, smashed.
Like a bent, damaged canned drink thrown away to lay over the ashes.
For the final night.