I’ve grown to appreciate the aus where Shen Yuan enters the story as “Shen Yuan” - same name, probably similar face, generally able to interact with PIDW as himself and change the story through his added presence. I like the sense of “if only you’d been here, things might have been better the first time around” of it all.
And I was thinking, it’s a funny coincidence in that scenario that someone named Shen Yuan gets put into… another Shen Yuan. What are the chances? What a weird twist of fate that Airplane would pick out the name that his most dedicated critic could slip into seamlessly.
What about a version where it’s not coincidence at all?
Airplane goes to school with a kid named Shen Yuan. He’s prickly and hard to approach and a little intense, but Airplane is persistent. In fairness, Airplane is relentless - and maybe it’s a good thing that they end up being friends, because they’re a little too much for anyone else to handle. They balance each other out. They’re the “weird kids” in class and they’re okay with that, because even when they don’t have any words for it, they know they’re not like their classmates, not really. That’s okay; they don’t want to be.
Recesses and breaks are consumed with the elaborate stories that Airplane wants to tell, and all the holes Shen Yuan pokes into them. It’s not mean-spirited, though, even though Shen Yuan isn’t the kind to temper his words. It’s passionate. He cares about those stories the way Airplane cares about them, and it can’t be mistaken for anything else when they lean together conspiratorially across the lunchroom table. They’ve both got notebooks filled with details and characters and monsters. Shen Yuan’s practically got a whole bestiary sketched out in wobbly childhood attempts at art, entries fervently scrawled beside them. Airplane prattles out plots nonstop, always with the promise of shining eyes and being asked “what happens next?”
They come up with a whole world together. Airplane’s going to write about it someday. Shen Yuan is going to read every word.
Shen Yuan misses school. Shen Yuan starts missing school a lot.
Airplane goes to the hospital room instead. He doesn’t think to worry, because Shen Yuan is okay - that’s what he says. He looks okay, and he’s a kid, and it doesn’t feel real that anything bad should happen to a kid. He doesn’t think to worry. He doesn’t think to say goodbye.
It’s one of the older Shen brothers who catches him on the way up to the room one day, in the hallway just outside - snaps at him to go the fuck home, and when Airplane hesitates, pushes him into the elevator and tells him not to come back. “Tells” is a generous way to describe the way the words come out - a growl, a hiss, the sound an animal would make when a hand got too close to a wound.
(It’s not fair to name a villain after him, even if the name never really comes up in the story. He wasn’t trying to be mean. He’d lost a brother minutes before, and he was getting his brother’s friend out of the way so he didn’t have to… see. It isn’t fair, but then, none of it is fair.)
Death feels very real after that.
The notebooks get shoved into a closet, and it’s not until Airplane’s moving out and one falls on him from a high shelf that he thinks about it again. He’s written things, lots of things, but nothing as ambitious as this - nothing as important. It could be good, he considers. He’d promised. Shen Yuan wanted to read it.
The problem was that no one else does, not for a long time, not until Airplane has whittled himself and his art into a corner and into such an unfamiliar shape that he has to wonder how it’s still his own face he sees in the mirror. He has to eat. He has to pay rent. Shen Yuan would yell at him, but Shen Yuan isn’t there to yell at him, and who cares. Who cares if it could have been better? The people who actually are here love it, and it’s paying his bills, and sometimes stories don’t go the way they’re supposed to and the world is fucking unfair. It doesn’t matter.
(It does. But he shoves that thought away along with styrofoam cups and soda bottles to the bottom of a garbage bag.)
Authors are not gods and their power is limited, but Airplane exercises just a sliver of what he’s been granted and gifts an inconsequential sort of immortality. He thinks about making him a rogue cultivator, maybe the kind that goes around documenting beasts and compiling his findings. He thinks about making him someone too powerful for death to touch, or too important to threaten, but when Airplane looks at the world he crafted and everything that’s become of it, it feels like the kindest thing he can do for Shen Yuan is a childhood where he’s loved, and a death that’s peaceful. What does it say about that world, that he’d kill off his best friend too early again instead of making him live there?
(The best writing he ever does is the only, shining moment of humanity that his scum villain ever displays: a lament about death that comes too early, about a brother gone too soon. The commenters praise him. The commenters flatter over how real the emotions feel. The commenters don’t get any response from Airplane on that chapter.)
Death is incredibly real when it comes for him too early, too, still hovering over his keyboard with the story technically finished and incredibly incomplete. Airplane could tell himself that’s because the written version can never be the version in the writer’s head, always shifting and with every possibility still on the table, but he knows better than that. The System knows better than that, with its condescending message about “improving” his writing and “closing plot holes” and “achieving his original vision”...
…and he’s a child again. He’s a child in his own story, he’s Shang Qinghua now without the benefit yet of a peak or cultivation or anything, and maybe he’s a little bitter, and a little scared, and…
And Shen Yuan - with longer hair, with robes, with a couple of older kids watching him from across the street, but undeniably the prickly little boy who used to sit down imperiously across from him and tell him everything that was wrong with the chuck of writing that had been handed to him last period, but with that smile that said he was only invested because he knew it could be better and they were going to make it better - marches up to him with a fire in his eyes and a frown that warns of a coming tirade.
“You told it wrong,” is the first thing he says.
Shang Qinghua wants to ask how him how he’s here, how this is possible, or maybe laugh because, yeah - yeah, Shen Yuan has no goddamn idea how wrong he got absolutely everything.
(Shang Qinghua wants to say “I missed you” and “why did you leave so soon” but he’s here now. He’s right here.)
“I know,” he says instead. “I’m sorry. It all kind of… spiraled out of control.”
Shen Yuan frowns, but then it dissipates the way it always does, and his eyes shine with ideas the way they always used to. “That’s okay,” he relents, grabbing for his hand. “We’ll fix it. We’ll make it what it was supposed to be.”
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(part 1 here! it's not required for reading this piece, but they are connected, so it'll make more sense if you read the first part first!)
The door to the sewing club slides open with a loud BANG!
“Yo.” A tall, intimidating guy with blond, braided hair strolls in, with all the casualness of someone taking a trip to the convenience store.
You gape wordlessly at him from where you're sitting, still jolted from the lound and sudden bang. Who is this? What does he want?? Has he ever heard of knocking???
“Let’s go eat, Mitsuya, I'm hungry as fu– oh, sorry, didn't see you there.” he strides into the room, pausing when he sees you. You can only blankly nod in response, the movement itself almost pure instinct, brain still running on fight or flight mode.
A light chuckle comes from your right, and you shift your gaze to the lilac haired male sitting next to you. He shoots you a reassuring smile before turning his attention back to the blond, now standing in front of him.
“Gimme a moment, yeah? I'm almost done here.” He motions to the school jacket in his hand. Your school jacket, actually. You accidentally ripped it while you were at school, and Mitsuya insisted on helping you fix it, waving away your voiced worries of taking away his precious lunch time.
He returns to the current task at hand, hands swiftly and fluidly sewing the tear up, masterful after years of practice. Your gaze returns back to the blond guy as he pulls up a chair from one of the nearby tables and plops down across from Mitsuya. They seem familiar with each other, the way both are relaxed in each other’s presence.
“Oh yeah, this is Draken, by the way. The guy I was telling you about.” Mitsuya pauses briefly from his sewing to introduce the new person in the room. You immediately perk up at the familiar name. Well, that clears up a lot of things.
“Draken? The guy with the matching dragon tattoo?” You ask, eyes alight with intrigue. Draken snorts amusedly.
“I see you've heard the story.” He turns his head so you can see the familiar dragon tattoo inked into the left side of his head, the exact mirror of Mitsuya's. Your mouth forms into a little ‘o’ at the sight of it. “This tattoo is mine, by the way. Paid for it and everything.”
Another snort, from Mitsuya this time. “Right, I'm sure you paid for it fair and square.” A smile dances on his lips as he continues sewing, eyes focused.
“Hey, who was the one who ate all my rice first?”
“Um, excuse me…” Your voice turns Draken's attention back to you. “If you don't mind, could I take a closer look at your tattoo?” You shyly ask the blonde male.
His eyebrows raise at the bold request, and you hurriedly add on to your previous question. “It’s just that, I've seen Mitsuya's one before, but I couldn't really get a full view due to his hair covering most of it. It seemed really cool, so…”
The explanation seems to placate him, and he smiles reassuringly, the sight easing some of your nerves. “Yeah, go ahead, knock yourself out.”
You brighten up at that, immediately moving your seat to Draken’s left and wasting no time in studying every detail of the tattoo.
“Woahh…it’s so different seeing it in its entirety! It really is beautiful…”
“Heh, right? I thought it would’ve been such a shame, leaving such a cool design to stay hidden in some dingy alley, so getting it as a tattoo was a no-brainer. Didn’t expect this guy over here to do the same, though.”
“Hahah, you really made the right decision. It fits you really well!”
“Yeah, and it fit with my name too, y’kno? Draken, dragon. Really helps with making a name for yourself.”
“Ooh, that’s a cool detail!”
As you ooh and aah over the inked dragon on Draken’s head, unconsciously shifting closer and closer to him, you don’t notice how Mitsuya pauses in his work, quietly staring at the two of you with an unreadable expression on his face.
“Have you seen the actual mural? It’s way bigger than this tattoo.”
“I haven’t, actually.”
“If you want, I can bring you sometime—”
“[name].” Mitsuya cuts in loudly, both your heads snapping towards him at the sound. He raises the repaired jacket in his hands with a smile that doesn’t really seem to reach his eyes. “The jacket’s done.”
“Oh!” You hop off the stool and gratefully accept the jacket as he walks over to hand it to you, lilac eyes never leaving your figure as you slip your arms through the sleeves, blissfully unaware. “Good as new! Thank you so, so much, Mitsuya.”
His eyes soften at your sincere words, a warm smile naturally finding its way onto his face at your happy expression. “No problem at all, [name].”
“I’ll get going, then. I don’t wanna take up anymore of both of your lunch time.” you say, turning around to leave. You shoot Draken a wave as you walk past. “Bye, Draken! It was nice meeting you; maybe I’ll take you up on that offer to see the mural sometime.”
“You too, [name]. I’ll see you around.”
Mitsuya coughs lightly, and the sound prompts you to continue moving towards the exit. He follows closely behind you, reaching forward to open the door before you can.
“Thank you again, ‘tsuya.” You say once more, turning to him with a bashful grin.
He huffs amusedly. “Like I said, it’s no problem at all. You can come to me anytime if you have any problems.” Your lips curl up even more at that, cheeks tinged with the slightest pink.
“Also,” He lets out another light cough, and you can’t help but take note of the way his ears are tinged red, how he suddenly seems to be avoiding your gaze. “You don’t…have to take Draken up on his offer.” he quietly says, words slowly turning into mumbles, the red from his ears slowly spreading to his cheeks. “I can bring you…if you want. And,” His face is fully red at this point, words so quiet you had to lean in to hear them. “if you want to look at the tattoo up close, you can just look at mine anytime…” he trails off, eyes looking anywhere but you.
You gape at him. This was something you definitely weren’t expecting. Despite your surprise, you can’t stop the giddy smile spreading across your face, giggling as you try to hold back your teasing. He’s already flustered enough; you suppose you’d spare him, just this once.
“Okay then.” You wave at him as you step out, eyes twinkling with mirth. “See you, ‘tsuya!”
Mitsuya watches your figure go until you disappear from his sight, sighing in relief and slight disbelief as he closes the door to the club. He hadn’t really planned on saying that, but the words just… slipped out. Something about the way you looked at him made them bubble up until he couldn’t contain them any longer. At least your reaction was positive.
He turns around, fully prepared to put the whole thing behind him, only to be greeted with a razor-sharp grin. Draken wiggles his eyebrows at him, looking like a cat that just caught its prey. “So…someone got jealous, huh?”
Mitsuya lets out a suffering groan. “Please. Don’t tell anyone. You didn’t see anything.”
Draken cackles. “Maybe I’ll consider it if you buy me a karubi don.”
He’s so telling everyone.
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