Jullian
2 years ago
The call came while he was in the kitchen, barefoot, standing in front of the open refrigerator without taking anything out.
It was early evening in California the hour when the light turned gold against the cabinets and the air still held the warmth of the day. His laptop was open on the table behind him, an unfinished paper glowing on the screen. Music played from the living room, something his boyfriend had put on without thinking.
His phone showed a Beijing number.
For a second he almost didn’t answer. He assumed it was one of the extended relatives, a time-zone mistake.
When he picked up, the voice on the other end was careful and formal, Mandarin structured in that distant, respectful way used for bad news.
There had been an accident.
He listened without interrupting, one hand still holding the refrigerator door open, cold air spilling against his bare legs. The only thing running through his head was Yuna.
Car accident.
On the way home.
Instant.
The phrases came in the wrong order, like elements in a program where the music had shifted half a beat ahead.
He said thank you when the man finished speaking. He didn’t remember deciding to say it.
When the call ended, the apartment was still full of the same warm light. The music was still playing. The refrigerator motor hummed steadily.
He closed the door.
For several seconds he stood there, his hand still resting against the handle, waiting for the world to change in some visible way.
It really never did but Yuna was still in the back of his head.
“Jian?” his boyfriend called as something about the apartment must have shifted.
His boyfriend had come into the doorway, drawn by the silence. Julian turned toward him, and something in his face must have been wrong, because the question didn’t finish.
“My parents,” Julian said.
The sentence stopped there.
He didn’t cry. Not then. He moved with an efficiency that felt like watching someone else passport, laptop, charger, the small suitcase from the closet. His boyfriend booked the flight while Julian stood at the table answering messages that multiplied faster than he could read them.
Are you coming home?
Yue is alone.
Call when you land.
Yue.
He tried to call her once. The line rang and rang before dropping into silence. He didn’t leave a message. He didn’t know what language to use.
At some point his boyfriend pressed a mug of tea into his hands. It went cold without him drinking it.
“I’ll come with you,” he said quietly.
Julian shook his head. The motion was automatic.
“You have midterms.”
The practical answer. The wrong one. The only one he could manage.
At the airport in San Francisco, everything moved too quickly. Check-in. Security. The long corridor of dutyfree lights.
He kept expecting to see them his mother standing slightly apart from the crowd so she could watch properly, his father pretending to read the departure board while tracking him in the reflection.
His phone buzzed constantly. He stopped opening the messages.
On the plane, when the doors closed and the engines began to spool, the reality shifted for the first time.
There was no version of this flight where they would be waiting at the other end.
He sat with his hands folded in his lap the way he used to before competitions, posture straight, breathing measured, as if control could be maintained through discipline.
He did not sleep.
Somewhere over the Pacific, with the cabin dark and the window showing only his own reflection, the guilt arrived quiet and precise.
He had not been there.
He had been in a kitchen in California, arguing about groceries, writing a paper that no longer mattered, living a life that had nothing to do with the rink, with them, with the apartment in Beijing.
Yue had been the one who saw them last. she had a skate competition or something mom was suppose to send him videos he absence mindedly thought in the back of his head.
Yue had been the one who opened the door.
His chest tightened at the thought of her alone in that space, the hallway light, the knock, the words delivered in that careful voice.
He pressed his hand against his mouth and finally closed his eyes.
For the first time since the call, he cried silently, shoulders rigid, the way he had learned to after bad skates as a child, when his father would sit beside him and say nothing until he could breathe again.
By the time the plane landed in Beijing, he felt as if he had been traveling for weeks.
The airport was exactly the same — the same polished floors, the same bright overhead lights, the same stream of arriving passengers pulling suitcases behind them.
Nothing had shifted to acknowledge that his entire life had been divided into before and after.
He moved with the crowd through immigration, through baggage claim, through the sliding glass doors that opened to the arrival hall.
He expected to see an aunt. One of the older cousins. Someone practical. Not just his baby sister alone and wrecked.
He was rehearsing what he would say how he would ask about the arrangements, about Yue, how he would keep his voice steady when he saw her.
She was standing too close to the doors, coat unbuttoned, hands tucked into her sleeves the way she used to do as a child when she was cold and refused to admit it.
For a second he didn’t recognize her becauae he looked exactly the same yet so different at the same time and his heart was in his throat. She had already been through so much.
She looked smaller.
Not physically. Structurally as if something that had always anchored her had been removed.
And then she started running. And he stared to run too.
Everything he had prepared to say disappeared.
He dropped the handle of his suitcase.
“Yuna—”
For a moment his body reacted before his mind could catch up, his arms closing around her automatically, one hand coming up to the back of her head the way it used to when she was small and had run to him after falling on the practice rink. He held her tighter than he meant to, as if the pressure could confirm she was real, solid, unhurt.
Her name came out rough, the syllables catching in his throat, the familiar childhood nickname slipping through before he could think to use anything else.
He bent his head, resting his cheek against her hair. It still smelled faintly of cold air and rink ice.
For the entire flight he had imagined this moment her standing at a distance, composed, the way she always was in competition and instead she was shaking in his arms, and the last fragile structure holding him together gave way.
“I’m here,” he said, the words low, unsteady but certain. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
His hand moved slowly over her back, a steady rhythm, grounding both of them. He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t say their parents’ names. Not yet. Those were fractures waiting for the wrong kind of pressure.
Instead he pulled back just enough to look at her, his hands still on her shoulders, as if afraid she might disappear if he let go.
“You didn’t sleep,” he murmured, noticing everything at once the red around her eyes, the tension in her jaw, the way she held herself too upright, like she was bracing for impact.
His thumb brushed clumsily across her cheek, wiping away tears she didn’t seem aware of.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner.”
@Jass
