1980s - Chapter 3

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The town was still asleep when Zhao Rui reached the station.

Mist lay low over the ground, pooling between the tracks like a ghost that refused to leave. The dawn light was thin and colorless, blurring the edges of everything — the signs, the carriages, even the faces of the few travelers waiting with their luggage tied in hemp rope.

He pulled his coat tighter around him. His breath fogged in the chill.

He hadn’t run like that in years. His heart still hammered from it — not the frantic rhythm of flight from danger, but the disordered beat of someone who had just realized too late what he wanted to keep.

The whistle came first — a long, hollow sound that made the air tremble. The early train to the northern provinces. It was leaving in ten minutes.

He scanned the platform, searching.

Li Ming was there.

Standing near the far end, a single duffel bag slung over his shoulder, coat buttoned wrong in his hurry.

For a long moment, Zhao Rui couldn’t move.

The sight was too familiar. It reminded him of all the people he’d once watched leave in another lifetime — soldiers, friends, strangers — none of whom ever came back.

He forced his feet to move.

The click of his boots on the concrete echoed softly as he approached. Li Ming turned at the sound. Surprise flickered across his face, quickly replaced by something gentler — resignation, maybe, or relief.

“You came,” he said simply.

“I did.”

A pause. The train hissed behind them, metal sighing against metal.

“Why?”

Zhao Rui opened his mouth — then closed it again. How could he explain? That he’d seen the end of the world twice now — once in fire, and once in the quiet moment Li Ming had walked away?

He swallowed hard. “Because I didn’t want the last thing you said to be a question.”

Li Ming blinked, the faintest smile tugging at his lips. “Then answer it.”

Zhao Rui’s throat tightened.

The words he’d buried for years clawed their way up, trembling like something long frozen thawing too fast. “If you had kissed me,” he said slowly, “I wouldn’t have stopped you.”

The wind carried the sound of the station — the murmur of passengers, the creak of wheels, the distant bark of a vendor selling steamed buns. But between them, there was only silence — a fragile, ringing kind that held too much.

Li Ming stepped closer. “Wouldn’t have stopped me,” he repeated softly, as if testing the weight of it.

Zhao Rui nodded once.

Then Li Ming’s hand rose — hesitating, trembling — and cupped the side of his face.

Zhao Rui didn’t flinch. Didn’t move. Just breathed.

For the first time since the world ended, someone was touching him without fear, without need, without violence.

Li Ming leaned in, his forehead resting against Zhao Rui’s. Their breaths mingled — warm against the cold morning air.

“Then let me do it now,” Li Ming whispered.

The kiss wasn’t desperate. It wasn’t rushed.

It was slow, deliberate, and heartbreakingly gentle — the kind that asked for permission even as it was being given.

Zhao Rui closed his eyes.

He could taste rain, smoke, and something faintly sweet — the echo of the life he’d never dared to want. For a moment, the two worlds — apocalypse and rebirth — blurred until he couldn’t tell which one was real anymore.

When they finally pulled apart, the train whistle blew again.

“Last call for passengers to board!” a conductor shouted down the platform.

Reality came rushing back.

Li Ming’s hand lingered on his jaw, thumb tracing the edge of his mouth before he let go. “You should go home.”

Zhao Rui shook his head. “And you?”

Li Ming smiled faintly. “I’ve never been good at leaving.”

He turned, grabbed his duffel, and took a step toward the train — then stopped.

“I don’t know what you’re running from,” he said without looking back. “But if you ever decide to stop running… I’ll be where the tracks end.”

Then he boarded.

Zhao Rui stood there, unmoving, as the train shuddered to life. Wheels groaned, steam hissed, the carriages clattered forward. The wind whipped his coat open, cold biting through fabric, but he didn’t notice.

Only when the train had vanished into the horizon did he realize he was still clutching something in his hand.

The photograph.

The edges were damp with sweat, the corners worn smooth.

He looked down at it — at the frozen image of a man who had somehow managed to carve himself into his life without asking for permission.

And Zhao Rui, who had survived the end of all things, finally let himself feel something close to fear — not of dying, but of being left behind.

2. The Letter

Three weeks passed before the letter arrived.

It was folded neatly, the handwriting neat and slightly slanted. No sender’s name, just an address up north stamped in blue ink.

Zhao Rui,

They have me repairing turbines near the coast. It’s cold, but the air smells clean here.

I thought of you today. There was a boy selling oranges outside the factory. He reminded me of you — not because of how he looked, but because he didn’t belong here either. He kept counting his coins like they meant nothing, like he’d already learned how fragile money can be. You have that same look sometimes.

Don’t disappear, okay? Not before I come back.

— Li Ming

Zhao Rui read it twice. Then again. Then again.

When he finally set it down, he was smiling — a small, incredulous thing that felt foreign on his face.

He went to his window. Outside, children were chasing each other down the street. The world was still moving, still turning.

He closed his eyes. The air smelled faintly of chestnuts and rain.

He didn’t know if Li Ming would really come back.

He didn’t even know if he deserved for him to.

But for the first time since waking in this new era, Zhao Rui wanted to live long enough to find out.

3. Epilogue — The Weight He Set Down

Winter came late that year. The first snow fell quietly, blanketing the town in white.

Zhao Rui walked along the riverbank, boots crunching over frost. The sky was a muted gray, the kind that promised another storm.

He paused, staring at the frozen water. His reflection wavered faintly beneath the thin ice — older, sharper, but somehow lighter.

The man who had died in the apocalypse was gone.

The man standing here had something left to wait for.

He reached into his pocket and touched the photograph again.

Not as proof anymore. Not as a relic.

Just as a promise.

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