Work Text:
There is a swelling storm
And I'm caught up in the middle of it all
And it takes control
Of the person that I thought I was
The boy I used to know
They meet in the game for the first time in an explosion of spitfire attacks and flying blood. The fight is fierce and reckless, bright and joyful. It is a storm of in-game skill effects amidst a violent, chaotic free-for-all in the Western Desert, and it sweeps Dazzling Hundred Blossoms and Zhang Jiale off their collective feet both figuratively (the player) and literally (the in-game character).
Dazzling Hundred Blossoms had been in the midst of the chaos in the Western desert, his clearly superior skill mowing down the enemy in aid of his allies. This changes when some newcomers join the battle. This isn’t unheard of in large and chaotic world pvp. Players come and go, and the tide of battle changes accordingly. At that time, Zhang Jiale and his gang of friends had been the ones guiding the flow of the battle.
The entrance of these newcomers bring a new element to the fight, a bloody berserker who disrupts their winning rhythm. Of course, superior skill acknowledges superior skill, and the two end up squaring off in a magnificent battle of wits and skill, sword versus gun. For days afterwards, Zhang Jiale’s friends would regale him with increasingly exaggerated descriptions of their battle across the sands tinted blood-red by the setting sun.
They dash around the battlefield trying to use the world around them against the other. Dazzling Hundred Blossoms uses the other players as cover to maintain his distance from the rampaging berserker, but they all fall one after the other and when Blossoming Chaos draws close enough, he has no more mana left to evade the Collapsing Mountain coming at him, and can only retaliate with a normal attack. He survives, just barely. A mere 4 HP between him and death.
Zhang Jiale wouldn’t know it at the time, but that chance meeting would change the entire trajectory of his life.
The team they start together based on that chance meeting begins as an impulsive dream that somehow, impossibly, becomes reality. With the naivete of blossoming youth, their blood boiling with vigour, they tear into competitions bringing a brand new blood and blossoms style into the game. But they are not satisfied with just this legacy. No, they have no plans to rest until they attain true glory.
~~~
Through the wind
Down to the place we used to lay when we were kids
Memories of a stolen place
Caught in the silence
An echo lost in space
On the worst days, when the championship he burns for seems the farthest away it's ever been, when the burden of leadership crushes his shoulders with its weight, the loneliness chokes him. On those days, he sits in the darkness of his room and wonders why he still carries on. It was never supposed to be about him. It had always been about them, working together, laughing together, charging forward together. They’d had a common goal, the same ambition, and, for a time, shared memories.
When Big Sun had left after season five, Zhang Jiale had thought with the naive optimism of youth that it was only for a short time. He’d be back once he was healed. Modern medicine was amazing these days, after all, and Big Sun was a young healthy man. Surely some cutting edge surgery or magic pill would solve all ills. Sun Zheping would be returning to Beijing where his family was for the treatment and return once he was healed. It only made sense that way. But he never came back, and he never contacted him again.
That was the most difficult part, the silence.
In those years, Zhang Jiale often felt like he was crying out for help into an empty void, and only received the echo of his pitiful screams in return. Until those echos faded away and even those faint vibrations were gone.
And then one day, having finally screamed himself hoarse, having ground himself down so low that he’d lost all hope, he’d given up. He’d walked away from it all, burdened with the guilt of not being able to live up to the expectations of the team, of the fans, and most of all, of the dreams that the two of them had had that bright summer day when they’d first met.
~~~
I watched my wild youth disappear in front of my eyes
Moments of magic and wonder
It seems so hard to find
Is it ever coming back again
Is it ever coming back again
Take me back to the feeling when
Everything was left to find
They reunite in-game onstage in the first individual match between Heavenly Swords and Tyranny. Of course, this wasn’t the first time Zhang Jiale and Sun Zheping had faced off. They’d literally just shaken hands onstage earlier when both teams had been introduced, but the handshakes had been perfunctory. Professional. The remnants of who they’d been before had been hidden behind the masks of who they were today.
Ensconced in his player booth, faced with this unfamiliar berserker character played by an intimately familiar player, the mask drops. Although he doesn’t realize it, Zhang Jiale’s face screws up momentarily into a rictus of anguish and regret. It’s only for a few seconds, long enough for his character to load into the map, short enough for him to smooth out his thoughts and rest his fingers in their accustomed positions on keyboard and mouse with nary a tremble.
It’s been five years since the last day they fought in practice. Five years since they’d spoken to each other at all. Big Sun had never been a talkative fellow. Zhang Jiale supposed, you could probably just call him taciturn. He was the one who talked, who filled the endless silence with his bright chatter. That was why they worked so well together. Sun Zheping left him a secure space to fill with his endless words and emotions, and he provided the warmth and sound in Big Sun’s vast empty silences. Where Big Sun truly talked to him was where they’d first met: in Glory. And so it was in Glory that they had their farewell.
When he would look back on that match, Zhang Jiale wouldn’t remember what they did in the few minutes that they spent loaded in the arena. Everything passed as a blur in his mind. Instead, he would remember the conversation they had had, displayed publicly for all to see, but so private that only the two of them knew that it had been even spoken at all.
- Watch me, watch how I’ve changed, how I’ve grown without you, how I tried so hard to fulfill our wishes. See the me you have ignored until today.
- I see you. I’ve always seen you. Even as you’ve changed and grown, I know who you truly are. I see you.
- Watch me! Watch how I have improved. Watch how I have grown. See how strong I have become.
- I know. I see you. I can’t keep up any more. You don’t need me any more. Good bye.
- Good bye.
When the match ended, Zhang Jiale wiped away the tears welling up in his eyes fiercely. He hadn’t cried until he’d seen Big Sun’s last words in the chat. That taciturn man had never said anything unneeded before, he had changed too. “Good luck,” he’d said. Good luck on your bright path that I can’t follow any more. I will be watching. That was what he’d truly meant.
Even after five years apart, they could pick up where they had left off; but after this, he knew that the both of them were different from who they were back then. Their paths had diverged too much now. Their new tomorrows were different. Zhang Jiale opens the booth door to cheers from his fans. He waves at them, swallows the lump of nostalgia and regret of what-could-have-been in his throat, lifts his chin proudly, and walks away from the past into his bright new future.