Chapter Text
“Dude! I thought the plan was to not die!”
“I —!”
“All that work for nothing! And you didn’t just fuck up, you had to drag me down with you? I thought we were bros, man. I thought we were cool!”
Shen Yuan shrinks back, watching him with wide eyes. “Why are you yelling at me?”
“Am I yelling?” Shang Qinghua crosses his arms and turns away. “I am just so sick of dying, bro! I thought we had a contingency, so I wasn’t worried, but now! What the fuck was that?”
“I couldn’t just,” Shen Yuan reaches up and pulls at his hair in aggravation. “I couldn’t just let that happen to Binghe!”
It’s kind of weird seeing him with such a slight build and shorter hair and big eyes a bright blue, when Shang Qinghua has long since become used to the broader shoulders and taller build and long, pin-straight hair of Shen Qingqiu. Shen Yuan’s got some curl to his hair. His eyelashes go on for days.
This must be how his bro looked like back in the real world. Or, their first world. After all this, there’s no way in hell that Shang Qinghua can call the world they’d just left fake or pretend.
He wishes he could.
Shang Qinghua makes a face and squints at his friend. Should he even call him that? After all, he… “You literally committed suicide. And you took me with you. Without asking! Bro, we’re both dead!”
“It’s not my fault that the plant bodies didn’t work!” Shen Yuan wails, and Shang Qinghua jerks back, stunned. Well, it seems that the cool and collected poker face of Shen Qingqiu had been left behind with the body itself. “You told me it was ready! And I didn’t ask you to stand so close to me when I detonated!”
“How was I suppose to know that’s what you were going to do?!” Shang Qinghua shrieks. He points an accusing finger at the other man. “We had a plan, you jerk! I kinda expected that we’d, oh I don’t know, go by it? Just a little bit? Play our parts? You changed the script on me without even giving me a cue!”
“Stop talking about it like it’s a stupid movie!” Shen Yuan says, and oh man his eyes are round and tearful. That’s not fair. “Binghe was going nuclear on us, Airplane! What was I suppose to do, let him destroy the world? Because you and I both know that’s what was about to happen!”
Shang Qinghua flinches back. He ducks his head and hunches his shoulder, looking away with a glare.
Shen Yuan sighs. He clears his throat, and says, “... I’m sorry I took you with me. I didn’t mean for that to happen. I tried to wait until you were out of range, but….”
Shang Qinghua sniffs.
“The only person capable of surviving a blast like that would be the protagonist.” He sullenly admits.
The both of them are silent at that. Shang Qinghua glares down at the vast expanse of blackness that surrounds them, leaving nothing to be seen but each other, somehow untouched by the dark. It almost seems like it might be a dream, but Shang Qinghua already knows what death feels like, and that had been it.
Can he even call himself Shang Qinghua anymore, if he’d left the body of that identity behind?
“I hope it was enough to fix Xin Mo’s influence on him,” Shen Yuan murmurs worriedly. “We’re not around anymore to mitigate the damage or direct the plot. What’s going to happen now? What if our absence means that the canon plot takes over again? Was it all for nothing?”
Shang Qinghua — Airplane drops his shoulders, rubbing his hands over his face tiredly. He feels way too old for this. Why can’t death be the final rest it was suppose to be? Why does this keep happening?
“Where even are we?” He asks.
There’s a familiar ding that echoes endlessly in the void around them. Airplane shares a glance with Shen Yuan, both their expressions bearing the same look of dread and exasperation.
“Why?” Shen Yuan bemoans.
“We’re not done?” Shang Qinghua demands, feeling suddenly furious as a window, slightly too light against the inky blackness, pops up before them. “Are you kidding me?”
He turns away from the blinding brightness and covers his face, muttering furiously under his hitching breath. It’s not fair! What are they, slaves to the System? Airplane is so tired.
“What,” he hears Shen Yuan breathe out beside him.
There’s a tug on his sleeve — they’re both wearing the same robes they died in, resized to fit their new (or rather, their old) bodies but just as dirty — and he turns to glance at his friend, only to find Shen Yuan gaping at the System window in astonishment.
“Airplane,” his friend insists, eyes wide. “Airplane, read it.”
With a put upon sigh, Airplane turns back toward the window and squints at it.
Congratulations, Host 74 and Host 81! Due to your exemplary efforts to rewrite the plot of World-0690, both of you have been promoted!
“What,” Airplane gapes. “A promotion? What the fuck does that mean?”
“Keep reading,” Shen Yuan urges him, eyes still round in shock.
In compensation for your hard work and the troubles faced in World-0690, Hosts have been given the choice of their next assignments!
“I don’t want to,” Airplane whimpers. He turns away from the half-read window and throws himself at his friend.
Shen Yuan lets out a sound of surprise as he catches him, and a hand automatically goes up to pet at Airplane’s head as he buries his face into Shen Yuan’s neck.
“I — Airplane? What’s — ?”
“I don’t want to do it again,” he says, eyes stinging. Fuck, he’s crying. He squeezes his eyes shut and clings to his friend. “I don’t want to. I’m done. I don’t want to anymore. Shen Yuan, I don’t want to!”
“Shit,” his friend mutters. The hand in his hair is comforting, stroking back and forth in a heavy pet.
Airplane sucks in a deep breath, which is a mistake, because it immediately bursts back out of him in a jarring sob.
He’s just so, so done. He doesn’t want to! He isn’t sure what he does want, just that he doesn’t want this! Please, please don’t make him! Not again! Airplane is done!
Shen Yuan speaks again, louder this time. “Airplane, listen. It’ll be different this time, okay? It’s giving us a choice!”
“I don’t want to,” Airplane cries.
“Um… How about I read us the, uh… the options. Okay?”
He sniffles. It’s not like there’s a decline button, he checked before he even started reading the damn window. This isn’t fair. This is so goddamn unfair.
Shakily, he nods his head against Shen Yuan chest. “... Okay.”
“Alright. So, um… option one is to be reborn with a system in a new world that requires a rewrite. It’ll be like how we ended up in PIDW, but we’ll have to read the plot beforehand so we know what we’re going into.”
“No,” Airplane jerks back, glaring up at his friend fiercely from beneath his damp lashes. “I will not be born again. I’m not growing up again. My childhoods in both worlds were shitty, I’m not letting myself be a child again, Shen Yuan!”
Shen Yuan gives him a weak smile. “Third time’s the charm?”
Airplane just continues to glare at him. The other man drops the smile and sighs.
“Yeah, okay, it’s a definite no to option one. I don’t wanna go through infancy or, hell, puberty again, either. So, option two…”
Airplane is quiet as his friend gazes up at the window and rereads their options. He refuses to turn around and look at it. He doesn’t want to see it. He’s so sick of the fucking System.
[Host….]
Fuck.
Shut up.
[This system apologizes—]
Shut up, shut up, shut up! Aren’t we done with you? Haven’t I finished what you wanted? Our mission is over, right? I don’t want to talk to you! Leave me alone!
[....]
“Okay, option two,” Shen Yuan says, eyes fixed on the window. Airplane lets his forehead drop to rest against his friend’s shoulder. “We can transmigrate into already written lives, fully grown bodies. Our task in that case would be to help stop the end of the world.”
“Fuck that,” Airplane and Shen Yuan both scoff at the same time.
Airplane draws back from his friend’s embrace to share a grin with him.
“I’m sick of responsibilities. How many options are there?”
Shen Yuan glances back up to scan the window. “There’s a few pages worth… Hey, System?”
There’s a ding. Airplane directs his gaze determinedly on his friend’s face and doesn’t look behind him.
“Can you filter the options?” Another ding. “Okay, filter out all options that require us to play a prewritten character or save a world.”
Ding! Airplane watches avidly as Shen Yuan’s expression smooths out into something pleased. The other man glances back down at him, and then blinks when he realizes that Airplane has been staring at him the entire time. He coughs, and pink flushes over his cheeks.
Airplane feels a smirk crawl onto his face. “Aw, bro. You know, you’re pretty cute like this. Is this how you looked like back — uh, in our first lives?”
Shen Yuan’s blush deepens. “I — uh… yeah, I think so? I don’t have a mirror, so I can’t be one-hundred percent sure…”
Then, the other man smirks back at him, a teasing light entering his bright eyes. “You’re not too shabby yourself, bro. Actually, you’re freaking adorable. If I’d known this was what Airplane Shooting Toward the Sky looked like, I’d have never even tried taking your papapa scenes seriously.”
“You never took them seriously anyway,” Airplane scoffs, fighting off his own blush. He stares into the inky blackness of the void instead. “Besides, no one should have taken them seriously.”
“Eh? Why?”
The smirk crawls back over Airplane’s face, and he glances up at Shen Yuan from beneath his eyelashes. “I’m ace.”
Shen Yuan pauses. He stares down at him, speechless for a few long moments. Airplane lifts one hand to hide how his smirk has transformed into a grin. His shoulders shake with amusement.
Finally, Shen Yuan’s face breaks into incredulousness.
“You —? Are you serious?” The man wheezes. He reaches out and slaps a hand against Airplane’s shoulder, and then does it a few more times. “Are you fucking serious? A joke! The entire thing was a joke this whole time? Airplane, I’m gonna fucking kill you, oh my god!”
Despite his words, the slaps are gentle. Shen Yuan still has one arm wrapped around him in a hug.
Airplane bursts into laughter.
“I mean,” he giggles. “The story itself wasn’t a joke? But the reader count skyrocketed after the first smut scene, and the subscriptions mirrored that. I was just a starving college student, bro. I hadn’t eaten in three days, I needed some cash.”
Shen Yuan’s hits cease, and a serious expression overcomes his outrage.
“Was it really that bad?” He quietly asks.
Airplane bites his lip and looks away. “It’s been worse than that, but… Yeah. It’s what helped me make the decision to lead PIDW into the stallion novel genre. I kept the actual story to myself and just focused on writing what the subscribers demanded. It was a huge blow to my integrity as an author, and there were a lot of times that I hated myself for it, but I was too hungry to care most of the time.”
“Shit,” Shen Yuan presses a hand over his mouth. Airplane looks away entirely before he can see the pity that’s likely to be in his friend’s expression. “That’s shitty, man. I’m sorry.”
“Whatever,” he shrugs. “After being born into it, though, there’s a lot of times I wish I’d just gone with my original draft. Starving would have been better than… a lot of what happened, back there as Shang Qinghua.”
Shen Yuan’s arm tightens around him. His hand finds its way back into Airplane’s hair.
“Hey,” he says, quietly. “What’s your name?”
Airplane snorts. “Shang Lei.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
He buries his face into Shen Yuan’s chest and laughs. “No, that’s my name.”
“Oh my god, are you serious?”
He smacks Shen Yuan in the arm, grinning. “Yes, I’m serious.”
“You hack writer.” Shen Yuan snorts. “You’re so original, I’m in awe.”
Airplane rolls his eyes and snuggles into his friend’s hug. “I’d offer to let you read the original PIDW, but I don’t have it with me, and I think it would hit differently now that we both uh, actually know most of the characters personally.”
Shen Yuan makes a face. “Man. I’d totally read it, too, if it wasn’t for that. And besides, the way you wrote Binghe... that’s not him. Not anymore.”
“Yeah. You raised him differently.”
There’s a quiet sound, like sniffling. “I … I don’t think I did such a good job,” Shen Yuan whispers, and his voice is thick.
Airplane closes his eyes.
“Anyway.” He says. “Our options?”
“... Right.” Shen Yuan coughs. He straightens up. His arm tightens around Airplane like one might clutch at a teddy bear. Airplane accepts it. “Um…. The filters have narrowed down the list quite a bit. How do you feel about being reborn as forest hermits in a farming simulation become reality?”
“Um. Pass. I’m not much for manual labor.”
Shen Yuan laughs. Airplane can feel the way his body trembles with it against him. He smiles and rests his head into the crook of his friend’s neck.
“Yeah, neither am I. Uh, there’s…. Demon Lords — nah, that’s R18. We know how that goes, and since you’re ace, no thanks. Um, there’s actually a lot of otome-type worlds. Weird. System, filter out those ones.”
Airplane yawns. He’s still feeling upset over all of this, but he’s come to a decision.
Whatever new world they end up in — and goddammit, it’ll be together — he’s not going to allow Shen Yuan to convince him and let himself become attached to the characters this time. He’d done so well, in the first half of his life as Shang Qinghua, keeping himself distanced from his peers and enemies alike. Life went by quick and mostly painlessly, when you didn’t connect with anyone. The real pain came after Shen Yuan talked him into seeing the people of that world as actual people.
It was lonely before then, sure. He’s not sure the hurt that came after was worth it, though. Plus, this time he’ll have his bro at his side. That’s all he’ll need.
“Oh, hello.”
He pulls back from his friend’s comfy embrace to look up at him. “Find a good one?”
“I think so,” Shen Yuan tells him. He’s smiling up at the window, and he’s got one eyebrow raised. “This one is ‘Become Game Masters of an ARMMRPG.’”
“Eh?” Airplane frowns. “... Doesn’t it mean, uh, a VRMMORPG? Like in anime?”
“No. This one is Alternate Reality Massive Multiplayer Role Playing Game. Instead of being a virtual world, in this… story, I guess? In this story, the player characters are actually people capable of dimensional travel. Each ‘game’ is a different dimension, and the people can only die in their home dimension. From the description, it’s basically the same as the synopsis of your run of the mill VRMMORPG anime, except the virtual games are real worlds.”
“Sure, but if they’re real worlds, then what does being a Game Master mean?”
Shen Yuan grins down at him.
“Hey, Airplane,” he says. “How do you feel about being an actual god?”
Luo Binghe curls up on his throne like a child might sit in their mother’s lap, but there is no warmth to be found for him in this position. He clutches his knees to his chest and fights off another bout of these ceaseless tears. What’s a throne worth, what’s the seat of an emperor worth, what is all the power that he’s spent years accumulating worth, if Luo Binghe himself is actually useless regarding what truly matters?
He’s the king of an entire realm, territories a-plenty in the human one as well, but none of it matters anymore.
Nothing can matter, not now.
He launches himself off the throne, startling the line of servants that kneel on the gilded floor. He ignores their jolts and their gasps of surprise, turning on his heel to leave the room entirely. It’s only a few doors deep into the private wing behind his throne, a room in the center of his palace that is more secure than any place else in all the world.
He throws open the door, and catches it before it can slam shut. He closes it with barely a whisper.
It feels wrong, making too much noise in this room. Being too loud.
Shizun never liked it to be too noisy.
Luo Binghe’s eyes sting as he approaches the shrouded and still form that lies on the dias in the center of the room. He kneels before it, and then lowers himself further to press his forehead against the cold stone floor.
“Shizun,” he whimpers. “This lowly disciple is so sorry. This scum will repent for as long as it takes. Binghe will kneel for eternity if that is what it takes. But please, please. Come back.”
His voice cracks on the last word. It echoes quietly in the room, bouncing off the walls and reaching back to him until all that Luo Binghe is able to hear are the reverberations of his own useless pleas.
Just like every time before, the form he kowtows to is silent and unmoving. Cold. Dead.
Luo Binghe has made the worst mistakes, and there is no way to fix them.
Rhys chibis for Shen Yuan and Shang Lei!
