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Yue Qi wasn’t sure what he expected when an envelope with a backstage pass and a ticket to a Xiu Ya concert showed up in his mailbox. He didn't usually pay attention to bands, but something about Xiu Ya's songs kept pulling at him. One of their songs came on at one of his work gatherings, and Yue Qi was entranced. Soon, he went down a rabbit hole about them.
The lead singer had seemingly appeared on the scene under the management of Warm Red Pavillion Records and was shrouded in mystery. Of course, a band consisting of one male lead singer with the rest being beautiful women led to salacious rumors. Many said that he was sleeping with the women in his band, while others said the women were eye candy to distract from the singer’s shoddy singing.
They proved their critics wrong when their first album came out to critical acclaim and was widely praised for its musical arrangement, vocal harmonies, and poetic, evocative lyrics.
It was also clear that the singer, who was also the main song writer, had a past love he explicitly referenced in his songs with male pronouns.
While he enjoyed all the songs on the album, Yue Qi found himself listening more to the melancholic ones. Something in the singer’s voice stood out, even when his bandmates were singing, like a pain that came from deep in his soul, and mirrored a similar hurt that Yue Qi kept deep in his heart.
The hurt of returning to try and find the boy he loved only to see the home where his first love lived as a foster kid abandoned, and overgrown with weeds. After his blood family found him in this very foster home and took him from the boy who he loved with his whole heart. The night before he left he promised to return for Shen Jiu.
He had been fifteen years old when that happened, and one night he took the keys of his dad’s car to drive to the foster home. Since he didn’t know how to drive, he ended up crashing the car, winding up in the hospital for almost a year. After that he vowed that as soon as he was healed and got out of his family’s control, he would find Xiao Jiu. It had taken him years to be able to get out from under his family’s thumb and gain the assets from the company left to him to look for Xiao Jiu only to realize he was too late.
After that heavy blow, Yue Qi threw himself into his work, and in his free time helped children who were much like himself and Xiao Jiu, children without families who either ended up on the streets or in foster care, who needed support from a callous world. If he couldn’t save Xiao Jiu, he’d at least save kids who were like the two of them. It helped soothe the dull ache in his heart, most days, but occasionally he’d meet a kid who reminded him too much of Xiao Jiu, and the old wounds he'd ignored would be ripped open.
That same feeling from seeing a child similar to Xiao Jiu seemed to creep up whenever he listened to Xiu Ya, clawing at the festering wound on his heart and yet was also a balm knowing that there was someone else out there who understood and carried this kind of pain in their heart. Perhaps it was that feeling of being understood which had led to Yue Qi standing at the barricade, surrounded by other fans and waiting with bated breath as the lights dimmed, and the first notes filled the small venue.
Behind each instrument was a lovely woman with her elegant fingers plucking at strings, dancing across keys, or tightly gripping drumsticks. As the intro music slowed, a tall, willowy figure seemed to glide across the stage towards the microphone. He was draped in a costume that was a stylish mix of current fashion and a traditional hanfu in various shades of green. The most prominent features were the green veil over the bottom of his face, and green phoenix eyes framed with kohl.
Yue Qi felt the very air pulled from his lungs when those eyes seemed to land on him. They flashed with an indiscernible emotion.
You could be my silver spring
Blue-green, colors flashing
I would be your only dream
Your shining autumn, ocean crashing
And don't say that she was pretty?
And did you say that she loved you?
Baby, I don't wanna know
Yue Qi was enraptured, his eyes never leaving that slender frame on the stage, singing from the bottom of his soul of a pain that felt like it was calling out to Yue Qi specifically. He would dismiss that thought outright if not for the countless times during this song those now familiar eyes landed on him once more, and sang the very words that caught Yue Qi’s attention in the first place.
Time cast a spell on you
But you won't forget me
I know I could have loved you
But you would not let me
I'll follow you down 'til the sound
Of my voice can haunt you
Oh, give me just a chance
You'll never get away from the sound
Of the man that loves you
Oh, was I such a fool
Yue Qi’s heart leapt into his throat as he stared back at the veiled singer, he could see the anger, pain, and heartbreak in those eyes, glittering with unshed tears, under the stage lights. The cheering crowd around him seemed to disappear at that moment, and the only ones in this world felt like him and the singer on stage. There was only one person who ever made him feel this way, but how? Thankfully, Yue Qi had a way to find out.
It took a while before he managed to find the backstage, his heart pounding in his chest as he approached the tall, icy bouncer.
“This area is off limits” the man said, his icy blue eyes narrowing at Yue Qi as he approached.
“Oh I have a backstage pass” Yue Qi said, searching his pockets, but seemed to have a hard time finding the pass. Did it drop somewhere when he was pushing through the crowd? He felt his heart sink at the possibility that his one chance to see if the mysterious singer is truly Xiao Jiu might have just slipped through his fingers.
‘Typical Qi-ge, always so careless’ a young familiar voice rang in his mind.
“Relax Mobei, he’s with me” a familiar voice beside him said. He felt slender fingers grab his wrist and pull him along as the tall bouncer stepped aside. Through the quiet walk down the hall he didn’t dare breathe a word to the person leading him to a dressing room.
Yue Qi finally gained the courage to look up at the person who brought him here although he knew from the voice it was the mysterious singer. Now in this space, seeing him up close, every fiber of his being was screaming the same thing as the willowy man reached up, and removed the veil to show a painfully familiar face.
“Xiao Jiu, is it really you?” Yue Qi managed to ask in a soft voice, his hands clenched at his side to prevent himself from doing something rash like grabbing the other man when he was clearly staring daggers at him.
“Who else would it be? At least I know you got the envelope. Getting your address wasn’t easy.” Shen Jiu said, sitting down at his vanity, gesturing to the couch nearby. Yue Qi sat down, and felt his hairs stand on ends once those familiar green eyes found his own in the mirror.
“Y-yes, but I’m still unsure why?” Yue Qi asked, “I tried searching for you, but every trail was cold. Where have you been all this time?”
Shen Jiu’s eyes fell on Yue Qi’s form. “Are you serious?! You have some nerve to ask me that! You left me in that place to rot, and finally, when I had enough, I got out and never looked back. I wasn’t sure how I could find you so I decided to take my writings and turn it into music. It was through my lyrics I found my band, and we got signed.”
Shen Jiu took a moment to take a breath, and approached Yue Qi, his eyes staring deeply into his eyes. “We had come here to record last year, and imagine my surprise when I was heading back to the hotel and I saw you through the window of some fancy restaurant. You were there with a woman like you had no care in the world. To think while I was suffering in that hell, you were living a better life without me.”
The pain that lanced through Yue Qi’s chest hearing the hitch in Shen Jiu’s voice was comparable to the pain of the car crash that kept them apart. He reached out to pull the other man closer only to have his hand swatted away.
“That made it perfectly clear why you left so I poured all my pain into my songs, and if I was going to let go of my feelings for you, I wanted you to hear it first hand. To see my pain so I can finally be able to walk away since clearly you did” Shen Jiu spat out, turning his back to Yue Qi, “You will not need to worry about me after tonight. Once you walk out of that door, you’ll just be a memory.”
Panic welled within Yue Qi. He just found his Xiao Jiu and already things were falling apart over a misunderstanding. He walked forward and pulled Shen Jiu into his arms, burying his face in Shen Jiu’s shoulder, inhaling the smell of his shampoo.
“You’re wrong, there has never been anyone else. How can anyone steal my heart when you so thoroughly captured it long ago? The person you saw was a colleague, and we were celebrating the fact that the last remaining ties to my blood family to my company have been dissolved thanks to her legal expertise.”
Yue Qi tightened his hold on Shen Jiu as if he would vanish, “I tried, I tried to go back for you a month after they took me. I took my father’s car keys and car to drive to the foster home. I ended up in a wreck that had me hospitalized for a year. By the time I got there, the house was abandoned.”
Shen Jiu let out a gasp, turning in Yue Qi’s arms to look at him. “I know after seeing what you saw, and believing I betrayed you, but I want to make it up to you. If you’ll allow me, I’ll show you how much you mean to me,” Yue Qi whispered, his voice trembling.
Shen Jiu pulled away and pulled out a sharpie from his pocket. He tugged Yue Qi’s hand out, and jotted down his number. “Text me when you get home, and we’ll set up a coffee date. Don’t fuck it up,” Shen Jiu said, pulling Yue Qi down to a kiss to seal the deal.