Wild Creatures

Chapter 129

CONTENT WARNING: MENTIONS OF DEATH - If that bothers you, then please skip this one. There's nothing gory but it's mostly about how to deal with it from a child's perspective.

*************

It was a navy coloured backpack.

For a second, neither of them moved, but then a janitor whistled his way into the narrow corridor, pushing his bucket further in and sloshing dirty water onto the floor. Lan Zhan glared at him, picking up the backpack and grabbing Wei Ying's hand, removing them from the vicinity of that trapped space within seconds.

They hurried to their car, with Wei Ying shaking with excitement. He knew the contents of the bag were not for himself, but he wanted to be excited for JingYi.

The boy was admittedly much better after the chat they had shared on the little kitchen table in Wei Ying's apartment all those days ago, and he hadn't mentioned his mother again, since she had last visited.

Which brought Wei Ying to another uncomfortable realisation: no one had told JingYi of his mother's passing. Correction: THEY hadn't told JingYi about that.

"What's wrong?" Lan Zhan is looking at him with worry.

"We have to tell JingYi. About his mother." Wei Ying clarifies, finding it hard to swallow past the hard lump in his throat.

Lan Zhan switches off the car immediately, and turns as much as he can towards Wei Ying within the confines of the cramped space in the driver's seat.

His arms bring Wei Ying into his embrace, as much as they can with the gearbox in between, but it is enough.

"We have to tell him," Lan Zhan's deep voice fills the silence.

"Yes. Yes, of course!" Wei Ying pulls back, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. "I know, it's just that...Well, how? How does one go about breaking a kid's heart like that? There's absolutely no good time to do it, and I'm terrified of telling him." It feels good to admit it out loud, even if it feels like a failure on their part.

"Mn. I also am not looking forward to telling him," Lan Zhan admits. He can't think of anything worse, actually.

But it helps that they both feel the same way, and that they aren't alone; they have each other.

"What about on Sunday?" Wei Ying suggests.

Lan Zhan is already shaking his head. "What if he asks us when it happened? We will have to tell him it was two weeks ago. It sounds cruel."

"We could be vague...no, you're right." Wei Ying concedes, discarding his own idea. "We should tell him the truth and hope that it will be okay. I don't want to lie to our children. When I was a kid, I could always tell when an adult was lying to me, and it was the biggest kind of hypocritical betrayal."

"Mn," Lan Zhan agrees. "I only found out about my mother's passing weeks after the fact. The two weeks spent in hospital, no one said anything out of fear, and afterwards, they didn't clarify, hoping I would work it out by myself. I was six."

He sounds bitter.

Wei Ying reaches for his hands.

"Adults always shy away from uncomfortable situations, mostly because they don't know how to deal with them. But I don't wanna be like that to our children. I know it's going to be hard, but I want to try anyway. I don't want to make the same mistakes as people did to me, when I was young."

Lan Zhan nods. "We should not put it off. How about tonight?"

"Okay, I just want to-"

His alarm for picking up the children goes off then, and Wei Ying quickly switches it off, as Lan Zhan starts the car again.