As You Are [Monkey King]

𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓 18: Leave

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"You've changed."

Wukong finds himself staring into a white void, facing a woman dressed in red, her cream colored hair reached just below her waist, two tufts of black hair adorning both sides of her face. She is smiling at him, welcoming, almost lovingly, he's blinded by her presence and wished nothing but to get to her.

"Xiu?" he started running towards the woman. As the simian neared, Lian Xiu opened her arms for him in urgency, his smile couldn't have been any more wider than it already is. But everything stops when she suddenly sputtered out red liquid from a gasp.

Wukong halts just a few feet away, looking down just as she's doing, there in her chest was a cudgel pierced through whereas the end extended to his hands that clutched the weapon that brought her damnation. His eyes widens, dropping it like it was searing from his hand.

"You've changed."

He looks back up to another image, a form of a modernized Xiu who's gaze held sadness and anger towards him. The simian took a step back, "I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to!"

"Do you really despise me that much?" she asked as tears started rolling down her eyes.

"NO! I DON'T! You're everything to me, you still are! I was just-" he looked down at his bloody hands and ran them over his face in despair, "I'm sorry. I'm scared that you'll die as well. I'm scared that you're not who you say you were, how those memories still stayed with you after you were sent to the Nether, I don't know how that... I didn't mean to hurt you."

Two pairs of hands grabbed each of his, and now he's face to face with two different people, "But you did."

Wukong woke up in cold sweat, his hands gripping the wooden frame of the sofa he slept on. The nightmares mostly consisted of Lian Xiu but this one sent a huge chill down his spine. It felt wrong somehow.

He rushed out of his sleepwear and wore one of his few decent garments. Just as the golden furred simian walked out the shack, he hesitated.

What is it that he had to go out for? It's not like he could just go and pretend to be her pet again, and it won't be good to show up at her doorstep after their last talk. Wukong shape shifts into a bug and went on his way, forget the reluctancy, forget the regrets, all that was in his mind was to make sure that Ying Xiu is safe.

But...

'Where the heck is she?' the Great Sage searched the places he was familiar with, the ones that he knew that Ying Xiu usually goes to. The old apartment was occupied by another tenant, Pigsy hadn't mentioned her nor seemed to be searching for his worker other than MK who did the task without much instructions to be taken- since he's currently free off of their training. Their other companions are quite busy with their own lives as well.

No sign of Xiu.

"Sorry, Monkey King, she didn't told us where exactly, just that she's going to use her vacation leave," said his successor. "I... think it'd be best to leave her be, don't you think?"

The simian sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, "It's okay, bud. I get it. I was just doing some rounds around Megapolis, no big deal really. Just... checking things out of my cave," he played it off with a lighthearted chuckle.