Each scribbled-out face in Wei Ying's memory is a loved one. After all, they'd spent their childhoods together and lost them together, too. It's the pain that does it. Time, too, but that takes longer and by then, memories have already eaten away at themselves until you can't even remember the faces of the people you'd gone to war with.
But, even without their features visible, Wei Ying could hear their kindness in the soft way they talked to them sometimes; see it in the way they slowed down their movements because speed is a threat to soldiers; feel it in the gentle hands encircling their throat when they thought about them for long enough. Throughout Wei Ying's wandering life after the war, they have all appeared. Sometimes, it was when Wei Ying wanted them most–the yearning deep and desperate enough to take a blade to the wrist–where they'd whisper-shout, "Keep going, go, go, get up." Other times, they were the last thing Wei Ying wanted to think about. But even then, they'd soothe, "We know, we know, it's not your fault, get up." Every time, Wei Ying had needed them. And every time, they came. All but one.
He doesn't appear often in Wei Ying's memories either. It takes searching and Wei Ying remembers he had always been a master at hide and seek. But sometimes, when their guard is low enough or, more often, their spirits, he'd crawl out of their two-child, one-man bunk bed and face them. He'd face Wei Ying as if he wasn't everything they'd been searching for for the past sixteen years. He never says anything to Wei Ying in these moments–he never had before, either–but then again, he doesn't need to. All the kids would appear then, whispering and shouting their encouragement. They'd all come to help him at one time or another. All but this one.
To Wei Ying, he was the only one.
That little boy in his big white shirt, sleeves so long they'd pool and fit like wings. Wei Ying likes to think he'd flown away from it all. That some way, somehow, he'd escaped the attack that took the rest of them. But then, he remembers finding that big white shirt. It wasn't so white anymore, caked with mud and tinged crimson. But Wei Ying could recognize it anywhere. Because, as they pulled it closer in a sobbing fit, the scent of mahogany and rainwater held them together even as it tore them apart.
Wei Ying smells it even now, as they open their eyes.
The first thing they see is a pair of crooked lips on the face of a quiet man.
He wears a white shirt with sleeves that pool like wings.
Wei Ying registers that he is the White Man. But as they open their mouth, they call him "Lan Zhan ."