It's a little much. Wen Kexing finds it hard to control his emotions at the best of times, but after the week he's had his defences are tattered, useless things. His eyes are wet, he knows, adrenaline and fear and dreadful hope flooding his veins. Does he do it, truly? Could he possibly succeed? Even at the height of his mania the certainty of his victory had always come with a cost. He'd crawled from the Valley not expecting to survive, and that was all right, wasn't it? If he found somewhere for Gu Xiang, if he gave her a nice life with someone else that would be enough.

And then he had stumbled over Zhou Zishu, and he'd still been certain this would all end with his death, but he wanted to survive then. The world was brighter, vaster, better, all of a sudden.

He clears his throat, an ache in it, "If I wake up in the morning and find this has all been a dream and you're not actually here, I'll burn this entire place to the ground, Ah-Xu. I really will."

The ghosts that have been haunting him lately have been too real. This could be one as well, he thinks, nervous gaze alighting over Zhou Zishu's face. But no, it feels real.

"So you know, and you still -?" Ah, emotions are terrible, he wants to drink, he wants to sleep, he wants to crawl into Zhou Zishu's ribcage and stay there. And then, carefully. "What are we, in the future?"