Wants and Needs

Wang Xian Yi couldn’t, for the life of him, remember how he got there.

He felt both his hands and left cheek harshly pressed against the rocky concrete. Three people surrounded him: a boy with a buzzcut and a maniacal grin, a boy who held a glass bottle, and a woman in the back, who was having the time of her life watching them while smoking a cigarette.

How long had he been there? It felt like an eternity, and he couldn’t even recall what led up to this.

Out of the corner of Xian Yi’s eyes, he spotted the boy with the bottle lifting it up. Next thing he knew, he felt the glass connecting with the back of his head, before shattering into thousands of emerald pieces, joining the other previously-shattered shards.

Xian Yi felt a warm liquid trickle down the back of this neck, making him aware that the impact did cause blood loss. He watched as Bottle Boy, well, raised the remainder of the bottle up, before slamming it down on Xian Yi’s skull again.

‘Oh,’ Xian Yi thought as he observed the thick, crimson blood steadily flow out onto the concrete, ‘that can’t be good.’

In front of him, he noticed that the lady had gotten up, casting her cigarette away as she made her way towards him. Her bloody red lipstick and impeccably wavy hair seemed to be mocking his dishevelled state.

“Can you go any slower? I told you to hurry up and get this over with, boys,” she coldly commanded as she squatted down–in the most elegant way possible–to meet Xian Yi’s eyes. Her cleanly painted nails found themselves in his hair, tightly grasping it.

She harshly pulled him up, smirking at his bloodied face, “Interesting,” she hummed, “he doesn’t show any reaction at all.”

A punch from the woman led both Buzzcut and Bottle Boy to jump right into the fight.

A powerful stomp on his foot. A solid kick to the ribs. A swift knee to the stomach. A sudden jab to his head. Xian Yi was getting tossed around and abused like a toddler’s least favorite toy, yet he couldn't be bothered to fight back. Blood spilled out from nearly everywhere, a thin line of the red substance dripped down from the corner of his mouth, making its way to the dirtied pavement.

The light-headedness was starting to sink in.

Another bottle hit his torso and he got roughly shoved against the wall of the alleyway. It was an undesirable situation, really.

From there, the abuse only seemed to worsen, but hardly anything registered in Xian Yi’s brain.

“Awwww,” he distantly heard the woman coo, “look at him taking it like a good boy~ Sorry buddy, but unfortunately, we have places to be. So, let’s end this fast, shall we?”

Xian Yi watched as Buzzcut picked up a lingering brick, smirking and tossing the block in his hand, only to catch and throw it again while inching forward. If he was aiming to make his victim fear him, it would’ve worked; the brick was obviously dangerous, whereas his slow steps contributed to the intenseness of the situation that was bound to happen no matter what.

However, that applied to pretty much anyone besides Xian Yi, who simply let out a sickly laugh as he leaned his head back against the wall, his lips pulling into a crazed grin.

‘Please let me finally die.’

***

Xian Yi is not suicidal. Well, technically, he wants to die, so he kind of is suicidal. But despite the fact that he has desired death for the past few years, his number of suicide attempts remain at a crisp and clean zero.

Yes, if there’s one thing you need to know, it's that above all else, Xian Yi wants to die.

Yet more than anything, he wants to live.

Contradictory, no?

Let’s clear this up a bit. Xian Yi wants to die, but he needs to live. Thus, as a compromise, he’s promised himself that he cannot pass away to his own hand; however, that doesn’t mean that he can’t kick the bucket to someone else’s.

Death comes naturally; when the time comes, it comes, and he’s been waiting for that time for as long as he can remember.

And that brings us to our next point, Xian Yi does not remember a lot.

When he was thirteen years old, his world took a 180 degree turn, and he found himself lying in the hospital sheets, staring blankly at the ceiling of the building. There were three of his possessions on the stand next to his bed: a pack of cigarettes, his old phone, and his wallet.

However, perhaps the most notable thing he found wasn’t actually one of his possessions, but it was what was written on his hand.

“Please live on for me.”

The five neatly-written words made him pause for a moment. They were also the first words that entered his head when he woke up. Why? Did he write that? It was in quotation marks, so was it a quote from someone else? It had to be valuable too, since, well, it was written on his hand. In the end, he took his phone and took a quick photo of his palm, before washing it off.

A nurse strolled into his room while he was scrutinizing the photo.

“Oh!” she laughed, “You’re looking at that.”

She gingerly sat down on the side of his bed, “Y’know, even though you were bleeding to death, you begged us not to get rid of those words. We couldn’t even clean that hand because you said that you would rather die than get rid of it! We tried though, and whew, it did not end well,” she chuckled, as if it were a fond memory.

“What happened?”

“I think you tried to stab yourself with something, I’m not too sure, though. I had just gone on break. It's kind of a miracle you're even here, to be honest.”

“...Huh.”

A few days later, Xian Yi exited the hospital with his items and some new information about himself.

1. He had gotten into a bad incident that almost ended his life. However, the doctors and nurses weren’t completely sure about the cause; they had received an anonymous phone call offering them the information, but by the time they arrived at the scene, there was no one present. All traces of DNA were gone along with any objects in the shed.

2. After the accident, he was diagnosed with long-term amnesia. He could only recall the things drilled into him, such as the multiplication tables, and other academic knowledge. What was more concerning, however, was the fact that he couldn't remember anything–anything–about his past life besides the basics of his identity.

3. Xian Yi cannot feel pain. After some extensive testing, the doctors discovered that he had CIPA, a hazardous condition that didn’t allow him to register any pain.

Over time, Xian Yi realized that he couldn’t feel much of anything. Joy and excitement seemingly abandoned him for depression and emptiness. He wondered if this was how he lived his previous life because it felt ridiculously pointless. He didn’t appear to have any friends, let alone family. He was able to return to school and apparently, he had a part-time job, to which he continued so he could pay off rent and buy food.

It was pathetic, really. Each day was the same, gray 24-hours that only held loneliness, melancholy, and vacancy.

He was living on the will of, decidedly, another person. He was living because those five words were the first things he thought of when he woke up from the accident, because he apparently refused to wash them away while using his life as the gambling piece.

And after further comparison of the photo to his past school work, Xian Yi learned that he, indeed, was the one who wrote those words on his palm, though he still didn’t know why.

Nevertheless, it didn’t take too long before he wished for death.

***

Welcome to a twisted story about wants, needs, a whole lot of contradictions, incredible indecisiveness, and a suicidal boy.