#excon 4 excon lolol

[multsicorn]

two murderers walk into a bar

[if you’ve been wondering what this ‘word of honor’ thing is all about.]

Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing are both people with very dark pasts. Each of them has killed a lot of people. (Wen Kexing is still killing people… oops? [eta: but that doesn't resume, and Zhou Zishu doesn't know about it, till after he falls in love with Wen Kexing.])

But that’s not who they know each other as.

They meet as just two guys: a rich dude drinking in a tavern, a bum drinking on the street. And they join forces as two skilled martial artists, both a mystery to each other, both having decided to protect a random kid from a massacre that broke out where all three were staying.

Wen Kexing, at least, is interested in - and attracted to - Zhou Zishu from the very start; Zhou Zishu, it turns out, can use his help in his new task of delivering the kid to (supposed) safety. And so they get to know each other. Get to like each other. Get… pretty damn attached, actually. (calling each other ‘soulmates,’ omg, how long have you known each other? two weeks??)

They repeatedly ask of each other - as this is happening - who are you? Who have you been? But there’s another question involved…

Each of them is a murderer; but they’ve found in each other someone who sees them as something else. As ~a person,~ not ~the mask~ (lolol). And so - I think - that’s a central question in the development of their relationship. Not ‘who are you,’ but ‘who am I’? Must I always be defined by my past, by the things that I’ve done? Or can I be someone else - can I be the person that someone who’s met me since imagines that I am?