Chapter Text
Somewhere, tucked away in an old pocket folder wedged into a too-tight space between two heavy photo albums on a dusty shelf, was an essay titled, “What I want to be when I grow up.”
It was written by Lan Wangji at the beginning of fourth grade. It had been printed in pencil with meticulous care, every character neatly spaced and properly proportioned. There was a slight wobble to the curves, if one cared to look closely, evidence of just how slowly the pencil had been drawn across the paper. It would still be a little while before Lan Wangji’s hand would learn how to produce such writing with the fluid elegance of a skill fully mastered.
In this essay, Lan Wangji had laid out a well-reasoned assessment of why he was going to be a lawyer when he grew up. He had many good pieces of evidence, such as the fact that his uncle was a lawyer who was expecting great things from him and the general importance of enforcing the rules in society. It had many large words in it, like “adjudication” – Lan Xichen had helped him take out the big, heavy dictionary from their uncle’s office to look them up – and it was probably the most well-argued essay his teacher had ever received from someone his age.
However, there was one glaring flaw in this otherwise impeccable piece of writing: nowhere did Lan Wangji ever state why he wanted to be a lawyer.
The truth was, at the beginning of fourth grade, Lan Wangji knew that he was going to be a lawyer, but he had never thought about why. His uncle had always given him plenty of logical reasons; it had never occurred to him to ask himself if it was what he wanted.
“I can’t decide!” Wei Wuxian had whined that afternoon in detention, dramatically sprawling the entire upper half of his body across the table.
His arms were so far outstretched that his fingertips nudged Lan Wangji’s book on the opposite end of the table. Lan Wangji shifted it out of the way and continued to read silently.
They were there because Wei Wuxian hadn’t handed in his essay on what he wanted to be when he grew up earlier that morning. The teacher decided he was to spend his lunchtime and recess inside the classroom working on it until it was finished, with Lan Wangji left to supervise.
Lan Wangji didn’t mind staying in the classroom; it was his habit to spend this time in here alone anyway. What he did mind was his daily quiet time being interrupted by the notoriously loudmouthed new student who seemed to have made it his personal mission to get under Lan Wangji’s skin at every opportunity.
“There’s too many things I want to be,” Wei Wuxian went on miserably. “An astronaut! Or a deep-sea diver – which is basically the same thing, but underwater instead of space. Or a doctor – the kind that gets to use knives on people. Or a train conductor! Or a chewing gum taste tester. Or the guy on TV who tells people what’s coming up next. Or someone who explores volcanoes and fights monsters. Or a racecar driver-“
“Quiet,” Lan Wangji finally interrupted, sensing that this could go on for quite a while if he let it. “Just pick one and write.”
“But I don’t know which one to pick!” Wei Wuxian twisted in place and wiggled until he was lying flat on his back on top of the table, shoving his doe-eyed face right into Lan Wangji’s space. “Lan Zhan, help me out! What do you think I should be?”
Lan Wangji replied, “I don’t care,” and lifted his book to block Wei Wuxian’s face. Wei Wuxian just squirmed over a bit until he could make eye contact again, obliviously earnest, as if the placement of the book between them had been a forgivable accident.
“Well, what did you write about?” he asked. “What do you wanna be? Wait! Let me guess. I bet you want to be someone who makes new kinds of laundry soap. Your clothes are always so clean!”
Lan Wangji had intended to ignore him, but then Wei Wuxian began to open his mouth again to spout some other ridiculous idea. Lan Wangji decided to just nip that in the bud and say, “I’m going to be a lawyer.”
“Huh?”
Wei Wuxian mouthed the word lawyer, and then suddenly jolted upright. His shoulder knocked the book right out of Lan Wangji’s hands and onto the floor. Lan Wangji could only watch in despair as it landed facedown, creasing the pages irreversibly.
In the meantime, Wei Wuxian had sat down in his seat, only to get right back up again, leaning over the table on his elbows and bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“A lawyer!” His cheeks were flush with excitement, puffing cutely as he spoke in a tone that would have been awe if not for the high volume. “Lan Zhan, that’s cool! I didn’t know you wanted to be something cool!”
Lan Wangji brushed his hair over his ear to hide the pink curling over the shell and bent to pick up his book.
“Hmm…” Wei Wuxian leaned back in his seat and squinted theatrically at the ceiling, then hopped up to clap his hands together. “Okay! I’ve decided: I’m gonna be a lawyer too!”
Something inside Lan Wangji’s stomach coiled up tight hearing that, something small and childish. That was his goal. “You can’t write about that.”
“Why not?” Wei Wuxian asked.
Lan Wangji turned his attention to smoothing out the bent pages of his book so he wouldn’t have to look at Wei Wuxian’s face.
“Because that’s what you wrote about?” Wei Wuxian prompted.
“You could be accused of…” Lan Wangji tried to remember the fancy word he’d looked up before, something beginning with a ‘p,’ but it wasn’t coming back to him. “… Stealing,” he finished.
Wei Wuxian pouted. “It’s not like it’ll be the same essay or anything. Hey, how about this! You tell me why you want to be a lawyer so I can make sure it’s different.”
Lan Wangji ignored him. He traced a crease with his thumbnail, pressing it as flat as he could, but it wouldn’t stay.
“Aww Lan Zhan, hey, come on, look at me!”
Wei Wuxian smacked his hand over top of the book, incidentally catching the corner of a page under his palm and bending it even more. Lan Wangji resigned himself to looking up.
“Why do you want to be a lawyer, Lan Zhan?”
Wei Wuxian’s expression was so sincere, his whole body inclining forward and ready to hear a response. His bangs had fallen into his eyes, but he was too focused on Lan Wangji to bother brushing them back. It didn’t do anything to dampen the intensity of his gaze. He didn’t blink as he waited for the answer.
And Lan Wangji realized he didn’t have one.
“Eesh, Lan Zhan.” Wei Wuxian clicked his tongue and lowered his head to his own work. “Fine, fine, I’ll just think out loud and you stop me if I say something similar to you.”
When have you ever not thought out loud? Lan Wangji wondered.
“Hm, what kind of lawyer should I be?” Wei Wuxian asked, tapping the eraser of his pencil against his lip. “The attack lawyers are pretty important-“
“Prosecutors,” Lan Wangji corrected him.
Wei Wuxian paid him no mind. “I guess it’d be pretty cool to put bad people away, huh? Make sure they don’t hurt anyone else. And the other side must be hard, what if you have to defend someone who did something really bad?” He wrinkled his nose in thought. “But… I bet there’s lots of people who get accused and didn’t do it. That must be really scary. What if someone really didn’t do it, but nobody believes them?”
There was a stretch of silence as he contemplated that scenario.
“That’s too sad,” he finally decided. “An innocent person, being put away for something they didn’t do? Being all alone and helpless with no one to fight for them?” He shook his head and began writing furiously. “I just wouldn’t be able to stand by.” He paused to glance up at Lan Wangji with a little smile. “Right? You wouldn’t either, right Lan Zhan?”
Lan Wangji had never thought about that before. He had always been taught that laws were the rules, and breaking the rules was dangerous. If too many people broke the rules, then nobody could feel safe. There needed to be punishments for breaking the rules to make sure that as few people broke them as possible.
Sometimes, the wrong person might be accused of breaking a rule, but that’s what the system was for: they could just prove they didn’t do it. That’s why the system itself had so many rules. As long as everyone followed all the rules and did everything properly, justice would always be served to the right people.
But – was Wei Wuxian right? Could an innocent person really just be abandoned to suffer like that?
He tucked that little thought away into the pages of his disfigured book and didn’t take it out again until several months later.
There was a boy in their class named Jin Zixuan. He was popular because he had all the coolest video games at his house and held his birthday parties at theme parks, but anyone who wasn’t dazzled by such things had no reason to be his friend. Lan Wangji distantly admired him for his serious work ethic, and he was probably the best person to be paired with for group projects because he actually took his role in such things seriously, but he was just… difficult to be around. He carelessly threw out insults all the time, seemingly without even realizing what he was saying was rude. On top of that, he had the misfortune of being both snobbishly proud and easily embarrassed, making him prone to lashing out about things that anyone else could ignore or laugh off.
In Lan Wangji’s unbiased opinion, Jin Zixuan was clearly the one who started it.
Wei Wuxian had just been minding his own business, playing some kind of game with his brother that required lots of yelling and running the length of the playground. Lan Wangji was watching from the classroom window, his pencil slack in his hand for the moment. He was still trying to figure out what the rules were from afar when Wei Wuxian suddenly skid to a halt. Then he was turning and approaching Jin Zixuan, who was surrounded by a group of his diplomatically titled “friends.”
They were having some kind of conversation – it looked like it was getting heated. Jin Zixuan was judiciously shoving his nose in the air and Wei Wuxian clenching his fists with agitation. Lan Wangji frowned and opened the window to catch some of the words.
“-what you said about my sister,” Wei Wuxian was saying. “Just take it back.”
“Why should I?” Jin Zixuan shot back. “I was just telling the truth.”
“You made her cry!”
“No I didn’t. I didn’t say it to her face.”
“You said it behind her back, and then it got repeated to her face, that’s way worse!”
“I didn’t make her cry,” Jin Zixuan repeated, defensive.
“How would you like it if someone talked about you like that?” Wei Wuxian spat.
“I wouldn’t cry. I’m not a baby.”
“I bet you would.”
“Oh yeah?” It was at this point that Jin Zixuan aggressively stepped right into Wei Wuxian’s space and gave him a little shove. “Prove it.”
So Wei Wuxian reeled back and punched him.
After an uproar of yelling and a lengthy lecture by the teacher, Wei Wuxian was briefly suspended before his sentence was upped to a flat expulsion.
Jin Zixuan got away with three days of detention.
It suddenly occurred to Lan Wangji later, looking over at Wei Wuxian’s empty desk, that rules were made by people.
And people were flawed.