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There were only three rules Hong-ge insisted Luo Binghe follow. That's three rules more than Luo Binghe is used to minding, but he would be willing to follow a hundred times that if it meant staying at Paradise Manor with Hong-ge, where he's safe and well-fed and warm. Where Hong-ge plays games with him and answers every question he can think of and smiles at him like he belongs there.
The rules are these:
One: Never go into the city without Hong-ge’s red pearl in his hair. Hong-ge says it marks him as a resident of Paradise Manor, and it serves as a warning to the other demons and ghosts: Luo Binghe is not to be touched.
Two: Never hesitate to ask for something he needs. This one hadn't been insisted upon when Hong-ge first brought him to Paradise Manor. But one morning after a cold spell, Hong-ge had come into his room to brush and plait his hair as he usually did and found Luo Binghe shivering on the bed with the single thin quilt wrapped tightly around him.
“It's my fault,” Hong-ge had said, almost to himself, after lighting the furnace and feeding him warm congee. He'd had a frown on his face, and Luo Binghe hadn't liked that he'd been the cause of that expression. “Remember that I am a ghost, little one. I don't feel the cold like you do. The next time you need something, anything, you must tell me.”
(Ever since, the furnace in Luo Binghe’s room is kept burning on cold nights, his bed piled with thick quilts, and Luo Binghe hasn't been cold again.)
Three: No fighting.
Luo Binghe knew he was most likely to break the third rule. He didn’t think it would be only a few months after his arrival that he broke it.
Most children in the Ghost City are awful. The ghost ones are ancient spirits trapped in childish form; the demons ones have a thirst for blood. But he has made a few friends, ones who are no more vicious than him, or if they’re more, it’s tolerable.
It doesn’t matter that one of them said terrible things about him. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t even care when the kid trips him on purpose, sending him sprawling into a puddle of mud and indiscriminate sludge. He does care when they start saying things about his father, and what his father must have done to his mother, and other terrible things that make his insides turn to lava.
He doesn’t realize until after his lip is split, there’s chaos in the street, and he’s knocked the kid down for good that when he heard the insults, he didn’t think of his birth father, the faceless figure from his past. It was Hong-ge he thought of.
The same Hong-ge who comes to him in the street, the tinkling of bells heralding his arrival like it did the first time they met. This time the sound brings foreboding of a different kind.
As Hong-ge takes in the carnage and chaos, Luo Binghe shrinks in on himself. Up until now, he’s done everything Hong-ge told him to do. At first, because he wanted to stay at Paradise Manor. And later, because he couldn’t bear the thought of disappointing Hong-ge, who ruffles his hair and teaches him things and laughs with delight when Luo Binghe demonstrates just how well he can be taught.
Hong-ge’s single dark eye casts about rapidly, then stills when it lands on Luo Binghe where he crouches in the street, bleeding. That eye goes steely.
“He said—he said—” Luo Binghe is trying to explain before Hong-ge says a word. But even as he tries, he knows it’s no use. He’s broken the rule. Hong-ge asks so little of him, and the way Hong-ge is looking at him now reminds him of the unfeeling gazes strangers once gave him. “I didn’t mean—I—”
“Luo Binghe,” Hua Cheng says, his voice ringing out colder than the air. “Come here.”
It is the first time he has called him Luo Binghe instead of little one.
Luo Binghe swallows tears and the blood in his mouth and runs.
_________
Hua Cheng finds Luo Binghe not huddled in a dark alley like the first time, but on the edge of the city, trying to stow away in a cart.
He’s a resourceful kid. He evaded all of Hua Cheng’s butterflies and guards searching the city. Hua Cheng had tried not to worry, thinking that Luo Binghe would sulk for a time and then come home. To find him trying to leave—it chisels a crack in Hua Cheng’s heart.
He tosses a bag of money at the cart owner and goes to the back of the cart. He can barely see a tuft of dark hair among the bags of grain.
“Little one,” he says.
There’s silence as Luo Binghe holds himself completely still. Hua Cheng wonders if he even breathes.
“I know you’re in there,” Hua Cheng continues, making his voice as soft as the wings of his butterflies. “Why did you run from me, little one?”
A small voice, muffled, rises from the sacks. “I broke the rule.”
“The—” Hua Cheng remembers doling out this rule, feeling quite responsible for doing so, like a father might. When he saw Luo Binghe bleeding in the street, though, he hadn’t thought about it. He’d only seen the blood on the boy’s mouth.
Luo Binghe whispers, “I disobeyed you.”
Hua Cheng resists the urge to lift Luo Binghe from the cart and look into his eyes as he speaks. “Do you know why I gave you that rule?”
Small shifting this time, but no answer.
“Because I didn’t want to see you hurt,” Hua Cheng says. “Not because I wanted you to blindly obey me. It’s not a rule for a rule’s sake, little one. It’s because I love you.”
There’s no reply, until Hua Cheng hears the sniffling. Then he’s lifting the bags away one by one until Luo Binghe’s grubby face emerges, contorted with sobs.
The boy is trying to tell him something, but his words get lost in the tears, and Hua Cheng pulls him into his arms. He’s very small, Hua Cheng notices, and resolves to feed him more. He resolves to never be the cause of this kind of grief again.
“—thought—you—won’t want—me—”
“I hate to see you hurt, is all, little one,” Hua Cheng soothes, stroking the boy’s shaking back as he carries him back to Paradise Manor.
Somewhere between the outskirts and home, Luo Binghe’s sobs fade to hiccups and then fall silent as he succumbs to sleep on Hua Cheng’s damp shoulder. With every step he takes, Hua Cheng thinks about the boy in his arms and the boy he himself had once been, sobbing in the arms of another. The same person who stands at the door of Paradise Manor to welcome Hua Cheng and his son home.