Work Text:
When you’re a fierce corpse, you become very aware of being dead.
It’s the lack of sensation. Nothing feels. Your mouth can speak but cannot taste. Your eyes can see, your ears can hear, but your heart do not beat. It is every night where you cannot sleep, cannot dream, and you look at the stars but cannot feel the cool wind against your face.
When you’re a fierce corpse, you become very aware of being alive.
It’s the shrinking height between you and A-Yuan, the lines creeping up on Master Wei’s once-youthful face. It’s your reflection in water that doesn’t change.
It’s the awareness that you’re living on borrowed time.
Master Wei said that you’re one of a kind. And you are, you suppose. The only other being who is like you is Song Lan, and you can’t possibly compare yourself to Song ZiChen. But here you are, a conscious fierce corpse, functioning independently of your maker.
They say ghosts and fierce corpses are fuelled by resentment. you never liked to think of himself as a resentful person. But you remember being beaten to death. It takes a very long time for an adult to be beaten to death, you realized.
You did not want to think of yourself as a resentful person, but it’s hard to say you've lived a very happy life. You like to think that you’re someone who’s grateful for what you’re given. But the happiness you were given in life was hard to compare to the pain.
In death, you’ve had a lot to be grateful for. Young Master Wei’s friendship, your sister, A-Yuan, that beautiful child, born in this hardship. But then they try to take them from you again, when they tried to kill Master Wei, and you lost control. You and your sister went to give yourselves in, but in the end, you couldn’t let them take her, couldn’t stand to watch her die.
You hate.
This world that just keeps taking and taking and taking from you. You hated it.
Perhaps that’s why you linger, even now.
They say, the first step to exorcise the living dead is to try and give them closure. When you saw A-Yuan again, grown up, beautiful, you were so happy. Happier than you’ve ever felt in your entire unlife. And then, Master Wei found his happiness with HanGuang-Jun. You protected Young Master RuLan, kept him safe. And you think, this is it, this is closure, this is contentment, this is the end of borrowed time.
But you’re still here.
You don’t mind being alive. In fact, you’re grateful to watch Young Master RuLan and A-Yuan grow up. But you wonder if there’s no end to your resentment. If the cumulation of your resentment is greater than all your happiness could ever fill. That perhaps you should be buried and sealed in the dirt, like ChiFeng-Zun and LianFang-Zun.
“That’s not it,” Young Master Wei shakes his head, “I know we call it resentful energy, but that’s just a generalization. Resentful energy isn’t made of resentment. It’s made of obsession… or rather, attachments, unfinished thoughts,” and with that, he twirled the ghost flute in his hands, “lingering sentiments*.”
“I’d like to see A-Yuan and Young Master RuLan grow up safe. See them live long, healthy lives,” you say.
He smiles at you.
“Wen Ning, I’m not claiming to know your thoughts better than you do. But before you found A-Yuan, I don’t think you stayed in this world because you hated it. I have no doubt that you did, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to raise you from the dead. But there could be other explanations.”
“Even when you hated the world, you still didn’t want to harm anyone. I still remember you, carrying ShiJie’s soup when you cannot eat it yourself, just so you could share it with others and ask if they like it…” He says. And if you’re still alive, you’d be blushing. You’re surprised he remembers.
“Perhaps what kept you here, before you found people to live for, wasn’t resentment. Maybe you were waiting for the world to prove you wrong, to prove that it is worth loving."
When you’re a fierce corpse, you become very aware of being alive. In the sleepless nights, you look up at the stars.
You feel the cool wind against your face.