Chapter Text
Usually, fights went well for him. He had no factual evidence to back this up, but he just knew that usually, they went pretty well. This one was not going well.
Usually, he didn’t have a corpse trying to strangle him, and that was definitely happening. Her hair had fallen out of its neat pin and her eyes were white, but the body of Madame Mo was undoubtedly trying to strangle him. Even though she accused him of murder just an hour ago, he still felt bad about her death.
“Get off,” he gasped, clawing at her hand, and it was good that he still had room to talk because that meant room to breathe but he was tearing up and—
(The body was crying. His body was crying; he was pretty sure this body was supposed to belong to him. He tried to curl his hand into a fist and the hand he could see in the corner of his eye curled too, dirt coated under its fingernails. A point in favor of the body being his. The hand waved at him — well, he waved at himself, that was good; he could sit up and that was even better. Now if he could just figure out the body’s sorrow. What it had lost, left behind in the blood-soaked dirt, if he could just stop crying.)
He’d stopped then, eventually, and he needed to stop now. There was no room to burst into tears when the body of your aunt was choking you. Instead he found the tiniest bit of space between his neck and her demonic arm and tried to hum, pushing through just a tiny bit of the resentful energy that he must know how to use, until her arm spasmed and dropped him to his knees with a nasty crack. “Fuck,” he gasped, scrambling around. Pain shot through his legs.
White disciples blurred around him, swords flashing. He didn’t have a sword. He only had a broken-off table leg, but that would have to be enough. He didn’t have time to keep zoning out in the middle of a fight — a fight they were losing, badly.
“Rest,” he yelled, and his throat burned from the yelling and the smoke. Belatedly, he realized that that made no sense. “Do any of you have guqins? Play Rest!” Not enough of them could hear him so he kept stumbling around, yelling it into their ears and some of them yelled back, in various measures of politeness, that they didn’t play the guqin, which was utterly useless.
He told one of them so and the boy very kindly stopped another corpse from attacking them.
The kind of funny upside about getting into the middle of a fight that lasted hours, eternities, eons, was that his hands and body belonged to him. Lying on the floor, before, his body was a too-small set of robes, tight and wrong and empty. Bodies, he was pretty sure, were not supposed to be empty, but his had been, a vast emptiness stretching out through borrowed veins instead of blood. No small part of him had wanted to lie on the floor forever.
The emptiness was still there deep down, thrumming inside his chest, but these hands were his, like his essence had been pressed up against that skin and imprinted on his bones. This body didn’t move as fast as he wanted, it wasn’t as strong as he wanted, but everything about it was his. The way it ached, even, that belonged to him, that persistent headache—
(He was pretty sure he hadn’t been drunk, lying on the floor then, but he’d rather have been. Better to be drunk than to actually be seeing a demonic array on the floor, drawn in coppery blood, hot and nauseating. His vision swam, the array under his fingers disappearing, and he’d drawn it, hadn’t he? He’d been the one to put blood to stone, to call upon the resentful energy pulsing in his veins.)
One of the Lan disciples pulled him away from the fight. Why couldn’t he focus, why couldn’t he just be here in the fight? “Mo-gongzi, be careful!”
Oh, that was him. Right, he’d forgotten, but that was his name, it had been yelled at him lots of times today. He’d been accused of murder with it, which was the whole reason they were in this mess. It was a nice enough name. Of course it was nice, it was his! It just didn’t particularly sound like his, but he could get over that. He’d managed to be talked around to his body, after all.
He — Mo Xuanyu, that was him — tugged at the boy’s sleeve. “You play the guqin?”
“Huh? No, Sizhui does.”
“Point him out for me.”
The Lan did, blood-splattered sleeve sweeping as he pointed at another boy who — yes, he summoned a guqin, that was what he needed. “Great!” Mo Xuanyu let his current Lan go. “Get him to —”
A long guqin note shattered down, splitting earth and separating the disciples from the corpse they’d been fighting. Its fingers splintered under the force.
Mo Xuanyu looked up at the man in white with a guqin, rivaling the moon.
It took him almost too long to find his breath.
“Play Rest,” Mo Xuanyu yelled in the brief moment of silence before Madame Mo started screaming again.
The man looked at him. Mo Xuanyu looked back, drinking his fill. He shouldn’t do that here, this was still — this was still the site of a battle, the wreckage of his family home. But the man in white bow his head to play, each motion captivating.
His power was intoxicating, Mo Xuanyu could get drunk on it. He took a step closer without even realizing; he wanted to taste it. Might have even come close, too, if Madame Mo had not stood between them. Her body sagged, but the demonic arm still fought. The Lan disciples were fighting back since it appeared Rest wasn’t enough, even as the cultivator in white left the roof and alighted in the courtyard, closer and closer. The reverberations were almost comforting.
Mo Xuanyu pulled one of the disciples out of the fray, the one he’d seen with the guqin earlier. He’d smashed it across Mo Ziyuan’s dead face. “Do you know Rest?” The boy nodded. “Play,” he ordered, shoving the boy behind him. “I’ll protect you.”
A bold claim and the boy knew it; his eyes flickered over to the cultivator in white and then he gave Mo Xuanyu a sharp nod and settled down in the corner of the courtyard, guqin strung across his lap.
Rest worked a little better with two; Madame Mo slowed down, each step taking effort. Almost restrained. But it still wasn’t quite enough. He could join in. Should, even. He knew he could, somehow, he just — needed to figure it out. He wet his lips, trying to find a whistle, something low to match the guqins, and he knew he had something. It bubbled up, pulling at him, screaming his name, something like a shriek at first, grating and echoing in his head like human voices could never. He put everything he had into it, and it smoothed out, power humming somewhere in his chest.
Madame Mo swayed gently, just the way he had earlier when—
(The demonic array was calling to him in that locked up little room, pressing at him, drawing him in. Arrays were gentle and clean but this one churned at him, begging and suffocating, the smell of blood clogging up his nose. Arrays were kind. Arrays weren’t supposed to have a horrible demonic mind of their own. It couldn’t be all his blood, sprawling huge and spidery across the entire floor. He’d be dead if it was all his blood. He tried not to think about the four neat cuts on his arm. He wished he could say he hadn’t done this, but he knew he couldn’t make that promise.)
The whistling was gone. Or he stopped; either way, it was over. The cultivator in white struck once with a sword, his movements poetic and fluid. There was not a single movement wasted. The end of the fight might not have been worth watching, but he certainly was. He flowed like water, his robes flashing behind him as he captured the arm, snapping close the qiankun pouch.
The juniors all buzzed around him like ducklings, yelling “Hanguang-jun!” over and over. Mo Xuanyu could hardly blame them as he sunk down, sitting on the steps, somehow breathless. Maybe he’d never been this close to a fight before. But something deep in his chest ached, calling out for the feeling of a blade singing in his hand, for the exhilaration and the concentration that Hanguang-jun must feel. He wanted.
His body had known what to do.
“Mo-gongzi?”
His body had held up pretty well, both in the fight and with harnessing resentful energy. He figured his new body deserved congratulations for that and he gave his shoulder a friendly pat. His hand trembled as he did so; his stomach gnawed on itself in hunger. Maybe he was not so close to Hanguang-jun as he thought.
“Mo-gongzi, are you alright?”
“Oh, uh, yes?” He looked up to find one of the Lan disciples smiling patiently at him. The one with the guqin. Lan Sizhui, he thought. “Hello. What do you need?”
“We’ve finished clearing up the flags,” Lan Sizhui said with a neat bow. Mo Xuanyu looked around, noticing that yes, in fact, all the white-clad disciples were now huddled around him, flags folded into perfect squares in their hands. He was the mama duck now. “Gusu Lan advises a burial in the family cemetery tonight, if that’s alright with you, to make sure they’re at rest. They carried a lot of resentful energy.”
Mo Xuanyu barely managed to hide his derisive snort at the understatement. That sounded perfectly fine to him, but considering the — well, considering everything, Mo Xuanyu thought the Mo’s would much prefer if he wasn’t involved at all. He gave Lan Sizhui a short bow, because that was what polite human beings did, and Mo Xuanyu wanted to at least give off that appearance before he flaunted his disrespect to a well-known sect. “That isn’t my decision,” he said as evenly as he knew how. He highly doubted anyone would consider him capable of arranging the funeral, anyways. “They did not call me family.”
Lan Sizhui tucked the flag into a pouch hanging on his waist. “Then Gusu Lan will assign two Lan disciples to arrange a funeral and keep vigil.” He blinked. “To make sure their spirits settle.”
Mo Xuanyu would love nothing more. “I think that would be best,” he said softly, because Madame Mo would probably rise from the grave again if he burned paper money for her. He wasn’t Madame Mo’s nephew, he was her shame, and the whole village knew it. Maybe it would have been better if he’d just ran earlier. No one would miss him. “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry,” Lan Sizhui said, and he didn’t add anything else. Not for your loss or for your family, but just something simple. There was something like concern written on his face, but not quite grief.
“I — thank you,” Mo Xuanyu said again, because what else was there to say? He couldn’t say it was okay, because it wasn’t, but he definitely and probably obviously wasn’t sad. But maybe that was okay, considering the circumstances. “You’re very kind.”
Lan Sizhui smiled at him, something bright and warming, and then his gaze slid over Mo Xuanyu’s shoulder, focusing on something behind him.
“A moment of your time,” someone said from behind him, voice steady, and Mo Xuanyu turned, expecting to see Hanguang-jun there. The man offered him a clean bow, his headpiece winking in the lamplight.
Hanguang-jun up close was beautiful, ethereal. Mo Xuanyu hadn’t seen a lot of pretty men in the singular day he remembered being alive, but he was pretty confident that Hanguang-jun would be top of the list no matter how far he traveled. There was just something magnetic about him. Mo Xuanyu wanted to reach out and mar that perfection, rub his grubby, bloody hands on the white of his robe just to see if the man could tolerate being human.
Mo Xuanyu would hope that gods smiled more, though. Hanguang-jun’s smile would be breathtaking. But Hanguang-jun’s face was devoid of laughter lines, as if he truly wanted to act the part of a statue. Maybe he was perfectly happy and just didn’t like to show it. Possibly he knew that if he smiled and laughed, people would be so busy looking at him that they’d run into doors and drop fragile plates.
But an emptiness caught in Mo Xuanyu’s chest as he stared at that blank slate, at those white mourning robes bathed in moonlight. Pressure built behind his eyes—
(When he’d woken up, all he could see was a blood-red sky and men in white mourning robes, burning white and bleeding blue and gold and green in the pale sunlight until everything was red with blood. There was screaming; it might have been him, but it might have been them. He couldn’t tell over the singing of their blades as he destroyed himself. Dead or dying, he wasn’t sure what the difference was, but he was in the middle of it, heart in his threat, pulse tortuously slow. Pain radiating out like honeyed poison, sickeningly lethargic. He unraveled, silence finding a home in the splinter of his ribs alongside his last breath. It had taken him so long to stand up.)
Mo Xuanyu screwed his eyes shut, sinking to his knees. “Fuck,” he gritted out, teeth grinding together. He clutched at his head, pressing away the visions. But they wouldn’t go away—
(One of the men reached for him, but he couldn’t, or didn’t, reach back. He was falling, he was weightless, if he could just breathe—
“Mo-gongzi?” Someone was calling him. “Mo-gongzi! Are you injured?”
“I’m fine,” he gasped out, the taste of blood a lie on his tongue. “Don’t worry, it’s okay! I, um.” He considered for just a second, the decision made before he’d realized it. Maybe it was stupid, but he didn’t want to stay here. Even he could tell that trying to figure out what had happened to him, with the Lan disciples gone, would be near impossible. “I’m going to pass out, but I think you should know I don’t have any memories before today?”
Then he made good on his word and blacked out.
⭘
If he were telling this as a story, he’d make everyone laugh. The day I forgot my body was mine, he’d joke, and it would be the best story in the inn that night. It would be funniest if he was drunk. But the truth was, it kind of sucked to get repeatedly kicked in the ribs when you couldn’t even remember the name of the man kicking you, let alone your name.
He didn’t know his own name, only pain blooming in his ribs. He didn’t know how he got here, only the blood where he bit down on his lip. How dare you?
“You dare tell on me, Mo Xuanyu! Who do you think you are?”
I think I’m no one, he thought hazily, and he was so out of it he started laughing. His reward for the laughter was his fingers caught under a boot that pressed down just hard enough to be a warning. If he wasn’t careful.
Rage was an easy, comfortable emotion to dredge up. He spat of bit of blood onto the array, and then decided that was stupid. You shouldn’t put more blood onto a blood array, that might cause problems. Ha. More problems.
“Don’t let him outside. He’ll just make a fool out of himself.”
That was probably true, considering he wasn’t even sure he could stand at the moment. When he was alone again, he managed to sit up and was pretty proud of himself for it. Proof, then, that he wasn’t totally gone.
He leaned against the wall, catching his breath. “Mo Xuanyu, Mo Xuanyu,” he sighed, taking in the whole of the array that stretched all the way to the other side of the room. It was smeared and messy and still singing to him. “What have you done now?”
Adding the now to the thought made the situation better. Like it wasn’t something to panic about! As if he was the oh so silly Mo Xuanyu, always getting into trouble, and not Mo Xuanyu, always playing around with dangerous cultivation and erasing his memory.
He — Mo Xuanyu, he supposed he’d have to live with the name even if it tasted wrong — really hoped this wasn’t a regular occurrence. Unfortunately, a feeling in his gut, remarkably like nausea, told him it probably was. God. He could have least run away before doing all this blood magic and getting his nose broken for it. It would have been a hell of a lot easier.
⭘
He came alive with a gasp, his body aching like it was constantly reaching for something unattainable and seam by seam, the effort tore him open. Like rising from the grave, shivery and weak, and for a moment he was sure that he’d used to be dead. He’d felt dead. Felt his spine stretch as he pulled apart, like the threads of a much beloved toy — but who had loved him — until the threads snapped, the toy in two pieces.
He shivered, twisting around to press those grimy fingers against the small of his back, making sure each vertebra was still intact. They were, each knob of his spine perfectly in line down the center of his back.
“Breathe,” someone ordered, and Mo Xuanyu was surprised enough that he did, one full breath so deep his lungs almost hurt. “Good.”
He wrenched his eyes open to see Hanguang-jun kneeling at his side, face stoic, two fingers on his pulse to pass him spiritual energy. All the juniors had been dispatched, which meant Mo Xuanyu could see the sky above him instead of their presumably (hopefully?) worried faces. He hoped they weren’t too upset.
His mouth was dry, so when he spoke the words were raspy, like dead leaves in autumn. He probably looked like a fucking mess. He tried to rearrange his unfamiliar face into something less upsetting. A smile wouldn’t go wrong. “Hi there.”
Hanguang-jun looked distinctly unamused. Impressive how he could do that while wearing the same blank expression. “You fainted,” he said, as if Mo Xuanyu hadn’t been aware. He was very aware — the most aware. Hanguang-jun pulled his hand back with a neat flick of his wrist. He had a few droplets of dried blood on his knuckles, completely at odds with the rest of his perfect self. Guilt welled up — Mo Xuanyu hadn’t actually meant to ruin him.
“I remember,” Mo Xuanyu said, staring at the grass under his legs instead of Hanguang-jun’s hand, disappearing into his robes. Without Hanguang-jun’s hand, he was disturbingly untethered. Hanguang-jun didn’t seem the type of person to like touching people. Or the type of person who liked people at all.
“You were screaming.”
“I don’t remember that,” Mo Xuanyu said helpfully. No wonder his voice was so hoarse. “I’m really not that upset about forgetting, though.”
“And the rest of your memories?”
“Oh, right,” Mo Xuanyu said, struggling to sit up. Hanguang-jun helped him with a gentle hand on his back and he grinned up at the other man. “I forgot about that.” Hanguang-jun clearly didn’t think it was very funny and Mo Xuanyu sighed. Hanguang-jun had absolutely no bedside manner; didn’t he understand that sometimes, you had to be a little human? Laughing at Mo Xuanyu’s jokes was required. “They’re still missing. Everything before I woke up this morning.”
He hadn’t really expected a quick blackout to change anything, but it still kinda sucked that it hadn’t.
He wasn’t exactly sure he should have told the Lans about his memory at all, but — he didn’t have to tell Hanguang-jun exactly how he’d lost his memories. But it was way too much of a coincidence that cultivators had been called to deal with spirits on the exact day he’d done a horrible ritual in his tiny prison of a shed and also erased all his memories. He really didn’t want to be locked into a different cage when Hanguang-jun discovered the rest of it, so he just wouldn’t tell him. He could figure this out himself.
He pasted a grin on his face in an attempt to prove that he wasn’t … dangerous, probably? Hanguang-jun was staring at him very intently. Maybe he was trying to see into his soul. Not that Mo Xuanyu was sure he had one in there.
“That,” Hanguang-jun said slowly, “is uncommon.”
“No shit.” It wasn’t a particularly nice comment, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say. He tried to stand up. Hanguang-jun, understandably, didn’t let him and Mo Xuanyu settled back down on the grass, confident that he was enough work to deal with that Hanguang-jun wouldn’t question what he didn’t say. “Fun, isn’t it.”
“You needn’t worry yourself.”
Anger flared up; Mo Xuanyu gritted his teeth. If Hanguang-jun meant to be comforting, he missed by a long shot. What did that mean? “Why shouldn’t I worry? Not a single thing about this situation isn’t to be worried about!” Could Hanguang-jun really think it so simple? That he wouldn’t want to know the full story of his family, that he’d never be in want of what was missing? “Do you think my part in this ended with them?” He felt his lips twist into something cruel. “Perhaps you expect that I’ll forget this too, since my memory is already so faulty? I’d have no concerns then, wouldn’t you agree?”
Hanguang-jun bowed his head. “Apologies.” His tone was perfectly even, Mo Xuanyu marveled. It would be impressive if it wasn’t the most irritating thing ever. “Gusu Lan will take responsibility, that is all I meant.”
Ah. So he really had meant to be comforting. Mo Xuanyu wasn’t comforted, but it was sweet that he had tried. It was a start, even if not a much better one. “How?”
“We will take the arm back to Cloud Recesses.”
“And do research on it?” Hanguang-jun nodded, just once. “And what do you think you’ll find out?”
Hanguang-jun gave him a slightly exasperated look. “Unclear.”
Mo Xuanyu grinned, ready to push a little farther, something sparking in his chest at the tiny bit of irritation that appeared on Hanguang-jun’s face. No one could be perfect, after all, not truly, even if Hanguang-jun looked very good at pretending. “Because you have no ideas or because you can’t share with outsiders?”
“I won’t make assumptions without proof,” Hanguang-jun said calmly. He inclined his head just a tiny bit, one errant, tantalizing lock of hair sliding over his shoulder, black on white. “Would you care to join us in Gusu?”
“I — what,” Mo Xuanyu said, suddenly all wrong-footed. Hanguang-jun had turned the tide here so easily, it was almost impressive. Mo Xuanyu had expected to fight a lot more. “Me?”
“It is your memory in question.”
“Yes, of course,” Mo Xuanyu murmured. He wanted to leave this stupid manor as soon as he could, leave behind the tiny shed with the blood and the array and the horrible people who’d lived in it. Honestly, he wasn’t even sure he wanted the memories back. “Yes, I’ll go. I don’t belong here.”
It hadn’t occurred to him to hide this truth — something about Hanguang-jun just compelled it from him. As Mo Xuanyu watched a complicated expression play out on Hanguang-jun’s face, though, he realized he probably should have.
He hurried to cover up that raw emotion. “Can we go now?”
That, at least, got a reaction out of Hanguang-jun; Mo Xuanyu was privileged enough to see his complete look of surprise. He startled backwards, eyes widening by more than just a fraction, lips slightly parted.
“No,” Hanguang-jun said sternly. Expressions looked really good on Hanguang-jun. There was a man beneath the god. Mo Xuanyu suddenly felt a little guilty for pushing him so far just to get a reaction out of him. Hanguang-jun was only trying to help; his only crime was being bad at small-talk. “You passed out.”
“I feel okay, though!” Mo Xuanyu took a moment to check if that was true. His head had stopped trying to split open and instead had just receded into a gently aching headache, and he’d stopped seeing weird visions. His ears were ringing, a little bit, but he could only see Hanguang-jun’s beautiful, impassive face. Even in the face of all this, it was unchanging. Mo Xuanyu kind of hated it. Kind of wished he was capable of appearing so unflustered himself. Wished he didn’t feel so badly the urge to ruin that smoothness. “Yeah, I actually feel okay.”
“You don’t sound confident.”
“I just — it was — a weird hallucination,” Mo Xuanyu told him, trying to convince himself as well as Hanguang-jun. Mostly himself, since he figured Hanguang-jun wouldn’t particularly care about one strange man’s hallucinations. Probably the servants had told him what to expect out of Mo Xuanyu, which was not much. “I felt dead. But it was just a hallucination, right?” He hoped that was all that was, even just thinking about it made his heart beat faster. “Could it be caused by the demonic arm? It started when you got close to me.”
“It’s possible,” Hanguang-jun confirmed. He sure didn’t like to open his mouth, did he?
Mo Xuanyu huffed, looking around. “Right.” The courtyard looked pristine. One servant hovered a few feet away, holding a new set of outer robes, which was when Mo Xuanyu realized that his own were covered in grass and a fair bit of blood. “Um, thank you for cleansing the — my! — house.” Was it still his house if his family didn’t leave it to him and he wanted to leave it in return? “And everything. Just — thank you for all your help.”
Hanguang-jun didn’t seem to know what to do with that, at all. “We can leave tomorrow morning,” he said, instead of a you’re welcome or anything similar. It was almost cute how awkward he was when faced with honest praise.
Mo Xuanyu let his shoulders drop now that he didn’t have to prove anything. “Great.” He was exhausted. “There should be guest rooms for you all here. Wherever your disciples are.”
“Cemetery.”
Mo Xuanyu winced. He didn’t want to talk about the cemetery or his dead family members or the poor boys who were too young to be burying anything. “You’re a really talkative man, Hanguang-jun,” Mo Xuanyu said instead, folding his legs up underneath him. “I bet you get that a lot.”
Hanguang-jun didn’t look quite so tall or annoying with Mo Xuanyu sitting on his feet like this, just beautiful. His eyes were a little softer, Mo Xuanyu hoped, his expression less stern as he agreed: “Frequently.”
Mo Xuanyu roared with laughter, so much that he started coughing and had to wave Hanguang-jun off. It didn’t hurt, it was just left over from the panic of earlier. He grinned up at Hanguang-jun, unwilling to let his traitorous lungs stop him. “So you are capable of making jokes.” Hanguang-jun studiously didn’t look at him, pretending it hadn’t happened. But Mo Xuanyu had heard it, he knew. “I’m proud of you, Hanguang-jun! Do you just put on the face of a good teacher with your juniors? It does a body good to laugh, you know, even if your kids see!”
Hanguang-jun pointedly ignored him. Mo Xuanyu grinned. This guy was going to be great to tease; he could tell. Hanguang-jun stood up, dusting off his still-immaculate robes. “Please rest and recover your health,” he offered, and then left with a flutter of white robes, moonlight on a river.
-
One of the servants woke Mo Xuanyu up early, the morning light so pale it made him look like a spirit too. “Gongzi,” he whispered. Mo Xuanyu blinked wearily up at him. He hadn’t gotten to sleep until very late last night, unable to remember where the guest quarters were and unwilling to sleep in the stupid room with the array. One of the servants had eventually caught him and herded him to a room where a steaming bath waited to soothe his various aches and bruises. He’d spent a long time tracing the cuts on his arm that he must have created for the array. Four previously, but only one left. “The cultivators wish to leave soon.”
“It’s early.”
“It’s five,” the servant agreed.
Mo Xuanyu pulled the blanket over his eyes. “Hating comfort must be one of their ridiculous disciplines,” he mourned, but he sat up, blinking sleep out of his eyes. The servant smiled sympathetically at him, holding out a pair of robes. Mo Xuanyu stared down at them, a little confused. They were nice robes, he could tell. “For me?”
The servant started unfolding the robes. “Of course you, Mo-gongzi. Who else but you?”
“Oh.” Mo Xuanyu ran a finger along the collar. It was high enough that it would cover the scraped raw section of his shoulder, running up his neck, where he’d been dragged along the stone yesterday on his way to be accused of murder. If he accepted these fine robes, the silk dyed in the peach colors the Mo’s had preferred, it would be harder to remove himself. They meant he should stay, to keep vigil and organize a burial and arranging for ancestral tablets to be made, but the servant didn’t mention it. “I thought none of you liked me?”
The servant set his jaw. “I’m not a Mo,” he said stoutly, as if that meant everything. It probably did. So Mo Xuanyu was only hated by his family, none of the servants. That cheered him up a little bit, honestly, to know that he wasn’t someone who tried to go around making people’s lives miserable, like the Mo family clearly did. “Gongzi, please put on the robes. They’re traveling robes made for — for the previous young master.” Mo Xuanyu must have made a face, because the servant rushed to add, “He never wore them. He said the embroidery was inferior.”
Every stitch of wine-red embroidery near the collar was even and tight. “Did the young master expect something better than godliness?” Mo Xuanyu exclaimed, allowing the servant to help him into the silk red inner robe. Surely one set of robes was alright. The servant had said they were traveling robes. He wasn’t expected to stay. “What’s your name?”
The man held out the outer coat for Mo Xuanyu to step into. “Deng Jiao.”
The coat was heavy, and hung loose around his shoulders, because his cousin was broader and taller than he was, but once belted, it wasn’t so noticeable. “Right.” Mo Xuanyu spread his arms as Deng Jiao wound a belt around his waist and a pouch to hang along it. “How do I look?” He’d personally have preferred something darker and less likely to get muddy, but he couldn’t find any real fault in them. And they made him feel a little more in control of himself that the torn, bloody robes from yesterday.
“Very handsome,” Deng Jiao said loyally, leading him into a chair near a vanity, complete with a small bronze mirror that he could see the corner of his face in. He didn’t know it.
After a night of sleeping, it wasn’t such a bad face. A little slender and boyish, a bit pale. His eyes were gray, heavy and serious in a way that was unnerving when he focused, and he made a face at the mirror, watching them crinkle as he smiled. He should just stop expecting things to look familiar. How could something as important as his face or his body be gone but he could still remember maple leaves? Why did he have to remember demonic arrays and the feeling of resentful energy feeding off him, but have to be told his own name?
“Mo-gongzi?”
Mo Xuanyu snatched his hand back from where it had reached out to touch his reflection. “Did I know you before?” He grinned and the face in the mirror grinned too. “Can I call you a-Jiao?”
Deng Jiao started attacking his hair with a comb. “You may, but I didn’t know you well,” he said eventually, working on a tangled snarl near the end. Mo Xuanyu supposed he deserved this for going to bed with his hair wet but in his defense, fainting really took a lot out of a man. “Most of us weren’t allowed to talk to you. You always thanked us, though, when we brought you food.”
Mo Xuanyu swallowed. His reflection looked distantly scandalized, as if he’d heard a distasteful anecdote about someone else. “Oh. So I really — they really didn’t let me leave.” He picked at his thumb, bit at his lip. They’d simply decided to lock him up forever and treat him as a horrible secret. Some family. Had he truly been that awful? Had he been horrible, cruel, the monster they all said he was? Should he even be let out? Should he just stay in that awful little room for forever, suffocating and dying—
Deng Jiao tugged on his hair to distract him, but the comb became a little gentler. “No,” Deng Jiao confirmed gently. “I hope you don’t mind me saying, but I’m glad you don’t remember. It was… unnecessarily cruel.”
Mo Xuanyu laughed, breaking the heavy silence around the room. “Me too, I think,” he giggled. Deng Jiao offered him a headpiece, a simple golden band, and helped him attach it. It made his head feel oddly heavy. He supposed his family wouldn’t have given him anything like this, but the man seemed intent on making sure his status, whatever it was, wasn’t forgotten. That was kind, in its own way, even if Mo Xuanyu would rather be forgotten.
“Do you want to get anything from your old room, before you go?” Deng Jiao held up the small pot of make-up. “There’s not much but I brought you this.”
Mo Xuanyu considered the small blue jar. The rooms he’d been in had been barren, besides the simple thin bed sheet, the pot of make-up, and the ripped-up letters. He should probably wash the blood off the floor before any of the cultivators saw it. Deng Jiao must have seen it. Was he ignoring it? He must be. Maybe he was ignoring it, so Mo Xuanyu didn’t have to go back in there.
That was a welcome pity, because he really didn’t want to go back in there. He didn’t want to put on the make-up and cover up his face; just the thought of hiding again made his stomach turn. “I’ll be fine,” he said instead, setting the little pot of make-up in the center of the table. It looked quite lonely there. He wondered if he owned anything that the family who liked him had left behind. If his mother had even liked him. He didn’t want to find out like this. “I’ll just go.”
Deng Jiao started leading him out the doors, through the courtyards. In the morning light, everything looked clean and new. The whole staff must have worked hard to remove all traces of last night and Mo Xuanyu wished they hadn’t. It wasn’t like he wanted to come back. He wished they’d just gone to sleep instead, ignoring the family, disrespectful as that might have been. He himself should have sat at their shrine, burning paper money.
The Gusu Lan cultivators were waiting for him, crowded just outside the entrance to the estate. He waved and one of them waved back, though Mo Xuanyu couldn’t tell which one it was. Deng Jiao looked at them steadily then back at Mo Xuanyu, the question clear in his eyes. “Are you going to come back?”
“I don’t know.” His voice trembled and he cleared his throat, trying to hide his nervousness even as his left hand fisted in the skirt of his robes. “I don’t belong here. I never did. And I probably kind of need my memories, even if they seem like a hassle, right?”
Deng Jiao looked like he had no idea how to even broach treating being locked away as a “hassle.” “Right.”
“You can do what you want with the house,” Mo Xuanyu told Deng Jiao. “Burn it or chop it up for wood or move in. I don’t care. Take everything in the family treasury.” He flexed his fingers. It wouldn’t make things easy, but he didn’t want a single thing from the Mo’s. He’d take the robes and trade them out as soon as he possibly could. “Whatever I do, I won’t do it here. I’m — well, I wasn’t one of them.”
“I understand,” Deng Jiao said with the patience of a man who absolutely wasn’t going to burn the house down.
Mo Xuanyu nodded, resolute. “You can write me at Cloud Recesses.” On a whim, he threw his arms around the man, thankful for even just the minute thoughtfulness of this morning. Of not having to stay, of not having to be a Mo. Though, ironically, he supposed he could thank his aunt for that. “I’ll be there for a month, at least. But I’ll come back if you need anything. I mean it.”
He didn’t want to come back. But this village was probably dependent on Mo Manor, and he didn’t want it to crumble underneath him. These were people, good people, who had to serve horrible masters. He hoped they’d flourish on their own, but if they needed anything — anything — he’d return.
“We’ll do our best to make sure you don’t have to return.” Deng Jiao patted Mo Xuanyu awkwardly on the back. He hoped Deng Jiao really meant it. He felt responsible, even if Deng Jiao had been the one taking care of him. “Best get going, now.”
Mo Xuanyu nodded. “Hopefully I never see you again,” he joked, and once he saw Deng Jiao offer him a smile, he turned around, bounding over to the cultivators. Some of them were squinting at him, perhaps wondering why he had decided to hug a servant of all things, but Mo Xuanyu didn’t let that bother him. More of the little Lans should hug servants. “Thank you for waiting!”
Hanguang-jun nodded at the head of the group. He looked just as beautiful and immaculate in the sunlight as he had last night under the moon. Hadn’t changed out of the mourning robes, either, but at least this time when Mo Xuanyu saw him, he didn’t have horrible visions of men with anger in their eyes. The demonic arm didn’t seem to be causing him a problem either, which was pretty good, all in all, even if Hanguang-jun immediately set off at a brisk pace.
“We will walk.” Mo Xuanyu made a face as all the disciples fell in line. Hanguang-jun certainly didn’t waste time. “Gusu is too far to fly.”
“Could you do it?” Mo Xuanyu asked curiously, hovering at his side.
“Yes.”
Mo Xuanyu wouldn’t remember where Gusu was, so he didn’t know how long it would take them to walk there. It was going to be a boring trip — Hanguang-jun had hidden all traces of the man who’d told a joke last night and instead arranged stoicism on his face the same he pinned on the delicate cage of his hair piece each morning. But Mo Xuanyu knew now that something lived there under the god, imperfectly and beautifully in the way only humans could be. If he studied enough, maybe he’d find the truth in the way Hanguang-jun blinked when considering a question or the way his jaw tightened when Mo Xuanyu told a horrible joke.
It must be possible to disturb the calm. When was the last time he’d smiled? Not just the corner of his mouth curling up like it had last night — just for an instant before the carefully arranged face came back — but a real smile?
Mo Xuanyu hoped it had been recent. At least in the past year. The man had been kind enough to him, even if his perfect unflawed visage was a cruel joke when compared to the complete and utter mess Mo Xuanyu had already made of himself.
The hems of his robes were already gathering dust.
Hanguang-jun kept glancing at him out of the corner of his eyes, which probably meant Mo Xuanyu was annoying him, so he let himself fall out of step until he was at the end of the neat two disciple lines. He quite enjoyed straying between the two different lines and wandering off the path to look at different things.
The disciples didn’t.
“Can’t you stop?” Lan Jingyi hissed as he darted ahead to look at some flowers that were nearly the same color as his robes. Mo Xuanyu rather liked Lan Jingyi, who irritated easily and probably could learn from Hanguang-jun’s measured calm. The boy treated him like a real person. A very annoying one, but that was also probably true, so it wasn’t like Mo Xuanyu could blame the boy for it.
“Well, you try not remembering anything.” Mo Xuanyu touched a tiny pink petal of the gorgeous flowering vine crawling up a tree. He grinned as it yielded under his touch, surprisingly springy. “This is my first time outside, you know!”
“That’s not how it works,” Lan Jingyi said, exasperated.
“Why not?”
“Because you’ve been outside before even if you can’t remember it!”
Mo Xuanyu did not know exactly how long it had been since he had been outside. “Well, I’m the one who can’t remember, so don’t I get to decide?” He straightened up, ready to step back towards the group, when a wave of dizziness came over him and he stumbled, his foot catching over an exposed root.
Despite his complaining, Lan Jingyi did steady him.
“Sorry,” Mo Xuanyu said weakly, clutching at Lan Jingyi’s shoulder. He tried to make himself let go, but he only got one step away before he was too dizzy to take another and Lan Jingyi had to catch him again, one arm around his shoulders and worry clear in his face. A buzzing built in his ears, something loud and roaring, like the ocean or screaming or—
Lan Sizhui pressed the back of his hand against Mo Xuanyu’s forehead. “Maybe we should stop, Hanguang-jun.”
“Don’t be silly, I don’t have a fever,” Mo Xuanyu dismissed, brushing his hand off. “Normal people just can’t keep up with cultivators like you, you know!” It was too late, though; Hanguang-jun stepped through the crowd of disciples. He scrutinized Mo Xuanyu, who offered up the best beaming grin he could manage. “I’m fine, Hanguang-jun, truly! No reason to worry your pretty little head!”
From behind him, someone gasped — Lan Jingyi, probably — but Hanguang-jun didn’t react. “When did you last eat?”
“Oh, I —” Mo Xuanyu blinked, the answer on the tip of the tongue, except there was no answer. Not in the past two days, which meant the response had disappeared to wherever the rest of his memories were hiding. “The food at Mo manor was so bland, Hanguang-jun, can you blame me for not remembering it? It’s practically as bland as the Gusu Lan sect food!”
Lan Sizhui frowned. “Mo-gongzi,” he said carefully. “Did you not eat breakfast?”
“It would have been rude to make you continue to wait for me,” Mo Xuanyu insisted, though really, he’d just forgotten. He hadn’t even noticed the hunger, he realized, pressing a hand to his stomach. He couldn’t muster up surprise at the knowledge that the Mo’s probably had not been good at remembering to feed him. It all felt dizzyingly familiar, the emptiness in his stomach, the emptiness in his body, the emptiness in his head—
“Mo-gongzi?” Lan Sizhui asked again, and he jerked his head up to meet an assortment of nervous stares.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he assured them, straightening up with no small effort. “It’s just been a long day and it’s hot out!” They’d been walking all day, and the sun was almost perfectly centered in the sky.
“Hanguang-jun,” Lan Jingyi protested, but Hanguang-jun held up a hand as if to say no need.
“We will stop at the nearby village to eat.”
Fortunately, the nearest town had an inn with a large dining room. Unfortunately, the Lans were the most boring group of people to eat with ever, no matter how much Mo Xuanyu whined that they weren’t in Cloud Recesses and so the rules about not talking didn’t apply.
“You’re all really giving me lots to look forward to.” Mo Xuanyu glared at his half-empty plate. He wasn’t sure how much more he could stomach without becoming sick. But they’d spent money on him, and Lan Sizhui had concern written all over his face, so he forced his chopsticks to pick up another piece of chicken. “Cloud Recesses sounds like a prison!”
He pouted, which everyone ignored. His sister would have played along, he knew; she would have pouted and called him XianXian and he would have felt so at home and loved, even if he made a fool of himself, because she was his sister. It hurt to think of her, his head pounded as he tried and failed to remember her face.
He was disrupted by a light touch on the inside of his wrist. “Are you alright?” Hanguang-jun asked, perceptive as ever.
The memory disappeared with the touch, like water slipping through his fingers until he couldn’t recall anything at all. Just Hanguang-jun’s stupidly pretty face.
“Sorry, sorry,” Mo Xuanyu said quickly, shoveling rice into his mouth, improperly and rudely. “I’m fine! I was just trying to remember something.”
“Don’t force yourself.” He looked at Mo Xuanyu’s still-mostly full bowl, and there it was — his brow furrowed in concern. “Your memories will not return by determination alone.”
Easy for him to say. He hadn’t possibly remembered a sister and then forgotten everything about her immediately, her face and her smile and the name she called him. Mo Xuanyu scowled down at his plate and ignored the way Hanguang-jun looked at him, like there was something to look at. He didn’t want to play nice anymore, even if Hanguang-jun had been very nicely putting up with him for the better part of a day. Even if that was the first good expression today that he’d seen.
He did what was needed: he pushed Hanguang-jun away before he ruined him. “I thought you said there was no talking during meals.” He regretted it even as he said it.
Understandably, everyone ignored that too.
