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There was something almost funny about recounting the unrecognised metamorphosis of a young child, to a young soldier, to a dead soldier, to a nameless ghost. It was almost funny, so long as he didn’t think about it.
“How did you not realise?”
Mu Qing was a presence neither welcome nor unwanted. Discomfort sitting like the subtle prickle of sweat on overwarm skin, Xie Lian could see the way stiff layers of silk collars clung to his neck, shifted against the way he shifted his posture for any breath of relief. Still so buttoned-up and refined, pride worn like the finest armour.
“It’s easy to say that in hindsight,” Xie Lian considered, and considered too the way Mu Qing’s fingers curled against his palms, no glance spared for the tea steaming in the cup before him, “but I think we’re all too busy being ourselves to pay much attention to anyone else.”
Something shifted in his expression — something subtle, all but unseen. A loosening of his lips, a tightening of his eyes before they slipped away; unnoticed by him, noticed by Xie Lian. The resonant, methodic sound of an axe splitting firewood filled the thick air, the spaces between their words, and through the window of Xie Lian’s crude heart-built home Mu Qing’s dark eyes, tight with an emotion Xie Lian knew but didn’t know how to name, followed the pendulant swing of Feng Xin’s arms, the arc of the axe before it struck wood.
There was a full stack behind the cottage, and cicadas still sang their heady summer song in the trees, leaves full and green. Sweat clung Feng Xin’s inner clothes to his skin, the shucked sleeves of his outer robe bound around his waist. For a moment he paused, axe lodged in the stack, and wiped the sweat from his brow, grimaced up at the bright, overhead sun.
He didn’t look a thing like Hua Cheng, but for a moment, in that expression of petulant distaste, Xie Lian was reminded of his San Lang
Calloused hands drawn over his thighs, sweat dried, and he grasped the coarse wood of the axe’s handle, wrenched it out of the log to continue cutting. Under the bunch of broad, tanned shoulders, the similarity was lost.
The brief hesitance of silence ruptured, Mu Qing’s gaze was cut by the next swing of the axe.
“Have you spoken to him?”
Mu Qing didn’t ask who he meant. “Every day,” he said, eyes down, studious, hands busied by curling around his cup, lifting it as though to drink before setting it down without a sip. “Wish I didn’t have to.”
“You should.”
Mu Qing looked at him, long and steady. Neat nails on slender fingers rolled a tintack tattoo against the ceramic of his cup. “His wife,” he started, emphatic, lips twisting in a degree of distaste, “and his child — ”
“What are their names?” An innocuous question. He hadn’t forgotten. All he wanted was to see if Mu Qing dared.
His fingers settled, eyes narrowed, piercing Xie Lian with all the scorn one might feel looking down the shaft of an arrow set in Feng Xin’s bow. “His wife and child left him.”
Xie Lian released Mu Qing, set his gaze to look out at the maple forest; an ocean of thick, green leaves cascading down the slope of TaiCang Mountain. “It’s been a year,” he said.
“It’s been eight hundred years,” Mu Qing corrected. The truth of it settled between them, disquieted like hot tea in summer. Mu Qing looked at his hands, and Xie Lian let him. An admission, spared under the pretense that perhaps no one would listen. “He’s like you in all the worst ways.”
Heat-stifled silence sat between them, punctuated by the pedantic hack of Feng Xin chopping firewood he didn’t need because he didn’t know how else to show he cared.
He watched Mu Qing as he interlaced his fingers, lips twisting as though he wasn’t sure whether to smile or scowl. Like he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Eight hundred years,” he said, twining his fingers and untwining them, “and it’s still too soon.”
A year. Eight hundred. Ten thousand. “There’s no such thing as too late.”
He shook his head without lifting his eyes, without saying a word. Tepid silence, hot tea in summer. Lips parted, dark eyes tight with that emotion Xie Lian knew, but didn’t know how to name. “He kissed me. Here.” He dipped his head, turned his cheek. Telling eyes shaded and hidden beneath his too-long fringe, he blinking at how it tangled with his lashes.
“Just now?” Xie Lian asked, a frown creasing his brow.
Again, he shook his head. Lips moved, moved around the shape of a no, but his voice didn’t find his tongue. “Before — everything,” he said instead, and swallowed against something thick and unwelcome in his throat. “Before it all went… Before you ascended. The first time. He…” A sharp breath; impatience, frustration. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I think it might.”
His glare, sharp enough to cut silk. “To you?”
“To you,” Xie Lian corrected, sedate, steady. Calm, and somewhat sad for that look he knew in Mu Qing’s eyes. “And to him.”
A scoff bit past his lips, hands clenched too tight around his cup. “What does it matter to him?”
“You think it doesn’t?” Xie Lian asked.
“He got married,” Mu Qing said, the truth a self-testifying certainty.
“You left,” Xie Lian reminded.
“I — ” He paused, cut himself off. Swallowed his words. Barely a whisper, he said with all the honesty in his aching heart, “I’m sorry.”
Xie Lian allowed him the privacy of turning his eyes to his own hands, watched a beat-up, junkard’s hands turn the fine ceramic against the hand-hewn wood of the table. “You’ve apologised to me twice now.” A shadow in his periphery, he saw Mu Qing startle, glance up from his cup. Up from his fingers, twisted inseparably together. “I think one of those was not meant for me.”
Incensed, Mu Qing started, frustration rising like stifled heat in his voice, “Eight hundred — ”
“Eight hundred years,” Xie Lian said, not looking up. Trash God hands on princely porcelain. “A thousand. Ten thousand.”
For a long while, Mu Qing said nothing. And then, quietly, “He loves her.” Defeat such as he would never admit in battle.
Xie Lian lifted his head, and thought he might have a name for that look in Mu Qing’s eyes. The one he’d so long been so familiar with. “What makes you think he ever stopped loving you?”
Hot tea in summer, hackles raised. Thoughtless, snapped waspish, “What makes you think he — ”
He cut himself off, but the unspoken words sat heavy in the air.
What makes you think he ever loved me.
Xie Lian turned his head, looked out at the endless ocean of green leaves sloping down the mountainside. Looked out at Feng Xin, who cut firewood he didn’t need because he didn’t know how to show he cared. There was something almost funny about the unacknowledged metamorphosis of a young child, to a young soldier, to a young god, to an old god. Almost funny, so long as he didn’t think about it.
There was a word for that expression that sat in Mu Qing’s eyes, which clenched his bleeding heart whenever it reared its ruthless head. “I think he might be tired of having people leave him.”
He looked at Mu Qing and thought that perhaps the two of them were alike in all the worst ways.
“Don’t you?”