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Golden boy.
Golden boy. Jinlintai’s heir. The son of a war hero and a martyr.
Such high expectations that it was impossible to meet them, never mind exceed them. He could never impress. Only disappoint.
Golden boy. They might say, rolling their eyes as though any success was inevitable, effortless. Never mind the sleepless nights studying, the frantic searches through the library, the silent tears in the early hours of the morning. The number of times he had to lose a fight before being able to defend himself.
Golden boy. They might say, laughing if he so much as stumbled on a night hunt, as though he should be infallible. Untouchable. As though anything less was failure.
Golden boy. They might say, tone scathing as the Chief Cultivator doted on him, weighed him down with gifts, recognition, as though it were impossible for any to have been earned.
Golden boy. A Jiang disciple might say, meaning to be friendly, but marking him and his robes as outsiders. Yunmeng may not have held the risk of sharp words or sarcastic tones – not unless they were willing to face the consequences leveraged by their sharp-eared sect leader – but in its place was only distance.
So he couldn’t truly fit in in his mother’s home.
But could never quite fit in in his father’s home either.
And if he couldn’t even find kinship amongst his kin, what hope could there be?
“We are something like… like best friends now, are we not?”
We.
Did Ouyang Zizhen consider Jin Ling a part of a “we?”
“Sorry. I didn’t think it through.” The Lan junior bowed, not a threatening uncle in sight.
Did Lan Sizhui actually believe that the hurt he may have caused Jin Ling mattered?
And one evening, after a long but successful night hunt, Jingyi proposed a toast, “To the ones you’d fight first, but that you’d die to defend. To the four of us: Jingyi, Sizhui, Jin Ling, Zizhen.”
Not Golden boy. Not sect leader. Not even Jin-gongzi.
To them, he was Jin Ling. To them, he was a peer. A friend. No longer alone, but part of a brotherhood.
Golden boy. Jinlintai’s heir. The son of a war hero and a martyr. Perhaps he was all of those things. But as the four of them raised their cups of wine or tea to toast, Jin Ling found that he didn’t mind so much, so long as with them, he could also be so much more.