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“Rin.”
She turns around at Nezha’s voice and he can’t believe it. She’s here. He’s here. At Sinegard in Master Irjah’s classroom. Except they’re not. And this is happening on another plane of existence in which Nezha had no right to cross onto.
Rin looks at him with disbelief for a second and it quickly turns into an all familiar rage. “You fucking idiot,” she snarls. “What are you doing?”
She storms across the classroom towards him and raises her left fist, ready to strike his face. Nezha braces himself for the blow but her hand goes right through his face and all he feels is a slight gust of wind. “Fuck!”
Rin keeps throwing punches at him but none of them seem to land. Nezha almost smiles because it feels like nothing has changed. She’s trying to kill him and he’s relishing in the fact that she never will. But everything has changed.
Rin is dead and he killed her.
“Go back, Nezha,” she says when she finally drops her arms to her side.
“Rin, I… I came here to see you.”
“Why?” she spits. “There’s nothing for you here.”
You’re here. “I just wanted to talk.”
“This may seem like a good idea to you now, but I promise you, it’s not.”
Rin has a pained look on her face, a face that looks like it has lost its fire. It breaks Nezha’s heart to know that he did this, had driven the blade into her chest that morning on Speer. He had taken the life of the person he thought to be a god, the only divine thing he had ever believed in.
Did that make him a god, now?
“I’m not me, not anymore,” Rin says slowly, shaking her head. “I don’t understand where I am or who I am half the time or if time is even real for me.”
“I’m so sorry. I did this. I wasn’t strong enough to hold the knife back,” Nezha tries but it comes out a whisper. He wasn’t strong enough then and he isn’t strong enough now as he’s standing before the ghost of the girl he loved and killed.
Rin drops onto a chair, looking distant, like she hadn’t comprehended any of Nezha’s words. Chaghan had warned him of this, but Nezha was willing to take the risk, had begged Chaghan to teach him how to make the drug work.
She might not be herself anymore, Chaghan had written. She might not even be there.
But Nezha knew. He knew her spirit would linger because he would too if someone had plunged a knife into his heart.
Nezha gets down on his knees next to her. “Rin,” Nezha pleads, desperate for her attention, but she’s still looking at something he can’t see. He doesn’t know how much time they have left. He already feels like he’s slipping. This can’t be it. He needs more time.
She looks at him then, opens her mouth as if to say something but it’s too late. Pulled back to the material world all too fast, Nezha jolts back into awareness in his body, gasping for air. Lying on his bed, he takes a moment to comprehend what had just happened and he still can’t decide if it was real or if his mind was playing a cruel, elaborate trick on him.
His room in Arlong is spinning, his head still grappling at the fact that the drug worked and it took him to Rin. For the first time in a year, he saw her face, her lovely, tragic face. She had wanted to say something, and he needs to know what it was, he needs to know so much that every bone in his body aches.
Nezha lifts the tiny vial of cobalt-blue powder to his face, twisting it around so the moonlight catches the specks. He had used half the vial’s contents in an attempt to find the right amount that sent him into the abyss where he hoped Rin was. There’s enough for three more times, he thinks.
Three more times would be enough.
___
He’s in Khurdalain. The memories come flooding almost immediately. The fog across the field, Nezha being dragged away by a Federation soldier, Rin shouting at someone to help save him, the side of his face searing from the acid. He had prayed it would be his end, but he should have known better than to expect anything merciful from the gods.
Nezha seeks out traces of Rin around the camp which looked like it had been deserted, wandering around empty barracks and dormitories. He finally finds Rin in what seems like a makeshift office, in one of the older complexes. She’s bent over a desk littered with maps, written reports, and spread-open books. It takes him a second to assemble the puzzle pieces: the black robes, the smokey sweet scent of opium in the air, and the trident in the corner of the room. This was Altan Trengsin’s office.
Rin looks up from the book she has in her hands. She doesn’t seem surprised to see Nezha. “Oh,” she says, like she had been expecting him. “Took you long enough.”
Nezha’s at a loss for words, unsure of how to approach Rin. He had been afraid that he would find her in the same state as the last time. She was all rage and then distant and unresponsive, nothing in between like she was controlled by a switch that could only go up or down. But this time, Rin looked like herself from before she destroyed Mugen. Her eyes are a warm brown, she still had her right hand, and she looked untouched by the tragedy that would follow after she razed the Federation’s homeland to the ground.
“Were you waiting for me?” Nezha asks dumbly.
She looks at him with her eyebrows slightly furrowed. “Who else would I be waiting for?” she asks, looking annoyed. “Sit, Nezha,” she nods at the chair in front of the desk, taking a seat on the opposite side.
Nezha cautiously makes his way to the desk, taking in Rin’s calm expression. Before, the outline of her body was blurred, the air surrounding her was icy, and she had looked like she was going in and out of places. But now, she seems solid, like she is completely in control of herself, and if the courage finds Nezha, he might be able to touch Rin’s hand if he reaches for it.
“Why are you doing this?” Rin asks when he takes his seat, as if she’s picking up where they left off.
I miss you. I want you around again.
“It’s been a tough year,” Nezha decides on this instead.
She scoffs. “And you thought doing this would make it easier? That seeing me would solve your problems? You’re wrong, Nezha, because this is the worst possible thing you could’ve thought to do.”
“Rin, please, I’m already here, aren’t I?”
Nezha knows she wants to protest, to usher him back to the material world where he belongs, but for some reason, she decides not to push further. She all but leans back into her chair, seemingly agreeing with his point.
“You’ve been dealing with the Hesperians well,” Rin notes.
“I’m not here to talk about them,” Nezha cuts her off. He didn’t need a reminder of the reason they were here in these circumstances.
“Then what do you want to talk about?”
“Where’s Kitay?” he asks. Truth be told, he had hoped Kitay would be with Rin when he came looking for her, that the bond between the both of them would hold even in the afterlife.
The sound of Kitay’s name brings a shift in Rin’s expression, like Nezha had peeled off a bandage off her skin quickly and unexpectedly. “He’s somewhere we can’t reach,” she replies. “He’s passed without me.”
A pang of disappointment hits Nezha's chest. Kitay’s gone. He takes a moment to let it sink in, feeling tears welling up in his eyes. Kitay’s gone, gone, gone. The best friend he grew up with, studied with, and fought with. The one who helped him get to the Academy, the one he let die too young.
“I miss him, too,” Rin whispers.
“I thought he’d be with you. That I’d have a chance to speak to him again.”
“He wanted to pass, and I let him. I still feel him sometimes, pulling me towards him. But I can’t seem to let go.”
Selfishly, Nezha thinks that if she had, he wouldn’t have been able to find her again. He hopes Kitay can understand him, and knows not to call Rin back to him now. Talking to her again, even seeing her face, had made Nezha realise that the past year had been incredibly lonely. He wants their conversation to last forever, wants time to be obsolete when he’s with her.
Nezha doesn’t want Rin to let go. Because he isn’t ready to let go of her either.
“Why are we in Khurdalain?” he asks.
Rin takes a moment to ponder, eyes darting around the room as if she had forgotten where they were until Nezha asked her the question. “I don’t know, honestly. I jump from place to place sometimes and I don’t even realise it. But I always end up at places that meant something to me.”
“This was your first post during the Third Poppy War,” he says, although pointlessly.
“Yes, I remember. Your father sent you here when we requested reinforcements. Honestly, it felt like a knight-in-shining-armor moment.” she says and Nezha swears he sees her smiling. “Mostly because I thought you were never going to walk again.”
Nezha recounts being nineteen then. After being stabbed through the stomach twice and puzzling the physicians when he healed within three months despite suffering from severe internal and spinal damage, he joined the war front in Khurdalain. He remembers the way his heart leaped when he heard the Cike was there, that Rin was there. He was eager for the thrill of fighting beside her again, and suddenly their years in the academy spent hating each other seemed like an exhaustive waste of time.
“I was glad you were in Khurdalain,” Nezha says simply.
Rin nods, seemingly discerning the underlying message. “Me, too.”
“Do you remember the beast we fought in the village?”
“How can I forget? We were being so painfully oblivious! Any moron would have known it was the little girl,” Rin laughs. She laughs , and the sound of it rings in Nezha’s ears like the soft chimes of a bell.
Nezha can’t help but laugh along with her. In hindsight, it was obvious the little girl was the chimei in disguise, but they fell for it either way. Especially Nezha, who saw so much of his little brother in the child and was overcome with the fierce desire to protect her. They should’ve known better than to underestimate a child.
“I guess it’s easier to laugh now that it can’t hurt us,” Nezha says after their laughter subsides.
“Altan hurt me,” Rin says, her tone turning low and dark. “He hurt me and I still loved him.”
“Sometimes, we love the people that hurt us.” Sometimes, we end up killing them, too.
“And when they die, they haunt us.”
“Did he haunt you?”
“Every day.”
“What about now? Now that you’re… you’re-” he can’t bring himself to say the word out loud.
“Dead,” Rin finishes for him. “I don’t hear his voice anymore. And I’ve never tried looking for his spirit either. I don’t know what good that’ll do.”
Nezha abruptly gets up from his seat and walks over to the corner of the room where Altan’s trident is propped upright against the wall. In one swift movement, he takes the trident and holds it horizontally, snapping it in half as he brings his knee upwards. It shouldn’t have been so easy. There was no way the trident could’ve broken so effortlessly, but with Nezha’s sheer will, it did.
“There,” Nezha says, disposing of the trident now in two parts onto the ground. “He can’t hurt you anymore.” He doesn’t know what came over him. Why did he want to protect Rin so much now that she was dead?
Clearly amused, Rin says, “Are you trying to be my knight in shining armor?”
“Maybe,” Nezha shrugs.
“It’s a weird look on you, Yin Nezha,” Rin shakes her head, a wry smile on her face.
That smile is enough for Nezha to keep coming back for more.
___
And he does. Despite having enough of the drug for two more visits, Nezha wants more, needs more. After leaving Khurdalain, he experienced a high that was impossible to come down from. The very moment he jolted back into awareness in his own body, he wanted to ingest the drug again to return to Rin.
He would have written to Chaghan again, but he knew the latter would refuse to supply him with more of the powder seeing as he was very much against Nezha attempting to seek out Rin’s spirit in the first place. Instead, he instructed his most trusted officers to seek out the cobalt-blue drug within the week.
“Bring me as much as you can find,” Nezha tells them. “By whatever means.”
It was simple mathematics. Nezha had given his officers a week to find the drug, which meant he should reasonably expect vials of it on his desk in a fortnight. With his remaining inventory, it was enough for two more visits, meaning he had to go at least six days without seeing Rin until the drug’s replenished.
It was torture.
Every waking moment was spent reliving their conversation in Khurdalain. Her voice echoed in his mind over and over, the sound of her laugh chiming softly in his ears. There was so much more Nezha wanted to say, countless conversations he was dying to have with her. He craved to be in her presence so much that he had to stop himself from ingesting the drug all at once one night. It would be a dire mistake to be left without any should his officers fail to fulfill their orders.
A week after Khurdalain, Nezha caves. Resigning to his chambers after a day of duties, he climbs onto his bed and carefully removes the cork from the vial. He licks his fingertip covered in the blue powder and he feels his eyelids fluttering almost immediately.
Nezha opens his eyes to another familiar landscape. Even without looking, he could sense where he was. The air is thin and crisp up on the Red Cliffs in Arlong. He had spent weeks up here with Rin during his father’s civil war against the Empire, training and sparring each other for hours on end until their muscles screamed in protest. He remembers her stubborn attitude towards wielding Altan’s trident, her persistence to train with it even though it slowed her down and made her movements clumsy. He remembers being increasingly annoyed at Rin who would’ve fought with much more strength and precision had only she given up on that fucking trident. Only now did he realise that it wasn’t just annoyance that he felt. It was jealousy.
If Nezha had to pinpoint the times in which he felt the most like himself, it would be when he was up here alone with Rin, where they could tear each other apart and put the pieces back together again. The time Nezha had spent with her on the Red Cliffs had shown him that he was closer to Rin than anyone he had ever thought he was close to.
“Nezha, over here,” someone called behind him.
He walks over to Rin who is daringly sitting at the edge of the cliff, legs freely dangling over the blue sea. He carefully sets himself down beside him and is surprised to feel their shoulders brush when he brings his arms around his knees. She meets his gaze then and her eyes are still a pleasant brown, her cheeks and nose are pink-tinged from the cold misty air. They exchange a smile and stare at the vast, open ocean for a moment, feeling the warmth of their arms against each other in silence.
“What are you thinking about?” Nezha asks.
“How peaceful this felt until you spoke,” Rin jabs.
He lets out a chuckle. “I’m serious.”
Tilting her head to one side, she looks serene, relaxed, like she did not have a single care in the world and the fire within her was replaced by a quiet, tranquil energy. Nezha notes that he’s never seen her like this, not even in those nights when they had sorghum wine in their systems.
“We spent a lot of time here, didn’t we?” Rin finally says.
“Most of it was me kicking your ass.”
“Don’t take too much pride in harassing a recovering addict.”
“I wished we had done more than just train and spar each other,” Nezha blurts without thinking.
Rin raises her eyebrow, lips forming a lopsided smile. “We could have done anything up here. I suppose it was our little safe haven away from the war.”
“Up here, everything feels so far away. Like nothing could reach us.”
“Nezha from the House of Yin, son of the Dragon Warlord,” she recites, and he tries not to cringe. “Escapes into the Red Cliffs with a southern-raised Speerly. What would people say?”
“They would say we were up to something magnificent, that we were legends born to save Nikan, the incarnates of the Red Emperor and Queen Tearza. They would say we were meant for each other.”
“You think we were meant for each other?”
“No. But I didn’t want to believe we were meant to destroy each other, either.”
Suddenly, it hurt to look at her. He feels a dull ache in his chest and prickling in his eyes. He lets himself be weak and vulnerable in front of her and he almost regrets it. Resting his head on her shoulder, he takes a moment to mourn over what could have been. Him and her, they could have changed the world, shattered it if they wanted to, could’ve torn the land apart and built it from the ground up again if they felt like it.
Instead, she left him and took their best friend along with her.
“Did you ever think what life would be like if the Mugenese hadn’t invaded?” Nezha asks.
“That would have been impossible. The war would have broken out eventually. If not initiated by the Federation then by your father.”
“Humor me, Rin.”
She hums in thought. “I have never thought of my life outside of war. We trained for it, night and day, in the Academy. We were taught that the Federation would not rest, that the two decades of peace were borrowed, and they would soon come to collect our debts. From the moment I left Tikany, my life was built around war, and deep down I had a feeling I was not coming out of it alive.”
Nezha waits for a satisfactory response.
“But to answer your question, we would have continued to hate each other until we graduated. I would have joined the Cike. And there are only two ways you leave the Cike. Strangely, I’ve tried both.”
“In other words, you never escape your fate.”
“No, I guess not. But neither do you. Yin Nezha would always rule. It is in his blood and his birthright. No war waged against any foreign army would take that away from him. In this universe and the next, he would always prevail as the last one standing.”
“Stop,” Nezha breathes out, pressing his forehead against her shoulder. “I never asked for any of it. Not like this.”
Rin obliges.
They stay like this for a while. Nezha has his eyes closed, listening to the waves crashing melodically into the base of the cliffs, as the brisk wind rustles through his hair. This version of Arlong no longer existed in the material world. If he trudged up here tomorrow, it would look entirely different. He would not find comfort or clarity, only remorse. He only had right now, this very moment, to cling onto the memory of the Red Cliffs, remember the conversations he had shared with Rin, the way their weapons and limbs had collided into each other as they trained and trained and trained.
“Let’s jump,” Rin says, like it is the most brilliant idea to ever cross her mind. She stands up, offering her hand to Nezha.
Dazed, he sputters, “Excuse me?”
“We don’t have much time left. So, let’s do something stupid,” she says, forcefully hauling Nezha to his feet. Her grip feels weak and her hand is icy cold.
He’s losing her, but Nezha refuses to let go of her hand. They take one final look at the horizon before them. The sun is almost setting, and he is reminded of how beautiful his home is.
“Now!” Rin shouts, pulling him with her as she leaps off the edge of the cliff.
His heart races in his chest, feeling the air rushing upward as he plunges towards the water. For a brief moment, he wonders if he would survive the impact, and how wonderful it would be if he didn’t. Nezha pulls Rin towards him by their tightly grasped hands, encircling her with his other arm, and braces himself to meet the sea.
___
“This is dangerous, Nezha.”
It’s one of Rin’s bad nights. She’s drifting, her silhouette fading in and out every few seconds. She wears a constant expression of confusion, her eyebrows are furrowed as if she’s trying to recall where she is and for what reason.
“Rin, stay with me,” he says, with one arm around her shoulders, desperately trying to keep her in place. He settles her onto the grass of the Lore Garden in the Academy, which is lush with exotic plants of every color known to man and well-tended trees, and kneels down beside her. “Look at me.”
She struggles to meet his gaze, looking disoriented, like she might pass out if she could. “You can’t do this anymore,” she says, but it comes out a whisper.
“No. No, we’re not having this conversatio-”
“The drug, don’t you feel it slowly killing you?” Rin interrupts.
“Rin, you’re distraught.”
“I know you have vials of it in your room, You’ve been coming to see me nearly every night now. Time… time is different for me. Sometimes, I remember our conversations in a jumbled up sequence, sometimes not at all. But I know you’ve been coming here too often, and it’s killing you.”
Nezha tries to form a response to her accusations. But it was true. Ever since his officers returned with two sachets of the drug, he threw all caution of using it sparingly to the wind. It became routine, coating the tip of his finger with the blue powder at night, feeling his spirit being flung into the abyss as he closed his mouth over it. Every night, he opened the gateway that brought him to Rin, and it was too, too easy.
“I don’t die easy, remember?” Nezha says. Rin had exaggerated. Yes, he noticed minute changes in his body during the day. His breaths became shorter, as if his lungs were slowly collapsing. He broke out in sweats even though Arlong was well into its winter months, and his tasks of handling palace affairs have been increasingly troublesome. His mind was in a perpetual state of counting down to the next time he would meet Rin. But the drug was far from killing him.
“No… no, you can’t,” Rin shakes her head, voice quivering. “I can’t let you do this.”
In a blink of an eye, Rin disappears.
“Fuck!” he exclaims. She can’t be gone, not again. He runs out of the garden, quickly making his way through the Academy. She might still be here , he thinks. Of all the places in Nikan Nezha ends up after ingesting the drug, he comes back to Sinegard most often. The library, the courtyard, the basement hall where apprentices held fights, had meant something to her, had shaped her into who she was.
Nezha checks each Masters’ classroom save for Master Jun’s, but to no avail. He picks up his pace as he goes from level to level, until he finally reaches the main hall on the third tier.
She’s so small.
Rin sits kneeling in the middle of the grand hall with her twisted hands in her lap. Chin tucked, she looks at her entangled fingers, fidgeting it around nervously. The dim interior of the hall sets an omniscient aura, as if anticipation hangs thick and low. It hits Nezha then; which exact moment in Rin’s history she is reliving.
It was their first day at Sinegard.
Nezha slowly walks into the hall and kneels beside Rin, mirroring her position. He’s careful not to make any sudden movements, afraid she’ll disappear into nothing again. He snakes a hand tentatively in between Rin’s hands to stop them from fidgeting, relieved to feel the warmth beneath his skin.
Being in this hall, Nezha can’t help but be brought back to his first day in the Academy. It was no surprise to his family and friends that his test scores admitted him into the most prestigious military school in the land. But what he never saw coming was how it would eventually come to this. The Academy now lay beneath rumble upon rumble that would take years for the Nikara to uncover. The three of them were dead and he alone had to bear the weight of an entire country.
Rin turns to face Nezha then, revealing a tear stricken face. She’s crying. “Do you remember the first thing you said to me?”
He gingerly wipes her tears with the back of his hand. Knowing his adolescent self, it couldn’t have been kind.
“You called me a fucking bitch.”
Nezha blinks. “I think you punched me in the eye first.”
“And then you threatened to kill me. You said you’d fucking kill me, Nezha,” she lets out a bitter laugh.
He’d been a hateful, cruel child. He grew up with a lack of an emotional outlet, and definitely was not used to being assaulted outright. “I didn’t mean it,” he tries.
“Of course you did. You almost killed me that day Jun expelled me from Combat. I felt it in every kick and punch you threw at my body. You hated me, Nezha, with every fiber of your being. You hated what I stood for. A dark-skinned peasant girl from the south with no connections to Sinegard, no money to her name, and no right to be in the Academy. I offended you with my very existence.”
“That wasn’t me. That was before I knew you. The real you.”
“That was the real me.”
“Rin, I’m sorry. I was impulsive and hot-headed. No one deserves to be treated like how I treated you. I’m so sorry.”
“No. No, they don’t.”
“Forgive me,” Nezha pleads, unable to look at her in the eyes.
Rin ignores his apologies, wrenching her hands away from Nezha’s. “Did you know the woman who fostered me had wanted to marry me off to a merchant thrice my age at 14? And when I begged for her to reconsider, she told me all I had to do was be a mute, obedient wife, who would bear him at least one son. She said I should thank her for finding someone who was willing to marry a girl as ugly as me, instead of being the ungrateful runt I was. So I studied. I studied every day for the next two years, burned my skin with a candle to keep myself from falling asleep, recited and memorised all 27 texts for the Classics exam over and over. Not only did I have to pass the Keju, I had to test into Sinegard, because I didn’t have the money for any other Academy.”
“You and I are not the same,” Rin continues. “You might have studied as hard as I did, but you didn’t do it because your life depended on it, because you were going to be sold off to a merchant without a second thought if you failed to get into Sinegard.”
“Rin… I’m sorry.”
“Don’t fucking apologise. If I were you, I would have been repulsed by me, too. If I grew up as privileged as you, seeing an abomination like me walk the halls of the Academy would make my blood boil, too. Besides, you got what you wanted in the end. Like you always do.”
Something in Nezha snaps. “You are not putting that on me, not anymore. You held my hands, you pointed the knife to your chest, you said I had to get their respect,” his voice rising in volume with every word. “You pushed the fucking blade.”
“And you were too weak to stop me.”
Nezha’s fuming now, head reeling as the words spilling from Rin’s mouth punches him in the gut again and again. “No, no,” he says. “If this is your sick way of getting me to stop coming here, it’s not working. I am not going anywhere, Rin. You’re not getting rid of me this easily.”
“You don’t understand. You’re suffocating. The drug is suffocating you.”
“I’m not leaving you, Rin. I’m never leaving you again.”
“This will kill you.”
“Let it.”
___
Nezha’s sanity descends in a downward spiral in an achingly slow pace, so slow that he does not notice he is going mad. Every night, he continues to escape the material world to find Rin. Every night, he climbs into her arms, high off the ecstasy of seeing her face, hearing her voice, being in her presence. Every night, it becomes increasingly impossible to let go, until letting go of Rin has turned into a concept that is utterly unimaginable.
Nezha refuses to admit that the drug might defeat him. Even when his breathing becomes ragged, when his hand trembles as he writes, when his eyes no longer recover from being bloodshot. Because admitting defeat meant losing Rin, and he would drown every inch of Nikan before he let that happen again.
When the drug is in his system, Nezha feels renewed. There is nothing he looked forward to more than their clandestine meetings, where there isn’t a need to deal with his shortness of breath, his shaking, weakened limbs, and the insistent dull throbbing in his temples. Why is it that this fucking drug killed and cured him at the same time?
Nezha closes his eyes. He’s standing on the deck of the Kingfisher, holding Rin’s hands.
Nezha closes his eyes. He’s sharing a bun ration with Rin in the mess hall in Khurdalain.
Nezha closes his eyes. He’s in Sinegard’s library, making Rin laugh as he mockingly recites Sunzi’s texts in Master Irjah’s voice.
Nezha closes his eyes.
He doesn’t recognize the landscape, not immediately. Nearby a lake, Rin sits with her knees tucked underneath her chin, looking wistfully at the still water.
“Where are we?” he asks, sitting cross-legged next to her.
“Lake Boyang,” she answers. “It’s cold.”
“Come here,” Nezha says. He gently tugs Rin closer to his torso, wrapping his arms around her small frame. She rests her head against his chest, and slowly, the rhythms of their breathing become synchronised. When did Rin start to breathe?
“Kitay and I were bonded here.”
Nezha wordlessly hugs Rin tighter. This is the first time she has mentioned Kitay since Khurdalain.
“He gave up his soul for me so that I could have the flame again. He never made a decision without knowing all the facts but he was willing to go into this completely blind. Because he loved me. And I let him down in the end.”
“Don’t say that. He wanted to go with you. I saw him nod.”
“And I wish I hadn’t been so stupid to let him. If any of us deserve to live, it’s Kitay. He would have done so much good to the world, could have helped you like he helped me.”
Nezha would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about having Kitay by his side in the past year. Kitay, who was always the smartest out of all of them, would know exactly what to do, which course of action to take, which strategy would work best. There are times when Nezha feels like an imposter in his own skin, and that an intelligent mind like Kitay’s would be a better fit for his position. But there is no mind in the world like Kitay’s but Kitay’s alone.
And he was gone.
“He was my other half, my soulmate,” Rin whispers quietly, the anguish evident in her voice. “I miss him so much.”
“I know what it’s like.”
“Then you know what it feels like to never be whole again.”
Nezha knew the pain like the back of his hand as if it was a permanent part of him. But in this moment, he has never felt more whole in his life. With Rin in his arms, the void in his soul has been filled for the first time in over a year. He no longer wakes up screaming at night or sobbing uncontrollably into his sheets over the people he has lost and can never get back.
Rin twists around to find Nezha eye-to-eye. His heart hammers in his ribcage, acutely aware of the close proximity of their faces. He can see every detail of her skin, the tiny scars that never fully healed, the specks in her irises, her lips that are drawn into a tight smile.
“That night before the battle of Arlong, you came to find me,” Rin breaks the silence. “You said you had dreamt of me dying.”
“I remember.”
“I didn’t know what to do. You were crying and apologising, saying you didn’t want to leave things the way we did before. I shouldn’t have tried to push you away.”
“It’s alright. It was a moment of weakness right before a battle that I didn’t know if we would survive. The argument we had before didn’t sit right with me. I just wanted to fix what was between us.”
“But I made things worse, didn’t I?”
“No, not worse. Maybe just a little more difficult.”
“For some reason, I always go back to that night. I wish I had done things differently. But I was still angry at you for hiding your connection to the Dragon, for refusing to use your powers. We were too different. You thought shamanism was a curse, and I thought it was the greatest gift I’ve ever received.”
“I tried to warn you, Rin. About my father, about everythin-.”
“I wanted to kiss you, you know?”
Nezha raises an eyebrow.
“You were always so pretty. Even with your scars, your face was still lovely. Sometimes when I look at you, I think to myself, he can’t be real, he can’t be human. ”
“Can I kiss you now?”
Nezha doesn’t wait for Rin to respond. He only asked as a form of warning.
He tilts Rin’s chin ever so slightly and places a soft kiss on her lips. He feels Rin tense up for a split second, surprised at his boldness, then relax into the kiss. Eyes closed, he didn’t think it would feel so right and so perfect. This is everything Nezha wanted and more.
Rin pulls away from the kiss first. With one hand cupping Nezha’s cheek, her finger lightly caresses his scars as if she’s retracing it onto his skin, as if she had memorised every line and stroke of the pattern etched into his flesh. Her touches ignite a flame within Nezha. His cheeks feel flushed, and it takes all of him to stop himself from claiming a second kiss.
“Nezha, your nose…” Rin dabs a finger underneath his nostril and it comes away bloody.
How could this happen? Nezha was supposed to be untouchable in this realm. He had felt no pain at the back of his skull, no ache in his bones, no tremor in his body. Why was this happening now? But he knew why. He had known for a few weeks now.
His body had reached its limit.
Nezha didn’t have time to react or he would have resisted the forceful pull of his spirit back to the material world. His eyes shoot open in an instant and he finds himself back in Arlong again. Without thinking, he retrieves the vial from his robes and sticks his finger at the opening. He had never done this before; ingest the drug twice in one night. He knows his mind isn’t in the right place, that doing this could kill him, yet he could not stop his body from wanting to return to Rin.
Bringing his finger into his mouth, Nezha collapses into his sheets.
Nezha awakes on a beach and there is a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach. He wants to turn back, wants to take off running in the opposite direction. Suddenly, the thought of the drug inside him disgusted him. If he could overturn his stomach to remove all traces of it, he would.
Rin sits across Nezha on a square tea table. Their eyes meet and he is reminded of the first time he finds her in the Strategy Classroom. Her sad, hollow eyes tell him that she’s tired, empty, and lost.
“Rin, take me somewhere else,” Nezha begs desperately. “Anywhere but here.”
This is all too much for Nezha; the three tiny teacups, the empty chair between them, the distant hum of a fleet of dirigibles hovering out of sight. They’re on Speer.
“Please, Rin,” Nezha pleads again when Rin gives no response. “Let’s go back to Sinegard. To Arlong. Please, anywhere but Speer.”
“It’s time, Nezha.”
“No! No, no, no…”
“Look at yourself,” she says, pity in her voice. “You’re dying. You’re killing yourself. And for what? A person who is already dead?”
Only when Nezha saw the outline of Rin blurring in and out did he have the courage to take her face in both his hands. He is so afraid to lose her, to be the person he was when Rin was not around, again. He had to feel the warmth of her face on his palms to know she was still here.
But all he feels now is nothing but a chill down his spine.
“Our time is up,” Rin says, gripping Nezha’s wrists.
“I’ll come back. To see you. I’ll come back again.” He’s frantically grasping at words now, his thoughts a frenzied wreck.
“Nezha, listen to me. You have to do this for me. Just for me,” Rin’s voice trembles as she presses her forehead against Nezha’s.
The tears slip down his face before he can even think to catch them. He knows what she’s going to ask of him, knows he will be too weak to do it.
“Promise me that you will never come back. Promise me that you’ll stop taking the drug.”
Nezha shakes his head. He can’t register the words, can’t comprehend the meaning of it.
“You’re losing control of yourself. Can’t you see? I’m killing you.”
He cries. He cries because he can never change their fate. As hard as he tried, Rin will remain dead, and he will always be the last one standing to reap all he has sowed.
“I can’t let you go, Rin. Please don’t make me.”
“I know it’s hard. But you must try. You have to be the Yin Nezha that leads Nikan through Hesperian occupation. There is only you and nobody else,” Rin sobs, and it breaks Nezha’s heart. “I was only ever good at starting wars. After we won Arlong, I was going mad. I wanted to destroy Hesperia like I destroyed Mugen, I stopped trusting Kitay, I killed Venka. The famine, the poverty… it didn’t matter to me. I just wanted Hesperia to burn.”
She’s almost gone now. No longer flickering, she seems to be slowly dissolving into the air, as if she’s made of sand and the wind is threatening to wipe her very existence.
“But you, you can make it right. I’m so sorry for being cruel and selfish, for leaving you, but it had to be done. It was the only way.”
“I’m not strong enough. Not without you, or Kitay, or Venka,” Nezha struggles to get the words out in between gasps of air.
“You are. You must be.” Rin’s body has halfway vanished. “You have to let me go. You can’t come back, because the next time you do, I won’t be here. I’m trying to save you like the many times you saved me. At the Red Cliffs, at the grotto, and at Speer. Let me save you now.”
Nezha holds onto her, refusing to accept the terrible things he’s hearing. “Rin, I… I-”
“I know your heart, Yin Nezha. I know what it wants to tell me.” She pulls him into one last embrace, and it crushes his soul. “Come back to me when the time is right. I’ll be waiting for you.”
They hold onto each other until the very last moment, until the very last speck of Rin dissolves into the air. The wind carries her to a place no living person may reach, where Kitay awaits.
And all that is left on Speer is Nezha.