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“A-Xu, do you miss living?”
Zhou Zishu’s fingers curled, ever so slightly, on Wen Kexing’s back. Took a breath. Kept his voice as light and steady as the qi he was gently funnelling into Wen Kexing’s meridians. “What are you babbling about? We’re not dead.”
Wen Kexing craned his neck. He couldn’t turn around completely, not without dislodging Zhou Zishu’s hand, but Zhou Zishu caught a corner of his pout around the long arch of his throat, the pearlescent sheen of skin. “You know what I mean.”
Zhou Zishu grunted. His free hand reached to gently, automatically, card the silver fall of hair. Wen Kexing hummed in his throat and leaned into the touch like a kitten begging for a pet. It made Zhou Zishu smile stiffly, the slightest thaw to his frost.
“A-Xu,” Wen Kexing prompted after a moment of silence. One skeletal elbow bumped his. A little something like hope flared up inside Zhou Zishu before guttering out in the snow.
Zhou Zishu sighed. “Does it matter?” Of course it did. It always did. “We can’t go back.” His fingers continued stroking Wen Kexing’s hair, the column of his spine. They were two spectres carved from ice. Wen Kexing’s skin dipped beneath his fingers, still soft, no warmer nor cooler than his.
“Can’t we?” But it was wistful, resigned, instead of a protest. Wen Kexing was barely two steps above infirmity, even after five years. Every look at him terrified Zhou Zishu: the bird-frail sweep of bone, the translucent stretch of skin. Zhou Zishu well remembered—could never forget—the despair of cradling that cooling body, the chill of tears on ice. Months of nursing that trembling heartbeat, so weak it was almost imaginary. Years of rebuilding those shattered meridians, inch by agonizing inch. That terrified, thready elation when Wen Kexing finally opened his eyes. If Wen Kexing were to cease again Zhou Zishu would burn them both, and this entire cursed armoury, and perhaps even the world. Fire would kill. Without Wen Kexing, there was no such thing as warmth.
Five years. Five years was at once an eternity and no time at all. How long had he and Wen Kexing known each other before they’d carved the other into their bones? How long had Ye Baiyi lived, caught between life and death?
“You haven’t recovered yet.” They would have so many more years—five, ten, fifty, hundreds. After. After.
Wen Kexing hummed, pensive. “This isn’t the only place with everlasting snow.”
Zhou Zishu snorted, rueful, gently headbutting the back of Wen Kexing’s head. The hair wasn’t the silken black from his memories, but at least it no longer felt like straw. “This is not a negotiation.”
No, and the icy seclusion wasn’t such a sacrifice. When you wanted something badly enough that it was worth more than what you pay for it, well…you called that a bargain.
But that wasn’t for him alone to decide. Zhou Zishu pressed his mouth to the crown of Wen Kexing’s head, catching silver strands between his teeth. “Are you unhappy?”
“No,” came the immediate answer, a shade too soft. There was a reluctance to it, a dulled edge of yearning.
Life was meant to be experienced, not preserved in permafrost, nor made to wither on the vine. Zhou Zishu thought of Ye Baiyi—the grey streaking his hair, his bottomless appetite, his disdain at his own preserving. He thought of Wen Kexing dashing from street vendor to street vendor, alight with glee, Zhou Zishu trailing after him, coin pouch rapidly lightening. Thought of shared wine on moonlit nights, where the warmth was not from drink. A drawn-out, agonizing death exchanged for something like freedom.
I want to live a good life, or die a good death. The shape of promises, a fight in the rain. Funny how things felt different on the other edge of the blade.
They’d both spent too many years not living.
“Who said this was forever?” It came out strained. Zhou Zishu’s hand slipped from Wen Kexing’s back to bracket jutting ribs. The pulse beneath them was light, too quick, like the beat of hummingbird wings. “We agreed, remember? The ends of the world, all its wines and poems—I’ll take the wine, you can have the poems.”
There was a small, pregnant pause. Wen Kexing cleared his throat. He didn’t turn around, but when he spoke, something his voice spilled open, like the scattering of stars. “What, I don’t get to drink?”
“It’s one or the other, and I’m no poet. Never did read all that much.” Zhou Zishu’s other hand curled into the shape of a gourd, his throat itching for a swig. “You think Chengling has his own brat by now?”
Wen Kexing’s laugh shivered the air like icicles falling to their deaths. He shifted where he sat, looking over his shoulder, all greyed-out eyebrows and ink-dark eyes. “A-Xu. So eager for grandchildren? I’d better keep them away from you. I saw you with Chengling, you slavedriver.”
“Yeah, well, he’s a sect leader now.” His heart twinged a little at that. Zhou Zishu had been sixteen when he took on that burden. Chengling had been even younger than that. “I should’ve pushed him harder. But I guess it’s not his fault that both his shifu and shishu are useless.”
“Speak for—ow! A-Xu, I’m an infirm.”
“So stop being one. I still need to kick your ass once—” he choked briefly “—once it’s a fair fight. Haven’t forgotten about that.”
Wen Kexing sighed dramatically, a thin, mortal wheeze. “Maybe you should’ve left me to die.”
His heart lurched, ice-cold; it still wasn’t funny, even after all this time. “You just try it. Lao-Wen, I’ll follow you down to hell.”
Zhou Zishu had seen many seasons in his life. The uprising of war, the fall of empires. Today, the air was clean, ice-sharp against his lungs. There was no blood misting the air, no smell of rotting bodies. He vaguely recognized the streets, the cities and towns they passed—new people, new life, overlaying the shape of old memories. They spun too fast, glittering and dancing in the world he left behind. Wen Kexing was giddy with it, steps steady but light, silver hair resplendent in the frigid sun. Moving again with hard-earned ease, fan fluttering as if to ward away the non-existent heat. Tugging Zhou Zishu with him. There were pads on his fingertips now, little deposits of fat filling out bone, rounding out the too-sharp angles of his body.
How many years had it been now? Too many seasons. The trees waved at them as they passed, ice studding their branches, all sleeping potential awaiting spring. Plum blossoms stretched, viciously bright against the snow. The trees, replanted; the buildings, built anew. In the distance, the mountains still looked the same.
The crest of new life, the wane of the old—that was, in itself, a season, whatever the temperature was.
Zhou Zishu knew the answer—had seen the plaque on the sect grounds, after all—but still could not help asking the disciples standing guard at the gates: “This is Four Seasons Manor, correct? Is there a Zhang Chengling here?”
The disciples surveyed them up and down, twin frowns tugging at the corners of their mouths. Barely past twenty, these two, the remnants of youth soft in their cheeks. Puzzled by these visitors who looked scarcely older than themselves yet dared to call their master by name. “Yes, jiashi is the master of this sect. Can this disciple ask for your names?”
The smile stretched, so slowly, across Zhou Zishu’s face. Something warm unfurled deep in the pit of his stomach like a wash of fine wine. “Tell him to come see me.”
“Rude, A-Xu.” Wen Kexing rapped his arm with the spine of his fan. He turned back to the young men with perfect, precise politeness, even sketching a shallow bow. “Please inform Zhang-zhuangzhu that the insignificant Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing would request a moment of his time, should he have any to spare.”
The disciples’ mouths flattened into uncertain moues. They’d undoubtedly heard of those names, and of how they’d long since gone. Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu’s appearances didn’t match their ages, of course, and those names were not so rare. Still, one disciple quickly bowed back. “Please wait here,” he said, and was gone.
Zhou Zishu looked over his shoulder. “Rude, Lao-Wen,” he quipped dryly.
Wen Kexing grinned back, alight with mirth, and Zhou Zishu wanted to kiss every breath out of his mouth. He restrained himself. They were in public. “Shameless,” he said instead, and it sounded like I love you.
“Listen,” Wen Kexing said softly, his throat working under near-translucent skin. Zhou Zishu dragged himself back, stretching his senses out: the crackle of breaking branches, the smell of plum blossoms. Twittering birdsong carried by the breeze. Murmurs, unintelligible, in the depths of the compound.
“There,” Wen Kexing whispered, and Zhou Zishu heard it, right on cue, as perfect as a performance: a sharp, undignified cry, followed by the sound of running feet. Thundering closer, a stampede.
The door slammed open. A cry of “shifu!” was his only warning before a blur slammed into Zhou Zishu in a display of the fastest Liuyun Jiugong Steps he had ever seen.
“Oof!” Zhou Zishu nearly bowled right over, immortal be damned. Chengling was no longer fourteen. He clung like he was still. Zhou Zishu’s ribs creaked. “Chengling!”
Beside them, Wen Kexing was laughing. Their gazes met around Chengling’s head. Something rushed out of Zhou Zishu’s chest like the displacement of air: golden, soft, an aching pride. He tightened his hold and tucked his chin into Chengling’s shoulder. They were of equal heights.
He’d missed this too—obligation, and its choosing, until affection tempered to love.
Wen Kexing tapped his fan on the crown of Chengling’s head. He was radiant, glowing, whole suns in his eyes. “Let go, Chengling, before he—” The air choked out of him as Chengling blurred, tackling him in turn. All the pasts forgotten, debts wiped clean. Love was a choice.
Zhou Zishu waited a few seconds—long enough for Wen Kexing to really feel the squeeze—then physically dragged them apart. It was both easier and harder than it should have been. “Chengling, you’re forty going on fourteen.” The boy had grown, filled out, had lines in his face. Only the eyes remained the same. “Compose yourself in front of your disciples.”
“A-Xu,” Wen Kexing wheezed beside him, admonishment mingling with helpless laughter, spilling freely like overturned wine. Zhang Chengling gathered the scraps of his dignity and drew back, face pink.
“Come,” he ordered his disciples, like he hadn’t been the one with damp beading his lashes. “Come greet your tai-shifu, your tai-shishu.”
The morning was warming. Steam wafted off their clothes, the chill of their frosts, under the sky that stretched forever. Disciples filed out of the manor to make their bows. Gao Xiaolian nestled into Zhang Chengling’s left side. Zhang Chengling tucked his arm around her. Zhou Zishu looked at Wen Kexing, at the tangle of their fingers, at the fraught tapestry of their family. The smiles around their mouths were fainter now. Softer. Steady, like the mountain beneath their feet.
“Shifu, shishu.” Zhang Chengling’s voice was halting, rueful, gaze sweeping up and down. Catching, ever so slightly, on the blanch of Wen Kexing’s hair, the jade pin in Zhou Zishu’s. The winter-pale of their skin. “I really thought you’d died.”
“Watch your mouth,” Zhou Zishu said; in the same breath, Wen Kexing added lightly, “close enough.”
There was a drawn-out, bright-edged silence, a little uncomfortable in its shine. They were the dead. They were not gone. The years had flown past them; left them untouched, but for the cloud-white of Wen Kexing’s hair. In that time, Zhang Chengling had become a man, a leader, a brother, a pillar. A better sect leader than Zhou Zishu had ever been. Shifu would’ve been proud, Zhou Zishu thought distantly; the memory snagged, sharp but painless, like a blade-edge drawing blood.
Zhou Zishu peered at the assembly, cataloguing all the fresh faces, the new lives carrying his torch. “Where are your shidi? Cheng, Cheng…something. Bi Xing, um…”
“Xingming and Zichen are away on errands but will be back before dinner. They’ll be thrilled to see you.” Zhang Chengling hesitated. “Are you two staying for dinner? Please stay; we can prepare a meal, I’ll open up the good wines. Honour everyone in the ancestral hall. I’ve never introduced you to my parents.”
Zhou Zishu’s hand tightened on Wen Kexing’s. Sweat gathered between their laced fingers, sticky like hawthorn syrup. Their gazes met, caught. Wen Kexing’s eyes were so, so dark. Something churned inside Zhou Zishu, a sort of seismic pressure: snow gathering on mountaintops, the tension before a quake. It built, and built, and—
Wen Kexing burst out laughing.
“Of course we’ll stay. Good food, good wine, good company. Who would dare miss that?” Wen Kexing turned back to Zhang Chengling, head tilted, all but chortling. “Chengling, you’re finally old enough to drink. If you’re not carried to bed tonight, then my name is not Wen Kexing.”
“Ah?” For a second Chengling was fourteen again, wide-eyed and aghast. “Shishu, is it necessary to drink that hard? There’s still tomorrow, I can prepare a room…” He trailed off, hope flickering on his face. “Wait, are you two staying?”
“Yes,” Zhou Zishu said quietly, like a sigh, like an unnamed release. Wen Kexing’s hand was a vise on his. The words rippled out of him, as if a pebble had been thrown into a still, clear lake. “I think we’ll stay a little while. I want to see how you’ve been training your disciples.”
Two months later, the first frost stole into Zhou Zishu’s hair.