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GUSU...

It was hard being Lan Xichen, heir to the Gusu Lan fortunes, successor to the Cloud Recesses Foundation, scion of all the Lans who had come before him. He carried the weight of ancestral expectation on his shoulders, had done since he’d squalled his way into the world nine years ago.

There were lessons from dawn until dusk, rules and regulations to be vigorously kept. Discipline for the disciplines that so governed Gusu Lan. Back straight, shoulders proud—but not too proud; cultivate grace and bearing with just the right amount of humility. Smile just so. There were strangers of import to meet, names and positions to remember, and bows to be delivered at just the right depth, dependent upon power, of course. Mistakes were not permitted.

Yes, it was hard being Lan Xichen, heir to the Gusu Lan fortunes and all that came with it. But it was never hard being a-Zhan’s gege.

Ever since Mother had placed a-Zhan in his arms six years ago and those light, soulful eyes had stared up at Xichen, he’d known there was nothing in the world he wouldn’t do for his didi. Made a vow to always love and protect a-Zhan, no matter the cost.

But his didi hadn’t spoken in six months. Not since Mother died. It didn’t matter how much Uncle scolded, how loud Uncle yelled for Wangji to be good, or how many threats he made for the whip, a-Zhan would not speak.

There was a stubbornness in his didi, Xichen knew that, and it was supported by a backbone of steel. If a-Zhan didn’t want to talk, he wouldn’t. Yet in those quiet moments he sat with his little brother, reading through the rigorous homework a-Zhan still had to complete, Xichen would sometimes see his didi mouth along with the words. Desperately trying to be ‘good’.

But his didi was good. Good and smart and kind. Sensitive in a way only Xichen and Mother understood. a-Zhan felt deeply, Mother had said; too deeply, she worried. ‘Too deeply for a Lan’ were the words unspoken. All Xichen knew was that when he was sad, a-Zhan was miserable; when Mother was worried, a-Zhan struggled to breathe. When Xichen and Mother were happy, however, a-Zhan’s smile lit up the world.

Now Mother was gone. There would be no more smiles. It was just Xichen and a-Zhan. And his didi was dying inside. Uncle didn’t understand, and Xichen had made the mistake of trying to explain that a-Zhan saw the world differently, walked it differently, felt it differently. It was a good different, Xichen had said, a brave different.

Uncle had disagreed.

a-Zhan had knelt in the snow without complaint, had held the bamboo stick outstretched in his tiny hands until his tiny arms shook. Xichen had knelt behind his brother and held those small arms aloft and steady, returning without fail every time Uncle had dragged him away.

“You and me against the world, didi,” he’d whispered in a-Zhan’s ear. “You and me against the world.”

#

It had been a year since a-Zhan had spoken his last words.

At night, long after Xichen should have been asleep, he had taken to sneaking into a-Zhan’s jingshi to pry loose the floorboard and choose a comic from the stash to read to his didi. It was one of the last links they had to Mother, the comics she had smuggled into Cloud Recesses for them, and it didn’t matter how late it was or how tired his didi, a-Zhan always seemed to brighten a little in anticipation of being immersed in those colourful pages.

a-Zhan wouldn’t smile, hadn’t done so since Mother died, but those eyes that everyone said were cold and distant—dead, he had heard some whisper—would widen a fraction in readiness for a story that would carry a-Zhan away from the fear and anxiety that seemed to weigh down shoulders too small to carry such a burden.

Snuggled beneath the blanket fort, a-Zhan would hold the little torch and play it across the panels as Xichen read. He created voices for each character, using the inflections taught by his elocution master to evoke suspense or wonder or joy. Xichen took the lessons of his masters and brought those illustrated worlds to life, brought Mother back to a-Zhan, if only for a little while.

Uncle had found the stash when he’d caught a-Zhan trying to sneak into Xichen’s jingshi—comic, blanket, and torch in hand. Never would Xichen forget the tears that had tracked down his didi’s cheeks as Uncle’s butler, Tian An, had gathered the comics where Lan Qiren had strewn them into the garden in a rage. Never would Xichen forgive Uncle for setting those books alight. For making them both watch as the flames devoured those worlds that had held a-Zhan’s only joy.

His didi had watched the smoke spiral into the sky like great grey snakes, and when those comics were nothing but ash, a-Zhan had broken free of Uncle’s grasp, dropped to his knees in the pile and tried to gather the sooty ruins to his little chest.

“I hate you,” Xichen had yelled at his uncle. “I hate you!” He bit the hand that held his wrist in a vice-like grip.

It earned Xichen a slap that knocked him to the ground, but it was all he needed to scramble away and gather a-Zhan in his arms, rocking his didi and urging him to breathe through his panic, kissing his head like Mother used to do.

“Clean them up,” Uncle had ordered Tian An, then swept out of the garden in a swish of white robes.

Xichen had sat cradling his brother until a bath had been drawn, then carried a-Zhan inside. Tian An had gone to clear the ashes of their dead worlds while Xichen had bathed his brother, singing softly to him as he washed soot from tangled hair, washed ashes from that small face whose eyes were dull and unfocussed, whose mouth was frighteningly slack.

No, he would never forgive Uncle for what he’d done, but Xichen had thanked Tian An for hiding four of those comics in his robes that night. For saving a little bit of their mother for a-Zhan.

#

It had been eighteen months since Mother had died. Eighteen months since a-Zhan had last spoken. Xichen didn’t need words to understand his brother, didn’t need words to know when a-Zhan was sad or afeared or when some small happenstance softened his features in a fleeting moment of not-sorrow. a-Zhan didn’t know true happiness, had not felt the buoyancy of joy that could lift you like wings.

His didi would turn eight soon, and Xichen wanted to do something special, something that would perhaps mend the perpetual slump to a-Zhan’s shoulders, to calm the fear within forever darting eyes. Something just for a-Zhan. Something with which to give his didi wings to soar.

Xichen just didn’t know what that could be.

There was only one person he trusted besides his brother. Zhu Yun was a quiet boy, a year ahead of Xichen but with eyes that seemed far older. The two had come to having lunch together after Mother died—the bow of Zhu Yun’s head from across the Gusu Academy grounds had spoken more than any of the hollow platitudes of teachers and fellow students.

“Watch him,” a-Yun had said of a-Zhan one quiet lunch. “He’ll tell you in his own way.”

It had been subtle, just as a-Yun had said. A slight widening of a-Zhan’s eyes when a rabbit had darted across their path on the way to the Cold Springs. The downward tilt of his didi’s chin as he tried to follow the rabbit’s passage from the corner of his eye was all the truth Xichen needed.

“Rabbits,” a-Yun had said with that slow nod of his. “I know a place.”

It had taken most of Xichen’s savings, extra for the man’s silence—no pets in Cloud Recesses—but Xichen would have sold his soul for the little colony of rabbits he and a-Yun now carried.

They had found a spot in the back hills of Cloud Recesses where the rabbits would be safe, made an enclosure, and spent every morning before school and every afternoon following to acclimatise the little bunnies to their presence. There were eight in all, and when a-Yun had said they’d made warrens, that this was their home now, they’d removed the enclosure.

Anxiety had skewered Xichen all night, and he prayed to any god who would listen that the rabbits would still be there the next morning.

They were.

They were there in the afternoon. All the following days. Weeks.

A month before a-Zhan’s birthday, Xichen had taken his didi’s small hand in his own and led that quiet soul to the back hills. The implicit trust with which his didi accompanied him made Xichen’s heart ache—there was nothing he wouldn’t do for a-Zhan.

Xichen had crouched a little ways off, turned a-Zhan’s face to his. “We need to be slow and quiet, didi,” he’d whispered.

The little frown—lightning quick—was a-Zhan’s question.

“A surprise, a-Zhan. A secret.”

a-Zhan blinked his agreement.

The exaggerated tiptoe of his didi as they approached was something Xichen would always remember, and the jubilation of hearing the tiny gasp that broke from a-Zhan when he spied the little rabbit colony was like a chorus of angels.

“If we’re calm and quiet,” Xichen had whispered as a-Zhan’s gaze had flitted from rabbit to rabbit to rabbit, “they might come up to us.”

Three more steps and they’d sat cross-legged in the grass, a-Zhan statue still apart from his eyes. One little black bunny had approached, sniffed cautiously at a-Zhan’s knee then peered up at his didi, that tiny nose twitching.

Xichen watched, waited, breath held tight as the rabbit moved to sit in a-Zhan’s lap.

The corner of his didi’s lip twitched, and the sun came back to Xichen’s world.

#

Xichen knew all a-Zhan’s safe spaces. Places his didi would run to when the world got too loud or it closed in too tight, when the weight of another’s gaze lingered too long or when words were a weapon sharp as knives. But Uncle was starting to learn those places too. And those safe spaces were no longer safe.

a-Zhan would run as fast as his little legs would carry him but Uncle was always faster. Handstands, Uncle would decree after some quack said blood to a-Zhan’s mind would force the words free. Ten minutes. Twenty. Half an hour. An hour. Incremental punishments that only wound a-Zhan tighter and tighter. Especially when under the hateful gaze of Su Daiyu’s watch.

Xichen did the handstands with a-Zhan; found new places for his didi to hide.

But he could not be with a-Zhan every minute of every day.

Two years it had been since his didi had last spoken, but Xichen knew the meaning of every angle of his brother’s head, every twitch of brow, set of the mouth, eye position… all of it. a-Zhan ‘spoke’, but only Xichen listened.

Yet he would know the scream of his didi anywhere.

Xichen had pushed from his bed, head dizzy with fever, growling at the nurse who tried to stop him leaving his jingshi. He was Lan Xichen, heir to the Gusu Lan fortunes, successor to the Cloud Recesses Foundation, scion of all the Lans who had come before him. He carried the weight of ancestral expectation on his shoulders, had done for eleven years now, and nothing would stop him getting to his didi.

He’d thrown himself over a-Zhan, holding tight and tucking his brother beneath him as Uncle raised the belt again. Xichen had grit his teeth when the leather landed; he would not scream, would not give Uncle the satisfaction.

But a-Zhan screamed for both of them—desperate, anguish-filled howls that must have reached Mother, for Xichen felt her hand upon his head, heard her whispering between the wails of his didi. ‘I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you…’

His didi’s screams tapered to a keening like that of a wounded animal, and the belt lashed one final time, burning like fire across Xichen’s back.

Then a-Zhan found his words. Voice parchment dry and ragged, he repeated those words over and over and over until Uncle stormed away.

“I… hate… you. I… hate… you. I… hate… you. I… hate… you. I… hate… you…”

Xichen held a-Zhan close, rocking his brother now, cooing nonsensical sounds as those words kept coming, fired like barbed arrows.

It was Tian An who’d picked them both up, carrying them back to Xichen’s jingshi as a-Zhan continued to speak those three words over and again. Tian An had dismissed the nurse, tucked Xichen and a-Zhan into bed together then left, forbidding entry to all.

a-Zhan’s breathing slowly settled but the words kept coming. Coarse, scratchy, but music just the same to Xichen. His didi blinked slowly, those golden eyes finally focussing, and that tiny hand found Xichen’s cheek as he stared at his didi.

“I hate you,” a-Zhan said, the words soft and gentle and filled with a love purer than anything Xichen had ever felt.

Xichen covered his brother’s little hand with his own and smiled. “Hate you, too, didi.”

#

Xichen was twelve when a-Zhan dragged a battered old desk up the three thousand steps of Cloud Recesses. His didi was nothing but sweat and trembling arms and legs, but there’d been that twitch of lips—that didi smile—at the accomplishment.

a-Zhan had a plan for that desk; and it glittered like magic behind those expressive eyes.

Where others saw a discarded piece of junk, a-Zhan saw possibility, life. Hope. Xichen saw the spark that ignited his brother’s soul.

Uncle had allowed a-Zhan this ‘folly’ on the proviso studies were maintained and words were spoken.

His didi had words, had never stopped learning the two years he hadn’t spoken. a-Zhan hoarded words like a dragon hoarded gold. Only when words were absolutely necessary would his didi release them. Even then, it seemed to Xichen that each one spoken almost hurt to leave his brother’s lips—like a painful farewell.  

“I need… a desk,” a-Zhan had said when Xichen had asked his didi what he needed. “I need… this desk.” Then in a voice barely above a whisper. “It needs… me.”

It wasn’t the answer to the questions Xichen had asked, wasn't the answer he had expected but it was an answer that spoke to something in his brother that even his nine-year-old didi might not have quite understood. So Xichen had searched online to figure out just what it was a-Zhan needed to fix the desk then set about making it so.

For two weeks a-Zhan had done nothing but stare at that desk when his lessons and obligations to Gusu Lan allowed. Then one Saturday morning, Xichen had found the desk undone, the pieces laid out perfectly as a-Zhan sat among them, diligently sanding a desk leg back to bare wood.

Xichen had sat and watched a calm come over his brother. Saw those always tight shoulders relax, smiled at the softening of his didi’s brow with each long, slow sweep of sandpaper along timber.

Where Xichen heard that scratching hiss of debridement, a-Zhan heard words. “It… talks… to me,” he’d said one day. “If I… listen… carefully.”

Xichen had said nothing; not quite understanding the world in which his brother lived but knowing it to be a place his didi felt safe, calm. A beautiful place.

“Here,” a-Zhan had said, pointing to a gouge along the desktop, “someone… hurt it. And… and here,” he’d pointed to filler in the one of the legs. “Someone… loved it.”

“Stories,” Xichen had said. “It’s history.”

“Mn.”

“And?” Xichen had asked carefully, seeing the promise of words teetering on his brother’s tongue. “What else does it tell you, didi?”

a-Zhan had looked away when he spoke. “W-what it… wants to… be.”

A blush had risen to a-Zhan’s ears with that confession. “And what does it want to be?”

“Magic.”

Xichen had smiled at his brother. “Then it’s in the right hands, a-Zhan.”

“Mn.” His brother’s nod had been decisive.

It was a simple desk, plain in its design, austere in its lines. Its only embellishment an old, rusted cog his didi had found as a replacement drawer handle, and it had turned that simplicity on its head. Gave character, soul, to the piece his brother had always seen. The desk had sat shrine-like beneath the window of a-Zhan’s jingshi, light hitting it just so—an invitation to new worlds, infinite possibilities.

Magic it had become, magic it had infused in his a-Zhan. It was not a desk for homework or rule-writing, not for study or essays on fiscal responsibility. It was the foundation for the creativity that burned like fire in his didi. It was for comic writing and illustrations, for paintings of bunnies and mountains, and for sketching magic in discarded pieces a-Zhan always managed to find. Or perhaps those pieces had called out with their voices for a-Zhan to come find them.

It was a-Zhan’s safe space, that desk. It was a-Zhan’s escape. It was a place where a-Zhan could be a-Zhan without fear or reprisal or scorn. It was a-Zhan’s home.

Until it wasn’t.

#

Xichen was nearing his sixteenth birthday when a-Yun had pulled him from class, ignoring the teacher’s protests as he swept Xichen’s books up and told him to come “now, a-Chen.”

“a-Yun?” Xichen had asked as his friend had shoved the books into his bag, pushing him along.

“You need to go home. For a-Zhan.” a-Yun nodded. “Meet you at the warrens. Go.”

Xichen had run the two kilometres back to Cloud Recesses, taken the three thousand steps two at a time until his legs burned like fire then took them three at a time. I’m coming, didi. Gege is coming.

He heard Uncle before he saw him, heard that growl that had Xichen’s gut sink and his heart skitter with fear. Not for himself. Never for himself. Only a-Zhan could raise Uncle’s ire like this.

“a-Zhan…”

Xichen followed the angry words that were greeted with an angry silence Xichen knew only too well. When he raced into Uncle’s compound, a-Zhan was kneeling straight-backed on the wooden pathway that led to their shufu’s quarters.

“You don’t deny breaking that boy’s arm?”

What? a-Zhan broke… No. Not his didi; his brother was a gentle soul, kind and compassionate in a world that seldom liked such things.

But a-Zhan’s silence was answer enough, and the set of his brother’s jaw said there would be no apology for what he’d done.

“Wangji…” Uncle’s tone was all warning, but a-Zhan raised his chin a fraction, defiant.

There was that a-Zhan stubbornness, that backbone of steel.

Uncle saw it; hated it. Hated those times a-Zhan did not cower, did not flee, did not curl in a corner and weep. In moments like this, at just thirteen, his didi had Uncle’s measure, and their shufu loathed that a-Zhan knew the truth of it, could see it reflected in those golden eyes that were so like their mother’s.

“Uncle…” Xichen started, making his way forward on legs that felt like jelly.

Then he smelt it.

It was too early in the season for fires, too dry to risk backburning.

Memories of a fire long ago had Xichen running once more. He tore past Uncle’s attendants and hirelings, pushing those out of the way when they didn’t heed his calls to “move, dammit!”

Xichen knew he was too late long before he skidded to a stop in the small front garden of a-Zhan’s jingshi, but seeing that desk splintered beyond repair, flames devouring the ruins dropped Xichen to his knees.

Tian An was slumped against the porch, the old man’s mouth bleeding, hands blistered. Su Daiyu stood guard over the pyre, smug, until a roar had shattered that pompous bearing and fear had lit those beady little eyes.

a-Zhan hit Su Daiyu from the side with the force of a Mack truck, slamming the man to the ground with a crunch. And almost Xichen laughed; you broke two arms today, didi. Good for you.

His brother’s arms were no longer small, and he drove them down like pistons into Su Daiyu’s self-righteous face. This time a laugh did escape as Su Daiyu nose became a smear. Those handstands really worked, shufu. Are you proud now?

“a-Chen,” Tian An said, hissing with pain as he pulled a-Zhan off a groaning Su Daiyu. “Take him. Go. Both of you.”

Xichen had smothered his laughter then, pushed to his feet and gathered his brother, guiding a now almost catatonic a-Zhan out of the jinghsi.

Tian An had shoved something into Xichen’s backpack then pushed him along. “Go. Fast.”

Xichen had found a-Yu waiting at the warrens just as he’d promised, and he helped lower a-Zhan to sit among the rabbits.

“Watch him,” Xichen had said, and gone to fetch water to clean up his brother.

That low and calm drone of a-Yun speaking with a-Zhan let Xichen know his didi was in safe hands.

It was only after he’d cleaned a-Zhan’s hands of blood, washed the tears from his brother’s face did he pull a-Yun aside. Not too far—always a-Zhan was in sight, rabbits nesting around him.

“It was Su She,” a-Yun said, all calm gone from him now. “Goading a-Zhan about not talking.” He glanced at Xichen’s didi, his smile quick. “a-Zhan looked that piece of shit in the face and said: ‘You are not qualified to talk to me.’ It was beautiful.”

Su She. a-Zhan had broken the arm of both father and son. “Then?” Xichen asked, his smile dropping as a-Yun’s did.

“Then Su She…” a-Yun’s lips pressed into a thin line. “He said things about you he should not.”

“And… a-Zhan broke his arm?”

“In three places.”

Xichen looked back at his brother surrounded by rabbits, and who held a tiny bunny gently in his hands, stroking its cheek tenderly. “What did Su She say?”

“a-Chen…”

“Tell me.”

“That… you’re a… deviant.” a-Yun said that last word as a whisper.

Xichen's heart broke, nausea swirling bitter in his gut. Uncle had destroyed the desk, that joyous world that meant everything to his brother because a-Zhan was defending his gege.

It was all Xichen’s fault. “Uncle burned his desk. Because of me.”

“He what?” a-Yun’s jaw set; he knew how much that desk meant to a-Zhan. “No. Your uncle did it because he’s a cruel bastard.”

“a-Zhan… a-Zhan broke Su She’s arm because I’m gay.”

“No,” his best friend said firmly. “He broke Su She’s arm because no one disrespects his gege.” a-Yun slung an arm across Xichen’s shoulders. “You think a-Zhan doesn’t know? That kid misses nothing, a-Chen. He loves every part of you. You need to do the same for yourself.”

Xichen raised an eyebrow at his friend.

“Okay, so Luo Ai is way smarter than me, but my girlfriend is right—she tells me all the time.” He motioned to a-Zhan. “Go talk to him.”

Xichen nodded and went to his bag, removed the cloth-covered item Tian An had shoved in there, knowing what it was without opening it. He went to his brother; crouched close. “a-Zhan…”

Finally his didi raised his eyes; they were so lost. a-Zhan was unmoored, and Xichen didn’t know how to fix that. “a-Huan.”

Xichen held out the cloth. The old, rusted cog was still warm to the touch but his didi lifted it free, ran trembling fingers over it. “All is not lost, didi.”

#

Xichen didn’t want to leave a-Zhan behind, tried to find any other way to complete his study at Cloud Recesses rather than away at university, but a-Zhan had insisted it was time for his gege to leave.

“Time for a-Huan… to chase his own dream.”

How could he tell his didi that being a lawyer wasn’t his dream, that it was the least disagreeable option Uncle had presented him. Xichen didn’t know what he wanted to do or to be, especially now that veterinary science was off the table. One look at a needle and he passed out—no amount of exposure therapy would change that. He and a-Zhan had tried. 

They’d stood on the train platform in Caiyi Town, two brothers alone in their bubble of bustling commuters, and every fear and worry Xichen held for his didi returned a thousandfold.

“I will be… all right,” a-Zhan said. “Keep my… head down.”

Anger surged through Xichen, an inferno that burned through his veins like wildfire—his didi shouldn’t have keep his head down, shouldn’t have to pretend to be who he wasn’t. Xichen ignored the stab of irony. “If you need me, I’ll come.”

His brother had shaken his head. “a-Huan needs more… deserves more than just… me and my… problems.” Those golden eyes met his. “Please.”

“They're not—”

“Please, a-Huan.”

Xichen was eighteen when he left his brother behind, and the fear and anxiety that so plagued his didi had found a home within Xichen. He gripped tight the old, rusted cog a-Zhan had given him, took his seat on the train and pressed his palm against the window.

a-Zhan rested his palm the other side of the glass; mouthed. ‘I hate you.’

Xichen had smiled at his brother. “Hate you, too, didi,” he said as the train pulled away from the station, pulled Xichen away from his brother.

#

Xichen was in his last year of college when a-Zhan joined him. The three years apart had not been kind to his didi. Or, specifically, Uncle had wrought a special kind of hell on a-Zhan. Xichen had come home at every opportunity. It hadn’t been enough.

But now a-Zhan was here. Enveloped in Xichen’s love, and under his protection once more.  

Art history, Uncle had decided a-Zhan would study. What better way to keep Wangji under his thumb than to allow him a leash just long enough for a semblance of freedom but where he was forever tied to the Cloud Recesses Foundation.

Six months Xichen had watched his didi struggle through the course. a-Zhan was getting top marks, doing what was required of him, but his brother’s heart wasn’t in it. Xichen had seen his brother dying inside once before, he refused to allow it to happen again.

It was a-Yun who’d found the courses—emailed them to Xichen with strict instructions to enrol a-Zhan, or his best friend would make the trip up to see him and kick his ass. ‘No more egg tarts,’ a-Yun had threatened, knowing full well the threat of withholding the pastries would drive home that incentive.

“What is…this?” a-Zhan had said a week later, pointing to the confirmation emails sitting in his inbox.

“Your new courses,” Xichen had told his brother, not looking up from where they were both studying, where they were both hating what they were studying.

“But—”

“You start Monday,” Xichen said, passing over a print-out of all the tools and equipment his didi needed for the three-year woodworking and restoration course run just off-campus. “a-Yun will be here in an hour. He doesn’t trust us to get the right stuff.”

“a-Huan…”

“I’ll handle Uncle,” Xichen had said.

a-Yun had been more… colourful in his opinion when he’d arrived loaded up with the home-made pastries that were the staple of his dessert bar. “Fuck that old bastard.”

a-Zhan had looked between Xichen and a-Yun; and there it was, that twitch of lips that meant the world to Xichen. “Fuck… that old… bastard.”

“That’s my boy,” a-Yun had said, clapping a-Zhan on the shoulder. “Now we just need to get your gege to curse.”

a-Zhan’s scoff was filled with mirth, and Xichen had never been more thankful for his closest friend.

#

Uncle had been furious of course; threatened to pull all financial support. Xichen told his shufu to go right ahead—he’d already filed for access to their mother’s estate. Xichen was twenty-one; it was his by right, “by birthright,” he’d told Uncle, and Xichen was fully prepared to support a-Zhan in his endeavours.

Before Uncle could play the legal guardian card, Xichen explained he’d already filed for that too. “You have two options, Uncle,” Xichen had said. “Leave Wangji alone to pursue his ambitions, and I will continue with my study and take up the mantle of the Foundation you yoked me with. Or, continue to push your will on Wangji and I will bring it all down. I will burn it to the fucking ground, shufu, just like you did to Wangji’s comics, just like you did his desk. Your choice, Uncle.”

And so a-Zhan’s ‘folly’ had become his didi’s calling. There was a serenity that suffused his brother when working on a new piece, and though the fear and anxiety still ran like blood through a-Zhan’s veins, there were moments of peace. Increasing moments of peace.

Xichen began to see his brother peek from beneath that shell that kept him safe. Sometimes days would pass without a panic attack. Then days would turn to a week. Two. Still, the world did often get too loud or too close or too much, but Xichen made sure he was there to sit with his didi in that safe space he had chosen and wait for his brother to come back.

They’d returned to Cloud Recesses together—Xichen to set up his legal practice in Caiyi Town, and a-Zhan to work commissions from a workshop one street down. Close enough that Xichen was there should his didi need him yet far enough way for independence.

But Cloud Recesses loomed over them both literally and figuratively. Uncle’s presence like a lingering thunderstorm just waiting to deliver its wrath.

a-Zhan’s anxiety returned. Now it was a good day if his didi could get through it without running, without fleeing the fear that he wasn’t good enough, that he was a failure, that he was nothing but an inconvenience to those around him.

Uncle’s whisper-network was taking its toll, and Xichen had no idea how to fix it.

#

It was a Tuesday when Wangji came to him, waiting an hour for Xichen to finish with a client he didn’t want in a law practice he didn’t want to own. Wangji. Three years it had been since his didi asked him to use that name, and though it rarely felt strange now, it was his a-Zhan he saw step cautiously through the door of his office, files clutched tightly to his chest.

“Didi?” Xichen asked, getting up to tell his personal assistant that the man could leave early before shutting the door.

Xichen sat beside his brother, not wanting a desk between them. For it wasn’t the twenty-eight-year-old Wangji he saw next to him, but the frightened child of Xichen’s youth.

“Didi?”

“I found… I found... home,” his didi said.

“Home?”

“Mn.” That decisive nod, and there was the straightening of shoulders, that backbone of steel.

The folders were opened. The first showed a mid-sized town with a small-town feel that was hugged by soaring mountains. It was bordered by small-holdings, hobby farms with a focus on organic produce for the local weekly market. The pictured houses were magical, some almost hobbit-like in design. And the main street was filled with quaint shopfronts with quirky business names. Whipped & Wired?

It was a thriving town with a close-knit community, and it was self-sufficient enough that should it get snowed-in, it could survive without intervention for months. But his brother didn’t care about the fiscal side of the town, he had fallen in love with its soul.

“This is where you’ve been… disappearing of late?”

“Searching,” Wangji said. “For home.” He pointed to the town. “Home.”

In the next folder, were plans. Plans that had been years in the making. A store. Where Wangji could showcase his restorations, sell them—or, as his brother insisted, ‘find them the homes they need’—and funnel profits back into the business to support more restorations. Within the folder was a building on the main street already set-up for retail—a huge showroom with an office at the rear, and a large workshop connected to the showroom floor. It was an older, single-storey building with a fireplace in the workshop, and a courtyard that backed onto an access alley.

Next came Wangji’s business plan—his financials, lists of current stock, and the price to move himself and his work to the other side of the country. To his home.

“Need… a-Huan’s help. Can... can a-Huan… be in the room when I tell Uncle… I’m leaving? Please.”

Not ‘I want to leave’, Xichen noted but ‘I’m leaving’. Wangji had made his decision but he knew Uncle had a way of twisting any and all of a-Zhan’s words, of using a-Zhan’s anxiety as a weapon against him. Wangji believed himself stronger with Xichen's presence, but his didi was the strongest person Xichen knew.  

Xichen looked over the files, pulled the photos and floorplan of the store toward him. Imagined it filled with his didi’s restorations, with the pieces that spoke their soul to his brother. Then he saw the business name: ‘Ruh-Roh Retro’.

Scooby-Doo. Xichen’s favourite comic as a child. Lost in the ashes of that hateful fire so many years ago. Destroyed by a man who saw his nephews as commodities, who thought a-Zhan defective, expendable, and who had exploited Xichen’s love for his brother to Qiren’s own gain.

Xichen looked up at his didi from a chair he hated in an office that was a prison, in a suit that felt like chains. He smiled at his little brother as he shucked those shackles. “When do we leave for home?”