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“You love her.”
“Huh?” The startled look on Wen Kexing’s face is truly comical.
With a tilt of his chin, Zhou Zishu indicates Gu Xiang on the other side of the room, where she prepares a meal while Zhang Chengling hovers close, attempting to assist her and getting slapped silly for it.
“You love her, don’t you?” Zhou Zishu asks quietly.
“She’s my servant, I have to protect her.”
“If you're afraid to say it, I won’t judge you.”
“I’m not afraid of anything!”
“I think you are. You’re afraid of admitting it. You want people to think you’re mean and self-centered and have no concern for others.”
“So now you think me incapable of love?” Wen Kexing asks, highly affronted. “Try me.”
“I think you like to pretend you don’t care about anyone other than yourself.”
Wen Kexing huffs. “I compliment you to the heavens. And what do I get in return? To be treated like your servant.”
“You’re just fronting.”
“The compliments? I mean every one of them, a-Xu! I’m not pretending.”
“And isn’t that what I just said? You love her. Admit it.”
“She is mine so I am duty-bound to protect her,” Wen Kexing repeats.
“You love her.”
“Honestly, a-Xu, you are so annoying. Does one love a servant?”
Zhou Zishu raises one eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you hope that one can? If you’re my servant, that is?”
Wen Kexing snorts inelegantly and swigs from the wine gourd. “Wait! Did you just admit—“
Zhou Zishu laughs. Life hasn’t been this fun in a long while.
Zhou Zishu’s soul is coming back into his body. That’s how it feels. He hadn’t expected to care about anyone ever again, but he does now. He hadn’t expected to find someone who needs to rely on him, but now he has someone. Two someones.
Chengling is a literal child, an orphan, a pawn in the schemes of powerful men who care little about the boy’s actual happiness. Left to the Five Lakes Alliance’s tender mercies, he’ll wind up married to someone’s unwanted daughter, or imprisoned in a high attic like an embarrassing, demented relative, or sold as a slave to a faraway regime that doesn’t give a shit about the Mirror Lake sect, or – and this is the most likely option – dead.
Wen Kexing. That’s another story entirely, but this is Zhou Zishu’s long-lost shidi and he will always think of him as such. There’s evil in his past but it simply doesn’t matter. Zhou Zishu will shoulder half the blame that accrues to him and will protect him, to death if it comes to that.
Wen Kexing’s soul also seems to be coming back into his own body, as his concern for Gu Xiang and Zhang Chengling becomes obvious, not to mention his penchant for stepping between Zhou Zishu and any form of danger. Left to his own revenge-filled devices, Wen Kexing will wind up destroying the world, or going completely mad, or murdering everyone in the Five Lakes Alliance, or – and lately this seems the most likely option – getting murdered by Ye Baiyi.
There’s only one good choice, in Zhou Zishu’s thinking, and that’s getting Chengling and Xiang and Wen Kexing settled somewhere relatively safe. None of them are out of danger yet, and any of them could die at any moment. Zhou Zishu hopes to die first so that he need not live without them. Somehow, though, he must leave all of them in a place where they can survive and perhaps even lead good lives. Without him.
On the way to Longyuan Cabinet, it seems mean to make Chengling carry the stunted dwarf Long Xiao on his back, but the boy needs to step up his strength training if he’s ever going to catch up in martial arts. Whenever they stop for a rest, Ye Baiyi recommends dumping the little beast on the ground, or preferably over the nearest cliff, but Chengling does no such thing. Through the boy’s eyes, Zhou Zishu sees what he himself feels… some pity for a child who was was born deformed. Yet that child had a good, kind father to raise him and still turned out bad. One of Zhou Zishu’s martial arts brothers in Four Seasons Manor had also been born with a short stature and a malformed arm, yet had succeeded in becoming a skilled martial artist. When he died in the service of the Window of Heaven, Four Seasons Manor had mourned him as much as any of the other brothers. Beauty isn’t everything. One can be born with advantages but in the wrong place at the wrong time, like Wen Kexing, lovely on the surface and damaged beneath.
Ye Baiyi punks the lot of them when he pretends to lose his footing on the bridge over the ravine. Wen Kexing takes it poorly.
“You do realize,” Zhou Zishu says in an aside, as they walk into the Longyuan Cabinet, “that you totally lose your chill around Ye Baiyi.”
“That old monster?” Wen Kexing frowns. “He thinks he’s so significant.”
“Can you argue with an immortal, though?”
“Pah! I could be an immortal if I chose.”
Zhou Zishu finds himself caught between an eye roll and a fond smile. “That remains to be seen.” His soulmate is halfway to crazy and Zhou Zishu knows it.
But Wen Kexing’s halfway to redeemed as well: when Chengling fell from the bridge, Wen Kexing was the first to dive after him, terrified. Later, inside the mountain, Wen Kexing even bows to Long Que and weeps in Zhou Zishu’s arms, and it feels like he is turning very human. This despite the fact that Zhou Zishu is beginning to guess at Wen Kexing’s hidden identity, which is not human at all.
Well, who hasn’t done something bad at least once, right? The gods invented forgiveness for a reason, surely.
After Long Que’s remains are buried with appropriate ceremony and deep kowtows, they keep traveling. When they bed down in the forest that night, Zhou Zishu makes certain, as he always does these days, that Ye Baiyi doesn’t get started on any bedtime stories. Often the grown men discuss plans in low voices around the fire while the boy sleeps. More often, Ye Baiyi and Wen Kexing wind up sparring verbally and sometimes physically.
“Do you two do that just for fun,” asks Zhou Zishu, trying to hush them, “or is it mutual hatred?”
Wen Kexing and Ye Baiyi, arms and hands momentarily stopped in the midst of martial arts forms, exchange glances.
“Bit of both,” says Ye Baiyi.
“Speak for yourself, you old fart,” says Wen Kexing. “I hate you.”
Ye Baiyi catches him off-guard, smacking the side of his head. “Oddly, I don’t hate you, prissy brat.”
Wen Kexing is about to deploy his fan and Zhou Zishu sees that that won’t end well, so he steps between them.
“Enough, let’s get some rest. I’ll take first watch.”
“Oh right, the blind and deaf man takes the watch,” says Ye Baiyi.
“I’m not blind or deaf!”
“You’re losing your senses, right?”
“I don’t need to taste or smell an enemy, do I?”
Wen Kexing lowers his fan and looks thoughtful. “Smell can be helpful. Like when you were wearing that disguise, I could smell you from a long way off.”
Zhou Zishu glares at him.
“But you smell delightful now,” Wen Kexing hastens to add.
“Good lord, do you fools ever stop flirting?” Ye Baiyi says, straightening his robes, stretching his arms to the sky, and yawning. “Go hide behind a bush or something and I’ll take the first watch. Just keep it down.”
“We are not doing anything like that!” Wen Kexing hisses. Then he looks over at Zhou Zishu. “Or are we?” He sounds suddenly hopeful, like he hadn’t even considered this possibility but it’s potentially available. Maybe?
Zhou Zishu shakes his head. How did it get to this point? “I’m going to be over there by Chengling.” He has to get away from Wen Kexing right now. Senses or no senses, he’s finding it harder all the time to act uninterested in what’s on offer. Somehow, he’s not even sure how, Zhou Zishu has fallen hard for this beautiful maniac, and he’s in way too deep now to ever get out.
Not that he wants to get out. But still, this is not the time.
They lose Ye Baiyi in the morning when he suddenly flies off to find Da Wu, greatest healer of their age, with the plan of cajoling him to attend to Zhou Zishu’s injuries at Four Seasons Manor. They already lost Gu Xiang when she ran off after her crush (with the blessing of all and sundry). Wen Kexing is devastated but refuses to show it. He knows this is what she deserves. That he doesn’t stand in her way is a credit to his burgeoning humanity.
Oh, and speaking of Four Seasons Manor…
“Let’s go home!” says Chengling.
“Let’s go home!” says Wen Kexing.
Zhou Zishu’s heart nearly melts, given that both of them consider Four Seasons Manor to be their home although neither has set foot there. He takes it for what they really mean, that he himself is their home now.
So he leads them home.
Four Seasons Manor appears over the last ridge. Zhou Zishu is rather surprised that it’s still there: through the gates, past the dragons and lions, past the wilted trees. It’s fallen into disrepair. All eighty-one of his brothers are dead now, and the other inhabitants have long fled, fearing the wrath of Prince Jin. Three people aren’t a lot to repopulate this huge place, but it’s start. Gu Xiang will probably come back at some point, maybe even with Cao Weining. The boy needs training away from his own sect. He’d make a nice second disciple. Gu Xiang might even make a third. She’d be a handful in the opposite way that Chengling is.
For now, though, there’s a lot of work to be done if this place is to be livable again.
Wen Kexing professes himself too lazy to do anything other than lay in a spot of sunlight like a cat.
Zhou Zishu is the master here, so he can’t be expected to do menial work, right?
This leaves Chengling, who is willing but he’s still a slip of a boy, a sapling that could blow away in a brisk wind.
Urgent tasks include drawing water from the well. “Chengling can do that.”
Gathering green stuffs from the fields. “Why not let Chengling.”
Shaking out the bedding. Chengling: “I’m on it!”
The work gets done sooner than expected because the grownups pitch in after all. Zhou Zishu shows Chengling how to mend the broken well rope. Wen Kexing shows the boy how to cook and how to kill a chicken, although that last task isn’t very successful. Together, the three check the boundaries and fix the protective array.
The last time that Zhou Zishu was at the manor, he painted over the final plum blossom in blood red. The place was quiet then, those few remaining inhabitants walking around on muffled feet. Now the quiet is peaceful instead of tense. The trees are beginning to flower again and the air is filled with lovely scents. Or it would be, if he could smell anything. Still, he remembers the flowering trees. His sight is dimming, but he can still see the soft colors of pink and magenta and cream. This place is home, once again.
One soft evening, dinner’s on the grill, the chicken with the reprieved life is clucking about the kitchen courtyard, picking off stray bugs, and Zhou Zishu is enjoying a jug of wine in the courtyard, when Wen Kexing comes along, waving his fan seductively, spying him there and getting a wicked gleam in his eye.
They wind up chasing each other around the courtyard, laughing, tripping, and then falling over, tangled up in each other somehow, silk robes billowing everywhere. They don’t speak or move for a moment, each trying to draw breath in the midst of all the giggling.
Zhou Zishu is the first to get to his feet, dusting himself off.
“Let me help,” teases Wen Kexing once he stands, brushing at Zhou Zishu’s robes in what Zhou Zishu considers to be privileged places.
“Hands off,” he laughs, attempting to bat Wen Kexing away.
Nothing stops Wen Kexing, though – not Zhou Zishu’s stinky disguise, not the hundreds of times he shoved him away or sniped at him. It’s not that Zhou Zishu’s defenses in this realm are weak. He’s pushed off a whole lot of offers, both when he was fit and when he was not. It’s not that Wen Kexing is the only one who broke down his defenses. It’s that Wen Kexing is the only one who could have done so.
For weeks now, he has argued with himself over what he plans to do about Wen Kexing’s outlandish flirting. By now he accepts that Wen Kexing is being truthful in his ridiculous way. He’s known all along that he finds Wen Kexing incredibly appealing. Not a single lover he’s had in the past was ever half so pleasing to him as Wen Kexing is. So he thinks Why not? because he has no faith that Da Wu and Ye Baiyi are going to succeed in saving him – he’s going to die, fairly soon, fairly painfully.
He leans into Wen Kexing’s space and kisses him briefly, a soft press of lips.
What happens next he never could have predicted. Wen Kexing jerks back and actually drops his beloved fan. It clatters to the ground. His eyes are so wide and startled.
Did Zhou Zishu miscalculate? Seriously? Isn’t this what Wen Kexing has been angling for all along? Maybe he did miscalculate.
He clasps his hands before his face and bows his head. “Forgive me, Lao Wen.”
He turns to leave but Wen Kexing springs into action, grabbing his arm; when Zhou Zishu turns back, Wen Kexing self-consciously releases the arm.
“I wasn’t ready!” he says, his voice sounding nervous. “Do it again, I just wasn’t ready. I didn’t think you—“
“Is that your excuse?” Zhou Zishu smiles to take away the sting of the words. His own nerves are on edge now but he doesn’t want that to show.
“Do it again!” Wen Kexing demands, frowning.
“You had your chance.”
“I wasn’t concentrating!”
“Now that’s an excuse I’ve truly never heard before.”
Wen Kexing looks desperate, flushed with pink. “A-Xu! Why are you being so cruel? You called me beloved.”
Chengling chooses that awful moment to poke his head around a doorway. “Master Uncle, I think the food is burning. Should I turn it on the grill? Oh, am I interrupting, um…”
“Yes, turn it over, you idiot!” Wen Kexing hollers. “And holy shit, leave us some privacy.”
Chengling’s head disappears.
“That kid,” Wen Kexing complains. He looks at Zhou Zishu from under his eyelashes, awkward now.
“I didn’t think you remembered,” Zhou Zishu murmurs. Part of him had hoped Wen Kexing had been too drunk to remember the word he’d used. “Let that night fade from your memory, shidi.”
“Oh,” Wen Kexing mumbles. “You want me to forget?”
That’s not the point Zhou Zishu meant to make. He wants Wen Kexing to forget the pain and the wretched grief of that dreadful night, but clearly it came out wrong. He leans over to pick up the fan, then tries to snap it open and closed.
“You are so bad at that,” Wen Kexing says fondly, still shy.
Zhou Zishu smiles and taps the side of Wen Kexing’s head with the fan, then hands it to him. “Some other time, Lao Wen, when you’re concentrating, give me warning, okay?”
Long past sunset, with the quarter moon gracing the sky, after they’ve gone through a jar or two of wine, Zhou Zishu steps out the front of the manor and looks down into the dark valley spread at his feet. His legs collapse under him without notice, and he sits hard on the dirt, cross-legged, his face in his hands. He’s not weeping; he doesn’t weep, as a rule, never did, really, and anyway he hasn’t enough senses left to make a proper job of it.
But can he just please keep this? For a short while? In the place where he was first happy, and later miserable, and now happy again. Let it be a home for Chengling so that the boy doesn’t turn out like Wen Kexing, seeking safety and solace but finding only horror and hatred.
In spite of the tiny hope Zhou Zishu nourishes, he must prepare himself to die within a year or so, and by then he’ll probably be entirely incapacitated by the Seven Nails of Torment. This means there is only so much time to re-invigorate Four Seasons Manor so that it will be a home for Chengling and Lao Wen and Xiang and Weining. They need to attract new disciples, boys from every sect, and girls as well. Four Seasons had never had girls as disciples – he’d never had a sister for a junior or senior – but that in retrospect was a mistake. Of course, right now he’s glad that there were no girls, because then he’d have been painting more plum blossoms for them as they died. Yet Gu Xiang is as deadly as any brother he’d ever had, and it makes no sense to keep girls from joining the martial arts world, if they have the skills and stomach for it.
Zhou Zishu imagines a time years from now, his own grave on the high hill near to Qin Huaizhang’s, where the new sisters and brothers of Four Seasons Manor will visit and pay respect. Maybe Lao Wen will be with them, or maybe he’ll be off somewhere else, sowing his own peculiar brand of discord while accompanying the ghosts of the Valley. He wishes he could leave Wen Kexing with something more, something to tie him to the manor and to the sect, something to keep him away from the ghosts.
A shooting star flames across the sky and he shudders. The omen might be good or it might be bad, but he has a premonition that very dreadful things are yet to come.