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Shi Qingxuan was having a devastation ghost over for dinner, and wasn’t that a funny sentence.
He’d starts supplying his own food after the first few times. A nice gesture, Shi Qingxuan supposed, except he couldn’t help but feel like Black Water was thinking about his financial state, and that made him feel prickly and cold between the shoulder blades.
“You know, I’m the host, I should be feeding you, it’s only polite and I would hate to be a poor host to a Supreme Ghost King,” he’d tried once. Black Water had scowled.
The next week, he found Shi Qingxuan in front of the temple and held out lunch. Shi Qingxuan had laughed and applauded the creativity, but honestly the new arrangement was causing a problem too. Because his friends had started asking who the new tall and unpleasant-looking companion was that they kept seeing Shi Qingxuan with. And what could one say in response? ‘This is Black Water Sinking Ships, it’s complicated?’
“You know, they’re noticing you,” he’d said, finally, after one too many questions.
The next time he showed up at the temple, Black Water brought extra food and offered it to a few of Shi Qingxuan’s friends where they were huddled a little ways away and obviously gossiping.
‘Offered’ was a strong word. He said, “here, if you want,” with a face like he’d just eaten something sour, handing it over and then going to sit down next to Shi Qingxuan without another word.
“What was that about?” Shi Qingxuan had asked.
“You said they were bothering you about it,” Black Water replied, “and they said – I heard that food might help smooth things over.”
And Shi Qingxuan didn’t tell him this, but this presented two more problems:
- “They said” implied that Black Water was talking to someone about all this, and unless things had really changed, that could really only be two people – well, one person and the other who went with him (and who would also, Shi Qingxuan reasoned, be the kind of person who would recommend sharing food as a peacemaking tactic, even though his own cooking was so bad). Anyway, Shi Qingxuan was both humiliated by the realization that these conversations were happening and desperately curious to know what they were possibly like, and it was killing him not to be able to just message Xie Lian and
- Rather than sate the questioners, this had only emboldened them, and Shi Qingxuan was now faced almost daily with a horde of people saying things like:
“Ol’ Feng, I heard your friend is rich enough to feed the whole city.”
(“Haha, you should see his debt, he’s terrible with money,” Shi Qingxuan said, privately wondering what it would do to Black Water’s reputation if that got out and if it would be funny.)
“So your friend’s trying to bribe us into liking him, eh? Well, it’s working!”
(“You’re too easily bought,” Shi Qingxuan had replied.)
And, most horrifyingly: “hey, your friend is going to have to do more than that if he wants our permission to get more serious, haha!”
(Shi Qingxuan didn’t know how to respond to this one.)
And all of these distractions came on top of the fact that Shi Qingxuan couldn’t freaking figure out how to feel about Black Water coming around in the first place, and the corollary that Black Water’s own reasoning was also confusing.
***
“Okay, but really, what do you get from being here?” She finally said, months into this.
(This was also the first time she’d worn her woman’s clothes and makeup around Black Water. He had, typically, said nothing except, “that’s a pretty color.” “It’s dirty,” Shi Qingxuan had said, uncharacteristically deflecting the compliment.)
(She missed being able to change forms achingly, sometimes, but this helped.)
“I told you,” Black Water said, “I want somewhere to be, and this serves.”
“You could go anywhere, talk with anyone, and this is the best option? I find that very hard to believe.”
Black Water shrugged one shoulder, as if to say, believe it.
“But, really,” Shi Qingxuan wheedled, “Why here? Why me?”
Shi Wudu had used to call her habit of repeating the same question badgering. Ming Yi Black Water had called it fucking incorrigible.
“I like the climate,” Black Water said flatly. Ming Yi had always kept refusing to answer, too. It had been like a game between the two of them.
But Shi Qingxuan was tired of playing, and she had a new weapon now.
“He Xuan,” she said. He Xuan’s face twitched like it always did when she said his name. And, like always, he caved.
“I like being around you,” he said. “I felt empty, after everything, but a little less so when I’m here.” He grimaced and shoved more food into his mouth, probably to stop talking.
And what was Shi Qingxuan supposed to do with that?
***
The last time she’d been at Puqi Shrine, she’d heard Xie Lian and his friends talking about what they called emotional honesty. Something everyone was trying in heaven, apparently. Shi Qingxuan had wondered, not for the first time, just what the hell was going on up there these days.
But more to the point, in the before times, she would have considered herself good at emotional honesty. Very honest, very open, about how she felt with everybody.
But the thing was, emotions weren’t very hard when you had everything and liked most people. It turned out that they were a lot harder when you had lost a whole lot and everything was different, and what were you supposed to tell the ghost king who betrayed you, ‘I like your company too, even though I don’t think I should, because you hurt me so bad, but I miss my best friend?’
No. Not an option.
“What do you do with your time when you’re not here?” she asked, the next time Black Water was over.
The ghost shrugged. “Nothing interesting. There’s some upkeep at the manor.”
“I don’t remember that as being a very well-kept place. No offence.”
“Everyone says that,” Black Water said stiffly. “I keep getting told to take better care of it.”
“So you clean your gross house and visit me. That’s it?”
“What else should I be doing?”
“I don’t know – you should have friends! Hobbies!”
“Hobbies.”
“Don’t scowl at me like that. You know I’m right.”
“I know nothing of the kind,” Black Water said, but nothing more, and that felt so familiar that Shi Qingxuan shuddered.
The truth was, she didn’t like the moments that reminded her too much of Ming Yi and the way they’d been before. It felt like stepping too hard and discovering a splinter stuck in your foot you hadn’t known was there.
And it made her suspicious. Shi Qingxuan didn’t like being a suspicious person. She didn’t think it was in her nature.
“Are you just coming here because I’m all that’s left?” She blurted out. Black Water slowly put down his bowl.
“Not exactly,” he finally said.
She folded her arms in a gesture she knew he would read as explain, please.
Black Water inhaled. Or seemed to. She was still getting used to that, to those ghost moments that were just a facsimile of a living man. “It’s true that I don’t have much else I need to do,” he said. “But I didn’t lie when I said I liked it. Being here. With you.”
“And I remind you of the old times.”
“And that, yes.”
“Well,” Shi Qingxuan said, “I hate that.”
“Why?” Black Water said. He looked genuinely confused. Which was rare.
“I don’t think it’s fair of you to want them back.”
Black Water was still looking at her, and Shi Qingxuan felt her anger rising far faster than she’d expected when she started down this path. “Because you broke them,” she went on, “we had the old times, and you broke them, and you don’t get to have them back – you think I haven’t noticed that you like to sit and listen to me talk and not say much yourself, just like we’re back at one of those banquets? You don’t get to have it back when you haven’t even said sorry.”
Black Water said, “I don’t know how to apologize for that.”
“Well, you could try,” Shi Qingxuan spat.
They sat and looked at each other.
Finally, Black Water said, “Can I think about it?”
He was sitting there so calm, like she was just a problem he had to work through, like his anger and emotions hadn’t gotten them here in the first place. Shi Qingxuan lost it. “Yes, but not in my house,” she nearly yelled.
Black Water stood up.
“And don’t you dare ask Xie Lian about this,” she said to his back. “Figure it out yourself.”
***
A few days went by and then Shi Qingxuan started getting questions. Again.
“Where’s your friend? Where’s his food?”
“Tell him when he comes back to bring my favorites!”
“You didn’t have a lover’s quarrel, did you? Aw, don’t worry, he’ll come back and bring you gifts to make up.”
“That’s not what happened,” Shi Qingxuan retorted to the last, but she could feel her face burning anyway. Her tormentor laughed and then patted her on the shoulder.
“I’m sure he’ll be back soon!”
A whole group of them were sitting on the temple steps with her. They all nodded in agreement and began to switch to encouraging words of their own.
“We saw how much he liked you, he won’t be able to stay away!”
“You’re a catch, he must know he doesn’t deserve you anyway!”
“A man doesn’t bring that much food with him if he isn’t serious!”
“It’s not like that,” Shi Qingxuan insisted. “And I don’t even know if I want him to come back.”
“Want us to help you decide?” one offered.
“Sure,” Shi Qingxuan said, really not sure at all how this could be helpful without a very long story she did not want to tell.
There was silence for a moment, and then someone asked, “why did he leave?”
“I told him to go.”
“Why?”
“Because the way he was acting reminded me of how he was back – before, before he hurt me,” she said slowly.
A couple of whispers. Her friends were very polite about not bringing up the little they knew about her past. In serious matters, anyway.
One of them said, “I once had to stop talking to a friend because they pretended nothing had changed, even when it had.”
Shi Qingxuan said, “I know he knows things have changed. But sometimes it feels like they haven’t changed enough. Like we’re just falling back into those ways.”
“Do you miss him?” one young man piped up. Shi Qingxuan nodded, flushing again.
“Oh, I know!” said the woman who’d mentioned her old friend. “We can make a list of the good and a list of the bad, and then look at them objectively.”
In the absence of a handy scroll, two youngsters were assigned to keep track of the pros and cons. They sat waiting and everyone looked at Shi Qingxuan.
“Uh, okay,” she said. “Pro: we were friends for a very long time.”
The youth on the left held up a finger.
“Con,” she went on, “he was lying to me that whole time.”
The one on the right nodded and counted.
“Pro: I like being his friend. It makes me happy.
“Con: he hurt me and he hasn’t apologized.”
“That seems pretty serious,” the man sitting right next to her said gently.
Shi Qingxuan took a shaky breath and nodded. “Pro: I think I could forgive him if I knew it was all in the past.
“Con: sometimes I’m afraid it’s not all in the past.”
“And that’s why you don’t like when it feels too much like before,” someone said. “You’re afraid that it will happen again.”
“I – I guess,” Shi Qingxuan said. She’d never thought of it that way before, but – “I know logically, the same thing can’t happen again. I know the truth now, I know who he is, he can’t fool me again.”
She thought for a moment.
“But,” she added, “I guess I am scared of that. It would break me to go through that again.”
Abruptly, tears filled her eyes. Someone patted her knee. Another murmured, “you’re unbreakable, Ol’ Feng.”
She sniffled into her sleeve.
“We’re tied,” the youths announced, when no one else was saying anything.
Shi Qingxuan breathed and wiped her eyes. This had helped so much more than she thought it would. “Thank you, guys.”
Soft answers of “anytime” and “no problem” rippled through the group. And when it became clear that she wasn’t going to say anything more, they moved on to lighter gossip and news and plans for the next meal.
But over the next few hours, people kept coming up to Shi Qingxuan and squeezing her shoulder, or offering her an extra bite to eat, or just telling her to “hang in there.”
Even as Wind Master, she’d never felt so light.
***
When he knocked on the door again, Black Water was holding a glass bowl. Inside it was filled with water, and in the water a little fish was swimming.
At least, Shi Qingxuan thought it was a fish. He leaned over and peered closer. “What,” he said, “is that.”
“It’s a fish.”
“Yes. But it’s made of bone?”
“You’ve seen the bone dragons.”
“Yes,” Shi Qingxuan said, “but I still don’t think that explains why you’re holding that right now.”
Black Water shifted uncomfortably – that echo again, that shadow of the human in the ghost. “I know you told me to go away, and I thought I should stay away as long as you want me too. Because I still don’t know how to…do what you need. But I thought, you don’t have an easy way to reach me. So I made this.”
He handed the bowl to Shi Qingxuan who was staring, thinking how this was an abnormal amount of words for Black Water to say all at once.
“It’s for communications,” he went on. “If you give it a password it’s like you can speak into my private array. I can’t talk back, but I’ll hear if you want me. To come visit,” he hastily added. “Or whatever.”
He took a hasty leave after that. Shi Qingxuan looked at the fish for a long time.
***
Pro: he’d given her her favorite memory.
It had been an Autumn Banquet, and she’d been so drunk, and Ming Yi had teased her and complained the whole way as he escorted her back home. But he’d guided her into bed with gentle hands, and when he’d turned to go, she’d said, “Ming-xiong, stay” and he’d grumbled and sighed and said “you better fall asleep quickly,” but he’d settled on top of the covers next to her all the same.
And she had fallen asleep too quickly to remember the look on his face. Some hours later, in the time before dawn, she heard him leaving. But when she first woke at that early hour, still hazy and drunk, there was an arm draped across her, and when he got up to leave, she swore she felt a kiss pressed into her hair.
Pro: she still wanted him to stay.
***
“Okay,” she told the fish a couple weeks later. “I’m ready to talk.”
Black Water was in her home about an hour later. She liked that, liked the space.
“I don’t think I need an apology after all,” she said to start. “I think I need – something else. Two other things.”
Black Water opened his mouth and closed it again. Then he just nodded.
“First,” Shi Qingxuan said, “it feels overwhelming to be the only thing you have. I need you to at least try to make other friends.”
Black Water frowned and wrinkled his nose in a way that looked very juvenile.
“Oh, don’t be like that, I’ve found it very helpful.”
Black Water kept scowling, but he nodded again.
“And second, I need to know that this time is going to be different. That things between us will be different. That you’re not just around because it’s easy to go back to being Ming Yi and the Wind Master. I need to know that nothing like what happened before will ever happen again.”
She finished talking and held her breath. For a long moment, Black Water said nothing. Then: “Okay. I understand that. What do you need to know all of these things?”
Shi Qingxuan thought. While she did, Black Water added brusquely, “and quit holding your breath like that. I don’t like it when you don’t breathe.”
“You don’t,” she muttered. And then said, “I would take a promise.”
He cocked his head to the side, and his eyes were suddenly very far away. Shi Qingxuan waited, marveling a little to herself. She’d never seen He Xuan so openly consider something before.
“I promise that I will not deceive you or lie to you again,” he said finally. “I went back to how it was because it was easier, and I was afraid that you would rather have it that way, how it was. You said you were happier then.”
“I did say that,” Shi Qingxuan admitted, “but now that we’re here, I want to be here.”
Black Water was looking at her like he was expecting more. And there was more, there were endless things to say, but she felt tired. A conversation for another day. There would be so many more days to have those conversations.
So Shi Qingxuan smiled. “Do you want something to eat?”
***
Someone looking in, Shi Qingxuan thought, wouldn’t necessarily notice the difference. He Xuan started coming over again, and Shi Qingxuan’s friends slipped her lots of deeply unsubtle winks and smirks and pats on the back. From before, the days were just as they’d been before.
Except. He Xuan was still the quieter one, but he started conversations more often, and actually occasionally deigned to tell Shi Qingxuan things about his life. And Shi Qingxuan was delighted to discover that being around He Xuan was different than Ming Yi. He Xuan was still blunt and sometimes mean, but not in the tired and put-upon way Ming Yi had always been. He Xuan was cleverer, more unexpected. More like a collection of sharp corners than a series of dead ends. Shi Qingxuan found, to her surprise, that she liked He Xuan better than Ming Yi.
Maybe it was just the honesty. Thinking back, Shi Qingxuan hadn’t known that Ming Yi wasn’t real, of course, but she might have had a bit of an inkling that something about him was false. It was how Ming Yi had always been so predictable – always the same way annoyed, the same way sighing at Shi Qingxuan, the same way wanting to be somewhere else.
Even if you knew someone so well, centuries-well, they should still be able to surprise you from time to time.
Like how He Xuan kept showing up. With a fan, with a fish, with dinner.
Or like how he turned to Shi Qingxuan, several weeks after they’d made up, and said, “how are you feeling?”
“Uh, what about? Do you mean in general?”
“About, um, me,” He Xuan said, face moving through some of the most glorious grimaces Shi Qingxuan had ever seen.
That was another thing. He Xuan was more expressive than Ming Yi had been. Still guarded most of the time, but when he did show an emotion, it was horribly entertaining. Shi Qingxuan liked this, too.
“Well,” she said, “I am glad you are still here.”
He Xuan nodded. “I am, too,” he said, perfectly serious.
Shi Qingxuan was going to need a written list to keep track of all the differences, at this point.
***
A few days later, he said, “you know, I feel strange that I haven’t gone to your home in all this time.”
He Xuan frowned. “Why? For one thing, you can’t travel there on your own, and for another, I assumed you wouldn’t want to.”
“Yeah,” Shi Qingxuan said, “but I do want to. I think I want to see it again.”
He Xuan was slowly tapping his fingers against the table, one at a time. Shi Qingxuan watched the movement, fascinated.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” He Xuan said. “No. I know it’s a bad idea.”
Shi Qingxuan pushed his chin out. “I’m not changing my mind.”
He Xuan’s brows knit together. Thinking.
Shi Qingxuan looked at his fingers again and said, “He Xuan, does it make you…nervous?”
(He’d been using He Xuan’s name more, these last few weeks. Watching the effects of it lessen as they both got more used it.)
“No.” He Xuan’s eyes blazed, but then settled, and he placed his hand in his lap. “We already did that. I don’t want to do it again.”
“Nothing will ever be like that again,” Shi Qingxuan said, quietly. “Even if you wanted it to be.”
“I know,” He Xuan said.
Neither said anything, and Shi Qingxuan knew they were remembering the same things.
He Xuan finally asked, “why is it important to you?”
“Because I want to leave all of that behind, I really do. But,” Shi Qingxuan swallowed, “I didn’t get time to have closure on anything before, when you just whisked me away after everything and then I was just. Here. And I remember all the time, but I want to see the actual space to – to confront it all again, and say goodbye, and then move on.”
He looked at He Xuan and waited for a reply. It was hard for Shi Qingxuan to explain why he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about going back. The Black Water Demon Lair and what had happened there felt like an open wound that had never been stitched closed.
He Xuan still wasn’t saying anything. So Shi Qingxuan went on. “I just feel like…it hangs over me. I dream about it all the time.”
“I still think this isn’t a good idea,” He Xuan said, “but I will take you there, if you wish.”
***
It was so, so much worse than Shi Qingxuan remembered.
Before, he’d been terrified, frightened out of his mind and beyond confused by what was happened. And so the manor had seemed to have danger in every corner, some unknown threat in every shadow, and Shi Qingxuan had tried not to look too closely for fear he’d never be able to look away.
All of that was gone now. It was just an empty building, dour to match the owner who walked by his side. Nothing here, nothing to see, and Shi Qingxuan had no fear.
So with all of that gone, he could see it for the tomb it really was.
Shi Qingxuan had never been in a place that so fully reeked of despair. Grief was ground into every brick, every stone. The building was artless, dark and dank and undecorated. There was no hiding its only purpose as a holding cell, a place that only had corridors so that they could be paced, day after day, by a man with nothing to do but wait.
Within these walls, He Xuan’s whole life’s purpose was clear. There was nothing. He didn’t have one. Not anymore.
And then they reached the room.
They had walked through the whole manor before getting there, He Xuan adjusting for Shi Qingxuan’s slower speed and offering an arm to lean on. They encountered no one else – Shi Qingxuan was sure that, even if other ghosts lived here, He Xuan had sent them away. And then they came to this room last, and Shi Qingxuan knew that was intentional, too.
He Xuan said, “are you sure?”
Shi Qingxuan pushed open the door.
It was, like the rest of the house, empty.
Well, not quite. There were the urns, and there were the chains.
There was no trace of his brother’s blood.
Shi Qingxuan walked over to the chains on the wall. He touched them, and the feeling was so familiar; he turned and saw the room, and saw He Xuan standing there, and the sight was so familiar; he took a gasping breath and the air smelled so familiar, damp and cold and like everything hidden from the world.
Shi Qingxuan felt as though he’d been struck in the chest. He crumpled to the ground, air rushing in and out of his mouth, and the memories flooded on top of each other. Tears gushed up his throat and a sob burst from him.
For the longest moment, a moment that felt like a century, Shi Qingxuan was sitting on the floor alone, weeping, empty space pressing in and around him like a coffin.
And then there was an arm around his back, and another under his knees, and He Xuan was saying, “I’m sorry for this” and Shi Qingxuan was being lifted into the air and carried out of the room.
Eventually, the movement stopped, and sometime later, when Shi Qingxuan was able to breathe evenly again, he looked up.
They were under a tree near the edge of the lake. On the side of it where there was just a forest, the manor visible only in the water’s reflection. He Xuan was sitting and leaning against the trunk, and Shi Qingxuan was slumped awkwardly against him.
He Xuan’s shoulder was very damp. Shi Qingxuan felt bad about that. He raised a hand to try to wipe some of the snot onto his own sleeve, but glanced at He Xuan’s face as he did so and was caught by what he saw there. He Xuan was gazing ahead, head resting softly against the tree. Some of his hair had snagged on the bark. His eyes looked so far away – Shi Qingxuan didn’t know what he was seeing, but it definitely wasn’t their surroundings.
There was a little line of a frown between his eyebrows, but his mouth was slightly open, and Shi Qingxuan thought that he looked almost halfway to relaxed. Which was not something he’d ever seen before. He almost wanted to keep watching, but he felt like he was intruding somehow.
Shi Qingxuan resumed patting at his shoulder, and He Xuan stirred and seemed to come back into himself. As he shifted, Shi Qingxuan suddenly noticed that He Xuan’s hand was resting lightly between his shoulder blades. As if he’d been stroking his hair. Maybe He Xuan realized this at the same moment, because they both froze and then tried to speak at the same time.
He Xuan said, gruffly, “better?”
“I got snot all over your clothes,” Shi Qingxuan said.
He Xuan shrugged.
“And I do feel better.”
“Good.”
Shi Qingxuan was becoming intensely preoccupied with trying to figure out how to disembark from He Xuan’s lap without drawing more attention to his being there in the first place when He Xuan said, “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to bring you here again.”
“No,” Shi Qingxuan said, “I thought I needed to see it again, but now that I have, I have no wish to see it anymore.”
“Good.”
“But, you shouldn’t either.”
He Xuan looked at him. “Explain.”
“I hate it there and I think it hurts you just as much as me to be there.”
“That’s my home. I built it. I live there.”
“Yes,” Shi Qingxuan said, sighing, “but, it’s terrible. He Xuan, that’s the worst place I’ve ever been in. You made yourself this horrible angry building and then you sat in it for centuries and stewed in your rage and bitterness and that’s all it was ever good for.”
“I spent a lot of time elsewhere during those centuries.”
“Don’t change the subject. You can’t live like that, especially now, when your whole revenge quest is over. What are you supposed to do there now? How are you ever supposed to get past it?”
He Xuan glared for a minute, and then closed his eyes and slumped his head forward. “I rebuilt it three times in the past year,” he mumbled. “I put a lot of work into it.”
Shi Qingxuan, taking this as acquiescence, said cheerfully, “We knew you have a lot of very weird problems, but we’ll work on it.”
He Xuan made a snorting noise that sounded like a stillborn laugh. Shi Qingxuan was charmed and also took the opportunity to scoot over and sit next to rather than on him.
“I really did not like seeing you that way,” He Xuan said.
Shi Qingxuan looked down at his hands. “I didn’t know it would be like that. But I don’t regret coming here, because now I know what it’s like. And I think it will be good for both of use to move on from this place.”
They listened to the wind in the trees. On his last visit, Shi Qingxuan hadn’t thought of this place as anything but a trap. It was strange to notice how ordinary some parts of it were. If he didn’t look at the lake, they could in any forest, under any trees.
“I keep telling you I don’t know how to apologize,” He Xuan said. “But I do. I know what I can offer, and I’ve been holding it back because I don’t think it’s enough.”
Shi Qingxuan waited. He’d become so much better at doing that.
“I’m not sorry for a lot of things,” He Xuan said. “I’m not sorry that I wanted revenge. I’m not sorry that I killed your brother.
“I’m not sorry that I included you. I think I should be sorry for that, but I can’t be. Not yet.
“But I am sorry for what I took from you, and I am sorry that I lied to you for so long. I am sorry that I broke your trust. I did not realize how much I liked having it until I didn’t.”
“Thank you,” Shi Qingxuan said. And then: “I missed you, when you weren’t around. I would like for you to stay.”
“So would I,” He Xuan replied. He was studiously looking in the other direction. Shi Qingxuan was pretty sure he would be flushed if such a thing were possible.
Actually, he was also probably a little bit red. Whatever, he pushed past this to get to the other thing he’d wanted to say. “But I want you to stay because you really, actually want to. Not because you feel you have to. I want to be your friend, not your atonement.”
“And I want your friendship, not your pity,” He Xuan answered.
Neither of them was looking at the other now.
“You can have it,” Shi Qingxuan said, solemnly. And then he grinned. “Also, please tell me what I, a mere mortal, am supposed to pity about the all-powerful fish demon?”
“I am not a fish demon,” He Xuan grumbled, but Shi Qingxuan chanced a sideways look and one side of his mouth was just the slightest bit curled up. Shi Qingxuan would take it. For now.
***
“Do we really have to do this?” He Xuan asked, whining a little.
“Yes,” said Shi Qingxuan, as she dragged him towards the temple steps. “They’re very helpful with this sort of thing.” One of her friends saw them coming and started waving. She waved back.
He Xuan said, “I told you I would try to have my own friends. I did not agree to interact with yours.”
“Oh, be quiet. It’s healthy to hang out with people who aren’t ghost kings.”
They reached the group. Several people smiled at Shi Qingxuan. A couple of them winked suggestively. He Xuan sighed.
“Hello, everyone! My friend and I were hoping you could help us with something,” Shi Qingxuan said.
There was a chorus of greetings. Shi Qingxuan nudged He Xuan, who said, “hello.”
“My friend has recently decided to redo his home, and I thought you could help us make a list of what it should include.”
(“How do you plan on explaining who I am?” He Xuan had asked.
“They won’t ask. And they already know the things that matter. You brought so much food.”)
The group was waiting for He Xuan to elaborate more. When he didn’t, someone asked, “is there anything you would like to keep about your old home?”
“It was very private.”
Another pause.
“What do you see yourself mainly using it for?”
“Eating. Sleeping. Managing my debt.”
Shi Qingxuan laughed, and said, “those are all the things you do now. What else would you like to add?”
“Well,” said He Xuan, looking as though he was dragging every word out against his own will, “I used to be a scholar, but I have been very…focused…on one area these past several years. I could have a better library.”
Shi Qingxuan beamed.
“Do you ever entertain?” one of the group called.
“No.”
“I would like a room for when I visit,” Shi Qingxuan said, looping an arm around one of He Xuan’s. Somebody whistled.
“You are a menace,” He Xuan hissed, not moving away.
***
(“I thought I would never get over it, at first, and then the other life started to feel like a dream even when I remembered so clearly,” Shi Qingxuan said, under the trees. “I know it hasn’t been that long, really, but sometimes the time since I left heaven feels like it’s been my whole life. And sometimes it feels like it just ended, and sometimes it’s both at the same time, and I don’t know what to do with that.”
“I know,” He Xuan replied. He didn’t have to say, I feel the same way. Shi Qingxuan knew, too.)