Chapter Text
Dad Tip #89: Look at situations positively.
Chengling wakes at midnight to the sound of creaking steps. For a second he panics – the room he’s in is extremely dark and extremely cold, and nothing is familiar at all. But then he hears Shifu cough, and the creaking steps continue down the stairs, and he remembers. The new house!
Now that he remembers, he tries to rein in the panicked feeling, but the sounds in any new house are a little scary, especially in an old new house that’s probably at least 30% haunted. One of the windows in his new room is broken, and the shadows that it’s making on the walls are unspeakably creepy, so he has to hide his head under the blankets. Chengling really has been trying to be brave, even though so much has been changing lately, but sometimes a boy reaches a breaking point and that point is creepy window teeth shadows when you’re alone in a room in a haunted house.
He cries for one minute, since it’s dark and he’s hidden under the blankets, but he’s been having a harder time getting his tears out lately, ever since his uncles yelled at him so much about crying, even though his family had just died. Sometimes it feels like the tears are building up inside him like a tidal wave, but they still won’t squeeze out of his eyes.
He tries to think about something else, like how tomorrow he and Shifu will probably fix the creepy windows, and how Shifu has been looking so much happier since they escaped the city where he used to have a job he hated. Chengling is also happy to have escaped, since he’s with Shifu who takes really good care of him, and he doesn’t have to worry about being passed around from uncle to uncle anymore.
It works a little, but the tidal wave is still trying to come out of his stupid dried-up eyes, and he’s still kind of panic-breathing because of the teeth shadows, and sometimes he misses his brothers so much it feels like there’s a black hole in his chest. Even if they were mean sometimes, they were always there to protect him from window teeth.
Shifu’s creaking steps come up the stairs again, only this time they stop outside Chengling’s room. Chengling tries to even out his breath, like he’s still asleep, and it maybe works because Shifu walks away to his room, but then he comes back, only this time he comes all the way into the room and sets down something big and soft.
Chengling peeks his head out from his blankets. Shifu is sitting up on his sleeping bag, back straight and eyes closed. He has a lot of trouble sleeping, Chengling knows, because of old injuries from an accident. Shifu hasn’t told him what happened, but he spends a lot of nights like this, sitting up and walking around because it hurts too much to sleep.
Shifu doesn’t say anything, or even open his eyes, but Chengling has lived with him for three months now, and he’s starting to understand that Shifu is the kind of person who will always do whatever he wants or needs to do, no justifications or excuses. Maybe he heard Chengling crying, or maybe his room was filled with spiders – either way, Shifu wants to be here, with him. Chengling is not alone, and the window teeth don’t look so scary anymore. As he falls back to sleep, he feels a hand on his head, and the tidal wave inside him recedes a little.
*
When Chengling wakes up the next morning, Shifu has already folded up his sleeping bag and gone downstairs. The room is warm now – he’s laying in a patch of sun and the breeze that’s coming through the broken window is warm and smells like flowers.
“We’ll have to go out somewhere for breakfast,” Shifu says, when Chengling has come down the stairs. “We have a lot of work to do today.”
“Okay!” The sun is shining and the birds are singing, and Chengling is having a really nice day so far. The house is not haunted at all in the daylight, and everything is just unfamiliar enough to be really interesting. He follows Shifu out the door and there are flowers everywhere! It was too dark to see them when they arrived last night, but the yard is full of them.
“We should walk to town,” Shifu says. “I can’t bear the thought of getting in the van again.”
“That’s okay with me,” says Chengling, taking a deep breath to smell the flowers and the grass and the sunshining air. He didn’t know how it would be to live on a farm, but so far it’s really great.
The driveway is long and winding through the woods, and they emerge on a busy road. The town is secretly very close by, even though the farm and house feel like another world.
“I used to walk to school this way every day,” says Shifu. “The roads weren’t so busy back then. And there weren’t any of these housing developments.”
Chengling does know about the housing developments – that was what made Shifu want to come back here in the first place. Some company had offered him about a million dollars for the farm, so they could tear down the old house and build a new set of these cookie-cutter houses.
Every minute that passes, Chengling is gladder and gladder that Shifu decided to come back, and that he decided to bring him along. He skips a little down the hill, feeling happier than he has in a while. Everything will be okay.
The cafe that Shifu brings them to looks like it’s been around since Shifu’s grandfather was Chengling’s age. It’s cute, but looks like it grew out of the cobblestones a hundred years ago.
“Just like I remembered,” Shifu says, halfway confirming Chengling’s assessment. “I used to come here before school every day to get a pastry.”
The barista smiles brightly and waves when they come in. Shifu gets tea and Chengling gets a hot chocolate, and the barista tells them to sit wherever they want.
They’ve just sat down at a table when the door opens and a man and a girl walk in. They’re both extremely fashionable like models. The barista smiles even more brightly, if that was possible. “Wen-shu! A-Xiang! Good morning!”
“Good morning, Cao Weining,” the man says grandly, leaning on the counter. “The usual, thank you.”
The barista – Cao Weining – nods and smiles, and gets two mugs off the shelf. “Right away!” He’s not really looking at the man, just at the girl.
The man turns to survey the room while he’s waiting. Chengling looks away quickly as he feels the man's eyes sweep over them. He doesn’t want to be rudely staring. Shifu doesn’t pay any attention at all – he’s just slowly sipping his tea.
He hears footsteps and looks up again – the man is walking over to their table! Chengling shrinks back from his glamorous aura. The girl he came in with hasn’t noticed – she’s talking to the barista.
Luckily the man isn’t paying any attention to Chengling at all. He’s only staring at Shifu.
“You must be new here,” says the man to Shifu. “I would definitely remember if I’d seen you before.”
“Hm,” says Shifu. He’s still sipping his tea. Chengling wishes he could be as collected as Shifu always is.
“What’s your name?” The man asks, and, astonishingly, pulls up a chair to their table. “Are you passing through town?”
“No,” says Shifu.
The man sparkles. “You live here? That’s the best news I’ve ever heard. I’m Wen Kexing, I live just up the road, you must tell me where you live so I can come deliver a housewarming gift.”
The man – Wen Kexing – is making a very strange face, like a housewarming gift isn’t really what he means. Shifu finally looks at him over his teacup and says, “that won’t be necessary.”
“I assure you, it is,” says Wen Kexing. “Just like it’s necessary for me to know your name! We’re practically neighbors, and you have to know your neighbors! What if you needed to borrow an egg?”
“I would go buy eggs,” says Shifu. He looks kind of annoyed.
This doesn’t seem to bother Wen Kexing. He smiles even more like Shifu is being very funny. “Well, what if I needed to borrow an egg from you? I would need to know your name, and also have your number just in case an emergency came up.”
“I don’t have a phone,” says Shifu, which is actually true. When he quit his job, he’d thrown his phone out the window and it got crushed by a bus, Chengling watched it happen.
Wen Kexing is astonished by this. “No phone? That can't be true.”
“It's true!” Chengling is momentarily overtaken with the urge to defend Shifu’s honor, but it evaporates immediately under the force of Wen Kexing’s gaze. “Shifu never lies,” he finishes, mumbling a little.
“No phone? No lying?” Wen Kexing shakes his head a little. “I should have known you were a paragon as soon as I saw you. Perfect and beautiful.”
“Do you talk like this to everyone?” Shifu asks.
“Of course not,” says Wen Kexing. “Only those who I know will become my very best friends.”
“That’s very optimistic,” says Shifu. “I find it hard to believe you have friends –you’re extremely annoying.”
That is possibly the rudest thing Chengling has ever heard Shifu say, but Wen Kexing must think it’s the best thing he’s ever heard, because his smile gets even bigger and he even laughs a little.
“Won’t you take pity on me?” Wen Kexing’s eyes get very big and sparkly. “If you tell me your name, I’ll stop annoying you for today at least. If you don’t tell me, I’ll have to keep talking to you until you do.”
“Well in that case,” says Shifu. “You can call me Zhou Xu.”
That... is not Shifu’s name. Luckily no one is looking at Chengling because his face is definitely giving that fact away.
“A-Xu,” says Wen Kexing.
“I said Zhou Xu,” says Shifu.
Unfortunately Wen Kexing completely ignores him by turning his attention to Chengling. “And what should I call you?”
Chengling is momentarily frozen – should he make up a fake name? Will it be okay to use his real name? He tries to look at Shifu, maybe he’ll hint with his eyes or something, but he’s just sipping his tea again.
“I’m, um, Zhang Chengling,” he manages, after floundering for about fifty years.
Wen Kexing smiles at him, but it’s a more comfortable smile than the one he made at Shifu. It’s just regular and friendly instead of whatever was happening earlier. “You should meet a-Xiang – Gu Xiang, over there – I bet you’ll be best friends.”
Chengling looks back at the girl – he does not think that friendship will be possible. She has that air of occupying a social status far beyond what Chengling will be capable of attaining. Even though she’s just sitting there yelling at the barista, she’s doing it in a way that makes her look very cool.
He nods, though, to be polite.
“Perfect,” says Wen Kexing, and turns back to Shifu. “I’m so glad to meet you, I feel sure we’ll meet again soon.”
“I hope not,” says Shifu.
“We definitely will,” Wen Kexing sparkles. “I’m sure of it. Now I must deliver a-Xiang to school.”
He breezes to the counter to pick up his drinks and the girl, and they both breeze out of the cafe. Chengling feels a bit like he was walking down some steps and missed one. The barista is looking after the girl with a very sad and longing sort of face. Shifu finishes his tea and sets down his teacup.
*
“Why’d you tell that guy a different name?” Chengling asks on their way home.
Shifu shrugs. “He was too annoying to know my real name.”
“Was it okay that I told him my real name?”
Shifu laughs. “It’s okay. It’s not like you have anything to hide – you’re only thirteen.”
That’s kind of a weird thing to say, and Chengling chews it over while they’re walking back up the driveway. Does Shifu have things he needs to hide? Isn’t a name just a name? Why does it matter?
He’s prevented from worrying over it further once they get home, since Shifu puts him immediately to work. First he has to sweep out the kitchen, and then they get in the van and drive to a bigger town to buy a new refrigerator, and come back and unload it and set it up, and then they have to go grocery shopping and that’s all before lunch.
“It’ll take a few days before we can fix the windows,” Shifu says over their slightly burned lunch. “You’ll have to go a few more days with the broken one in the bedroom.”
Chengling feels a small amount of dread at that.
“I’ll sleep in that room until the windows are fixed – I think it’s warmer in there,” Shifu says, which is very relieving. If Shifu is with him he can go forever with a broken window in his room.
“And,” Shifu pauses. “At some point you’ll need to start going to school.”
Ah. School.
“I can just stay here and help you fix the house,” says Chengling, after his own pause. “I don’t really learn anything at school anyway.”
“I think it might be good for you to make friends with people,” says Shifu. “You can’t just stay up here all your life like a hermit.”
“But you’re going to,” says Chengling, making his eyes very big and pleading. “I could stay with you and keep you company.”
He’s been shuffled around so many schools since his parents died. It doesn’t get easier or better.
“Well,” says Shifu. “Maybe you won’t have to start for a few weeks. But soon we’ll be working so hard you’ll be begging to go to school.”
“I won’t! I’ll help a lot!” Chengling digs back into his lunch. He’ll be the best helper Shifu has ever had.