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He shines like the sun
Sizhui knows that that isn’t what people usually think about their friends, but he can’t help himself. Jin Ling is glowing, radiant in his light robes, exquisite gems glistening in his raven hair. He was immediately aware of him the moment he entered the conference hall, everything around him momentarily out of focus.
It wasn’t like this when they first met, barely teenagers, both sure, one more loudly than the other, to have truth at their fingertips. The reality, of course, was something entirely different.
When Jingyi whispered to him that he was the famous orphan of the Jin Clan, the spoiled and arrogant child that had known tragedy and loss since mere days after his birth, he didn’t pay it too much mind. He knew the entire cultivation world underestimated the young heir; he wanted to form his own opinion on the matter, as he always did when gossips reached his ears.
“We are defined by our actions or their absence” Hanguang-Jun told him a long time ago and Sizhui didn’t have anything to object to that. He hates rumours, gossip, the faint murmurs of his classmates, the sneaky glances of the adults. Thinking about it now, having collected the pieces of the puzzles that he didn’t remember he lost before, he believes to understand why it may have looked to him as those kinds of behaviours were following him and Hanguang-Jun wherever they went.
Anyway, the annoyance towards falsity, towards inconsistency between words and facts, was a strong side of his character. Do not tell lies is one of the first rules the Lan sect teaches little children and those kinds of smoky and dull communications were an infraction of that, just as a proper lie would have been.
So he chose to wait and see for himself.
It seemed to him that Jin Ling was incredibly easy to read, hence the ever-present misunderstandings between him and his friends looked absurd. Whether he liked it or not, the young prince wore his heart on his sleeve, leaking emotions like a fractured vase.
Sizhui immediately felt something akin to pity towards him, even if he was ashamed of his own perception. But the boy’s weaknesses, and his sometimes apparent helplessness, were so clearly visible it was frustrating.
So, without even realizing it, the young Lan took on the role he knew better to play: the caregiver. Just as the problem was evident, so was the solution: attention.
And perhaps it was that that noisy boy was endearing, or maybe that he understood his need better than he wanted to admit, even to himself, whatever the case was, Sizhui started to take care, pay attention, eventually reprimand, but mostly accept, listen, observe.
But managing human relations do nothing but cage them and Sizhui knew that, but sometimes he pretended he didn’t. It usually was reality that admonished him and took him back on a more genuine path.
If he had to point to a specific moment he would select one of the first night-hunts he, Jingyi, Zizhen and Jin Ling managed to organize after the latter had become sect leader. They were travelling back home for some days by then, setting up camp for the night near a dense forest, east of Yunmeng. It had rained all day and just then the clouds retreated to make room for the stars. The air was cleaner than before, washed by the storm, chilly but not uncomfortable.
Sizhui had just come back from the river, dishes clean and hands ice-cold, when he noticed his friend sitting on a rock not far from the tent, looking up at the sky, apparently lost in contemplation.
So he went closer, trying to make as little noise as he could: it felt like a delicate moment, hanging by a thread. Something in his friend’s face looked different than a moment before, when they all had dinner together, chatting but mostly listening to Jingyi’s unreliable adventure stories. Now there was something melancholic behind his gaze.
“There should be the constellation of Orion above us right now”
Jin Ling almost jolted despite his voice being less than a whisper. He quickly nodded, regaining his composure almost immediately, but without tensing up; he somehow looked at ease, as he usually was with Sizhui.
A beat of silence, maybe two, some frogs croaking near the river and a distant howl hooting.
“Today it would have been my mother’s birthday”
He said it like that, unsolicited, as if he had needed to explain himself but also as he if he had truly wished to share it with Sizhui.
So the Lan disciple sat next to him and said nothing: he wanted to treasure that communication and respect his friend’s longing. And above all, he didn’t want to force him to share anything more than what he felt comfortable with.
But more than that, he realized, he was overwhelmed: his friend was rarely that straightforward in expressing his most fragile parts of himself, despite every time they put themselves out in the open on their own accord, for everybody to see. This was different, it was a deliberate and willing choice and Sizhui had felt as he was holding a precious and delicate jewel that he absolutely did not want to break.
“I don’t know if my memories of her are real, everything I know is from stories someone else has told me…There is a portrait of her in my quarters back home, but jiujiu said that it doesn’t do her justice”
He had started to make little furrows in the ground with a stick while he was talking and Sizhui followed his movements with his eyes, feeling as he wasn’t able to look him directly in the face. Jin Ling’s voice wasn’t exactly sad, but more nostalgic and maybe a little frustrated, but all things considered he seemed relieved to entrust a tiny piece of his heart to someone else.
Give it to me, I will be happy to carry it for you
Then the movement had stopped and, sensing he was being watched, Sizhui tried hardly to reciprocate the look.
“Do you remember anything about your childhood?”
Jin Ling had managed to surprise him twice in a very short amount of time.
It was a question potentially heavy with incredible grief but Sizhui didn’t feel uncomfortable: there was genuine curiosity behind those maybe careless words. And judging by his friend’s expression he was already regretting his famous spontaneity.
They had discussed their respective past already and they agreed that they both shouldn’t feel responsible for the history of their families: they were different people and they were going to make different choices, better ones.
But Sizhui knew that Jin Ling constantly struggled with the effort to forgive himself for a genocide he did not commit, but that had his colours. Just as it was sometimes difficult for him to completely relax in the presence of Wen Ning. But what mattered to Sizhui was progress, the persistent and silent strive to change and do better.
“I remember hunger and the smell of coal” he had not meant to sound sad, just matter of factly.
Jin Ling kept on watching him, relieved that he had started to answer, and Sizhui had to look away once more, keeping his gaze in front of him.
His memories of that time were very vague; he was still a little child when he had to confront what would have been probably the hardest moments of his existence and little he had understood then and little he got now, wiped out by what had come next. The rest of his childhood sometimes made him ask himself some questions, but it never made him lack food or safety.
He risked a glance in the direction of his friend and Jin Ling was still there watching him fondly and patiently, and Sizhui remembers that he wondered then when did the young sect leader grow so much.
He nevertheless had felt serene and chuckled lightly when he realized that his eyes had started to tear up a bit. He didn’t remember the last time he felt safe enough to loosen up like that.
“I remember I was loved”
He whispered that without thinking and it was like opening an old box full of sensations he was sure belonged to that period of his life: the soft contact of fabrics of somebody else’s coat keeping him warm, a murmured lullaby, the simple smell of earth.
He looked down and some tears fell on the back of his hands, folded on his knees. A few seconds later he heard Jin Ling move and, without a specific reason to, he thought that the boy had left, put off by his raw and uncontrolled honesty, leaving him alone in the meadow.
Instead, a big and not so pale hand entered his view and went to rest delicately on his own.
The first lights of dawn were lazily stretching in the sky by the time the two of them had gone to sleep.
It was not that up until then Sizhui had been oblivious to Jin Ling’s strengths.
It didn’t matter how bravely he saw him fight during night hunts, or how fierce and determined he had looked standing up for himself and his battles, or or or. What struck the young Lan the most was his kindness.
He’s aware that Jingyi would probably laugh at him if he regrettably dared to say it aloud. But Jin Ling’s warmth was obvious to him, it wrapped around him like a spell.
It was in the way he bantered with Jingyi or how he listened to Zizhen’s constant rumbles, sometimes even forgetting to feign annoyance. In the way he cuddled Fairy, in how he would always be last in line when they went out on quests so he could keep everyone safe under his watch. In the painting he “secretly” bought for Wei Wuxian. His yearning when he spoke of the summer spent in Lotus Pier during his childhood. And when he taught Sizhui how to swim in a mountain lake one summer afternoon with unbelievable patience.
And and and
And maybe it was true that Jin Ling behaved differently with him, that he cared for him in a different, more tender way. However it was, Sizhui basked in it.
And maybe because of that, he could see things that others couldn’t. Or maybe it was only because he paid attention and with time he noticed that he wasn’t doing it just for the sake of the other boy but also for his own. It became a necessity, an act of habit. He was drawn to him, like he was the light of a candle in a dark room in the middle of an ink black night.
And slowly but surely, he started to feel like the differences between them weren’t building walls anymore, but instead bridges; they somehow completed each other, being even less different than he originally thought.
Reflecting himself in Jin Ling’s eyes he has seen his own worth.
Because he too wanted to be seen.
He shines like the sun
And it is true. Still, Sizhui keeps his eyes on him, even when Jin Ling’s ones meet his, locking together. It is wonderful indeed to feel, even for a split second, as if they were the only two in the room, in the region.
It is as when you catch your image in the mirror and remember you exist: you are alive right there, in that moment.