Work Text:
At the sound of Zhou Zishu’s voice, Wen Kexing woke up.
Wen Kexing had a peculiar way of waking up: silently and very fast. His body did not move; his breathing barely changed. Only his eyelids blinked open, revealing those eyes with irises so black and whites so clear. Even as he took in the sight of Zhou Zishu conscious and trying to sit up, his eyes remained as unreadable as twin winter ponds, their surfaces too dark to spot a ripple in. Instead, Zhou Zishu read the new valleys underneath his eyes, the unfamiliar sharpness of his cheekbones, and the imprint the bedsheets had left on his cheek, a long, narrow crevasse in the snow of his skin.
“Ah Xu, you’re awake,” Wen Kexing said, voice low, words slow. Zhou Zishu wondered how long he had been sleeping; watching Wen Kexing, he thought he might have an inkling. When Wen Kexing stood up, his outer robe slid off his shoulders into a soft heap on the floor, but Wen Kexing did not seem to notice. “Don’t move too much just yet. I will go and get Da Wu—”
“Lao Wen.” When Zhou Zishu spoke, he found that he could not manage but the softest of whispers, barely above an exhalation. Wen Kexing heard him clearly all the same. “Is that all that you want to say?”
“Ah Xu,” Wen Kexing said, louder this time. Zhou Zishu watched him coolly from the bed. The effort to sit up had exhausted him, but he felt calm and patient as he waited for Wen Kexing, looking into those cold, dark eyes.
The next time Wen Kexing opened his mouth, a strange sound escaped his throat in lieu of words, something between a gasp and a sob. It reminded Zhou Zishu of ice cracking and splintering, of the breaking of a frozen river. An inhuman sound, a lonely sound. When Wen Kexing rushed towards Zhou Zishu, the whites of his eyes were threaded with red. Zhou Zishu exhaled, and let the torrent claim him.
Throughout it all, Wen Kexing had not let go of Zhou Zishu’s hand.
Qi Ye dreamt.
He dreamt of Zhou Zishu sleeping in a frozen mountaintop, oblivious to the gears of the world turning underneath him. He dreamt of spring coming. He dreamt of Nanjiang beckoning.
They said goodbye to Wen Kexing from the threshold of the kitchen, where he was busy making food for Zhou Zishu. Zhang Chengling saw them off instead. As Jing Qi and Wu Xi made their way down the mountain, Wen Kexing propped Zhou Zishu up against his own body and fed him mouthful by patient mouthful, filling him up with warm broth made thick with hope.
Jing Qi had watched Wen Kexing feed Zhou Zishu once. Although Wen Kexing’s expression was placid and his dark eyes remained inscrutable, although Zhou Zishu looked lax and peaceful in sleep, the sight of their twined figures felt too intimate, too raw. It felt like staring into an open wound. Unable to look on, Jing Qi had turned his face to watch the snow fall outside the window.
When Jing Qi and Wu Xi reached the bottom of the mountain, the sun had reached its zenith. Soon, Wen Kexing would return to the kitchen to prepare Zhou Zishu’s next meal and repeat the painstaking process all over again. Outside of the village at the bottom of Mount Changming, Wu Xi plucked the last of the plum blossoms and tucked it behind Jing Qi’s ear.
They returned to the mountain nearly a year later. Zhang Chengling greeted them. He had grown in their absence, in Zhou Zishu’s absence. Jing Qi thought he had to be almost as tall as Zhou Zishu now, but a comparison was not feasible. Wen Kexing was in the kitchen when they arrived, and in the kitchen when they departed once more.
Zhou Zishu slept.
Year after year, they came. Year after year, they found Wen Kexing in the kitchen and Zhou Zishu in his bed. Year after year, they left them where they found them.
One year, Zhang Chengling came down the mountain with them. That year, Wen Kexing walked out of the kitchen to see them off.
Year after year, they grew older, Jing Qi and Wu Xi. As their limbs slowed down and their bones grew heavier, their pilgrimages to the summit of Mount Changming, where Zhou Zishu slept in his bed, Wen Kexing stood in his kitchen, and time lay frozen in white snow, became less frequent.
One day, after they had said their goodbyes, Wu Xi told Wen Kexing, “Wen-xiong, we will not be coming any longer.” When Jing Qi looked at him in astonishment, Wu Xi returned his stare evenly. “Not in this lifetime.”
Wen Kexing saw them off from the threshold of his kitchen. Time seemed to have passed Wen Kexing by: his hair remained as black as crow’s wings, his eyes as dark as the day Jing Qi first met him. Similarly, Zhou Zishu slept, oblivious to the passage of time. Watching the young man before him with old eyes, Jing Qi was moved to say something, words that perhaps he should have uttered decades earlier. However, before Jing Qi could open his mouth, Wen Kexing put his hands together, bowed deeply, and said, “Da Wu, Qi Ye, I wish you safe travels.”
The plum tree at the bottom of Mount Changming had grown old. Even in early spring, its branches remained mostly bare. Jing Qi’s hair had grown as white as the snow draped over its boughs. Stunned, Jing Qi exclaimed, “The painted eyebrows are fading; the hair is tangled clouds… We have grown old, have we not?”
Taking Jing Qi’s hand in his, Wu Xi said, “They have not.”
Jing Qi glanced at the peak of Mount Changming, a distant silhouette behind a curtain of clouds, and sighed.
Perhaps he had learnt something from his encounter with Ye Baiyi. In the end, Jing Qi never asked Wen Kexing that question: Wen-xiong, it has been so many years; have you still not…?
When Wu Xi made to leave, Jing Qi followed.
A thousand years had gone by. The man who appeared at the threshold of Wen Kexing’s kitchen was no longer named Jing Qi. Wen Kexing invited him in, anyway.
The young man found that kitchen was cold: there was little difference between the dim interior and the frozen courtyard outside. One could easily mistake the place as uninhabited and abandoned. Wen Kexing, too, was cold; his existence did not seem quite human. The only source of warmth in the room was the pot of ginger soup, bubbling hot and golden.
When the man who was not Jing Qi offered to bring the soup to the bedroom, Wen Kexing frowned and said, “It’s not ready yet.” His voice had grown soft and low with disuse. “Would you like to talk to Ah Xu in the meanwhile?”
Lying in his white underrobes, Zhou Zishu looked as eternal as the snow that covered the peak of Mount Changming. Watching him, the young man sighed and murmured, “Zishu, it has been so many years. I have seen the Eastern Sea turn to mulberry fields three times. Your wife has turned back into a ghost. Have you still not woken up?”
When the wind blew, the tree at the foot of the mountain had no petals to shed, only snow. At the peak of the mountain, the night was long, the quilt and pillow cold. There were now blue seas where once was mulberry fields, but there still remained two ghosts at the edge of the sky.
The man who was not Jing Qi thought: if this was how it had to go, was it not too cruel?
Qi Ye woke up, and remembered that he was Jing Qi.
Jing Qi was very rarely awake when the sun had yet to rise. In the quiet dark preceding dawn, his heartbeat was thunderous. The snow was falling, and his blood felt too hot for this black-and-white world.
He tried to light the lantern once, twice. His hands were trembling, and it was not from the cold. When Wu Xi touched his shoulder, Jing Qi exhaled and let his hands drop to his sides. Unlike Jing Qi’s, Wu Xi’s hands moved surely and deftly in the dark.
As the flame illuminated the sharp lines of Wu Xi’s profile, Jing Qi murmured, “I saw a dream.”
Lifting the lantern, Wu Xi asked, “A bad one?”
“A strange one.”
They spilled out of their bedroom into the white courtyard, bundles of heat and a small light in a stark, inviolate world. At this hour, Wen Kexing should have been in the kitchen, taking a respite from his bedside vigil to busy himself with the task of keeping Zhou Zishu alive. However, the kitchen lay dark and silent, and the stove was cold under Jing Qi’s touch.
There was no light in Zhou Zishu’s room, either. As Wu Xi lifted the lantern higher, Jing Qi saw the empty chair by the bed and was about to turn away and search for Wen Kexing elsewhere—where, Jing Qi could not say—when he saw them.
They lay together, dark and silent, in the narrow bed. Under the light of Wu Xi’s lantern, they cast only a single shadow. It was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began: head to head, chest to chest, limb to limb, toe to toe—Jing Qi thought, surely their souls must have been touching.
They lay together, cold and still, even as Jing Qi laid his hand on Wen Kexing’s shoulder—what he thought might have been Wen Kexing’s shoulder. In the weak light, with their dark hair and white underrobes, they seemed to be made not of flesh and blood, but of ink and snow.
Not for the first time, Jing Qi thought: if Zhou Zishu had gone down to the Yellow Springs, would it not have been a kindness for Wen Kexing to follow?
The aftertaste of the dream lay heavy on his tongue still, along with the knowledge that it would have been a kindness. Not to the living, but to the dead.
“Wu Xi.” Jing Qi’s voice sounded oddly small to his own ears, half-swallowed by the silence. The falling snow was erasing their footprints from the courtyard, returning the world to its pure state. “Are they…?”
Placing the lantern on Wen Kexing’s chair, Wu Xi reached for a neck. Felt for a pulse. “Beiyuan,” he said gently, “they are only sleeping.”
Wu Xi’s hand was warm around his as they stood over the couple in sleep. Jing Qi tried to discern the rise and fall of their chests, but the night was too deep, the light too weak. Instead, Jing Qi turned his face to watch the snow fall outside the window.
“Oh,” he exclaimed, louder than he meant to be, “the snow has stopped.”
Zhou Zishu woke up at noon.
Having set down the food tray, Jing Qi straightened up and found himself looking into Zhou Zishu’s eye, gleaming in a shaft of sunlight, staring placidly at Jing Qi over Wen Kexing’s shoulder.
Instead of dissipating as a dream would, that dark eye followed Jing Qi’s movements as he crossed the room. Jing Qi hovered by the bed and watched Zhou Zishu. Zhou Zishu peered owlishly back.
In his waking hours, Wen Kexing guarded Zhou Zishu’s body jealously, and no one in the frozen mountaintop, neither man nor ghost, dared to begrudge him for it. Wu Xi kept his daily checks brief, and whenever Jing Qi pressed him for information regarding Zhou Zishu’s condition, he replied simply, “Wen-gongzi is preserving his body in perfect condition.”
Jing Qi frowned. “You make it sound as if Zishu were already dead.”
However, as the days drifted by, the more accurate Wu Xi’s words became. Crossing the courtyard after another evening of drinking wine alone, Jing Qi looked up to see Wen Kexing’s candle glowing at Zhou Zishu window. Winter had deepened, the days had grown short, and the waiting had changed: if they had been waiting for a man to wake up before, they were now waiting for a man to come back from the dead.
In his sleep, Wen Kexing guarded Zhou Zishu no less jealously. For the first time in three months, Jing Qi took a good look at Zhou Zishu under the light of day. Whether it was the effect of returning from the land of the dead or an impression brought about by Wen Kexing’s larger frame wrapped around him, his friend seemed oddly small in Jing Qi’s eyes. Even when he was injured, before Wu Xi gave him the medicine to counter the poison of the Nails, Zhou Zishu had never appeared as frail. Watching Zhou Zishu slowly tilt his head to look at Jing Qi better, trying to shift laboriously against Wen Kexing’s iron grip around his waist, Jing Qi was reminded of a kitten in his Nanjiang courtyard, tucked securely against its mother’s chest. Only a few days old, and already it was rebelling against enforced nap time. The rest of the litter had been stillborn; even asleep, the mother cat had kept her paw on the kitten the whole time.
“Good morning,” Jing Qi said pleasantly. “Although, really, it is midday now. It is the fifth day of the twelfth month, if you want to know.”
Zhou Zishu sighed. The soft hair on Wen Kexing’s temple fluttered with his exhalation, but Wen Kexing did not as much as stir. “Three months… Sleeping for three months has made me hungry. Is that food?” When he tried to sit up, however, Wen Kexing did not let go and did not wake.
Jing Qi watched Zhou Zishu struggle for a little while in amusement before saying, “Perhaps you would like to let him sleep a little more.” Moving the food tray to the bedside table, he added, “Your wife fed you well while you were asleep. I am sure he will feed you well now that you are awake. Just let him get some rest. These months, he has not had any.” At that, the weak rustling of Zhou Zishu fighting against Wen Kexing’s grip ceased. “Zishu, you have got yourself a devoted wife.”
“A foolish wife.”
“Foolish only because he decided to tie his fate to a man as cruel as you.” Jing Qi sat down on Wen Kexing’s chair, looked into Zhou Zishu’s eyes, and said, “I am glad you are awake. Digging two graves in the middle of winter in this frozen wasteland would not have been an easy feat.”
The number of graves did not even give the cruel Lord Zhou pause, taking it as his due. “As if Qi Ye would have been the one to dig them.”
“Watching a disciple dig graves for his masters would not have been an easy feat, either.”
After a pause, Zhou Zishu said, “Then, I am glad to have spared Qi Ye the undue trouble.”
“Zishu,” Jing Qi said sharply. An admonishment. They watched each other for a few moments, Zhou Zishu looking at Jing Qi over Wen Kexing’s sleeping shoulder, Jing Qi looking at Zhou Zishu lying intertwined in the sunlight. In the end, Jing Qi dropped his gaze and lamented, “For three months, I saw you, and yet I raised my cup only to the bright moon and to my own shadow.”
Tucking his head more comfortably against Wen Kexing’s, Zhou Zishu sighed and said, “I suppose I owe you that much.”
“Pay me back soon,” Jing Qi said, smiling. He rose to his feet. “This spoilt layabout does not know how to tend to people and will take his leave. Your wife will tend to you once he wakes.”
Jing Qi was at the threshold when Zhou Zishu called out to him. His voice was weak, but his words were clear. “Beiyuan.”
Jing Qi paused in his tracks. He turned around to look at Zhou Zishu. In the sunlight, the dust motes suspended above Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing’s heads were tinted in gold. They trembled with the quiet vibrations of Zhou Zishu’s words: “I am glad I am awake.”
Jing Qi grinned. “So am I,” he replied, and walked out of the room. It was a sunny day, a cloudless noon that had forgotten the previous night’s snow.
They were asleep when Jing Qi returned. Wen Kexing was on his back, one arm wrapped possessively around Zhou Zishu. Zhou Zishu’s head was on Wen Kexing’s chest, his hair hiding the scar Zhao Jing’s sword had left on Wen Kexing’s shoulder.
The bowls lay empty on the bedside table. When Jing Qi leant down to pick up the tray, his sleeve brushed against their bed. Jing Qi watched the synchronous rise and fall of their chests. Under the warm sunlight, they were breathing together, like two trees with trunks growing as one.
Wen Kexing was awake.
When Wu Xi and Jing Qi entered, he did not move to sit up. Neither did he let go of Zhou Zishu. Instead, curling protectively around Zhou Zishu’s lax body as a beast would its mate, he stared at Wu Xi and Jing Qi with those dark, unblinking eyes of his. “He just fell asleep again,” he whispered, loosening his hold just enough for Wu Xi to take Zhou Zishu’s pulse. Nothing more and nothing less.
“With Zhou-zhuangzhu having regained his consciousness, the danger has passed,” Wu Xi declared. “He will tire easily and require a lot of rest, but this is a normal sleep, from which he will not have trouble waking up.”
Wen Kexing took back Zhou Zishu’s hand and wrapped the man wholly in his arms once again. “Of course,” he said lightly. There was something not quite human about the man who was the Ghost Valley Master. Without Zhou Zishu, Jing Qi mused, Wen Kexing was as readable as a river gone to frost. It was impossible to divine what flowed in its depths. “Of course.”
They slept for days.
Or so it felt to Jing Qi. The kitchen lay silent, the stove cold. Unable to stomach the idea of Qi Ye and Da Wu serving him, Zhang Chengling had taken it upon himself to prepare their meals, the way Wen-qianbei had been teaching him. Alas, the disciple was early in his training and knew only to make porridge. After a dinner of porridge, a breakfast of more porridge, and a lunch of even more porridge, Da Wu took one look at Jing Qi’s face and stepped into the kitchen. Under the guise of teaching Zhang Chengling a medicinal Nanjiang recipe, that night, they ate Wu Xi’s food. The chair in Zhou Zishu’s room stood unused, and his window remained dark. But the bed remained warm, and the bowls came back empty.
They woke up, it seemed. They lived while no one was watching. Like a pair of beasts licking each other’s wounds in the dark, hiding their frailty away from the world. Letting no one witness them but each other.
One morning, Zhang Chengling burst out of Zhou Zishu’s room, empty tray in hand, and almost ran straight into Wu Xi. Jing Qi peered at him curiously. “Child, where is the rush?”
“Uh,” Zhang Chengling said eloquently. “Uh. Shifu—he’s awake.” Jing Qi looked at his wide eyes and realised that although Zhang Chengling had heard of Zhou Zishu’s improving condition, he had not actually seen Zhou Zishu awake just yet. “He’s awake and he—he asked for a bath to be brought to him.”
Wu Xi and Jing Qi shared a glance. “That’s good, isn’t it?” Jing Qi said. “That means he will probably be coming out of that room soon.”
So a warm bath was brought into Lord Zhou’s room. He and his wife, however, appeared to be asleep. When Zhang Chengling moved to wake the couple up, Jing Qi laid his hand on his shoulder and brought the child out of the room.
“They will use it when they are ready.”
Rubbing the back of his head, Zhang Chengling questioned, “But, Qi Ye, won’t the water get cold?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jing Qi said breezily. “That’s your shifu’s problem. Now, why don’t you show Wu Xi your progress with qinggong?”
When Zhang Chengling returned, the water was cold, and the husband and wife lay asleep in each other’s arms. Their hair, freshly combed, spread across the white, sun-warm sheets, two ink strokes merging into one.
Jing Qi woke up, and Zhou Zishu’s bed was empty. The sheets were cold, and the blankets were missing.
It was dawn, and the night had yet to give up all of its shadows. Jing Qi was reminded of dreams in which Zhou Zishu had died in his sleep. In those dreams, Wen Kexing had wrapped Zhou Zishu in the blankets, brought him outside, and dug him a grave in the snow.
In those dreams, Jing Qi always found Wen Kexing while he was digging a second grave, a sleeping place in the earth for himself, right next to Zhou Zishu's.
He found them in the kitchen, following the warm glow emanating from the room. A pot sat on the stove, throwing off heat and the sweet smell of Laba congee. The brazier had been lit, and Zhou Zishu sat next to it, wrapped in blankets and smiling, watching Wen Kexing fuss about him and the kitchen.
Attracted by their light, Jing Qi approached. However, before he could cross the threshold of the kitchen and greet the couple, something held his voice back and stilled him in his step.
He went to the dining room instead and warmed some wine. Opened the window and sat by it until Wu Xi found him.
Draping a cloak over Jing Qi, Wu Xi asked, “Beiyuan, what are you doing?” Instead of leaving Jing Qi’s shoulders, Wu Xi’s hands began massaging them instead. A warmth that was not the wine rushed through Jing Qi’s body.
Watching Wen Kexing carry Zhou Zishu across the threshold of the kitchen and into the white courtyard to feel the first rays of the sun, Jing Qi placed his hand over Wu Xi’s and replied, “Looking at the snow.”
Yesterday, it did not snow, and it rained instead. Three people went down the mountain to the green scent of fresh earth breaking through the frost. Zhang Chengling had been tasked by Wen Kexing to purchase supplies for the New Year feast. Wu Xi wanted to buy more herbs. Jing Qi—
“You are going down the mountain?” Zhou Zishu asked in surprise as Jing Qi got up from the table. Zhou Zishu was wrapped in so many layers of robes that it seemed as if he had not lost any weight at all since Jing Qi last saw him in the capital—a concession to his wife’s fussing.
“I want to see a tree,” Jing Qi replied and, despite Zhou Zishu’s curiosity, refused to explain further.
Outside of the village at the foot of Mount Changming, there stood a plum tree. Waiting for Zhang Chengling to finish his shopping, Jing Qi contemplated the blossom-strewn snow and murmured, “Last night came the sound of wind and rain. How many flowers had fallen down?”
Looking up, Wu Xi asked, “There are flowers on the branches still. Does it matter?”
With that, he plucked a red flower and tucked it behind Jing Qi’s ear.
At the sound of Wen Kexing’s voice, Zhou Zishu woke up.
“Falling asleep in the bath while I am combing your hair,” Wen Kexing sighed, “Don’t you dare say your wife does not pamper you, Husband Zhou.”
“Did the little tyke rub off on you while I was asleep? Would you like to be praised for carrying out your basic duties?” Zhou Zishu asked drily. Tilting his head, pressing a damp cheek against Wen Kexing’s calloused, scarred palm, Zhou Zishu dropped his voice and murmured, “Unless…my wife is unwilling?”
Wen Kexing proceeded to make a show of how willing he was by drying off Zhou Zishu thoroughly and dressing him in his favourite robes, although he ignored Zhou Zishu’s protestations against the layers upon warm layers that Wen Kexing kept piling onto him.
“What do I need all of these layers for?”
Wrapping a cloak around Zhou Zishu’s shoulders, Wen Kexing tried to coax him by appealing to higher authority. “Da Wu said this is a critical period of your recovery and that your body has to be kept warm…”
“What do I need them for,” Zhou Zishu said, leaning into Wen Kexing’s touch as Wen Kexing guided them towards the door, “when you are warm and you are mine?”
Wen Kexing trembled as they crossed the threshold, a faint shiver that nevertheless travelled all the way across Zhou Zishu’s body. It was not from the cold. At that moment, Zhou Zishu dazedly thought: so it would be from this now on, we would be together, sharing warmth when there was warmth, shivering side by side when it was cold.
Following the course of a long river winding to the horizon as the seasons changed and the world turned, until the water’s path merged with that of the Wangchuan River.
Like a pair of wandering jian birds sharing wings.
Throughout it all, Wen Kexing never let go of Zhou Zishu’s hand.