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Wei Wuxian had rushed into his life like a storm, disrupting the calm waters of his peaceful Gusu Lan home.
Although his stay had been short, walking through the Cloud Recesses, Wanji could see him in every part of the place. His laugh carried through the winds, his bright smile shone like a vivid illusion whenever he walked past the rabbits, and the familiar cries of “Lan Zhan! Lan Zhan!” echoed around him when he looked up at moonlit rooftops.
Wei Wuxian appeared everywhere. After Wangji had watched his home burn, and his body break, Wei Wuxian had been there, comforting and supporting him. At competitions, he would always somehow run into Wei Wuxian, neither of them trying, but finding each other as if connected by the invisible thread of fate.
And as much as Wangji tried, he could not ignore him. Not when Wei Wuxian’s intentions were good, when all he put forth was the truth, and yet, he was always the one who suffered. He was always the one everyone turned on. Wangji couldn’t bring himself to be one of those people.
Wangji couldn’t figure out why he felt this way, why even just thinking about Wei Ying made him lose control. Made him want to throw away everything else, to forget the world and everyone who had ever hurt them, and led everything to become like this.
No. He knew, but he didn’t want to admit it.
For the first time, he had fallen in love.
…
Wei Ying never asked for help. He retreated into himself, hid behind an exterior of laughter and jokes and an act of nonchalance turned arrogance.
Wangji finally saw it, when he visited Yiling that day. More than resentment, more than frustration, more than sadness, what really sat in the center of Wei Ying’s heart was hidden so well that it took years of suffering and loss to finally drag it out: loneliness .
But he would not reach out, as if afraid that everything he touched would meet the same fate as him. Instead, he chose to walk alone, as if his own pain paled in comparison to everyone else’s.
A man who lived as if he was on borrowed time, and died as if he was finally returning home. No matter how much Wangji wanted to reel him in, to keep him safe, he slipped further and further from Wangji’s grasp, going to a place he could not follow.
Wei Ying only came back to him in his dreams.
The love that Wangji could never speak aloud had been etched onto his back and over his heart in marks that would never fade.
Losing Wei Ying was so painful, Wangji swore that he would never lose anyone ever again. He continued building his name as Hanguang-jun like a belated apology to Wei Ying, for not standing by his side when he was defending the weak and the helpless, the wrongly accused. For leaving Wei Ying on that single log path by himself. He would never let anyone else be so alone again. He raised Wen Yuan as his own, giving him all the love and care that he was sure Wei Ying would have given him, had given him all those years ago back in the Burial Mounds.
But none of it would bring Wei Ying back.
…
The notes were faint, but it was a melody so intertwined with his very soul that he recognized it immediately.
Impossible…
But it had to be. There was no one else it could be, no one else who knew that song.
The source of the music was the body of Mo Xuanyu, the youth from Mo village. But…how? And why?
No, Wangji thought. Does that matter?
Wei Ying stepped back into him, and Wangji grabbed his arm by instinct, fueled by a fierce, intense desire to protect.
Recognition reflected in Wei Ying’s eyes, and Wangji was certain.
He was in love, for the last time.
…
Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan. That time, on Dafan Mountain, how did you know it was me?