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Ye Baiyi came into the house on Mount Changming like a stormcloud. Rong Changqing watched him, noting the less-than-coordinated yanking as he took his boots off and the redness around his eyes. So he wasn’t just still annoyed, then—the man yelling at the bottom of the mountain had said something to throw him off. He sat up quickly. “Baiyi? What was it?”
“They’re throwing another Heroes’ Conference,” Ye Baiyi said. He threw his second boot down, then sat down hard in the nearest chair. Rong Changqing watched him, his mouth dry. Ye Baiyi glanced up at him, then sighed. “It’s not like with Xuan’er. He brought the Token of Honor. Ghost Valley is stirring again.”
Ghost Valley had stirred then, too, but it had been the stirring of carrion-eaters fighting over his son’s body. He glanced away, feeling that old cowardice tugging at him. It had all gotten so much bigger than he ever expected it to get, and now… “What did they do?”
Ye Baiyi’s mouth tightened. “I’ll go deal with it. You can stay here.”
“No, we’ll deal with it together.” Rong Changqing stood, casting around for a bag to start packing. They had to have something; he just hadn’t needed to find it in the last hundred-odd years. “It’s my mess, anyway,” he said.
“Changqing, you’re safer up here,” Ye Baiyi tried. “What are you going to do without the snow and ice?”
Rong Changqing took a deep breath. “If you can leave, I can leave. There’s no risk I’ll let you take alone.” He glanced at the window, to the landscape that was all shades of white, grey, and brown. He missed green. “It will be good to walk through the world again with you.”
The Yueyang Sect’s seniors looked like they were about two seconds away from sending someone to pull Ye Baiyi off the scaffold he was perched on and teach him a lesson about insolence. Unnoticed in the shadows of the gate, Rong Changqing crossed his arms and smiled.
Gao Chong held out an arm to stop his hot-headed friend and asked, “Shaoxia, are you here on behalf of Mount Changming Sword Immortal?” Rong Changqing had to press a hand over his mouth to stifle his laughter at the guess. The Yueyang Sect disciple standing beside him gave him a sidelong look.
With a dramatic flourish of his sword, Ye Baiyi cut down the carved pendant hanging from the scaffold, sending it flying into Gao Chong’s hand. “Take your Token of Honor!” he cried.
That was enough of that. As the crowd murmured in surprise and Gao Chong examined the token, Rong Changqing pushed through the small group of disciples at the gate, pretending to scramble across the courtyard as if he had just caught up. “Sorry, sorry, sorry! This disciple apologizes for his shidi’s clumsiness.” He bowed hastily and shallowly to Gao Chong and then Shen Shen. “I’m afraid our shifu never disciplined him. I am the disciple of the Changming Sword Immortal,”—he cast about for a likely name—“Li…Song. Song as in pine tree.” He grinned at them.
Above him, faintly, he could hear Ye Baiyi snort.
Gao Chong seemed angry not to be speaking directly to the Changming Sword Immortal (if only he knew). Rong Changqing folded his arms and listened politely, with the air of a disciple who would take a message to his master, who would return it or not at his leisure. He’d perfected it many years ago, though he had not had a chance to use it since he began wandering with Ye Baiyi.
At the end of the speech, he bowed again. “I can see that many famous heroes have troubled themselves to attend this gathering personally. The Sword Immortal has every intention of keeping his promise, but he has limited patience for things like conferences. Since he has entrusted us to return the Token of Honor to you, you may tell us anything you would tell him, and he will come when this gathering of heroes is ready to move.”
Ye Baiyi disappeared somewhere during the dance of courtesies, and Rong Changqing was not surprised. Truth be told, the noise of the world outside their mountain was starting to get to Rong Changqing, especially after a few hours of the best heroes Jiangnan had to offer posturing and squabbling over the Ghost Valley problem. He found Ye Baiyi at the camp they had set up outside of Yueyang and collapsed face-first into the grass with a groan.
“It’s your fault for not just demanding they respect you,” Ye Baiyi said unsympathetically. “Do they really think the Changming Sword Immortal is going to look old?”
“They think the Sword Immortal is one man who is a lot older and wiser than either of us,” Rong Changqing mumbled. “Which neither of us ever bothered to correct. Shen Shen told me he’d heard our ‘shifu’ had been on the mountain for five hundred years.”
Ye Baiyi poked Rong Changqing with his foot. When that failed to make him move, he said, “If you were going to use an alias, you could have told me. You were never any good at coming up with lies on the spot.”
“I didn’t know they were going to mistake you for his messenger!” Rong Changqing protested. “I thought you always said the best lies are ones that people want to believe anyway? They came up with it.”
Ye Baiyi made a rude noise. “Yes, Li uhhhhhh Song-shixiong, I’m sure no one thought it was strange you needed a minute to think about your name.”
Rong Changqing rolled over just in time to catch Ye Baiyi’s most shit-eating grin before it faded. He laughed just seeing it; it was one of his favorite expressions. “Ah, it’s been so very long since I had to take messages for a master. How many years has it been since you seduced me away from a very promising first disciple position, again?”
“Stop telling people I seduced you.” Still, a hundred years or more on, Ye Baiyi flushed and avoided his eyes while fluffing all his feathers. “It seemed like a very reasonable worldview at the time. I was only twenty.”
“Justice, truth, righting wrongs and saving the meek from the strong who oppress them,” Rong Changqing said, with accompanying grand gestures. Ye Baiyi glared down at him. He was close enough that Rong Changqing could reach up and squish his cheeks, meeting his eyes upside-down, so he did. Ye Baiyi, as always, went still and let him do it. “Ye-shaoxia, Ye-xiong. Remember those days?”
“I remember you getting it into your head that maybe violence wasn’t the solution to all problems,” Ye Baiyi said. “That maybe some people just needed another chance.”
The smile fell off Rong Changqing’s face. He dropped his hands and sighed. “Was I such a fool? If ghosts can move on, they can be reborn into a new life…was it such a terrible idea?”
Ye Baiyi shifted, pulling Rong Changqing’s head up to rest on his crossed ankles. He looked down at him seriously, looking as remote as the face of their mountain. A moment later, the expression cleared, and he smiled bitterly. “They were just people, in the end. You always saw the best in people; not a lot of them lived up to your hopes. What has Ghost Valley done this time?”
Rong Changqing closed his eyes and recited the litany of atrocities: the massacre of two sects; the deaths of several other martial artists, including the appearance of ten decapitated heads at a magic show; above all, the breaking of the promise that had kept Ghost Valley and the human world safe from one another. Once you joined, you were not supposed to leave. Whoever the current Ghost Valley Master was, he had forgotten the first and only promise that mattered.
Last time that happened, his son had died in the midst of the battle. Rong Changqing could see Ye Baiyi remembering it, his eyes shuttered with pain. “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” Rong Changqing said. “What’s happening with Ghost Valley now, and what they were trying to do twenty years ago.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ye Baiyi said. “We only promised to wipe it out.”
“It does matter,” Rong Changqing insisted. He groped over his head for Ye Baiyi’s hand, pulling it down until he could cradle it against his chest. He felt it tighten in his grip and rubbed his fingers over Ye Baiyi’s knuckles to ease the tension. “I know it matters to you; you don’t have to pretend. We’ll figure out what happened to our Xuan’er.”
“You enjoy all the beauties you want to, I’ll make my own fun,” Ye Baiyi said the next day, as Rong Changqing hesitated at the sound of music. He had wanted to protest that he wasn’t tempted by the ladies inside, but by their songs, but Ye Baiyi was gone before he protested. He frowned. It was true that once, a very long time ago, he might have…but how Ye Baiyi could imagine he would be the same now, Rong Changqing didn’t know.
Still. That was a new song; he wondered about all the songs he had missed in their long exile.
A few hours later, he finally tracked Ye Baiyi to an inn and found he had left chaos behind him. It was beginning to be a familiar feeling, and he was beginning to understand Ye Baiyi’s frustration in their earlier years, when the dynamic had most often been reversed. “I’ll pay for the food,” he told the server who was recounting every moment of despair and wonder as he had watched Ye Baiyi consume enough food to feed an army.
“Oh, not to worry, it was already paid for,” the server said.
“By whom?” Rong Changqing asked. What little they had brought with them was in Rong Changqing’s purse.
The server cast a look around. “Two gentlemen. I don’t see them just now, but I believe they have a room for the night…”
Armed with a description, Rong Changqing sat at a table near the door and watched the comings and goings. It was a busy inn, with all the martial arts world in Yueyang, it seemed. He marked every pair that came through the door, until he spotted one that seemed likely. And that was interesting: they didn’t wear any of the sect uniforms Rong Changqing had been trying to keep track of, but they moved like martial artists.
“Young masters! Young masters!” he called out, waving to them. The taller looked at him with amusement and said something to his companion, who shook his head and turned towards his table. Rong Changqing waited until they were just close enough that he wouldn’t have to shout again to say, “Were you the two generous fellows who treated a man with a bottomless stomach?”
“It was I,” the taller man said, with a sardonic bow.
The other elbowed him. “With my money,” he said in a low murmur that seemed to be meant for only one pair of ears.
“Wen Kexing,” said the first man, as if his friend had not spoken. “And this is Zhou Xu, of course.”
“Li Song,” Rong Changqing replied, well into the character of the (human, mortal) disciple by now.
“Is the story that interesting?” Wen Kexing asked.
Rong Changqing smiled. “Only that the rogue in question is my responsibility. I would be happy to pay you back, if you would name the sum.”
Wen Kexing and Zhou Xu exchanged looks. Wen Kexing said, “I’m afraid if you hear the number, you’ll reconsider. In any case, we reached our own deal with him.”
Heaven only knew what that deal was. “I notice that neither of you carries a sword, although you are clearly both martial artists. I’m a swordsmith of some skill; if you’ll be in town for a little while, I may be able to pay you back in labor.”
Zhou Xu tilted his head like a bird that had spotted a particularly juicy worm. Rong Changqing expected a question, but he just shook his head. “Thank you, Li-xiansheng, but it will not be necessary.”
As he watched them go, Rong Changqing thought, I wonder what brings them here. Not greed, and that’s interesting.
“Qin Huaizhang’s disciple! This guy isn’t good, be careful around him!” Ye Baiyi called after Zhou Xu’s retreating back.
Rong Changqing jumped down from the balcony overhead and leaned against the pillar, looking at Ye Baiyi with fond amusement. “It took you long enough to find a lost cause,” he said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ye Baiyi snapped.
Rong Changqing tilted his head, getting good and comfortable against the pillar. “My apologies. It could be one of three things. One, a classic Ye Baiyi lost cause, to be pursued to the very end, regardless of whether it seems possible to get a good result simply because it is the right thing to do. Two, Zhou-xiong accused you correctly, and you really do want to get his robes off.” The way Ye Baiyi’s glare intensified made him shift uncomfortably. It had been a joke, but if it wasn’t… “Or get under the other one’s skin; I’m not sure it was necessary to pull him quite that close in that fight.”
Ye Baiyi lunged to his feet, and Rong Changqing dodged to the other side of the pillar, laughing. This was much easier—so ridiculous that it had to be a joke. Truth be told, Rong Changqing had no idea what Ye Baiyi’s type was. For all he knew, he was genuinely an ascetic. He hoped not, but this was one part of his life he had kept entirely secret from Rong Changqing.
“Three,” Rong Changqing, putting the pillar between himself and Ye Baiyi’s grab again, “you’ve decided this one is yours, just like you did with his master.”
Ye Baiyi went stock-still, looking off into the middle distance. After a moment, with perfect disgust, he said, “Ugh.”
Rong Changqing patted his arm sympathetically. Ye Baiyi was an old curmudgeon, but even in their years on the mountain he hadn’t been able to stop himself from adopting the odd stray with fierce affection that he absolutely refused to admit to the object himself. When Qin Huaizhang had left the mountain to return to his travels, he’d taken the newly-named Baiyi sword with him, and Rong Changqing had spent the next several months working on the perfect sword to replace it. It had been an excellently absorbing project; and if only Ye Baiyi knew about the masterpiece he carried on his back, Rong Changqing was simply pleased that it suited him so well.
“Oh,” Rong Changqing said, delighted, as he remembered the Baiyi sword glinting in Zhou Xu’s hand. “I already gave Zhou-xiong a sword, in a roundabout way. That’s one less debt to worry about.”
“What are you talking about now?” Ye Baiyi said warily.
Rong Changqing waved him off. “Nothing. Well, well. Baiyi, it seems we’ll have to keep an eye on these two, won’t we? You know, I don’t think Wen-xiong is as bad as you think. He seems sincere, at any rate.”
“He’s a rascal with no sense of respect,” Ye Baiyi said. “At least that brat taught his disciple how to speak to an elder.”
Rong Changqing reached out and poked the corner of Ye Baiyi’s scowl. “You’re just like a mother worrying over her daughter’s marriage,” he cooed, watching the horror and chagrin dawn in Ye Baiyi’s face, and then the sudden turn into fury. That was his cue. He turned and ran, calling over his shoulder, “Don’t you think you’ve caused enough damage to the nice canal tonight!”
The conference had not given them as much information as Rong Changqing had hoped. It had given them a new and unwilling addition to their party, whom Rong Changqing had absolutely forbidden Ye Baiyi from putting into a sack. They traveled with a carriage, so anyone who wanted to ride in it for a while also had to put up with Long Xiao’s rather unnerving presence.
Rong Changqing had liked Long Xiao’s grandfather a lot—while not the most solicitous man, he had a head stuffed full of ideas and took a great deal of delight in having a partner to expand on them with. Ye Baiyi had never spent time in a room with them together if he could help it. He said he was too stupid for all the technicalities, but Rong Changqing knew that they made him nervous when they spent too long on certain topics.
Well, maybe Ye Baiyi had been right. But none of this explained how Long Xiao had ended up such a bitter fruit of a rather eccentric tree. Rong Changqing tried to spend time with him, but Long Xiao had rebuffed all efforts at friendliness. It troubled him.
Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu were much more agreeable company, and of their disciple, Zhang Chengling, the worst you could say was that he was a little overenthusiastic sometimes. As Rong Changqing generally regarded this as a virtue, they got on like a house on fire.
One night, after swapping with Ye Baiyi for Long Xiao-watching duty, Rong Changqing returned to the fire to find Zhou Zishu giving him a measuring look. “What?” he asked, half-laughing.
“I know you aren’t Li Song, or his disciple, or whatever you’re telling people,” Zhou Zishu said. “But I hadn’t realized we were traveling with another revered master, Magic Craftsman.”
Rong Changqing blinked at him. Beside him, Wen Kexing looked genuinely startled. “What?” he said, then turned to give Rong Changqing a sharp once-over. “He’d be more than a hundred years old now.”
“Well, yes,” Rong Changqing said. “Why are we doing this now?”
Zhou Zishu jerked his head towards the carriage, and the figure in white hunched on top of it. “He called you Changqing, when you thought you were alone.” Beside him, Zhang Chengling made an “oh” sound, as if finally catching up to his master’s conclusion.
Rong Changqing nodded thoughtfully. Ye Baiyi generally did only call him by name when they were alone—but he was like that with most people. An insulting nickname was much more comfortable in his mouth than an endearment, or even anything so personal as a given name. Mostly, he called Rong Changqing “blockhead” when others were listening. “We truly didn’t mean to keep up the deception. It seemed easier to just let you go on calling me what you had been, since you knew who Baiyi was anyway.”
“Why bother in the first place?” Wen Kexing said, an edge to his voice that Rong Changqing truly did not understand.
“Well,” Rong Changqing said slowly, “the Five Lakes Alliance didn’t really believe that Ye Baiyi was the Sword Immortal; it seemed easier to let everyone believe we were disciples instead. We really do want to help stop Ghost Valley from committing any more crimes, so pushing the issue wasn’t on the top of my priority list.”
Wen Kexing’s eyes glittered in the light of the fire, his body language closed-off and tense. Rong Changqing had little idea what that could be about, and even less what to do about it. Zhou Zishu put a hand on his wrist, then turned to Rong Changqing. “So you’re immortal, too?” Rong Changqing nodded. “And you’re interested in how Long Que is involved in the mess with the Glazed Armor.”
Rong Changqing scratched the back of his head, shifting a little. He wasn’t keen on explaining this, even to traveling companions he was coming to like. “You probably know that my son, Xuan’er, was at the center of that…‘mess,’ as you call it. I would like to know what he did, after he left the mountain, and how he came to the”—his voice broke, slightly, but he pushed on—“end that he did.”
“You mean, how he dragged others down into infamy and death?” Wen Kexing said in a low growl. “How he decided that he knew better than anyone else, that he could create the perfect martial arts form, and he didn’t care what he sacrificed to get it? How he caused countless deaths before the entire world rose up to put him down?”
“Lao Wen,” Zhou Zishu snapped. Rong Changqing heard it through a rising buzz in his ears, too aware of his breathing, how he was far too still, how pain ripped at him. He pictured a wave of people subsuming his son—his son who, after all, was far too much like himself; his son who he still remembered as a soft loaf of unformed human in his arms, and as the wild young man who had left—and tears stung his eyes.
Wen Kexing stood and stalked away from the campfire. Zhou Zishu murmured apologies, then followed, leaving Zhang Chengling wide-eyed across from Rong Changqing.
“I’m sorry,” Zhang Chengling whispered.
Rong Changqing raised his head to look at him properly, surprised. “It’s not for you to apologize for your—Wen-shu.”
Zhang Chengling shook his head. “For your loss. I’m sure Wen-shu didn’t mean to be so cruel. He’s…” He paused, as if considering just what he was.
“It’s good information,” Rong Changqing said after a long moment, turning his head so his fringe would shield the motion as he dabbed at his eyes with his sleeve. “I wanted to know why people were so angry. I know more now.”
Zhang Chengling drew his knees up, resting his arms there and peering at Rong Changqing. “Is that why you’re here? For Rong Xuan?”
What in the last forty-odd years hadn’t been for Rong Xuan? He had been the center of their universe—his, Ye Baiyi’s, and his wife’s. Sometimes he thought she had simply pined away after he left, although the more prosaic factors of illness and the cold winds on Mount Changming were the real answer. (And, after all, couldn’t she have left him if not for their son? He knew her heart too well to believe she would not have stayed for him, but on his worst nights, he wondered). He had been laid up by grief for her when the fresh grief of Rong Xuan’s death hit him. He had only now, in the last few years, begun to emerge from the chrysalis of that grief. To live again, here in the world of living, breathing humans, was meant to be the last culmination of that transformation.
But first… “I want to help his ghost rest,” Rong Changqing said. “Whatever answers there are to find, I’ll find them. Whatever debts, I’ll pay them. And then, maybe, he can be at peace.” And so could he. And so could Ye Baiyi.
“I understand.” Zhang Chengling nodded seriously. “My family were all killed. I’m going to make sure they have revenge.”
Rong Changqing considered Zhang Chengling. He seemed so soft, so untrained and untried. Ghost Valley—Rong Changqing’s own creation, another child unleashed on the world to wreak havoc—had forced him to consider such actions. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he promised Zhang Chengling. “Do you think that will satisfy them?”
Zhang Chengling blinked at him. “What?”
This child. All of their traveling companions seemed painfully young, but this one most of all, still chubby-cheeked, even if he wasn’t as innocent as he deserved to be. “You don’t need to pursue revenge yourself. Take it from a father; they wouldn’t want that for you. But I can pursue it for you, if you want. It’s my responsibility.”
Later that night, as Rong Changqing wandered past the carriage, sleepless, Ye Baiyi called down to him, “And is that one yours?”
“Hm?” Rong Changqing looked up, still halfway in reverie.
“Chengling. The little idiot. Don’t you know that orphaned duckling already has two strange ducks lining up to take care of him?”
Rong Changqing smiled, finally taking his meaning. “That’s you, Baiyi. You’ve decided to take care of all three of them, I know it. But he deserves a better lot than revenge, I think.”
“Hmm.” Ye Baiyi resettled his weight, the carriage creaking lightly on its wheels. Inside, Long Xiao snored. “So it’s a project, then.”
“The only one that truly matters, I think,” Rong Changqing agreed.
“Just don’t forget that it’s my cause, too.” Ye Baiyi looked down, his face silvered by moonlight. In such cold light, he looked achingly beautiful and wholly unreachable, like Chang’e herself, stranded alone in her immortality. Rong Changqing was suddenly immensely grateful that Ye Baiyi had hauled him back from death, locking them into this eternity together. Side by side, for as long as either of them existed. He reached up, letting Ye Baiyi help him up onto the roof, and sprawled against his side. Not unreachable at all, but warm and human. Rong Changqing tucked his nose into Ye Baiyi’s shoulder and wrapped his arm around his middle, taking reassurance from the solid bulk of him.
“I could never forget,” Rong Changqing said. “Baiyi. Everything of mine is also yours.”
After the revelations of Longyuan Pavilion, Rong Changqing tilted his face to the clear mountain sky to cry a few tears of relief and bitterness. Their Xuan’er had been loved; Long Que had spoken of him with such warmth. Their Xuan’er had been betrayed, had weathered terrible times before his final death. “What a terrible irony,” he said to Ye Baiyi’s back as they lagged behind the others. “For father and son both to be pulled back from death by another’s love.”
The line of Ye Baiyi’s shoulders went rigid. “It’s not the same.”
Rong Changqing reached forward, catching Ye Baiyi’s hand. “I know, old friend. What we did—you have such a generous heart. I have always wondered if it was simply your determination never to let go of someone you cared for.”
“What she did was against nature,” Ye Baiyi said. “It made Xuan’er a monster. She should have let him rest peacefully.”
“All fools in love hope past reason,” Rong Changqing said.
Ye Baiyi spun, eyes red-rimmed. “Past reason and past what is good,” he snapped. “Is it right to doom someone because you love them? Anyway, why are we speaking of Yue Feng’er? We finally know how Xuan’er died.”
“We do,” Rong Changqing said softly. “And it will join the list of other things we must do together, you and I.”
Until this moment, he had been planning to finish that ever-growing list—to put the problems of his son, and Ghost Valley, and Zhou Zishu’s health to rest before he thought about speaking to Ye Baiyi about any other matters. But he thought, perhaps, that Ye Baiyi’s causticness was less his anger at Yue Feng’er than at himself. It had the particular flavor of his self-loathing, regrettably familiar after so many years.
With his grip on Ye Baiyi’s hand, he pulled him a step closer. “What will we do after that list is done? When Xuan’er is at rest and your Zhou Zishu is healthy?”
He saw Ye Baiyi close his teeth on an instinctive reply, his eyes bleak, and his heart ached. With all of his long practice, it was still so easy to miss Ye Baiyi’s hurts, for he hid them from everyone. “The world is full of music and good food and wine. I don’t want to go back to eating ice and snow with you, but not because I begrudge the life you gave me. Rather, I would like to enjoy every year I have left with you to the fullest.”
Ye Baiyi’s brows crinkled. “You…”
“You certainly haven’t been eating as if you plan to go back!” Rong Changqing poked him in the stomach, unable to resist being absurd, even in this moment. “You’ve been making up for lost time, eating and drinking the way you are. It was good to see you enjoying the world; it was my fault we got stuck on that mountain, anyway. I was so arrogant, to think that just because I understood theory I could master eternal life.”
Ye Baiyi’s frown deepened. “Your fault? If I’d just let you die like I should have, it would be over with for both of us. None of this would have happened.”
Rong Changqing thought he understood—that the blades of Ye Baiyi’s words were aimed at himself once again. But still, the bottom dropped out of his stomach. He took a deep breath, releasing Ye Baiyi’s hand with effort, but stepping forward to close the distance even more. “Exactly. None of it would have happened. I would never have married, would never have had Xuan’er. I wouldn’t be alive with you right now.”
He closed his eyes, leaning down to rest his forehead against Ye Baiyi’s. He really had meant to wait—but Ye Baiyi was sad right now. Even if he didn’t feel the same way, he had to know. He had to understand that Rong Changqing regretted none of it. “You brought me back to life, but I would have died if I hadn’t understood, right then and there, one very important thing.”
Ye Baiyi’s hand came up, grabbing Rong Changqing’s sleeve hard enough that he felt the tension in the fabric pulling at his shoulder. “What thing? Why do you have to use so many words?”
“You must understand it, too. Maybe in a different way. You’ve always been able to love people enough to give up pieces of yourself. I never knew how to until you. And I didn’t understand how to love without restraint until that moment.”
When, with Ye Baiyi sobbing and holding onto him, he’d understood that Ye Baiyi had broken every rule to keep him alive for just another moment. And then, suddenly, he’d understood how to accept that love, the only way he knew how—besotted and terrified and reckless.
Ye Baiyi pushed him abruptly back, searching his face. “You—”
Rong Changqing smiled sheepishly at him. “I know you never meant it that way. That you’re just…like this. But how is a man supposed to avoid falling in love with you?”
“You idiot.” Ye Baiyi stared at him, eyes wild, and then shoved him. Rong Changqing fell back a little, hoping very much that this was just his usual boisterousness and that he hadn’t actually broken something between them. “You—blockhead, you never said!”
“Well, it’s not like you ever tell me anything about your love life,” Rong Changqing said.
Ye Baiyi threw up his hands. “Because I’ve been in love with you since the day we met!”
Rong Changqing felt like he’d struck him across the head. He gaped at him. He was going to have to pick his jaw up off the floor any moment now, but he simply couldn’t summon the brainpower to do it. For how long? And he’d just—
“We are so stupid,” he said in awe. “I think we deserve an award. Has anyone in the history of the world been as stupid as we are?”
Ye Baiyi came at him, shoving at his chest. But then Rong Changqing’s back fetched up against a convenient rockface, and he decided that this was probably for the best anyway. With a quick twist, he pressed Ye Baiyi up against it instead, grinning down at him. “I think we’ve got at least ten minutes until the kids notice we’re missing. Want to spend them making up for lost time?”
“I hate you,” Ye Baiyi said, and pulled him down into a kiss.
When Zhou Zishu called his name some minutes later, Rong Changqing groaned into Ye Baiyi’s mouth. His hand had somehow ended up tangled in the many absurd layers of cloth shrouding his torso. “I’m going to kill him. No, that would undo all your hard work. I’m going to put frogs in all his clothes.”
“Put honey in his boots,” Ye Baiyi agreed.
“There you are,” Zhou Zishu said, amusement in his voice, and Ye Baiyi pulled away abruptly. “Should we plan to meet up later?”
Rong Changqing dissolved into silent giggles, pulling Ye Baiyi’s head against his chest to shield him a little from Zhou Zishu’s sharp eyes. “We’re right behind you. Do that Siji Manor thing and pretend you don’t know anything while actually knowing a lot.”
“Don’t tell that stinky brat!” Ye Baiyi said.
Zhou Zishu turned to walk away. Over his shoulder, he said, “I’m sure Ye-qianbei and Rong-qianbei can find us when they need us.”
Ye Baiyi grumbled into Rong Changqing’s collar. “I didn’t hear a promise.”
“Well,” Rong Changqing said. “I’m sure he’ll do what he thinks is best.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”