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Chapter Text

“In Tikany, she’d been an invisible shopgirl, far beneath everyone’s notice. Her life and death had been utterly insignificant. If she’d been run over by a rickshaw on the street, no one would have bothered to stop.”

-The Dragon Republic, pg. 611

Rin wobbles precariously, a stack of wooden crates swaying dangerously beneath the tips of her toes. Her object of interest sits just out of reach of her fingertips; a dusty, medium-sized package of dried red ginseng root, wrapped with thick white cloth into a compact brick. Her last customer swept up the last few pieces of ginseng from the little cart of dried medicinal herbs that stands by the shop’s entrance. The cart sits there, at the front, inviting potential buyers to purchase any variety of plant, cloying the air with heavy spiced fragrances that threaten to make Rin sneeze. Auntie Fang had instructed Rin to replenish the herbs when needed, and Rin doesn’t like what happens when she doesn’t listen to Auntie Fang.

Falling off these crates seems like a much preferable outcome to disappointing her foster mother.

Finally, with a move that is perhaps more stupid than it is brave, Rin jumps, hand catching tightly around a loosened corner of the package, pulling it down as she falls back onto the crates. The whole stack shudders for one terrifying moment; but then the sway slows, and Rin lets out a shaky breath. She climbs down slowly, package in hand, and heads for the large, cluttered desk in the back of the store where she takes orders and works on her ledgers. She’s still not perfect; her mind can only work with so many of those large, complicated numbers, but she’s learning quick. Auntie Fang has made it very clear that she expects nothing but perfection.

Rin drops the package onto the table with a thump, trying not to think about the mottled bruises scattering her ribs from last time Auntie Fang wasn’t satisfied with her calculations. At least at her grown age of nine, she’s been deemed responsible enough to run the shop on her own. That means fewer interactions with Auntie Fang, and thus, fewer opportunities to make her mad.

She reaches for the dagger she’d taped under the desk, pawing at the underside until her hand meets the hilt. It’s an old, rusted thing, having seen many years of use under Auntie Fang. Rin uses it to cut open packages and slice up herbs. Once she’d been left alone in the shop, Auntie Fang told her to point and stick it into the crotch of anyone who tries to steal. She’d had to point it a few times, but luckily the situation had never escalated to sticking it into any sensitive places. Yet.

Just as she presses the dulling tip of the blade to the seam running along the side of the ginseng brick, a grating little chime sounds from the front of the store, indicating a new customer.

She hears a sob, and quickly shuffling feet. Rin looks up at the sound.

A young, frazzled, snivelling boy of a customer, bolting in as if being chased by a pack of rabid wild dogs. He appears to be about her age, but the similarities end there. He looks otherworldly, like a painted lantern plucked straight off the moon. His robes, his far too expensive robes for a place like Tikany, alongside his porcelain face of nobility that had never seen a single day of disease, are as out of place as Rin would be in a palace.

She blinks at him stupidly. “Would you like to buy something?”

He startles, as if just noticing her presence. At first, he just cries harder, head turning wildly to look at the door where he just came through, then back at her, as if unsure if he would rather stay here or face whatever it is that’s waiting for him outside. Rin bristles; she knows most people find her muddy skin and underfed frame off-putting, but she doesn’t think she deserves a reaction quite like this.

He looks back at her again, this time in what is clearly terror, his already-pale face only leeching colour further. His eyes zero in on her hand.

Oh, right.

Rin lowers her dagger onto the table slowly. “I won’t hurt you.”

His lips quiver and he takes a step in her direction. “Please- please help me.”

Even his voice doesn’t belong, lilting and aristocratic even as it shakes. He looks so pathetic, the shivering little noble boy, that she can’t help but feel a little pity. She wonders how he even ended up here, in Tikany, of all places.

Rin hears shouts and laughter, loud and mocking, from somewhere outside the shop. The boy starts sobbing.

“Please,” he pleads, taking another staggering step towards her, tears and snot smearing his skin.

Rin frowns, re-gripping her knife. “Here, behind the desk. Hide.”

She feels bad for the boy. She’s reminded of little toddler Kesegi. She’d like to think someone would help him like this if he were ever in need. And besides, she wouldn’t want this boy’s blood spilled everywhere in the shop if worst came to worst. That would mean she’d have to stay late to clean the mess, and Auntie Fang would certainly be unhappy.

His face goes slack with relief, whimpered thank you’s spilling like prayers from his lips as he lunges behind her, ducking into a tiny, shivering ball just in time for the store door to burst open once again.

Two men saunter in, clearly drunk, one gripping the neck of some kind of foul liquor bottle as he nearly trips over his own feet. Rin rests her dagger on the hard wood of the desk, but keeps it gripped tightly just in case.

The man without the bottle is holding his own weapon, a dirty kitchen knife, between loose fingers. He points it in Rin’s general direction, barely keeping the blade up without it drooping downwards at the tip.

He leers, taking a shuddering step forward. Rin’s fingers tighten around her dagger, and she feels the boy beneath the desk clutch onto her pant leg with a trembling hand.

“Hey, you! Little girl,” the man with the knife slurs, dragging his inebriated partner along. “Have you- have you seen one little boy, yea tall-”

His knife hand shoot down, massively underestimating the boy’s height as he struggles to keep his grip on the knife.

“-all snobby and rich looking?” He continues with a noticeable hiccup, pausing to catch his breath. “He’s definitely some prissy little Lord’s spawn, we can certainly sell him- sell him for a good price to someone.”

The boy’s hand tightens around the fabric of her trousers, and she shakes her head in response to the man, and as a warning to the boy below.

The man takes another step forward, now only a few feet away, and Rin brandishes her knife, hand shaking just a little.

“Don’t come closer.” She threatens weakly, swallowing through a dry throat. She lowers her knife and points it in the direction of the man’s crotch.

His companion laughs loudly, brandishing his bottle like a flag, nearly sweeping a row of cheap cosmetic powders off their shelf. “Ooooh, you’re a feisty kid aren’t ya!”

“No need to point that at us, girl,” the man with the knife chuckles along, but blessedly takes a step away from the blade directed at his groin, hands raised in placation. “We’ll be on our way, just give us a shout if you see him, will ya?”

Rin nods tensely, still holding her dagger. The two men saunter away, knocking an ugly, ceramic bowl to the ground on their way out, but with no further damage. Their laughter fades as they walk away from the shop, and Rin drops her dagger to the table as the door shuts behind them resoundingly.

The boy starts to cry again.

Rin sits down beside him with a sigh, pulling her pant leg out of his grasp with a tug and wrapping her arms around her knees for comfort. He looks wrecked; eyes swollen and tremors racking his body.

“First time being threatened to be sold off, huh?” Rin tries for humour, but her voice trembles a bit too. She doesn’t like these confrontations, even if she’s unfortunately used to them. She doesn’t like how small, how weak she is compared to these men. She doesn’t doubt that if any of them were wanting to hurt her, to really hurt her, there isn’t much she would be able to do about it.

The boy flinches at her words, staring at her in horror.

She sighs. “Not from around here, are you?”

He shakes his head in a few jerking motions, as if shaking bugs out of his hair. His sleek, midnight-black hair, done up into an intricate topknot that has definitely never felt the disgusting grip of bug legs when he’s trying to sleep at night.

“Well, wherever you are from, you really can’t go around looking like that, someplace like this.” She states, reaching up to pull on the shimmering cerulean ribbon holding up his hair with a sharp tug, sending it tumbling down into a mess of dark strands. “Better.”

He blinks at her, eyes wide. At least he isn’t crying anymore.

“Also,” Rin adds, leaning down to rub her hands into the dirt and grime that had gathered on the floor over a long day of work. “This could help. A little.”

She grabs a sleeve of his robe and smears her stained hands all over the fine, expensive silk material. She almost sighs at how soft and comfortable it feels. The boy jerks away in shock, pulling his sleeve close to his body, as if she’s just threatened to stab him.

She rolls her eyes at his theatrics. His clothes staying clean, really, is that what matters here?

“You look too rich, too important. That makes people here want to go after you.” She clarifies in the same tone of voice she uses to reprimand Kesegi when he reaches for the sizzling hearth or a sharp knife.

The boy flushes scarlet, stuttering in indignation. “I- I know! I’m not a child. I’ve been learning my family martial arts, I’ll have you know. I can- I can beat up any of the uncivilized bastards from around here!”

Rin scowls. She doesn’t like his pretentious, snivelling voice. “Well, then why didn’t you beat up those guys that chased after you back there?”

He turns redder, and this time he looks away in embarrassment.

“I’m still learning.” He mumbles quietly. “They were… scarier and meaner than any of the masters I’ve been practicing with.”

Rin scoffs. Must be nice to have someone care enough to find you a master to learn from. She crosses her arms petulantly.

To her surprise, the boy leans down, covering his hands with dirt the same way that she did, and begins smearing it into his clothes with no more than a pitiful wince. He even smears a bit on his face, and Rin’s lips quirk at the effort.

She lets him sit under the desk, until the trembles pass, until his breaths even, until he’s certain the men have truly gone. She continues organizing inventory and doing calculations in her ledgers as he waits, neither of them saying a word. It’s only when he gets up on shaky legs, likely ready to find his way far, far away from this place, that he finally speaks.

“I’m Nezha. What’s your name?” He says politely, and she sees a flash of the important, powerful man he is likely destined to be one day. Unlike her; a poor, unwanted shopgirl from Tikany.

“Rin.” She says simply. She has no need for politeness here, not when it will bring her nothing of value anyway.

“Thank you, Rin.” He says softly, earnestly.

He gives her one final look over his shoulder as he turns, and then he leaves.

Later that night, when Rin is closing the shop, she sees a flash of blue and shiny silver amongst the grime on the floor. She picks it up, squinting, dusting off the soft velvet, rubbing the grime off the intricate dragons stitched into the material with silver thread. By the time she realizes what it is, whose it is, Nezha is long gone. She stuffs the ribbon in her pocket and locks the door behind her.

The boy, Nezha, comes back three days later.

Rin is staring at a packet in her small, shaking hand when it happens. She’s lost in her thoughts, thinking about the task that lays ahead of her later that evening. She’s responsible for helping Auntie Fang deliver important packages to not-so-important people. These packages are filled with opium, she knows that much, but it could be gold for all she understands why its recipients hold it in their hands as if it’s as precious as their newborn child.

She’d actually had one person offer their child to her, just for a few more handfuls of that opium gold from her pockets. She didn’t have any more than what Auntie Fang allocated to her, of course, but that didn’t stop the emaciated, frantic mother from trying to claw it from her anyway.

It’s horrifying, and Rin wants nothing more but to toss the packet in her hand along with its contents into a river. She’d do it if she didn’t think Auntie Fang would kill her for it.

Her fingers wrap around the crinkled paper on instinct at the sound of the chime at front of the shop, and she drops the opium into her pocket before her newest customer can see it.

Nezha peers around a shelf, and Rin blinks at him in surprise.

“Hello,” he says meekly, hands tucked behind his back. He’d changed out of his expensive robes, now wearing a pair of simple beige cotton pants and a tunic, his hair knotted back plainly, as was standard for most boys in the area. He walks towards her.

He wears a makeshift mask, wrapped tightly over his nose like a bandit. He’s trying to hide his aristocratic features, Rin supposes, but she still finds the look kind of silly. She tells him as much.

His ears turn red.

“I’m trying to be discreet, okay?” He mumbles while pulling down the mask, embarrassed.

Rin shrugs. She returns to what she was doing prior to ruminating over her opium run, picking up a brush to mark any new orders for the shop that she’d need to place for the upcoming month.

The silence drags on.

“Would you like to buy something?” Rin asks eventually, noticing Nezha shuffling from foot to foot in front of her.

“Um, yes.” Nezha grabs a tin of ointment from the shelf nearest to him without even looking. “This.”

He hands her the product. Rin stares. “Old ladies usually buy this for their rashes.”

Nezha flushes again, and mutters something unintelligibly under his breath. He grabs the tin from her hand and returns it to its rightful place.

Rin looks down at her order sheet, then back at Nezha. “Can I help you find something?”

“I’m, uh, not actually looking to buy anything.” He says, not looking at her.

“Why are you here then?” Rin wonders. He seemed very scared when he ran in here three days ago. If she were him, she’d never have come back to the shop.

Nezha seems to contemplate for a moment, chewing on his lip. Then, he brightens.

“Look.” He brings out something from the folds of his tunic, sharp metal shining from the warm afternoon sunlight streaming in through the windows. “It’s a dagger. Like yours, but fancier. Isn’t it cool?”

It does look cool. Intricate designs of cliffs and rivers wind their way across the hilt, and the blade is sharp and spotless. Rin feels a little jealous.

“Aren’t you worried the bad men will come back here?” She asks earnestly. If he just came here to show her the dagger, it doesn’t seem worth the risk. Besides, noble boys like him probably had much more important things to do than visit peasant shopgirls.

Nezha raises his chin haughtily, holding the dagger out before him, like a sword. “I can take them.”

Rin observes him, the way he holds the weapon with such self-assurance that she can almost believe him. Maybe she can, maybe noble nine-year-old boys can win in a knife fight against two grown men.

Rin goes back to her orders, and Nezha joins her, asking her questions about what she’s doing, about the products, until she has to tell him to be quiet so she can get her work done. So, he stays with her, in silence, playing with the dagger. He swings the blade around, pretending to be a soldier, a general, until the sun begins to dip on the horizon, and he says he has to go home.

He starts coming back. Not every day, not for more than a few hours at a time, but often enough that she starts talking more and he begins to listen more, instead of exclusively the other way around. She shares with him the kinds of games she likes to enjoy in rare moments of rest, how she plays with little Kesegi. He tells her about his expensive toys, about his sweet little brother and awe-inspiring older siblings, about his days filled with study. She doesn’t understand much about his life, but it’s clear he doesn’t understand hers either. He shares big dreams and hopes for the future, of sailing oceans and slaying dragons. When he asks of her future, she draws a blank. But it never matters for long; any time she’s stumped by a question, he helps build a dream for her, imagining her on the open oceans alongside him, placing orders and doing inventory while he navigates the ship. He describes her brandishing Auntie Fang’s rusted knife as they both battle a tempest of sea creatures, coming out victorious every time.

He explains it all so beautifully, so logically, that Rin can almost imagine it all to be real. A few times it costs Rin her well-practiced efficiency, and she misses a product or miscalculates a sum on her ledger while lost in Nezha’s stories. The bruises she hides under her clothes after Auntie Fang finds out about her missteps always hurt, but she doesn’t dare tell her about the boy that’s been coming by and filling her head with fantasies. Somehow, it feels worth the pain.

Every day, she carries his ribbon in her pocket. But he’d never asked for it back, and she’d never claimed she isn’t selfish. It’s a pretty ribbon, and she doesn’t have any pretty things. It’s the least she deserves for saving him when they first met, she reasons.

She never does get a real answer for why he came back that first time, but weeks pass, and their companionship feels as natural as breathing. Like poppies in summertime, he grows on her.

Then one day, the poppies are gone, and he disappears without a word.

Chapter Text

“She’d never joined the dances when she’d lived here. Those dances were for rich girls, joyful girls, girls whose marriages were events to be celebrated and not feared. They weren’t for war orphans. Rin had only ever watched. She wanted desperately to join them now, but she was afraid she wouldn’t know how to move.”

-The Burning God, pg. 159

When Nezha disappears, Rin feels his absence like a persistent bruise, more painful than any of those she’d ever gotten from Auntie Fang. Her fingers keep reaching for the ribbon in her pocket, a reminder of the stories and dreams they’d shared, a reminder of the ray of gentle moonlight amongst the bleak reality of Rin’s existence. It keeps the hurt at bay too much for her to sell it, and so she returns to her miserable little life with the strip of fabric in tow.

One day, the ribbon finds its way around her wrist, wrapped tightly to hide its shining silver detailing from the greedy eyes of those looking for anything of value to steal. It’s nothing but a flash of soft blue under her sleeve, a piece of fabric only precious to Rin. She never wears it around Auntie Fang, who no longer feels the need to come around the shop, and no one else cares to deign it with a second glance.

Sometime during the three long years after Nezha’s disappearance, like a living, breathing thing, the ribbon slithers into her hair, coiling itself through dark bundles of hair like a lovers’ embrace.

She needs a new ribbon, Rin reasons. She needs something to pull the messy curls from her face when she dusts the many apothecary shelves, she tells herself.

Her old one broke, ripping at the seams when faced with the dense mass of strands curling down her spine, after all.

She was certainly not exerting a bit more force than necessary the last time she wove the ugly thing into her hair. She most certainly could not rip up a new ribbon from one of the many rags at her disposal.

So, the valuable length of velvet finds itself nestled in her hair, more often than not, more often than it needs to be. She slips it back into her pocket at the end of each day, stepping into the place she calls home, awaiting Auntie Fang’s judgement and derision. She plays this game, day in day out, and the pain of Nezha’s disappearance dulls. The ribbon is her beautiful little secret, and she plans to keep it all to herself.

But it appears that her plans always find a way to shatter into a million little pieces.

It’s a normal day; the door chimes, a customer enters. Rin keeps her back turned as she sorts through a box of bottled spirits and medicinal liquors.

“Rin?”

She knows that voice. Her hand leaps to her mouth and she turns, bottles clanging behind her as she drops them.

One of them shatters. She feels a liquid begin to seep into the thin soles of her shoes, but she cannot seem to remember how to move.

He’s a little taller, a little sharper, a little sadder. Still slender, cheeks still full of youth. No less otherworldly.

He appears similarly enraptured with watching her, large eyes tracing the shocked lines of her face. It’s only when Rin steps forward with an audible squish that his pupils fall to the puddle of liquor and broken glass on the floor, turning apologetic.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, eyes still locked on the spill, approaching as if to do… what? Like those aristocratic hands have ever had to clean anything in his life.

Rin steps into his path, paying no mind to the pools under her feet.

“You left,” she says, the hurt she’d pushed away for the past years surfacing like a summer’s flood. He meets her gaze. “You didn’t even say goodbye.”

Heat burns at her eyes, painful and unforgiving. Her head hurts with the force of her glare.

The look that crosses his face is absolutely miserable.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers again, voice cracking. “I didn’t know I was leaving until I had to.”

Rin says nothing, her heart twisting painfully inside her ribcage. She watches as his eyes grow watery, as he clutches onto his shirt, a tremble in his lip.

“Please,” he begs, eyes wide and imploring, tracing the angry purse of her lips, the betrayal in her gaze. “Don’t hate me. Not you too. Please.”

His voice cracks on the last word. Tears spill down his face, cracking his face into a broken mosaic.

She hates him, just a little. For how he abandoned her to a life of nothing but misery, even if not by his choice. For how he gave her no closure, making her wonder if he’d actually left or been captured in a dark alleyway, never to be seen again.

But she looks at him, really looks at him, and sees her own pain reflected in his open, trembling gaze.

And in that moment, she realizes how little her anger actually matters. She was never going to hate him, the boy she saved years ago, the boy that saved her many times over since, giving her dreams to hold onto on those awful nights she spent crying herself to sleep, bruised and unloved.

So, she steps forward, and does something no one had ever done for her. She comes right up to him, close enough to feel his sniffling breaths on her skin, and wraps her arms around him tightly.

He doesn’t even hesitate, and his arms curl around her in turn, clutching at the back of her shirt. He buries his face in her hair with a sob.

It’s as if he’d never left, and words begin to spill from his lips. He cries to her about losing his little brother, about the anger and coldness of the rest of his family in return, about the friends he was isolated from. Confessions spill like blood from an open wound, admissions of self-hatred and fear and pain. Rin holds him through it all; they sink to the floor, and she continues to hold him.

When the sunlight begins to fade from the horizon, his sobs subside, and she begins to fear for the tasks she still has to do, for the broken bottle, for Auntie Fang’s wrath if she finds out.

So, she makes a confession of her own. Not the extent to which Auntie Fang hurts her, never that; that is her burden to bear. But she inflects the appropriate urgency into her voice when she tells him how important it is for her to do everything that is asked of her.

Nezha nods, solemn. He seems to understand, and he doesn’t pry. For that, she is grateful.

He helps her clean, helps her collect the shattered pieces of glass as her own shattered soul slowly mends in the process. He organizes shelves at her instruction, and even double checks her calculations in the ledger.

It’s only when they are almost finished, only a few more shelves left to dust, that she notices him staring.

He’s watching the sway of her hair as she cleans, something strange and unreadable within his gaze. Rin moves her hand to her head self-consciously.

“I like your ribbon.” He says quietly, eyes locked on what Rin now realizes is the blue piece of fabric that should belong to him.

Her hand wraps around it protectively, suddenly afraid he would ask for it back. It feels like hers, after all these years. It’s been a source of comfort, a soft caress against her skin, a holder of dreams and stories for her to indulge in the worst of moments. She doesn’t want to lose it.

He notices the twitch of her lip, the flicker of fear in her eyes, the whitening of her knuckles, but he just smiles.

“Keep it,” he says softly, fingers playing with the hem of his shirt. “It looks pretty on you.”

He flushes. Rin just blinks, surprised. That’s a word she’d never possibly imagined to associate with herself.

“Okay,” she whispers, and just like that the ribbon is hers, really hers.

Later, when he leaves, he promises to come back soon. That night, Rin sits in her cot, Kesegi’s soft breaths echoing from the other side of the room. Her fingers play with her blanket, patched and ripped in spots, but warm enough to have gotten her through the worst of winters she’d faced. It’s the only object she really loves. Well, now, one of two objects she loves.

She traces a rough edge of the fabric, tearing at the seam, threads splitting in half from years of use. Her thumb digs into a rip near the edge of the blanket, parting the soft fibers, giving herself purchase on the beloved material.

Then, her hands pull apart with a sharp tug, and a strip of the fabric begins to rip loose from the rest of the blanket.

Rin clutches her makeshift ribbon in her hand, keeping it hidden within the confines of her pocket, where it’s been for more weeks than she’d like to count. She watches Nezha as he sits quietly, tongue between his teeth, focusing intently on a thick text he holds splayed in his lap. He’s studying for the Keju, dreaming of attending the most prestigious academy in all of Nikan, wanting to be just like his older brother. Unlike Rin, he has a path laid out for him; one of glory and prestige, of graduating from Sinegard and commanding navies. He says his father is a Warlord, says this with a puff to his chest and an arrogant quirk to his lips that Rin doesn’t like. He says his father will make him General one day.

His Warlord father matters little to Rin. What has a Warlord ever done for a peasant like her? He notices how Rin frowns every time he gets that pretentious tone of voice, and the arrogance fades a bit with every conversation. His words begin to change, his intonation softens and sticks to his mannerisms every time he makes her frown fade to something akin to a smile, like unlearning a particularly bad habit.

Something softens in her chest from his clear effort to make her happy, and the ribbon burns at her fingertips. She continues to wear Nezha’s cerulean velvet in her hair, and the desire to gift him the ribbon she painstakingly tore from her beloved blanket grows with every week of his presence in her life.

She peeks at him again, where he leans against a shelf in the Fangs’ shop, studying, and her mind is barely paying attention to the ledger she’s been trying to fill out. He’s still dressed inconspicuously, having learned a hard and permanent lesson the first day he’d burst into the shop. Even so, Rin notices the little details others might miss. The sharp fold of his collar, the straight, unbroken seam down the side of his sleeve, the lack of patches or tears; all pointing to more wealth than he is visibly presenting.

The smooth, beige band of unblemished leather that holds his hair in a casual knot.

Stupid, she’s so stupid.

Why would he ever accept the silly little ribbon she’d ripped up for him in a moment of guilt and weakness? Why would he ever use the ugly, patched little thing for his pampered hair of pure silk?

He’s kind, so kind with her, she knows that much. He wouldn’t laugh at her, wouldn’t make fun of her pathetic attempt at turning a rag into a gift. He would smile, thank her, take the ribbon carefully. Then, he would toss it into the nearest gutter upon leaving the shop, amongst where the rest of the unloved scraps like Rin belong. Somehow, that hurts more than the first possibility.

Rin lets go of the burning ribbon in her pocket and pulls her hand away before she’s tempted to make a stupid, stupid mistake.

But for whatever reason, she just can’t make herself throw the damn thing away, and it continues to weigh down her pocket day by day.

Nezha looks up at her frustrated huff curiously, tearing his gaze away from a particularly heavy page of text. She looks away, an angry heat burning at her temples, and he returns to his reading.

This time around, he stays longer, much longer than all those years ago. Months pass, and the Fangs’ little shop practically becomes his second home. She doesn’t know much about where he lives right now; it’s some gated building in the most affluent part of Tikany, where he’s been living with a contingent of servants while his Warlord father goes off to conduct important dealings all over Rooster Province. She knows much more about where he lives back in Arlong; the massive palace and glittering halls and shimmering rivers. He talks about his home almost as if in a trance, sudden bouts of sadness hitting whenever he comes a little too close to the topic of his little brother.

Whenever that happens, he changes the subject quickly. He asks about her home, about her family. Rin dreads this turn of conversation more than anything. She tells him things about herself that she’d never told anyone, but some topics she just can’t breach. There are some things he doesn’t need to know. He would look at her differently, and she really likes the way he looks at her now.

So, she busies him and herself, avoiding the topic altogether. When he isn’t studying, he likes to talk. When he likes to talk, he likes to ask her about her family. When he asks her about her family, she gives him things to do around the shop.

He’s surprisingly receptive to the idea, and surprisingly quick to pick up on the menial tasks of running a shop. She keeps Auntie Fang’s opium trade as a dark little secret in a back room of the shop as they stock shelves, clean, and check the inventory together. When he leaves is when she enters that back room, and forces herself to swallow down her rising bile as she sets about another run for her foster mother.

This routine becomes her life, and one much preferable to the life before Nezha showed up. One day, the routine breaks, and Nezha runs into the shop on an early morning with a big grin on his face.

“Rin!” He exclaims, sliding to a halt before where she sits cross-legged on a crate, grinding up vegetable roots. She can feel his energy boiling, bursting out at the seams, the excitement palpable and uncontainable. “I’ve heard there is a festival happening tonight, here, in Tikany! Can we go? Can you take me?”

Rin’s fingers squeeze around the pestle in her hand, considering Nezha’s request. She tries to find a reason why it would be a bad idea, but she can’t. The shop will be closing early today for the celebration anyway, and she usually likes to attend these kinds of festivities to watch everyone twirl and laugh from a distance. It might be kind of nice to have some company, actually.

“Okay,” she says softly, and the smile she gets in response makes her flush with the weight of its joy.

They set up on a small, innocuous patch of grass, up on an incline that gives them an overhead view of the town center. Sharp tufts of greenery tickle her ankles as Nezha lays out a thin blanket on the ground behind her. 

Rin looks out over the flurry of activity below. Townspeople and revelers rush around to set up the biannual celebration; hammering down benches, rolling out barrels of cheap wines, clearing out spaces for bonfires and people to dance. Some merchants bring out carts of silks and delicacies and baubles, rolling around the perimeter of the town square to attract the attention of excited children and their intoxicated parents.

Rin and Nezha sit, side-by-side, watching and waiting as darkness begins to kiss the cloudless sky and festive fires dance amongst the revelers below. A group of people dressed in bright fabrics drags out a select variety of string, woodwind and percussion instruments, and a bright, peppy tune soon floats up to their little patch of grass.

She can hear the excited cheers and laughter emanating from below; families, friends, and couples alike dragging each other by hands and elbows and sleeves to the empty dance areas laid out throughout the square.

The fires burn brighter, lighting up Rin’s face with a warm glow even from the distance. She stares, mesmerised. No one follows a pattern; no choreography emerges as everyone dances to their own tune, circling with their loved ones and shrieking in joy. Young children join the fray, bouncing around and between billowing bodies, trying to keep pace with the beat of the energetic music flowing over the crowd.

Rin feels a tickle on her cheek, the intrinsic sense of someone’s gaze on her skin. She tilts her face to meet Nezha’s bright eyes with her own. The ribbon she’d ripped from her blanket sparks in her pocket like a burning stone.

“We should join them,” he says in a rapid breath, hesitantly breaking their eye contact to look back towards the dancing townspeople with wonder shining from every crease of his face. “I’ve never been able to join celebrations like these back home, my mother says it’s undignified. But I can cover my face, and no one would even recognize me here! Please come with me.”

The lilt of his voice holds the excitement and anticipation of a child holding his favourite toy, so light and happy that the immediate ‘I’m not going’ on her lips dies and withers into nothing but a thought. The loss of his brother and isolation from his family had been so difficult for him; she’d seen it firsthand in the quiet moments of grief and quick swipes of his palms at watering eyes he didn’t think she’d noticed over the past few months.

He deserves a bit of joy. She doesn’t deserve to ruin that for him.

Rin looks back towards the undulating crowd. The music flows and ebbs, an ever-changing tune with no clear endings nor beginnings. Rin loves watching these celebrations; she loves to hear the songs and laughter from twirling, joyful bodies. She wants to join them more than anything.

But this kind of joy isn’t for her; it never has been, and it never will be. Even in an unrestricted crowd such as this, she isn’t welcome. No one wants a miserable war orphan infecting the circle of merriment, no one wants her there and will make it clear with their upturned noses and turned backs. And, for some reason, she doesn’t want Nezha to see the way they’ll look at her.

Maybe then he’ll finally realize who he’s been spending time with and join the children of officials and magistrates instead.

“I don’t know how to dance,” is somehow the only thing Rin thinks to say, her voice coming out as a cracking whisper. She can’t look at Nezha, can’t see the disappointment in his face.

But Nezha is undeterred; he grips her shoulder softly and turns her to look at him.

“I don’t either,” he admits, face flushing, maybe from the heat of the fires below.

He pulls out a cloth from his pocket, wraps it around the bottom half of his face, ties it at the back to make sure he’s unrecognizable. She feels something warm wrap around her fingers. And then he’s standing up, holding her hand, giving it a gentle tug.

“Come with me?” He asks again, the plea clear in his voice.

His hand is soft and warm in hers, a tender heat against her calloused palm that doesn’t get held, not like this. She doesn’t want him to let go.

She looks at the dancing townspeople once again, and suddenly they don’t seem quite as scary. Maybe it won’t be that bad if she’s with Nezha. She rises to her feet, toes digging into soft earth, and he drags her down to the crowd, never letting go of her trembling hand.

It’s a short walk, and soon enough Rin feels a bit overwhelmed by the waves of heat and loud noises emanating from everywhere around her. They stick to the edge of the crowd, around some of the younger adolescents like them, and Rin’s hand goes clammy within Nezha’s grasp as she tries to make sense of their movements and how to replicate them.

It’s not an issue for long.

The other children around them laugh, shrieks and giggles rising up as they stumble through jerky moves and trip over each other, heedless of how they appear. It doesn’t take too long for Rin and Nezha to join the commotion, hands holding tight as they bounce around with the rest, following the beats of the drums, swaying to the melodies of the flutes and strings.

Rin clutches his fingers tight when she sees the stares begin; not too many, most folk too preoccupied with the festivities to pay her any mind, but enough to make her shoulders hunch and face cower. They see her, her poorly fitting clothes, her dark skin, the poverty sticking to her like a sticky membrane. They judge, even when they shouldn’t, even when this celebration is for them all, and Rin remembers why she didn’t want to be down here in the first place.

Nezha notices. She wonders when he’ll let go of her hand in disgust. It’s easy enough to pretend they’re equals in the hidden corners of the Fangs’ little shop. Not so much in public.

She glances at his face hesitantly when he only squeezes her hand tighter. But, he’s not looking, not at her. His angry eyes burrow holes in the strangers still tossing her looks, glaring. They see him, they whisper to each other, likely something about the strange boy with his haughty demeanor holding onto the unwanted orphan girl. They must decide that two weird children are just not worth it, and the looks fade as the judgemental individuals return to the merriment.

But Rin is no longer dancing, lips now twitching down at the corners. Why does everything in her life have to be a battle? And now her miserable existence has ruined Nezha’s mood too.

She turns to Nezha once again, perhaps to apologize, or to make it clear that this is what he signed up for by being friends with her, but he beats her to the punch.

He grabs her free hand with his, and then he’s twirling her around so quickly that the bonfires and people blend into streaks of neon lights. She loses track of her self-pity during the dizzying spin, replaced by a sudden, delighted burst of giggles from her lips.

When he stops, she stumbles a little on the spot, still laughing. She notices that he’s watching her glee with a matching level of happiness, a wonder lighting up his eyes as he stares. Rin feels a fresh burst of energy, excitement nipping at her toes as she’s the one to drag him along this time, pulling him closer to the fray of bodies where they can start to bounce and dance once again.

She no longer sees any stares, and she’s not sure if it’s because no one cares anymore or if it’s because most of her attention is caught on Nezha and the way the light of the bonfires plays with his features.

She’s not sure how long they dance, twirling between other joyful townspeople and exhilarated children. But by the time they’re both breathless and tired, laughing with wide grins across their faces, the festivities are still in full swing, and they make their way to the edge of the square for a break.

Rin lets go of his palm, somewhat hesitantly, in order to wipe at her sweaty face and fan her heated skin with her hands. She’s just recovering her breath when she smells something sweet and delicious wafting through the air.

As if on cue, her stomach growls, hungry from her exertion and meager meals, and Rin trains her ravenous eyes on the source of the scent. A merchant’s cart rolls to a stop just a few feet away, carrying mountains of sweet rice dumplings, still hot and letting off swirling coils of steam into the air. A pile of children follows the cart with quick feet, coins flashing from between their small fingers, given to them by exasperated parents walking close behind.

Nezha must notice it too, because he grabs her hand once again and pulls her towards the cart with a determined stride. Pushing past happy children munching on their dumplings, Nezha goes up to the front, pulling a coin out of his pocket discreetly. He hands it to the vendor, receiving a delicious dumpling in return, cradling it in his palm like gold.

The rice dumpling is huge, the size of his entire hand, and Rin’s stomach churns painfully as she watches him hold the treat, wishing she had a single coin of her own to spend.

Nezha lets go of her hand, and with a sharp motion, splits the dumpling in half, careful to keep its steaming contents within each piece. He looks up at her, and before she can say anything, forces the bigger half into her hand.

Rin almost drops it in surprise, but at this point it’s already in her hand, and he’s taking her other hand in his and pulling her away to their little patch of grass on the incline, and all her protests die on her tongue. The ribbon in her pocket burns hotter.

When they reach their blanket, illuminated by the distant glow of bonfires, Nezha pulls his mask down and grins so happily that at this point any last threads of desire to give him back his dumpling fade away.

She tries to hold herself back, she really does. But the moment she takes the first bite and stunningly sweet bean paste erupts across her tongue, she devours her entire half of the dumpling before Nezha enjoys even two mouthfuls of his.

He sees this, sees her licking her fingers hungrily for any crumbs of the delicious treat, and simply smiles, offering her the rest of his piece with an outstretched hand.

She wraps her hand around his gently, curling his fingers over the dumpling, and pushes the arm back towards him with a shake of her head. She’d taken enough from him tonight. It is her turn to give.

With a burst of determination, damn her apprehensions, Rin reaches into her pocket and quenches the flames of the ribbon with a clench of her fist. She pulls out the ugly little strip of fabric, the one so dear to her, the one that would probably be in a gutter by the next day, and reveals it to Nezha on an outstretched palm.

“I made this for you.” She says softly, watching carefully as his eyes trace the makeshift ribbon in her palm, mouth open in surprise. “I’ve loved your ribbon so much that I- I thought you deserved something in return. I know it’s not much, and might not be the easiest material to use as a ribbon, but it’s all I had. It comes from a blanket that’s very important to me.”

She feels the need to add the last part, feels the need to make it clear that this isn’t just junk, chewing her lip nervously. She observes as he reaches out his fingers, trailing over the tips of hers, down their stems and towards the ribbon in the middle of her hand, leaving sparks in his wake. His dumpling sits in his other hand, all but forgotten.

He picks up the tattered fabric like it’s something precious, cradling it between gentle fingers. He turns it this way and that, studying its patterns and stitches, observing the medley of muted colours and frayed edges.

Rin holds her breath, and Nezha finally curls his hand around the gift, placing it into his pocket with the same tenderness as when he’d held her hand.

“Thank you,” he says, voice cracking just a bit. When he looks at her, his eyes are shining against the low light of the flames below.

Neither of them says anything else, but somehow, they don’t feel the need to. The silence between them carries just as much weight as any set of words possibly could. Nezha takes her hand again, this time interlocking their fingers affectionately, and they watch the continued celebration below.

The stay that way for the rest of the evening, holding hands, letting the music and laughter envelop them from below, until their respective lives force their hands apart, and they part ways for the night.

A week passes with no trace of Nezha. Rin is starting to get concerned; the last time he’d been gone for this long, he’d ended up disappearing for three years straight. The thought of him getting ripped away from her again makes her heart feel like it’s cracking apart at the seams.

She’s staring at her ledger numbly, trying to force her mind to think and fingers to work, when the door to the shop bursts open more viciously than usual. Her head whips up at the noise, and there he is; flushed, breathing hard, barely skidding to a stop before he would have crashed into the shelf nearest to him.

Rin is violently reminded of the first day they met; him running in with the same look of fear in his eyes as in this moment. Her heart pounds as she abandons her work and rushes out from behind her desk.

“Nezha, what’s wrong?” She asks, coming to a stop right before his breathless form.

He shakes his head, tries to babble something unintelligibly, then shuts his mouth, pursed lips trembling. Then, he hugs her, wrapping his arms around her tightly, tighter than that day he returned after his absence.

She returns the embrace, confused and scared, terrified of what could have brought this on. She rubs circles on his back as he buries his face into her hair, mumbling incoherently until he pulls away just enough to say the dreaded words.

“I’m leaving. I don’t know when- if I’m coming back.”

He folds her back into himself, pressing his cheek to her hair, and she can feel the hot tears soaking into the strands, mixing into the velvet of the blue ribbon she still wears and her curls alike. She doesn’t say anything- she can’t. If she does, she will crack into a million little pieces. And what else is there to say, anyway? So she holds him in turn, holding back angry, anguished tears with every ounce of her willpower.

When he finally leaves, she feels like they’d held each other for hours. Upon his exit, she sees her ugly, tattered strip of blanket-ribbon wrapped around the knot of his hair. The back of his head disappears, and the image burns in her mind; the careful, loving way it was arranged among the strands of his inky black hair. The ratty blanket is not an easy material to use as a ribbon, she knows that, but he’d taken the time to make it work.

Rin turns away from the door and sinks to the floor, pulls his ribbon out of her hair to cradle in her hands, and allows herself to cry.

Chapter Text

“How was it that even now Auntie Fang could still make her feel so stupid and worthless? Under her withering glare Rin felt like a little girl again, hiding in the shed to avoid a beating.”  

- The Dragon Republic, pg. 478

“Just a little bit more, please, I know you have it,” a thin, haggard man pleads, the sickly pallor of his skin complimenting the rotting wood cracking along the shed’s walls.

Rin takes a cautious step back, but her face remains stoic and unyielding. Her hand curls tightly around the pouch of coins in her hand as she readies herself to bolt.

The man’s companion looks like a terrified rabbit, his ashen skin paling further at the interaction. “Come on, let’s go, you don’t need any more opium, it’s not good for you-”

The scared man cuts off in a gasp as his sickly partner jerks forward suddenly, too quickly for Rin to react.

His sharp fist connects with her cheek, pain bursts across her face, and then he is promptly pulled away.

“You idiot,” the scared companion hisses as Rin watches him drag the other man back through blurry eyes, hand pressed to her cheek in shock. “This is the Fangs’ girl. They’ll fucking kill us if we ruin their best runner.”

Rin doesn’t need to hear any more. She’d gotten the money she was sent to get, and now it is very much time to leave. Ignoring the trickle of blood and pulsating hurt on her face, she dashes around the two men quickly, and leaves through the exit before either of them make her regret sticking around.

As the bruise fades over the next few days, Rin seethes at the injustice of it all. She gets attacked, and then of course Auntie Fang gets mad at her.

What will the people think, when they see you with that ugly thing on your face? They’ll think we beat you, they’ll think we’re savages.

Rin snorts angrily as she scrubs the shop floor with more vigor than is necessary. Make the bruises you give me as hidden as you’d like, no one here is stupid enough to think you treat me like an actual daughter.

Rin wishes she’d had the gall to say all that and more, but she’d wanted to be able to move without wincing the next day.

Rin watches her fingers turn red and wrinkled as she cleans the dirt off the floor with a heavy rag, getting ready to close up shop for the evening. Loose strands of her thick, inky hair fall into her eyes, and she blows them away with a huff. Her hair has grown long, very long, and even Nezha’s beautiful ribbon can only do so much. Her heart hurts a little at the thought of him, as it does every time he crosses her mind. But it’s a feeling she can lock into a small cage; to be observed and studied from the outside, to hold in the palm of her hand when she needs the reminder of his kindness, to lock away when his memory is too much to bear. Just the knowledge that he is somewhere out there, living his pampered, noble life, is enough to keep the pain of his nearly two-year-long departure at bay.

Once her hands are thoroughly sore and her back begs her to stand, Rin rises to her feet, dropping her rag over the rim of the water bucket. The light is dim on the horizon; the sun is setting and its final rays slither away from the crevices within the shop. With a few quick steps and flicks of her wrist, Rin lights the lanterns scattered throughout the darkened corners of the room, grabbing one loosely, letting its light press hot little kisses to her fingers.

She pushes through the innocuous door at the back of the shop, setting her lantern down to begin her final count of opium-bought coin for the night.

Her fingers card through taels like water, adept and nimble at what they do from years of practice, and her mind enters into a pleasant buzz of repetitive work and empty thoughts. She likes this aspect of her work; the ability to focus in on one brainless task and wipe out the rest of the world around her, like her own bubble of peace.

She used to hate this kind of work when Nezha was around. It meant she couldn’t give her full attention to his soft words and ringing laughter; she couldn’t let her eyes linger on the quirk of his lips when he read a particularly difficult text nor imagine the curl of her blanket-ribbon in his hair.

How things change.

She allows her mind to go blank once again, and she continues to count the coins methodically.

Then, a chime rings out from the front of the shop, and she’s pulled out of her trance entirely.

Rin curses, and calls out to the shop loudly, “I’ll be right out to help you, give me a moment!”

Who shops this late, anyway? Annoyed, Rin sorts through a final stack of coins quickly, mentally counting up the tally, and sweeps all the taels into a pouch for Auntie Fang’s collection. She snuffs out her lantern on the way out, closing the back door behind her with a sturdy shove.

“What can I help you wi-”

Rin freezes mid-sentence, her bored drawl coming to a screeching halt.

Everything feels suspended in time. The blood in her veins stops rushing and her heart freezes mid-beat.

Because it’s him. 

She would recognize him anywhere.

Lit by the low lights of the flickering lanterns, Nezha looks even more painfully beautiful than the last time she saw him, the lights caressing the crevices of his face like dripping gold. He’s biting his lip nervously, and in his hand he’s clutching a cluster of red peonies, the same colour as his flushed cheeks.

He holds the flowers out to her, moving his arm almost methodically, as if he’d practiced the motion again and again, wanting to get it exactly right.

“I missed you,” Nezha says, words soft like the velvet of her ribbon.

The familiar timbre of his voice snaps her out of her shock, and Rin practically launches herself in his direction. He spreads his arms just in time for her to wrap hers around his neck, pressing her face to his cheek, breathing him in like precious air. His arms circle her middle tightly, folding into the creases of her waist as if made to be there. He’s taller than her now, enough that her toes lift off the ground when he embraces her.

Rin thinks she hears the flowers drop to the floor. She’d doesn’t care; having Nezha back is worth any flower in the world.

Her hand climbs into his hair and she feels the familiar scratch of her beloved blanket within the knot of his strands. She lets out a dry sob against the slope of his cheekbone. He’d kept it all this time. Rin has to remind herself that she’s too old to cry.

He buries his face in her neck as he lifts her higher off the ground, holding her securely to his chest until his arms start to shake and he has to lower her back to earth.

During her descent, Nezha’s nose lingers at her neck, his whole body leaning as he follows her down, as if he can’t bear to release her, to let her out of his arms.

When he pulls back, his face is so, so close, and he appraises her like one would a work of art, tracing every stroke of her features with teary eyes of onyx, and Rin is left utterly speechless. His gaze lands on her cheek, on the bruise from her unfortunate opium run days ago, and he frowns.

His hand moves to cradle her face, his thumb tracing the contusion on her skin gently, dotingly.

She can practically see the gears turning behind Nezha’s eyes, see him considering what to say. He wants to know what happened, he wants to know if she’s alright, he wants to know how he can help. But, even with these years apart, she knows that he understands her as well as he does his own heart. He knows she wouldn’t burden him with answers to those questions.

“Does it hurt?” He settles on finally, concern lining his tone.

Rin remembers the angry, jittery man, his limbs shaking right before his fist met her face. She shudders.

“A bit,” she admits in a whisper, leaning into the warmth of his palm against her cheek.

Nezha tilts her face with his hand, inspecting the bruise just a little closer. Then, he leans in, and there is a tender press of his lips to the injured skin, as if to say, let me ease the pain, let me kiss it better.

His lips are so warm and soft, that Rin almost believes it works.

He pulls back after a lingering moment, and they both flush in unison.

Rin steps away from his welcoming warmth, needing air, needing to clear her head. She bends down to pick up the fallen peonies, giving her hands something to do, and he crouches beside her, helping her gather the flowers into a beautiful bundle.

“I wanted to get you something,” he says gently, his fingers twitching nervously. “I know how little you care for meaningless spending. But I saw these and I thought of you. I’d like to think they’re not meaningless.”

Nezha leans in to pluck one of the peonies from her grasp, rolling it between his fingers lovingly, before he lifts his hand and pushes the softened stem behind her ear. His fingers curl through her hair as he adjusts the flower to sit comfortably amongst her locks, then trail down her jaw, lingering for just a moment before pulling away.

Rin looks down at the flowers in her hands once again. Petals the colour of fresh blood and death.

“Red peonies, as in the symbol of love,” she finally murmurs.

When she looks up at him, he’s still looking at her, affection rising in splotches of red across his porcelain skin. He doesn’t confirm what she said. He doesn’t need to.

Rin smiles, and any trace of embarrassment disappears into nothingness. She leans forward, touching her forehead to his for one tender moment.

“I missed you too.” She whispers, and her world makes sense once more.

The hours, days, weeks pass like the flow of a lazy river, easy and languid, every moment precious and stored forever in Rin’s mind.

This time around, Nezha tells her upfront that he’ll be staying for likely no longer than half a year. Then, he’ll go back to Arlong, take the Keju, and go to Sinegard.

Rin knows what this means.

“So, I won’t see you again.” She’d stated.

“I can’t believe that,” he’d replied, voice full of trembling conviction. “I’ll find you again. I always do.”

They’d be in their twenties by the time he would realistically be able to seek her out, and that’s ignoring his responsibilities post-graduation, or the very real possibility that he’d forget all about her over so many years. Rin doesn’t know what her future holds, but even she can feel her time running out as Auntie Fang’s shopgirl and opium runner. By the time Nezha comes back, she won’t be here, and she doubts much of the girl she is today will still be left by then anyway.

Rin hadn’t said anything in response, because there was nothing to say. His idealism is one of the most beautiful things about him; she won’t be the one to crush it.

Nonetheless, they can both hear the dinging water clock in their minds, counting down the months until his departure, like a slow thundercloud approaching from the distance. Nezha still spends much of his time studying for the Keju, but he breaks away from his texts more often than he probably should. He helps her around the shop without her asking, and she’s glad because it leaves more time for them to spend with each other, talking about everything or nothing, sitting close. Sometimes, when the shop is closed, they curl up on patches of forested land, away from prying eyes. Often, he likes to wrap his arms around her, to invite her to lean her head against his chest, to play with her fingers and with her hair affectionately. He really likes to run his fingers through her hair; Rin thinks that he enjoys the reminder that she still wears his ribbon, as evidenced by the way his touch lingers by the piece of fabric. She finds the gentle caress of her scalp soothing, and she often returns the favour, trailing her fingers adoringly over the ribbon she’d gifted him whenever she can.

He can be very cuddly, she’s learning. He really likes to hold her. She finds that she doesn’t mind.

Through it all, Rin admires the peonies Nezha had gifted her at every possible opportunity while she works, tracing the petals with her fingers as she checks off orders and writes out calculations in the ledger.

The flowers never seem to wilt as they stand tall and pretty on her desk, rejuvenating suspiciously every week or so, Nezha sneaking around her not-so-subtly with a bundle hidden behind his back.

She wants to chide him for his constant spending on something as impractical and temporary as flowers, but it seems to make him happy, and she does really love the peonies. She can’t find it in her heart to say anything.

As the months trickle by slowly, he’s there with her so often, that it’s somewhat inevitable that the one day Auntie Fang chooses to visit the shop, he happens to be there.

When Rin sees her foster mother, her blood runs cold. She never comes to the shop, not in years, and Rin wonders why now.

The older woman shuffles into the room, eyes roving over the shelves thoughtfully. Nezha is standing in front of a nearby rack of ointments, helping Rin note down a new item, and Auntie Fang barely spares him a glance, assuming a perusing customer.

Her foster mother sniffs, beady eyes lingering on the open crate of products splayed out on the floor and the scattered parchments on the desk behind Rin. Auntie Fang’s gaze narrows as it lands on her, and she takes a few heavy steps towards Rin.

“What’s with this mess, girl?” Auntie Fang asks, lip curling menacingly. Out of the corner of her eye, Rin spots Nezha looking up from the shelf before him with owlish eyes, wondering what’s going on.

Rin gulps, bowing her head enough to appear respectful. She doesn’t want this to spiral. Not in front of Nezha.

“Just organizing a new shipment,” she mumbles softly, wringing her hands nervously.

Auntie Fang tsks. Before Rin can react, Auntie Fang’s hand comes out quickly for sharp smack upside her head.

Rin flinches, and her hand moves to cover the spot of hurt. She didn’t hit her that hard, she never does in public. But Rin knows Nezha is looking. Her eyes burn with humiliation.

“Useless,” Auntie Fang snaps, fists curling. “First time I come to see my shop in years, and you can’t even keep the space tidy.”

Her hand reaches out again, to hit or pinch or grab. Rin doesn’t know which one, but she braces herself anyway.

A shape moves into view before Auntie Fang’s hand can reach Rin.

“Do you treat all of your employees this way?” Nezha’s voice shakes as he speaks, furious, in a way she’d never heard him talk before.

Rin’s gaze moves to him, wide-eyed, trying to shake her head: no, please don’t do this, you will only make this worse.

But he’s not looking at her; he’s glaring daggers at her foster mother. He’s taller than the woman, gritting his jaw in an attempt to appear intimidating, but he’s still just a child.

Auntie Fang barely spares him an annoyed glance, but quickly does a double take after the initial appraisal. Her keen gaze catches on those details that paint him as other than the peasants who regularly visit this shop.

She frowns, still watching Nezha carefully. “Mind your own business, child.”

He sneers, a vicious thing that carries all the weight of his wealth and legacy. “I am the son of the Dragon Province Warlord, I would be careful with how you speak to me.”

Rin freezes in her spot. What is he doing, Great Tortoise what is he doing.

Auntie Fang blanches, and her eyes refocus in their analysis of his appearance. She anchors on the aristocratic planes of his face, on the haughty raise of his chin. Her lips purse, turning a similar shade of blood-drained pale as her skin, and her gaze darts back to Rin, question in her eyes.

Her pupils trail over Rin again, sharp and discerning, and this time they catch on the precious sliver of blue in her hair. The question in Auntie Fang’s eyes turns into fury.

“My apologies,” she grits out to Nezha, words like the grating scratch of metal on metal. “She can be a little dull at times and requires a stern hand. But I have the utmost respect for Lord Vaisra and his house. Please don’t sully yourself by coming to our rundown little shop. If you need supplies, I would be more than happy to organize personalized deliveries to your estate.”

Auntie Fang just can’t help herself but to toss the business opportunity in there. When Nezha doesn’t respond, she bows her head stiffly, almost as if pained by the motion, and leaves with a final threatening look in Rin’s direction.

Rin doesn’t realize she’s shaking until Nezha’s hands are cradling her trembling fingers. He tilts his head to catch her gaze, squeezing her hands affectionately.

“Are you alright?” He murmurs, and one of his hands releases hers to reach for the spot where Auntie Fang had struck her.

Rin breaks out of her trance and jolts away violently.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she hisses, dark and angry and terrified.

Rin pulls away from his warm hold and grabs the spilling crate from the floor, moving to the opposite end of the shop to organize the products.

“Rin, I was- I was just trying to help-” he tries, following after her, reaching for her trembling form.

“Leave me the fuck alone, Nezha.”

Perhaps it’s undeserved, fuelled purely by the fear of Auntie Fang’s retribution for her humiliation.

Nezha flinches away from her hurtful words. They’re unfamiliar to his ears, as they are to hers.

But, he listens. He doesn’t leave the shop, he’s there in case she changes her mind, in case she wants his comfort, his help. But he keeps to himself; he sits a ways away, glancing at her every so often, playing with invisible threads in his shirt.

When he leaves for the night, needing to return to his residence, he does so with a soft goodbye and a promise to return the next day, confusion and heartbreak ringing in his voice.

Rin locks up the shop soon after. There’s no need to linger; the sooner she faces Auntie Fang, the sooner it will be over. She curls her hands protectively to her body as she takes a shuddering breath, and steps away from the shop for the night.

The next day, Rin comes to the shop early. She doesn’t want to be in her house anymore, and she hurts too much to sleep.

By the time Nezha comes in, as he’d promised to, she’s not as composed as she would have liked herself to be. She’s sitting on a crate, wincing and holding back tears, clutching onto an order sheet while trying to read it through blurry eyes. When she sees him, it takes all her willpower not to cry.

He notices her across the room; the pathetic wobble of her lip, the sniffle of her nose, the hunch in her posture, and he hurries towards her. He drops to his knees before where she sits, heedless of the dirty floor, putting them at eye level.

“Rin,” he breathes desperately, hands reaching up to cradle her face. “Rin, what happened? Are you hurt? Where are you hurt?”

His hands move to check her bruised arms, ribs, stomach, and she grasps for them before he can touch her.

“I’m fine,” she says in a warbling voice, gripping his wrists tight. “I’ve had worse.”

Rin meets his eyes then, large and devastated, and boiling tears gather in the corners of her eyes.

“That’s- that’s not why I’m upset,” she mumbles, and the tears fall.

“You stupid girl,” Auntie Fang had said the night before, gripping her arms in punishing holds. “You think that boy will save you? What, he gave you some damn attention and now you think you’re better than us?”  

Rin had winced at the words, still catching shallow breaths against the fresh injuries littering her abdomen. Every breath had hurt, but she’d still managed to cry out a mangled protest when Auntie Fang had reached for her pockets. With quick, rough dips of her fingers, she’d found what she’d been looking for, pulling out a strip of precious blue.

“I thought I saw something strange in your hair earlier today,” Auntie Fang had mused, crinkling the shimmering cerulean between pinching fingers. “The boy gave it to you? Or maybe you stole it?”

She’d scoffed then, releasing Rin with a vicious shove. Rin had fallen back to the floor, watching in horror as her foster mother had turned to the flaming hearth nearby.

“No matter. You should know better than to indulge in fantasies.” And with that, Auntie Fang had tossed Rin’s beloved blue ribbon in the fire.  

Rin had let out a sob, crawling on aching hands and knees towards the hearth. But the fabric had already been disappearing into the flames, burning into nothing but ashes and smoke.

“Forget that boy,” her foster mother had stated evenly, sitting down on her stool as if she hadn’t just thrown Rin’s heart into the fire. “Now, get out of my sight.”

Teardrops drip down Rin’s cheeks, and she realizes dimly that this is the first time she’d ever cried in front of Nezha.

“I’m sorry,” Rin sobs, voice trembling when Nezha’s thumbs wipe under her weeping eyes. “I lost your ribbon.”

“Oh no, Rin, Rin,” he stammers, looking desperately for a way to comfort her, his gaze pained from watching her cry.

His arms slip around her waist, and he pulls her down into his lap, curling her face into his chest as he embraces her so, so gently. She weeps openly into his shirt, then; she knows it’s ‘just’ a ribbon, and perhaps if Nezha was staying she wouldn’t even be this upset. But he is going to leave, she is never going to see him again, and she’ll have nothing of him left.

She’ll have nothing left.

“Rin, Rin, my Rin, my sweetheart,” he murmurs her name into her hair, as if desperately reminding her that even if he knows not what words to say to ease her pain, he sees her, he loves her, he’s there. “Please don’t cry, I’ll get you another one, I’ll get you a dozen of them, please, don’t cry.”

His breath wobbles as he smooths his hand over the back of her head, and Rin is reminded of how deep his well of feelings runs. He’s always so open and pure with his emotions; his watering eyes like oceans of sadness and vulnerability, spilling over. She’s never been like that. To him, her tears are so utterly foreign that it’s terrifying.

Her cries slow eventually, eyes emptied, dry hiccups the only thing her body has left to give.

He stays with her the rest of the day, he makes sure she eats, he makes sure the shop continues to run smoothly even with her scattered mind.

He keeps his promise.

He comes back the next day with a small, white box in his hands. In it lies a cerulean ribbon, plain silk, threads sewn in clumsily at the edges. It’s objectively less beautiful, less adorned, and much less valuable than the one she’d had before. He says that he has no other ribbons to give her, that any similar to the one she’d had are either back at Arlong or need to be made to order. He says he’ll buy her as many as she’d like, he’ll give them to her when he comes back for her after Sinegard. With adorably reddened cheeks, he tells her that he made it himself, that he took it from the sleeve of his favourite robe, same in shade to her old ribbon, and sewed in the fraying edges on his own. He shows her the proof on his needle-pricked fingers, never having sewn a thing in his entire life.

“I know it’s not as pretty as the one you had,” he says, curling her fingers around the soft silk. “But I hope it can be enough for now.”

It’s his, and she gets to keep it. She loves it already.

She’ll have something left, after all.

Rin places the precious blue ribbon under her tunic, far from where Auntie Fang could find it, and directly over her beating heart.

“It’s more than enough,” she says softly, and rises onto her toes to press her lips to his cheek lovingly. Nezha spends the rest of the day grinning ear to ear.

The day of his departure crawls up slowly, like a slumbering beast yawning awake leisurely, until it doesn’t. Before she knows it, it’s their final full day together, and Rin plans to spend every second of it with Nezha.

She’s trying to be positive, to be happy. To leave her final memory of him as a beautiful portrait for her to revisit in her mind anytime she needs the comfort. To allow him to hold on to a similar picture of her. Her heart shatters nonetheless, but she refuses to let the damage spread.

She expects this day to be wonderful; she will make it wonderful.

She was a fool to think the universe would ever be so kind to her.

Early that morning, as she’s preparing to dash to the shop to meet Nezha as soon as possible, Auntie Fang stops her. She tells her they have a guest. She tells her to be polite. She threatens her not to make a fuss.

She’s forced into a seat across from Matchmaker Liew. Her fate is spelled out before her in no uncertain terms, and Rin watches her world crumble around her.

Rin makes her way to the shop, feet unsteady, breaths coming in sharp gasps. She’s being sold off. Like cattle. No, like a slave.

She sees her future in such clear, morbid detail. She’s forced into the marital bed, screaming and kicking, the old inspector’s breath cloying in her nostrils and hands gripping at her flesh. She swells with children, births them in agony, dies in childbirth or dies as her soul withers away from her grasp. She becomes another one of those glassy-eyed young women who come into the Fangs’ shop in search of remedies for painful sores and desolate minds.

She never sees Nezha again. Worse, he finds her as that broken shell of a person, an old man’s property, used and distorted.

Rin almost laughs. She’d always been a little jealous of Nezha’s certainty in his future. To some extent, her future is now even more certain.

What she wouldn’t give to go back to her blissful ignorance.

Maybe she should run, take her chances with the world. Maybe she should toss herself off a cliff.

Tears gather in her eyes not for the first time that day. The world will not be kind to her if she runs. And she doesn’t want to die.

She doesn’t deserve to die.

Nezha is waiting by the front door of the shop when she arrives, tapping his foot nervously as he stands. She’s late, very late.

He jolts immediately when he spots her, rushing in her direction.

“Rin! I was starting to worry you wouldn’t show up today-” Nezha stumbles to a stop.

His anxious excitement at her appearance quickly drifts into something more akin to fear as he spots the look on her face and the shimmer of her eyes.

“Rin? What is it?” He asks, hands reaching for her tentatively. His own eyes start to shine as he watches her sniffle, trying to hide her teardrops in vain. “We promised we weren’t going to cry today.”

She lets out a soft laugh, but it sounds more like a sob. She wasn’t going to cry. But things change.

Nezha pulls her in, embracing her tightly, and she wraps her arms around him, grateful for the excuse to hide her teary face in his neck.

She can’t tell him about her engagement to the inspector. She won’t. There’s nothing he can do, and she doesn’t want to cause him any more pain. He’ll leave for Sinegard, he’ll forget about her, and it will be for the best.

She’ll keep him forever in her heart, his ribbon pressed tightly to the beating organ. Maybe the memory of him will help her survive through everything that comes.

“Nezha?” She says quietly, almost timidly.

He pulls away hesitantly, making just enough room to look her in the eyes. “Yeah?”

“I’m not going to open the shop today,” she says softly, tracing the lines of his face with her eyes, trying to commit them to memory. This memory would have to last a lifetime. “Let’s go inside and spend the rest of the day together, away from everyone else.”

“What about your foster mother?” He asks gently, worriedly.

Rin shakes her head. She doesn’t care anymore. She will have this one day of happiness, damn Auntie Fang. “It’s fine. Please, I really want this.”

He looks at her uncertainly, but then his eyes catch on a wayward teardrop pooling on her cheek. He wipes it away with his thumb and smiles sadly. “That sounds perfect.”

So they go into the shop; Rin keeps the curtains drawn and the closed sign up. Nezha digs through the stash of inventory, finding a blanket and even a thin mattress among the stores. In some ways he knows the shop even better than Rin does, and Rin’s lip wobbles. She will miss him. So much.

He drags the mattress to a corner of the shop while Rin brings out a few lanterns, setting them aglow near their little alcove. Nezha settles onto the mattress, arms open and inviting, and buries them in the blanket once Rin curls into his embrace.

Nezha's fingers dip into her loose hair, dragging through the strands gently as she sniffles into his chest. He rests his chin on top of her head, humming softly.

“Once I graduate from Sinegard, I’ll come back for you.” He assures her with a tender tone, lips pressing a kiss to her hair as she trembles.

He truly believes it, doesn’t he?

The words only hurt, reminding her of the fact that she will never see him again, certainly not like this. The kind, beautiful idealist. She only hopes the world never gets the chance to break him, not in the way it’s cracking Rin into tiny little pieces.

She says nothing, only pressing her face closer to his chest, hoping he doesn’t feel the moisture slowly soaking into his shirt.

His arms tighten around her, cradling her waist, her back, holding her like the most beautiful of vases, dearly beloved and precious.

“Wait for me, please.” He pleads, and the crack in his voice nearly ruins her.

A soft sob escapes against his chest.

“Always,” she lies with a shuddering voice. He’ll forget her. He’ll move onto bigger, better things.

She will rot.

They don’t let go of each other for the rest of the night. They both cry quietly for some time, his hands caressing her hair and waist devotedly, her fingers clutching onto his back in desperation.

At one point, he asks her if she remembers the stories he used to tell her when they were nine; the dreams of sailing the oceans, of watching over each other, of building a future together.

Of course Rin remembers; they got her through all those painful years alone. She’s surprised he remembers. She tells him as much, and a tearful laugh vibrates through his chest.

“My family is very cold at times, as you know,” he says softly, pressing his lips to her temple. “You were like- like a ray of sunshine I could hold even in the dark, when I felt so utterly alone. I’ve always dreamt of adventures and glory as a child, but ever since you came into my life, I’ve found it impossible to build any of those dreams without you in them. I’ve re-lived the futures I’d imagined for the two of us all those years ago so many times that it’s embarrassing. I’d come up with many more in the years we spent apart.”

The vibration of Nezha’s voice emanating from his chest is soothing against Rin’s cheek, and she hiccups softly. A ray of sunshine to his moonlight. How painfully poetic.

“Would you- would you tell me those stories of our future? The ones I haven’t heard?”

She’s too old for stories. She asks this of him nonetheless.

His heartbeat pounds rapidly into her ear. He’s nervous, she realizes. Flustered, perhaps. But he can still feel the occasional sobs racking her body; he can hear the plea in her voice. She doesn’t want to be a wife. She doesn’t want this life.

He pulls her in a little tighter, and his voice begins to flow. She allows herself to believe in a fantasy, just for this one night. The sweet melody of his tales soothes her malcontent soul, like the balm she’d tenderly applied to his skin the time he’d burned his wrist on a wayward lantern.

He talks in between soft, lingering kisses to her cheeks, to her jaw, to her hair. She never wants him to stop.

The night goes on, the lanterns burn into embers, her mind starts to struggle to keep track of Nezha’s stories. She tries to stay awake; she tries so hard. She doesn’t want to miss out on a single moment with him. But his voice is so soft, weaving tales of their future together, everything from grand adventures fighting monsters and exploring all corners of the earth to the most domestic moments of murmured endearments and soft touches. Rin finds herself falling gently into sleep, lulled by a lullaby she’d never had anyone to sing to her.

When she wakes in the morning, the mattress is cold, and Nezha is gone. Perhaps it’s for the best; perhaps he knows that if he’d woken her, she’d have never let him go.

Her mind is still troubled. But as she slept, as Nezha’s words wove gently into her dreams, a spark of an idea had begun to form. One so outlandish, one so unrealistic that she should have never even considered it.

That morning, with six tael worth of opium, an impossible goal in mind, and a precious strip of blue ribbon and red peony petal pressed to her sternum, Rin goes to find Tutor Feyrik.

Chapter Text

““I wish things had been different,” Nezha said.”

 - The Burning God, pg. 534

Rin stands at the base of the mountain, staring up in awe. Sinegard Academy stretches up towards the sky, rust red sloping pagodas reaching their peaks for the heavens like hungry fingers pleading with the gods.

A waterfall shimmers at the distant height, lazy clouds skimming the bright silvery blue.

It reminds Rin of Nezha.

A lot has been reminding her of Nezha lately, now that there’s a possibility she might actually see him again. But she doesn’t know for certain that he’s here, she doesn’t even know if he tested into Sinegard.

This feeling gnaws at her now, the uncertainty. She’d dragged her feet on her way here at every step, terrified of the moment she lines up with her classmates and doesn’t see the soft porcelain features and pretty smile amongst the crowd.

Rin shakes her head sternly, flicking out the thundering thoughts.

She got into Sinegard. She, a peasant, a nobody, tested into the most elite of academies in the entire nation. And she did it all on her own. If Nezha isn’t here, she will study, she will excel, she will graduate, she will be someone important, and then she will find him.

She won’t be forced to marry. She is free.

She wants to believe that he would have wanted this for her, even if their lives don’t overlap for the years to come.

Tutor Feyrik grunts from behind her, tired from their lengthy journey across the nation. Rin turns around to face the elderly man, grinning nervously.

“We’re here,” she whispers, hardly daring to believe it to be true.

Her tutor smiles kindly, but eyes her hair warily for the hundredth time during the last few hours.

“Last chance, Rin, it’ll be easier to cut it off right now.” He warns, mouth thinning out into a serious line.

Rin presses her hand to her head thoughtfully, fingers tracing her tight high bun with gentle fingers. She’d heeded Tutor Feyrik’s concerns with her lengthy hair, tying it up and away from grabbing hands wanting to drag her into dark alleyways.

But a particular blue ribbon wraps its arms lovingly around the mass of hair, and she can’t bear the thought of cutting down the strands that hold it.

She remembers the moment she left Tikany, the last time she looked her foster mother in the eyes.

“Sinegard will eat you alive,” Auntie Fang had said, lip curling in a condescending sneer.

Rin had reached a hand down the front of her tunic, fingers grasping for the soft strip of cerulean silk that had sat pressed to her breastbone over the past two years, intertwined with her beating heart.

When she’d pulled it out, she’d made certain that Auntie Fang had gotten a good eyeful of Nezha’s ribbon, before wrapping it into her hair with nimble fingers.

Her foster mother’s eyes had flashed in recognition, and Rin smiled in response. “I’ll take my chances.”

No, she can’t take it out of her hair. It is now the acknowledgement of her freedom from the Fangs. She won’t tear her own flag of liberation to the ground, not for anything.

Besides, it’s her only piece of Nezha.

Rin shakes her head, readjusting the satchel on her shoulder as she turns towards the gates of Sinegard Academy once again. “I’m keeping my hair.”

Orientation is when she first meets a few of her fellow classmates. Her eyes rove over their noble, haughty faces hungrily, but she deflates when she doesn’t see the one she’s looking for.

It’s fine, she tells herself, he might already be inside, or maybe he hasn’t gotten here yet.

She pays careful attention to the massive multi-story buildings lining the treacherous slopes of the academy, makes a silly mistake of confusing the outhouse with a classroom, and stays quiet for the rest of the tour.

Her classmates snicker, tossing her nasty looks as they whisper amongst themselves, making unsubtle comments on everything from her dark skin to her dirty clothes to her southern accent.

She tries not to let them bother her. But with how kind Nezha had always been to her, it’s a little jarring to see his reflection in these pale, important, wealthy peers treating her so.

She’s hit with a sudden, vicious thought. What if he treats her the same?

Her hands turn clammy as she considers the possibility she hadn’t imagined once until now. What if he is here, what if he remembers her, and what if he wants nothing to do with her?

Here, he is among his peers, the sons and daughters of nobles and lords and warlords. Would he risk his reputation for someone like her? To even be seen around someone like her?

She bites her lip nervously as she lingers behind the group, helping her wheezing tutor climb a steep set of stairs.

Would he outright scorn her? Or would he pretend he doesn’t recognize her?

Something heated grows at the back of her throat, and she gulps heavily. Whatever happens, she will survive it. Even if it crushes her heart. She always does.

She suddenly feels like a little child again, the one that cried herself to sleep each time Nezha had left. Maybe she wouldn’t survive it. Her heart had grown too soft with his love over the years.

They approach the registration building, and she hears the chatter of dozens of excited voices emanating from inside. The apprentice leading their tour tells them to get their documents verified inside, his voice a bored drawl. Rin shares in tender goodbyes with her tutor, allowing herself a lingering hug before she watches him hobble away and disappear from the academy.

She feels so, so terribly alone.

Rin turns back towards the busy building, taking a shuddering breath. Her hands shake, her teeth chatter. This is it. This is the moment she confronts her novel, all-encompassing fear of rejection.

She enters the room, and her eyes begin their search immediately, methodically parsing through lines of students, hopeful and terrified.

As her gaze roves, her heart only thunders louder. Would it be better if he weren’t here? Would it be easier, to never know how he would treat her before his peers?

Then, like a river trickling in the distance, she hears an unmistakable voice. Peals of laughter erupt in response.

She turns, mouth going dry.

Her eyes trace the group of pupils behind her, dissecting the messy lines standing before the registration booths.

And then, she sees him.

He looks so, so beautiful that it hurts. He stands so tall, lean, shoulders back, basking in the attention of half a dozen students around him. He’s not facing her, and she watches the profile of his jaw move as he says something else to the group before him, so self-assured, fitting in so perfectly.

This is exactly where Nezha belongs.

She’d only ever seen him in the context of Tikany, of poverty and strife, and she never imagined just how right he would look among his peers. It only makes Rin all the more self-conscious about her presence here.

She wonders if he would be embarrassed by her, by having ever loved her.

She continues to stare. Someone snickers behind her, something about pathetic peasant trash like her slobbering over those much too high above her station.

Her gaze traces his fine, silken hair, up in an elegant topknot.

Her ribbon is holding up his hair. Her ribbon is still holding up his hair.

Her heart beats faster in her chest, and she bites down on the inside of her cheek. She cannot cry.

He turns his face just so, and she catches a glimmer of sunlight slash across his eyes, brightening their dark depths even from across the room. He blinks, sharp and sudden against the bright gleam, and tilts his head away from the light, squinting.

He’s facing her. And then, he sees her.

At first, he just blinks, eyelids twitching like he’s trying to dispel a hallucination, one too heart wrenching to stare at for too long.

She wonders if this is what she looked like each time he’d reappeared in Tikany; almost unable to believe the sight, staring at him like she was afraid he’d disappear with the next blink of her eyes.

Rin wrings her hands nervously, watching Nezha with big eyes. She can physically see when the shift happens, when his mind switches from shock, confusion, and disbelief, to what can only be described as awe and pure, unfiltered, joy.

He stumbles in her direction, as if shocked into the movement, and shoves two of his companions aside to make way as he starts to dash across the room. The stumbling students exclaim, and curious eyes around them are drawn in by the commotion.

But suddenly everyone, their chatter, the buzz in the air, it all disappears.

All Rin sees is him.

And then her doubts, her fears, her apprehensions, they all disappear too.

When he collides with her, she worries for a delirious moment that he will send them both toppling, rolling across the floor like children.

But he’s stronger now; he sweeps her into his arms, an arm around her hips, an arm around her waist, lifting her up so high that she gasps, locking her arms around his neck and burying her face in his hair.

Nezha grips her body, as if still uncertain that she isn’t a ghost, as if terrified that she’ll be ripped out of his arms once more. She feels his dry sob against her neck.

“Are you real?” He breathes into her skin, the soft skim of his lips sending shivers up her spine. “Please, be real.”

“Nezha,” is all she murmurs in response, all of her practiced words and greetings she’d prepared for this moment floating away in swirls of smoke.

And then, they topple anyway.

It’s as if his knees give out from the weight of her voice, spilling out as a shuddering breath. He takes her down with him as he continues to hold her close, locked in a tight embrace.

Rin cradles the back of his head, carding her fingers through the familiar strands, curling around her fingers as if they’d never been apart.

For the first time out of all of their reunions, she doesn’t feel like crying.

She pulls away until their foreheads brush, until she can study his face; she wants to look at him, she wants to see him, she wants to see her hope reflected in his gaze.

For once, they have an actual chance.

Nezha’s eyes are misty when he blinks up at her, and one of his arms uncurls from around her waist, hand reaching up to cradle the curve of her jaw, watching her with the glimmer of stars in his eyes.

Rin’s neck flushes and she squirms away, suddenly aware of the many eyes, blinking at them curiously.

“Aren’t you worried about what your companions will think?” She asks sheepishly, hand playing nervously with the blanket-ribbon holding Nezha’s topknot in its elegant bun.

He shakes his head, a soft smile playing over his lips. “They don’t matter. Besides, the ones that do, they already know how much I love you.”

Rin’s heart flutters in her chest, and she can’t help the goofy grin that splits her face in half.

“I love you too.” Those are the easiest words she’d ever said in her entire life.

His smile stretches into something brilliant, and then his eyes drop to her lips. Her breath catches in her throat, suddenly too heavy for her to exhale.

She wants to kiss him.

She isn’t given a chance to consider if she wants it badly enough for their first real kiss to be in front of all their classmates.

“What’s with all this crowding?” Someone snaps loudly, and Rin scrambles to her feet with a jolt, cheeks red.

A dark-robed apprentice pushes through the wide-eyed crowd that was watching their reunion, locking eyes on Nezha’s prone form and Rin’s fidgeting feet.

“What is this, a brawl already?” He sighs, sounding bored. “Tiger’s tits, at least wait until the first day of classes.”

Rin shakes her head in denial, reaching down to offer Nezha a hand. “We weren’t brawling.”

He grabs her hand, rising smoothly to his feet, only letting go after a moment that lingers a little too long for propriety.

“That’s for sure,” a sharp female voice snorts from somewhere amongst the crowd, and out of the corner of her eye Rin sees Nezha tossing a glare in the voice’s direction.

The apprentice raises his eyebrow. “Fine. Whatever, I don’t care. I’m just here to make sure you all don’t kill each other.”

He turns around, doing a sharp spin to face the crowd surrounding them all. “Now, get back into your lines before we drag the sorry lot of you out by your scruffs.”

Rin and Nezha share a look, their little bubble broken, and step into the nearest line. Some people still watch them curiously, whispering amongst themselves. Nezha’s little crowd of admirers now stands to the side, uncertain what to do.

Rin feels a little tense, all the scrutiny like millions of little ant legs across her skin. She shivers, and Nezha rubs a comforting hand over her arm.

“It’ll be okay,” he assures, seeing her discomfort. “We’re together now, that’s all that matters.”

Something flashes in the corner of Rin’s eye, and a beautiful girl with long, silky hair and sharp eyes suddenly steps in line right beside them.

“Shit, so this is the peasant girl you’ve been obsessed with?” She asks with the same haughty voice as the girl Nezha had glared at earlier.

Rin scowls.

“Venka,” Nezha growls in warning, pinpricks of red flushing across his cheeks.

Something clicks in her mind. Rin’s eyes grow wide. “Oh, so you’re Venka?”

She knows of Venka. Nezha had told her many stories about his best friends from back home last time he lived in Tikany.

From how vicious Nezha had made her out to be, Rin didn’t expect her to be quite this pretty.

Venka’s eyes narrow and turn back towards Nezha. “What did you tell her about me? If you told her anything personal, I will gut you in your sleep.”

Rin snickers. “Charming.”

Then a thought hits her.

“Wait,” she says, turning to Nezha herself. “What did you tell her about me?”

Nezha raises his hands, eyes wide as he faces the scrutiny of the two glaring women before him.

Their line moves up, and another boy slips in beside them casually.

Someone had come in to save Nezha.

“Hello! Rin, right?” The boy says excitedly, thoughtful eyes assessing her face.

“Uh, yes.” Rin clears her throat, glancing between Nezha and the boy. “And if I were to hazard a guess… Kitay?”

The boy looks surprised, eyebrows rising. “Oh yes, how’d you know?”

“Nezha doesn’t exactly have many friends, from what I’ve been hearing, at least.”

Nezha chokes in indignation as both Venka and Kitay stare at her, blinking. Then, Kitay grins and Venka barks out a heavy laugh.

“I’m starting to like her,” Venka exclaims, grabbing Rin’s elbow to drag her along with the moving line.

“Same,” Kitay affirms, patting Nezha on the back playfully as he continues to splutter, affronted. 

Rin smiles, a sudden happiness blooming in her chest. She hasn’t felt this feeling in a long time, not since Nezha had left. She wraps her hand around Nezha’s arm, tilting her head to press an affectionate kiss to the underside of his jaw, quick and playful. She hears Venka mock-gagging in the background, and she realizes the others around them are probably staring.

She doesn’t care, especially when the indignant look on Nezha’s face swaps for one of adoration, and he takes her hand in his as they continue to walk down the line.

And just like that, in a school filled with people who mock her, with people who want to see her fail and disappear, she starts to fit in.

Those first few days of classes are gruelling; aside from meals, Rin and Nezha find little to no time to talk.

They huddle at the end of the far cafeteria table; her, Nezha, Kitay, and Venka. She learns a few interesting things during her time getting to know Nezha’s closest friends.

“Honestly, I think I have to thank you,” Kitay says on one of those first days, picking through his slop with a disgusted grimace. “Nezha always came back significantly nicer and less arrogant after every stay in Tikany. I have a feeling you had a lot to do with that.”

Rin snorts, finally capable of remembering those memories fondly instead of with desperate sadness. “Yes, I do distinctly remember glaring at him every time his ego got a little too big. It’s worked wonders.”

Nezha lets out a mock gasp of objection from beside her, squeezing her hand gently where he holds it under the table. “The size of my ego is quite normal, thank you very much.”

“Yeah, no.” Kitay scoffs, shaking his head. “In fact, if not for Rin, I have a feeling that you would have stopped talking to me the moment I beat your score in the Keju.”

“Oh, most definitely,” Venka adds in, tipping her bowl to her lips.

Nezha turns to Rin, and his pout is so adorable that she’s tempted to think about kissing him again. “You don’t think I would have done that, do you?”

“Of course not,” she coos, reaching up to swipe her thumb over a smear of food at the corner of his mouth. He definitely would have done that.

He brightens immediately, tilting his face to press a delicate kiss to her roving thumb.

“You two are absolutely disgusting,” Venka grumbles.

Rin rolls her eyes at her theatrics, turning back to her cooling bowl.

“Yeah,” Kitay says in agreement with Venka after forcing a bite of food down his throat. “Did you know how many sleepless nights I’ve had to spend with this horrifically lovestruck fool over the last two years, trying to convince him that running away from Arlong and kidnapping you out of Tikany was not a good idea?”

Rin’s eyebrows rise. This, she did not know.

She looks back at Nezha questioningly and he just shrugs.

“Well, I didn’t want to leave you there.” He says, looking at her pointedly.

Yes, as much as she had tried, hiding her awful home situation from Nezha had proved impossible in the end.

“It’s not that I wanted to keep him from you,” Kitay adds quickly, “but abduction of a minor is generally frowned upon in Nikan. I don’t think two runaway teenagers would have gotten very far while on the run from the authorities.”

“Besides,” Venka butts in, grinning coyly. “Nezha is a little prince, no way he would have survived more than one night in the wild.”

Nezha sputters, nearly choking on his food. “I’m not stupid! I would have brought enough money for us not to need to resort to ‘the wild’.”

Rin grins along as Venka begins to laugh, turning to look back at Nezha. There aren’t enough words to express how she is feeling right now, how grateful she is to know that he’d spent those two years thinking about her, just as she had of him. So, she just smiles, and hopes her eyes say everything words cannot.

His fingers interlock tightly with hers under the table, squeezing affectionately as he returns her smile, and she knows that he understands.

It only takes about a week at the academy until both Rin and Nezha are tired of short, stolen moments together, and little to no time to talk alone. She admits to him in a quiet whisper that she misses how he used to hold her back in Tikany, how they would talk for hours in each other’s arms.

He agrees, the clear signs of a new idea passing across his features in a blink. He presses quick lips to her brow before they have to part, and Rin spends the rest of the morning wondering what he is planning.

She finds out later that day, when Nezha comes to tell her that he wants to show her something.

He takes her to a tiny little room, practically a closet, hidden away near the main hall of the academy. Inside, a folding cot piled with blankets and even a pillow.

And so, they start to slip away from their dorms late at night, the only time that truly belongs to them. They start to talk again, like they did all those days in Tikany, stopping only when their tired eyes and lazy yawns draw them into sleep.

He tells her about those two uneventful years before the Keju, filled with tireless study and sleepless nights. He tells her how proud he is of her for testing into Sinegard as she presses her face into his neck, curled up in his arms. He asks her how she managed it, what with running the shop and no more than two years of preparation, awe in his voice.

She tells him of long nights of endless study, of stubborn memorization and shirking her duties at the shop. She tells him of the hope that kept her going; the hope of escaping her life in Tikany, of maybe even seeing him again. He runs his fingers through the loose curls of her hair, her ribbon around her wrist to give her scalp a break for the night. His fingers trace down her spine, and she finds herself relaxing, opening up like a blossoming poppy, like she used to all those long years ago.

And yet, she doesn’t tell him of her wax-burnt arms. She doesn’t tell him of Auntie Fang’s promise to sell her off to an old man, to be raped and bred.

Not right away, at least.

Every night, she falls asleep with her head on his chest; she likes to listen to the sound of his heartbeat, reminding her that he is still there, still with her. He seems to take comfort in holding her wrist as he drifts off, the familiar press of blue fabric soft against his fingers.

Sometimes, her dreams are restless; her body is still trying to process those horrific days, weeks, months leading up to the Keju, and it expresses itself by invading her sleeping thoughts.

She wakes in the middle of one such night, her mind conjuring the feeling of the inspector’s hands grabbing at her clothes, arms circling her waist, and she scrambles out of Nezha’s embrace, breathing hard.

He wakes at her movement, rises to his elbows with bleary eyes, blinking hard.

“Rin? What is it-” He interrupts himself when he sees the panicked heave of her chest and the unbidden moisture staining her cheeks.

She purses her lips against the sudden flood of emotions, willing her heart to slow and breath to ease. Nezha shifts to his knees, reaching for her, and she flinches when his fingers brush the bare skin of her cheek, the nightmarish image of the inspector gripping her face tightly resurfacing like a flood.

Nezha pulls away, eyes big and concerned, brows furrowed upwards. His mouth opens wordlessly, as he considers what to say.

“Can I do anything to help, sweetheart?” He murmurs finally, looking like he wants nothing more but to pull her back into his arms.

She takes a hiccupping inhale, and closes her eyes as she exhales, centering herself. When she looks at him again, he’s still kneeling, waiting.

“Lie back down,” she says gently, watching as he complies, settling back down on his back, the blanket strewn open in invitation.

Rin approaches slowly, stretching out beside him, settling her head back onto his chest at her own pace, placing her hands on his warm torso.

“Can I put my arms around you?” He asks timidly, pulling the blanket over their forms. She nods against his chest, and his arms curl around her once more, warm and doting.

Her chest shudders against his body, still reeling from her nightmare. He coos to her softly, hand curling over her scalp, massaging it gently just the way she likes it. As she melts against him fully, her lips open of their own accord, and she begins to whisper into his chest. She tells him of her threatened engagement to the old inspector, of the way she fought tooth and nail to never have to live that life.

He presses his face to her hair and more moisture gathers in her eyes when she feels his tears soak into her strands. He starts to apologize, again and again, with soft, shuddering breaths.

“I wish you’d told me.” His voice cracks, his hands cling to her frame. “I would have never left you there, we would have found another way.”

“Kitay was right, Nezha,” she murmurs, pressing her lips to his tunic softly, directly over his beating heart. “You couldn’t have saved me. I needed to save myself.”

“I’m so sorry,” Nezha whispers again, this time pulling her closer, cradling her head into his neck. “You didn’t deserve to go through that. Especially not alone.”

Rin takes another heavy breath, letting her mouth ghost a kiss over where her face is pressed to his skin. “I’m not alone now.”

She feels his lips touch the crown of her head, she feels them linger. “Never again.”

The weeks and months pass, their classes get only more gruelling, but Rin finds it nowhere near as overwhelming as she expected. She attributes this to her wonderful support system, unlike any she’d ever dreamt of.

She does well, very well, in classes, consistently scoring the top scores, almost always trading on and off with Kitay, Nezha, and Venka for those top spots. They study together, they build each other up, they celebrate each other’s successes. They help one another when anyone starts falling behind.

Nezha is an especially perfect balm for her soul; they can talk privately on a nightly basis, and he supports her through her difficulties as she does him.

When her menstruation begins, she makes the painful but easy choice of destroying her womb. She knows no one has the right to judge her, especially not a man, not one who would never truly understand.

Nonetheless, she knows that whether consciously or not, everyone in this society attributes a woman’s worth to her body and her ability to make life. As much as she doesn't want to, she worries what her friends will think of this decision.

Turns out, she has little to fret about.

Venka calls her crazy when she finds out, but she squeezes her hand supportively and brings her a warm compress for her angry stomach.

Kitay brings her all of his class notes and keeps her distracted from the mind-numbing pain.

And Nezha. As soon as Venka tells him, Nezha comes with an armful of food and pain-relieving remedies from gods know where, and remains by her side as much as possible, holding her hands and comforting her with soft words and touches. The other women in the dorm don’t even say anything when he stays with her at night, tucking himself behind her back and cradling her feverish body to his, holding her through those delirious hours.

He never once questions her, never once judges her on her decision.

When she comes back to class, all three of her friends help her catch up on her missed work, and she finds the transition back into school smoother than she could have ever imagined.

Through it all, her love for Nezha grows, but she finds it difficult to express. Their easy, innocent touches and gentle words are more than she could ever ask for, but she knows her feelings go beyond a platonic bond, as she catches herself glancing at his lips a little too often.

She worries he doesn’t reciprocate those feelings. She knows he loves her so, so much, and she doesn’t want to ruin this.

They continue to cuddle at night, and they continue supporting each other in all they do. When they spar against each other in class, she tells him not to go easy on her, and so he never does. She learns and grows, musculature filling out her narrow frame. She even stumbles across the eccentric Jiang, starts learning the things Jun would never teach them, and begins to gain the upper hand in spars with her classmates.

When the Tournament comes around, Rin and Nezha face each other in the ring, the two finalists, in a scenario that is so shockingly familiar yet completely novel.

They compete, they don’t go easy on each other. But throughout it all, there is an undercurrent of respect, love, and admiration, painting every strike and grapple. When Rin wins, she takes his hand, helping him up to stand, and wipes a smear of blood off his face with her tunic sleeve, dotingly.

He smiles, and she can see the gentle happiness in his gaze. “You are amazing.”

She watches the glimmer in his eyes, the soft, sculpted curve of his lips, and thinks about kissing him once again.

But then they’re being ushered out of the arena, and she no longer has the opportunity to linger on the thought.

Rin squirms on the thatched straw roof of the fruit stand, sweat tickling her skin as the sun beats down cruelly from overhead.

She watches the Summer Festival procession with disinterest; aside from catching glimpses of Nezha, Kitay, and Venka as they trudge along with their noble families, Rin finds this part of the celebration incredibly uninteresting.

Where is the dancing? The excitement? The shrieks of joy and laughter? This isn’t a celebration; this is nothing but a nauseating display of wealth and opulence.

Worst of all, it’s boring.

Rin scratches at the back of her perspiring neck, huffing out a breath.

Rin left her friends before she had to endure the awkward back and forth where they pretend to ask their families if she can ride with them, while knowing full well the answer to that question. Now, all she wants is to see them again, and to continue enjoying the pretty sights and smells and melodies of the booths around her, twirling among the expensive baubles that Rin had to threaten Nezha from buying for her at every turn.

She’s interrupted from her thoughts by two things happening nearly simultaneously. Screams and shouts arise from the crowd below as the Empress, no, a goddess, arrives on a palanquin of pure sunlight, glowing more radiantly and entrancingly than any woman she had ever seen. At the same time, a hand reaches over the crunchy straw of the roof Rin is currently occupying.

At first, she barely notices the intruder, so hypnotized by the beauty of the Empress, so taken by the desire to love her, serve her, protect her at any cost. But then a blue fabric flutters in the corner of her eye, inky hair of pure silk framing his embroidered robes and porcelain skin.

When she sees Nezha, the Empress suddenly matters so, so little. Rin looks away from her, and her gaze catches fully on a radiance much brighter than the parading woman’s could ever be.

He’s watching her too, like the Empress isn’t even there, like she doesn’t even matter, and he’s looking at her the way she’d been gazing at their ruler just a moment prior.

He doesn’t say anything. He slides up closer, so close that his soft exhales tickle her nose, and he looks down at her lips. His gaze lingers, just long enough that Rin feels a bloom of hope blossoming in her chest, but then he flushes, and looks away quickly.

The blossom shrivels and Rin scowls. Fuck it, enough is enough.

She cups his cheeks with tender hands, turning him to face her once more.

“What are you afraid of?” She whispers, the words so quiet they could be mistaken for the wind, flighty and soft. Her voice shakes, as much as she wishes it didn’t.

His eyes close as he leans into the warmth of her hands with a sigh. “Losing you.”

She smiles softly, the irony melting like rotting lemon slices on her tongue. He’s echoing her long-held sentiments so precisely, so similarly that she almost laughs. They’re both such idiots.

But as she traces the swell of his cheek with her thumb, brushes his jaw with the heel of her palm, she sees the lines of tension tauten on his soft skin, sees the scared tremble in the corner of his eye and the flutter of his lip. This goes beyond the simple fear of rejection, of the loss of their precious bond.

Perhaps it’s a fear of giving in fully, of turning oneself inside-out for the other to see in gruesome detail, of displaying every crevice and hollow and pit to be studied like the meticulous brush strokes of an expert scribe or a wizened cartographer, just to be torn apart from each other by the fickle nature of fate.

Rin realizes that perhaps her fears go beyond simple rejection, too.

“You’ll never lose me,” Rin says gently, tilting his face down, wanting to see his every expression in painstaking detail.

His voice shakes when he responds, eyes blinking open, fluttering against the drops of dewy mist gathering on his lashes. “You can’t know that for certain.”

Rin considers his words, the ring of truth to them, the fact of life that no one knows when loss will come for them.

All she wants in this moment is to comfort Nezha, her Nezha, her love, swiping at his teary eyes with her thumb. One of her hands reaches for the back of his head, fingers dipping into the soft strands, dislodging his meticulous topknot, held up with hairpins of glimmering silver, dragons dancing across the precious metals.

Nezha doesn’t seem to mind, only letting free a soft hum of contentment, watching her through half-lidded eyes of pure adoration. Her hand curls in further, and she finds what she’s looking for. Within the updo, holding the base of the entire knot tight and secure, her blanket-ribbon weaves among the strands, fraying from years of love and use. She pulls it out with a gentle tug, letting the hair scatter over his shoulders like a waterfall of a starless night, hairpins dropping to the straw, surrounding him like offerings at an altar to a deity.

His hand curls softly around the wrist still pressed to his cheek, holding it steady, shifting his face to press a tender kiss to her calloused palm.

“As long as you have this,” she murmurs, holding up his ribbon in her other hand, raising it up in the sunlight, watching his eyes dance over it softly, “you’ll always have me.”

His eyes trace back up to hers slowly, the devotion unmistakable within those onyx depths. Freeing her other hand from his hold, Rin tugs at the ribbon holding up her own hair with a quick pull.

She holds out the shimmering blue silk in her hand, letting it flow like water over her heated skin. “And I’ll always have you.”

He cradles her hands then, closing them over their ribbons, intertwined beneath their fingers, royal blue and peasant beige, indiscriminate as they coil against their palms.

His expression is so open, so vulnerable.

“I love you,” he murmurs, bringing their joint hands to his lips, “so much.”

Rin smiles, and shifts just a little closer. “I love you too.”

His gaze breaks from hers, for a moment, and his eyes sweep the celebration below, the people mingling and talking, the Empress long gone.

“You should join me next year,” he says softly, and catches her eyes once more. “In the parade.”

“Yeah, right,” she snorts, shaking her head at the thought of her riding alongside his beautiful, majestic cohort of a family. “It’s only for members of the noble houses, and I’m as much a Yin as I can fly."

A quiet pause. Then, “You could be.”

Nezha says this softly, face flushing red.

Rin looks away, neck growing hot, eyebrows furrowing in question, in question of something she thinks she already knows the answer to but is afraid to name.

When she catches his gaze once more, he meets her eyes with a determination that steals her exhale into a shallow gasp. Still cradling their ribbon-clasped hands, he leans in, noses grazing, breaths shuddering.

Then, with the devotion of a familiar prayer, his mouth meets hers with an insistent press, soft lips gentle and coaxing.

And suddenly, like broken ceramic rearranged into something whole by loving hands, everything falls into place.

Chapter Text

“Rin saw a stream of bright colors, bold and gaudy, which resolved themselves into definable shapes only when she squinted. Reds and golds became streamers and firecrackers; blues and purples became fruits, berries, and cups of pouring wine. She looked around, dazed.”  

- The Dragon Republic, pg. 397

The tender morning sunlight tickles Rin’s nose, warming the cold extremity against the unprecedented Summer’s chill.

Rin curls further into her heavy blanket, pulling the thick mesh over her head with a sniff. Something large shifts next to her, and suddenly, she’s very warm.

She’s smothered against hot skin, face pressed to a sturdy, familiar chest, hard enough to squeeze the breath out of her lungs.

“Nezha,” she croaks, pushing weakly against his shoulders as her elbows are pinned to her sides. He doesn’t budge, so she jerks her knees up to her chest, freeing up the room she so desperately needs.

She’s met by a sleepy whine of complaint as her needy fiancé wraps his arms around her tighter, pointy knees and elbows and all.

This has become a common occurrence.

Rin would find this clingy morning Nezha a lot more endearing if he didn’t consistently endanger her lungs of collapsing.

She does the only thing that generally tends to work in this situation. She opens her mouth where it’s pressed near his collarbone, and bites.

Nezha yelps as he wakes with a start, arms loosening around her, and Rin is finally able to push away to a safe distance.

Rin pulls down her blanket, glaring weakly in Nezha’s direction as he emerges from her sheets, rubbing at his collarbone with a pout. A novel set of little teeth marks joins the many spanning the expanse of his sculpted chest.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, reaching for her again, curling a hand over her hip.

“We really need to do something about this before you actually suffocate me in your sleep.”

He grimaces, perfect lips curling down sadly. Rin wants to let him wallow in his well-deserved guilt for another minute, but she’s always far too soft when it comes to him. She sighs. Her hands grasp his face gently, smoothing out the lines of concern with tender thumbs.

“It’s okay, I can always just keep biting you.” Rin assures him softly, palms gentle against the soft skin of his cheeks.

Nezha smiles, then, a big, brilliant thing. The hand holding her hip pulls her in sharply, eliciting a happy squeal as she ends up pressed to Nezha’s chest once more, this time far more tenderly than before.

He cradles her warm body to his, resting his chin on top of her head.

His body thrums with excitement, and he can’t hold the tender position for long before pulling her up to face him. Rin presses her lips to his as soon as she can reach them, sharing in the joy, in the anticipation of the day.

His hands are so gentle as he holds her face, returning the kisses until they both need to come up for air. Nezha grins as his gaze catches her half-lidded eyes, smile so wide that he glows.

“We’re getting married today,” he whispers, and then they’re kissing again, deeper, and longer than before, hands roving over familiar skin and beloved curves and crevices.

They are getting married. Rin has never been this happy. She doesn’t think she’d known happiness before she’d fallen in love with Nezha.

It will be the largest wedding the Dragon Province has seen since Vaisra’s. Possibly bigger, considering this isn’t a quick and arranged affair such as was Nezha’s father’s and mother’s.

A shiver travels up her spine, not for the first time. But Nezha’s lips continue to worship her mouth and she remembers why she is doing this.

She loves him. She has always been selfish, but not when it comes to him. He would do anything for her, and the least she can do is indulge in his boyish dream of a large, traditional, beautiful wedding.

In the end, she’ll officially be his wife, and he’ll be her husband, and that’s all that matters.

“We’re getting married,” he whispers again, in between kisses that have now migrated to her neck, so much joy in his voice that Rin can’t help the tender smile that stings the corners of her mouth.

It was certainly a journey to get to this point. A long, difficult journey, from both sides of their lives. But they’re here, they are done. This is it, nothing will pull them apart ever again.

“We’re getting married,” she breathes back, a soft sigh to the gentle rove of his mouth against the skin of her shoulder. Her hand curls into his silky hair, tugging on it softly.

Her door bursts open.

Rin jumps in Nezha’s arms with a gasp, head swiveling towards the noise. Nezha, the bastard, clings to her harder, burying his face in her neck.

“Oh, I swear to the gods, you two are something else!” Venka exclaims shrilly as she storms into Rin’s room, glaring at her meanly. “Nezha, get the fuck out of here, you are really not supposed to be here right now. For fuck’s sake, have either of you heard of propriety? You really couldn’t wait to jump each other’s bones until tonight?”

Rin flushes, returning Venka’s glare as she raises her blanket higher around both Nezha and herself.

When Nezha buries himself further into Rin with a grumble, Venka audibly grinds her teeth.

“Nezha, if you don’t let go of her right this second, I will drag your naked ass out into cold myself.” She snaps, crossing her arms sternly.

Nezha mumbles into Rin’s neck, sending shivers down her spine as his hands press divots into her skin. “I want to see her try.”

Rin has no doubt that Venka is about to march across the room and do exactly what she’d threatened to do. Rin pushes Nezha away with a pang of disappointment, and he finally relents, rolling off her with a dejected sigh.

Venka takes a threatening step forward and Nezha forces himself out of bed, grabbing his discarded clothes as he goes. “Fine, fine, I’m leaving.”

He can’t help himself but to send another grin towards Rin, giving her a final peck on the lips as Venka screeches at him to get out. “I’ll see you soon, sweetheart.”

Rin plops back on her bed with a soft sigh, equal parts happy and anxious. This is going to be the longest day of her life.

Rin and Nezha’s engagement had been a foregone conclusion; as natural as breathing. They had known one fact for certain: they never wanted to be apart again. What better way to ensure no one had any method of separating them than by binding themselves through the immutable and highly respected union of marriage?

When Nezha had officially proposed near the end of their second year at Sinegard, they were still young, so young that no one thought it would last. No one who hadn’t seen them around each other, at least. Anyone who’d spent that entire first and second year of Sinegard with the two lovestruck fools only rolled their eyes knowingly when they heard the news, as if to say, no shit.

The proposal was short and sweet, simple. Rin hadn’t doubted that Nezha had had a full evening planned, with speeches and affection, but all it had taken was those first three words, those simple ‘Will you marry-“ for Rin to grab his face, kissing him deeply, whispering ‘of course’, over and over again, interspersed with soft ‘I love you’s’.

In the end, Nezha was enough for her to almost forget why she’d ever scorned the idea of marriage so.

Love had made her into a brainless fool, and she couldn’t find it in herself to find that upsetting.

They weren’t quite complete fools, however, and kept their engagement quiet, hiding the sapphire-inlaid silver betrothal band Nezha had placed lovingly around her finger until they could overcome the largest obstacle in their union: their families.

Well, more so Nezha’s rich, important, pretentious family. Rin had already told Auntie Fang to go fuck herself in her mind years ago.

They’d had a plan; Their four-day Summer break from Sinegard had been approaching then, and Nezha would be joining his family for the Summer Festival as usual. This time, Rin was coming with him.

The first day of their break went about as well as Rin had expected, even as Nezha had been his usual idealistic self. When Nezha had asked his father and mother to meet him for an urgent matter, they certainly hadn’t been expecting him to walk in holding the hand of an irreverent peasant girl with a semi-permanent glare, announcing that they were engaged.

His mother had burst into actual tears. His father’s eyebrows had risen high enough to take flight. Vaisra had all but called Nezha a stupid child and told them to get lost.

The next day went marginally better. She was quite impressed with Nezha, actually. She wasn’t sure if she’d have been able to have a similar conversation with Auntie Fang if it was necessary, and Vaisra was leagues more intimidating than her foster mother. Nezha had come back to his father’s study, Rin in tow, unwilling to be cowed. Nezha had been prepared, the many reasons why he should be allowed to marry Rin filed away in his mind. First of all, she was one of few to rival him in her studies at Sinegard, proving a level of academic prowess worthy of the House of Yin. Secondly, she was fantastic at combat, and would make a great team with him if it came to protecting their House. Thirdly, he was the second son, and not expected to carry on the Yin lineage in the same manner as Jinzha would be expected to, so who he married shouldn’t have been anyone’s concern.

Vaisra kicked them out once more.

But on the third day of their break, Nezha had gone into Vaisra’s office, alone. After multiple nerve-racking hours, Nezha had come out with a massive grin on his face and his father’s tentative blessing.

Rin still wasn’t sure, to this day, what he had said to convince his father on that third day. When she’d asked, he’d just smiled wider and kissed her, telling her that even his father couldn’t deny that they were perfect together anymore.

She’d raised a skeptical eyebrow at that. But nonetheless, whatever he had done, it had worked.

The next day, the final day of the Summer Festival, she’d been invited to the join the Yins in the Summer Festival parade, and their engagement had been made all but official with the betrothal band around her finger.

“Ow!”

“Oh, be quiet, you big baby.”

Venka runs a vicious comb through Rin’s hair, dragging through a knot like it owes her money. Rin grits her teeth instead of cussing Venka out once again. The woman has no patience for anything, and Rin has been far too spoiled by Nezha’s gentle fingers whenever he manages to get his hands on her hair.

She wishes it was Nezha combing out her hair. He does it so tenderly that she falls asleep nearly every time.

She tells Venka as much and receives a scoff in return.

“And tell me, how long does it take him to get your hair done?”

Rin considers the question, and realizes that maybe Venka has a point.

“Fine,” Rin acquiesces with a grumble.

A few more painful brush strokes later, and Rin’s hair shines in long, smooth sheets down her back. She admires her hair as Venka busies herself with the massive basket of cosmetics she’d dragged in for the purpose of turning Rin into a ‘proper bride’. The woman had immediately appointed herself as Rin’s maid of honour upon learning of her engagement to Nezha, and had thrown herself into the role head-on while Kitay had taken on a role as Nezha’s best man.

Rin is immensely grateful that someone is willing to do all this for her. Not that she’ll ever admit it to Venka out loud.

Venka takes her time, dragging fine powders and tints and rouges delicately across Rin’s sharp features, eyelids narrowed in focus. After what feels like ages, Venka pulls back, a satisfied look settling deep in her feline eyes.

“You’re all done on the makeup. Nezha will lose his mind.” She announces smugly, brushing sticky powders off her hands, palm against palm.

Rin fidgets in her seat, suddenly worried she will end up looking like a child playing dress-up next to Nehza’s regal elegance at the altar.

She shifts to rise, to look at herself in the large mirror leaning against the other side of her chambers. She takes a step in its direction.

“Nuh-uh.” Venka grabs her elbow, dragging her to the tall wooden closet in the nearest corner of the room. “Not until you’re done.”

Rin sighs, dragging her feet. She knows what comes next. As much as a childish little part of her excites at the pampering and adornments to come, she still shudders as she remembers the heavy layers of skirts and tangling shawls that were presented to her at her dress fitting, the seamstresses and seamsters scurrying around her like mice as they tried to make everything just perfect.

It is perfect, truly, even more gorgeous and exquisite than she remembers when Venka opens the closet door with a flourish to reveal tumbling layers of colours.

But putting it on is an absolute nightmare. At the very least, Rin is very happy she’d rejected Nezha’s offer for attendants to help her prepare on this day, as even the look of manic excitement in Venka’s eyes is more than enough for Rin to handle.

Putting on the massive ceremonial garb is truly a feat that takes more time than any clothing ever should. At times, Rin even starts to question if she should have accepted the attendants. Four hands are not nearly enough to handle the lengthy train of silver-embroidered blue fabric that trails in thick ribbons over her shoulders like a shawl, to parse through the thick, heavy folds of red skirts adorned with golden threads painting depictions of flying phoenixes and their feathers, promising good luck and happiness in the marriage to come.

Sheets of the embroidered xiapei tighten over her torso and Rin takes in deep breaths, settling into the full fabric.

By the time that she’s fully stuffed into the dress, miraculously, both her and Venka are panting heavily. The latter woman places her hands on her knees with a huff, looking up to assess Rin’s state through heavy lashes. She grins.

“Oh yeah, it’s all coming together.” Venka says smugly, seemingly recovering from her exhaustion as she makes her way back for her basket of cosmetics. Rin wobbles in her direction, where Venka applies a few final touches to her face and neck, then proceeds to run a hand through her loose hair.

“Alright, looks like we’re ready for the final part.”

Venka reaches into her basket once more, this time pulling out piles of hairpins and decorative pieces and jewellery, so many that Rin’s eyes widen and she wonders how her neck and body will manage to support them all.

Venka chuckles at the desperate look Rin tosses her way, and proceeds to pull and prod at her mess of hair, lifting it off her neck strand by strand.

“Don’t worry,” Venka grunts from behind her, securing a clip near the apex of her neck. “I’ve practiced this on myself. It shouldn’t be too heavy.”

That statement doesn’t reassure Rin.

But by the time Venka steps away, Rin doesn’t feel the expected weight on her neck. Sure, spots on her scalp are a little tight here and there, but Venka did a surprisingly masterful job of arranging her hair without it crushing her spine. Beautifully cut gems and precious metal bands encircle her limbs and extremities like vines, painting lines of opulence across the expanse of her skin.

Rin blinks at Venka through heavy lashes, gnawing on her lip. Venka’s eyes soften, small smile touching her lips as she places her hands on her shoulders gently.

“There’s just one thing left,” she murmurs, turning Rin around and pushing her gently in the direction of the mirror. “Go, take a look at yourself. I’ll bring it over.”

Rin smiles, already knowing what that one thing will be. She never does anything without it. She won’t be missing it on this day.

Rin steps in front of the mirror with a nervous exhale, daring to take herself in, all of her, as her gaze drags to her reflection.

Rin sucks in a sharp breath.

She looks… magnificent. Like royalty.

And pretty. She thinks she starts to see what Nezha sees every time he tells her how beautiful she is in between doting kisses.

She usually blushes, embarrassed, disbelieving. Pulls away with a mortified curl of her chin into her chest as she looks away from Nezha’s earnest gaze. He loves her, of course he’d say things like that. He would follow her retreating face, would cup her jaw, would continue peppering her skin with kisses, whispering how he wishes she’d see herself the same way he does.

She never thought she’d see herself as beautiful, or pretty even. She’d thought it was impossible, a silly goal to strive for. She’s realizing now that maybe it’s just something that takes time.

Maybe Nezha knew that all along. Maybe that’s why he kept insisting on giving her those sweet little compliments, soft and breathy pretty’s and stunning’s, deep and husky gorgeous’s and irresistible’s.

Her reflection blinks back at her with darkened eyes, red-painted full lips, and sculpted brows. A soft blush paints her cheeks, not all of it from the cosmetics. The wedding gown trails over her frame like a living embodiment of opulence and beauty, detailings of real gold and silver glimmering with every movement. She’d have thought the large splashes of blue and silver of her trailing shoulder pieces for the House of Yin and the red and gold of traditional Nikara wedding dress would clash awfully, but the two only enhance one another, stunning and captivating. Her hair is piled intricately upon her head, glimmering golds and silvers of hairpieces building an entire story across her inky locks.

She shines with happiness, and she thinks that’s the prettiest part of it all.

Venka comes up behind her, carrying something in her hands, a knowing smile on her face. “Here.”

Her hands come up gently to her head, holding a familiar blue ribbon, worn with years of use, sewn up lovingly again and again to keep it together because Rin cannot bear to replace it. Venka curls the fabric into her hair, tying it into the strands as it contrasts with the expensive jewellery adorning her hair and body.

No matter. The ribbon could be nothing more than a scrap and Rin would still think it belongs amongst the most magnificent of riches. Rin grins as everything finally comes together.

“Told you.” Venka whispers, watching her with uncharacteristic affection. “Nezha will lose his shit when he sees you.”

Rin can’t wait to see it.

Once Rin had come back for her third year at Sinegard, her engagement to Nezha was the talk of the academy. Sure, it came as no shock to anyone with eyeballs, but they were still surprised the two were actually going through with it, specifically the fact that Vaisra had permitted it.

From the moment it was announced, they all knew it would be a grand, enormous affair. Vaisra would allow no less for a son of his.

Nezha, especially, loved the idea.

The traditional ceremony, the immense banquet, the crowds of people to witness their love. It is so utterly cheesy and romantic, and so utterly Nezha.

Rin knew from the moment he’d confessed to her this desire, childhood joy lighting his face from within, that she would never deny him this.

The first thing that Nezha had asked, the considerate bastard, was how she’d felt about the thought of a large wedding, big eyes blinking earnestly. As much as the wedding was expected to be the affair of the century, as much as Nezha wanted it to be, Rin knew in that moment that all she had to do was say the word, was to show any discomfort or uncertainty, and Nezha would shut it down.

But he’d wanted it. And he gave her so much. And she loved him. So, she’d only smiled and embraced him tightly at the news.

Then, came everything else.

They were to be married immediately after their graduation from Sinegard, a solid three years from the start of their engagement. This allowed for the time necessary to prepare for such an enormous wedding, spanning days of feasts and celebration, with many traditions and rites to be performed in the time before the actual marriage ceremony could take place. Furthermore, it gave peace of mind to those who were genuinely concerned that they were too young to be jumping into this commitment. Three years was certainly a lengthy engagement, giving them plenty of time to mull over the decision.

Rin would have married Nezha that same night he’d proposed if she’d had her way.

But for him, she would wait for as long as it would take.

Nezha, for his part, hadn’t seemed to mind the long engagement. As he’d put it, it gave him so much more time to ‘pamper’ Rin with piles of betrothal gifts, as was customary for the groom to present to the bride prior to the wedding.

And pamper he did.

So much so that it quickly became a problem. Rin was generally capable of keeping up with the arrays of food and cakes Nezha would present to her on a monthly basis, sharing the various delicacies with Kitay and Venka as they promptly polished them off in light of the measly academy meals.

The issue arose with the non-consumables; various precious objects and decorative pieces displaying the wealth and beauty of the House of Yin, integrating Rin into the family one fancy bowl at a time. The little space she had under her bunk had been overflowing by the time graduation approached, so much so that Rin had definitely stepped into a few unfortunate porcelain pieces on those late nights when she was too exhausted to keep track of her steps.

Rin had indulged him because of how happy it seemed to make him, to see her elusive smile when she received something particularly pretty or meaningful, like the dozens of beautiful blue ribbons he’d given her over the months, though none she would wear over the one she’d gotten from him years ago. Besides, she found his excitement kind of adorable, even amongst the many amused looks and bets of their peers watching his lavish spending unfold.

As the months and years had passed, Nezha continued to play his part of prospective groom, and they began to plan the actual event: the guests, the itinerary, the minuscule details that made Rin’s brain itch.

This was where they had encountered the first massive deviation from the traditional wedding plan Nezha had so been gushing about.

Financially, Rin could contribute exactly nothing to the entire event.

No dowry, no money to pay for the wedding ceremony, as was the bride’s family’s responsibility. No family or connections at all, really, to fall back on.

It’s not as if Auntie Fang would contribute.

Nezha assuaged her concerns immediately. Perhaps he had been right; the House of Yin had more than enough wealth to cover the wedding to the grandest extents they could imagine it. And Nezha didn’t need a dowry; he only wanted her.

But that had not been the point.

The point had been that publicly, everyone saw Nezha showering gifts upon her, saw the Yin family contributing massive monetary expenses to the wedding. It was easy for them to applaud the Yins for keeping to the proper rites of betrothal, for doing their part.

When they saw Rin, they saw an impoverished woman leeching off the wealth of this respected family.

They didn’t see her successes in Sinegard Academy, they didn’t see her potential to make something of herself, without the need of anyone else. 

They saw a damn concubine, because a bride without a dowry was dishonourable, was considered no better than a mistress.

But Nezha was just so happy, and so oblivious, because no one would dare disparage her in front of him like that. And since when had Rin ever cared what others thought of her, anyway?

So, she’d said nothing.

That is, until she’d found herself sitting in the depths of a cozy, rapid caravan, dread building in her stomach as she approached an old home she never really thought she’d ever see again.

Rin had been bouncing her knee madly, not even noticing the movement, until a gentle hand pressed down onto the trembling limb, solid and steadfast. Nezha’s thumb rubbed soothing circles into the dip under her kneecap, fingers warm and tender.

“Hey,” he’d murmured, softly, tilting her chin to look at him from across the small space of the caravan. “It’ll be okay, I’ll be there with you the entire time.”

He’d paused for a moment, contemplating, watching her attempt to chew through her lip anxiously. “The offer still stands, sweetheart, I’d be happy to go get him myself.”

Rin had sighed, shaking her head and dislodging his hand from her face. Immediately feeling the loss, she put a gentle palm over the one still covering her knee. “And I’ve already told you, I need to do this. He’s my brother, I’ve already abandoned him with her for years and I won’t be so much of a coward not to face her now, not for this, not when it’s so important to me that he be there at my own damn wedding.”

Nezha’s brow had furrowed in tender concern, lips turning down at the corners as the hand on her knee tightened just a fraction.

“Nezha,” Rin said softly, giving the tensed hand a squeeze. “It’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

“That bitch made you run opium for her since you were eight,” he grumbled, the soft petulance in his voice making Rin’s lips quirk upwards. “Forgive me for being concerned.”

Rin had laughed, then, the sullen expression reminding her so much of the angry, pretentious little boy that had pouted at her all those years ago when she’d smeared her grubby nine-year-old hands all over his expensive cerulean robes.

He’d blinked at her in slight shock, eyes big and soft and pretty, but then he’d grinned tenderly, unable to hold it back whenever he saw her smile. He flipped his hand over under hers, intertwining their fingers, holding her palm close for the rest of the ride, long and gut-churning.

When they’d entered Tikany, Rin was hit with the smell of dirt and decaying leaves, so strong and potent that it was nearly enough to mask the occasional tendrils of sickly sweet poppy smoke snaking through the air, so so familiar that it had burnt at her nostrils.

No memories flooded her brain at the immediate reminder of her old home, but the sense of dread and fear and exhaustion that had veiled her like a blanket all of her childhood had fallen over her shoulders once more, causing a violent tremble to shoot down her limbs.

The caravan had barely gotten a few dusty, unpaved streets into the town before Rin yelled out at the driver to stop, already opening the squeaky hinges of her door and swinging out her feet, Nezha letting out a soft protest behind her.

Rin had landed onto mushy soil just as the caravan halted to a stop behind her, soon joined by another pair of feet right beside hers as Nezha bounced out after her.

He hadn’t said anything; only grabbed her hand once more, interlocking their fingers in an attempt at comfort, knowing she needed to approach this place at her own pace, to take it in bite by bite lest she choke on the memories of a life long thrown away.

“The shop is nearby,” Rin had murmured, feet already directing her towards her second home for all those years as if in a trance, tugging Nezha along gently. He’d complied, letting the driver know to wait for them, following her dutifully.

As they’d walked, they’d gotten a few stares here and there, gaunt faces and ragged villagers peeking out at them in surprise, as if greeting ancient yet familiar ghosts.

Many had seen the strange duo; the two inseparable children from different worlds, always together. They now returned as phantoms to this desolate place, grown, here for the night and gone the next.

Perhaps some of them had even heard of the society-shattering union of the Dragon Warlord’s son and an impoverished dark-skinned southerner. Maybe some of them had connected their own dots.

Rin had wondered if Auntie Fang had heard. She’d wondered if perhaps the woman was already waiting for them to show up, to try to drain them of every coin she could.

Rin had repressed another shudder, clutching Nezha’s hand tighter.

When they’d gotten to the shop, Rin almost thought her feet had led her astray. Because what sat in front of her was not a shop, but a broken, dismantled building; a ruin to be rebuilt at the next owner’s desire.

Rin had thought she’d feel a spark of glee, of satisfaction at the sight. Perhaps even some level of nostalgia or regret.

She’d felt nothing.

Nezha in tow, she’d turned around and promptly made her way towards her old home.

Rin kneels on a soft cushion of blood red satin, feet tucked into the monstrous number of skirts flowing from her ceremonial wedding gown. Plush birdsongs can be heard flowing from the weeping willows stretching their arms to the soft grass below. Soft melodies weave their way between branches of blooming cherry trees, surrounding the shining temple displaying her union with Nezha to the dozens of carefully-selected guests paying rapt attention.

Nezha shifts beside her, kneeling on a cushion of his own, head bowed similarly to hers, paying reverence to the ancient man hobbling before them, reciting words of praise and prosperity for the House of Yin in this marriage, in this uniting of two souls.

This old man has been monologuing for so long that Rin starts to wonder why anyone hadn’t done the unsteady, warbling man a mercy and hired a new ceremonial officiant for the mighty House of Yin.

She huffs a little under her breath, a small, unruly strand of hair moving with the motion as it slips further out of her heavy hairdo. She sees Nezha’s face tilt out of the corner of her eye, just a fraction, tossing her a glance.

She feels something shifting; a soft, imperceptible ruffle of skirts, as if a snake slithering its way into the oceans of fabric flowing around Rin’s body like a puddle of red and gold, a river of silver and blue trailing back behind her.

Warm fingers wrap around hers, hidden within the massive layers of her gown, and Nezha’s mouth tilts up at the corner, sweet and tender. He bows his head a bit lower, hiding the improper action from the watchful eyes of their families and friends gathered behind them.

Rin squeezes his hand, grateful, and holds it close as they kneel there silently, the perfect picture of reverent bride and groom.

He rubs soothing circles into the back of her hand. And then, a little whisper, soft as the wind, only meant for her ears as Nezha’s lips shift as if with no more than a little sigh.

“You look so, so beautiful.”

Rin beams silently, ducking her chin closer to her chest to hide her flush. When he’d first seen her, his reaction had not disappointed. His jaw had hung so low that he couldn’t even stutter a word out to her before they were both being led to kneel by the altar. Hearing his thoughts put into words spurs Rin’s fluttering heart into an uneven rhythm.

“You do too.”

Her words escape in a soft breath, similar to his, gentle and floaty. He looks so handsome in his beautiful robes, red and gold with slivers of his House colours to match hers.

The best part is that she’d noticed her old, ratty ribbon tucked deep into his silky hair, the jewels and hairpins shining among the locks not enough to hide its presence.

She holds his hand just a little tighter. She only lets go when the officiant finally addresses them, mouth pursed tightly, willing them to bow their foreheads to the ground; once in worship of the heavens, twice in worship of the relatives, thrice in worship of the spouse.

They rise, then, Rin on unsteady feet as she prepares for the next, nerve-racking step of the ceremony; where they get a moment to finally exchange words, to speak their devotion to one another.

In front of all their guests.

They clasp hands, and words spill like honey from Nezha’s lips, soft and tender.

“I’ve loved you since we were children,” Nezha murmurs, the cobalt gems of his eyes glimmering in the late afternoon light, a flame of devotion fuelled into a steady hearth. “Probably ever since you held that knife out against those men, the bravest nine-year-old I’d ever seen, a goddess there to protect me. From that moment on, no possible future of mine would not include you; I couldn’t even fathom such a thought in the deepest recesses of my mind. Put simply, you are, and always will be, my future.”

Her hands tighten around his, and she doesn’t even realize there are droplets forming at her lashes until she notices a tear tracing its way down the slope of Nezha’s cheek. One of her hands slips out of his gently, probably breaking half a dozen protocols or so, breaking another dozen when she puts it on his cheek, rubbing away at the trailing moisture with a doting thumb.

He smiles, the moving muscles pressing into her palm. When he speaks next, his first few words are soft enough to only be for her ears.

“I didn’t think I’d be alive today, gods know I’ve tried not to be. But you’ve made me want to live, Rin, my love. I’ll be yours until death, and even then I won’t rest until I find you again in the afterlife, as I’ve come back to you again and again all those years in Tikany. I’ll follow you forever, anywhere you go. I’m yours, for eternity.”

He shifts his face to press a tender kiss to her palm, lifts a hand of his own to place over hers, keeping her close as his breath tickles the skin of her fingers.

Rin doesn’t think anything she can say can come close to the poetry of Nezha’s love, spoken so beautifully that even some of the pretentious huffs she’d heard popping up from some of the more disapproving Yin relatives throughout the ceremony have been silenced into nothing.

She clears her throat and tries anyway, because Nezha deserves it. “You’ve always been the bigger part of my heart, I don’t think there is much I can say that you haven’t gleaned already from how much love and affection you can bring out in me, so much so that it’s kind of mortifying.”

She hears a few laughs from the guests, and she feels her next words come a little easier as she strokes Nezha’s cheek with her thumb and he hums appreciatively at her touch. “I may have protected you from those men when we were nine, but you’ve protected my heart more times than I can count since then. Even when I lash out, when I pull away viciously, you give me nothing but understanding and affection, you give me the room to pour my soul out and the support to get through some of the worst moments of my life. You temper my rough edges, and you give me the kind of softness and kindness and vulnerability I don’t know what I did to deserve. I don’t think I’d be who I am today without that unconditional love, and I’d do anything for you, anything to protect you. I love you, and I’m yours too, forever and always.”

Rin had heard the whispers, the backhanded snipes and murmured insults of the nobility when they’d learned of her and Nezha’s union, when they’d attended the feasts and celebrations leading up to this day. That was what she was worried about; being surrounded by such vitriol as her only concern when it came to such a large wedding celebration.

But as she stands here, now, holding his hand, seeing the happiness gleaming out of every pore in his body, she can’t help but to care so, so little about any of that. And as they lean in, damn the protocols, to peck their lips tenderly against each other’s as their friends exclaim in celebration and everyone else gasps and grumbles in a mix of surprise and affront, Rin wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Tomorrow, they would go find Tutor Feyrik, and Rin would take him to attend her wedding, one of the only two people in this entire town she’d ever want there with her. After that, they would all go back to the Yin estate in Arlong, to pass the final days leading up to the wedding celebrations.

But today, she’d had to get to her brother, and in order to do that, she would face a monster much larger than any her younger self’s mind could ever imagine.

Rin stood at the crumbling stoop to the monster’s house, the creaking of her toes sinking into decaying wood the only sound to ground her to the situation at hand. She’d let out a heavy, laboured breath, one that softened at the end only due to the sudden grip of warmth around one of her hands; Nezha’s tender palm holding hers in support.

With a final inhale, Rin had pushed through the front door, heavy but unlocked, sliding across the scratched floor with a squeal.

When she’d taken a step inside, she was greeted by a familiar, cloying scent of undulating opium smoke curling through the air, reaching its tendrils for the low, greying ceiling. It scratched at her nostrils and tickled at her skin, bringing back awful, cold memories of Uncle Fang’s beady eyes following her as she’d make her way through the living room, a rusty pipe hanging from his withering lips and browned teeth.

This time, no Uncle Fang was to be seen in the living room, his chair uncharacteristically empty, strangely clean.

A lot could change in half a decade.

Rin had pulled Nezha along, drifting past the room as if in a trance, trying to breathe shallowly, following the trail of smoke as it led to the kitchen.

What had greeted her was a painfully familiar yet utterly foreign sight.

Auntie Fang had been a shadow of her former self; face gaunt, bony shoulders forcing peaks through the layers of her clothing as she sat on a crooked stool, the frailness of her features doing little to temper the permanent scowl of her face, lips scrunched like she’d been eating a lemon.

A pipe hung loosely between thick fingers.

Auntie Fang looked up at the noise of their footsteps as Rin stepped cautiously into the kitchen, pulling her shoulders back in an attempt to calm her nerves, setting her face into stone.

The look she’d gotten was not one of surprise, one of shock at seeing her, at seeing Nezha. Instead, a layer of new irritation dripped across Auntie Fang’s dilated pupils, the opium in her bloodstream crawling across her bloodshot eyes.

“Look at you, ungrateful little bitch. I heard of your betrothal to this boy even all the way down in this shithole.” Auntie Fang had snorted hoarsely, setting her pipe down onto the table before her. Rin had felt Nezha’s fingers tighten around hers, the angry huff of his breath hot on her neck. “What, here to gloat? Or maybe to beg for a dowry? You won’t be getting one.”

Rin had pursed her lips, heartbeat in her throat. Something deep inside had wondered if maybe over all these years Auntie Fang’s heart had softened, if maybe in her own fucked up way she’d even missed Rin, the closest thing she’d ever had to a daughter. Rin had thought that maybe, Auntie Fang would have given her her promised dowry after all, since it was certainly not going to the inspector.

She should have known better.

Rin had taken a shaky breath, and dispelled all those silly fantasies away. “We’re not here for a dowry.”

Auntie Fang’s eyes had dragged to Nezha, then, for the first time, taking in his reaction as he’d stepped even closer behind Rin, still holding her hand tightly, staring her old foster mother down like he’d had all those years ago.

Some murky, brown liquid dripped rhythmically from a corner of the table, feeling deafening in the silence of Auntie Fang’s appraisal, which had quickly turned into a fresh flame of anger within the woman’s eyes. Perhaps anger that she hadn’t elicited the reaction she was hoping for from Nezha at hearing that he wouldn’t be getting a dowry. Rin’s fingers tightened around his.

“Oh for gods’ sake,” Auntie Fang had snapped, picking up the pipe to take another hit, inhaling the burnt poppy deep into her lungs, letting out wisps of smoke through clenched teeth as she continued to stare at Nezha. “Why would you even marry her? You won’t even get the balm of a dowry to help you tolerate her presence. It’s not too late, just leave her here so I can marry her off to someone more suited to her station and save you the embarrassment.”

Her gaze had moved back to Rin like a whip, almost sharp enough to make her flinch. “It really would be a pity if you were to go through with this silly little marriage. The inspector was asking about you recently, you know. I would give him your dowry, and maybe then everyone wouldn’t see you as a fucking whore.”

Rin couldn’t help her flinch then, a sharp, violent shudder at the reminder of the inspector she’d been promised to. The grip of his filthy hands, the viciousness of his grimace as he’d take her body and dignity and life until she’d have nothing left to give.

She hadn’t thought about him in years, not with Nezha by her side, and now the thought that he might still be hoping for marriage made her want to vomit.

She’d felt Nezha’s free hand press into the small of her back, soft and comforting, a balm for the fear now gipping her body, before he took a violent step past her, teeth gnashing with fury.

Nezha had never really known what people were saying about her behind their backs, how badly it looked that she had nothing to give to their union. And it was now exposed in its pure, most brutal form for him to witness. Rin had wondered what he would think now, now that he knew how poorly their marriage looked to the outside world, how much they all hated her.

Nezha had snarled, subtly pushing Rin behind him, protecting her from the derision of the woman who’d hurt her most. “Don’t you fucking talk to her that way-”

“What, it doesn’t bother you that she can give you nothing?” Auntie Fang had snarled just as viciously in turn, interrupting Nezha’s words as she stood from her seat sharply. “If you’re going to steal her away from us, the least you could do is give us some of those riches this pathetic lapdog Yin Nezha should have plenty of.”

The initial shock at just the audacity of the woman to request such a thing was quickly replaced by rage, as Rin saw red at the way Auntie Fang was talking to Nezha, the sneer in her lip, the greedy bleed of her eyes. Rin had quickly stepped in front of Nezha to face her once more, placing a steady hand on his chest to keep him back.

“Keep his fucking name out of your mouth,” Rin had growled, low and dangerous, drawing Auntie Fang’s hawk-like eyes right back onto herself. “I’m here for you to talk to me, not to harass him.”

As the woman’s attention had returned to Rin, something brutal and sharp and fearful she hadn’t realized was there suddenly released its grip from her stuttering heart. As much as logically Rin had known that there was little Auntie Fang could have done to hurt Nezha, not in the way she’d tortured Rin all through her childhood, just remembering the abuse and imagining her turning her wrath on Nezha made Rin more afraid than she’d remembered feeling in years.

Rin had taken a deep breath as Auntie Fang had pursed her lips, finally shutting up as she slumped back down in her chair to take another hit of opium.

“I’m here for Kesegi,” Rin had murmured after a few steadying beats, feeling the return of Nezha’s hand grasping hers from behind her, supportive and tender. “I want him at the wedding. Nothing else.”

Auntie Fang snorted, practically spitting smoke. “Yeah, right. He’s fifteen, so what I say goes, and no way is he going with you.”

As if summoned by his name, Rin heard soft footsteps pattering towards the kitchen, quiet and tentative, but nervous. Kesegi had popped his head in from the living room, face jutting into the kitchen, and Rin’s breath had stopped in her throat.

He’d looked so different, so much older, taller than her now. As much as she had not been the best older sister, she’d loved him, and he’d loved her too.

The moment he’d spotted her, she’d seen the tears gathering at his lash line. She wanted to hug him.

It seemed he wanted the same thing, as he’d stepped into the kitchen, arms stretching forward, before he was stopped by a withering look from Auntie Fang and a sharp clearing of her throat.

He’d stood in his spot, eyes staring pleadingly at Rin, begging her to take him with her as he’d begged her to all those years ago.

Rin had shaken her head roughly, clearing it of her fears and anxieties and the awful conversation of the past few minutes. She’d spent long enough here, anyway. She’d reached into her pocket, pulling out a small pouch, clinking with coin. Auntie Fang’s eyes had lit up instantly, fingers tightening around her pipe.

“I have some money for you,” Rin had said softly, suddenly exhausted, offering up what little coin she’d been able to procure in the little time they’d had since graduation when she could start dipping her toes into receiving any sort of compensation for her years of accumulated knowledge from Sinegard. “For the trouble of taking Kesegi away for a few weeks. Just… take it. Don’t make this any more difficult than it has to be. In case you’ve forgotten, you are running an illegal opium smuggling scheme, and I have all the power to expose you for it now.”

Auntie Fang’s eyes had hardened, her knuckles going white around her pipe, as if recalling that just the possession of opium, in front of a Warlord’s son, no less, could already guarantee a death sentence.

But it had seemed like the threat of death and the promise of coin was just enough to sway her to Rin’s side, as Auntie Fang had grumbled some insult or other under her breath, pointing to the pouch and threatening Kesegi to be back by the month’s end, all but ending their conversation.

It had felt strange, leaving it at that. Taking Kesegi’s hand, turning away from her childhood home, with not even a goodbye to the woman who’d been forced to keep her alive for all those years she couldn’t care for herself.

But that was how it had ended, as Auntie Fang didn’t bother to deign her with a single word more, not even meeting her eyes as she’d left, turning back to her pipe instead.

It was an image that had stuck with Rin: her old foster mother, as dependent on the opium as she’d forced her husband to be, as she’d tried to tell Rin to do to the inspector once she’d married him.

Fallen to her own poison. How ironic.

The thought left a strange, dull feeling in Rin’s chest, even as they’d retrieved Tutor Feyrik, luckily uneventfully, even as they’d returned to their caravan for the trip back to Arlong.

That feeling continued as Rin had watched her foster brother and old tutor sleep on the bench across from her and Nezha, trying to catch desperate slivers of rest in the shaking caravan as the soft moon peeked through their curtains.

Rin couldn’t sleep; she’d just kept seeing that image of her foster mother with the pipe between her lips, glassy look slipping over her eyes. She’d wondered how hard Auntie Fang would try to fight her if she just never returned Kesegi, if she’d even remember to fight her on it.

She’d wondered if the inspector was still somewhere, waiting for his perfect child bride to arrive at his doorstep.

When Nezha had placed a soft hand on her shoulder, she’d flinched away.

“Leave me alone.” She’d snapped unkindly.

She hadn’t meant to sound rude, not to the love of her life, but sometimes her nature just reared its ugly head, all the anger and frustration that resided deep in her being coming to the surface to hurt those who deserved it the least.

As with every time she’d lashed out at Nezha, she’d wondered if this time was the final straw that would make him snap at her in turn, as perhaps he would deserve the chance to.

Instead, she’d felt his hand, soft and careful, placed down palm up atop her knee; a gentle offer, not pushing, not pressuring.

For what was not the first and likely not the last time, Rin was hit with the feeling like she didn’t deserve his kindness, not when she was so temperamental, so prone to anger.

She’d taken his hand, and that was enough to break her frustration, to guide her body to curl into his as he’d accommodated her immediately, helping her lay her face against his chest in a warm embrace.

She pressed her ear to his heartbeat, listening to the steady, comforting thump as she’d wondered what to say.

He beat her to it.

“I’m sorry,” Nezha had murmured, soft and quiet and so, so surprising as his arms curled tighter around her frame.

Rin had blinked, taken aback. “For what?”

“I’d never considered how your lack of dowry would look to everyone else,” he’d sighed in a shuddering breath, fingers stroking up her spine. “It hadn’t even crossed my mind… And only now I’m realizing the kinds of things they could be saying about you, now with the upcoming wedding.”

Rin had shrugged in his arms, cuddling herself closer to his body. “They were always going to say those things about me. They would say worse if we’d stayed together and didn’t get married.”

He’d stayed quiet, for a moment, and then a little tremble racked up his body, and his voice came out as a pained little whisper. “Is this my fault?”

Rin had peeked up from her position with her face pressed to his chest, confused at his tone and his question. Her eyes grew wide with immediate concern as they landed on his face, seeing the telltale glisten of silvery tears on his lashes.

He seemed unwilling to look at her, to meet her eyes, so she reached up to cradle his cheek tenderly. “No, Nezha, why would it be your fault?”

“I was the one who wanted a big wedding. You’d agreed, but I didn’t even consider that you might have just been doing it for me.” Nezha had choked out, voice shaky. “Now, because of the scale of it, everyone’s attention is on us, and the rumors about you can spread.”

“Nezha,” she’d murmured softly, leaning up to press her lips to the corner of his trembling mouth. “This isn’t your fault. I can make my own decisions, and I’d decided that your joy at the occasion and my desire to be married to you was worth the possible downsides of going through with such a large wedding. You didn’t pressure me, didn’t push me. You were the most understanding you could have been. I want this. I want you. I can deal with the rumors.”

She’d turned his face towards hers, gently, finally meeting his eyes. “I love you. Fuck everyone else.”

His hand had moved to hers, still pressed to his cheek, gripping it tightly, like the only thing that mattered on this earth. His eyes drank her in with a deep clarity, affection written plainly on his face. “Great Tortoise, I love you so much. I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”

Rin had laughed, then, soft and gentle, settling back into his chest, letting out a sigh of contentment as he’d pressed a kiss to her hair and held her closer.

She’d felt a deep certainty settle in her soul; that as long as they were together, with all the dowries in the world or dirt poor, they would be okay.

Rin is bathed by the sounds, colours, and shapes all around her. The banquet hall for their final, largest celebration of marriage is massive; lumbering archways curl under the domed ceiling many stories above, hanging with chandeliers of dripping jewels and garlands of red peonies and flowering chrysanthemums, painting blushing strokes against white marble and glittering gold streamers. In certain areas, the ceiling is partially open to the night sky above, showing the twinkling lights of distant stars and meteors as they smile down on the revelry below.

Large, circular tables pepper the enormous hall, covered in everything from steaming roasts to towers of exotic fruits, sweet bean rice dumplings, and rivers of Sorghum wine for guests to enjoy. The attendees lounge across chairs and cushions and sofas, hundreds of people laughing and talking and swaying, traipsing around in swaths of vibrant fabrics and expensive gemstones, dressed up in their best garb.

And yet, no one outshines the bride.

Not just because of her dress, really. Rin has long changed out of the back-breaking wedding gown, as lovely as it was. She now wears a stunning floor-length dress of blood red, more gold detailings lining its every crease, making her shine like one of the many stars above and feel so, so pretty. With no more fabric trains nor extra layers to contend with, this gown is much easier to move in, but much less of a standout amongst the wealthy and powerful guests all around her, even if they’d mainly avoided donning the red hues as those generally reserved for the bride and groom.

No, what makes Rin stand out is the uncharacteristic way the generally impudent, rude, and grouchy woman now giggles at her new husband adoringly as he cradles her cheeks and presses quick little kisses all over her face, as if he hadn’t seen her in days, as if she didn’t just enter the banquet hall after marrying him all but a few hours ago.

“You look gorgeous,” Nezha whispers lovingly as he pulls a step away, taking her hands in his.

Rin grins. “I feel gorgeous.”

Nezha beams at that, at her sudden, rare smile of joy, face lighting up like a lantern. His hands release hers and rapidly weave around her waist, pulling her up against him and into a dizzying spin, only letting her go as she shrieks happily and shoves her hands against his shoulders in weak protest.

No, no one can possibly ignore that.

“Nezha!” She chides lightly, breathless, shaking the blur out of her head as her feet touch ground once more. “Stop, you’re dragging everyone’s attention here.”

“We’re supposed to be the center of attention today, sweetheart.” He swoops in for a proper kiss and she shoves a hand against his mouth. Her untroubled husband takes it in stride, wrapping a hand around her wrist as he presses kisses against her palm instead.

Rin flushes the same red as Nezha’s expensive robes.

A common tradition for a Nikara bride is to cover her face with a fan throughout the marriage proceedings, to hide her shy blush out of modesty. Rin had refused that particular bit of ritual she knew she’d mess up immediately anyway, but wonders now if she’d dismissed it a little too quickly.

“It’s embarrassing,” she mumbles shyly, eyes darting to the curious guests around them.

He laughs softly, but doesn’t try to swoop in for another kiss, cradling her hand tenderly instead as he continues to press his lips to her palm with a soft adoration.

Rin is quickly reminded of the rumors, the talks of her non-existent dowry and violent tendencies corrupting the princeling of Sinegard. The wedding itself was a private, highly ceremonial affair, with few allowed to attend. This massive banquet is the opportunity for many of those who judge them together to finally catch a glimpse of how they interact, to see for themselves the evil seductress and young, innocent Warlord’s son as they celebrate the life they’re building together.

She wonders what they think as they see Nezha’s love for her in every smile and touch and kiss. She wonders if it makes them question their assumptions of their union, or if it further cements their hatred for her slithering her way into the tight circle of Yins.

But then her heart flutters as Nezha’s lips pull away and he curves her hand over his cheek, looking at her like he never wants to stop. It must be something special if he can still make her heart stutter like so after all these years. Suddenly, the guests and their gossip matter so, so little.

Her thumb traces the pretty curve of his cheekbone as she smiles tenderly. “I love you.”

Rin steps onto her toes as she finally reaches for the kiss Nezha had tried to swipe mere moments ago. Her lips melt against his so perfectly, and he pulls away far too soon.

“I love you too,” he says softly, gives her one final peck on the lips, then pulls back fully. “But, we do have duties to our guests. Unfortunately.”

Rin lets out an exaggerated sigh, raising and drooping her shoulders as Nezha chuckles at her theatrics. The two of them had meticulously rehearsed this day many times before its arrival, compromising on customs and rituals. Some Rin outright refused, such as having two separate banquets for the bride and groom (she is not doing this without Nezha as a buffer to the nobles). Some she begrudgingly agreed to, such as ensuring both sides of the family meet (poor Kesegi will have to carry the heavy load of that, but Rin will be there to stand by him). And some, she excitedly signed up for, such as ensuring the smooth setup of half a dozen courses of delicacies for the banquet spread.

Nezha steps away after a last squeeze of her hands, barely willing to part from her, but leaving to give some attention to his eager relatives, large in number when considering the many branches of Yin that have sprouted from the main family tree over the generations.

Rin smiles, turning around to face her own responsibilities. She would find Kesegi, introduce him to Vaisra, maybe Saikhara and some of Nezha’s haughty siblings, if they were even willing to look down their noses at them, and then find her friends and husband to celebrate the rest of the night together.

Just as she takes a few steps into the crowd, two figures quickly intercept her.

“And here’s the bride!” A loud, chortling voice greets her as a moderately inebriated Baji blocks her path, cheeks flushed from the merriment. “You two are adorable; I wasn’t willing to believe that you’re capable of gushy love and romance until I saw it with my own eyes.”

His words are lilted, teasing, and he brings her in sharply for a smothering hug, heedless of customs of decorum. Rin laughs at his enthusiasm, rolling her eyes in amusement as she waits for him to let go so that she can breathe again.

Over her last two years at Sinegard, she and the members of the Cike had gotten unexpectedly close, close enough that she considers them some of her closest friends now. After pledging for Lore and discovering her Speerly heritage, Jiang had been diligently preparing her for the possibility of needing to join the Cike, were her powers ever to present and be revealed to the world. With all the missions she’d gone on to shadow them, it is no surprise that she’d built a bond with them over those years.

“Oh, alright, let go before you crush her, Baji,” the second figure’s voice rings out, the tone of exasperation barely masking his clear amusement.

Rin lets out a relieved breath as Baji releases her, giving him a playful shove before turning to look at the man who’d saved her from asphyxiation.

“The Rin I know would never giggle and allow herself to be twirled around like that in public. I say, escape with your dignity while you can,” Altan teases, a soft glint in his earnest gaze as he watches her softly, his Cike uniform pressed to perfection, unruly hair done up into a semblance of order. “I never liked Nezha much anyway, and it’s not too late to ditch his ass, you know.”

“True, you’re not technically married until after consummation,” Baji adds unhelpfully, eyebrows wiggling suggestively. Rin shoves him once more, less playfully this time as her cheeks flare red.

But Altan actually laughs at Baji’s dirty comment, and Rin can’t help but snicker in turn.

“Stop talking shit about my husband, both of you,” she chides, and feels a soft flush rise on her chest at just how good it feels to say the word. Husband.

Baji shakes his head in amusement, and then his eyes catch on something behind Rin, face going a little pale.

“Oh shit, I should get over there,” Baji sighs, smile turning into a little grimace. “I think Ramsa’s about to set off the fireworks too early and give all those unnaturally elderly Yins heart attacks.”

Rin laughs as Baji runs off with a solid pat on her shoulder, promising to come find her again later. She turns her focus back to Altan, only to find that he is already watching her with a smile. He opens his arms, then, and Rin folds herself against him, the warm hug helping her disarrayed mind to center itself once more.

He’s the only other Speerly she knows, likely the only other Speerly still alive. He’s the closest thing to a biological relative she’ll ever have; a brother by blood as much as Kesegi is her brother by soul. She thinks he understands that too as she clings to his back, sighing softly.

She’s heard of how the Phoenix god corrupts, of how it can wreak violence and hatred and instability on a mind. Rin shudders at the thought of seeing Altan that way, and is once again so grateful that she knows him as the kind, strong man that stands before her today.

Neither says a word as they stand there, because no other words need to be said when they hold each other like family.

Something shifts in the air suddenly; a twist of the strands of music threading their way through the crowd, a delightful brightening of the notes, jumping into a quick, peppy tune, begging for people to join in a festive dance.

It is one of the things she had to insist on for the wedding, knowing full well how the aristocrats in attendance would turn their haughty little noses up at the whole thing. She wants to dance, she wants to twirl with the people she loves as she celebrates the rest of her life with the man she married. She doesn’t care how unrefined it might look.

Rin pulls away from Altan, bouncing on her heels nervously, glancing at the empty dance floor, at the people mingling around its edges, everyone from friends to family to nobles to even Sinegardian classmates and Masters, the ones willing to make the lengthy trip to Arlong.

Her attention is torn back towards Altan when he grips her hand, tossing her a coy grin. “Can I have this dance?”

And when their feet travel to the open center of the banquet hall, when they begin to twirl and talk and laugh, it’s as if an invisible wall is shattered, and others slowly begin to pile onto the dance floor, some more reserved and soft with their movements, others loud and vibrant, creating a canvas of floating colours and excitement and joy.

Rin thinks back to Tikany as she dances, to the festivals and celebrations she’d never been able to fully enjoy, to the one she’d actually tried to because Nezha was there. She is now one of those girls she’d seen in Tikany, one of those actually excited for her marriage, dancing without a care in the world.

It feels like freedom.

She continues to dance, eventually letting go of Altan, only to fall into the arms of Kitay, then Venka, then Kesegi, then even frail Tutor Feyrik at one point. She dances with her friends in the Cike, and some of her classmates and Masters she’d grown to like.

They all tell her how in love she and Nezha look, how lucky she is, how rare a marriage of love, such love, is in high society.

Rin smiles and laughs and chats politely and happily, her mind turning to Nezha once more, her desire to dance with him only growing by the minute.

But before she can excuse herself from the dance floor to find him, the colder, older picture of Nezha intercepts her smoothly, taking her away for a dance of his own.

Her blood runs a little colder when she looks up at Vaisra’s stony, expressionless features, but she gulps her apprehension away.

Perhaps she could at least try not to immediately destroy her relationship with her new father-in-law.

“Your little brother, Kesegi, was it?” he starts off without preamble, moving her slowly through the others dancing on the dance floor, as if to his own beat, used to doing everything at his own leisure. “A sensitive boy, if not a little fragile. Reminds me of Nezha as a child, if I were being honest.”

A pit grows in Rin’s stomach as her hand goes clammy against Vaisra’s. She was supposed to be there to introduce Kesegi to the Yins. She’d completely forgotten, and he’d had to face them alone.

“It’s a good thing he now has me to protect him then, isn’t it?” Rin says lowly, the subtle threat lacing the dips and peaks of her words.

Vaisra just lets out a low chuckle, turning her smoothly to the music. He seems to think for a few long moments, still moving in that slow, languid way of his, giving Rin no choice but to follow in his footsteps.

Suddenly, he laughs once more, a mocking, sardonic sound. “Do you know what that silly child of mine said to me during that Summer years ago? That day I gave this unfortunate union my blessing?”

Rin bristles at his scornful tone, but she can’t hide her spiking interest from her face.

“The stupid boy had threatened to emancipate himself from the House of Yin if I tried to keep him from you. The worst part is, I could tell he’d meant it. He knows how much it would hurt our House’s image if one of our own would choose poverty, scorn, and destitution over remaining part of our family, and he’d meant it anyway.” Vaisra shakes his head, almost exasperatedly, stony features breaking for a moment with a purse of his lips. “He must really love you if he is willing to abandon everything he’d ever known for you.”

Rin flinches, as if struck, heart beating sharply in her chest. Nezha had offered to give up everything for her. Just like that.

The desire to go see him, touch him, hear his voice, burns away at every bit of restraint still left in her body.

Rin stops abruptly, causing another dancer to bump into her, gathering a few looks as she and Vaisra become statues in the middle of an undulating sea of bodies. He raises an eyebrow, surprised by her sudden motion.

As politely as she can, Rin bows her head shallowly.

“Thank you for telling me that. I think it’s about time I go dance with my husband.” Rin excuses herself curtly, and turns away from a still-frozen Vaisra to make her way out of the throng of people.

She doesn’t bother giving him another glance.

With her single-minded goal at the forefront of her thoughts, Rin goes to find the other half of her heart.

She spots Nezha among a group of elderly Yin relatives away from the dance floor, shifting from foot to foot, looking like he desperately wants to get out of the conversation, but forces pleasant smiles and laughs anyway.

When she comes up to them, looping a gentle hand around his elbow, his face lights up and he lets out a relieved sigh, leaning his body towards hers subconsciously.

“Would you like to dance?” She asks softly, giving his relatives what she hopes is a good approximation of an apologetic smile.

Nezha grins, placing his hand over hers. “Of course, sweetheart.”

He turns to his relatives, excusing himself with reverent bows of his head, already letting her pull him towards their dancing guests.

The moment they clasp hands on the dance floor, Rin presses herself in, letting Nezha hold her close as they sway, her cheek pressed to his shoulder.

“Your father told me about what you said to him, about how you convinced him to give us his blessing,” Rin murmurs into his shoulder, arms wrapping around the back of his neck.

His arms tighten around her waist as his breath stutters in his chest. “I- I meant it. I would give up anything for you.”

Rin hums against his robe, turning her face into the material, breathing in his scent. “I know. I would too, Nezha, my Nezha.”

She feels him press his lips to the crown of her head, feels him nestle his cheek onto her hair.

“Yours,” he murmurs in response.

One of Rin’s hands travels to tangle in the knot of his hair, searching out the reminder of their youthful love, of their unbreakable bond in the inky strands. She feels the brush of her blanket-ribbon against the pads of her fingertips, and she sighs softly.

She feels the tension of his blue ribbon twirling through the updo of her hair.

She tries to think of something beautiful, of something touching and vulnerable to say to the love of her life in this moment. No words could do justice to the love she feels thrumming at her heartstrings.

The music picks up speed, from the slow and gentle melody they were swaying to, into something boisterous, fun, and upbeat.

Nezha pulls away to hold her hands, to take her into the twirls and movements this kind of beat requires. Rin squirms back into his arms immediately, eliciting a wonderful laugh deep from his chest.

“I want to keep holding you,” she sighs into his robe like a petulant child, gripping onto his sleeves.

“Oh sweetheart,” he chuckles, pulling away more slowly this time, trailing his palms up to cradle her face. “I’m sure they’ll play another slow song soon, and if not we can always tell them to. We have the whole night ahead of us, after all.”

Rin sighs, folding her hands over his, looking into the beautiful depths of his onyx eyes. She can’t help but smile at the love and admiration she finds within them.

“You’re right,” she murmurs finally, clasping his hands fully. “We have the whole night ahead of us.”

And as he pulls her into a quick twirl, raising her up off the floor, eliciting one of her rare laughs, their two ribbons twirl around each other like circling suns and moons, never far from the two lovers who give them meaning.

We have our whole lives ahead of us.