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Wei Chengxiang settled across the table from Zhao Qindan, mugs of tea steaming between them, and her body fell into something of a perfection—artful in its lanky casualness.
They were in Wei Chengxiang’s kitchen in New He, Zhao Qindan in town to write a feature piece on the grand expedition that her old friend was undertaking. They’d been together for two long days, touring the newly built ships, taking photos, and holding their formal interviews, and now they were warm in a shared sense of thick exhaustion as they settled down for the evening.
Zhao Qindan found herself lingering on Wei Chengxiang as she waited for her tea to cool, tracing the lines of her posture. She sprawled into sitting like a man at home, and in all the years since they'd met, Zhao Qindan had never seen another woman who sat like her. But as she watched, Zhao Qindan could also pick out some faint tells of tension beneath the affectation of the sprawl. Her face looked contemplative, maybe, or pensive, and she'd made no move to speak or interrupt Zhao Qindan’s staring since they'd sat down. She looked out the window instead, lost in thought.
Zhao Qindan cupped the warmth of her teacup and wondered whether Wei Chengxiang would bring up whatever was so obviously on her mind without prompting.
She waited.
Finally, when her tea was cool enough to sip and over one third drunk, Wei Chengxiang said, “Dandan.”
“A-Xiang.”
Zhao Qindan liked to make a game of their nicknames, all marital one-upmanship in the spirit of their brief time mistaken as a couple, and the corner of Wei Chengxiang’s mouth ticked upwards for a moment before resettling.
“Do you remember that time I gave everyone embroidery for the new year?”
“Of course.”
Zhao Qindan wouldn’t be forgetting that pattern any time soon.
Wei Chengxian said, after a pause, “Do you remember what I gave that Xi Shiyong?”
Ah.
“I wish I could forget, on your behalf.”
Wei Chengxiang turned her head from the window and raised an eyebrow.
“The man has terrible taste,” Zhao Qindan said, and another flash of wry amusement touched Wei Chengxiang’s lips.
“You know he came to visit afterward and admitted he knew?”
Zhao Qindan’s eyes widened, and she leaned in despite herself.
“What did he say?”
“He said he thought I didn’t know.”
Zhao Qindan was almost impressed by the man’s audacity.
“Do you want me to slander him for you? I could ruin his reputation—just say the word.”
Wei Chengxiang barked out a laugh.
“What reputation? And wouldn’t that ruin the integrity of your bulletin?”
“I could make one ethical exception for an old friend.”
Zhao Qindan took another swig of her tea, soaking the earthy taste into her tongue. She called Wei Chengxiang a friend often, liked saying it aloud. It was nothing short of a miracle that the two of them should be sitting there in that kitchen, laughing and teasing and tasting the same fresh-brewed tea. The daughter of the Zhao and a crossdressing wretch from Jinping’s Southern Outskirts. She could at least be grateful to Xi Shiyong for making them meet. But Zhao Qindan had a good number of friends, had met countless people she laughed with and liked, and she didn't ache and burn and overflow with a well of warm home-feeling when she sat alone with them.
But what other word for them was there for them if not a friendship?
“I should have just given the purse to you instead,” Wei Chengxiang said. “At least you would have rejected me tactfully.”
Zhao Qindan almost faltered, felt her face flush even as she grinned with teasing amusement.
“And what would a fellow like you be doing giving out purses to a young woman? Isn’t that backwards?”
“You tell me, Sir Xu.”
“Ha! You’re lucky our Tai Sui didn’t try to cast you as me in the real Sir Xu’s place. I might have been “Sir Wei” now otherwise.”
Wei Chengxiang made a face.
“He wouldn’t. Even he’s not cruel enough to do that to an old friend.”
“Poor Rucheng, then. If only he’d met Xi Shiyong sooner.”
Wei Chengxiang smiled again, and Zhao Qindan drank in the amusement on her face. Her way of joking was dry, her smiles often one-sided, but Zhao Qindan found something almost transfixing in the way she moved her face. It was impolite to stare at a scar, but the way her old wound pulled at her eye and mouth made her somehow even more handsome when she smiled. It twisted her skin in strange ways and gave her an intensity unlike any other person.
How far they’d come since that scar had scared her away on the road in Chu.
“You really are too good for him,” Zhao Qindan said.
“I know,” Wei Chengxiang said. "Believe me, I know.” She paused for a moment and gave Zhao Qindan a pained look. “He’s just—” she cut herself off, seemed to chew on her words, then scowled. “He doesn’t deserve his face.”
Zhao Qindan couldn’t help but laugh at her a little, and Wei Chengxiang only glared. Somehow, Zhao Qindan seemed to be the only person she knew that didn’t find Xi Shiyong attractive. Even his enemies called him a handsome devil, but what was so good about that smug face full of angles?
“Come on,” she teased, leaning in close and batting her eyelashes. “He's not that special. Aren't I just as pretty?”
Wei Chengxian sputtered and flushed, leaving Zhao Qindan to make fake apologies as she failed to hold back another round of laughter. Wei Chengxiang huffed, putting up a look of annoyance that was clearly just for show.
“You’re just as bad as he is.”
Now that was almost offensive. Zhao Qindan raised an eyebrow.
“Rich people,” Wei Chengxiang said. “No sense, any of you.”
Because the woman financing the grand sailing expedition still held “rich people” as the epitome of what she wasn’t. Zhao Qindan pulled on every haughty high-born instinct she’d long-since buried to look down her nose in a knowing way and say something condescending enough to befit a noble daughter.
She’d miss this when Wei Chengxiang was gone, miss her handsome face rolling her eyes and waving a hand dismissively as she picked up her tea again. She’d miss the old familiarity of the only friend she’d lived with since the day she’d left her family home. And all at once the true gravity of Wei Chengxiang’s imminent departure settled over her.
She would miss this, would miss being able to travel to He to see her old friend any time she liked. Even if going two months without seeing her in person wasn't too strange, given the dangers of Chengxiang’s voyage and the likelihood of subsequent missions, only the heavens knew when she might get to have this again.
“A-Xiang,” she said after a moment. "Remind me how long this expedition is supposed to take?”
“We’ll be cautious for the first one. The goal is one month, but we're packing supplies for much longer just in case.”
“And if you find something that changes your schedule?”
“Who knows? We might run for our lives and race home. We might find paradise and never come back.”
Zhao Qindan’s heart did something funny at that, and Wei Chengxiang seemed to notice.
“Teasing,” she assured her. “We wouldn’t stay anywhere too long for a first expedition. I’ll have to bring Dandan all the news of the great beyond, which means coming home.”
“Good girl. I’ll be waiting to report on you, so bring home something interesting for the Tao World Record.”
Wei Chengxiang had been sitting sprawled sideways all evening, but she turned her body then, facing Zhao Qindan and reaching a hand across the table. She didn’t reach for anything, just placed her hand toward her general direction, but all the same Zhao Qindan felt like she’d been reached out for. She placed her own hand on the table, next to Wei Chengxiang’s, and waited for her.
“Zhao Qindan.” Wei Chengxiang met her eyes with a sudden intensity. “When I come back, I’ll ready a second expedition one way or another. Come with me?”
Zhao Qindan’s eyes went wide, and a half-smile like an entreaty pulled at the side of Wei Chengxiang’s mouth, crinkling her tearstreak scar and turning the rictus curve of her lips into something soft and heady.
“I don’t know how safe we’ll be this time, but once I have a feel for the ocean, you should come. You’ll get a feature issue out of it—a month in the life of a sailor beyond the continent.”
She spoke in a voice that was thick with something Zhao Qindan didn't know how to look at. The offer wrapped around Zhao Qindan’s ribcage like it wanted to make a home there.
Wasn’t that tempting? To be at arm’s reach of A-Xiang for at least a full month of traveling? After all these years of them living apart? It would almost be worth the awful peril inherent in a sea voyage, and she would get a brilliant story from it for the Tao World Record. Could she be a sailor?
“You want me to come with you?”
“I want you to let your toilet bulletin handle itself for a while. See the world before you settle and write about it.”
The idea was intoxicating.
“What would I do on your ship while we’re out there?”
“The captain’s wife, of course.” Wei Chengxiang let the joke linger, and Zhao Qindan felt her cheeks heat. “You can be a guest in a reporting capacity. Or you can study up on steamships while we’re gone and play sailor. I’ll let you join my crew if you seem knowledgeable.”
“Is that a joke too?”
“I trust your competence as much as I trust hired hands. You can judge whether you’re fit for a job, no?”
“I think I can manage the intellectual pressure.”
“Heavens forbid I challenge the great Sir Xu.”
Zhao Qindan shifted her hand, the distance between it and Wei Chengxiang’s growing infinitely smaller.
Something burned in the pit of Zhao Qindan's stomach—some strange mix of longing and home. She wanted to spend more time like this, wanted to sail with Wei Chengxiang as the captain’s prized reporter and spend long evenings drinking tea with her in a dim, comfortable kitchen.
“Do you remember,” Wei Chengxiang said, “when you first stayed with me in Tao County and we had to share a bed?”
“You could hardly call that a bed.”
Wei Chengxiang gifted her another amused smile. “You insult my old house while you’re staying in the new one?”
“I assume you won’t make us share blankets and a bedroll on the floor in your grand new home.”
“Not unless you want to curl up on the floor with me, Miss Zhao.”
Zhao Qindan played up a show of haughty affront. “Miss Wei!”
“Sir Wei.”
“Sir nothing! Hitting on young ladies like that.”
Wei Chengxiang huffed. “You’ll be a hundred years old and still calling yourself a young lady.”
“And you’ll still treat me like one, right a-Xiang?”
“Until you’re old and gray.”
One or both of them shifted, closing the gap and pressing the sides of their hands against each other. Wei Chengxiang's skin was warm and rough, and Zhao Qindan itched to take her hands and learn their contours, map the places that a long life of manual labor had calloused and reddened and scarred. She imagined doing so in a cabin on a steamship, and she wanted it. She wanted.
They sat in their contact for a moment, Zhao Qindan strung between getting lost in her own head and lost in her endless observation of the woman across from her. Silence was as easy as talking; she could spend shichen watching Wei Chengxiang’s face and her fascinating posture. She wondered if Wei Chengxiang felt the same.
“A-Xiang,” she said, when they finally broke the silence. “You will come back safe to me, won’t you?”
Wei Chengxiang leaned back and regarded her with a true and natural comfort, her earlier tension gone. “All the demons of the East Sea couldn't stop me.”
Zhao Qindan thought of Wei Chengxiang posed triumphant on the bow of her returning ship, overflowing with stories of the great beyond. She thought of herself on a ship with her on some future expedition, Wei Chengxiang's experienced hand on her arm as she steadied her through turbulence and storms. She thought of impressing her with her knowledge and wit as they explored some beautiful distant shore.
“I’ll hold you to that.”