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Being tasked with helping his sister had changed from working with her to keep people alive to disposing tens of bodies every day. War killed men in more ways than one, as Wen Ning soon learned. The stench of rot, disease and gore were not pleasant, but ultimately something Wen Ning was used to. Even having to haul the corpses from the infirmary was something he found oddly peaceful, giving him a brief respite from the cries of agony and screams of anger.
Wen Ning might even say he quite liked playing the part of the mortician and undertaker. The dead were nowhere near as scary as living humans, nor as demanding. He liked the thought of being of some comfort to their spirit, showing respect to their body before they fully left the mortal realm to be reborn.
Or he would have.
“Where the hell have you been?”
The sneer would have appeared out of place on such a young face if Wen Ning hadn’t known Xue Yang for long as he had. He dropped his gaze and mumbled an apology, not stopping in his place. Not anymore. He’d learned that quick. No matter how terrified he was of Xue Yang, freezing in place led to far worse outcomes than the occasional smacks of Jiangzai’s sheathe on his head.
“You’re lucky I had two leftover from last night or else it would be you that I’d be reanimating,” Xue Yang growled, furious. Not a good morning, Wen Ning noted. Xue Yang had probably not eaten anything in a while, with the way he was gnawing on his thumb like a hungry dog.
Wen Ning weighed his options in his mind. Did he offer to bring Xue Yang breakfast or try to get out as fast as possible and as far away as his legs could take him? Considering the condition of those in the infirmary, they were bound to have at least four more deaths that day alone. That meant having to return to Xue Yang later, and if no one else bothered to bring him lunch, which was more than likely to happen, then—
“Put the first one on the table,” Xue Yang commanded, either oblivious or uncaring, both options equally as likely, to Wen Ning’s panicked calculations. Wen Ning struggled but managed eventually to lift the first dead body onto the table with spell marks nearly completely covered by dried blood and bits of gore he didn’t bother to try identify.
He stumbled back as Xue Yang pushed his way next to the corpse, poking and prodding with a critical eye for any flaws in its condition. “Was this poisoned? There’s nothing visible on the outside. Don’t tell me you fucking brought a poisoned corpse—”
“No, Xue-gongzi, I wouldn’t do that! A broken rib punctured his lung, see?” With a pale face, Wen Ning pressed down on the side of the body. “He died of asphyxiation, as the puncture went unnoticed for too long. I swear, I wouldn’t dare to bring a-a poisoned body—”
Xue Yang groaned and slapped his hand away. “Stop it with the fucking snivelling. You’re more pathetic than a heart-broken whore.”
Wen Ning stepped back again, cradling his hand. Despite his malnourished looks and small stature, Xue Yang was a deceptively powerful cultivator, and even a slap on the hand made the bones in Wen Ning’s hand creak. “This one apologises, Xue-gongzi.”
Xue Yang wasn’t listening to him anymore, too absorbed in his work again. He would mutter to himself, occasionally let out a short cackle as the shadows appeared to flare. Wen Ning stood to the side, useless, but too afraid to make any noise that would irritate Xue Yang more.
He wondered if Wen Qing was worried about him. He was taking quite long to come back, but it wouldn’t be the first time that he got stuck assisting Xue Yang with his… experiments. Or getting dragged away by Wen Chao on his way back to the infirmary.
The shadows continued to grow and grow, the whispers of resentment building around the corpse as it twitched and sputtered. Xue Yang was breathing heavier and heavier, swaying as he carved spells into the corpse’s dead flesh. The dead man jolted, and Xue Yang let out a giggle, and the shadows swallowed Wen Ning, and—
A gurgling sound. Not one of a corpse. Not even one of Wen Ning’s choking breath.
Xue Yang snarled. For a moment the shadows flared for a second, before flattening, as if fatigued.
“Should I bring gongzi an early lunch?” Wen Ning heard his own voice echo in the deadly silent room. He certainly hadn’t meant to speak out loud and quickly pressed his lips tightly together.
Xue Yang’s glare over his shoulder burned for a long moment, and Wen Ning was nearly ready to lose a limb or two. But instead, Xue Yang huffed and looked away.
“Do what you want.”
Wen Ning blinked and scurried out of the room. When the door closed behind him, he let out a stuttering breath and braced himself against the wall. His knees were weaker than boiled noodles and shook like a new-born foal’s. He kept his head down all the way to the kitchen, grabbing what he could get his hands on without too many questions. At the last moment, he recalled the barely secret fondness Xue Yang held for anything sweet.
He held his breath as he slid multiple mooncakes onto his tray. Once he fixed the linen covering and escaped the kitchen with minimal notice from the kitchen staff, he felt his lungs deflate in relief. He even managed to right himself without dropping anything as he nearly tripped upon entering the room.
Xue Yang didn’t even blink as he stared at the doorway through which Wen Ning had entered. He was sat on the table, and behind him the body he had been trying to reanimate. Even the head of the corpse turned towards Wen Ning too with its tongue lolling out of the gaping mouth. Both stared at him eerily still.
Wheezing out a whisper, Wen Ning announced: “I brought lunch, Xue-gongzi.”
The grin on Xue Yang’s face appeared in a flash. “The Wen-name is wasted on someone so eager to serve others like you.”
Wen Ning tucked his chin to his chest. His hands gripped the tray harder. Looking down, at least he could see they weren’t trembling too badly.
“Bring it here.”
Wen Ning might have been able to stop his hands from trembling, but his feet had a mind of their own and refused to do more than shuffle along the floor towards the table, the corpse and Xue Yang. Once Xue Yang’s legs came into view, Wen Ning stopped.
“What, don’t want to put it down? Demoting yourself from a servant to a piece of furniture now,” Xue Yang said, not appearing to wait for any real answer. He cackled out his next words. “Whatever gets your rocks off, Wen Qionglin.”
Frost swallowed Wen Ning’s spine and ran through his veins. He didn’t know Xue Yang knew him by name. That surely couldn’t be a good thing. A nameless Wen that could be exchanged from one to the other meant he blended into the masses. What had he done to gain Xue Yang’s attention? What mistake could have been so bad as to burn his name into Xue Yang’s mind?
Xue Yang flung the cover off of the tray. The pristine linen fluttered down onto the floor, forgotten instantly by the both of them. The first to go was not the steaming soup, not the bowl of rice or even the meat glistening in its own fat. Holding no regard for such conventions as table manners, Xue Yang stuffed an entire mooncake in his mouth. Crumbs from the corner of his mouth were pushed back in by his thumb.
“Now, that’s the stuff,” said Xue Yang, though his voice was muffled by his full mouth. “Want one?”
It took several moments for the words to register, and even longer for Wen Ning’s head to rise. Xue Yang already had a second mooncake in his mouth and was watching Wen Ning with mild apathy. It was as if just getting something to fill his stomach had quenched the thirst for violence in his eyes. At least for now.
“Want?” Wen Ning echoed, jaw slack in that way that Wen Chao always mocked him about. As if he was a fish in a pond, he had said once, before deciding Wen Ning should join them to see if he too could breathe underwater. Even getting held underwater by his cousin didn’t help cure the bad habit, it seemed.
Xue Yang took advantage of the opportunity and crammed a mooncake in between Wen Ning’s teeth. “Have a taste. It’s good, right?”
Wen Ning coughed. He tried his best to chew on the pastry, but a few pieces still crumbled away and down his front.
“Hey, didn’t your mother teach you better than to waste food?” Xue Yang grumbled, picking the biggest pieces and popping them without care into his mouth. “You’re fucking lucky to have sweets like this made available to you, you know. If you’re not gonna enjoy them, let those who will have them.”
Wen Ning chewed faster through the sweet, sticky mass in his mouth. He couldn’t answer Xue Yang like this. Before he had even managed to utter another word, just having swallowed down the doughy lump in his mouth, Xue Yang held up another one before him.
“I-“
“Want more?”
Instead of having it shoved into his mouth, the mooncake was held in front of his face. Truly, if they were anyone else, Wen Ning would have considered the act affectionate. If anyone were to see them now, Xue Yang with his mouth quirked up in a mirthful smile and Wen Ning looking at him with his mouth and eyes open wide, all while holding the tray of food between them… How could it not remind a person of a lecherous young lord playfully seducing a servant with sweets.
The image was absurd. Xue Yang’s behaviour was absurd. Perhaps the absurdity of it all confused Wen Ning’s mind, dragged him along with its currents, helplessly jerking his body along, both this way and that, as only that could explain why Wen Ning leaned forward and bit the mooncake in half.
It was sweet, smooth and heavy on his tongue. The taste was better when he was not choking on it, too.
Xue Yang snorted and made the remaining half disappear in his own mouth.
Wen Ning swallowed. The sweet taste lingered, and he licked his lips. “Gongzi should-should eat, uh, lunch too.”
“Ugh, both you and your sister are such nags,” Xue Yang complained, but still picked up the pair of chopsticks and bit into the tender meat. “Is it some kind of requirement to becoming a healer? Disposition for being a hard-ass.”
“No, no, that—that is not—” Wen Ning muttered but trailed off at Xue Yang’s curving brow. He kept his mouth shut for the rest of Xue Yang’s meal and dropped his head low again. Xue Yang continued to make his remarks, whether directed at the corpse laying behind him, at Wen Ning or perhaps occasionally himself. Not a scrap of food was left on the tray in Wen Ning’s hands by the time he was finished.
“What do you plan to do now, Wen Qionglin?” Xue Yang asked, still uncharacteristically and deceptively friendly. “Going to run back to your sister and hide yourself in her skirts? Sob your tender little heart out about the demon of the Wen dungeons and the horrors you’ve witnessed?”
“Huh?”
Xue Yang stretched his neck side to side, and the cracks echoed against the walls. “Maybe you haven’t gathered it yet, but I’m going to continue my work. I pegged you to be more of the sensitive sort, but if in reality you’re more afraid of your own unseemly, violent proclivities—”
“No, I-I’m not really afra-fraid of the dead, gongzi,” Wen Ning informed him, leaving Xue Yang’s remarks of any violent desires ignored. Maybe Xue Yang had guessed right on some level, but there was no need for him to know that.
“Hm, I guess healers see little difference between a living body and a dead one.” Xue Yang’s cruel grin faded away, leaving him looking at Wen Ning a blank face, yet increasingly alert eyes. “One simply pumps blood through the veins, and the other doesn’t.”
“Um. Well… Well, more-more or less, gongzi,” Wen Ning said, not wanting to get into the intricacies between the definitions of living and dead.
“Most people forget that, you know,” Xue Yang drawled, his eyes flickering toward the corpse on his table. “Maybe even this one did too. Besides priests who prepare the body for a burial, healers are the ones who deal with the dead the most. While most do their best to keep the living alive, it would be easy for them to tip the scales just enough to ruin the balance. Not that it would be even that different from any other death! What’s one more to stop the whinging of a man who has one foot in a grave.”
“Wha— Xue-gongzi, what are—”
“All I’m saying is that many people forget to behave themselves in the infirmary.” Xue Yang’s voice was gentle like black silk. “And all of us end up there for one reason or another during our lifetime.”
“Uh.”
“Otherwise it’s a hard lesson to learn,” Xue Yang said, bringing up his foot onto the table and leaning his head on his knee. “You should never piss off healers.”
Wen Ning opened and closed his mouth repeatedly. Xue Yang continued to stare at him. His black eyes reminded Wen Ning of a raven, watching a dying, diseased deer wheeze its last breath. Ready to dig its sharp beak into the soft, wet guts spilling out.
“Instead, one should be nice to healers. Give them sweets to keep them sweet. Isn’t that right?”
“Um.”
Xue Yang’s grin returned, suddenly. It was less malicious and more excited, but still it raised the hairs on the back of Wen Ning’s neck. “I imagine a healer would make a hell of a demonic cultivator. Interested in finding out, Wen Qionglin?”
“I-I…” Wen Ning mumbled. Xue Yang leaned closer, and Wen Ning took a step back instinctively. “No, no thank you, ah, gongzi.”
Jutting out his bottom lip like a pouting child only made Xue Yang appear younger.
“Fuck it, then.”
“I’ll, um, take my-my leave, then,” Wen Ning offered, bowing before turning around.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever, get the fuck out of here,” Xue Yang growled, but it was clearly half-hearted. He almost appeared genuinely disappointed Wen Ning had not taken him up on his insane offer of turning him into a demonic cultivator.
Wen Ning hesitated by the door, glancing over his shoulder at Xue Yang’s hunched over figure. The darkness had already begun to ebb and twist in the room. He inhaled and spoke as loudly as he dared. “Thank you for the mooncakes, gongzi. They were… They were very good.”
As soon as he said that, he ran out of the room, barely holding onto the tray in his hands. He decided the yin energy had to be affecting him somehow. Perhaps he had stayed in the room for too long. After all, there could be no way Xue Yang had said ‘you’re welcome’ to him.