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Shang Qinghua stares, wide-eyed and hoping against his notorious streak of bad luck for some sort of salvation.
He would like to psyche himself into believing Shen Qingqiu doesn’t remember the boy he was less than a half-day ago, the interactions blushed in barely concealed, growing adoration. For the apologies written in Shang Qinghua’s undertones, in the way he saw to Shen Jiu’s needs the best he could given the circumstances.
What prevents him from denial (a skill he has perfected over the decades) are the viridian eyes skewering him from the bed opposite of him. The room wasn’t this small when they first arrived, so why is it now closing in on all sides? The ventilation was just fine last night, why can he barely find air now?
“Shen…shixiong,” Shang Qinghua gulps, fingers twining and untwining, tangling and untangling. “How…um…was shixiong’s rest?” His voice cracks, and he internally cringes.
Shen Qingqiu flips open a fan—where did he get that?—and sniffs derisively. “I should ask shidi that, being as that his blanket is on this shixiong’s bed.”
Nervous laughter bubbles from his chest, his hand clammy as it rubs down his neck. “Well, um, they’re quite thin, don’t you think? Two would be better than one….”
With a delicately raised brow and absolutely no sign of belief, Shen Qingqiu raises himself from the condemning scene of his bedspread. Shang Qinghuq shrinks back, shoulders hunched as he fingers through the nest of hair on his head. Being around this particular shixiong always urges hyperawareness of his appearance, despite generally not giving it a second thought.
“The autumn climate is cooler in this area,” Shen Qingqiu notes, calm yet foreboding, his footfalls echoing dully as he approaches. Shang Qinghua draws his legs under his person. “And a simple request would bring eight blankets should shidi see fit.”
“I’m used to the cold,” Shang Qinghua responds, much easier than he expected, but no less squeaky. He wishes he could control that. As for the latter unspoken question, his honest answer may get him verbally chewed out, or worse, permanently resented by his shixiong. Not for the words themselves—at least, not in the sense that it would consequent the verbal chewing out—but for the nature of them. The meaning concealed beneath, pulsing like a reviving heart: slow and deep.
Because I didn’t want to leave you alone. Because I didn’t want you to wake up and think I left.
His determination toward refraining wavers in the face of his shixiong’s continued advancement. Silent, as is the tide when it pulls back; tranquil, despite the tsunami soon to follow.
“It was late, shixiong. I didn’t want to cause trouble,” he continues. The lie crackles in the air. He aims to smooth it with his words, even though experience proves that particular effort on the contrary. “I’m used to sleeping in odd situations, anyway. It’s no big deal! Shixiong was…um, he needed it more, probably.” Another footstep, and Shang Qinghua’s teeth clack.
Have Shen Qingqiu’s eyes always been this sharp? Drawn pinched, hooded, two blades designed to spill his blood? “Is this master only shixiong when he appears as such?”
Ice drops between his ribs, then pumps out cold. “No, of course not! Shen-shixiong is—he’s always shixiong, to this shidi. Obviously nothing else!”
“Then why,” the blade strikes out, serrated, “did you refer to him by his previous name?”
There’s no correct way to answer that, is there? At least now, Shang Qinghua knows he remembers. They aren’t avoiding the central issue here, the one that begins with the set of child-sized robes laying on the bedside stool. “There wasn’t anything else for me to call shixiong by that he would know of!”
“Not referring to him by name never came to shidi’s mind?” Shen Qingqiu cuts through his excuse, and while his fan obscures his lower expression, it does little to subside the snarl in his voice. “Or is shidi dimmer than this shixiong first assessed?”
The sting of the insult runs off him—as they usually do, when he hasn’t time to dwell on offenses like some of his martial siblings have the luxury of doing. “Shixiong, this shidi really doesn’t know what you want him to say,” he admits. It slipped sounds too weak, even if it is mostly true, but perhaps his admission is just as foolish as what he left unsaid. His untold answers can only beg more questions. Questions he’s unable to respond to.
(A deep ping, like a thick cord struck, echoes beside him. Shen Qingqiu can’t hear it.)
Expectedly unsatisfied (probably more disgusted with his pathetic shidi, honestly), Shen Qingqiu snaps his fan forward, the painted sheet whipping the air. “What shixiong wants is the truth, something of which shidi seems to be incapable of giving.” Sunlight strikes through the windows, setting his eyes alight in green torrents. “Why did shidi say it?”
“I—” His throat stings. “Shixiong, I can’t—”
Red bleeds into his peripheral, staining his world crimson. Bold OOC letters smear across his vision, followed with a monotone, detached voice warning him of character departure. Oh, and the consequences of such departure.
Shen Qingqiu can’t see it. Shen Qingqiu can’t hear it.
Shen Qingqiu curls his lips back. “This master has no interest in your dithering, Shang-shidi—”
“It wasn’t nine!” Shang Qinghua shouts. Barely audible to himself, over the blaring alarm in his ear. B-points drop as he speaks, punishments listing themselves before his trembling hands. “I didn’t—didn’t call you nine , shixiong, I called you black jade .”
For a moment, everything goes still. The abrupt cease of shrieking peals and crimsoning widgets nearly knocks him off balance, but he slams his palms on the bed beneath him to prevent that, the thinly clothed straw scratching his palms. The System seems about as shocked as he does over his confession, as though it weren’t expecting him to directly defy it. Especially in the eminent face of punishment.
He doesn’t raise his gaze. For fear of his shixiong’s reaction or the System’s sentence, he doesn’t know.
“What?” Shen Qingqiu hisses, though he would have to be a complete idiot (he’s only one half of the time, and most of it is weaponized) to miss the tremble in his voice.
He doesn’t acknowledge it. In fact, he decides to throw it to the wind. “Shixiong’s name…original name…was Jiu, as in ‘black jade.’ He was too young to remember. It was only…only really a freak coincidence that, well, that he also came to be known as Jiu, just with its…its numerical meaning.”
Another bout of nothing, before Shen Qingqiu’s fist grazes his upper vision. His shixiong quickly covers it in the fabric of his sleeves, but not before Shang Qinghua watches the thin skin of his knuckles stretch white over the joints, trembling. “Is this some sort of joke? Is that what shidi sees this as?”
His low tone does little to abate the rising panic in Shang Qinghua’s chest. Specifically because the System has yet to strike him down. “No, no! Of course not! Why would—why would I do that—”
“You speak as if you haven’t deceived your way out of trouble before!”
“Not to you!” Shang Qinghua insists, resolute, surprising even himself. “Never you.” Not willingly, at least.
“And this master is supposed to believe that?” Shen Qingqiu cuts back, both in voice and in position. If he weren’t as composed and disciplined as he’s built himself to be, Shang Qinghua suspects he’d start pacing. His heels still slide across the wood, already a testament to his mounting ire. “Does shidi think me daft?”
“Of course, not!” Shang Qinghua defends, fingers digging into his tense thighs. “Shixiong, I’ve never—wanted to lie to you. Maybe I’ve—I’ve pretended, or something, but never—never directly, and never to you!”
“How is that any different?” Shen Qingqiu’s fan tassel smacks its frame in his upset. “How am I to believe that? What evidence could you provide that would prove your baseless claims true?”
Shang Qinghua’s anxiety climbs up his ribs, invading his throat. He twitches his sleeves over his palms, tugging at the fabric at the low of his back. Sweat soaks into it, sticky, gritty with salt, and where did the System go? “I don’t know—”
“Of course you don’t, because you’re lying—”
“— the reason all your robes are silk is because it’s the only fabric that doesn’t irritate the brand mark on your chest.” Shen Qingqiu goes still. “And you wrap your wrists in bandages when you’re at home, because they ache from overuse and you can’t always direct qi to heal it.” The first few months he tried led to one of his worse qi deviations . “And you always avoid heavy meats because your stomach can’t handle it—”
“Enough!”
Shang Qinghua startles, clamping his jaw shut. “Sorry,” he murmurs. Those weren’t topics he should have brought up, the emotions associated with them too overbearing to load his already distressed (though he won’t admit nor show it) shixiong. Rationalizing it won’t do much good, but he really didn’t know how else to convince him. He doesn’t even know if it worked, whether his shixiong believes him or considers him even more moronic. Whether he’ll continue assuming he’s lying, instead, or do the xianxia equivalent of suing over emotional distress.
He still doesn’t know where the System went, which only compounds his dread and torment. The last time it completely disappeared during an extreme situation, it was due to it being a plot-changing scenario. This can’t be…?
“Not a seer,” Shen Qingqiu deduces, anger whetting his tone. “An oracle, perhaps. Unlikely as it is,” he adds on after a glance up and down Shang Qinghua’s body, causing him to shiver under the attention despite its condescending nature. Shen Qingqiu steps forward, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What are you? A blessed one?”
“Cursed, more like,” Shang Qinghua softly corrects, nails picking the threads of the cheap bed sheets. “I can’t…can’t say much. It’s—something I’ve tried to get rid of—oh, shixiong, I’ve tried— but nothing works. I don’t even know if it will ever go away. But…it…um…I know things that I—I’m not supposed to. And most of the time, I can’t share it. I can’t change it. I just have to live with it.”
Except for now, apparently, the damned System silent for once.
Shen Qingqiu finally sits down. Across from him, on his bed, as proper as the peak lord he is. His fan waves in long, drawing rocks before his chest. Wisps of hair sway in the crafted breeze, raven, glossy against his ashen cheeks. Shang Qinghua wishes he could return color to them—
—wait—
“That is as vague as shidi’s martial strength, though this master supposes that should only be expected. This curse, then, provides shidi foresight and hindsight into what exactly? What he deems fit for scrutiny? A curious whim to explore?” Shen Qingqiu shoots at him, haughty and expectant and beautiful rightfully so.
“No!” Shang Qinghua defends. The System’s distinct lack of threats and warnings against his actions—revelation and OOC related—make his stomach squirm. The feeling escalates the longer he faces his shixiong’s spearing gaze, the man succeeding at stripping his skin from his muscles, and his muscles from his bones, leaving his most vulnerable parts bare. “No,” he repeats, quieter, fingers fidgeting with the tie of his belt. “It—well, it, um, I was kind of…born…? With it? And because of that, I know certain things about the world—and some of its people—before it may even happen. It’s not—not a continuous thing. Like, I can’t see the future, technically…I know what—what’s supposed to happen. Vaguely. But, um, not. Not everything. Just an, um, expected direction, I guess?” Shang Qinghua doesn’t quite know how to say I only know whatever piece of time the plot claimed and whatever needed to occur for that to happen, which is not a lot in the long run, but for our sakes, it means I know more about everyone around us than I need or want to know without sounding more unbelievable and in need of medical help than he already does. Shen Qingqiu, if he were of the character to be inclined to, would have probably referred him to Mu Qingfang already.
The real Shen Qingqiu is going to keep him here until his justified paranoia gets satisfied. Even then, he may just kill him anyway. His shixiong searched for associates of the Qiu household and relatives of Wu Yanzi for years after his enslavement and discipleship in order to keep mouths sealed (if Shang Qinghua dropped arrows and hinted at locations, well—no use in bringing up that part of the past), expecting his shixiong to excuse him, when he very well holds both of those secret and several handfuls more, would be downright ignorant. Hope still finds him in want of that, however. Even if keeping his shixiong’s face behind his eyes and voice between his ears as his last living moments doesn’t sound as unappealing as it should, considering the death aspect of it all.
“Does shidi know everything, then?” Shen Qingqiu poses next, fan starting up its slow breeze once more. Shang Qinghua grips his sleeve ends harder.
“Not—not everything! Just, um, most—well, not even most, if I’m honest…” It’s difficult to remember every detail after dying and decades of a second life, especially considering most of PIDW was written in a state of financial alarm, existential dread, and energy-drink infused coffee. “It’s just, I know things that most people shouldn’t. And, um, a lot of those things I can’t change, because the—uh, the curse, it won’t let me. It prevents me from doing certain actions that would—would change the course of the world.”
Though now that Shang Qinghua is forced to verbally acknowledge his situation (as roundabout an explanation as it is), there were maybe times where he could have—
—and the System still isn’t here.
Silence passes over them, interrupted with Shang Qinghua’s dry swallow. Sweat prickles at his neckline despite the autumn air tumbling through the window. Shen Qingqiu whips his fan down once, before presumably catching himself and forcing stoicity back into its rhythm. “Shidi has always known, then?”
Without raising his gaze, Shang Qinghua nods. His hangnails have worsened, the calluses on his middle finger harder. “Yes,” he confirms quietly, barely over the soft hush of Shen Qingqiu’s fan. “I’ve always known. It’s why I—I called you that. Jiu. Well, um, not really that, either.”
“What is the meaning of that?” Shen Qingqiu questions. Even if his tone relinquished most of its panicked aggression and now only holds careful curiosity, said curiosity is dipped in weariness—which is, naturally, masked underneath resentment.
Shang Qinghua should have thought before he spoke. “Um.” The System has yet to enact its lethal promise. It didn’t instantly send him back to his electrified corpse when he essentially revealed his most guarded secret, but then again, the System operates on its own laws. Meaning he may just keel over five minutes from now, but if he thinks about that too hard he’ll have a panic attack, and he’s fumbled enough in front of his shixiong already.
“Well?” Shen Qingqiu demands, impatience lining his brows.
“Like I said before, shixiong,” Shang Qinghua begins, licking his dry lips. “The Jiu I used, it was “black jade,’ not, um. Not the number. Since it’s what shixiong’s original name was meant to be, that’s what I used to call him by..”
At the subsequent quiet, Shang Qinghua slips back into his very misplaced habit of rambling and unsolicited commentary.
“Well, you know. I mean, I already said it was cruel—well, maybe not cruel, but that’s for you to decide, not me—coincidence, that it happened to be the same as uh—as the other one. Really unfortunate, really. Black jade is nice, that’s why I picked—um, probably why they picked it. They probably wanted you to be prosperous, or something. Also maybe because it would give you wealth, and it’s a beautiful gem, honestly, kinda like how you’re—”
“Shut up, shidi,” Shen Qingqiu seethes.
“Okay. Right, yes, of course. Shutting up.” Shang Qinghua snaps his jaw closed.
Truly, he’s shocked Shen Qingqiu let him bumble on for that long, but that could also just be his shixiong processing. Shang Qinghua hasn’t fully processed everything that’s happened to him, and he’s been living with it for well over twenty years. That might also be because he generally likes to ignore everything that happened to him, or compartmentalize it so it’s more of a detached series of events than anything that personally affected him, but that’s irrelevant. An Ding Peak Lords (and Northern spies) don’t have time for multiple psychiatric breaks per week. Shang Qinghua’s been riding the edge of a meltdown for months and he’s been able to perform perfectly well.
Shen Qingqiu doesn’t close his eyes, but blinks longer than usual, casting his attention toward the leaves fluttering outside. The hands of wind guide one between the beams of the wooden window frame, a golden flake that gently crinkles as it rocks back and forth, back and forth toward the floorboards between them. Shen Qingqiu’s irises follow its path, and Shang Qinghua’s follow him.
“Did this curse suddenly decide to grant permission for this shixiong to know?” Shen Qingqiu asks after a few moments, gold reflected in his pupils, body strained and face twisted in a way Shang Qinghua’s never seen before.
“I don’t know.” Shang Qinghua wonders at gold against viridian. He wonders how his shixiong would look adorned in gold, before he remembers his current place. “I really don’t, shixiong,” he insists when Shen Qingqiu’s fan twitches in disapproval. “It’s never done this before. I’ve never—never been able to tell anyone. Usually it would spout threats and consequences at me.”
“What sort of consequences?” Shen Qingqiu finally glances up, eyes piercing. Shang Qinghua’s chest aches.
“Any, really.” Shang Qinghua curls his nails into his sleeves. “It’s pretty vague when it wants to be. Sometimes it’ll just…uh, threaten me with various things it, um, could do—like make me do certain things, or take away certain things. I haven’t—I haven’t really tried. Not doing what it wants, that is. I mean, I know what would get me killed, but even then, it’s not so simple. A lot of the consequences I could face wouldn’t immediately kill me, but would later down the line, or would kill someone else, or so on.”
“That is arbitrary.”
Shang Qinghua manages to muffle a groan. “It definitely is. It likes surprises. I honestly don’t understand it, especially right now. I don’t know why I can suddenly tell you these things when I haven’t been able to before. But if I keel over on the way back, you’ll know why.” Tightness locks his throat, so he laughs nervously to loosen it. “Hopefully that won’t happen, but, uh, you never know, you know?”
Shen Qingqiu straightens his back from where he’d leaned forward. Unconsciously, most likely. Shang Qinghua doesn’t acknowledge this, just as he doesn’t acknowledge how Shen Qingqiu’s hands have just stopped their minor trembling. “Shidi attempted to tell this master before?”
“Um,” Shang Qinghua clamps up. Based on the challenging look his shixiong has, trying to wiggle out of answering this question isn’t ideal. It wouldn’t work, either. They both know what he said. “I mean, I have. And it worked, one time, but um, the others not so much. I couldn’t really tell you anything important, but, um, I wasn’t sure you’d believe me even if I did.” The last part he tacks on, because Shang Qinghua doesn’t lie to Shen Qingqiu.
There wouldn’t have been a good way to explain how he knew the reason Yue Qingyuan didn’t return, for one that he would have to mold the truth through a filter that completely left his transmigration and the System out of it—if the System had even let him interfere with the plot in the first place—but also because it was contingent on Shen Qingqiu’s past, and no one was supposed to know about his past.
“I’m sorry,” Shang Qinghua spills out before he can stop himself. “I didn’t…I didn’t mean to keep it from you. I meant what I said earlier, you know. I’d never…if the words would help, I wouldn’t want to lie to you. But I couldn’t say anything.”
“Why?” Even Shen Qingqiu, master at masking, isn’t able to soothe the roughness in his voice. The primal need to know, to understand why someone else would care. Shang Qinghua can tell, because the same need resonates within himself, except it remains unheard and unanswered.
With that, he smiles. Not big enough to constitute a true expression of happiness, but enough to convey the genuinity in his words. To reinforce the truth that built within him for years, festering and gathering in a bundle behind his ribs, seen but ignored, out of hope it would dissipate, or otherwise assume a different, milder form. He couldn’t snip it, as rooted and fixed as it was and as it continues to be.
The System still hasn’t spoken up, either.
“Haven’t the others said it enough?” Shang Qinghua asks. “Hasn’t shixiong thought of it himself? I’m selfish, shixiong. I think only for myself, and my wants and needs.” A survivalist mindset refuses to remove itself easily, afterall.
Shen Qingqiu scoffs, evidently interpreting the words as something else entirely. “So shidi wishes to use me for gain?”
“I wish for you.” Shang Qinghua physically reels back, as though the words recoiled into his shoulders. He knew he loaded them, pulled the trigger himself—but it didn't ease the impact of them.
Shen Qingqiu blinks three times in quick succession, fan halted, wrist stiff.
Of course, Shang Qinghua knows. Shen Qingqiu’s dug up trauma lingers in the air, invaded and fresh, infused with the misplaced yet present embarrassment of another’s knowledge of it. Of course, he knows confessions don’t belong in the crevices of spilled hurt and resurfaced secrets, yet here it lies, burning, engulfing the air between them.
The golden leaf trembles.
“What?” Shen Qingqiu breathes. His previous fury, indignation, paranoia completely shatters, leaving only a bruised, hollow heart. “Is this some kind of joke? Are you joking?”
“It isn’t.” Shang Qinghua would feel insulted at the lack of belief, if he weren’t abundantly, wholly, irrevocably aware of the utter surprise dripping down Shen Qingqiu’s spine. Shang Qinghua didn’t even know Shen Qingqiu’s face could do that expression, muscles slack, cheeks devoid of color, whites visible—hardly, but visible—around his irises. “A joke, it’s not. It wasn’t. I’m sorry, I didn’t—I shouldn’t have said that, not right now—”
“You like me,” Shen Qingqiu claims. The lack of formal language speaks to his shock.
You like me.
Shang Qinghua nods numbly. Everything feels far away, distant, yet at the same time, too vivid, too distinct. The bristling branches and murmuring staff echo detachedly in his mind, yet the rough, worn fabric beneath his fingertips scratch his skin. Shen Qingqiu’s form seems cities away, yet his presence presses close, close, close.
Shen Qingqiu appears to snap back into his carefully constructed persona, of which Shang Qinghua secretly believes soaked into his skin over the years and is now properly a part of him. Which he would be able to think of more clearly, should his mind choose to focus on anything else other than the transparent shock in his shixiong’s eyes. Then again, he could stare at them whenever he’s presented with the opportunity.
“I didn’t mean to,” Shang Qinghua whispers, and despite having been the one to confess, he feels completely exposed. “I’m sorry, I just—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have thrown that on you. You’re—shixiong is already occupied with other things.” Like finding out Shang Qinghua knows more about his life than anyone else. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop doing that,” Shen Qingqiu hisses, whipping up fast enough that the blanket beneath him thuds to the ground. “Stop apologizing! It makes you sound weak, and this shixiong will not hear it!”
Shang Qinghua flinches back, but that does little to deter his irate shixiong. He’s long since known that once he gets started, he goes until there’s no more wick to burn.
“Apologizing is useless here, and unless shidi plans on rescinding his words, then stop.” Shen Qingqiu’s fan slaps shut, jabbing in his direction.
Shang Qinghua’s sure he’s about to get it. Whatever ‘it’ entails. “I’m sorry,” his vocal cords move on their own. Shen Qingqiu steps forward menacingly, but Shang Qinghua quickly corrects himself. “No, I mean, really, I shouldn’t have. Not here, after everything I’ve already told you. It was too much, with the whole kid thing and probably remembering all that happened—”
Shen Qingqiu’s heel clicks against the floor before his own feet ominously. Shang Qinghua’s hands dig into his legs, neck straining to maintain eye contact, yet not daring to move, to breathe too harshly. His heart shudders behind his ribs, rattling his core, lungs expanding too fast to properly catch air.
“It is not for you to decide what I can and cannot handle,” Shen Qingqiu asserts. “That is for me to choose and only me to choose. If I want to hear it, then I will, and if I do not, then I will not. So, tell me: does shidi mean it?”
Shang Qinghua’s spiraling brain screeches to a halt, leaving marks on the pavement of his consciousness. “Huh?”
Shen Qingqiu clicks his tongue. “You claimed you would never lie to me.”
“Of course,” he answers without hesitation. “Always. I’d never lie to you.”
“Then do you mean it? That you wish for me?”
Shang Qinghua takes in a breath, immediately regrets doing so as he inhales the herbal scent of his shixiong, then lets it all out. He trembles with it. “Yes,” he whispers, ears hot, mind screeching. “I do.”
“Most would argue lying through omission would find its purpose here,” Shen Qingqiu mentions, fan fluttering below his jaw.
The atmosphere mirrors Shang Qinghua’s internal state: tense. “Shixiong…?” He ventures tentatively, because no matter how much he wishes he could soothe over the ragged edges with calming words, they only ever have a synergistic effect on the discomfort.
“If you held such inclinations toward this master, then shidi never spoke of them.” Shen Qingqiu continues, voice low. “Were you going to sit with them until you died?”
As Shang Qinghua mentally scrambles to piece together the right words to reply without sounding absolutely out of it, because what the hell is going on—why isn’t he upset at the accidental love confession?—someone knocks on the door.
It acts as enough of a distraction to toss a pin into the overheated disc in his mind, stopping it mid-spiral. He glances at the door, then at his shixiong, and it would be cause for suspicion if an adult and a child rented the room, and two adults checked out of it, wouldn’t it?
Shen Qingqiu obviously already understands this and calmly assumes a spot behind the bathing screen, as if he hadn’t completely twisted Shang Qinghua’s mind inside out. After ensuring his adult-sized shixiong’s body is out of sight, Shang Qinghua hastens to slide the wood open.
“Uh, yes?” He asks the staff member who approached.
The staff member clears his throat, a light blush set on his cheeks. “Excuse this one’s interruption, honorable cultivator.” Shang Qinghua internally winces at the address. “The innkeeper wishes to extend apologies, for the chef has gotten sick and we have no replacement for her at the moment.” They bow, but for some reason, Shang Qinghua believes it is more to avoid eye contact with him.
He does a cursory glance down at himself—sue him—and instantly knows why. Ancient China is quite modest, and his draping robe collar, wrinkled sleeves, and loose hair certainly fits the immodest category. “Yeah, sure, no worries,” he reassures quickly, slipping into colloquial—and modern, really—language. “Um, it is alright. We’ll just grab something on our way out of town. Thank you.”
He closes the door before the staff member can get his appreciation for their understanding out all the way, and for both of their sakes, he believes it is for the best.
Withholding from the urge to knock his head against the doorframe in hopes of startling a few brain cells into action, he turns back around to face his shixiong.
Who stares back at him with an expression Shang Qinghua would have a better time deciphering ancient demonic runes than translating its intended meaning (he’s actually quite good at the former, all things considered).
“Um,” Shang Qinghua starts, fiddling with the ends of his hair.
“We don’t have time for dithering, shidi,” Shen Qingqiu points out dryly, but Shang Qinghua can swear there’s a lilt in his voice, a lifting note that subtly reflects in the hardly-noticeable tilt of his lips.
Is…
Is his shixiong teasing him?
“Well—um, the—uh, the time…never…came up…?” He offers, weak as they both know it is. Even if Shang Qinghua acknowledged the budding (and then blooming) feelings toward his shixiong years ago, was his peerless shixiong genuinely wondering why the An Ding Peak Lord wouldn’t approach him to confess? Seriously, Shang Qinghua may be shameless, but he isn’t as lacking in intelligence as others believe him to be. He has self-preservation and pride, even if the latter rarely manifests in anything defensive.
Besides, Shen Qingqiu barely knew who he was other than his nuisance of a martial sibling who got him stuff on time and every once in a while needed a signature or approval for a new deal (usually relating to the Demon Realm).
Shen Qingqiu raises an elegant brow, and Shang Qinghua sighs just as his stomach prickles. “Honestly, shixiong, I don’t have that much time—”
“So this shixiong would have been a waste of time, then?” Shen Qingqiu presses, voice somewhat very uncharacteristically plaintive. Shang Qinghua’s sure he wasn’t meant to do that.
Shang Qinghua’s also sure he isn’t supposed to be able to read him that well. No one else needs to know he’s known this particular shixiong’s nuances since before his birth, and even then, studied them during their brief meetings over the years. Call it creepy, or obsessive, but what is a fallen author meant to do instead?
“No, of course not!” Shang Qinghua hastens to fix the misunderstanding. “No, it’s just, um. Well, you know…”
“This shixiong, in fact, does not.”
Shang Qinghua swallows, then swallows again. He fixes his fingers in his sleeves, that way he can conceal their trembling. Not that it would do him any good. “I didn’t think you’d notice,” he whispers, barely audible.
He doesn’t dare look up. He’s not sure what he’ll find, and he doesn’t want to, either.
Then there’s a light stinging on his forehead, not enough to hurt, but enough to feel. Shang Qinghua jerks his chin up to Shen Qingqiu standing barely an arm’s length away. There’s not a smile on his face, but there isn’t not a smile, either.
“Shidi is not the only one who knows more than they give voice to.” Shen Qingqiu pulls the fan back, snapping it back into place below his chin. “Would it not be true then, that I would notice?”
Shang Qinghua clasps his jaw shut so it won’t gape.
“Pack your items,” Shen Qingqiu orders, drawing out his arm and flicking it back, causing his sleeves to flutter mesmerizingly. “We are meant to return to the sect by evening. This morning has stretched on long enough. As I recall, shidi referred to taking our meal elsewhere.”
Before Shang Qinghua can try and process the information (was Shen Qingqiu asking him out on a date? Was Shen Qingqiu asking him out on a date?) his shixiong is out the door. Nevermind that said shixiong isn’t supposed to be in the inn at all, at least as an adult, or that Shang Qinghua, who was with a child, is now no longer with a child, and are they going on a date?
The thought sparks him into action. “Shixong, wait—”