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“Ah, what are you crying for again, Wangxi?” Nangong Si asks as soon as he steps into the girl’s room, having heard the sniffling coming from behind the door already. At first, he thought he might not interfere, just walk past, but when has he ever been able to ignore her?
So, in the end, he opened the door and stepped right in.
The crack of light that comes in through the opened door draws her attention almost like she’s a moth. Nangong Si can imagine her like that. A little moth with little moth wings on her shoulders, flying through the night in an absolute panic in a desperate attempt to find any source of light at all.
“It’s dark,” she sniffs, bringing her hand up to her eyes to wipe away at her tears, and then at the bit of snot dripping from her nose. “My candle burnt out, so…”
Her voice gives a few hiccups, and Nangong Si sighs a bit, closing the door behind him and stepping inside.
Some moonlight is falling in through the window, enough for him to not trip over anything. Not that there’s anything on her floor anyway – Ye Wangxi, even at the age of five, is the epitome of order and cleanliness. Her foster father raised her like that.
“Why didn’t you ask for a new candle before this one burnt out? You shouldn’t sleep with them on, though,” he scolds her, “you could burn down the whole room!”
Her only response is another quiet sniff into her hand. Then, she lets it sink until both of her hands are in front of her.
She grasps at the blanket below them, trembling.
“It’s so dark here,” she whines.
Nangong Si has never understood her fear of the dark. Sure, he used to be a bit scared of it too, when he was even younger than he is now, but his mother told him to cut it, so he cut it.
It doesn’t seem like Ye Wangxi is able to do that.
Probably because she’s a girl. All the men in Nangong Si’s life always say women are weak and scared of a lot of things as opposed to men, so that’s probably it.
“Should we go to find a candle, then?” he asks eventually, taking it upon him to find a solution to make her stop crying. He isn’t sure what the feeling inside of him is, but he doesn’t like to see her cry.
“No!” she yelps, “no, don’t leave-“
“You could just come with me.”
“I’m not walking around in the dark! What if there’s ghosts or demons?”
“There’s no ghosts or demons here, silly,” Nangong Si laughs. He steps towards the bed and sits down on it, grasping her hand like his dad sometimes does when he gets scared.
Not of the dark.
Nangong Si gets scared of other things.
“Still… I don’t want to,” she sniffles, immediately squeezing his hand back like the ghosts and demons are going to crawl through the walls if she doesn’t.
“Are you less scared if I’m here?” he asks, at which her eyes go wide – as much as he can tell in the dark, anyway. He’s sure her face is all smudged with tears and all red. It’s not the first time he’s seen her cry.
In the end, she gives a tiny nod and a tiny affirmative noise.
He sighs.
“Alright, you crybaby. Then let me under the blanket, it’s cold.”
Once more, she nods, and raises it enough for Nangong Si to slip below. He makes some more space until they sit in bed together, not quite upright, but also not really lying down.
For a while, it’s just quiet between them, but Ye Wangxi quickly grabs his hand again to cling to it once more.
“Come on, stop crying,” he tries to coax her, “you’re safe. After all, I’m here to protect you, right?”
She does nod, but it takes a lot longer for her to stop crying. Nangong Si really doesn’t understand how someone can be so scared of the dark. It’s just night – nothing happens at night that doesn’t happen during the day.
After a while of him trying to calm her down, though, her tears do cease. She sniffs a few more times, and then, her head starts dropping in the telltale sign of someone about to fall asleep against their own will.
“…Go sleep,” Nangong Si says, unable to hold the little laugh from his voice.
“…Don’t want to. It’s dark.” With her free hand, she grasps at his sleeve suddenly. “…A-Si, will you stay? You won’t leave if I fall asleep, right?”
“I’ll stay,” he says, dragging her down under the covers with him. His cheeks burn a little. It’s alright. No one is going to know that he’s slept in bed with a girl if he doesn’t tell anyone.
“Okay,” she makes, and obediently gets below the blanket with him until her head is bedded on the pillows. Nangong Si joins her, and in the end, only their hands stay connected.
It’s clearly enough to calm her down, though, so that’s good. Everything Nangong Si wants is for her to just go to sleep, with how tired she looks from all her fear.
She’s still shivering a bit.
“Just sleep. I’ll protect you, I promise,” he repeats, intertwining their fingers and giving her hand another small press.
“…A-Si?”
“Hm? I’m here.”
Her voice is full of sleep already when she speaks up again, her eyelashes the only indicator in the dark that her eyes are closing against her will.
“You’re so bright, you’re kind of like a light. It makes me less scared. I’m still scared ‘cause it’s dark, but… it’s not that scary when you’re here.”
And then, she drifts off to sleep, leaving a poor Nangong Si to fend for his life against a feeling way too big for his small body.
*
In his last moment, her face will be the last thing he ever sees. He’ll see the glow of lava reflected in her eyes, so bright that they shine like the sun itself. It feels warmer than the red-hot liquid around him about to swallow him whole and never let go. Ye Wangxi feels warmer than anything else, and he’s sure that she doesn’t need him to shine her light onto the world.
Deep inside, that girl is still scared of the dark, and he knows as much.
But he knows now that her light will always break through the darkness, no matter what.
In the end, it’s him who’s scared of the darkness he’s about to sink into, and it’s her light that guides his way.
The bubbling lava swallows him whole.