Chapter Text
After two hours of silence of pooling in the late afternoon sunlight together, Zuo Le, forearms burning, finally spoke to Yun Qingping and asked, “Do you like to watch me train?”
It seems that question struck Yun Qingping’s funny bone, since he was only abled to look up from his scribing for a moment before cracking up in laughter.
“I guess I just see it all simpler than you do. I fail to see the appeal.” He sheaths his training blade, and raises his eyes from the wooden dummy as his friend wipes his brief tears. The pale alcove’s open window behind him lit up his light hair and pale clothes like a gold halo. Zuo Le sighed lightheartedly at the lack of answer as his companion silently turned back to write, and placed his tired hand on his hip. Said with rare sarcasm with the lack of an answer, “Yun, surely you have more adept martial artists lined up to challenge your…”
“The Grandmaster instructed me to keep a close eye on you, so there’s no need to worry about my schedule, Zuo Le. Unless you think I have other orders?” The record keeper pointed out.
You still didn’t answer the question, Zuo Le sharply thought.
Seven years ago, a similar yet different scene played out in Yumen. A young Yun Qingping was urged to greet Zuo Le, who had started to get a little full of himself. Zuo Le had always felt a little odd being watched while he trained, not that he let it affect him or anything, but now he had this new, quiet, white-fluffy-haired-horned boy keeping a quiet eye on him whenever they both had a bit of free time.
Zuo Le had certainly wondered, but never asked, why that boy never bothered to train with him.
Looking back on it, the young candleholder is quite embarrassed of the way he acted as a child. Docile certainly isn’t quite the right word to describe him now, but it was even farther from the truth back then. It’s not like he misbehaved, but maybe it was this lack of restraint in favor of… fun? Adventure? Blank curiosity?- that broke the quiet barrier between the two.
Yun couldn’t climb, but would watch as Zuo Le did, and listen sincerely to how Zuo Le described the sights over Yumen’s walls. Shook his head with a smile every time he was urged up.
“I’m sure the Grandmaster can take you places when you’re older,” A young Zuo Le had said, pausing to chew his sugar rice fritters and ignore the fact that Yun Qingping is slightly older than him. “The sun turns the dunes bright orange in the evenings, but you’ll never see them if you don’t leave.”
“The way you describe it is enough.”
Yun Qingping’s eyes didn’t leave one of the countless books Zuo Le had seen on his person. The quiet street corner restaurant they had found themselves in grew dark as the sun fell behind the moving fortress’s walls.
“...Are you sure you should be writing this down in that book, though? Didn’t the grandmaster say it was for official business?”
“Your life is considered official business, according to laoshi.” Yun Qingping’s fluffy ears perked up as he finally put the brush down. “And I won’t be able to start the record for another half a year or so. This is just part of my training.”
“I see.” Zuo Le said, putting another fritter in his mouth so he didn’t say anything weird, like ‘I hope you don’t stop writing down things about me once it stops being training.’
If I don’t write it down, it won’t be remembered. I think all of this has to be remembered.
“It has to be remembered, huh…”
The Yun from their early time in Yumen was different from how he is now, but hadn’t changed in some ways. Zuo Le imagines the Yun aboard Rhodes Island, looking down at him with a bottle of water in one hand, is thinking the same thing.