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A farmer plants seeds in the field, waiting for his crops to come to the table; a woman bears herself children so they might take care of her when she grows old. For the long-lived on the Xianzhou Loufu, for whom death is a faraway dream, for those who have no fear of hunger or starvation the way those from less prosperous origins do, a general picks up a boy—
What does he anticipate, then, from his lieutenant?
When he goes to the training field, the general often accompanies him. Yanqing monopolizes his time, a truth that he's pricklingly aware of — but the general's attention doesn't come without Yanqing's own efforts, and the merit of putting in time to train the next generation outweighs the costs, or so they say. After all, a talent like Yanqing's is hard to come by: swordsmanship comes to him naturally, easily, like water flowing into the shape of ice; where one goes the thought of the other follows, like how the gold of Jing Yuan's eyes prophesizes the arrival of the Lightning Lord. It's natural for Yanqing to follow Jing Yuan — it's natural for Jing Yuan to take care of him. That's what everyone says, what everyone understands; it's what Jing Yuan himself understands, or must understand.
"You shouldn't worry so much about what others think about you," the general says, his hand resting on Yanqing's shoulder.
Yanqing nods because he's expected to. The general is farsighted and wise, and knows how to conduct himself well. It's Yanqing's perspective that's more fractured and small-minded than he'd thought, thinking himself a tiger among men when he'd only been a frog in a well. It's written that indulgence and praise ruins a son: a kind word there and a kind word here, and Yanqing's estimation of himself begins to falter. To believe that you're talented, only to find out that how much you're lacking — it's a startling humiliation, and it stings, too, to realize that he can't accept his flaws with the grace he should.
How strong you are — how worthy you are — can't determined independently. Steel needs to be tested against steel. A sword needs another sword to slide against it.
He trusts the general's judgment. He always has. It's his own that he's beginning to doubt.
That evening, Jing Yuan corrects his form and runs through exercises with him in the courtyard, offering a word of advice here and there. Sweat beads onto Yanqing's brow as he moves through his sword forms, dampening the roots of his hair. He can feel his skin sticking together where flesh meets flesh at his bent knees, the quick rise-fall of his chest only half as deliberate as it should be in breath.
When Jing Yuan holds out his hand and asks him to see his weapon, Yanqing gives it to him. The general turns it over and over in his palms, looking for something that his lieutenant can't see, and wraps his fingers around the hilt. A finger runs against the flat of the blade, measuring the length.
"Yanqing," says Jing Yuan, and looks up. His smile is faint, his expression gentle. He flips the sword over in his palm once, and then gives it back to him. "The greatest weakness a swordsman can have is a lack of perspective. Remember that."
Yanqing's response — though he can hardly hear it — is clumsy but sincere, making the general laugh. He ducks his head at the sound of it, feeling torn between warmth and self-reproach, and notices, for the first time, how late the evening has grown. The moon has begun to peek out from the clouds, faintly silvery, and for a moment Yanqing wishes he could pluck its silvery face out from the pond of the sky and offer it to the general, both-handed, in his palms.
In one of the very first lessons that he had taken from Jing Yuan, there had been another master there: one of the general's acquaintances, an old war veteran that now called himself a wandering swordsman. They were watching Yanqing fumble around with a wooden sword in one of the older courtyards — now abandoned, too small to serve Yanqing in his practice — while sitting under the shaded eaves, a pot of tea split between them.
"He's talented," the master had said, watching him.
The general had smiled. "He is, isn't he?"
They must've caught Yanqing listening, though it's something that he only realizes now. Jing Yuan's voice had lilted upwards with the note of teasing he only employed when he wanted to fluster his disciple, eliciting a hot flush of pleasure in his unwitting chest at the compliment.
"Look at him," the master had said, shaking his head. "He doesn't hesitate at all, does he? Young people, always fearless — one day, they'll leave us all behind."
"There always comes a day when a disciple must leave their master," Jing Yuan had said. He'd emptied his cup and held it lightly between his fingers, twisting it between the sides. His head tilted downward, absorbed in his study of Yanqing's shadow: watching not just his movements but the silhouette he carved against the ground, cut against the panes of sunlight that poured down in rivers through his hair and over his limbs. He looked at Yanqing like he was looking through him and past him to a version of him beyond, and it was only then that he laughed, loose-limbed and languid, and let the edges of his eyes curl a little in shallow, removed satisfaction. "It's good that he's like this. When the time comes, he won't hesitate either."
It was then that Yanqing had tripped over the transition into his next stance. There had been a small commotion: he'd landed the way that he was taught, careful, but kicked up a flurry of pebbles and cloudy earth from the ground underfoot, the blade instinctively angled away from his body during his fall. The attendant had come over to check on him, and the general had risen; Yanqing had apologized, pink-faced, for the mistake, and immediately been forgiven.
It wasn't until later — later, when everyone had gone, and they were sitting in the dining room, the two of them, Yanqing pouring Jing Yuan his drink — that he said what he'd been thinking ever since he'd heard that. He should've waited until they had finished eating, or, perhaps, not said it at all: but he was impatient, back then, even more than he was now, and the words rattled in his chest and demanded that he speak them.
"General," Yanqing had said.
Jing Yuan raised his eyebrows across from him. Yanqing's hands furled into fists, and then deliberately loosened and lay flat against his thighs.
Asserting: "I won't leave you."
Was it hard to read the general? Yes, often: but not for lack of seeing what he felt. His mouth had twisted then, and his eyes had flashed; he'd looked at Yanqing with an expression caught between crying and laughing, warm with fond amusement, his eyelids faintly sloped, drooping, from the exhaustion of the day's work. He looked at Yanqing with the expression he had when Yanqing had overestimated himself, or underestimated himself, or more accurately and concisely misjudged himself — the one that he wore when Yanqing didn't correctly gauge the length or weight of his weapon and missed, and the one that he wore when Yanqing spoke words that he didn't fully understand the weight of.
"Thank you, Yanqing," he'd said. His hand had reached out, gentle, and smoothed the wayward strand of hair at the crown of the boy's head.
It wasn't unusual for Yanqing to receive visitors in the general's place. The favor that the general bestowed upon him was clear: allowing him to represent Jing Yuan to others, and speak on his behalf — act on his behalf — exist, in essence, on his behalf. He was used to fielding questions about the starskiffs and what there was to see in the Xianzhou Luofu, what there was to eat and where they could shop; the casual questions that he often faced, especially when the visitors paused, eyebrows raising, and looked at his face, his perceived youth.
But the question that he heard the most: "What's your relationship with the general?"
"I'm his lieutenant," Yanqing would say. Every time, unfailing.
But in private—
"It's like a loan," says Yanqing to Yunli. She's sitting by the edge of the water, watching him; she wasn't tall enough for her legs to reach the ground, so they dangled instead, the heat of the sun-warmed stones just centimeters away from her worn soles.
"One without any repayment?" Yunli retorted, amused.
"I'll repay him," said Yanqing. He couldn't resist adding: "You wouldn't get it."
"I don't get it," Yunli said back, arch. She had the mannerisms of a high-born noblewoman, no matter how much she liked to brawl and get swept up into the everyday trouble that occupied the streets. It was obvious that her grandfather, the General Huaiyan, had raised her preciously, making sure that she was always taken care of.
In a way, Yanqing had been the same. Jing Yuan had carefully taken him under his wing, protecting him from the dangers that he had been ignorant of as a child, though he had a difficult time believing that he had ever been as carefree and irreverent as Yunli was. She's a girl, though he doesn't resent her for that: never for being a girl, just for being an awful one, irresponsible and self-righteous.
But it's good, he guesses, that she's like that, the way that Jing Yuan often tells him that he's so confident.
It's only recently that he's heard the underlying statement hidden underneath the praise: that it's good that there's nothing that could break his confidence, that he's never encountered the type of strength that the general knows exists beyond his capabilities. That it's good that he's been born in an era of relative peace, that he hasn't had to grow up in the strife that defined the circumstances that defined Jing Yuan, a terrible cycle of carving and being carved, that it's good that he wants strength, and doesn't need it.
That was true before. But now—
Sometimes, Yanqing thinks: if the world were as the general wanted it, would Jing Yuan have had him pick up the sword at all?
That's why they're different, Yanqing and Yunli: she thinks nothing of the way that the General Huaiyan takes care of her. They're family. She knows what they are; she's always known. It's in her blood; there is no different to her. The world just is.
Yanqing knows who he is to the general. But for the general — who is Yanqing to him?
A boy is a weight on another — like a child held on their father's shoulders, or a baby cradled in their mother's arms. A physical weight, a physical burden: see how someone's back hunches in apology for their child's mistakes, sobbing, it was my fault for not educating them properly, and how the line of their brows grows stooped, and the tension between their arms builds as if they're holding a boulder until they let it out with a sigh, saying, it's all my fault, it's mine.
A son is an anchor. They keep their parent close; they drag them down.
"So you think of him as your father," says Cauldron Master Lingsha. Yanqing startles, jolted from his deliberations by her sudden arrival. She smiles at him — sharp, sweet, indulgent — and follows his gaze to where he'd been watching a man drag his son home, scolding him the entire way down the street. He's been staring too long: he wonders if he was too obvious. "The general, I mean: although, who else?"
"He's my master," says Yanqing. He'd been standing underneath a shady awning: he steps aside, offering his spot to her. "It's different."
Lingsha nods, unbothered by the correction. Yanqing swallows back the reflexive arguments that threaten to pry their way out of his throat: does everything have to be family? Surely a Vidyahara would understand what it was like better than anyone else; that there was more than one way to exist in the world, and more than one way to understand other people.
But she hadn't argued; it's only him that wants to. Defensive without an attack. Wondering, still. Unable to define something without being told. In a way, he's still a child.
A lack of perspective, the general had told him. Years later, Yanqing's problems are all the same: he hadn't known how to gauge the distance back then, and he doesn't know how to gauge distance now.
No, not a loan: an investment.
When you plant a seed, it will return from the earth a thousandfold.
Yanqing goes to see the general in the morning. Jing Yuan, on occasions where there aren't any urgent matters demanding his attention, is a slow riser, and picky about who he allows in his quarters. The massive white lion that sits in his courtyard is even pickier, only allowing a select handful to wander around the general's estate.
But Yanqing enters without issue. The sunlight has just begun to creep up the facade of the building, casting silhouettes that will lengthen as the day goes on. He's supposed to escort the general to his morning meeting, but Yanqing keeps his footsteps quiet and soundless, padding carefully across the wooden floors. The door obediently opens under his palm, and inside, the general is dozing on the bed, sitting slumped instead of laying down — his posture loose and languid, his white hair let down and loose.
"General," Yanqing says softly. "It's time to get up."
Jing Yuan stirs. He's always suspected that the general's already woken up by the time that Yanqing's stepped inside, but sleep, for Jing Yuan, is a hard thing to shake off; his eyes open a fraction, misty from his slumber, and reveal a sliver of burnished gold.
His voice is morning-low and morning-rough. Jing Yuan yawns. "Come here."
Yanqing obligingly steps closer. The general raises a hand and beckons him forward, so he comes closer still, uncertain, the protective charms that Jing Yuan's given him sliding against the fabric of his uniform, until he's standing in front of him. The sun slopes against his back. Yanqing wonders, errantly, if the general just means for him to provide him shade.
Quickly — in a flash of movement — Jing Yuan pulls him down, his fingers wrapping around Yanqing's wrist. Yanqing tumbles down onto the bed, sprawled with his limbs knocking together in an ungainly fashion. Jing Yuan makes a small noise of satisfaction in the back of his throat, patting the top of Yanqing's head without having to look, and Yanqing, dazed, only blinks.
"You should sleep more," says Jing Yuan, his eyes slipping shut. "Otherwise, you'll never grow."
"You'll be late," Yanqing points out, though they've been late before. Still, he's been given a responsibility; he's supposed to bring the general to the Seat of Divine Foresight, supposed to report to him about the matters that have piled up in his absence, supposed to ensure that all's well upon the Xianzhou Luofu — it's a matter of accountability.
"Yanqing." Jing Yuan's fingers brush against the wrinkles on Yanqing's forehead until they flatten. The general's smiling. He can hear the laughter in his voice. He's happy; Yanqing wonders why, faintly warm from the sunlight: doesn't ask, in the end. "Don't think so much. We'll be alright."