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The morning had been good to him, earning a lot of tips from playing music at a hundred-day celebration of the local gentry and Fang Zhou couldn’t help himself but invite his little sister out to eat. He himself enjoyed food, but never as much as his sister did, who just delighted in tasting everything new. As they had visited this town near the southern sea, he had asked around for the best restaurant and had been pointed towards a small, but clean looking place that seemed busy with visitors. So, that is where he leads his sister after their busy morning.
They are served quickly with some side dishes, but the famous sweet and sour ribs of the restaurant take a little longer, which is fine, as it gives them some time to catch up. He smiles at his little sister and her joy at the first taste of the food and takes his own first bite, already resigned to it not tasting like he feels it should, as all food in his life seems to be like.
He’s wrong.
He looks at his chopsticks in confusion, this… Maybe it’s just a fluke.
He tries the dish again. No, it’s delicious and he’s never tasted this in his entire life, but it’s so familiar in his heart. He tries another dish, ignoring the way his little sister is looking at him with questions in her eyes at his suddenly serious face and nearly frantic movements while going through every one of the side dishes, expecting the slight disappointment he has always felt, had resigned himself to, and not feeling it at this moment.
What is happening?
“A’xiong, are you alright? Is something wrong with the food?”, his sister asks him tentatively.
Yes, he wants to say but shakes his head, inexplicable tears are rising in his eyes. “No Ci-mei, it’s delicious.”
“That’s good to hear.”, the cheerful voice of the waiter interrupts them and sets down the steaming main dish of sweet and sour ribs. Fang Zhou blinks away the tears and puts on a smile, thanking him for his service. “You are in luck, Fu-dachu is in today, he is our best cook. Enjoy your meal.”
The waiter leaves as quickly as he came and Fang Zhou is confronted with delicious foods, he’s eager to eat. A novel feeling he’s not felt before in his life. Maybe now he finally understands, why his little sister loves eating and cooking so much.
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He comes back alone two months later. Fang Ci going off on her own, meeting up with a friend from the Sword Alliance, so Fang Zhou is free to roam a little more than usual and finds himself traveling back to this town by the sea. He sits outside this time, enjoying the early summer sun and trying not to feel nervous. Why would he feel nervous, he’s just here to eat.
It’s just… in the last two months, he has tried other food in other restaurants, and it tasted good, was even delicious at times, but it never clicked like this one experience here. It baffles him. So he decided he would come here again, just to see, if it still is like that.
This time he only orders a main dish with rice and waits patiently for it to arrive, looking around, watching the people walking by on the street, listening to snippets of conversations around him.
When his food arrives he can tell something is different from before, and his first bite confirms, what he has already felt. It’s still good, better than most even, but it’s not the same as the dish two months ago, that brought him to tears for inexplicable reasons.
He waves down the waiter.
“Is everything alright?”, the young man asks with a smile and Fang Zhou nods.
“Everything’s fine, thank you. I just couldn’t help but notice that the sweet and sour ribs taste slightly different than before. I was here two months ago, you see?” The waiter’s face lights up and he grins knowingly.
“Ah yes, that’s because Fu-dachu isn’t in today. He isn’t our regular cook, but our most popular chef.”, the young man explains.
“Oh.”, Fang Zhou says and tries not to sound disappointed. It’s alright, really. The food is still more than fine.
He leaves the restaurant after eating his meal and makes his way down through the market and then out of town. Deciding to enjoy the nice weather, he takes a stroll along the beach and sits down on a nice sand-dune. For a moment he just closes his eyes and relaxes with the sun on his face, the fresh, salty breeze around his nose and the sound of the waves in his ears.
It doesn’t take long for him to get bored of that though, and he takes out his qin from his qiankun space and resolves to continue composing the piece that has been spooking in his mind for a while now. It’s unusual in the sense that he normally doesn’t compose songs for more than one player. Very seldomly, he writes a duet, but never a piece for four. But this song has been haunting his dreams for a while now and maybe he can finally get it out of his system by figuring it out into an actual piece.
He's been at it for quite some time, the sun long past her noon position, when a shadow falls across him. He halts his play and looks up into a young man’s stunningly pretty face. His eyes are wide, looking at Fang Zhou with a strange kind of wonder and desperation. He’s out of breath, as if he’s run through the sand for a while to reach him. His hands twitch at his sides, as if they want to tap something, but the young man balls them into fists and falls to his knees before him.
Fang Zhou too feels slightly out of breath for some reason. It can’t just be because the man is pretty, he has seen many handsome or pretty men in his life, even if he can’t remember any of them at the moment, as dark eyes study him as if they have missed his features for a life time. Fang Zhou also takes his time to calm down his frantically beating heart, noticing the two tiny moles under the young man’s right eye, another one high on his left cheek, all of them inviting soft kisses, and he has no idea where that thought came from.
“Ex- excuse me, I didn’t want to interrupt or disturb you, daren.”, the young man apologizes, his gaze slipping to the side, face grimacing with embarrassment and self-scolding. Fang Zhou can’t let that stand, his heart already opening up towards this stranger. The young man’s hands lie on his thighs now, one tapping out some unknown rhythm, while the other is pressed hard against the fabric, as if forcing itself not to do the same. He notices Fang Zhou’s gaze and the tapping hand too, is pressed into stillness, both hands back into forming fists.
“It’s absolutely fine, I didn’t play anything important.” Fang Zhou smiles and reassures, coaxing the man to look back at him. “My name is Fang Zhou, who do I have the honor of meeting?”
The young man blushes and it fits him beautifully, like peach petals falling onto soft milk-pudding.
“Fu Zhumei. My name, that is. I’m called Fu Zhumei.”, he still sounds a little breathless and the blush deepens into a slight sunburned color, which just endears him even more in Fang Zhou’s heart. It is so strange, Fang Zhou is not a man that bonds quickly. He has many acquaintances with whom he is on good terms, amicable even, but he doesn’t have many friends, or even close friends. But this young man seems somehow instantly connected to his heart in a way he has never experienced before. It’s an exceedingly weird experience. Not a bad one, though.
He hesitates for a moment, good etiquette holding him back, before he throws it out of the window. He reaches out and gently takes the white-knuckled fists into his hands, causing the young man to tense up his whole body, breath hitching, before he just seems to melt into his guidance. With patient hands, he caresses the fists to relax, to open up and find their secret.
“You have good hands.”, he finds himself saying and feels his own blush rising to his ears. What even would be bad hands? But Fu Zhumei’s eyes widen at the compliment, looking down at his hands, as if he’s seeing them for the first time. They are relaxed now, but not without energy. They twitch, fingers held back, before giving in and tap, tap, tapping away at a rhythm only they seem to hear.
“Most people don’t like them.”, Fu Zhumei laughs and takes them back from his grip, fisting them into the fabric of his outer robe, stopping their movement and holding them still. His beautiful eyes look back up at Fang Zhou and still, his heart beats faster.
“I like them.”, Fang Zhou finds himself saying, before he can think about it and wants to kick himself for being so blunt and he barely knows this man, but he feels so connected. It’s worth it for the smile that blooms on the young man’s face, as radiant as the sun behind him. He seems to hesitate for a moment, but soon finds the courage to speak.
“If Fang-daren doesn’t mind, I would like to invite him for a meal, I have interrupted his play after all. I really didn’t want to disturb you, I just… it’s the strangest feeling that has led me here when I heard your music from afar.” Fu Zhumei laughs in embarrassment, ducking his head and standing up again, brushing away the sand from his robes. Fang Zhou finds himself nodding before he can politely decline. He stores his qin back into the qiankun space and joins Fu Zhumei on his way to the young man’s home.
They talk all the way to the little house and garden just on the outskirts of town and all through the time Fu Zhumei spends cooking them a meal of beautifully crafted spicy fish noodles. It is in that time that Fang Zhou confirms his suspicions about Fu Zhumei’s hands. They tap. Against every surface they can find, if they are holding a knife or chopstick, they tap, tap, tap a rhythm. Against a bowl or the table, into the pot or while cutting ingredients, they never stand still.
It’s the most beautiful thing he has ever seen or heard. He kind of wants to take out his qin and accompany these pretty, running rhythms, but their conversations are just so engaging and he finds himself laughing more than he has in a long time. Even with his sister.
It all comes together when he takes his first bite of the food. It all makes sense then. As if he had been walking through his life in a daze, a mist he hadn’t been aware of and suddenly he stepped out into the sun.
“Xiao-Fu.”, slips out, breathless and familiar, as if not spoken for the very first time. Pretty, dark eyes watch him, searching for something and then curve into that radiant smile again, making his heart beat faster.
“Da-xiong.”
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The End