Chapter Text
Until the age of seven, Shen Jiu was a (mostly) normal child. The third son of the family, he was the middle child and was surprisingly drowned with love. His three brothers and one meimei made it their personal jobs to annoy (adore) him.
Somehow, it always felt off, like it was too much and not enough. Distantly, he could feel the old feelings of being left behind, almost as if in a past life he was despised in contrast to now. However, his parents were caring and doting, and his family was amazing, and that was enough. It was enough to overwhelm the acrid feeling that would sometimes boil in his belly, deep within his core. It was enough. Right?
However even through all these hints of normalcy in a loving family, there were moments where things would feel like he couldn’t control anything, as if looking onto himself outside of his body and not being able to actually move the way he wanted. Shen Jiu supposed it was a… dissociation. Of sorts. Was it a sign of declining mental health? Yes. Yes it was. Was he going to do anything about it? No. No he wasn’t. Any signs he felt of some sort of anxiety or something… else. Were shoved into a tiny box, locked with a key, and tossed into the vast trenches of his own brain. (Unbeknownst to Shen Jiu, somewhere, perhaps in another life, a group of biased, judgmental immortals would soon realize how wrong they were in their original assumptions of his character, personality, morals in life, everything really.
Being in a family of seven, although it might seem like a lot, wasn’t that bad. He was the middle child out of five, and his family was large but close knit. His parents ran a very successful business in the background of their cheesy romance, bringing in more than enough money to fund all of their honeymoon trips and vacations. If Shen Jiu had to describe his family’s wealth, it would be like-what was that guy’s name again? The one with the red and gold metal suit that could fly from those western comics that Yuan-er sometimes read and would show him. “He’s so cool gege! He’s like. The ONLY one in the team without actual powers and like he’s really rich! He’s so smart too!” The incessant voice of his younger brother echoed in his head, bringing a tiny twitch to his lips. He would remember later.
His family was loaded. Although he was young, he was mature for his age, almost too mature. Doctors didn’t really think it was a bad thing, just told his mama and baba to come back if anything weird happened. Otherwise, he was just “a gifted child.” Then again, his siblings were also weirdly smart for their ages, so maybe it was just a thing. Muqin and Fuqin didn’t seem too worried about it, so it was probably fine. He wondered if that was just the pretense of normalcy in their completely chaotic lives. Hm. Anyway, the chaos in his everyday life? He didn’t know it yet, but it was about to get worse. A lot worse.
When he turned nine (symbolism unrealized), Shen Jiu began having… episodes. His first sign that something was wrong was during a calligraphy lesson with muqin in the living room. His head spun, and he felt something wet trickle down his lips. His hand shot up to meet his nose- blood. His vision swam and he fell, barely getting caught by Ming-ge, who scrambled to soften his fall. The last thing he saw was all of his family members hovering over him in a panic. They called the family physician, who prescribed him bed rest, worried but unaware of what was truly happening. When he awoke, he could hear his parents asking what they should do. “Probably just stress. Jiu has been working hard in his studies lately, yes? Physically, there’s nothing wrong with him. There is no documented case similar to what’s happening to him, but as long as he rests it should be fine. Make sure he takes it easy, though.” Their physician bowed once, before leaving. The lights on the ceiling only intensified his migraine, a sharp, throbbing pain behind his eyes and temples. This was only the first in many to come, however.
At first, his family tried to make light of it. Hua-ge joked that maybe Jiu-gege had “protagonist syndrome,” and their meimei with her pigtails and barbie dolls declared that anyone who made fun of her gege would get a time-out forever. But the fake too loud laughter didn’t quite cover the fear that seeped into the cracks of their daily life. Shen Jiu caught it in the way his baba’s hand lingered on his forehead a moment too long, in how his mama cried late into the night, thinking no one heard. He heard. He always heard.
But what unsettled him most wasn’t the pain, the blood, or even the fainting.
It was the pull.
A strange tug deep within his lower belly, a swirling sensation he wasn’t supposed to have. Something no ordinary person let alone child should feel. Of course, he had no words for it. Not yet. To him, it was just a heaviness, a pressure, a knot deep within his core that tugged whenever emotions ran a little bit too high.
And then came the dreams.
The first one appeared when he was ten: mountains painted in strokes of jade and ink, sweet crisp smelling bamboo, an enormous mountain peak. Someone familiar in a way that tasted bad calling a name that made his bones ache—Shen Qingqiu. A name that tasted like fear, and yearning, and guilt, and deathdeathdeathdeathdeath-he did not understand.
When he woke, there were tears on his cheeks and a throbbing behind his eyes, as if he were holding back years of something poisonous, words spat like venom, a coldness in his eyes like it was a defaultnonononononononononononononit’snotlikethati’mnotlikethatpleasebelievemepleasesomeonepleaselovemedon’tleave-
He didn’t tell his family. How could he? They already acted as if he were porcelain wrapped in silk; beautiful, fragile, and far too easy to break. He couldn’t stand their fear sharpening into panic anymore. So he lied, every time. “I just had a long day. I’m just tired.”
But they knew. He knew that they knew. But they respected him enough to come clean when it became too much. Because the truth was far harder to accept. Something was wrong with him, and it was only getting worse.
By eleven, the episodes changed—evolved. Sometimes, when overwhelmed by joy or fear or anger, he would seize—with convulsions or with unnatural stillness. Shaking. Tremors. Frozen. Breath held hostage. Eyes locked open, unblinking. Lips turning blue.
A stillness no doctor or physician could explain.
Because the phenomenon wasn’t neurological, or physical, or anything reasonable or explainable.
It was destiny.
Deep within him, something old stirred. Threads of spiritual energy that did not belong to this world, he inhaled too sharply whenever he felt anything too strongly. The doctors saw nothing on scans, because qi was not something their machines could measure. His blood tests were normal, because spiritual pressure didn’t register in veins.
But the invisible channels inside him—meridians he didn’t know existed—strained. Swelled. Cracked.
Each “episode” was a “qi deviation”, the spiritual equivalent of an electrical surge through faulty wiring. It tore at him from the inside, leaving him shivering and confused in its aftermath. Like he was broken-again.
And each one left behind echoes. More vivid dreams, flashes of something else, different people-another life.
Sometimes, during the stillness, he felt as though he were being pulled sideways, toward someone else, somewhere else. A place with swords and peach blossoms and crisp tall bamboo stalks and eyes watching him with judgment sharp enough to scar. He had many scars, didn’t he? But his skin unblemished, but also a patchwork of tissue-clean-scarred-no.
One such episode struck after watching his siblings perform a chaotic dance routine they’d rehearsed all week. He was proud—too proud—and emotion surged bright and sharp inside him. His veins clenched, twisted, lit up like overburdened wires.
The world froze.
A ripple passed through reality only he could see, fabric stretching thin as tissue, and from that torn seam came a voice—light, mocking, unbearably familiar:
“Oh? You again? Shizun~”
The voice purred and his mind whirled with something familiar. Something old and wrong and nonononononononono-brushed against the back of his consciousness.
When the episode ended, he collapsed. His siblings panicked. His parents rushed him to the physician. No one knew what to look for, so no one found anything.
And Shen Jiu said nothing of the voice, the flickering, the cold hand dragging along the walls of his mind.
He didn’t know it yet—not fully—but every passing year thickened the spiritual residue inside him. Every dream was a memory bleeding in. Every episode was a warning.
They all thought he had a mysterious incurable medical condition.
But the truth was far more ominous.
Shen Jiu was cultivating.
Badly.
Unintentionally.
Powerfully.
And every qi deviation dragged him one step closer to a world that had not finished with him, never had enough, always taking taking taking.
It was almost poetic in a tragic way that such a young child was diagnosed with a medical mystery before even hitting double digits. It was even more poetic when he died at seventeen, the day before his eighteenth birthday.
But we’re not quite there yet. Let’s rewind a little bit.
———————————————————————————————————
“Hua-ge! We’re gonna leave without you if you don’t hurry up!” The annoyed, girlish voice rang through the crystalline foyer, echoing against polished marble and the chandelier Baba bought because Mama once glanced at it while shopping and said it was “pretty.” Their meimei stood at the base of the staircase, hands on her hips, ribbons in her hair fluttering with each impatient screech.
“Huaaaaaa–geeeee—!” she tried again, louder this time, as if the problem was simply a lack of volume and not the fact that Shen Hua moved at the speed of an elderly snail on weekends.
“I’M COMING!” Shen Hua finally yelled back from somewhere upstairs. A shoe thudded. Something clattered. A very suspicious crash followed. “Probably not important!” he called down.
“Meaning it’s extremely important,” Shen Jiu muttered, straightening the collar of his dress shirt in the mirror by the door. He looked… average. As always. (Not that anybody else thought that too. They thought he looked unfairly good, as usual.) “He better not have broken the vase. Mama will kill him. Then bring him back to life just to kill him again.” He quietly adjusted the straps on his violin case, hiding a small smirk. “But you’re the one who bumped into it last night, Yuan-er.”
“Allegedly,” Shen Yuan huffed. “Besides, shouldn’t we be focused on you, birthday boy minus one week? This is your pre-performance performance. Think of it as a dress rehearsal for your future life as a celebrity.”
Jiu rolled his eyes, but warmth bloomed in his chest. “It’s just a student showcase.” His face betrayed none of his warm emotions, maintaining a neutral, almost cold facade.
“Yeah,” Hua-ge finally appeared at the top of the stairs—hair messy, tie crooked, one sock missing but still looking good—“a student showcase where you’re literally the finale because everyone knows you’re the best and the star.”
Meimei scoffed incredulously. “Jiu-ge is the best at everything.”
Not everything, Jiu thought, but he didn’t say it. He just shouldered his violin and didn't feel the way the air shimmered faintly when his emotions rose—just a tiny ripple, hardly noticeable unless you lived in a world where qi mattered.
Which they didn’t.
Which was a problem, not that he knew it then.
__________________________________________________
Shen Jiu wasn’t always interested in music. Until he turned five, when his mother put him in classes to learn etiquette he didn’t need. “Everyone in this family,” Mama used to declare, “will learn the Four Arts. Not because it is practical, but because it is cultured.”
Qin. Qi. Shu. Hua.
Music, strategy, calligraphy, painting.
A millennium-old tradition forced upon five modern children who would rather be gaming, skateboarding, or— in Shen Yuan’s case—reading comics, fanfiction, novels, and watching anime on bootleg sites.
Most of them protested. Loudly.
Shen Hua faked injuries after soccer practices and STEM camp.
Shen Yuan argued about “personal freedom and the tyranny of brush technique.”
Meimei just cried until Mama relented.
Even the oldest gege claimed that his fingers “were only suitable guqin strings,” and refused to partake in any classes other than music and sometimes calligraphy.
But Shen Jiu…
He loved it.
The first time his tiny fingers traced the body of a guqin, something thrummed inside him—soft, warm, familiar. Like remembering a melody he had never heard. Painting came naturally too; ink flowed from his brush as if it knew where to go. His calligraphy, though imperfect, had a precision beyond his age. And strategy games like Go and Weiqi—felt less like puzzles and more like conversations he had held before- that he shouldn’t remember.
He excelled so quickly that Mama’s instructors asked if he’d like to join the adult classes.
By twelve, he taught some of them.
By fourteen, he was tutoring university students in music theory.
By sixteen, he was a junior instructor in the community arts program.
By seventeen—well.
Seventeen did not end the way it was supposed to.
But that was later.
Today was just a performance.
“Okay!” Mama’s voice floated from the kitchen as she marched out, purse ready, hair pinned perfectly. “Car is waiting. Let’s go! Hua-er, fix your shirt. A-Yuan, stop smudging the mirror. Meimei, let your brothers breathe. Jiu-er—”
She softened when she looked at him.
“You’ll do wonderfully, baobei.”
Jiu felt something twist, just slightly, in his belly—the faintest pulse (qi?) reacting to affection. He ignored it, just like always. Tilted his head and smiled instead.
“Yes, Mama.”
They all piled into the family car, squabbling for seat belts, shoving each other lightly, Yaning climbing over laps because she insisted on sitting next to Jiu.
As they drove toward the venue, Shen Yuan looked over and asked, “Are you nervous?”
Jiu considered it.
“No.”
“Wow,” Hua-er laughed, “confident much?”
“It’s not confidence,” Jiu said quietly, fingers brushing the violin case. “It’s just… when I’m playing, nothing feels wrong.”
No flickering edges.
No echoes of mountains not found on Earth.
No voices whispering from a world he should not remember.
Music steadied him in ways medicine never could.
“Besides,” Jiu added, “it makes Mama happy.”
That earned a snort from every sibling.
But Yaning took his sleeve between her fingers and held on.
“It makes all of us happy,” she said.
He looked out the window so they wouldn’t see the emotion shimmering too brightly in his eyes.
And somewhere—in the invisible spaces between breaths—his qi hummed in acknowledgment.
A warning.
A promise.
A memory.
But none of them knew.
Not yet.