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Zhixing is having a terrible time. He’s hungry. He feels battered. He feels buffeted around by a particularly violent storm. Initially, he can’t sleep at night because every bone in his body hurts, his muscles ache, his skin throbs with blackening bruises. They don’t seem to get the concept of warm water up on that rotten mountain where Zang Hai has deposited him with those two… brutes Zang Hai calls his friends and has made Zhixing’s superiors. He’s forced to bathe in an icy brook, off the edge of the muddy patch they call a yard. He hasn’t worn proper robes in forever; most of the time he’s in an indecent state of undress wearing just shirt and trousers, or not even a shirt, his hair has gotten greasy and difficult to comb, and he stinks of sweat every evening. Before and after practice, they shoo him around to fetch cooking water, chop firewood, wash their rags and shake up the piles of millet straw on which they sleep, atop a mudbrick platform in the single room they all share. He’s never felt so humiliated and exhausted in his life, and soon he sleeps like a stone every night, until dawn when they shake him awake to start another awful day.
He’s made to practice on the yard, in full sight of their cosy little tea party set-up on the steps to that dilapidated hovel that passes for a house. Zang Hai’s two friends lounge there, a tea stove between them, and have a good time gossiping and lazing around. They’re probably joking about Zhixing. He’s repeating, for the hundred-forty-fifth time that day, a nine-step sequence whilst wielding a fighting staff (they’ve refused to give him a sword, not even a wooden one, and don’t seem to care a whit for the affront to his self-worth). His opponent is a wooden pole about his height, planted in the mud. It’s hung with a tattered brocade robe, vaguely reminiscent of a man. Father, perhaps. Zhixing is meant to land a precise strike where it would kill. Now and then, he’ll be offered a correction, never more than a word he’s supposed to turn into something practical. They drink disgusting tea all day – boiled and stewed until it’s like ink – or they’re cooking watery rice gruel (He’s sick of it but it seems all they eat, only varied with salty-sour cabbage pickles now and then, an abomination to any sensible culinary tastes.). They gossip or play knuckle-bones. Beyond that, they seem bored.
He hates, with a passion, their looks which veer between pity and resignation – as if he were hopeless.
Is he hopeless?
The thought makes him so frustrated he wants to howl.
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Zang Hai doesn’t spare him a glance when he visits. He only ever talks with his friends, even when Zhixing is right next to them, or sweating his socks off to practice whatever routine they’ve imposed on him.
It annoys him that they’ll talk about him, without even acknowledging his presence. Let alone inviting him into the conversation. It feels as if Zang Hai doesn’t see him at all.
It vexes him more than it should. In the world beyond this place, Zang Hai will remain a commoner, a servant no matter how capable, and Zhixing is a nobleman, his superior no matter how foolish. But the world outside doesn’t exist on this mountain.
They agreed what this would be. They defined it: He’s acknowledged Zang Hai as his teacher. He’s calling him Master. If anyone knew, it would be considered an outrage, an offense beyond measure to the regular order ordained by the heavens. And yet…
It’s unlike Father’s disdain. It feels right, this bending of pride to someone so much better than him. It sends an odd thrill through him every time. He likes calling Zang Hai this: Master. Teacher.
He’d like to call him other things, too. He’d like to whisper them into his ear, into his mouth, he’d like to touch them with his lips to Zang Hai’s bare chest, where his heart beats, and to the scar on his back. He’d like to paint them on his stomach with his tongue. He likes that Zang Hai is older, he likes his unfailing poise, that cursed self-possessed chill that pervades every gesture, every look from those dark eyes. That demands and demands and demands, without ever giving anything in return. He likes that he has to work himself to the bones even for a fleeting glance.
He still can’t read him. Zang Hai, for all his name suggests, is a secret with nine seals.
Only superficially does Zhixing get it – that burning drive for retribution, for balance and closure. It’s a searing thirst that can only be quenched in blood. This, he can relate to.
Zhixing has no doubt that Zang Hai will have what he craves. And more, if only he’d take it. He’ll devour his enemies and he’ll swallow Zhixing’s heart whole-
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The thick, heavy staff lands with a violent smack on the ground instead of hitting the post. The impact thrums through Zhixing’s bones with the raw power of his own strength. It hurts because he wasn’t prepared, didn’t pay attention and simply missed his aim.
What was he thinking?
His stupid brain flashes him an image of dark, haughty eyes. He bites his tongue to swallow a yowl. It hurts, a lot, as the pain settles in his wrists, elbows, shoulders where it seems to gnaw itself deeper. His spine wants to crumble. His knees want to buckle. He wants so badly to just throw himself into the dirt and sleep, sleep, sleep…
He wipes his burning eyes. He blinks mud-spatters from his lashes. He chances a glance at where the three other men sit around the rickety bamboo crate serving for a tea table.
He meets Zang Hai’s eyes.
Cool. Appraising. As if assessing a piece of kit. A weapon in the making. As if he wanted to see whether it was worth the investment he’s making – his time, his patience, the other things he teaches: how to read people, how to spin someone into a web invisible and strong as a silk cocoon. Not only would they realise it too late, but they’d let themselves be caught willingly, eagerly even. He’s so clever. He’s wily and ruthless. Those strong, capable hands can shape people and timber alike. They can carve puzzle-boxes and draw maps. They can build altars and fashion fates from the readings of the heavens.
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Zhixing wants to know, fervently, Zang Hai’s limits. Is there anything he isn’t capable of? Is there anything, anyone who can withstand the power of the tides? The vastness of the sea can drown everything. Even if the waves are glassy-smooth, barely heaving in a long-fetching swell, for beneath this deceptive calm curls an undertow, silent and utterly irresistible.
He has the urge to break away from Zang Hai’s gaze. He makes himself hold it.
One of Zang Hai’s friends holds up a bamboo flask of wine and says something. Zang Hai draws a breath and begins to turn, his attention leaving Zhixing. It feels like he’s been dismissed. Written off, again. A failure, not even worth the effort of disappointment, as if that’s what had been expected of him. Zang Hai will just move on. He won’t let something so insignificant ruin his plans. He’ll find someone else.
Zhixing’s hands shake with the echoes of that blow. He clenches his fingers harder. “Look at me,” he pants, sweat dripping from his brow and trailing down his back. He enjoys a flash of vicious satisfaction when Zang Hai pauses, mid-turn (a small, elegant turn of his handsome head). Zhixing meets his gaze and wants, wants, wants. He wants to be seen, by Zang Hai.
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The shirt he wears instead of his robes is already soaked and dirty. Disgusting. And yet, and yet…
Zang Hai is looking. As if waiting for something.
A pang of nausea hits him, clenches his guts, roils in his stomach. Everything shrinks to that gaze. Is this the feeling before a decisive battle? Zhixing is heaving, swallows it down, and with a bone-shaking effort gathers himself. Resumes his stance. Swirls through the sequence of steps that’s been defeating him for days – steps through it lightningfast, unthinking, and strikes the dummy hard enough to splinter the staff. This time he can’t hold on; his grasp is sprung open and the broken staff drops to the muddy ground. He bends over for a heartbeat, arms dangling; he’s unable to feel his fingers beyond the pain flashing through them right into his brain. Still he won’t cry out; he’d rather die here and now, as he forces his head up to see…
Zang Hai, looking at him.
Looking as if he's truly seeing him.
It races through Zhixing like living fire.
It emboldens him. It makes him drunk, like the sharp, distilled wine they’re drinking at that makeshift table. It gives him the reckless courage of a fool and the icy calculation of a strategist. It makes him cross the small distance – eight steps, he counts, eight lucky steps – to where they’re sitting. They’re watching as he closes in.
They jump when he yanks Zang Hai by the collars of his boring, sober robes, yanks him with a force that makes Zang Hai’s eyes fly open and his lips part. Someone shouts a swearword. Someone curses under their breath. He senses them crowding him, but nobody lays a hand on him.
He pauses a whisper from those handsome lips. He watches – those eyes, blinking, then half-closing, long lashes shading their gaze.
“Look at me,” he demands, in a sharp, husky rasp. “Teacher Zang. Master. Look at me.”
Zang Hai’s eyes close. There’s a minute shift in his posture, a tensing and relaxing, barely-there but true.
It’s not really a kiss. It’s as light as dandelion down. An illusion, perhaps it never happened at all.
But Zang Hai’s hand comes up and settles on Zhixing’s underarm, and Zang Hai’s fingers close around it and press, ever so slightly, into his flesh.
“I’ll earn it,” Zhixing whispers, rough and forceful. “I’ll earn you.”
Zang Hai pulls back, and when Zhixing meets his gaze, it’s different. Still cool. Still maddeningly distant. But no longer unexpectant.
Zang Hai calmly smooths out his robes until he’s his usual flawless self. “Let’s see.”
That’s all he says. He doesn’t rebuff Zhixing. He doesn’t acknowledge how outrageous the whole thing was. He simply sits down again and holds out his cup. One of his friends refills it, the other turns his back to Zhixing.
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Zhixing feels as if someone had poured fire into his veins. It's burned away every trace of exhaustion. The blood sings in his ears, a pulsing energy drives him to gather half of the broken staff. And as he flies through sequence after sequence, he catches sight of Zang Hai looking at him over the rim of the cup, still appraising, only now there’s a trace of something else. A strange weight. Blooming respect, perhaps.
Zhixing feels ready to conquer the heavens.
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END