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Yue Qingyuan wakes up.

It’s the first thing that makes no sense. He should be dead. He remembers the impact of every arrow, slicing into his skin, nestling in his ribs. The drain from Xuan Su had been so much, but it hadn’t mattered – he knew it was the end, and yet he could not help but try. Blood had spilled from his lips and he had tried to move until his body no longer listened to him. That’s the first thing that makes no sense.

The second thing that makes no sense is that he had been sleeping peacefully in his own rooms on Qiong Ding peak. Ever since Shen Qingqiu had been stolen from them, he had not had peaceful sleep, and rarely even in his own rooms. The only thing that had stopped him from becoming a ghost walking – as he had once before, many years ago, when he thought Xiao Jiu had burnt to ash – was that Shen Qingqiu was not dead. There had still been a chance, still been something, and he had spent much time on Qing Jing desperately wishing that he had been able to do something, anything. That’s the second thing that makes no sense.

The third thing that makes no sense is that there is a voice in his head.

“Thank god you’re up,” says a voice that seems to come from inside of Yue Qingyuan. He sits up slowly, and there is no one in his room. “Bro, no sudden movements!!! We gotta figure this out!!”

Ah. Okay. He’s finally truly lost it. Yue Qingyuan always knew this day was coming.

“A pleasure,” he says serenely, going to tuck his hands inside his sleeves and failing because he’s in only his sleeping robes, and they’re not long enough. There is no one to look at, so he smiles at the wall instead. “Whom I am speaking with?”

“...Bro, that is SO creepy. Like, seriously. WTF. Um.” The voice pauses. The sound is clear, but it is slightly distorted. As if he’s hearing it from another room, or through a pane of glass. “You can call me Airplane, I guess? Sure. Airplane. I’m gonna be your… guide! Guide, yeah, guide. We’re gonna figure this out together.”

What an odd name. Yue Qingyuan notes that this Airplane does not ask who he is – apparently, it already knows. A discomfiting thought worms in that this could be the work of a demon, but he dismisses that swiftly. He is already dead, and likely hallucinating in his dying moments. Or simply insane and none of that incredibly vivid, haunting nightmare actually occurred. He’s had terrible dreams like that before, but never quite so vivid.

“What are we figuring out?” he asks. “How do you intend to guide me?”

“Okay, so like, here’s the thing. You and Shen Qingqiu? God, that was a shit ending. Really sorry about that.” Yue Qingyuan’s smile wavers, and drops from his face. “But! We’re here to fix that. Give you well-rounded character arcs, do things differently, have a happy ending.” There’s a pause. Yue Qingyuan gets up and begins to look through the papers on his desk. “I think it was the BL crowd? Homophobia or whatever? As if you guys were the only gay guys around, like, did they seriously think all the wives weren’t having fun with each other, too? And I knowww I wrote some of those demons as changing genders and stuff-”

Yue Qingyuan tunes out whatever Airplane is saying and stares down at the dates carefully noted. He’s always been organized, and he touches the paper with shaking fingers. These dates are off by nearly a decade. “You said we were going to do things differently,” he says abruptly, cutting off whatever nonsense Airplane was saying. “Do you mean to say that we’ve gone back in time?”

“Uh, yeah! Sorry, I guess I didn’t make that clear. We’re in the past and weeeeait wait wait what are you doing.” Yue Qingyuan grabs Xuan Su and walks out the door. “Dude, no no no, I told you! Nothing impulsive! Stop it! You can’t kill him, he’s the protagonist, it will NOT go well-” Yue Qingyuan got very good at tuning out that voice inside of him years ago – this one is trying to guilt trip him just as badly as his normal inner voice, but he doesn’t listen.

Every single person he passes stops and stares. Disciples once long gone off the mountain, or fallen for different reasons. Unfamiliar faces he never bothered to know, just gave the appearance he did. A few of them run off, towards Qing Jing peak and Bai Zhan peak – oh, Liu Qingge is alive, isn’t he? If he can, he’d like to keep it that way – and Airplane’s voice is growing ever more frantic, but Yue Qingyuan doesn’t listen to a word.

Shen Qingqiu meets him on Qing Jing peak. He looks… beautiful. Wonderful. A sight that brings tears to Yue Qingyuan’s eyes. His body is intact, no limbs missing, decked out in his fine greenery as he holds a fan to his face and narrows hostile eyes over it. “Sect Leader,” he spits out, his words like venom. “To what do I owe such a… disarrayed visit?”

Yue Qingyuan closes the distance between the two and embraces him. Airplane abruptly falls silent. Shen Qingqiu lets out a choked sound of rage, pushing at him, but Yue Qingyuan can’t bring himself to let go and presses his face down into Shen Qingqiu’s shoulder and cries. “Xiao Jiu,” he mumbles. “I missed you. I’m so happy.”

Shen Qingqiu stops struggling, and while his voice is still hostile, there’s a line of bewilderment in it. “Are you- having a qi deviation?”

Honestly, that wouldn’t be a terrible explanation for everything that’s happened today. “I might be,” he murmurs, before he pulls back to look at Shen Qingqiu. Despite the tears in his eyes, he can’t help but give him a soft smile. He’s here. He’s fine. He’s well. 

Shen Qingqiu looks unnerved, eyes flickering all over Yue Qingyuan’s face and he takes a step back. This time, he allows him to go, and so he takes another back. “I’m… going to go alert Mu Qingfang,” he says sharply. “Do not leave this peak.”

“Alright,” Yue Qingyuan agrees. He has no plans to go anywhere. He wonders why Shen Qingqiu doesn’t get one of his disciples to watch him, but there are no disciples in view. Is he sparing Yue Qingyuan the embarrassment? It’s sweet of him. Shen Qingqiu gives him one more searching look, and then turns to take off on Xiu Ya.

He doesn’t have much time, then.

“Dude, you need to stop,” hisses Airplane. “What the fuck are you doing? You can’t kill him. It won’t work! He’s the protagonist!”

None of that makes any sense nor any difference to Yue Qingyuan, and so he peaceably goes on his way once more. Perhaps the disciples are still in their rooms – when he thinks about it, the disciples he had passed had been more senior, so the young ones… Ah, but Luo Binghe slept in the woodshed. Right.

Qing Jing is a place he could navigate in his sleep, and in this strange out of body experience, Yue Qingyuan does. He even knows where the woodshed is, though it looks different when he opens the door and sees a young Luo Binghe curled up on a blanket inside. The boy looks up in surprise and bewilderment. “Sect… Sect Leader…?”

He won’t be cruel. Yue Qingyuan unsheathes Xuan Su and brings it down in one swift move, and the world explodes into light.

“I told you that wouldn’t work,” Airplane complains, as Yue Qingyuan opens his eyes in his bedroom. Everything looks the same. He sits up in bed and glances over at his desk, and there is no sign of the mess he made of his papers earlier.

“...Did we go back in time again?” he asks, trying to wrap his head around this.

“Yes. Will you actually listen this time instead of running off and trying to fucking off him again!? I told you! I told you!!!” Hm. Airplane did.

Yue Qingyuan really would like to think this is a dream, or that it is insanity, but he looks down at his arms and thinks of how warm Shen Qingqiu was in them. He could not have imagined that. He would not have. “Very well. You are my guide, and have been sent to me to help me get a better ending for… Shen-shidi and I.” He is glad that this… spirit, whatever it is, has tied him and Xiao Jiu together so thoroughly. Good. “What are you, and why can I not kill Luo Binghe?”

He wants to feel bad about killing a child. He does! But Yue Qingyuan knows he is not a good person and has never claimed to be, despite what others think. He would do far worse to save Shen Qingqiu. Airplane gives what sounds like a sigh. “Okay, so. I’m from another world and I like… died. So as my punishment or whatever I’m stuck here. In my world, all of this shit? A book. And Luo Binghe is the protagonist. So you can’t kill the protagonist.” Airplane falls quiet for a moment. “Uh, don’t have like, an existential crisis or something.”

“I am not going to,” says Yue Qingyuan. He’s not read many fictional books, never many stories, and he wonders if those stories are actually real in other worlds. Interesting. There’s nothing to have a crisis about, however, because Yue Qingyuan and his failures are painfully real, no matter what Airplane says. “How do you expect us to survive if I am not able to eliminate Luo Binghe?” Perhaps if this Airplane had gone to Shen Qingqiu… but no, no, he does not actually think that would have gone any better. He certainly would have also attempted murder.

“Okay, so. Luo Binghe wants revenge and all that, yeah? It’s the cycle of abuse. Shen Qingqiu was abused and so he abuses and then Luo Binghe abuses and it’s all a tragedy, yada yada.” Yue Qingyuan sits very, very still and reminds himself he cannot wring the neck of a non-physical being that speaks so nonchalantly of Shen Qingqiu’s pain, especially when that being is helping him. “So. The point isn’t getting a better ending – er, that’s not why I was sent here, at least – but a well-rounded character arc. Aka, the both of you have to develop and change. So!”

“You’ve got to tell Shen Qingqiu what really happened, with Xuan Su and everything.”

He wants to say no immediately. He sees no need to dredge that up. No need to dig up some of the most horrid times of his life. Beating at the walls of the caves, begging and screaming himself bloody, body broken and remade, banging his head and weeping and-

No. No. He has no desire to dredge that up. Besides, “How would that help us survive?” he asks, staring at the wall. “Perhaps it would give us a… character arc. But I do not see how that would help us survive.” He doesn’t think it would even give that, simply give Shen Qingqiu more reasons to hate him while Yue Qingyuan sobbed at his feet, but he is willing to try anything in order to save Shen Qingqiu. Even that.

“Well… The logic is that it would mellow him out, you know? Cause he hates it here. You’ve gotta know that.” Yue Qingyuan does. “So if you tell him that then he knows that you don’t hate him and then it’ll be better and he won’t dropkick Luo Binghe off a cliff. That’s the logic I was sent here with, I dunno, I’m workshopping this. I know I can bring you further back in time, any time in Luo Binghe’s lifespan, so you could do it early and stuff and then make things better.”

Yue Qingyuan… does not agree with this. He does not think that carving himself out like this will affect Shen Qingqiu greatly in any way. Even if it does – he struggles to see how that would change anything in terms of their survival. There is no solving the situation with the Qius, though Yue Qingyuan does not blame Shen Qingqiu for that in the slightest (how kind could they be, how could they claim to have treated Xiao Jiu so well, when they broke his legs so quickly after stealing him away). The lack of knowledge of Xuan Su did not make Shen Qingqiu kill Liu Qingge, nor did it make him resent Luo Binghe. He does not see how this could work – yet he is willing to try anything. However…

“What if you are wrong?” Yue Qingyuan asks. “Confessing the details will give us this ‘character arc’. But if it does not help us survive, after we have completed such an arc, will we be able to try again?”

“Uhhhhhhhh.” Airplane pauses. “I’m nooot sure but… probably… not…?”

“Then that will be our last resort,” says Yue Qingyuan. “We will try it my way first.”

“...Sure. Okay. What’s your way?”

“Killing Luo Binghe, of course.”

“Dude!”

It doesn’t work out.

Well – Yue Qingyuan isn’t writing it off, just yet. But it doesn’t work out in a lot of different ways. Obviously, Xuan Su isn’t working. Instead, Yue Qingyuan assigns Luo Binghe to a mission to him, despite how much it pisses off Shen Qingqiu. It’s very easy to push the child off a cliff far too high to survive, and Yue Qingyuan is riding down to confirm that he’s dead – no assumptions!!! – when a rockfall out of absolute nowhere kills him.

He tries a different cliff in the next loop, a completely different area at a different time, and the same thing happens. “I told you, dude. He’s the protagonist. The world’s protecting him and shit,” Airplane scolds, but Yue Qingyuan doesn’t give up just yet.

The next option is poison. It takes a lot of research and reluctant input from Airplane to find a poison that will work on a still-sealed Heavenly Demon – “It’s still technically curable, but not since he’s like, a baby.” – and then there’s a wild mix-up in the kitchens somehow and Shen Qingqiu ends up drinking it in his tea.

(At least, that’s what Airplane reports. Yue Qingyuan doesn’t actually see Shen Qingqiu die, much to his relief. He’s walking along, hopeful with this new try, and then the entire world goes bright and he’s waking up in bed again.

“How can you both have a character arc if he’s dead?” says Airplane when asked. “If he dies before you have that, then we start over again.”

“Even if he dies at the hands of Luo Binghe?”

“Yep.” Somehow, Airplane is able to pop the ‘P’ despite being a disembodied voice inside his head and lacking any physical body. “But seriously, this won’t work. Third time wasn’t the charm.”

“I have infinite tries,” Yue Qingyuan reminds him, and begins to plan his next attempt.)

Poison doesn’t work the second time. He ensures that Shen Qingqiu is off of his peak the next time, and it somehow gets countless people on Qing Jing (but not Luo Binghe). The little girl who Shen Qingqiu cares so deeply for, that little Ning Yingying, is killed in the mess and Yue Qingyuan… doesn’t remember the last time he saw Shen Qingqiu this… broken. Everyone blames him, too, of course, no matter how nonsensical it is.

He quickly resets that timeline by another Luo Binghe-induced rockfall and starts again.

Despite everything… Yue Qingyuan is enjoying himself. Isn’t that sad? He goes and he sees Shen Qingqiu as often as he can while he thinks of something new or is putting something new in motion. Every bitter, biting comment is a balm to his soul, every cutting glare a warmth that grows inside of him. It’s difficult to be sad over such hatred, as he once was. While Yue Qingyuan would have rather had hatred than nothing, he hadn’t truly grappled with that ‘nothing’ for years, and forgotten how it felt.

He would rather Shen Qingqiu hate him for the rest of his days, even more than he does now, and live. Yue Qingyuan would carve out his heart and offer up every single secret if he knew that it would work no matter what.

The next attempt Yue Qingyuan makes is at the demon invasion, once he remembers that was an event that occurred. Unfortunately, when he stays on Cang Qiong, it simply… doesn’t occur. He hadn’t thought about that. That gives him some time, though, and he decides to deal with Luo Binghe during the other demon invasion at the Immortal Alliance Conference.

(“Neither of these were caused by Luo Binghe? You’re certain? Neither Shang Qinghua nor Sha Hualing had any knowledge of his identity?”

“Y’know, when you look at it from an in-universe perspective, I can see why you’d think that… but nope, they’re really clueless. Promise.”)

He simply disposes of Shang Qinghua before the Conference, and nothing happens. Luo Binghe stays on Qing Jing, and Yue Qingyuan thinks… perhaps this will work? And then one day when he is drinking tea in his office, going over some paperwork and hoping Shen Qingqiu will return from his mission soon, the entire world goes bright.

Yue Qingyuan sits up in bed, rubbing at his face. Every time he loops, he’s starting to wake up with an aching head, worse and worse each time. Perhaps this situation is not so lacking in consequences as he thought. “What happened?” he asks.

“Leeeeemme check.” There’s quiet, and then Airplane makes a sound like it’s sucking air past its teeth. (He really does have so many questions, but doesn’t know if he wants them answered.) “Damn. Looks like good ol’ Shen Qingqiu found out Luo Binghe was half-demon on that mission, and tried to kill him. Didn’t go well.”

“So Xiu Ya cannot kill him, either…” Yue Qingyuan’s next plan was going to be simply trying to have Luo Binghe killed instead of thrown into the Abyss, but that’s clearly not going to work either. He doesn’t dare try poison again – even if he were to try to engage with a poisoned plant or the like, he can easily see how the ‘world’ would turn it against him if it’s actually doing such. The Conference is not a place to do it, though he does make a mental note to kill Shang Qinghua, if he ever figures a survivable way out of these loops.

(It isn’t as though Yue Qingyuan doesn’t understand his resentment, but there are far better ways to deal with it. At least if Yue Qingyuan kills him, he will be more merciful than the demon lord he served, though only because Yue Qingyuan doesn’t care much for torture.

He’s felt too much of it, himself. Better to get it over with.)

Yue Qingyuan stands up and steps over to retrieve his robes for the day, while Airplane makes a questioning noise. “What’s the next plan, then?” It sounds exasperated. “I think you’re running pretty low on ideas, dude.”

“I am,” says Yue Qingyuan simply. “So I will go to someone who is far better at this than I am.” He gets dressed, and goes to Qing Jing.

Shen Qingqiu is not happy to see him, of course. Shen Qingqiu is never happy to see him, but it lightens Yue Qingyuan that he is here to see that. Frosty orders push Ming Fan into making them both tea before the boy is excused, and Yue Qingyuan smiles across the table and is met with a glare. “To what do I owe the presence of our… esteemed Sect Leader?” he spits, making every word sound like an insult.

“I fear I must consult with our esteemed strategist,” he says simply. There’s a pause, and a bit of tension seeps from Shen Qingqiu when he flickers his eyes over Yue Qingyuan and realizes he speaks the truth – that he is here on business and nothing more. 

(He wonders, sometimes, if Shen Qingqiu would truly be happier if he never saw Yue Qingyuan again. Yue Qingyuan would not. If he could, he would grip him so tightly that they would become one, without anything to separate the two, but he knows that Shen Qingqiu would never want that. If Shen Qingqiu wished to leave Cang Qiong, Yue Qingyuan would let him with his full blessing. He wants him to be happy.)

“Very well,” says Shen Qingqiu, folding his fan with a snap and tapping it impatiently on the desk. “What did you wish to ask?”

Yue Qingyuan considers the best way to phrase this, and then decides that subtlety doesn’t matter. “If I wished to kill someone… what would be the best way to go about it?”

He’s rewarded by a rare look of utter shock on Shen Qingqiu’s face. It’s delightful. He should really take these loops to figure out the best way to make him happy, or to give him moments like these, even if he doesn’t particularly like that Shen Qingqiu won’t remember them. “You-” He shakes his head abruptly, scowling. “Don’t say something like that so easily! What if someone were listening in?”

Yue Qingyuan can’t help his smile. “You would never allow for such.”

Shen Qingqiu’s eyes flicker away – he doesn’t have a ready response for that, and sneers instead. “So you need someone dead… and you asked me? How astute of you.”

They both know he’s killed, how his hands are bloodied, and while Yue Qingyuan still does not know what happened in his days with Wu Yanzi, he knows of the future peak lord blood that will stain the hands that rest on the table. “I asked my strategist,” Yue Qingyuan says simply. Now is not the time to get into that.

Curiously, the lack of reassurances or any commentary seem to help. The straightforward focus on business leaves Shen Qingqiu clearly surprised, for Yue Qingyuan is rarely like this, but it also seems to… help. He’ll remember that. “Killing them publicly isn’t an option?” he asks, though he must know the answer. Yue Qingyuan shakes his head. He’s ready for Shen Qingqiu to ask who, but his shidi is clearly aware that Yue Qingyuan will not give said information, and so he does not ask.

He taps his lips with his fan, thoughtful. “Killing them and making it look like an accident, in a mission gone wrong?” Yue Qingyuan shakes his head. “Poison?” Shake of his head. “Can you get someone else to kill them?”

That gives him pause. “...I did not know our connections included assassins,” he says slowly, because Shen Qingqiu would know that better than him.

Shen Qingqiu gives a dismissive wave of his fan. “Not in that way. Do they have enemies you can turn against them, to take care of them for you?” Yue Qingyuan considers this, and nods slowly. Perhaps an attempt with the demon invasion, once more…

“Yes. Thank you, Shen-shidi, that was very helpful.” He gives him another smile, and Shen Qingqiu watches him with narrowed eyes.

“...Don’t expect me to clean up after you if you make a mess of everything,” he snaps, and Yue Qingyuan inclines his head before he leaves.

Sha Hualing had not come before because of Yue Qingyuan remaining on the mountain. This time, he spreads it carefully around that he will be leaving on a mission, and instead stays and disguises himself. If he can get one of the demons to kill Luo Binghe, well… does the world’s protection apply to that? At worst, perhaps it would cause Luo Binghe to get outed as half-demon and then he could see how that falls out. It could give him more options.

Instead, Shen Qingqiu realizes it’s him immediately.

This makes it completely impossible to interfere in anything (not that he thinks of a specific action – if Luo Binghe was always in this fight and never died, what more could he do here?), and Shen Qingqiu corners him the moment the demons are dealt with, absolutely furious. “What are you doing here?!” he snaps, utterly furious. “Do you not think I am capable of defending the peaks on my own? Have you donned such a ridiculous disguise to watch me?”

He wears Liu Qingge’s blood on his robes as he says this. Yue Qingyuan carefully does not point out the hypocrisy. “It was not about you, Shen Qingqiu,” he says, and that does not help the situation at all.

“Really. Then would you care to explain what this was about?”

Yue Qingyuan hesitates. “Ah… the situation we spoke of before.”

Shen Qingqiu looks him over, and decides to accept it – or he simply does not wish to fight anymore. His hands shake, and Yue Qingyuan wonders if adrenaline is the only thing that keeps him going, leaping straight from murder into such an invasion and then to a supposed betrayal. He turns his back on Yue Qingyuan and he leaves.

Yue Qingyuan does not try anything else during this loop. He does not kill Shang Qinghua, either, and he lets everything fall as it did in his first life. Luo Binghe is cast into the abyss, and he does nothing.

Instead, he focuses on Shen Qingqiu. In previous loops he had neglected his gift giving, and so he steps that up once more – it is a good exercise in learning which gifts will never see the light of day again, and which ones that Shen Qingqiu will use, even if they are from him. Every tea he tastes, fan he sees, charm that adorns his wrist… he makes note of them all. They will all be purchased again.

It is a good five years, of simply… enjoying life. How precious it is, when one knows what it could be otherwise. There is no worry for what is happening for Shen Qingqiu – he is not locked away, he is not tortured. Yue Qingyuan gets to see him living his life, and he does his best to make it easier for him, nipping any rumors in the bud that he can and doing his best to allay his fellow peak lords’ resentment.

The day before Luo Binghe will return, Yue Qingyuan sits calmly on his bed. “Airplane,” he asks. It has been quieter, during this period of him doing nothing, and Yue Qingyuan wonders if it is observing Luo Binghe. It seems to have some kind of omnipotence, after all. “If I kill myself, will I be able to ‘loop’?”

“Woah, woah, woah,” it says. “We haven’t talked for IDK a month and this is how you start it off? Can you EVER take it down a few notches?” Yue Qingyuan doesn’t understand what he means by that, and after a few moments of silence, Airplane huffs. “Yeah, of course not. Fine, fine, whatever. Uhhhh, yeah, sure. Any kind of death will.”

“You stated before that we could start the loop from any point in time during Luo Binghe’s life,” Yue Qingyuan says. “Could we start it from his birth?”

Airplane is aghast. “Bro, noooooo. No no no! That’s a baby! WTF, bro! You can’t be serious!”

It is not as though Yue Qingyuan likes the options he has here. “I have to try,” he says.

“Goddd, I hate this. I hate you and your stubborness. Fuck. Fuck! Fine, but I’m closing my eyes. I don’t want to see this.”

“Thank you,” says Yue Qingyuan, and he sits down at his table calmly to drink some poisoned tea.

Naturally, attempting to drown an infant just makes the world blow up in his face once more.

His head feels like it’s splitting open, and he is glad that Airplane had the foresight to make the following loop normal. If it had looped him back to Luo Binghe’s infanthood years, Yue Qingyuan would have had far too much to deal with in terms of ascending and the recent death of Tianlang-jun. As it is, Luo Binghe is fourteen and Yue Qingyuan has nothing pressing down on him, so he can sit at his table and drink unpoisoned tea until the world stops swimming before him.

“Are you going to stop soon?” comes Airplane’s sullen, irritated voice. It sounds tired, which Yue Qingyuan deeply understands. “It’s not exactly fun for me watching you guys dying all the time, you know.”

Yue Qingyuan pauses, teacup halfway to his mouth, and then sets it down. “I didn’t realize you cared,” he says. Admittedly, he had not given much more thought to Airplane than as a means to an end.

“I’m not unfeeling! You guys were just characters before! The whole story was supposed to be about the cycle of abuse and Luo Binghe wasn’t gonna end up happy either but I didn’t finish before I died.” It makes a huffing sound.

Yue Qingyuan evaluates that for a moment. That word choice… “You wrote the story that we are in.” Does that mean that… “You wrote our fates and our history. Xiao Jiu’s and I’s.”

There’s quiet. “...Yeah. If- If I had thought it would actually happen to real people… Well, obviously I wouldn’t have written it that way. But that’s what readers wanted and and- I needed the money to survive and-” Airplane begins to ramble, for some reason speaking of ‘porn’ for whatever reason, clearly trying to defend himself, but…

If Yue Qingyuan blamed Airplane for its actions in that previous world, that would be nigh designating it the role of godhood. If everything they had ever done was prewritten, then it would mean that none of Yue Qingyuan’s choices were his own, and neither were his failures.

Blaming Airplane would be too kind to himself, really.

“That means that you wrote Luo Binghe, too,” Yue Qingyuan cuts it off. He looks down at his teacup and considers. “Are you the one protecting him?”

“What? No! I don’t have that kind of power. Told you, it’s the world.” Airplane pauses for a moment. “But… I don’t like seeing that either, dude. None of you were supposed to have happy endings.” It sighs. “You don’t have to like him. I get why you don’t, I’m not going to fucking argue that. But… you see why he doesn’t like you guys, right?” Yue Qingyuan is silent. “Killing him’s not going to work. Can’t you see that? Can’t we try to do it… better for all of you?”

Yue Qingyuan does not respond for a few moments. He stares down at his tea and then lifts it to his lips and takes a long sip. It… helps. It’s grounding. “You’re right. Killing him won’t work. I… do not require revenge.”

“So you’re going to tell Shen Qingqiu!? Thank god!”

“I did not say that.”

“Yeahhhhhh, I don’t think this one is going to work, either,” says Airplane with a huge sigh.

Yue Qingyuan hums as he stares down at the disciples digging their holes. Some have clearly never worked a day in their life, and are going to give up soon. A few have clearly received some form of cultivation training and are using it to give themselves a stamina boost. Others, like Luo Binghe himself, are simply pouring their all into everything. Neither Liu Qingge nor Shen Qingqiu have arrived yet. Yue Qingyuan takes his opportunity.

He steps through the cultivators, arriving at Luo Binghe and his hole. The child digs faster, keenly aware of his presence, and Yue Qingyuan… recognizes himself, in this desperation. It doesn’t impact his goals at all – he doesn’t like Luo Binghe, and he doesn’t like himself.

“You are a physical cultivator,” he tells the child, and Luo Binghe looks up with wide eyes. “Bai Zhan Peak would be good for you.”

“Are… are you choosing me, sir?” he asks.

Yue Qingyuan shakes his head. “That is not my peak. Bai Zhan does things… differently. Go to Bai Zhan and challenge the sect leader. He will accept you.” He gives Luo Binghe directions and sends him off. A few others nearby who overheard do the same, but Yue Qingyuan will be surprised if they manage to catch Liu Qingge’s attention.

He checks in the next day, and it worked. “How… how did that work???,” Airplane asks, baffled. “You really think this’ll last? What if Liu Qingge finds out he’s half-demon?”

“Then perhaps he will have a grudge against Liu Qingge,” says Yue Qingyuan. He has dealt with Liu Qingge’s death so many times now it… Well, while he would prefer the other not be dead, he has more pressing matters.

This attempt, though, it would be better if Liu Qingge lived.

Yue Qingyuan checks in frequently on both Bai Zhan and Qing Jing peak. Luo Binghe appears to be flourishing on Bai Zhan, and Shen Qingqiu’s newest disciple is a little girl with bright green eyes that looks at her new Shizun like he hung the moon in the sky. 

When Shen Qingqiu asks to go cultivate in the caves, it’s easy enough to deny him for the moment. “After Liu Qingge emerges,” he says. “I have business off of the peak, and I need you to take charge.” Shen Qingqiu isn’t… happy, but he agrees.

And then Liu Qingge dies anyway.

He’s in the caves far, far longer than he should be. Mu Qingfang goes looking for him. Mu Qingfang emerges with his body. “A qi deviation,” he reports. “A violent one. If you had permitted Shen-shixiong to cultivate as well…” Mu Qingfang shakes his head. “We may have had two dead peak lords on our hands.”

“Oh, right,” says Airplane. “Wasn’t sure if that was true or not.”

Yue Qingyuan reminds himself that he cannot inflict wounds on a bodiless spirit, and that he does actually like Airplane. “What do you mean?”

“Well, like, I wrote in my notes that Shen Qingqiu didn’t actually kill him, but it wasn’t in the book. Like, none of the readers knew I was thinking that, you know? So I wasn’t sure if that would be true or not.”

“...Were there a lot of things in your notes that did not make it in the final book?”

“Lots,” Airplane says mournfully. “Sooooo much, dude. I lost so many notes when my hard drive fried… Don’t get too mad, it’s a TOOOOOON to remember, the book was super duper long!”

Yue Qingyuan has a headache once more. “Tell me if you remember anything else.”

Shen Qingqiu is doing a lot better in this loop, both on account of his new disciple and the lack of ‘murdering Liu Qingge’ accusations, and Yue Qingyuan observes this with relief. He’s willing to keep pushing this forward as far as it goes until there’s a freak accident in a fight between Bai Zhan and Qing Jing and Shen Qingqiu dies, somehow. It’s completely inexplicable.

“I told you the world won’t let this work,” Airplane complains. “It wants you guys to have character arcs and taaaalk to each other, not just shove your problems off somewhere else.”

“There’s no harm in trying again,” Yue Qingyuan says.

“Dude, you wake up every loop looking worse. I really don’t think this is good for you. There’s always a catch with these kinds of things.” Yue Qingyuan opens his mouth, but before he can say anything, Airplane talks over him. “And yes, damn it, that’s worry!! I’m allowed to be worried!!!”

Yue Qingyuan shakes his head slowly. “It’s… bearable. You know full well that I have handled far worse.” Nothing will ever compare to the caves, not even dying for Shen Qingqiu. That was hardly painful in comparison.

“Ouch, guilt trip,” Airplane mutters. “Doesn’t mean you should, dude.” It drops it, though.

The next few loops are devoted to experimenting with two things. First, he needs to find a peak for Luo Binghe. Second, he needs to figure out the best way to deal with Liu Qingge.

It’s easy enough to save Liu Qingge. Mu Qingfang is alerted to Yue Qingyuan’s concerns and doesn’t allow him in the caves, and the qi deviation is staved off before it can even begin. However… Yue Qingyuan knows Liu Qingge well. He prides himself on being able to understand all of his martial siblings and what they want from him.

Liu Qingge is straightforward and loyal. Yue Qingyuan saving his life only cements that. If he can twist the situation so that Shen Qingqiu saves Liu Qingge…

Perhaps he is thinking too highly of his shidi, giving him too much credit, but he also has to think logically. Shen Qingqiu, if he desired to kill someone, would not do it in this fashion — especially given how skilled Liu Qingge is, the correct action would be to run during a deviation.

If Shen Qingqiu can successfully save Liu Qingge, he will have his protection for life.

It takes some trial and error, the correct encouragement towards Mu Qingfang to give everyone remedial lessons on how to halt a qi deviation, as well as the correct application of qi from Yue Qingyuan in a passing shoulder pat to stabilize Liu Qingge enough — and it’s done. Shen Qingqiu manages to save Liu Qingge, and gains a protective guard dog in one fell swoop.

A lovely sight. An amusing sight. Yue Qingyuan has long wished for anyone else to see what he sees in Shen Qingqiu, to give him their loyalty in the same way he has strived to. Shen Qingqiu certainly does not regard Liu Qingge as a friend, and he thinks it’s the same the other way, but to have one more person in these mountains that will defend him…

It’s soothing, to Yue Qingyuan.

On the other hand, finding a different peak for Luo Binghe… it does not go well. He sends the boy to Wei Qingwei, until there’s a freak accident on the day Shen Qingqiu brings over his disciples for their swords. The cooking peak goes extraordinarily well, because apparently Luo Binghe is some kind of cooking prodigy? Yue Qingyuan really believes it will be okay until he swings by to check on everything and there is, somehow, a flour explosion.

Beast peak? A three-headed flying boar lizard goes on a rampage and guts Shen Qingqiu. Talismans? There’s a catastrophic failure that levels the entire mountain, which Yue Qingyuan happens to be visiting. Wine-making?

He didn’t even know wine could do that.

“I told you, they want a well-rounded character arc,” says Airplane. “You sending him somewhere else isn’t going to give you guys that.”

Yue Qingyuan nurses his tea, hunching over his table and trying not to throw up. He’s begun to spend the first day of each loop indoors, completely sick. Head throbbing, stomach roiling, every part of him aching… “Running out of peaks, anyway,” he murmurs. He doesn’t dare send him to Shang Qinghua, and Qi Qingqi will obviously not take him.

He tries one more time with his own peak, but it doesn’t go well. Yue Qingyuan cannot stand to be around Luo Binghe, even this innocent version of him — he thinks he hides it well from all the disciples, but Shen Qingqiu sees right through him. He forgets to kill Shang Qinghua this loop, too focused on trying to assuage Shen Qingqiu, and demons crash the Immortal Alliance Conference.

Shen Qingqiu throws Luo Binghe into the Abyss.

It’s… alright, honestly. Yue Qingyuan doesn’t know if he could have lived the rest of his life with Luo Binghe as his disciple. It had taken everything he had to tolerate the boy, and the five years of peace they have is welcome.

“Are you gonna keep trying this, bro?” asks Airplane.

He looks over the table at Shen Qingqiu sipping tea. If he tells him the truth and it goes as badly as Yue Qingyuan thinks… will he hate him even more? Will he lose even this small bit of peace between them?

“Let me try once more,” he murmurs into his own tea. He’s long learned that no one can hear him when he speaks to Airplane. “Please.”

“It’s your funeral, dude,” says Airplane, but he doesn’t press.

Yue Qingyuan tries twice more, in fact. Once, he prevents him from getting into Cang Qiong entirely. Huan Hua Palace scoops up Luo Binghe, and he learns the hard way that a deeply loyal Luo Binghe is nearly as bad as a revenge-driven one. It does mean that he gets to see Liu Qingge fiercely defend Shen Qingqiu, which is satisfying, but Yue Qingyuan kills himself before Shen Qingqiu can be taken into custody.

The second try is leaving him at the borderlands and letting demons scoop him up, but it just means that years later they unite under his leadership and come crashing into the jianghu.

After that one, Yue Qingyuan spends an entire day in bed. He doesn’t even bother with tea. He curls up underneath his blankets, pretending there’s a second warm body underneath with him, and presses the palms of his hands into his eyes.

“Bro…” says Airplane, and Yue Qingyuan does not response. “Qi-ge,” it tries, and Yue Qingyuan does a full-body flinch that he can’t contain. “Yue Qi,” is what Airplane finally settles on. “Why are you so scared of this, man? Why won’t you tell Shen Qingqiu what happened? It could… I mean, he hates you now. Don’t you want to fix that?”

“I do,” Yue Qingyuan whispers. He doesn’t have words to express how much he wants to fix it. “But it’s…” He’s never had to articulate this to anyone. Never had to express it in words. “It doesn’t change anything. I… failed. I failed so deeply that Xuan Su-” Airplane knows. He doesn’t need to articulate that. “And when I try to speak of it…”

He hates the caves. Hates them. He feels like part of him is still trapped in there forever, banging on the walls and screaming. Yue Qingyuan knows he is good at seeming… fine. He is. Only Mu Qingfang and Wei Qingwei know the extent of what happened there, though not his reasoning behind trying for Xuan Su early, and he thinks that they think he has moved beyond it.

And shouldn’t he have? Yue Qingyuan is no longer Yue Qi – despite what Airplane has settled on calling him, he has not been that boy for many, many years. Nor is he Qi-ge any longer, for he does not deserve that title. He is no longer trapped. It is over with and done. That pain may be written on his body, may be embedded on his soul, but it is truly not the pain that he fears. If that were the case, perhaps Yue Qingyuan would forgive himself that.

(He wouldn’t. Yue Qingyuan will never forgive himself of anything.)

But locked away in that sheer darkness, the helplessness of being able to do nothing, knowing that it was his own actions that had led him to this… he does not trust easily, had not trusted easily, and yet it’s more painful with the benefit of hindsight to know that he could have trusted them. That at least Wei Qingwei or Mu Qingfang (or Liu Qingge, though Yue Qingyuan had not known him at the time) would have listened or assisted or done something.

His greatest failure, and Yue Qingyuan will forever be choking on it.

Airplane sighs. “I… get not being able to talk about it, dude, but… will you at least listen to me on one thing?” Yue Qingyuan doesn’t think he can even speak anymore, so listening is the least he can do. “I wrote this world. And yeah, like, you’re people. But I know you guys. And I can tell you right now that Shen Qingqiu won’t hate you more for it. He’ll probably be pissed at you for keeping it a secret, but I think I have a solution for that, too.”

Yue Qingyuan looks at the wall as if he can meet Airplane’s eyes that way. “You… do?”

“Yep. Let’s try this right after your Shizun and the others ascend. You can chalk it up to being scared of her.” Does Shang Qinghua know that is the truth, or is he simply creating a story? Yue Qingyuan doesn’t want to know, and doesn’t ask.

“...Very well,” he agrees. “But… I need to get it perfect.”

“Of course you’d say that,” says Airplane, resigned, but it doesn’t argue.

Yue Qingyuan is really, really bad at this.

Part of it isn’t his fault. As much as he loves Shen Qingqiu with every piece of himself, he is aware that his shidi sees fault and insult in everything, sees even a kind word as only a manipulation. It means that when Yue Qingyuan stumbles over his words, tries desperately to bring up the past, Shen Qingqiu lashes out like a wounded animal and flees at the soonest opportunity.

Any attempts at cornering simply make the situation worse. Every time he horrifies Shen Qingqiu beyond repair, he simply takes a few steps off a cliff.

“Dude, you need therapy,” says Airplane after the third time he does so and is bedridden for the whole start of the loop. “Like, everybody here needs therapy for sure, but you need it REAL bad.”

“What’s therapy?” mumbles Yue Qingyuan into his bed, keeping his eyes closed so the light doesn’t split open his skull.

“It’s like, uhhh. You go to a mind doctor who tells you all the things wrong with your head and how to fix it.” Airplane doesn’t exactly sound confident.

“I know everything wrong with my head, and I don’t think it’s fixable.”

“Felt that.” There’s quiet for a moment. “But you gotta stop retrying, okay? I’m really worried about you, dude. You’re getting worse.”

Yue Qingyuan doesn’t say anything. It’s… he needs to get this right. He was the one who left Shen Qingqiu there, even if Airplane says that he won’t blame him. A good explanation is the least that Yue Qingyuan owes him, for all this failures.

“You were just a kid, too, Yue Qi,” says Airplane. “C’mon. You were just a kid too.”

For a long, long moment, no one says anything. “...Five more tries,” says Yue Qingyuan. “Five more. And then I’ll take whatever happens.”

He doesn’t make it to five. Two tries after that, he attempts to meditate in the caves. It’s a poor choice.

The darkness gets to him first. It doesn’t matter that he can see in it well enough as a grown cultivator, that he’s no longer a child that can barely handle himself – the darkness presses down on him like a physical presence. His fingers trace the walls, shaking and trembling like he’s going to fall to pieces. His blood marks these walls. His wounds still linger here.

“Yue Qi,” says Airplane, alarmed, but it sounds like it’s coming from far away. Farther than usual, several panes of glass instead of just one. Yue Qingyuan steps further into the caves, away from the walls. He tries to sit down but he can’t, collapsing to his knees instead. His heartbeat is so loud, clawing its way out of his throat and he feels as though if he opens his mouth hes’s going to vomit his entire lifeblood all over the floor.

“Yue Qi!” He’s hot. Cold. His vision is flickering black and he’s on his hand and knees, the floor cool underneath him and Airplane’s voice is echoing in his ears, strange and distorted yet familiar, bouncing off of itself so its two voices and there are hands on his arms and when did Airplane get a body? but it’s not Airplane, it’s Mu Qingfang and he’s talking to Yue Qingyuan and so is Airplane and he can’t make out any words until there’s a pinching in his neck and everything goes well and truly black.

He wakes up on Qian Cao. “Congratulations, Sect Leader,” says Mu Qingfang, looking down disapprovingly. Yue Qingyuan is vaguely aware that in this timeline, this is the first time he’s ever been address with such by this shidi. “You drove yourself into a qi deviation. Your meridians are the worst I’ve ever seen from you, and you should be well aware how much that is saying.”

Airplane murmurs in his ear, “You getting sick was a result of your meridians being fucked up it sounds like. The more you looped, the more messed up they got.”

Yue Qingyuan stares up at the ceiling for a moment, past his shidi, before he drags his eyes over to meet Mu Qingfang’s. “I need to tell him,” he whispers.

It takes a moment for Mu Qingfang to register what he’s saying, and while his eyes soften, his face remains stern. “I am… glad you are making efforts to… communicate with our martial siblings,” he says, his eyes flickering to Xuan Su. “But that does not mean you should be neglecting yourself in the process.”

Yue Qingyuan lets out the smallest of breathless laughs. “I can’t… I can’t figure out what to say to him.”

Mu Qingfang shakes his head. “Try writing it down, shixiong. Figure out your words and write it down. After you spend a day here.” And true to his word, Yue Qingyuan is not allowed to leave Qian Cao for the rest of the day.

He sleeps. Airplane remains silent, and he’s glad for it – he doesn’t hear it until the next day, when Mu Qingfang finally releases him. “...Please don’t do something like that again,” it says, when Yue Qingyuan closes the door behind him and enters his home. “Dude, Yue Qi, that was- that was… bad.”

Yue Qingyuan sits down at his table on his knees and stares at the grains of wood. “I won’t,” he says quietly. “I… won’t.”

“I don’t think you should loop again, either. I was watching, and Mu Qingfang didn’t alert Shen Qingqiu or anything like that. You’ve still got a clean slate this loop.” That’s good. Yue Qingyuan hadn’t even thought of that.

When he doesn’t reply, Airplane prompts again. “Yue Qi?”

“...I’m going to write it down,” says Yue Qingyuan, and he does. With a shaky, shaky hand he pens all the facts. He doesn’t make it flowery. Just… the facts.

He tried to return for Shen Qingqiu, and tried to get his sword early. It failed, and his Shizun locked him away in the caves for a year. He has the scars from it, if Shen Qingqiu wants to see. His sword is now powered by his lifeforce. When he finally managed to leave the caves, he found the Qiu manor burned, and thought Xiao Jiu was dead. He can’t talk about it. He’s sorry.

Laying it out in a simple list like that makes Yue Qingyuan want to dig a hole in the ground and bury himself alive in it, for that would be the worst fate he could conceive of for himself. It would be the worst way to go. He stares down at the paper and swallows sharply. “...I’m going to give it to him.”

For a moment, he thinks he feels the physical presence of Airplane, pressing warmly into his side. “You’ve got this, Yue Qi,” it says, and then it falls silent.

Shen Qingqiu doesn’t want to enter the caves with him. He doesn’t – but he does. He sneeringly agrees to go along with their “newly esteemed Sect Leader” and follow Yue Qingyuan into them. (Mu Qingfang has been alerted. He’s ready for things to go terribly, terribly wrong. Yue Qingyuan desperately hopes they don’t.)

He sneers all the way until Yue Qingyuan stands before him in that bloody, haunted chamber and presses the paper into his hands. “What is this?” he snaps. Yue Qingyuan doesn’t have words. He just shakes his head, and Shen Qingqiu reads.

Yue Qingyuan can’t watch whatever his face does. He turns away and focuses his eyes on a bloodstain on the wall, and lets the silence hang between them. “You…” Shen Qingqiu’s voice is a rasp, a trembling thread of rage and sorrow. “You never…”

He grabs Yue Qingyuan’s arm and turns him around. Shen Qingqiu’s face is streaked with tears, his entire body shaking with emotion. “You- How could you not tell me!? How-” Yue Qingyuan opens his mouth and tries to speak but he chokes on his words, his whole body trembling just as fiercely. He can’t. He can’t. He can’t.

Shen Qingqiu sees that, and something – it softens, a bit. He yanks Yue Qingyuan, hauling him out of the cave, and as soon as they reach sunlight Yue Qingyuan is falling to his knees in the dirt, gasping for air. “I can’t-” He chokes on his own words, on his breath, tears welling up in his eyes and falling to the ground. “I-”

He can’t see anything until he sees Shen Qingqiu’s green-clad knees fall as well, and hands rest on his shoulders. “I thought you didn’t care,” he weeps, and Yue Qingyuan looks up to meet his red, red eyes. “You- You should have told me, you-”

“I couldn’t- I-” Yue Qingyuan can barely get the words out, and he reaches out to scrabble at Shen Qingqiu and pulls him into a hug and in his arms, he feels Xiao Jiu melt into him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry-”

“Shut up,” hisses Shen Qingqiu. “You don’t-” He shudders. “Shut up. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

“It wasn’t going to become perfect overnight, dude,” says Airplane. “You have to give him time. Just because he doesn’t blame you doesn’t mean he doesn’t need time. He invited you for tea later today, didn’t he?”

Yue Qingyuan laughs brokenly. “There’s no way to try again anyway, is there? We’ve gotten… we’ve gotten our character development. Now we just need to… to deal with Luo Binghe.”

“Yeah, about that. Not to kick you when you’re down, but… You were probably gonna kill Shang Qinghua, right?”

It’s very out of the blue. Yue Qingyuan blinks. “Yes. I was. Why?”

“Sooooooo. Since my job is done here… I was wondering… can I have Shang Qinghua’s body? I can like, possess him.”

That’s… “...You can possess people?”

“Don’t freak out! Only cause the job is done. And only once. I can’t go body-hopping around or whatever. And then I can help you guys. No demon invasion, we can set Luo Binghe’s mom up with some money and meds and shit so she doesn’t die, and I can take him on An Ding.”

“Which you are able to do, since we’ve had our… character development.” He closes his eyes. “Alright,” he says. “Alright.”

It’s a quick detour to drop off Airplane in Shang Qinghua’s body before he goes to meet up with Shen Qingqiu. One moment, Shang Qinghua is barely able to disguise his dislike over tea – the next, his eyes are glowing blue and Yue Qingyuan is alone in his head for the first time in a long, long time. “Woah, dude,” says Airplane- says Shang Qinghua, since that has to be his new name now. “Trippy. Least he’s like, my height.”

Yue Qingyuan’s curious. “You were roughly this height when you were human, before?”

Shang Qinghua makes a face. “I was human the whole time I was in your head, dude. But… yeah.” He siiiiighs, long. It’s so… odd. Seeing expressions he had only heard and imagined, now projected onto a familiar face. “So. Plan.” He holds up a finger. “Give Luo Binghe’s mom money and meds so she lives.” Second finger. “I’ll take him onto An Ding – which is a huuuuuge fucking favor, let me tell you, because Luo fucking Binghe is terrifying – and he’ll stay far away from you guys.” Third finger. “No demon invasion. I’ll… figure out Shang Qinghua’s demon connections and shit, let you know if I need help.” Fourth finger. “Get Shen Qingqiu to save Liu Qingge and get him on his side.” Fifth finger, his full hand splayed in the air. “You go kiss the fuck out of Shen Qingqiu.”

Yue Qingyuan lets out a helpless laugh. “It sounds so easy when you put it like that.”

“Yeah, well.” Shang Qinghua gives him a lopsided smile. “You tend to complicate things, dude. How am I the normal one between us, huh? You’re gonna give a guy a complex or something, Yue Qi.”

He leaves An Ding feeling light as air, and goes straight to Qing Jing. There is no Ming Fan or Ning Yingying to greet him – Shen Qingqiu is newly ascended, as they all are, and he doesn’t have everything figured out on his peak yet. Instead, when Yue Qingyuan knocks on the door, Shen Qingqiu is the one who lets him inside.

Though it’s been about a week, Shen Qingqiu doesn’t look… good. He looks tired, still putting himself together, and Yue Qingyuan feels a pang. This is what he did. Clearly the truth needed to be told, but…

Silently, Shen Qingqiu pours them both cups of tea. They drink it, and then Shen Qingqiu breaks the quiet. “...You should have told me before,” he says. “I thought…” He lets out a shuddering exhale. “You never forgot about me, then. Never, Qi-ge?”

Yue Qingyuan shakes his head. “Never, Xiao Jiu,” he whispers. “I could never, ever abandon or forget about you.”

Shen Qingqiu sets his cup down with a trembling hand. He looks at it for a moment, and then stands up to step around the table and then kneel directly in front of Yue Qingyuan. He reaches out and touches his cheek, and then drags his hand down to where Xuan Su is belted at his side. “This happened because of me,” he says quietly. He considers it for a moment, and its heat. “You’re getting a second sword. And… you’re never touching this again.”

“If that’s what Xiao Jiu wants,” says Yue Qingyuan, relishing the name on his tongue. He can say it. He can say it. “Anything he wants.”

Shen Qingqiu’s face flushes just a little. His other hand reaches up to trace along Yue Qingyuan’s cheek, his thumb brushing his lip. “Anything I want, huh?” He looks him over. “Who am I to you, Qi-ge?”

“Xiao Jiu,” he says automatically, and Shen Qingqiu rolls his eyes.

“Not what I meant.” His thumb traces along Yue Qingyuan’s lip. “You love me, don’t you?” He’s not sure if Shen Qingqiu just needs the reassurance or if he’s asking a rhetorical question – either way, Yue Qingyuan nods. “How?”

He can’t help a slight smile. “However Xiao Jiu wants me to love him,” he says quietly. If Xiao Jiu wants them to be brothers – then they will be brothers. If he wants him to be friends – they will be friends. If he wants more than that…

“I want Qi-ge to… love me truthfully,” says Shen Qingqiu very firmly. “No more secrets. No more lies. I…” He makes a face, but manages to spit out the words. “I’ll do the same.”

What an honor, to be blessed with Shen Qingqiu’s truths. What a gift, to have everything that hides away in his heart. “I have a lot of things to tell you, then.” He thinks of Luo Binghe. Of Liu Qingge, of Airplane who has now become Shang Qinghua, of dying again and again in the endless pursuit of Shen Qingqiu’s life.

But most of all, he thinks of all the little moments that Shen Qingqiu doesn’t remember. Even if he hated Yue Qingyuan for all of them… they still existed. They still matter. Once, they were the only taste of his Xiao Jiu that he could grasp onto.

“I’ll pry them all out of you later,” says Xiao Jiu, and he leans forward to press lips against lips.