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The first thing Mo Xuanyu noticed upon waking up was that he had no idea where he was, nor how he’d gotten there. In fact, the more he thought about it, he didn’t remember much of anything at all. The room around him was violently gold; he couldn’t get away from it no matter where he looked. With a grimace, he forced his eyes closed again. The glittering… everything… would only serve to make his headache worse.
“Didi?” a voice rang out from across the room.
His head spun around to look in the speaker’s direction, though he regretted it immediately. A wave of nausea overtook him, so he had to wait an embarrassing few seconds before he could reopen his eyes and get a look.
In the open doorway stood a woman in peach and gold robes, though they were much easier on the eyes than anything else in the room. In the back of his mind, he realised it must’ve been some kind of medical bay. There was no reason for any other room to have that many beds. Especially empty ones that showed no signs of regular use.
He didn’t recognise her.
He felt he should’ve recognised her. He wanted to recognise her. Yet the term on the tip of his tongue wasn’t ‘Jiejie’. Not like it should’ve been.
Saozi.
That was what his muddled mind was telling him. His sister-in-law.
But that didn’t seem right either. He felt almost sick to his stomach at the thought of it.
She certainly looked more like a sister. She had the same nose as him. The same eyes. The same hair. So she had to be his jiejie. His sister in blood, not in law.
She had stepped closer to him in the time it had taken to come to that conclusion; she’d pulled out a chair at his bedside and taken a seat. His hand was grasped between her own.
He wished he knew who she was. He didn’t know why he didn’t. Didn’t know why his head hurt. Why he couldn’t seem to remember a thing outside of his own name.
“A-Yu, didi,” she said, voice soft as a whisper. Like she was scared to be heard. Like there was someone listening in. But why? Who would be listening in? Perhaps she was someone important — her robes certainly suggested that she was some kind of nobility — but he wasn’t. He was a nobody, he remembered that much. Even when he’d been brought… been brought…
Where had he been brought to?
He shook his head, turning back to his sister.
“Didi,” she called again, “we’re going to get out of here, I promise.”
He noticed now that her hands were trembling. Her eyes were rimmed with red, ever so slightly swollen and wet. She kept glancing over her shoulder, like she expected someone to burst in at any second.
But why? Were they not safe here? Was it related to how he’d lost his memories?
“Jiejie, what—?”
Before he could finish, she raised a hand to cover his mouth. The room went so quiet he was certain she’d stopped breathing, and it didn’t take long for him to realise why.
Footsteps. Slowly creeping closer, louder and louder, steady in rhythm. One after the other. Left, right, left, right. Closer and closer they came. His sister looked ready to bolt — or maybe just duck out of sight under the bed.
Regardless, he was already preparing excuses in his head. He didn’t know what was happening, not even a little bit, but something inside him — beyond the memory loss, beyond conscious thought — told him he could trust her. That perhaps she was the only person he could trust. He wouldn’t let anyone hurt her. Not without fighting back, at least.
But the footsteps passed, fading away as quick as they’d come.
As soon as they were out of earshot, his sister shot back up, dragging him with her.
“We have to go,” she spoke with an urgency he was sure he’d never heard before, “they took my A-Song. We can’t let them take us too.”
…A-Song?
The name rang a bell, but only distantly. It felt like catching a faint whiff of home, but never strong enough to identify an exact scent. He knew an A-Song. He must have.
But he’d forgotten them.
“Jiejie—” he stammered out, tripping over his own feet as she dragged him along. Fortunately, he’d been fully dressed in regular robes — an unflattering gold, but better than nothing — so nobody batted an eye as they walked past. Clearly it wasn’t the servants that had his sister so scared.
“Jiejie, where are we going?” He tried again.
No response.
Perhaps it was better that way. He certainly wouldn’t recognise a place name if she gave one, and if they somehow got separated, he couldn’t reveal where she was if he didn’t know either.
They were in some kind of courtyard, ponds filled with lotuses surrounding them on all sides. If the circumstances had been any different, he would’ve loved to stop and take in the sight.
His sister pulled out a sword.
A cultivator. His sister was a cultivator.
He’d never met a cultivator before. At least, he didn’t remember meeting any. His father didn’t count.
He bit back all the questions he wanted to ask, knowing that there couldn’t be a worse time to ask them. There was only one thing that he needed to say. One thing he needed her to know.
“I… Jiejie, I don’t remember anything.”
She stiffened for a moment, frozen in place. He almost worried that he would be yelled at, that was what such a reaction would usually entail back home. Instead, she helped him onto the sword, forcibly relaxing her muscles as she stood behind him so as to hold him steady whilst they flew.
He could hear yelling from the building they’d just left. If they’d wanted to leave undetected, that plan had been busted.
His sister didn’t seem scared anymore though. A fire had steeled in her eyes.
Before he knew it, they were so far off the ground that even the tallest buildings below looked like a speck of dust.
Finally, she spoke back: “It’s alright didi. We’ll figure something out. I don’t know what he did to you, but Sao— …Jiejie’s going to make sure everything’s okay.”
She’d gone slightly green, but he knew better than to point it out.
He felt safe with her. Even as they balanced precariously in the sky, he felt some invisible weight lift off his shoulders.
“Thank you, Jiejie,” he said quietly. A slight pause. “I’m sorry…”
He didn’t know what he was sorry for, just that he was. Perhaps he had wronged his sister before losing his memory, but then why would she have brought him with her? Whatever the case, an apology just felt right.
His sister sighed.
“Silly boy,” her voice was laced with a fondness that seemed almost bitter, “it isn’t you who needs to apologise. It’s everyone else that owes an apology to us.”
She didn’t elaborate, even when he asked her outright. So they stayed in silence, flying somewhere safe under the light of the moon.