Chapter Text
Jiang Cheng has a superpower. He discovers this when he is eleven, and his father doesn’t look at him.
To be honest, that’s not quite right. His father has barely ever looked at him, so that’s not exactly the place to start. It gets worse that year, but that is not where it begins.
It begins, yes, when he is eleven, as most things do.
Later in life, Jiang Cheng will discover that life is merely a series of ‘before’s and ‘after’s. The calm before the rain, the fallout of the hurricane. Managing them, containing them, surviving. Jiang Cheng’s life is the before and the after.
It is the moments in between that he has never had any control over. The moments that split a life into before and after. The wind and the storm.
Wei Ying’s arrival is one of those moments.
The before doesn’t last very long, all things considered. After all, most cultivators live well into their third centuries, and many pass their four hundredth birthday with little fanfare at all. The introduction of his adopted brother happens after barely ten years, most of which will blur with time until they are faded and unrecognisable, like paintings dredged up from the bottom of a lake.
All he will eventually remember from that hazy period is Ah-Jie, who tells him stories and makes whole pots of soup just for him because she hasn’t got the recipe down yet and he’s the only one who is always willing to try it. Ah-Niang isn’t yet quite so fierce; she loves to sing, and on days when Ah-Die is away, their home fills with humming and Jiang Cheng sits and watches as Ah-Niang shows his sister how to dance.
Ah-Die is a distant figure in their lives, though somehow always in the foreground of it. He will remain so throughout Jiang Cheng’s childhood. For now, though, Jiang Cheng watches for his father’s smiles, counts on his fingers the times his father reaches out to pull him into a hug, and waits for the day when he has to use both hands.
The during is even shorter. Less than a week, and Jiang Cheng is forced to send his dogs away, falls into a ditch, is carried back by his sister, and swears his lifelong brotherhood to the scruffy beggar-child his father brought home that morning. The older boy swears back, huge eyes shining out from a face now scrubbed clean of dirt. There is no fear there – not like there was when Jiang Cheng threatened to call for his dogs. Not like the other boys’ faces the few times he was allowed to play with them.
Wei Ying is the first friend he’s ever made.
It’s in the after, though, that everything starts. It doesn’t happen all at once, the way Jiang Cheng used to think things changed. It’s slow, a little bit every day until he wakes up one morning and cannot imagine it was ever any different.
Ah-Die begins to smile more; Jiang Cheng welcomes the change until he realises none of them are ever directed at him. Or Ah-Jie, or Ah-Niang, who shouts more than ever. She stops singing, doesn’t twirl Ah-Jie around the way she used to before. She scowls more, too, only it’s directed mostly at Ah-Die and Wei Ying.
The one constant is Ah-Jie. She still laughs the same as ever, still cooks bowls upon massive bowls of lotus root and pork rib soup, still peels dishes of lotus seeds for their family to sit down to eat. It is the only time the yelling stops; when they all have their mouths full of Ah-Jie’s soup – she’s finally perfected the recipe – and they can pretend that they’re a normal family. Just for a little while.
And Jiang Cheng…
Jiang Cheng isn’t quite sure where he fits into all this.
Everyone says Lan Huan has a superpower. He first hears this when he is nine years old and his little brother is five, and he doesn’t stop hearing it throughout their childhood.
Ah-Zhan is too young to remember the before, or at least that’s what everyone says. That he’ll forget soon, as his memories swell with each passing day and the years of his childhood seep through the seams.
He’ll forget their mother’s face, the smell of her robes, the softness of her arms around them and the way she used to card her fingers through their hair as they lay on her lap and she told them stories. Huddled together even though it was always warm in her rooms, Ah-Zhan’s tiny head tucked under Lan Huan’s chin, Niang’s deep voice settling over them like a blanket.
Ah-Zhan will forget their father’s smile, peeking through the window as he watched them play in the garden between their parents’ houses. Die doesn’t smile anymore. Doesn’t play his guqin, listening for the steady, clear notes from Niang’s xiao in answer. Not in the after.
That’s what everyone says, anyway, but Lan Huan knows enough by now to know that everyone isn’t always right. Ah-Zhan won’t forget, because Ah-Zhan is special. Ah-Zhan never forgets.
There was no during for their family. Only before and then one morning, they woke to find that after had come in the night. There was no warning that day, when they trekked down the long, winding corridors and opened the door to Niang’s cottage.
The air was too still then. Too quiet. Shu-Fu moved quick to shield them from the sight, clapped a hand over Ah-Zhan’s eyes and shifted his body into the doorframe, but Lan Huan saw anyway.
Niang, but not Niang. Niang, because it looked like her, had the same soft hands and the same beauty mark just under her eye, and the same long hair that curled at the ends. Not Niang, because Niang was always moving and this person, this woman who could not be their mother, was still.
Arm outstretched and limp, sprawled across the floor, and suddenly, Lan Huan knew that after had come for their family.
And Ah-Zhan, Ah-Zhan who never saw, who couldn’t have seen because Shu-Fu was covering his eyes and Lan Huan had clapped his hands over his little five-year-old ears, began to cry.
They start cultivation training six months after Wei Ying arrives at Lotus Pier. Those six months are for Wei Ying’s benefit, Ah-Die says, smiling gently at Wei Ying as he does so and ignoring Ah-Niang’s pointed glare; Wei Ying was on the streets for a long time, Jiang Cheng finds out later.
What that means is: his brother doesn’t know how to read.
At first, Jiang Cheng doesn’t know what to do with this information. Jiang Cheng began lessons with his first tutor barely a day after his fourth birthday; before that, Ah-Niang had taught him. He can’t imagine what it’s like, not knowing how to read, looking at words and having them not make sense. Barely knowing how to write his own name.
It’s an easy decision to make: Jiang Cheng has to help his brother. He has to; it’s a moral obligation. He can’t let Wei Ying run around Lotus Pier without being able to read – it would bring shame to the entire family.
So Jiang Cheng helps. In lessons, where his old tutor instructs Wei Ying on pianpang and which yin goes with which zi, Jiang Cheng sits quietly and copies out entire texts. Yunmeng’s clan teachings, Man Jian Hong, Mu Lan Ci, even Chang Hen Ge – he writes them all. And when class is over, he sits Wei Ying down and forces him to read them out, word-by-word, and tell him what they mean.
Wei Ying behaves himself for the first three weeks. Still uncertain of his place, he goes along with Jiang Cheng’s relentless nagging and demands that they practice. But as time goes on and he becomes more comfortable, more sure of himself, it gets harder and harder to keep him still.
Wordless compliance turns to protests and whining to go out and play, to explore more of his new home, and Jiang Cheng finds himself raising his voice more often, smacking his brother’s arm harder to bully him into submission. Eventually, he discovers illustrated novels, and it gets easier.
Wei Ying’s reading ability progresses in leaps and bounds: he’s at the level of a formally schooled eight-year-old after two months, and a ten-year-old by three. Their tutor gushes over his progress, sings praises of his natural talent to Ah-Die, who beams wider than ever and pats Wei Ying on the back.
Jiang Cheng’s cheeks begin to ache from the effort of holding his smile.
“Jiang-Shushu, I had help,” Wei Ying protests, bowing his head. “Jiang Cheng’s been helping me with my reading every day. He’s really good too!”
But Ah-Die shakes his head.
“Do not disparage your gifts, Wei Ying. You have done well.”
He pats Wei Ying again, and this time, Wei Ying shines with the praise. Jiang Cheng’s face falls. Ah-Die doesn’t notice.
After the six months are up, Ah-Die deems Wei Ying ready when his marks surpass Jiang Cheng’s in their latest test. Jiang Cheng says nothing, and neither does their tutor.
Ah-Niang, of course, has plenty to say.
Die stops talking after they lay Niang in the earth with the ancestors. He just sits there when they visit. Stares at the wall where the window looks out on the garden between the cottages. Ah-Zhan tries to crawl into his lap once, hoping for comfort, but Die’s arms stay by his sides. They don’t even move to pull him into a hug.
Ah-Zhan doesn’t try again after that.
The guqin goes silent too, now that there is no xiao to answer. The other disciples speak in whispers around them, and the one time Lan Huan gets close enough to hear, they say Sect Leader might as well be dead. Lan Huan claps his hands over his ears and runs as far as his nine-year-old legs can take him, but he can’t escape the little voice that wonders if he’s lost two parents with the passing of one.
As the days turn to weeks, it becomes apparent that their family will never be the same. It couldn’t anyway, not without Niang, but the arrival of the after has left all of them scrambling in its wake.
One morning, Ah-Zhan grabs Lan Huan’s sleeve and leads them to the part of Cloud Recesses that houses their parents’ cottages. He doesn’t say a word the whole way. When they finally get there, Ah-Zhan knocks on their mother’s door.
“She’s not here,” Lan Huan says, as soft as he can. There’s something in his throat, pressing against the walls of it.
His little brother shakes his head. Gets down on one knee, then two. His back is straight as a board, and he sets his hands flat against his thighs. Lan Huan kneels beside him.
It’s fifteen minutes before Lan Huan gathers up the courage to speak.
“There’s no one inside,” he tries again, voice even gentler than before. “Let’s go back.”
Ah-Zhan’s eyes remain stubbornly fixed ahead, his mouth pressed into a thin line. He glares fiercely at the door, the only obstacle between him and his mother, as if by willing it away, Niang will return to them.
Lan Huan doesn’t move either. As long as Ah-Zhan is here, he will be too.
They stay until the sun sets, and even past that. Ah-Zhan falls asleep at what is meant to be dinnertime, slumping to the side to lean against his brother’s shoulder. Lan Huan stands, shakes the feeling back into his legs, and carries him home.
Shu-Fu opens the door to their room just as he is tucking Ah-Zhan into bed. His face is haggard; despite their clan’s rules regarding their nine-o’-clock bedtime, there are marks beneath his eyes that tell of a night without sleep.
“Where have you two been all day?”, he asks. There is no anger in his voice. His mustache is the droopiest Lan Huan has ever seen it.
“Wangji wanted to see the house.”
For the first time, Lan Huan realises just how high his voice is, compared to his uncle’s. It squeaks a bit, and Lan Huan knows it’s a function of his age, that it will crack and deepen as he gets older (Niang said so), but suddenly, he can’t wait for that time to come.
Suddenly, he hates his voice. He doesn’t understand why.
Shu-Fu nods. He says nothing about the hours they spent outside, hidden away with no one aware of where they were. He says nothing, even, about how Wangji is fast asleep, nearly an hour before the usual time, and how no one has heard him speak since Niang–
Since they found Niang.
What Shu-Fu does say is “you’re doing well, Ah-Huan. Take care of your brother.”
Lan Huan nods. Shu-Fu leaves, and Lan Huan is alone again in the room. He wraps his hand around his brother’s, manoeuvres his tiny fingers to grab his forehead ribbon and tug it loose. Lan Huan is careful not to let his own hands brush the cloth.
Smoothing Ah-Zhan’s soft hair back, he whispers, “we’ll be all right. I’ll take care of you.”
He blows out the candles, leaving them both in darkness, and crawls into his own bed. His forehead ribbon doesn’t make a sound when it comes off. In the dark, he holds onto it like a lifeline.
Two weeks into cultivation training, Jiang Cheng gives up smiling. It’s something of a relief, to be honest – happiness doesn’t suit him particularly well, even in the form of a mask. It’s easier to go back to a scowl, now that he’s confident that no one is watching him particularly.
(No one is looking at him at all, is what he means, but he doesn’t know how to voice that out loud without sounding like exactly the kind of spoiled brat that Ah-Niang would tan his hide for being.)
All things considered, Jiang Cheng is doing just fine. Though it hasn’t yet been a month, his teachers say he’s well on his way to forming a golden core. Which is good, because every year, there are always one or two disciples taken in who simply don’t have the ability or skill to do so. Despite Jiang Cheng’s illustrious family background, he’s always harboured a secret fear of being one of them.
That he isn’t is a relief too, at least, even though the one time he voiced that thought to Ah-Niang he was rewarded with a lecture shouted so loud Ah-Jie could hear it from the kitchens. (Die didn’t come out of his study though, so it couldn’t have been all that loud.)
But apart from that, Jiang Cheng’s tutors have depressingly little to say to him. A passing comment on his sword forms (bend your legs, young man – keep that elbow up); a remark here and there when they hand him back his latest exam, splotched all over with red ink. (Don’t write in absolutes – a cultivator must be flexible.)
He stops his teacher on his rounds around the classroom as the man is handing out papers, asks him what he means. He can’t afford to get sloppy, after all; Ah-Niang expects better of him. Ah-Die does too – Jiang Cheng just knows it.
But the instructor simply shakes his head. “Talk to Wei Ying,” he advises, setting an exam in another student’s waiting hand. “His responses were by far the most creative. Very insightful.”
He turns to face Jiang Cheng’s brother, eyes lighting up as they settle on his star pupil, and just like that, Jiang Cheng is forgotten. He settles back behind his desk and holds back a sigh.
(If he stops to think about it, Jiang Cheng seems to be doing that an awful lot these days.)
He doesn’t hang back when the lesson is over, though he could – probably should, too – be using the time to consult his tutor properly. But then again, he’s not sure what point there would be in it. Instead, Jiang Cheng follows his brother out of the classroom, rolling his eyes as Wei Ying stops to wave goodbye to what seems like every single one of their classmates.
Yet another pointless action – they’re seeing them all again tomorrow, aren’t they? Jiang Cheng clenches his fingers around the bamboo scrolls and wishes Wei Ying would hurry up. Ah-Jie’s making soup for lunch.
Die always joins them when there’s soup.
It’s been a month since Niang…left, and Lan Huan is beginning to worry.
To be honest, beginning isn’t really the right word; Lan Huan has been worrying since the moment his eyes met his mother’s robes, splayed out across the floor like scattered flower petals. Since Ah-Zhan began to cry, and he felt their whole world turn inside-out.
Ah-Zhan still hasn’t spoken since then. He opens his mouth to eat, and to breathe – one week when the winter sickness made its rounds and the fever lasted for days – but not to speak. Not a single word.
He goes to their mother’s cottage every day to kneel, soundless and still as a five-year-old should never be. Lan Huan sits with him, next to him, but he can feel his brother drifting farther away.
Die never comes outside to check on them, and every day Lan Huan wonders if the next time they knock on his door, he too will be on the floor. If it will feel any different from now.
(Sometimes, Lan Huan sees the sadness in the corners of Shu-Fu’s eyes when he thinks Lan Huan isn’t looking, and he remembers that Shu-Fu is a younger brother too. That once upon a time, Shu-Fu was as little as Ah-Zhan and Die was supposed to be looking after him. Die doesn’t look after anyone now, not even himself.)
At the end of every day, Lan Huan carries his little brother back to their shared room, tucks him in warm under the covers, wakes in the night when Ah-Zhan crawls silent into his bed, tears dripping down his round cheeks from the nightmares of the outstretched hand he never saw. Lan Huan wraps his arms around his brother and lets him seek shelter there, forces himself to be a cliff to cling onto, a lighthouse in the storm that has come to wash them all away.
And every night, Lan Huan feels the fear creep just as soundless into his throat. It sinks into his chest, rises to his mouth and threatens to swallow his words the way it has swallowed his brother’s. In the day, it steals across his face and threatens to drown his smile, the way it has drowned his brother’s.
But Lan Huan fights. He thrashes hard enough to break the surface, arms flailing all the while; he sings lullabies and asks questions and plays his xiao, and he keeps smiling.
He smiles to scream I am not afraid in a place where screaming means aching arms and hours of punishment. He smiles because it makes the sadness in the corners of Shu-Fu’s eyes go away, just for a little while. He smiles because Ah-Zhan doesn’t anymore, and when the fear comes it whispers one day he will forget how to be happy.
He smiles because Niang is gone, their family is falling apart, and this is all he can do to hold them together.
Somewhere along the line, Jiang Cheng figures it out.
It takes him over eight months, but then everyone says he is slow compared to his shixiong, and even Wei Ying hasn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. So Jiang Cheng is maybe just a little bit proud of himself; it’s not like anyone has to know.
The realisation comes to him in bits and pieces, the way realisations often do. Looking back on it, Jiang Cheng thinks he can see the signs of those first pieces months ago. The very day Wei Ying first came to Lotus Pier and everything changed. Now, Jiang Cheng sees those bits in different ways that are somehow still just the same.
It’s in the way Die’s eyes never focus on him when he and his brother are standing side-by-side, the way their classmates barely even glance at him as they wave to his brother in the halls. It’s in the way, too, that Ah-Jie rushes to greet them when they return from their first clumsy attempts at night-hunting, and throws her arms around Wei Ying first.
Slowly, surely, an idea – a suspicion, if it can even be called that – begins to grow in Jiang Cheng’s head.
One morning, Jiang Cheng changes his hair. Not a big change like the time Wei Ying decided he wanted to look like Ah-Jie and instead went around looking like a panda for an entire afternoon, but a change nonetheless. He braids it just like Die, one on each side of his head, spends half an hour in front of the mirror getting it right, and walks out just in time to join the rest of the junior disciples for their morning meal.
At breakfast, he listens to his classmates’ conversations with half an ear, eyes fixed on his porridge, mind racing ahead to dinner. They’re all eating together, because Ah-Jie is making her special soup, the one not even the cooks in the kitchens can recreate so clearly Ah-Jie is the best cook in the world. And maybe, just maybe Die will be proud that he got the braids just right, will tell him so before they even sit down to eat–
For a moment, Jiang Cheng’s heart pounds with excitement.
(Look, Fengmian, he dares to imagine Ah-Niang saying, turning to his father with a rare smile on her face, he looks like you. Die smiling back soft because Jiang Cheng has only ever looked like his mother and maybe if he changes, becomes a little more like his father then everything will be better.)
Then his brother slides into the empty seat next to him, late as always because Wei Ying doesn’t know how to rise with the sun is the sun and the moment is gone, lost in the excitement of Wei Ying stealing a persimmon off his tray and Jiang Cheng trying and failing to get it back. The feeling stays for the rest of the day, through lessons and lectures and the realisation that the only person to notice the change in Jiang Cheng is his big brother, who only laughs good-naturedly and teases him about playing dress-up.
“If you wanted to look like Uncle Jiang, you should let the rest of your hair down too,” Wei Ying says, laughter shining out of his eyes. “You shouldn’t tie it so tight – don’t you know you’ll go bald?”
Jiang Cheng scowls at him and can’t help running his fingers over the braids to make sure they’re holding. They are.
“Shut up,” he says back. Wei Ying laughs again. He puts an arm around Jiang Cheng’s shoulder, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t shrug it off.
Later that night, they sit down to dinner in silence. Die doesn’t notice and Niang doesn’t smile, and Ah-Jie keeps her head down and ladles soup into all their bowls without a word. Wei Ying finishes his in no time at all, but just like every other night, he doesn’t ask for seconds. Ah-Jie gives them to him anyway.
The peeled lotus seeds pile up on the dishes in front of him, and Jiang Cheng’s heart sinks a little more with every minute that passes.
When dinner is over and Jiang Cheng returns to his room, he removes his braids. They come out quick as he runs his fingers through his hair, unraveling in seconds. He makes an effort not to think of the half-hour he spent this morning, fighting with the unruly strands, wrestling them into place with the hope that enough determination would make up for the coordination he clearly lacks.
He almost succeeds.
The hair is still wavy where it had held nearly the whole day. Jiang Cheng flattens it with his fingers and hopes it will be straight again when he wakes up tomorrow. He feels like an imposter, a silly child wearing a costume too big for him. Too important.
Don’t be a baby, he tells himself. He tells himself, too, that his eyes do not sting.
As the weeks turn into months, Ah-Zhan’s silence doesn’t fade. He learns to communicate in other ways: the hard set of his mouth when he doesn’t want to do something, the furrow that grows between his brows when he sees Niang’s xiao set on the top shelf of the cupboard in the storage room where all her things are kept.
Lan Huan always gets it down for him.
When Ah-Zhan’s eyes flicker towards it where his fingers curl around the smooth jade, Lan Huan knows to put it to his lips and begin to play. (It helps that Ah-Zhan never asks to learn, only that his big brother plays for him.) He isn’t any good – not like Niang was. His breath wavers too much for him to sustain a note, and he hasn’t yet figured out the fingering, but Ah-Zhan listens like it’s the entire chorus of their sect’s yearly orchestral guqin performance.
Shu-Fu is teaching them both the guqin, and Ah-Zhan communicates with that too. On days when shadows cling to the sleeves of his robes, he plucks the strings slow and lingering, notes mournful and seeping through the air, and Lan Huan brushes the shadows away like cobwebs with a story or a song on Niang’s xiao.
(Ah-Zhan is little still. Lan Huan doesn’t know how much longer that trick will work. He fears for the day it stops.)
Ah-Zhan doesn’t smile, so Lan Huan smiles for the both of them and spells out what his younger brother needs to people who cannot hear the words he doesn’t say.
People begin to whisper, of course. People do that. The whispers spread like wildfire through Gusu and beyond, and Lan Huan hears them when foreign dignitaries visit the Cloud Recesses, and sometimes when he sneaks down to Caiyi Village for loquats. Sometimes, they are about him.
The boy who always smiles, they say, a good child, strong and happy. Lan Huan thinks of their words the next time Shu-Fu brings him out to welcome guests from Lanling, and his smile crystallises on his face.
Later, as he tucks Ah-Zhan into bed, his cheek muscles ache from the effort. The expression remains, pulling his lips back to stretch over his teeth. He tries to stop, but he cannot. He is a good child, after all, and good children are happy.
He reads minds, Lan Huan hears next, from a stranger on the street. That brother of his barely talks, and yet the older boy speaks his thoughts for him. A good brother, to care for him so.
Lan Huan runs home that day – no, he walks, running is forbidden in the Cloud Recesses, and Lan Huan always follows the rules – and gets his mother’s xiao down from the top shelf of the storage room.
He forms calluses on the tips of his fingers where they cover the holes in the white jade, and sometimes his mouth hurts a little from blowing. But a month later, he can play Niang’s favourite song without faltering and Ah-Zhan almost smiles. Almost.
(Lan Huan sees his eyes shine.)
Bright, come the whispers again, seeping in from everywhere when he least expects them. Like a little piece of jade. Our sect heir is so talented, didn’t you know?
Lan Huan’s teachers praise his skill with the xiao and nod approvingly when he proves he can recite all three thousand six hundred and seventy-eight clan rules from memory. He does handstand pushups for hours and learns how to circulate his qi before he turns eleven, and Shu-Fu nearly glows when he hears the news.
Lan Huan only studies harder and keeps smiling. These days, when he takes off his forehead ribbon and slips under his sheets, his face doesn’t even hurt.
Some days, if Jiang Cheng stands very still and concentrates very hard, he can feel himself disappearing. It’s a funny feeling, a little bit tingly and a lot empty, and he wonders if that’s what it’s meant to feel like.
He doesn’t have anyone around to ask, though, so the point is moot anyway. No one else can disappear like he can.
He can always feel it happen, too. Every time, because he’ll be standing somewhere talking to a classmate or a teacher or his sister, and his brother will walk into the room, flash a smile and a greeting, and Jiang Cheng will feel a veil fall over him. It shimmers like water and feels like nothing against his skin but the odd tingly feeling of the person he was talking to raking their gaze over thin air where he is supposed to be.
It’s heavy, and sometimes Jiang Cheng can’t breathe.
But it’s a small price to pay for being invisible. He can do anything, go anywhere he wants, and no one will stop him. (No one will see him.) Now and then, the urge takes him to tell his siblings of his newfound ability.
Look, Ah-Jie, he imagines saying, I can disappear. Watch!
In his mind, he beckons his brother into the room, the veil comes down and he vanishes behind it, right on cue. His sister’s eyes go round and his brother’s too, because this is their power, of course. It only works with both of them together.
Even high-level cultivators can’t do this – disappear into thin air this way – but somehow when Jiang Cheng thinks of telling his siblings, the words stick in his throat. He never does tell them.
(It’ll be his secret, he thinks. He doesn’t have a lot of those. Wei Ying shares most of his secrets. Ah-Jie holds the rest.)
Now and again, he hears stories from far away, from places outside Lotus Pier and its rivers and lakes that are his entire world. He hears about Lanling and Jin Guangshan, and the latest boy that has shown up at Koi Tower, claiming to be the sect leader’s son. He catches himself wondering if Madam Jin used to sing before all the boys began to come, if Jin Zixuan used to watch his mother dance and asks himself why she doesn’t anymore.
Then he scowls and puts the thoughts away, because he doesn’t need to think about Jin Zixuan. He doesn’t even like him – the peacock thinks Ah-Jie is plain, for Yu Di’s sake. Does he not have eyes?
The stories about Gusu are harder to shake off. They linger like grass seeds in his thoughts, hooking onto everything and stinging when they’re pulled out. They tell of a father who doesn’t see hischildren, of a mother who stopped dancing. And two boys: one his age, one nearly Ah-Jie’s.
Jiang Cheng has met Lan Xichen before, at one of the yearly sect leaders’ gatherings held at Gusu. He was young, his head only coming up to the top of Die’s legs, so he doesn’t remember much about the older boy. Just that he was dressed in white with the nicest smile Jiang Cheng had ever seen, and he was kind.
He thinks he likes Lan Xichen a little more than Jin Zixuan.
And so the stories come, week after week, month after month, of the boy with the nice smile who can read minds, and Jiang Cheng wonders if maybe Lan Xichen is just a bit like him.
Other times, the stories tell of a boy who shines like polished jade (like the sun like Wei Ying) who is breaking all the records. Who is fifteen and has formed a golden core stronger than most mid-level cultivators. Who has forged a sword and can fly on it. It is the same boy.
The wondering scatters like dust in the wind. The two of them are nothing alike.
Jiang Cheng’s brother, too, is breaking all the records. He is stronger every day, faster, better. He wins all the little contests the disciples hold among themselves, tops every exam; his free time is spent chasing the fat pheasants in the forest and playing pranks that Jiang Cheng tries to talk him out of. (They both get whipped when he fails.)
Wei Ying brings Jiang Cheng along on all of his crazy adventures. They break into Lotus Pier’s library of forbidden books together. They sneak into the kitchens together; Wei Ying charms the kitchen maids to distraction while Jiang Cheng makes off with whole plates of snacks.
The times when it’s just him and his brother, Jiang Cheng never goes invisible. There is always warmth in his chest and sometimes on his shoulder because Wei Ying can’t stay awake in front of a book and usually ends up leaning on him open-mouthed and drooling.
Jiang Cheng refuses to acknowledge that on those nights, he drags his sound-asleep brother back to bed, huffing the whole way because Wei Ying is at least an inch taller than he is despite apparently having been starved as a child (the way he eats just proves both of those statements). He pats the wet spot dry with open disgust that no one is around to see and returns to his own room.
In the dark, he laughs to himself. It’s a little bit funny, he thinks, that the only person who sees him is also the one that makes him disappear.