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“Young Master Liu! Young Master Liu, please come back!”
His parents were going to be really mad that he ran off when he had promised to be on his best behaviour for this trip at the market, but they would understand. His red string had moved! For the first time! He could see it pulling into a specific direction, instead of just floating aimlessly. And he knew that on the other side, he would meet a very important person, just for him! His parents said so, and they wouldn’t lie to him. He didn’t listen to everything they said about his string, except that it was a gift of the Liu clan and that only he could see the string, not his important person, but that was fine. Liu Tingyi never lied because lying wasn’t honorable, so if he explained everything to that person, they’d believe him. And then they could be friends!! Forever!!
He hoped that his person wasn’t too old, or worse, a baby. And that they liked to fight, it was important. He didn’t know what he would do if they liked to stay inside always to do boring stuff. Maybe he could stay with them and do boring stuff to make them happy, but only sometimes. A very little sometimes. Maybe once every two months, or more. He would figure it out.
His red string suddenly directed him towards an alley and, sliding swiftly between two angry adults, he kept running in that direction. But he had barely managed to push through another group of angry people before he collided into another person with a ‘oof’. He fell onto his bottom, his hand landing on something squishy, and rubbed his head with a grimace. That hurt!
“No!” said someone, his voice sharp and furious. “That was my meal for the next two days, you fucking idiot! You squished it!”
He looked up to see a dirty child in front of him, climbing on his feet and glaring at his hand. He followed that direction to see that the soft thing under his hand had been a bun, now thoroughly smashed on the ground.
“Oops, sorry.”
“Sorry! I don’t care about your sorry! What am I supposed to eat now?”
He frowned, confused. “Why don’t you go buy another one?”
The boy sneered at him, and he felt himself get angry in return. Maybe it was his fault for not looking where he was running and squishing his bun, but he had said sorry! It wasn’t a reason to be mean!
“And with what money, fuckass?”
“You’re not supposed to say bad words! Your parents will be angry at you!”
“Does it look to you like I have parents? How stupid are you?”
Well, it was true that this kid was very dirty. Parents usually forced their child to wash once they came back from having fun outside, even if it wasn’t necessary because he barely touched any mud so he wasn’t actually gross, really, he didn’t need to take a bath.
“Are your parents dead?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I hope so.” shrugged the boy.
“That’s mean!” He couldn’t imagine wanting his parents to be dead. But his parents were cultivators anyway, so they couldn’t die.
“I don’t care! If they’re not dead then it means they sold me, so they deserve to die!”
This boy was so mean and rude, but now it made sense. Parents were supposed to be the ones to teach you manners, so if he didn’t have parents, he couldn’t know manners. He just needed to find someone who would take care of him, and he would become a nicer boy. Probably. Maybe he could find someone who would want to adopt him somewhere?
“You need a parent”, is what he concluded.
“I don’t need a parent! I have Qi-ge!”
“Who’s Qi-ge?”
“You’re not allowed to call him Qi-ge, that’s my nickname for him! And Qi-ge is my brother, duh.”
“How am I supposed to know his name?” he complained. “You’ve only called him Qi-ge so far!”
The other boy blushed, looking embarrassed, but glared even harder.
“You don’t need to know about him anyway!”
Liu Tingyi stomped on the ground. This boy was so annoying!
“Fine! I don’t care anyway, I’m looking for someone!”
He moved to push past the boy, but before he could look down at his hand to follow his red string, said boy caught his sleeve.
“You owe me food! You squished my meal, so you owe me one bun! No, five! Five to make up for it!”
“That’s not fair! You only had one bun!”
Suddenly, the boy’s face changed from a scowl to something sadder, more pathetic. He was confused by that sudden new emotion, but felt alarmed when he noticed tears appearing in his eyes.
“But that was my only meal for the next days… I worked so hard to get enough money to pay for it…”
Panic zipped along his spine and his brain broke down. He didn’t want this kid to cry! He didn’t like people crying! And what if someone saw that and thought he had bullied him? He would bring shame to the Liu clan! His parents would be mad!
“Alright, alright! I’ll buy you five buns! I’m sorry!”
The tears suddenly disappeared and the boy gave him a smug look.
“I want the five biggest that the merchant has.”
He barely listened, filled with indignation. That boy lied! He pretended to be sad to make him agree, but it wasn’t true!
“You-You! Liar! Tricks are dishonourable!”
The boy glared, his face just as indignant as he himself felt.
“I didn’t lie! It was my only meal, and I did work to get it! I’m going to be hungry if you don’t get me food, and maybe I’ll even die and it’ll be your fault!”
He deflated. He didn’t want someone to die because of him, even if it was a mean boy like him.
“You didn’t have to pretend to cry”, he grumbled, refusing to let the other kid win.
“Of course I do”, replied the boy very seriously, tugging him along out of the alley and towards the merchants, “if I don’t cry then adults don’t give me money, and if I don’t bring money then I’ll be useless and they’ll kill me.”
“Someone will kill you?” he repeated, horrified. “That’s really bad! You need to tell a cultivator, they’ll protect you!”
The boy snorted, looking at him with disdain. “Maybe if it was you, because you’re rich. No one cares if a dirty slave like me dies.”
That couldn’t be true, but the boy seemed very sure of himself, enough to make him doubt. But that was wrong! Cultivators protected people from evil, and it didn’t matter if the victim was rich or poor!
“That’s not true! Cultivators aren’t like that. My parents always work hard to protect everyone!”
“If you say so”, he replied with a pitying glance, which made him bristle. He stopped a bit before a stall, in a half-hidden spot behind a wall. “Now go get me five buns, from this vendor. And remember, I want the biggest ones!”
“Yes, yes”, he rolled his eyes. “Annoying.”
It was only when he was handing the money to the merchant, an old lady who cooed about him paying like a big kid (which he was! He knew how to count, he could pay himself! It wasn’t anything impressive!), that he remembered the reason he had run away in the first place. His string! He still hadn’t found his important person! Oh no, he needed to give the buns to the boy and then move fast. What if his important person had left while he was distracted?
Filled with anxiety, he glanced at his finger to see that the string was still stretched and moving in a particular direction. He took the buns from the old lady, thanking her absently, before looking where the string was pointing. There wasn’t much over there, only another empty alley and the boy, staring at him from afar.
He stopped walking as the realization hit him.
The boy… was his special person?
No no, there was no way. His parents said that his important person would be perfect for him, that it would be fate bringing them together. This boy wasn’t perfect! He was so stubborn and annoying and fussy! He always complained and was mean and he did dirty tricks like fake crying! There had to be a mistake!
Seeing that he wasn’t moving anymore, the boy left his hidden spot and rushed towards him, tugging him by the sleeve.
“What are you doing? Someone is going to steal my food! Give it to me, I’m hungry!”
Shocked, he let the other boy take the buns from his hands without a word, and followed him back into the alley.
“What’s your name?” he asked, still feeling a bit out of it. Was it possible to change your important person?
“I’m Shen Jiu”, muttered the boy before breaking a bun in half and biting into it.
“My name is Liu Tingyi.” He replied quickly, but before he could say anything else, the smell of the warm pork bun reached his nose and his stomach grumbled. So maybe he hadn’t eaten yet today, but cultivators didn’t need to eat! He was too young to be a cultivator yet but he would be one day, so he was training himself to not need to eat! His parents gave him plenty of snacks for the day anyway, not that he would eat them!
The boy, Shen Jiu, looked at him mockingly before groaning.
“You’re an idiot like Qi-ge! If you’re hungry, you need to eat before you give your food to other people! That’s stupid!”
He took a bun from his little pile and pushed it in his hands with an aggravated noise.
“Eat it!”
“But I bought it for you…”
“And what! If you bought them for me then they’re mine, and I decide what to do with them! Eat it, I said!” he insisted, and Liu Tingyi didn’t miss his face turning red in embarrassment before he went back to wolfing down his own bun.
Liu Tingyi bit into his bun, feeling weirdly touched. Shen Jiu was mean and rude, but maybe he wasn’t just that. It’s like his parents said, that some people were complicated and you needed to spend some time with them to understand them better. It always felt weird to him, because why pretend to be someone you weren’t, but maybe it was normal for Shen Jiu. In any case, the boy was kinder than he had previously thought, and he felt bad for thinking such mean things about him.
“Do you like fighting?”
Shen Jiu threw him a smug glance. “I’m the best at fighting! I always win against the other kids who try to steal our things, and even the adults are scared of me biting them! Qi-ge says I shouldn’t fight that much, but it’s because he’s weak that I have to protect him.” he bragged proudly, clearly happy to talk about his victories.
Liu Tingyi looked at him in awe. He liked fighting but he wasn’t allowed to do more than use a small sword, and he was definitely forbidden from fighting for real. But Shen Jiu did, and he won! Even against adults!
“Amazing! I want to fight like that too, but my parents won’t let me. We should fight each other right now! Show me!”
For the first time since they met, hesitation flashed through Shen Jiu’s face. He glanced at his hands and then at Liu Tingyi's outfit, before reluctantly shaking his head. Liu Tingyi frowned, his excitement falling to disappointment.
“Why not? Come on!”
“You’re rich”, hissed the boy, clearly annoyed that he was pushing it. Not that it took much to annoy him, from what Liu Tingyi had gathered. “If someone sees that I’m fighting with a rich kid, what do you think they will do to me?”
“But I’m the one who asked for it, it’ll be fine!”
Shen Jiu glared harder, looking genuinely angry.
“You’re an idiot, of course-”
“Young Master Liu! Finally, we’ve been looking for you everywhere! Your parents are going to be really disappointed. And what-”
The attendant’s eyes glided on Shen Jiu, displeasure on his face. The boy shrunk onto himself, almost flinching at the way the man reached them with big steps. Liu Tingyi wasn’t fully sure what was going on, but he knew it was making Shen Jiu look scared and he didn’t like it.
He gripped Shen Jiu’s wrist and moved forward, putting himself between the attendant and his new friend. He proudly smiled at the man.
“I found my special person! His name is Shen Jiu!”
The attendant’s face went through several emotions, confusion moving to surprise and settling onto something a bit warmer.
“I see. This lowly one is happy for the young master, but he still shouldn’t have ran off like that. Does young Shen Jiu have parents we would need to meet up with? Or any family?”
Shen Jiu bristled, looking between Liu Tingyi and the man with confusion and wariness.
“That’s none of your business! And what does it mean, special person?”
“It means we’re linked by fate! My parents say it’s a gift in our family. I found you, so we’ll be really important friends!” He turned to the attendant. “He doesn’t have parents, but he has his Qi-ge! And the people who make him work.”
“Very well”, replied the man with a tight smile. “We’ll take care of everything and buy his contract, so he can come back with the young master.”
“What?” asked Shen Jiu, shocked. “Wait! Wait, I can’t leave without Qi-ge! Yue Qi!” He glared at Liu Tingyi. “I don’t want to be your friend if I can’t have Qi-ge coming with us! I’ll be really mean to you all the time otherwise!”
“You’re always mean anyway”, he mumbled, but turned to the man with determined eyes. “Qi-ge is coming with us too.”
“I told you to stop calling him that!”
Apparently reaching the end of his patience, Shen Jiu used the anchor of his hand around his wrist to bring him closer, and proceeded to bite into his arm until he let go.
“Ow, you bit me!” he exclaimed, delighted. No one had bitten him before! Maybe the red string had been right actually, where else would he find someone willing to fight him seriously? He couldn’t wait until they got to have real fights!
The attendant sighed and decided to leave them be, instead focusing on planning how to buy and take back two slaves with them to the Liu residence. He could already feel that life with these two menaces running around was about to become a nightmare.