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Ever since her brother woke up from that long coma which scared her so badly, Shen Tang has begun noticing a few things about him.
It’s definitely him—it’s not like she thinks he’s been possessed by some ghost, or lost all his memories and came back as a different person. He still has the same habits; he still makes fun of her endlessly even while playing with her hair or being quietly caring. He still takes care of strays—she saw what he did for that one other patient that she’d never heard of before, no matter how much Shen Yuan insisted that they were longtime friends. He has the same favorite things, the same tendency to mutter quietly judgemental quips about perfect strangers that make Shen Tang giggle endlessly, and he still occupies himself by reading shitty webnovels on his phone until he gets out of the hospital.
But he’s different all the same. The way he holds himself, the way he moves—even the way he speaks is different. It’s like he went away to some etiquette school while he was asleep and came back with the mannerisms and proprieties of an ancient wuxia hero.
He sits on the couch with good posture. What the hell is up with that?
But he’s still so painfully Shen Yuan that Shen Tang can forgive it—the whole family can, all of them so pleased to have him awake again that they are willing to write off whatever is necessary.
All the same, it’s difficult to write off the listlessness. At first, Shen Tang had thought it was being stuck in a hospital, bored as his body recovered and he was forced to go through physical therapy to move again, something he had complained about endlessly. He’d seemed—anxious, run down, like he was waiting on something that never happened. The friend he’d brought to his room, Xiang Fei, had helped him to brighten a little, and Shen Tang had almost convinced herself that she was imagining things.
And then he’d come home, and the listlessness had persisted. Their parents had insisted Shen Yuan stay with them for a while, nervous about the prospect of him returning to his apartment alone where he’d been found, and he’d agreed without argument.
Shen Tang loves her brother, but she wants to smack him upside the head until he brightens again. It’s just the constant air of waiting, even when Shen Yuan begins filling his days back up, that makes her upset. Frustrated, even. This shadow of her brother, following in his own footsteps, who is so clearly affected by all that has happened to him; how can she fix that?
She can’t, of course, so she takes him to the movies and barges into his room uninvited and complains about her coursework at university, and he humors her. When he moves back to his own apartment, insisting he’ll be fine alone, she just starts showing up there instead.
He just seems so pale. Like he’s been diluted somehow, the vitality drained from him. It’s almost imperceptible from how he’d been before the coma, but Shen Tang knows her brother, and she knows that something in him has changed.
She thinks that maybe things will eventually go back to normal, that he’ll spring back to life. But she doesn’t hold out much hope. Shen Tang’s brother is different now, and it’s weird, and she wants him back.
She misses him.
And then Luo Binghe shows up, and Shen Yuan’s life returns.
It’s silly to say, as much as it’s totally true.
She’s at Shen Yuan’s apartment when it happens, the two of them watching a shitty drama and eating takeout on the couch. There’s a knock on the door, which makes Shen Tang frown and Shen Yuan pause, because this apartment complex is nice and no one should be able to get to the door without being forced to alert Shen Yuan’s phone for entry into the building, and their parents or brothers would have texted first.
“How did they get up here?” Shen Tang asks as Shen Yuan sets down his food and rises, that oddly graceful way of movement making it look far too controlled for something as normal as getting off the couch.
“I’ll take care of it,” Shen Yuan says, and disappears towards the front door.
She doesn’t pay attention for a bit, more interested in opening up her phone to check up on one of her games, before she realizes that the muffled voices at the front door aren’t stopping.
“Ge?” she calls out, questioning.
The voices stop, and then Shen Yuan emerges from the front hallway with the most beautiful man Shen Tang has ever seen in tow behind him.
He is also, bizarrely, in cosplay. Or something like it, because his wavy, perfectly styled hair goes down to his waist and looks totally natural, and the fabrics are ten times the quality of the synthetics that are usually used for cosplay hanfu, and the accessories glitter and sparkle like the real thing. Shen Tang would know. She absolutely had a crystals collecting phase, and she had been sure to learn how to properly identify the real things.
Glass is pretty and synthetics can be difficult to spot, but it doesn’t sparkle and refract like that.
The man looks at her with a hilariously distrustful gaze, given that she is Shen Yuan’s sister and he is some xianxia-looking immortal cosplayer who Shen Tang has never met before in her life.
Shen Yuan introduces the beautiful man as Luo Binghe, who greets Shen Tang with a voice like honey and a practiced smile as soon as Shen Yuan explains that she’s his sister, all traces of his previous countenance gone. Shen Yuan weaves a web of bullshit about him being a friend of his from one of his MMORPGs, and that he had just totally forgotten that Luo Binghe had been planning to come over.
As if Shen Tang would believe something so stupid!
But there is something in Shen Yuan’s eyes that she can see, a spark that hadn’t been there before, as stupidly romantic as that sounds, and Shen Tang’s words die in her throat before she calls him out on his crap. Shen Yuan stands a completely appropriate distance from Luo Binghe—but he keeps glancing over, almost leaning, as if Luo Binghe contains some sort of gravity that only he is able to feel, one that draws him in.
Shen Tang wonders where the hell Shen Yuan had met this man.
He’s perfectly polite, and after Shen Yuan pulls him back into his room—disappearing for longer than she might have expected—he returns with Luo Binghe dressed in black slacks and a button down shirt just a little bit too small, looking very flattering given the muscles that flex with every movement in a way that she can appreciate. She doesn’t see Luo Binghe in that xianxia outfit again.
For a photoshoot before he dropped by, Shen Yuan had insisted earlier.
Bullshit, Shen Tang persists. He didn’t even bring his own change of clothes!
What Shen Tang also notices is the way that her brother returns each of Luo Binghe’s shockingly intense glances. He stares in a more blatant way than he ever would have in the past, partially as if he can’t stop looking at Luo Binghe—as if his presence is a balm to some malady that Shen Tang didn’t know existed—and partially as if he’s simply appreciating the view.
Luo Binghe preens obviously with every glance.
Shen Yuan sits next to Luo Binghe on the couch and Shen Tang watches in utter amusement as Shen Yuan can’t stop touching Luo Binghe. It’s not obvious—it’s a quick pat to his knee when he gets up to get Luo Binghe a drink, or a brush of fingers as he passes the glass over, or even a little playful tug to the ponytail that Luo Binghe has his hair in, complete with a hair band that Shen Tang definitely recognizes as Shen Yuan’s. Shen Yuan doesn’t stop talking with Shen Tang, and Luo Binghe listens more than he speaks, but the entire atmosphere is. Well.
Look, Shen Tang doesn’t think she’s imagining things. And Shen Yuan is more alive than he’s been since he woke up from that coma.
She wonders if something happened before the coma—but that doesn’t make sense, because it doesn’t explain all of the other little differences. Not to mention how weird Luo Binghe is, speaking more formally than Shen Tang has heard outside of dramas and novels, though he loosens up quickly.
She goes to the restroom and when she comes out she keeps quiet. Not to be malicious or anything, she’s just…curious.
She peeks around the corner and sees Luo Binghe and Shen Yuan with their foreheads pressed together, her brother’s eyes closed. They lean against each other and hold hands like they might shatter into pieces if either of them dare to let go. Luo Binghe whispers something, and Shen Yuan murmurs something back, and then Luo Binghe leans in—
Shen Yuan pushes him away soon after, laughing about his meimei, and Shen Tang takes that moment to walk back into the room.
Shen Yuan is so red that she wants to rib him for it, to laugh at him for his big gay crush and the apparent boyfriend that he never told anyone about, but she can’t bring herself to do it. Shen Yuan is so happy.
She hadn’t ever thought she would get him back. She wants him to be happy so badly.
Shen Tang is certain of one thing: Luo Binghe doesn’t come from one of Shen Yuan’s MMORPGs. She has no clue where he came from, except that his mannerisms are similar to Shen Yuan’s new ones, he defers to Shen Yuan in everything while quietly bullying her brother into both attention and affection, and the clothes he showed up in were absolutely the real deal.
Shen Tang wonders for the millionth time what happened while Shen Yuan was asleep.
Because something had to have, right? It’s crazy, there’s no way those kinds of coma-dreams are actually real, and Shen Yuan never mentioned anything, but she has no other explanation for it! Luo Binghe looks and acts like the protagonist straight out of a story.
Part of her wants to confront Luo Binghe. The rest of her wants to thank him for bringing her brother back, even as he’s pushy and monopolizes his time and charms the rest of her family with his incredible cooking.
“Yuan-ge,” she calls one day, after a family movie trip that Luo Binghe had been conspicuously invited to. Shen Yuan and Luo Binghe trail after the group and Shen Tang follows behind them, soda in hand, watching as their fingertips brush against each other with every step they take.
Shen Yuan turns around, Luo Binghe turning with him. Shen Tang wonders if the flash of red in Luo Binghe’s eyes is real or imagined.
“What’s up?” Shen Yuan asks.
She briefly considers how to phrase things, then just sighs. “I’m happy for you,” she says. “It’s good to see you like this.”
She sees her brother’s purposeful cluelessness surfacing as he fails to figure out what she means at the same time as she sees Luo Binghe come to a perfect understanding. Luo Binghe’s lips curl into a small smile, and as infuriating as he can sometimes be, Shen Tang is so glad that Shen Yuan has him.
“Thanks?” Shen Yuan replies, and Shen Tang rolls her eyes, crushes up her soda can, and they move on.
Part of her isn’t surprised when Shen Yuan starts preparing to disappear again.
Unlike the first time—the coma—this one is purposeful. He spends time with every member of his family, and visits his favorite places with Luo Binghe as if checking off a list, and takes Shen Tang out shopping the way that he usually hates doing.
Now that he has found Luo Binghe, she figures, he will go away with him to wherever Luo Binghe had come from.
Shen Yuan had never gotten around to explaining that part. Now it feels like it’s too late for her to ask.
She still doesn’t expect the portal.
Finding it is a complete coincidence—she shows up to Shen Yuan’s apartment using her keys to get in and without announcing herself, because it’s funny when Shen Yuan scrambles to act like he and Luo Binghe hadn’t been up to anything while Luo Binghe stretches out on the couch and watches Shen Yuan with a remarkably smug expression. Okay, it’s a little gross, but it’s totally worth it for the sake of embarrassing her brother, watching him pretend like his new junior-roommate isn’t totally his lover.
Shen Tang turns the lock loudly and slowly, ensuring that Shen Yuan has plenty of time to throw himself across the couch from Luo Binghe in a play of totally unconvincing heterosexuality, and when she opens the door, she calls out as she steps in.
Silence answers her.
No, not silence.
There’s a…certain quality to the air, a vacuum to it. Something that tugs at her senses, makes her feel like the quietness in the apartment is unnatural. She can feel a prickle along her arms and the back of her neck, making her hair stand on end. She steps forward, forgetting to toe off her shoes as she follows the sensation.
It turns into something almost oppressive as she follows it to Shen Yuan’s room. When she pushes open the door, she’s enveloped by a wave of cold.
It’s a silent vibration in her head, pulsing waves that crash over her. Nothing touches her and at the same time she feels a prickling sensation over her skin, something that makes the blood in her veins crawl and a voice in her hindbrain tell her to get away, run away, get as far as you can from here.
In the center of the room is a rip right through reality, swirling with darkness and shrinking shut before her very eyes.
That’s where Shen Yuan went, she thinks. That’s where he’s going back to.
Part of her is internally crowing, bouncing off the walls because holy shit, that’s a rip in reality right in front of her. That’s magic, and something had actually happened to cause Shen Yuan’s coma, and Luo Binghe had arrived to bring him back and magic might actually be real and disappearing before her very eyes.
Shen Tang thinks of her friends at university, her family, and her very promising career in medicine.
She thinks of Luo Binghe’s xianxia-immortal outfit and the dark waves of energy in front of her, disappearing
Her body moves before she can stop herself. She sprints towards the portal and throws herself through it as it closes, uncaring what’s on the other side, just certain that the answer is going to be something amazing.
The way that Luo Binghe and Shen Qingqiu talk is both the same and so utterly different from the way that Shen Yuan had treated Luo Binghe. Shen Tang can’t stop staring.
“Really, Binghe?” Shen Qingqiu stands straight and tall, wearing that perfect posture that Shen Yuan had worn in a way that suits him far better.
Luo Binghe pouts like a child, grabbing Shen Qingqiu’s hand in his and resting his chin on his shoulder. He’s far more outgoing here than he’d been in the modern world, and Shen Tang realizes how much he’d been holding himself back. “She can’t be sent back immediately, Shizun. Drawing a portal between worlds is…taxing. Didn’t Shizun insist that this disciple be careful around Xin Mo?”
Honestly, she’s impressed by the act.
Shen Qingqiu sighs, and Luo Binghe preens when a hand rises up to pat him on the head, fingers brushing through the curls drawn up into a high ponytail. “I suppose you’re right, but she certainly can’t be left to fend for herself like this. Are we going to have to make my meimei a cultivator?”
Holy shit, Shen Tang thinks. It’s actually a xianxia story, complete with immortal masters, and cultivation, and a half-demon protagonist that is obsessed with her older brother. She sits on his bed—there’s only one for the two of them—as Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe discuss what is to be done with her, and her brain zeros in on the realization that she’s going to get to see fantasy, and creatures, and magic.
She can’t fucking wait.
Shen Tang has always taken after her brother, after all.