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Yin Yu woke up alone in his room, unaware of how much time had passed. Despite not being part of the mortal realm, Ghost City still had a summer season. It hardly was noticed, as only the few non ghostly visitors (or banished god residents) were even able to feel the heat. When Yin Yu woke up in paradise manor, he had to be told it was summer. He couldn't feel the heat anymore, he really had died and now was a ghost.
Nearly everything about his room was the same, with no sign of how many summers had passed since his death. Trying to remember anything that happened in between then and now only resulted in a headache and flashes of a blurry figure who Yin Yu immediately recognized as Quan Yizhen. During his time serving as Ghost City's Waning Moon Officer, he became very familiar with the process of how a ghost was formed. After he died, he must have become a ghost fire, something so weak that most dispersed mere minutes after forming. The one's that remained long enough to gain form either did so through sheer luck or the help of another. Even Chengzhu had told him, late one night, that he would have never had the chance to become a Ghost King had His Highness not rescued his flame.
So, after he died he became a ghost flame under Quan Yizhen's protection, and the most he could piece together from his flashes of memory was that Quan Yizhen truly cared for him, and was waiting for him. Yin Yu's head hurt more thinking about it, why would his shidi go through all this effort for someone who nearly killed him? Why couldn't Yin Yu stop thinking about him since waking up? Why had Yin Yu come back as a ghost at all?
-
The summer passed, and then fall, winter, and spring. A year passed, and Quan Yizhen visited Paradise Manor every day, asking after him and bringing gifts. Yet Yin Yu couldn't bring himself to see him, and he told Chengzhu to send him away every day as he absorbed himself in his work as the Waning Moon Officer. Every night when he returned to his room, he'd be greeted by a variety of gifts, sometime it would be food, a dessert or a fruit, and other times it would be something Quan Yizhen had found during the day, a flower or a nice rock.
By the time summer rolled around again, the gifts changed. One day, when Yin Yu returned after work he was greeted with a single gold bar. He found it odd, but Quan Yizhen had given him weirder gifts before, so he only shrugged before placing it in a drawer with the variety of stones and crystals he had previously been gifted. However, it wasn't a one time thing and one gold bar became two, then five and ten as Yin Yu continued to receive them every day. Finally, he was both guilty enough and curious enough to speak with Quan Yizhen, he should have done it earlier considering how his shidi had dedicated himself to bringing him back, but now he was just baffled by these gold bars.
He agreed to meet with him just outside Ghost City's borders, and sat beneath a tree as he waited, sheltered from the sweltering heat he could not feel. When Quan Yizhen arrived, he didn't bound over to Yin Yu as expected, instead walking as if he was a hunter trying to approach a prey who would run at the slightest noise, until he sat under the same tree. Yin Yu turned his head to meet his eyes, but his gaze was so intense he instinctively turned his head away.
"Does this mean Shixiong wants to court me?" Quan Yizhen asked warily. Yin Yu sputtered a bit, utterly bewildered by the sudden question.
"Court you? Where in the world did you get that idea?" Yin Yu said, regretting how callous his words were when he saw Quan Yizhen nearly flinch. To be fair, he had no idea why his shidi thought he wanted to court him.
"I started giving Shixiong courting gifts, and now he wants to see me again." Quan Yizhen explained with hope filling his eyes. Yin Yu made the terrible mistake of making eye contact, and was hit by the sheer devotion and affection in his eyes, eyes that looked at him as if he was the only thing that existed in the world.
"Courting gifts? Do you mean those gold bars?" Yin Yu sighed, finally connecting the dots on what in the three realms his shidi was on about. He almost wanted to laugh, centuries of misunderstanding to work through and yet here they were bickering over whether or not Yin Yu wanted to court him.
"I asked Ming Guang how to make it clear that I wanted to court you, and he told me girls like wealthy men. I know Shixiong isn't a girl but he said the principle was the same." Quan Yizhen said, looking a bit sheepish.
"Shouldn't we talk through some things first? Jumping to courting seems a bit much considering I tried to… kill you." Of course Yin Yu had to ruin the good mood. If only Yin Yu could let go of his guilt. He felt like the brocade immortal incident would haunt him for centuries to come.
"I don't care. I like Shixiong anyways." Quan Yizhen replied, unbothered, leaning towards Yin Yu.
"You don't care? You should care!" Yin Yu exclaimed, using both hands to push Quan Yizhen away from him. Why was he ruining everything? His shidi deserved better than an easily frustrated pathetic excuse for a shixiong.
"Shixiong hasn't said he doesn't want to court me" Quan Yizhen replied, tilting his head to the side like a confused puppy. Yin Yu was at a loss at how his shidi would always ignore the important point to focus on some other detail. His lack of care for Yin Yu's own actions towards him only frustrated him more.
Fuck it.
Yin Yu grabbed Quan Yizhen's chin, pulling his face closer to crash their lips together into a kiss. It's true, he couldn't bring himself to tell his shidi he didn't want to court him because it just wouldn't be true. For whatever reason he couldn't bring himself to lie about this. If Quan Yizhen was stubborn enough to chase after him for centuries, nothing he could say would discourage him now, so he might as well roll with it.
"Yizhen," Yin Yu said, reluctantly pulling away from the kiss, if only to make sure his shidi remembered to breathe. It wasn't the greatest kiss in the world, not that Yin Yu had all that much to compare it to, but they had time to improve.
"Yes, Shixiong?" Quan Yizhen replied as if on instinct.
"Don't take advice from Pei Ming anymore."