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The thing was, Shen Tang was allergic to cats.

It wasn't a serious allergy—she could visit Yuan-ge whenever she wanted and, at worst, leave with an itchy nose or a faint rash blooming along her arms. It was nothing that had ever stopped her from spending an afternoon at his flat if she felt like it.

Still, it was a fact.

Another fact was that there was nobody else who could take the damn cat now.

Shen Yuan was twenty-two and annoying. He sent her links to things she didn't care about at two in the morning, then got offended when she failed to answer—or at least leave a reaction—within the next few hours. Only last week, he had spent almost an hour ranting at her about something stupid that a bunch of porn-obsessed men apparently had the nerve to call a novel.

He also had plans for the following weekend. There were parcels on the way containing the newest merchandise he had bought and apparently believed Shen Tang knew nothing about. There was an appointment marked in his calendar for the veterinary clinic because his stinky old cat needed another check-up.

There were groceries in his fridge, some of them probably already expired.

His computer was still on.

Shen Yuan lay motionless beside his stupid gaming chair while his stupid cat kept meowing.

And meowing.

And meowing.

Shen Tang pressed both hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut, as though either gesture could make the sound disappear.

It didn't.

Jiu-er's cries carried through the flat, scratchy and insistent, bouncing from one wall to another until it seemed there was nowhere Shen Tang could stand without hearing them.

She wanted him to shut up. God, how she wanted him to shut up.

Because every time he cried out, some horrible part of her expected—hoped— Shen Yuan would answer.

From then on, everything became a blur.

Somehow, Shen Tang managed to pull herself together enough to take out her phone and dial 120 with stiff fingers. She felt as though she were somewhere far, far away, watching through someone else's eyes as she gave them the address and answered whatever questions she could.

After that, the blur only thickened.

People came in. Someone checked her brother—oh god, he was dead, dead, dead—while somebody else spoke to her, asking questions she didn't have answers to. Hands guided her towards the door, gentle but insistent, and Shen Tang let herself be moved until something made her stop mid-step.

Jiu-er was sitting in the doorway, yowling.

He shouldn't have been able to make that much noise anymore. His voice had gone rough with age months ago, reduced to scratchy complaints and the occasional indignant croak, but now he screamed loudly enough to fill the room. When one of the emergency responders tried to step around him, Jiu-er lashed out.

Shen Tang twisted free of the hands trying to usher her outside.

As much as she despised the ugly animal, she couldn't let him get hurt too.

He was only an old cat.

His once-black, glossy fur had faded with age, turning brownish wherever the sunlight caught it, with streaks of grey marking the years that had passed. His joints had grown stiff over the last year, making the veterinary bills climb at an increasingly horrifying rate.

Shen Yuan had kept smiling through all of it.

He acted as though it didn't bother him, as though watching his best friend grow old was something manageable as long as there was still something he could do about it. He bought little steps for the sofa. He baby-proofed half the flat once Jiu-er became less steady on his feet. Every few weeks, another parcel appeared containing some supplement, heated bed, ridiculous toy or miracle product that carried even the faintest promise of making things easier.

Now there was no Shen Yuan.

And there was nobody left whose entire life seemed to revolve around keeping the damned cat in one piece.

Shen Tang crouched in front of him.

"He's gone," she whispered.

Jiu-er stared at her, pupils blown wide.

"You can't act out like this, okay? You'll get yourself hurt, and then what am I supposed to do with you?"

His ears flattened.

Shen Tang swallowed.

"We might dislike each other, but you're still a Shen, Shen Jiu." Her voice wobbled despite her best efforts. "And Shens help each other."

Jiu-er gave a low, disgruntled sound that Shen Tang chose to interpret as acceptance.

She slid her hands beneath him and lifted him carefully against her chest.

For once, he didn't scratch her.

If anyone had asked Shen Tang what the hardest part was, aside from finding her own brother dead, she would have answered without hesitation that it was telling everyone else Shen Yuan was gone.

She wasn't the one who called Da-ge and Er-ge, small mercies. They were both abroad, far enough away that the call reached them at four in the morning, and Shen Tang sometimes wondered whether they had known before they even picked up, whether their hearts had started beating faster at the sight of the time on the screen because who called at four in the morning unless something had gone terribly wrong? She hadn't heard either conversation and had no idea what her brothers had said when they found out, which was perhaps another mercy she ought to have been grateful for.

She did hear her mother.

The cries carried through the apartment while her father tried frantically to console her, his voice breaking often enough that Shen Tang could barely recognise it through the door she was leaning against. She sat cross-legged on the floor of her room with Jiu-er in her lap, stroking one hand slowly through his fur because she had no idea what else she was supposed to do with it, and when the old cat merely tolerated the attention instead of snapping at her or getting up to leave, the tears already falling down her face only came faster.

The following days blurred together until Shen Tang could barely tell where one ended and another began. There were phone calls, documents and conversations she would later have no memory of participating in; people brought food she didn't remember eating, somebody was always asking whether she had slept, and she kept waking at strange hours without knowing whether the light beyond the curtains belonged to morning or evening. The only reliable markers of time became meals, bathroom breaks and Jiu-er, because whatever else happened, the cat still needed feeding in the morning, his medicine had to be given at the correct time, his water changed, his litter cleaned, and somebody had to make sure he was actually eating rather than merely rearranging the food in his bowl and pretending otherwise.

Shen Yuan had left an entire page of instructions after one of their more recent veterinary visits. There were notes about supplements hidden in one of the kitchen cupboards, instructions for what to do if Jiu-er vomited, the number of the veterinary clinic, and a warning underlined twice that Jiu-er would pretend to be starving after every meal and SHOULD NOT BE BELIEVED. Shen Tang disliked the prissy old bastard, but without him and his endless list of small needs, she suspected she might have spent those first few days lying in bed and staring at the wall until somebody physically dragged her out of it.

The thing was, Jiu-er had always been Shen Yuan's cat.

Technically, he had originally belonged to the whole family. One of their relatives had a cat who, over several years and more litters than Shen Tang cared to count, produced an improbable number of kittens, and Jiu-er had been the ninth. Shen Yuan, young enough at the time to find himself unbearably clever, had immediately declared that the ninth kitten therefore had to be called Jiu—and, because he was apparently joining the family rather than merely being adopted into it, Shen Jiu. Somewhere along the way the name had softened into Jiu-er, although Shen Yuan still employed the full version whenever the cat committed a particularly serious offence.

The cat had been prickly almost from the beginning and sufficiently distant that Shen Yuan spent years complaining that Jiu-er definitely did not love him, an accusation for which there was admittedly some evidence. Jiu-er sometimes left a room shortly after Shen Yuan entered it, regularly ignored every possible variation of his name and had once bitten him hard enough to draw blood because Shen Yuan had attempted to remove him from a cardboard box destined for recycling. The main flaw in Shen Yuan's argument was that Jiu-er treated everyone else considerably worse.

In addition, if anyone wanted to find him, the first place worth checking was almost always Shen Yuan's bed. Whenever Shen Yuan shut the bathroom door, Jiu-er would sit outside and scream until he came back out, while nights spent awake for too long inevitably ended with the cat appearing beside his gaming chair around two in the morning and beginning to knock things from the desk until Shen Yuan finally gave up and went to bed. Once, when Shen Yuan had been sick enough to remain beneath the blankets for several days, Jiu-er spent most of them curled against his knees, occasionally waking long enough to bite him whenever Shen Yuan dared to move too much.

Shen Tang remembered asking why he didn't simply throw the horrible creature out of the room, only for Shen Yuan to look at her as though she were the unreasonable one and tell her, "He'll leave if he wants to." Jiu-er had remained exactly where he was, of course, because their entire relationship seemed to have been built on mutual irritation and an almost complete inability to remain apart for very long.

No wonder Shen Yuan had adored him.

Shen Tang found ample proof of that when she finally opened her brother's phone. She wasn't sure what she had expected to find there—something profound, perhaps, because apparently death made you expect profundity from people who had spent most of their lives sending you stupid memes—but the first photograph in Shen Yuan's gallery was Jiu-er asleep on the soft new blanket Shen Yuan had bought him, followed by a bowl of noodles, one deeply unflattering photograph of Shen Tang that she made a mental note to delete later, and then even more Jiu-er.

There was Jiu-er on the sofa, stretched across two cushions as though he paid rent, Jiu-er beneath the table, Jiu-er staring out of a window and a blurry Jiu-er apparently fleeing from the camera. There was a close-up of one paw covered in little stickers and hearts Shen Yuan had added afterwards, another of the cat with his face buried in a blanket, and one where Jiu-er sat squarely on top of Shen Yuan's laptop while Shen Yuan's hand appeared at the edge of the frame, presumably attempting to dislodge him. Screenshots of conversations broke up the photographs, together with memes, food pictures and parcels Shen Yuan had apparently felt needed to be documented upon arrival, only for another series of cat photographs to begin immediately afterwards, including a video of Jiu-er sleeping that lasted almost two minutes and in which absolutely nothing happened.

Shen Tang laughed.

And laughed.

And kept on laughing as the sound coming out of her mouth, so rough on the edges, just couldn't seem to stop. She was sitting there with Shen Yuan's phone clutched between both hands and laughing at his ridiculous collection of cat photographs until her vision blurred and she realised something warm was running over her cheeks. Soon she was crying hard enough that she could barely make out the screen at all.

Jiu-er, asleep beside her, opened one cloudy eye.

"Your human was insane," Shen Tang told him hoarsely.

He looked at her for another second before closing his eye again, which somehow made everything worse, and Shen Tang bent forward around the phone as the laughter dissolved completely into sobs. It took her several minutes before she could wipe the screen against her sleeve and keep scrolling.

Da-ge and Er-ge arrived the following afternoon, both looking terrible. They had always seemed older to Shen Tang in the particular way elder brothers were supposed to be older: annoyingly certain that they knew better and, most importantly, capable of fixing things whenever something actually went wrong. Now Da-ge stood in the entrance hall with his suitcase still beside him and a face almost entirely drained of colour, while Er-ge hugged their mother for so long that eventually everybody else simply stood around them, uncertain what they were supposed to do.

Jiu-er came to investigate after a while, and both brothers went quiet when they saw him. Er-ge eventually crouched and offered one hand; the cat sniffed it with grave consideration, decided whatever he had found was inadequate and walked away without another glance. Er-ge laughed once, a short, strangled sound that reminded Shen Tang far too much of herself.

The funeral happened soon afterwards, although Shen Tang remembered most of it only in fragments that refused to arrange themselves into any sensible order. White and yellow chrysanthemums crowded around Shen Yuan's photograph until their scent seemed to settle permanently at the back of her throat, and there were wreaths, white mourning flowers, subdued clothes and the constant quiet rustle of people moving through the funeral home. Relatives she barely remembered knowing came to speak to them, alongside people from Shen Yuan's life whom she had never met before, and almost all of them wore some variation of the same devastated expression that Shen Tang had grown to hate because she knew exactly what it meant before they even opened their mouths.

She remembered looking at Shen Yuan's photograph and thinking they had chosen the wrong one, although there was nothing actually wrong with it. He looked good there; his hair behaved for once, and there was the beginning of a smile tugging at his mouth, which was perhaps precisely why Shen Tang disliked it. He looked too present, as though if she stared for long enough his expression might shift and he would ask what everyone was doing standing around looking miserable.

The final farewell was clearer in her memory than almost anything else, no matter how much she might have preferred otherwise.

Shen Yuan looked strange when he was still. His face was recognisable, of course—she knew every feature after spending so many years looking at it across breakfast tables, from the opposite end of sofas, through video calls and in photographs he complained she had taken without permission—but something essential seemed to have gone missing from it, enough that Shen Tang eventually stopped looking at his face and focused on his hands instead.

Those were easier because she knew those fingers in motion. They were the hands that stole food from her plate and pushed her forehead away whenever she got too close to whatever he was doing, the same hands that had tied her shoelaces when she was little badly enough that their mother made him redo them, and which had shoved a phone into her face countless times because there was apparently something she absolutely had to see at that precise moment. Near one knuckle was a small, pale mark left by Jiu-er after Shen Yuan had tried to wrestle a piece of plastic out of his mouth, prompting the cat—deeply committed to killing himself through gastrointestinal obstruction—to object violently enough that Shen Yuan complained about the resulting scratch for days.

Looking at the faded scar now, Shen Tang wanted to shake him.

She wanted to grab him by both shoulders and scream until he opened his eyes, wanted him to complain that she was hurting him and call her insane and demand to know why everyone was staring. She wanted to tell him that his parcels had arrived, that his stupid cat wasn't eating properly, that there was still a veterinary appointment marked in his calendar and Shen Tang had no idea what questions she was supposed to ask because that had always been his job. There were messages waiting for him and things sitting half-finished in his apartment, people who kept instinctively reaching for their phones before remembering there was no point calling him anymore.

There was so much left to tell him that Shen Tang couldn't understand how everybody else could simply accept that there would never be another opportunity to say any of it.

Eventually somebody touched her arm and told her gently that it was time to move, and Shen Tang did because apparently that was what happened now: other people told her when it was time to leave her brother behind, and she obeyed.

The cremation came later, followed eventually by an urn that Shen Tang could never quite reconcile with the brother whose computer had still been running when she found him. She understood what had happened in the abstract way, understood every individual step that had led from Shen Yuan lying beside his gaming chair to the object their family now carried home with them, but her mind refused to make those things belong to the same person.

By the time they returned, all of them were exhausted beyond anything Shen Tang had previously known the word to mean, and Jiu-er was waiting near the door.

His head lifted the moment it opened, but instead of looking properly at any of them, his cloudy eyes travelled over Shen Tang, Da-ge and Er-ge towards the empty hallway beyond their shoulders. Nobody spoke as the old cat stared past them for several long seconds, apparently waiting for the missing fourth person to appear after all, and when he eventually seemed to understand that there was nobody else coming, he turned around and walked slowly deeper into the apartment.

Shen Tang shut the door behind them.

Only when the lock clicked into place did she hear the small, broken sound beside her and realise that Er-ge was crying.

The vet told her Jiu-er was old, which was information so obvious Shen Tang almost wanted to ask whether she was still expected to pay for the appointment.

Of course he was old. His fur had faded, his joints hurt, he slept more than he used to and sometimes seemed to spend several seconds remembering why he had entered a room in the first place. Shen Yuan had been complaining about all of those things for months, usually while simultaneously buying another supplement, another ridiculous bed or another piece of equipment apparently designed to make life easier for elderly cats with expensive tastes.

The vet also told her that grief and disruption could affect animals, which Shen Tang knew too, although she liked hearing that considerably less.

Then there were the things she hadn't already known: numbers, weight lost since the previous appointment, blood-test results and the slow decline of a body that had already been getting older long before Shen Yuan died. It had simply happened quietly enough that everyone could pretend there was still plenty of time, especially Shen Yuan, who seemed to operate under the assumption that if he researched enough and paid enough veterinary bills, Jiu-er would eventually be forced to live forever out of sheer inconvenience.

Now Shen Tang was the one who kept buying the food for elderly cats.

Then the food for cats with sensitive stomachs and bad kidneys.

Then another kind that supposedly tempted animals who had lost their appetite, followed by supplements, medication and a warming pad Jiu-er regarded with deep suspicion for days before deciding it had always belonged to him.

Da-ge paid for half of it without being asked. Er-ge ordered some obscenely expensive supplement bottle after apparently spending one sleepless night reading articles about feline nutrition. Their mother cooked chicken, and their father—who had once threatened to banish the cat from the dining room for getting onto the table—sat there tearing the meat into tiny pieces while Jiu-er occupied that same forbidden table like a sickly little emperor receiving tribute.

None of it made him eat very much.

He slept more. Sometimes he wandered from room to room, looking vaguely dissatisfied with whatever he found there, and sometimes Shen Tang would discover him sitting near a door.

The doors were the part she hated.

At her flat, Jiu-er learned the sound of the lift quickly. Whenever it stopped on her floor, his head would rise; footsteps in the corridor made his ears turn, and the scrape of a key against the lock could still pull him out of what had looked like a dead sleep seconds earlier.

Every single time, his head moved towards the door, even if his eyesight was not as good.

For the first week, Shen Tang cried whenever she noticed.

By the second, she had learned to turn away.

By the third, she came home after a day in which everything had already gone wrong, pushed the door shut with her heel and saw Jiu-er's head lift from the cushion at the familiar sound of keys.

Something in her snapped.

"He's not coming."

Jiu-er looked at her.

"I told you already."

The words sounded cruel as soon as they left her mouth, but apparently cruelty had never stopped Shen Tang before because she heard herself continue.

"He's dead, you stupid cat."

His cloudy eyes remained on her for another moment before his head slowly lowered back onto the cushion.

Shen Tang stood in the entrance hall with her bag still hanging from one shoulder and immediately wished she could shove every word back into her mouth.

It was ridiculous. Jiu-er didn't understand dead, at least not the way she did, and Shen Yuan remained equally dead whether she said it aloud or spent the rest of her life politely avoiding the subject. None of that stopped her breathing from turning shallow and uneven until eventually she let the bag slide from her shoulder and followed it down the wall.

"I'm sorry."

Jiu-er did not come to her. Of course he didn't, why would he?

After several minutes spent sitting uselessly on the floor, Shen Tang wiped her face against her sleeve and crawled over to him instead. He allowed her to press her forehead against his side without objecting, and the warmth beneath her cheek frightened her with how slight it felt now, as though somebody had quietly been taking pieces of him away whenever Shen Tang wasn't looking.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry" she kept whispering, as if afraid of being heard. "I miss him too."

Jiu-er breathed against her hair.

There had been a running argument in their family for years over whether the cat actually knew his own name.

Shen Yuan insisted that he did.

"He knows," he had once said, pointing accusingly at Jiu-er. "He simply chooses not to respond because he's an asshole."

Jiu-er, who had been washing one paw, continued washing it.

"Jiu-er."

Nothing.

"See?"

"That proves literally nothing."

"Jiu-er."

The cat's tongue passed over the same paw again.

Shen Yuan crouched until they were eye to eye. "Jiu-er."

Jiu-er paused, looked directly at him and then turned around with great deliberation to present him with his backside.

Shen Tang had laughed so hard she nearly dropped her phone.

Apparently, she hadn't dropped it.

She discovered that a month after the funeral, when Jiu-er had stopped eating almost completely and another veterinary appointment had ended with a kind voice explaining things that contained no actual hope.

Shen Tang had developed a hatred for kindness by then. People were always gentle just before they told her something horrible.

She took Jiu-er home wrapped in his blanket. Da-ge offered to come over and their mother did too, but Shen Tang told both of them she was fine, then ignored the absurdity of saying that while carrying a dying cat into an empty flat.

She didn't want anyone there.

This felt like something that belonged to Jiu-er and Shen Yuan, and Shen Yuan had already failed spectacularly at showing up, which left Shen Tang as the nearest available substitute.

Jiu-er slept through most of the evening. Shen Tang sat on the floor beside him because he had stopped enjoying being picked up, and after years of watching Shen Yuan ignore every hiss and offended noise because apparently he knew what the cat really meant, she figured Jiu-er had earned the right to win a few arguments.

She worked her fingers through the fur between his ears.

He had always liked that.

Shen Yuan used to claim otherwise, usually while saying, "He hates being petted," with Jiu-er pressed directly against his thigh and Shen Yuan's hand already drifting towards his head.

The memory made Shen Tang's throat close.

She reached for her phone.

There were folders now, because apparently grief came with the need to make an order and sense out of nonsense. She and her brothers had gone through Shen Yuan's devices and saved anything they thought somebody might want later, accumulating years of photographs, messages and videos none of them had considered important when Shen Yuan was alive enough to produce more of them whenever he pleased.

There were badly framed photographs in which half his face was missing, voice messages complaining about food deliveries, recordings from family dinners and videos Shen Tang had taken solely because her brother was doing something embarrassing enough to deserve preservation.

There were so many ordinary things.

That was what got her.

Nobody had known they were collecting a finite number of them.

She found the video because the thumbnail showed Jiu-er sitting on the windowsill, younger and considerably less decrepit than the bundle curled beside her now.

For a few seconds, Shen Tang couldn't remember filming it.

Then she pressed play.

Summer sunlight filled the room on the screen, and Jiu-er was younger there, his fur darker and his back still straight as one ear turned lazily towards the person behind the camera.

Shen Yuan's voice came through the speaker. "Jiu-er."

The cat ignored him.

Beneath Shen Tang's hand, the old Jiu-er's ear twitched.

"Jiu-er," Shen Yuan tried again, and when the younger cat continued staring through the window, Shen Tang suddenly remembered filming this. She had been sitting on the sofa trying not to laugh while Shen Yuan conducted what he apparently considered a scientific experiment.

"I know you can hear me," he said.

The Jiu-er beside her lifted his head.

His mouth opened.

The sound was thin enough that Shen Tang almost missed it.

A single meow.

Shen Tang broke.

She bent over him, careful because he was fragile now, one hand pressed against the floor while the other covered her face. The sobs hurt. They came so violently she could barely breathe through them, and somewhere inside all of it she was aware of the recording continuing.

Shen Yuan laughed.

The cat on the video walked away.

Her brother told him to go fuck himself.

The living Jiu-er lay beside the phone and listened.

"You bastard," Shen Tang managed.

Jiu-er blinked slowly at her.

"He called you every day."

Another tear fell onto the blanket.

"You never answered him."

She stroked between his ears.

"You couldn't do it once when he was here?"

Jiu-er closed his eyes.

Shen Tang played the video again.

She let it run until it ended.

Then again.

By the fourth time, she no longer knew whether she was doing it for Jiu-er or herself.

Eventually she stopped restarting it.

The phone lay beside them.

Shen Tang rested her cheek against the edge of the blanket and listened to Jiu-er breathe.

His breaths were shallow and uneven. She counted them despite herself.

One.

Two.

A pause.

Three.

She hated Shen Yuan again.

She hated him with all the desperate fury she had been carrying since she found his cold body weeks ago.

How dare he die first?

How dare he leave them with his clothes and his books and hundreds of photographs of a cat?

How dare he leave his stupid cat waiting at doors?

How dare he make Shen Tang explain death to an animal who had spent nearly his entire life pretending he did not care whether Shen Yuan existed?

"You should be here," she whispered.

Her fingers curled slightly in Jiu-er's fur.

"You should be here for this."

The cat breathed.

Shen Tang closed her eyes.

After a while, she picked up the phone one last time.

She did not play the whole video.

She dragged the little bar backwards until she found the right place.

Shen Yuan's voice filled the quiet room.

"Jiu-er. Come here."

Jiu-er opened his eyes.

For a few seconds he looked very awake.

His gaze went to the phone, and Shen Tang could almost imagine that he understood. Perhaps he thought Shen Yuan was in there. Perhaps he remembered only a voice and a hand and a warm place to sleep. Perhaps animals did not understand absence in ways humans could recognise and spent their lives believing that anything lost might still return through the correct door.

His mouth opened.

This time, the meow was barely audible.

Shen Tang stroked his head.

"Yeah," she whispered. "I know."

Jiu-er lowered his head onto the blanket.

The room stayed quiet after the recording stopped.

Shen Tang remained beside him for a very long time.

At some point his breathing became slower.

At some point there was a breath she waited to hear followed by another.

It never came.

She did not know exactly when he died because there was no moment large enough to contain it.

One second she was stroking him.

The next she realised she had been stroking him for several minutes and he had not moved.

She stared.

Then she touched the side of his face.

"Jiu-er?"

Nothing.

It was absurd how wrong that felt.

Shen Yuan had called that name thousands of times and received silence in return.

Shen Tang had watched it happen.

She used to laugh at it.

Her voice shook. "Jiu-er."

The cat did not move.

Shen Tang bowed her head until her forehead touched his.

For once, she understood exactly how her brother must have felt.

"Fine," she whispered.

Her fingers moved gently through the fur behind his ear.

"Ignore me, then."

By morning, her eyes were swollen and a familiar red rash had spread across her forearms where Jiu-er's fur had been pressed against her for hours, itching badly enough that under any other circumstances she would already have been reaching for antihistamines.

Shen Tang noticed it only when she finally lifted her head. She stared at the blotches for several seconds before lowering her face back against him anyway.

Tomorrow, the rash would begin to fade.

Shen Yuan had not expected much from Cang Qiong Mountain Sect, which was perhaps unfair considering it was one of the foremost cultivation sects of the age and he had spent the better part of several months hearing people speak of its twelve peaks as though immortality itself might trickle down the mountain if one stood close enough.

He had come for considerably less impressive reasons.

Qiong Ding supposedly possessed a set of records he had been trying to locate for weeks, and after enough travelling to make every muscle below his waist resent him personally, Shen Yuan's ambitions had narrowed to obtaining access to them, eating one meal that had not been cooked over a campfire, and leaving before anyone sufficiently important noticed him.

Naturally, the sect leader received him personally.

Yue Qingyuan was pleasant enough that Shen Yuan distrusted him almost immediately. Not because the man had done anything wrong; if anything, he was irritatingly considerate, offering tea and asking after Shen Yuan's journey with the sort of mild interest that somehow resulted in Shen Yuan answering three questions more than he had intended. Still, the records appeared to exist, Yue Qingyuan seemed willing to grant him access, and Shen Yuan had nearly begun to believe that the visit might proceed without incident when the door behind him opened.

"What is this about, Zhangmen-shixiong?"

Shen Yuan turned.

The man in the doorway wore green.

It was the first and least useful thing his brain supplied, immediately followed by long black hair, narrow eyes, folding fan, robes expensive enough to feed Shen Yuan for several months and an expression that suggested whoever had summoned him had already wasted too much of his time.

He was beautiful, unfortunately. Beautiful in that sharp, inconvenient manner that usually promised a personality designed specifically to make everyone around him miserable.

Shen Yuan stared long enough for the man's brows to lower.

His chin lifted a fraction.

There was something in the gesture—something about the tiny pause before full offence settled across his face, as though he had given Shen Yuan ample opportunity to realise independently that he was being intolerable—that caught beneath Shen Yuan's ribs.

The fan flicked open.

"If this is the wandering cultivator you mentioned, then I fail to see why my presence—"

"…Jiu-er?"

The word left Shen Yuan before he knew he meant to say it.

The fan stopped halfway through its arc.

Yue Qingyuan's teacup touched the table with a soft click.

The man in green looked at Shen Yuan with an expression of such concentrated disbelief that, under any other circumstances, Shen Yuan might have apologised immediately.

"What did you call me?"

For one terrible second, Shen Yuan wondered whether several months spent travelling alone had finally damaged something essential in his brain.

This was a man.

A cultivator, judging by the sword; an important one, judging by the robes; an extremely dangerous one, judging by the way Yue Qingyuan's attention had sharpened despite the unchanged smile on his face.

He was not a scruffy elderly cat who had spent most of his life pretending to be deaf whenever Shen Yuan wanted him.

It was impossible.

Then the man's left ear twitched.

A tiny, irritated movement.

Shen Yuan's throat closed.

He had spent years translating language exactly like that.

"Oh my god."

The stranger's eyes narrowed further. "What?"

He took a step before common sense caught up with him. "Oh my god, it really is you."

Yue Qingyuan's hand had moved closer to the hilt of his sword, although so smoothly Shen Yuan might have missed it if he weren't currently noticing everything with painful clarity, and the man in green had shifted his weight in a way that promised Shen Yuan would regret another careless movement.

"Stay where you are."

Shen Yuan stopped, yet one of his hands had already lifted halfway between them—he lowered it.

"Sorry."

The man's brows drew together, and Shen Yuan had the strange impression that the apology had unsettled him more than the approach.

"Sorry," he repeated, wiping quickly beneath one eye when his vision blurred. "You never liked being grabbed without warning."

"This master has never seen you before."

"Yeah." Shen Yuan laughed weakly.

"Shen-gongzi," Yue Qingyuan said, very gently, "this is Qing Jing Peak Lord Shen Qingqiu."

Shen Yuan finally dragged his attention away long enough to look at him.

Shen Qingqiu.

The name was familiar. It should have been considerably more important than the single syllable currently repeating itself inside Shen Yuan's skull; he had heard stories during his travels, some admiring and others considerably less so, about Qing Jing's scholarly peak lord and his famously unpleasant disposition.

Somewhere behind the name was another impression too, something about scum and villains and a level of outrage that felt intimately his own despite Shen Yuan having absolutely no idea what it referred to.

Shen Yuan looked back.

"Shen Jiu," he tried, letting the syllables settle on his tongue.

The fan creaked beneath fingers that had tightened around its ribs.

Shen Yuan's heart stumbled.

"Jiu-er," he said again, softer now.

Something crossed Shen Qingqiu's face and vanished before Shen Yuan could identify it. His gaze remained fixed on Shen Yuan, however, far more intent than before, as though the insulting stranger had unexpectedly become a problem requiring serious consideration.

Beside them, Yue Qingyuan inhaled. "Xiao Jiu?"

"Don't call me that." The answer came quickly enough to cut.

Yue Qingyuan's mouth closed.

His expression barely changed, but the hand that had been resting beside his teacup withdrew into his sleeve.

Shen Yuan looked from one man to the other.

Interesting.

More interesting still was the fact that Shen Qingqiu appeared to notice it too, because his gaze flicked briefly towards Shen Yuan before returning with a faint crease between his brows.

He had objected to Xiao Jiu.

He had said nothing whatsoever about Jiu-er.

"What exactly," Shen Qingqiu asked, each word polished sharp, "do you imagine you know about this lord?"

Shen Yuan's laugh came out more breathless than intended.

"That you hate being picked up."

Yue Qingyuan blinked.

Shen Qingqiu looked as though Shen Yuan had begun speaking in demonic language.

"And that you bite when people try to take things away from you. Cardboard boxes especially." Shen Yuan was aware that this was becoming increasingly humiliating, but there seemed little dignity left to save. "Once it was a piece of plastic. You got me right here—"

He looked down automatically towards his hand.

There was no scar, why would there be? This wasn't even the same body.

Shen Qingqiu had followed his gaze, resting on Shen Yuan's knuckles for a second longer than necessary before snapping back to his face.

"What nonsense."

"You bit hard."

"You pulled too hard."

Silence.

Shen Yuan stared, feeling hope unravel in his chest.

Shen Qingqiu stared back.

Very slowly, the fan rose to cover the lower half of his face.

Yue Qingyuan's attention moved between them.

Shen Yuan could hear his own pulse.

"What did you say?"

"This lord said nothing."

"You absolutely did."

"I said your story is ridiculous."

"No, you said—"

"Are all wandering cultivators this irritating, or are you exceptional?"

That almost did it.

Shen Yuan laughed despite the pressure behind his eyes, because there was that expression again, that minute tightening around the nose that he had seen whenever a promising packet turned out to contain medicine instead of treats.

"You've still got the same horrible personality."

"Horrible?" He sounded offended.

"You've always been like this."

Shen Qingqiu's fan snapped shut.

Yue Qingyuan shifted one foot forward.

Shen Yuan noticed because he was already expecting violence himself, but none came. Shen Qingqiu simply looked at him, irritation still written plainly across his face and something else beneath it that Shen Yuan could not name.

Confusion, perhaps. Or recognition, although Shen Yuan hardly dared call it that yet.

Shen Yuan raised his hand again and this time he stopped well before reaching him.

Yue Qingyuan said, "Shen-gongzi—"

"Stay out of it."

Shen Qingqiu did not look away from Shen Yuan when he said it.

An awkward silence followed.

Yue Qingyuan's expression remained composed, but whatever he had been about to say disappeared; only his eyes moved, first to Shen Qingqiu and then to Shen Yuan's suspended hand.

Shen Yuan swallowed.

"I won't touch you if you don't want me to."

The fan shifted against Shen Qingqiu's palm.

For several seconds Shen Yuan thought that would be the end of it.

Then Shen Qingqiu's chin turned slightly aside.

He had not stepped away.

That was enough.

Shen Yuan closed the remaining distance slowly, brushing the backs of his fingers against the black hair beside Shen Qingqiu's temple. It was absurdly smooth, nothing like the coarse fur his body remembered expecting, and for a moment that difference nearly broke whatever spell had caught him.

Then his thumb moved behind Shen Qingqiu's ear.

Shen Qingqiu leaned into the touch.

It was barely anything.

A fraction of an inch, gone almost as soon as it happened, except Shen Yuan knew that movement.

He knew it.

Shen Qingqiu seemed to realise what he had done at the same time, jerking away sharply enough for his hair to slide from Shen Yuan's fingers.

The tips of his ears had gone red.

Shen Yuan made a strangled sound and covered his mouth.

"Say it," Shen Qingqiu warned, lifting his fan like a weapon, "and this master will remove your tongue."

Shen Yuan shook his head.

"Are you laughing?"

He was trying very hard to.

What came out instead was a sob.

The fan lowered.

For once, Shen Qingqiu had nothing immediate to say.

Shen Yuan rubbed furiously at his face. "You really are him."

Something about those words changed the way Shen Qingqiu looked at him.

His eyes seemed to lose focus for a moment, fixing somewhere slightly past Shen Yuan's shoulder, and his fingers loosened around the fan before tightening again. Shen Yuan watched a strange sequence of expressions move across his face: suspicion, irritation, something almost startled, then irritation again as though the second feeling had personally offended him.

"Jiu-er?"

Shen Qingqiu's gaze snapped back.

His lips parted—nothing came out.

Yue Qingyuan's voice was very quiet behind Shen Yuan.

"Xiao Jiu."

Shen Qingqiu flinched as though the sound itself had touched him, not unlike a hissing, feral cat.

"I told you not to call me that."

The rebuke was immediate, but Yue Qingyuan did not answer. Shen Yuan glanced sideways and found the sect leader looking at Shen Qingqiu with an expression he could not begin to decipher; there was something almost painfully gentle in it, yet the line of his mouth had tightened, and for some reason he looked as though he had just been handed something precious in precisely the wrong shape.

Shen Yuan looked away.

Whatever existed between those two was clearly none of his business.

Then Shen Qingqiu said, "You disappeared."

Everything else vanished.

Shen Yuan turned back.

"What?"

Shen Qingqiu looked furious. His grip on the fan was hard enough that Shen Yuan could see the tendons along the back of his hand.

"You disappeared," he repeated and there was accusation in it now.

Something in Shen Yuan cracked.

"Oh."

Not his best contribution to a conversation, admittedly.

Shen Qingqiu reached out so abruptly Shen Yuan almost recoiled, then found fingers locked around his wrist.

The grip hurt.

He didn't pull away.

"I waited."

Behind them came the faint scrape of porcelain.

Shen Yuan couldn't make himself look.

"I'm sorry."

"Useless."

"I know."

"Idiot."

"Yeah."

Shen Qingqiu's thumb pressed once against Shen Yuan's pulse.

"You took too long."

A wet laugh escaped Shen Yuan before he could stop it.

"You're one to talk."

That should have earned him the fan.

Instead, Shen Qingqiu's mouth tightened. For a moment his eyes looked almost bright, though he turned his face away before Shen Yuan could decide whether he had imagined it, and the fingers around Shen Yuan's wrist loosened without actually releasing him.

That, more than anything, made Shen Yuan's chest hurt.

He lifted his free hand.

This time he stopped before touching him.

Shen Qingqiu noticed immediately.

His gaze dropped to Shen Yuan's fingers and remained there long enough that Shen Yuan nearly withdrew them, suddenly embarrassed by his own certainty. This was absurd. He had met this man less than half an hour ago. Shen Qingqiu had already threatened him several times, had apparently forgotten most of whatever Shen Yuan thought he remembered, and was still gripping his wrist hard enough that a mortal would probably have bruised.

Yet when Shen Yuan's hand began to fall, Shen Qingqiu's fingers tightened.

"Well?"

Shen Yuan blinked. "Well what?"

The look he received suggested that Shen Yuan had somehow failed an examination whose questions had never been provided.

Then Shen Qingqiu tilted his head.

Barely.

Shen Yuan's throat closed.

He reached for him again, sliding his fingers carefully into the dark hair behind his ear, and this time Shen Qingqiu did not recoil when his eyes closed.

The gesture was achingly familiar.

Everything else was not.

There was no fur beneath Shen Yuan's hand, no warm little skull fitting neatly into his palm, and no tail twitching irritably somewhere beyond his field of vision. Shen Qingqiu was a man, with a sword at his waist and old anger written into the lines of his body, a man whose life Shen Yuan knew nothing about and whose expression suggested he would rather bite through his own tongue than admit that any of this felt natural.

But his head had tipped towards Shen Yuan's hand in exactly the same way.

Apparently some things survived anything.

Shen Yuan swallowed.

"Jiu-er."

Shen Qingqiu's eyes opened.

He said nothing.

That alone felt like permission.

Only then did Shen Yuan remember that they were not alone.

Yue Qingyuan stood where he had been throughout the entire disaster, one hand resting loosely against the edge of the table. His expression was composed, but the cup beside him had shifted several inches from where Shen Yuan remembered it being, a thin crescent of tea staining the wood beneath it.

Shen Yuan immediately felt intrusive, which was impressive considering he was currently the one with his hand in another man's hair.

He started to pull away.

Shen Qingqiu caught his wrist.

Again.

Shen Yuan looked down at the fingers closing around him, then back up.

"What?"

"You are staying."

It took Shen Yuan a moment to realise this was apparently a declaration rather than a question.

"I am?"

"You travelled here alone."

"Yes, but—"

"And no one is expecting you elsewhere."

Shen Yuan frowned. "Not immediately."

"Then there is no problem."

"There are at least several problems with that logic."

Shen Qingqiu looked entirely unconcerned.

From somewhere behind them came a quiet breath that might have been amusement, though when Shen Yuan glanced over, Yue Qingyuan did not look amused.

"Shen-shidi," he said, "Shen-gongzi may already have arrangements of his own."

The hand around Shen Yuan's wrist tightened.

"He can change them."

"Can he?"

The question was gentle.

Something in Shen Qingqiu's face hardened.

For one strange moment the room seemed to hold considerably more history than Shen Yuan had been informed of, and he became acutely aware that he had stumbled into the middle of something without knowing where its beginning was.

Shen Qingqiu turned back towards him.

"You came here looking for something."

"The records, yes."

"Not those."

Shen Yuan's breath caught.

Shen Qingqiu looked faintly annoyed at himself.

The silence stretched.

Then his thumb moved once over Shen Yuan's pulse, so lightly Shen Yuan might have missed it if he hadn't been paying attention.

"You came looking for me."

It was not entirely true.

Shen Yuan had come for dusty records and probably an argument with some archivist. He had not known Shen Qingqiu existed in any way that mattered to him until the man walked through the door.

And yet.

He looked at the face in front of him, at the eyes he did not know and the expression he somehow did, and found that correcting him felt impossible.

"Maybe I did," Shen Yuan said, and was surprised by how true it felt.

Shen Qingqiu went quiet.

Behind them, porcelain clicked softly against wood.

Shen Yuan carefully did not look.

"Then you're coming with me," Shen Qingqiu said.

His tone had regained some of its usual sharpness, but Shen Yuan was beginning to understand that this meant very little.

"That still sounds suspiciously like kidnapping."

"That's absurd, you're not a kid."

"So becoming human made you a pedant. Good to know."

Shen Qingqiu's steps faltered.

Shen Yuan almost regretted saying it.

Then the grip around his wrist pulled him half a step closer instead.

"He is coming with me," Shen Qingqiu said instead.

This time the words were directed past Shen Yuan.

Yue Qingyuan did not answer immediately.

Shen Yuan glanced between them.

Something had changed in the sect leader's face. The smile was still there, faint and gentle, but his eyes had dropped to Shen Qingqiu's hand around Shen Yuan's wrist and stayed there for a beat too long.

"Are you sure? Shen-shidi, you don't know—"

Shen Qingqiu's fingers shifted.

"He is mine," he hissed out.

Shen Yuan stopped breathing.

For the first time since they met, Shen Qingqiu looked genuinely caught off guard by himself.

The fan lifted slightly, as if he might hide behind it, but pride apparently won before it reached his face.

"He came looking for me," Shen Qingqiu added coldly. "Therefore he will leave with me."

Shen Yuan could have pointed out that this was neither a recognised rule of hospitality nor a remotely sensible conclusion.

He could also have pointed out that he belonged to himself, thank you very much.

Instead his mind had snagged helplessly on the previous sentence.

He is mine.

Once, many years ago and impossibly far away, Shen Yuan had said something remarkably similar while clutching a furious kitten to his chest as his siblings complained that he was hogging the new cat.

He's mine. Get your own.

Jiu-er had scratched his chin five seconds later.

Shen Yuan laughed.

It came out unsteady.

Shen Qingqiu's eyes narrowed. "What?"

"Nothing."

"You're laughing."

"Maybe a little."

"I can still change my mind."

"No, you can't."

That slipped out before Shen Yuan thought about it.

Shen Qingqiu stared at him.

So did Yue Qingyuan.

Shen Yuan felt heat crawl up his neck but, having already destroyed whatever dignity he'd brought to Cang Qiong with him, decided there was no point recovering it now.

"You waited," he said more quietly. "Didn't you?"

Something in Shen Qingqiu's face closed.

His hand did not let go.

Shen Yuan smiled.

"All right. I'll come with you."

The tension beneath Shen Qingqiu's fingers eased so suddenly that Shen Yuan realised only then how tightly he had been holding him.

For a moment nobody spoke.

Then Yue Qingyuan said, very softly, "Qing Jing is beautiful this time of year."

Shen Yuan looked at him.

There was warmth in the man's expression. Real warmth, he thought.

It just seemed to hurt him.

Shen Yuan didn't understand why, and the feeling that he was looking at something private made him lower his eyes.

"Thank you, Yue-zhangmen."

Shen Qingqiu gave an irritated click of his tongue. "For what? Zhangmen-shixiong has done nothing."

Yue Qingyuan's smile shifted.

"Xiao Jiu—"

"Don't call me that."

The answer came instantly.

It was sharp enough that Shen Yuan winced on Yue Qingyuan's behalf, but the sect leader only lowered his gaze for a moment before inclining his head.

"Of course."

Shen Yuan looked between them again.

There were clearly several lifetimes' worth of problems there, none of which he had any business trying to untangle on his first day.

Shen Qingqiu tugged him towards the door.

Shen Yuan followed for two steps before an impulse made him glance back.

Yue Qingyuan was still watching them.

Not Shen Yuan, he realised—Shen Qingqiu.

The expression vanished the moment their eyes met, smoothed effortlessly back into something warm and courteous, and Shen Yuan suddenly felt certain that whatever had happened in this room had been both very good and very cruel to him.

He had no idea what to do with that knowledge.

So he let Shen Qingqiu pull him into the corridor.

The hand around his wrist remained.

"Jiu-er?"

Shen Qingqiu turned immediately.

It was so quick, so instinctive, that neither of them seemed prepared for it.

Shen Yuan felt his mouth curve.

Shen Qingqiu's eyes narrowed.

"What?"

"Nothing, just wanted to hear your voice."

"Idiot." There was no real heat behind it.

Shen Yuan let himself be pulled along the mountain path, watching green sleeves move in the breeze and the fingers around his wrist shift occasionally as though checking that he was still there.

For years, he had accused Jiu-er of ignoring him.

He had called from doorways, from across rooms, from beside a bowl of food, and Jiu-er had perfected the art of hearing every word while behaving as though Shen Yuan did not exist.

Perhaps that had never meant he wasn't listening.

Perhaps Shen Yuan should have known better.

After all, when it mattered, Jiu-er had always found his way back to him.

This time, he had simply taken a little longer.