Chapter Text
-
Three days after Gusu’s orphan foundlings are welcomed into the Cloud Recesses as their own, it rains: the type that turns thick and heavy in the turn of a second and obscures everything. It drips against the ridges of the tiled roof, a tinkling rhythm that makes way for heavy splatters and rolls into rivers down the outside walls.
It rains, it rains, it rains, and then: it stops.
The calm settles, the mountain mist gathers, and the flock of bushy terracotta partridges once again come to peck at the trimmed gardens beyond Wangji’s reading room window.
No more than an incense stick later, the door to his office slams open, wide paper slats trembling with the weight of Wei Ying’s long-legged stride.
“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying cries with his entrance. Already, his words run in streams, crossing, halting, and then—and then, and—, barely a pause for a breath. When his shin catches on the curling wooden lip of Wangji’s desk, he altogether sinks to the ground, red-cheeked and floppy-limbed. “Ouch,” he says. And then: “Mercy for your poor Wei Ying.”
The rain has sunk into Wei Ying’s clothes, soaked his hair in thick clumps over his shoulder. The collar of his inner robes is painted translucent against his neck, visions of skin showing gauzy through the silk. Later, Wangji thinks, he will comb through his hair and press his fingertips to the soft underside of his jaw.
“Wei Ying,” he says.
Wei Ying drags a noise of frustration through his chest, sticking out his legs in two clear directions. “Did you see, Lan Zhan? Did you?”
Wangji hums. “I did.”
From here, Wangji can see a slither of the courtyard outside the cluster of buildings for junior schooling. When the skies had opened, he’d glimpsed the children—who’d been standing in two wobbly lines in front of the central pavilion—scatter like pond ducks. And he’d heard Wei Ying, voice pitched high: Don’t run! Aiya! Aiya!! What are you—? So scared of a little rain?
Wei Ying sits up, dripping rainwater onto Wangji’s desk. “You didn’t help,” he accuses, and he sighs with the weight of it—a winsome little noise that has the corners of Wangji’s mouth tightening.
“Hanguang-jun,” Wei Ying says, “leaving your poor little husband unhelped and alone. What would your pupils think? Are you ashamed?”
Wangji replies, “I’ve committed an unspeakable act.”
Wei Ying smirks, leaning forward. The desk between them hosts Wangji’s writing utensils and his half-drafted letters. His eyes carry over them, curiosity sharpening his gaze.
“Is this it?” Wei Ying asks. “The report?”
“Not in its entirety.” Wangji turns the parchment over. “We thought it may be best to divide the reports to account for each sect, binding them together later.”
“We?”
“Shufu has volunteered his recommendations,” Wangji says. “To minimise any potential offence caused.”
Wei Ying breathes out a laugh, though he does not lift his eyes from the page. “Lao Lan’s diplomacy is second only to Lan Zhan’s, but he is less likely to cause offence with Jiang Cheng—twenty-three spirits?”
“Clusters of spirits. They spread across the western river basins.”
“And the offence caused?”
“It follows a procession from Yi’an to Yunmeng.”
Wei Ying nods. “So,” he says. He presses the tip of his pink tongue to the back of his teeth. “There is no other discernible pattern—no other notable event save for Jiang Cheng’s wedding two seasons past. Is that it?”
“Mn.” Wangji agrees, returning to his writing. “Yunmeng Jiang have been swift and diligent in their suppression. But now the issue is beyond the territory.”
Wei Ying presses both palms to his face, pushing in on the hollows of it until his cheeks bunch and his lips pucker. “What’s your verdict, Lan Zhan?”
A beat. “Messy.”
Wei Ying snorts. “And Shufu’s?”
“Unfortunate, unavoidable, and la—”
“—mentable,” Wei Ying groans at the same time. Then he snickers, “You know, I saw a copy of the Erya in the grand library. Shall we gift it to him as our next visiting present, hm? Give him some new words to try out?”
Wangji writes another character. “Do not rob others of knowledge by removing books from the library.”
Wei Ying heaves a sigh, switches tactic. “Lan er-gege,” he begins plaintively, walking two slim fingers across the surface of the table until he can rest his cool fingertips on Wangji’s exposed wrist. “Tell me about the hauntings. Is it truly gruesome? You can tell me, I can handle it—I am a feeble and gentle man, but I’ve steeled my resolve to whatever my husband likes.” He sighs again, a deep breath in through his nose, and a theatrical sweep of his shoulders. His eyes dart over to Wangji in a quick spurt of a movement, even as he hunches over the table and tries to appear disaffected. “Why, this is the reason my poor body is littered with traces of you. Look at me, bruised all so much from Hanguang-jun’s cruel hands.”
“Wei Ying,” Wangji says. But it’s to little avail. Wei Ying has already introduced a little of the bass in his voice that Wangji greedily savours, and when he leans forward, Wangji cannot help but take note of his pretty, chapped lips and the scent of fresh-water rain that clings to the warmth of his skin. “You are audacious.”
“Tell me,” Wei Ying insists. “Are they jawless ghouls? Are they dripping flesh with each step? Terrifying ghosts! Dismembered—” He cuts himself off abruptly—enough that Wangji tenses—and turns around just as a small shadow comes over the door.
There is a child that crosses the threshold, perhaps three or four at first glance, and no taller—Wangji would guess—than Wei Ying’s thigh. Wrapped in pupils’ robes, she is just as drenched as Wei Ying before her.
“Xiao guniang!” Wei Ying exclaims. He sits back with a thump - voice three notes higher, and not a trace of his flirtation left. He draws his brows across his face. “Is that any way to behave? Entering and going as you please? Dripping rainwater all over Hanguang-jun’s delicate room. He’ll have your hide, you know, if you’re not careful—tell those plump little pheasants in Caiyi to carry you away to where naughty children repent. Is that what you want?”
The child’s attention focuses entirely on Wei Ying, even as she ignores him. She takes quick, listing footsteps, heavy with intent and sure in her direction, like the physicality of walking is simply an obstacle. In one round fist, she clutches a tattered piece of rain-sodden parchment.
She clambers down beside Wei Ying when she reaches them, falling onto one knee on the inky black sprawl of his robes. The paper is deposited on the desk, accompanied by an indirect glance up and across to Wangji, dismissive. Her gaze sweeps across the letter he is composing—and then at her own piece of paper.
“Xiayi,” Wei Ying beckons as Wangji drains the excess on his brush, depositing it on its small jade rest.
The child does not answer.
Wei Ying touches two fingers to Xiayi’s round cheek to get her attention before, with some effort, bundling her into his lap. To Wangji he says, “This little one is a menace. Has half of the pupils still out there looking for her, I’d bet.” He bounces her a little in his hold. “What were you doing, hm? Are they still scrabbling around for you? Were you—”
“Gege,” Xiayi interrupts.
“Mn!” Wei Ying’s voice is bright and eager. He leans close to hear.
“It’s a ghost?”
Wei Ying blinks in surprise.
“It’s a ghost, gege?”
“How—?” Wei Ying glances up at Wangji, blank and confused. He covers both of Xiayi’s cheeks with his palms, tilting her face until their eyes meet. “You—such nonsense out of such a cute little girl. What ghost? Where did you hear that? There are no ghosts for you, hear me?”
Xiayi considers this for a moment, face squished. She says, “I—?”; says, “Gege, I—?”
Wei Ying looks at her expectantly. And she looks back at him. There is, Wangji discerns, the beginning shades of what could be frustration in her face, two small bushy brows in the slightest furrow above dark eyes. Xiayi’s chest puffs up, she deflates. She pushes Wei Ying’s hands away, and pulses her own hand open and closed, like the right words elude her.
“You saw a ghost?” Wei Ying prompts.
“No.”
“Heard it?”
A headshake.
“Are you the ghost?”
Xiayi pauses, offended. “Not a ghost.”
“Are you sure?” Wei Ying teases. He tilts his head forward so that they’re forehead to forehead. His dark hair spills over his shoulder, quite—but not quite blending with the choppy ends of Xiayi’s hair. “In those clothes you could be,” Wei Ying is saying, “I tell Lan Zhan all the time—don’t I, Lan Zhan?”
A glance over.
Wangji affirms, “Mn.”
And Wei Ying nods, reflexive, like two points on the ends of a knot. “I always tell Lan Zhan—but look at you, xiao guniang, so pretty and perfect, just like my jie—“ Wei Ying pauses, and in the breath of a moment, his eyes dim, and then relighten, locking his thoughts away. “Look at you,” he says now, again. “So pretty, guniang, ahhh.”
Wei Ying crowds his arms around Xiayi, squeezes like there’s too much of her to hold all at once. Xiayi endures it stoically for a moment, then pushes Wei Ying’s hands away.
-
The older disciples come to find Xiayi just before Wangji comes to the close of the report.
There’s a clatter of footsteps outside. Two shadows criss-cross, then Lan Jingyi is crashing into the doorjamb of Wangji’s study with a barely-repressed grunt. Half a breath later Liu Ming is running into the back of him.
“Xiao Xia!” Liu Ming cries, righting herself. She tosses a lock of wavy hair over her shoulder, dark eyes sparkling. Her face is round and lovely, her cheeks red from mirth. “There you are.”
Wei Ying looks delighted. Xiayi, in his lap, looks just as surprised as Wangji feels. “Here,” she confirms.
“Hanguang-jun. Wei qianbei,” Jingyi says, after he’s clambered upright, favouring one shoulder over the other. He cuts a side-long glance at his companion before putting his hands together. They bow.
When Liu Ming lifts herself up, she beams, “You’ve found our lost little baby.”
“The little baby found us,” Wei Ying says proudly. He pats Xiayi’s head. “Smart little one. Outwit fourteen teenagers.”
-
They take the child away with just as much disorder as they entered; Xiayi hiked on Liu Ming’s hip, rain-messy boots testing the limits of the dressmakers’ clothing charms.
The silence seems to ring following their departure. Outside, the mist drifts from one side to the other, drowsy and heavy with latent rain. And the birds are plump rounds of colours blurred against the trees.
Wei Ying chuckles, head nestled in one palm. He doesn’t volunteer anything more, so when Wangji finalises his last line, he says: “She’s lively.”
“Liu Ming?”
“Mn.”
“She’s something.” Wei Ying agrees. “Jingyi can barely keep up with her, and he’s the only one who can!”
“Well matched.”
“Well challenged,” Wei Ying snorts. He watches Wangji arrange and put away his toolkit: the brush head dipped in water, and wiped; the ink-stone placed to one side for later cleaning; and the small water-dropper shaped like a little tadpole on a brisk first swim, elegant tail curving to make way for a finger’s hold.
“She is good,” Wei Ying continues. He looks at Wangji and takes him in whole. “With the children too. She could even be my chaperone.”
Wangji’s hand pauses in motion for only a brief moment. He resumes using the flat of his hand to align his report pages. It’s almost enough to elude Wei Ying’s shrewd gaze.
“Aiya, Lan Zhan—” he says. “There’s no need to look like that.”
“Like what?” Wangji replies mildly.
Wei Ying doesn’t answer, eyes skittering away to look outside. He, Wangji has found, has grown more and more to starting things he doesn’t want to see through. It prickles, a little, under the skin.
“Wei Ying.”
Wei Ying presses his lips in a sarcastic tilt. “Lan Zhan.”
They look at each other.
Unsurprisingly, Wei Ying caves first, with a barely repressed eye roll. He focuses on Wangji’s mouth, on his neck, looks out to the corners of the room, where flutters of dust have started to gather in the eaves.
“It’s good, it’s good,” Wei Ying says, jittery. His fingers strum the hem of his skirt like an instrument. “Lots of little ones around my feet. Who knows how many ideas I can cram into their little heads before their mid-day meal!”
Wangji takes in a breath. “Wei Ying has no need for a chaperone.”
Wei Ying throws him a smile, wide and brittle at the edges. “Ah, but.” The words seem to stop in the long column of his throat, swallowed down two-three times in a row.
Then Wei Ying laughs, tension uncoiling from his shoulders. He leans back, hands flat on the ground behind him. The gentle stretch emphasises the soft swell of his chest, his small waist. His clothes are mostly dried now, soft and rumpled in the aftermath of the earlier deluge. Even whilst damp and dishevelled, Wangji’s breath catches in the base of his throat at the sight of him.
Wei Ying rolls his neck from side to side, and then he moves forward again, sprawling over the low desk.
“It doesn’t look like it’ll rain more today,” he murmurs, eyes fluttering shut, his elbows two sharp points on the desk surface.
Wei Ying looks tired, with the papery thin skin under his eyes tingeing purple in the shadow of his lashes. These are small pouches of tiredness in such an inconsequential way. Wangji had never seen him like this before—back when he oscillated between two extremes.
Wei Ying’s eyes move slowly behind his lids. He absently traces an array with his finger.
Wangji says, “Do not fall asleep at the desk.”
Wei Ying hums.
“Wei Ying.”
“Don’t nag, Lan Zhan.”
Wangji takes another slow, even breath. Beneath the table, he adjusts his position and sends a resounding kick to one of the desk legs. Wei Ying’s upper half slides off the desk with the impact, elbow smarting against the hard floor. He screeches.
Outside, the flock of bamboo partridges startle and fly away.
-
Later, when the darkness is beginning to part with the next day’s dawn, Wangji wakes to an empty bed.
Wei Ying is undoing yesterday’s robes over his body, fingers slow and listless. When he gets in under the covers his skin is cool to the touch, and he presses an icicle of a nose tip to Wangji’s jaw, chuckling low and lazy when he flinches.
Wangji adjusts so that they’re pressed together from top to bottom, Wei Ying’s head on his chest.
“No ghosts?” Wangji asks.
Wei Ying yawns, wide enough that his jaw clicks and his molars glint in the low talisman light. He shakes his head, eyes shut.
“I checked the nursery, and both the dormitories. No ghosts,” Wei Ying murmurs, then he grins, trapping a laugh high in his throat. “But plenty of naughty little Lans out and about.”
Wangji pauses—parts his lips.
“Ah, no need to get so worked up, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying assures, fingers pat—pat—patting over his ribcage. “It was just a little hand-holding behind the back bushes. I put them right to bed after.”
“Put who to bed?”
Wei Ying, suddenly, is an immovable statue, eyes shut and lips pressed tight together.
“Wei Ying,” Wangji says.
He does not get an answer.
-
Within the week, Lan Qiren asks Wangji to guest over Lan Bomen’s lesson with the children whilst they are having tea.
“To introduce them,” he says, gazing out towards the window. “To the interim sect leader. As is appropriate.”
His words are slow and measured—the same slowness and measuredness that he exhibited when he meted out punishments to Wangji and Lan Xichen as children. As they grew, Lan Qiren was perhaps more transparent in his anger, his disappointment, his incredulity at their childish, petty actions. Now, only the bare curl of his fingers before they’re straightened suggests his thoughts.
So, Wangji, with three hanging scrolls rolled up and strapped to his back, is accompanied out of home by Wei Ying.
“—and we’ll meet in the grand hall for the meal—” Wei Ying tells him.
“Yes,” Wangji says.
“—don’t forget to sound things out nice and slowly,” he continues, quick fingers making sure Wangji’s belt lays flush and even against him. “Don’t be taciturn, gege—”
“Yes.”
Wei Ying pauses, eyes darting up to take Wangji in. He narrows his eyes, breath catching ahead of an abandoned thought. Then, he enunciates clearly: “I am not fussing.”
“Mn,” Wangji agrees. And he kisses him soundly, leaving Wei Ying slack-jawed and messy-haired; mouth red and swollen.
Wei Ying clears his throat and fans his face with a hand. “Who’s—who’s scandalous now?” he asks, sleeping robes gaping wide over his flushed chest. “Out! In the open where anybody could see. So audacious, Hanguang-jun.” He pushes at Wangji, inelegant and fruitless. “Be a good boy now and run along, you’ll be late.”
“I will not.”
Wei Ying, indignant, stares at Wangji. He starts, “You—are insatiable,” then, quick as a bird, he darts forward to press three warm kisses on Wangji’s cheek. He’s back inside with the door shut before Wangji can formulate a reaction.
Wangji, presses his fingertips against the hollow of his cheek, heart blustering like it’s been scalded by the warmth of Wei Ying soft mouth. But he wills his legs to move, one in front of the other, until their home is nothing but a minor pull on the edge of a back-lane. Straight-backed, he walks until he reaches the schooling pavilion, with its neat lines and cool tones.
The Osmanthus Room is delegated to an intricately-faced building towards the centre of the sect. What it lacks in size and ostentation, it instead resolves in warmth and comfort. The walls are plain, the woodwork polished to a sullen sheen, and there are no silver trinkets present to excite distraction. It is staid, and it is strict but, all the same, Gusu’s foundlings sit on plush cushions, stuffed with fragrant white jasmine and encased in fine silk brocade, and there is a careful eye on them by a rotating cast of chaperones.
It is tragically characteristic, Wangji thinks, treading slowly between the low desks, for Gusu-Lan to hide its kindness beneath the veneer of rigidity.
Over seven nights have passed since the children arrived, dirt-streaked and hungry, at the sect gates. Wangji had not been part of the scouting party but he had glimpsed their curious eyes peeking out from the sedans carried in. The eldest amongst them wore curiosity veiled in wariness, but the little ones were wide-eyed, taking in everything: from the shoulders of the pupils marching beneath them to the high-tipped roofs around them.
Today, after a good breakfast, they’ve been bundled in away from the cooling winter to begin skill-building their penmanship.
There still lingers a little note of apprehension in the air, for a new place and new expectations. Wangji pauses beside a young boy, no older than seven or eight. He has no name—none that was found—but his soft, ruddy cheeks and large eyes have given rise to Little Round as a sticky endearment.
“Hold your brush vertically and higher upon the shaft,” Wangji says to him. Little Round shakes like a leaf in the summer rain, eyes wide; Wangji almost smiles. “Make the end tip point towards the sky.”
He makes his way like this, across the classroom with encouragement and specially summoned patience. Wangji is a man of the sword, after all, not entirely built for the gentle practice of teaching—no less for the teaching of children plucked from destitution into the lap of elegance, rules, and expectation. It’s why, when one of the older girls flinches as Lan Wangji kneels to her right, he tries not to take it too personally.
Xiao Jing does not lift her eyes higher than his chest, and she mumbles, “Sorry—sorry, Hanguang-jun.”
Wangji gives a curt shake of his head. “No need.”
He does not lean too far into her space, gaze instead sweeping over her neat desk. The girl turns the page over in quick halting motions, tilting it so Wangji can see better. The lines are hesitant, with obsidian ink pooled beneath false starts, but the composition is correct and even.
“Good,” he murmurs, pretending not to see Xiao Jing’s pleased pink flush. “We will continue with the next character. When you are ready.”
It goes on like this as the sun shifts its position, marking its presence through the way it sets elongated patterns across the floor. Wangji sees each child, until there are only two desks remaining for his tour. The closest of which has an occupant with fluttering lashes and a head pillowed on sleeping arms. Lan Wangji walks past her, there will be plenty of time for restraint yet.
When he kneels beside the last desk, there is no flinch this time, just clear, dark eyes and furrowed brows. Just Xiao Xia. Xiayi, as warm as newly fallen dusk.
Her name, written on the roster in the officiant’s spindly hand, is accompanied by quick remarks: Good enough health. Prone to straying.
Everything about Xiayi is small and unassuming, from her mouth to her nose, to her ears. She is smaller, even, than Sizhui was when Wangji bundled him against his chest for the first time.
“Hello,” Wangji says after an awkward stretch of silence. He wonders what he should do with his hands, dithers, and they end up folded on his lap, itching for the comfort of Bichen’s hilt.
Xiayi is a child so still amongst the chaos of her desk; streaks of ink on the underside of her sleeve and all over her fingertips. It’s everywhere, from thick splotches across pilled paper to bloomed stains on one of the wooden paperweights by the side.
She takes an eyeful of this and then turns back to Wangji. “I’m drawing.”
Wangji hums. “I see.” And then, not unkindly, “Though you are supposed to be writing.”
The character for I, me, myself, looms large over the room on a long scroll, hooked on a delicate chain from the ceiling. For the younger ones, there is a cluster of over-large characters written in Wangji’s steady hand: no, one, person.
“I’m—don’t know to do that,” Xiayi says. And then she tilts her head, appraising her mess. “But I can be drawing.”
“You will run out of space,” Wangji reasons. “On your paper.”
Xiayi considers this, eyeing the small slither of unblemished cream amongst the ink, touching it. “Maybe.”
Lan Wangji towers over her, even kneeling down. Xiayi is small and compact, but she doesn’t seem burdened by it. In this tiny moment, he allows himself the liberty of leaning a little closer. “Your strokes are strong.”
“Then—then, I make more space,” Xiayi says instead, fingers sneaking under the edge of the paper. She flips it over to the rougher side, ink splotches already soaked through. “Seeing here?” she asks, using the heavy flat of her hand to smooth it down. “More.”
“Will you use this side for writing?”
Xiayi busies herself with her brush, previously discarded on the bamboo desk mat. The dried scritch, scritch, scritch of it on the rough paper grates. And Wangji does not need to exert any force, just two fingers pinched either side of the brush, to halt its movement. Xiayi’s eyes skitter to his.
“It is unbecoming to ignore others,” Wangji says, and he thinks Wei Ying would be beside himself with the irony of these words from Wangji’s mouth. “Do you agree?”
A breath’s worth of hesitation, his gaze does not leave hers. She nods.
Lan Wangji releases the brush. It does not move. “Will you try for me?”
Xiayi looks at Wangji’s characters at the front of the room. She clutches her brush, flat across her palm with her fist facing up, and draws a patchy horizontal line across the middle of her page. It tilts up a degree at the left.
“Once more,” Lan Wangji instructs. He holds her sleeve and puts his hand across, tapping close to his hand. “Begin from here,” he demonstrates with his index finger, “to here.”
Xiayi’s hair tumbles over her shoulder as she leans forward. She makes a clean attempt at a line, no less patchy and even more crooked.
Wangji makes a show of passing a critical eye over it, aware of the buzzing energy beside him. At last, he hums, and says, emphatically, “Very good.”
Xiayi lets out a blustery exhale, teeth peeking out of her lips as she smiles. She runs over the mark with her hand, pats it once, then twice. And Wangji feels something unknowable settle in himself, like a lock fitted into its proper place—to fit in line with all the other locks, in all their proper places. The end result, he thinks, is satisfactory.
-
“This one, also?” Wangji asks his uncle later, picking up a small leaflet. It has been folded in the style that he prefers, but the half-started creases on the inner pages reveal that it hadn’t been, at first.
Lan Qiren’s desk is crowded with writing utensils, papers, and other trinkets; a small jade oil lamp in the shape of chalice with a dragon resting at the end of its a coiled stem, some weiqi playing stones in a porcelain plate, and two coils of aqua-coloured hair ribbons. This is all placed at odd intervals in and between the small tower of student writings before him. They are stacked in no particular order that Wangji can discern, but his uncle looks over each with considerable care.
He glances up from his current reading. When he sees Lan Kun’s name inked on the front of the essay Wangji holds, he frowns. “Kun-er features far too much exposition and too little analysis.” He picks out an essay three volumes deep into a neat pile. “Take Dong Jihe’s considerations of Lu Ji, her style is perhaps less elegant, but there is still a strong foundation in the argument. It would do Xichen good to see how she is progressing.”
Wangji takes the bound volume of pages, its thick corners beginning to fray. He thumbs over it; roughened skin bumping over roughened paper.
Lan Qiren adds, “She has already been instructed to re-copy her writings a further two times, a reminder to keep her thoughts written well and neatly kept.”
Wangji nods. “I will take it to Xiongzhang.”
The essay, still in his hands, holds heavy in the almost silence. There’s the sharp flutter of paper as Lan Qiren turns pages, the pungency of ink permeating. He thinks of Lan Xichen in his quiet cottage.
“Shufu,” Wangji says, a lungful of air on unanswered questions. They press up, into the bottom of his chest, but he does not realise them. Instead, lowers his eyes and says, “The reports on the river hauntings are progressing well. We should send them out soon.”
His sentence is edged by a long silence. Lan Qiren’s heavy, inscrutable gaze is on him from the other side of the table. There is, if Wangji strains to hear, the last crows from the cicadas outside, distant and unclear. He concentrates on this, even as his skin prickles with heat.
Lan Qiren makes a considering noise in the back of his throat, and throws a distanced glance at the essay in his hand. “There is the Jiang banquet, to be had,” he says. “For the new heir.”
“Yes.”
“It is a good opportunity for us to bind closer ties to the other sects, from our children to theirs. In which case, it may be better for you to accompany our pupils, rather than myself as intended,” he says. “See about taking some carriages for the newest children, the youngest amongst the group will do. It’ll be prudent that you and the older pupils look into the hauntings as you go.”
“Mn,” he says. “Is there anything to note?”
“Nothing but the number, I should imagine. The letters we’ve received suggested it will be a straightforward affair. A lack of elegant planning perhaps, but nothing we cannot quietly settle. Will Lan Sizhui lead?”
Wangji presses his fingertips into the parchment; a slight pressure, barely a movement. “He may not be back in time to do so.”
Lan Qiren’s bristly moustache twitches. “May not?”
“I am…” Wangji pauses. Continues, “Unsure.”
Lan Qiren nods. He cups his chin and smoothes the flat of his finger over his beard. “Liu Ming then, to deputise along you in your journey. It’s about time that she comes up to her more senior responsibilities. She is being considered for first disciple over the new crop of young pupils.” He takes a breath. “And I suppose you will be taking Wei Wuxian.”
Wangji bows his head, nods once. “If he would like.”
Lan Qiren considers this, a slight downturn to his mouth. Wangji arranges the remaining essays in a neat, dense pile.
Whatever Lan Qiren is thinking, he does not share it with Wangji. Instead he looks over the disciple’s writings once more. Finally, he says, “Deliver to Xichen this essay also.”
-
Wangji returns home to find Xiayi sitting behind his desk in the front room. There are a few mushy crumbs of a disassembled cake across the surface, and even more smeared across her face.
Wei Ying is wandering, pacing between the desk and a sectioned snippet of space behind the privacy screen he’s stretched across the eastern side of the room.
“Wei Ying,” Wangji says. He unbuttons the collar of his light travelling cloak.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying exclaims. His smile is radiant. “We’re having tea.” He darts behind the screen, returns with a bronze-sphered pendulum in one hand and a writing brush in the other. “Well,” he elaborates, “Xiao Xia is having tea. I am speaking with the dead.”
“Naturally.”
Wei Ying catches the wryness of his tone, smirking. “Come have tea with us, Hanguang-jun,” he says, even as he turns and retreats behind the screen. “You’ve worked hard today.”
Wangji places his cloak on its stand, and deposits Bichen on her mount. Xiayi’s eyes follow him sedately, and she stuffs a mushy, crumbling ball of cake in her mouth. Behind the screen, he spies two of Wei Ying’s long, squat chests of drawers open, with workbooks and loose papers filled with intricate arrays, and geometrical analyses, and commentary, and formulations on the floor. Wei Ying is stooped over the drawers, searching.
Wangji comes to sit beside Xiayi—on a slither of space to her left—and he’s careful to avoid the crumbs that have tumbled over the edge and scattered across the floor.
He reaches into his qiankun sleeve for his handkerchief and offers it to her. She eyes this, and then stares intently at his face.
Over the minute din of Wei Ying’s rummaging, he says, “Will you use it for me?”
It takes a moment longer for her to move. She reaches for it hesitantly and cleans up messily, the handkerchief scrunched up between her fingers and dragged in uncoordinated swathes across her face.
Wangji takes stock of the desk. There is, in front of Xiayi, a notebook he’d gifted to Wei Ying a handful of night-hunts ago. The page now contains an assortment of lines, dashes, and dots—quick and rushed like she was playing catch up with her thoughts. Like Wei Ying does, eyes bright in the jump between idea to idea.
Xiayi discards the handkerchief in a pile on the edge of the table. She follows his gaze and points one small finger over the page. “Here,” she explains to him. “It’s a writing.”
“Yes,” he agrees. “You have done well to collect your thoughts.”
He brews them another pot of sweet tea. And he pours it into the three drinking bowls when it has sufficiently cooled.
She picks it up carefully, holding it aloft in a shaky grip.
“Xiayi,” Wangji says.
A beat—two. Xiayi takes small kitten sips from the bowl, teeth clinking against the ceramic edge. He doesn’t get an answer.
It’s the silence, Wangji thinks, that pulls at Wei Ying from around the screen and beckons his return. He’s a sweeping vision that arrests attention, dark hair tumbling over his shoulders
“Xiao guniang,” he says. There’s a new heaviness to his face that doesn’t match the light loudness of his tone. Nor that of his movements, as he arranges himself on the frontside of the table and crowds in close to Xiayi. “Hanguang-jun is speaking to you. Be a good girl and answer, hm?”
Xiayi looks at Wei Ying and then at Wangji in turn. She presses her lips together, then looks away, scrunching her hand in her skirt. “Listening now,” she says. Then, a listing question in her voice, stringing together syllables into a wave of sound: “Hanguang-jun?”
“Mn. Will you tell me more about the ghost?”
Xiayi frowns, two wispy brows coming close together. “Ghost?” She looks at Wei Ying, and back at Wangji. “It’s here.”
Wei Ying’s eyes sharpen, he straightens from his slouch. “It’s in here? In this room, Xiayi?”
Wangji watches her—a small, hesitant shake of her head, lips pursed unhappily. He says, “I think she may be asking.”
“Asking,” Wei Ying repeats to himself. His eyes look dark and distant from this angle, and he sweeps the back of his hand over his neck, gathering the mass of his hair to tumble over his shoulder. Then, he adjusts the collar of his robes, and reaches across the table for Wangji’s handkerchief. He brushes it delicately across Xiayi’s face and smiles. “Pretty, pretty guniang,” he says. “You haven’t seen this ghost, have you?”
The tension with which Xiayi holds herself—small shoulders hunched up tight—begins to uncoil some. “Haven’t seen,” she says, relief aerating the words. She endures the steady wipes of the handkerchief. “Feels here.”
Wei Ying hums in agreement, eyes darting up to Wangji. There’s a latent smile on the edge of his lips, small and devastating. His eyes carry the beginning of the excitement he gets when there’s something new to parse, to discover—and Wangji’s belly heats in return.
Wangji lifts his arm, holding his sleeve with one hand as he shifts Xiayi’s drinking bowl closer to her. “Finish your tea.”
He stands shortly after that, returning to his routine. He finishes dressing down, temples tender following the release of his guan. Then he returns to the main room, sweeping past Wei Ying’s low conversing tones with Xiayi, and sits to meditate next to his qin.
Wangji is able to secure a good few moments of calm, of his environment being reduced to nothing but a hazy secondary layer. He focuses on his core, tabulating the swirling mass of energy into something more definitive, concentrating on narrowing it down and circulating it in wide, steady paths.
Quietly, he hears Xiayi ask: “Gege, what is it?”
“Meditating,” Wei Ying says shortly—distanced. “Leave him be, Xiao Xia.”
There’s a long silence following that. Then, the rustling of skirts, a mullish, curious little tone: “I want to see, gege.”
Then, the sharpness of another body falling into his. He’s brought back to the surface, the present crashing in his ears. He opens his eyes just as Wei Ying snaps, “Xiao Xia!”
“It’s quite alright,” Wangji says. To him, to her—to them both perhaps. But then, definitively to Xiayi, he continues, “You can stay. But you must be very quiet.”
Xiayi looks abashed, with her big owl eyes boring into his. He arranges her on his lap, letting her legs stick over the cross of his, and places his hands under hers.
She clutches at Wangji’s index fingers with small chubby hands, knuckles dimpling in the soft skin.
“Take a deep breath,” he says, eyes closing. “Be still.”
It lasts, perhaps, half a ke, before she begins squirming and wriggling. With his thumbs, Wangji presses into the back of her hand, gently but firmly, bringing her attention to her movements. Just as he’d done so with Sizhui, just as his uncle had done so with him.
Each movement merits a press, until the moments in between draw longer and longer. Anytime now, Wangji thinks, tracking the weight of Wei Ying’s footsteps on the other side of the room, anytime now she will grow to the limit of her boredom and slink away.
But Xiayi grows heavier on him. Her back bows into his chest, her head awkwardly placed on his shoulder, fast asleep.
Wangji deepens into his meditation, breaths sure and even. The sharp ruffle of paper drags him closer to the surface, with a shadow across his lids, and the comforting presence of another, his other.
There is a brief displacement of air as Wei Ying lowers himself.
“Aiya,” Wangji hears him sigh. He adjusts Xiayi with careful hands, holding her gently as he pulls out Wangji’s hair from behind her, where the weight of her has been pulling on the strands. Then he lays her carefully back. And he touches warm fingers to the cradle of Wangji’s jaw. There’s a long, quiet stretch after that; Wangji fluctuating between deep and shallow meditation, the proximity of Wei Ying not quite letting him go.
Wei Ying sighs again, corralling Wangji’s attention, effortlessly, effortlessly. “Xiao guniang,” he’s murmuring to himself, “what trouble you will be.”
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