Zhou Fuxue did not sleep a wink that night.
Shen Di’an had warned him over and over not to go to the Rizhao Great Hall and add to Mingzhu’s troubles. Unable to sleep in his own courtyard, he had made his way to Mingzhu’s courtyard instead, meaning to wait for his return.
Insecurity was woven into Zhou Fuxue’s bones. Even knowing that someone as careless as Mingzhu wouldn’t mind him entering his room, he still felt too ill at ease to go in, and simply sat on the covered walkway, hugging his knees.
Zhou Fuxue tilted his head, studying the wilting flower beside him, and marveled at how strange he had become. He had known Mingzhu for less than a month, yet the sharp edges he had taught himself to raise—the armor of a childhood spent being bullied—always softened without his consent whenever he came up against that grinning face.
He could show anyone else a coldness that repelled them a thousand miles away, but against Mingzhu he could never manage more than three sharp words. As he studied the flower, Zhou Fuxue racked his brains for the reason, idly dipping his fingers in the water beaded on the railing and scrawling characters across the walkway’s boards—methodically listing out a whole heap of Mingzhu’s flaws first.
—Talks nonsense. Never takes anything seriously. Dissolute and rakish. Sloppy. Oh, and never attends morning lessons.
Even Zhou Fuxue hadn’t expected Mingzhu to possess so many despicable failings. After a moment’s silence, he wiped the water marks from the board at once and racked his brains anew—this time for Mingzhu’s virtues.
A long while later, the water on his hands had dried, and he still could not produce a single one.
Zhou Fuxue: “…”
After much deliberation, he finally traced the root of the matter to Mingzhu’s face being a good three parts thicker than the corner of a city wall. In ten years of life, Zhou Fuxue had never once met anyone whose cheek could rival his Eldest Senior Brother’s.
Having worked this out, Zhou Fuxue finally relaxed, satisfied that he wasn’t treating someone with not one redeeming quality any differently.
He thought: I don’t care about him. I’m only fulfilling my duty as a junior brother.
He thought a while longer, then murmured to himself, as if to convince himself, “Call it repayment for him bailing me out at morning lessons.”
With that debt squared, he felt marvelous all over.
Congratulations all around—the “bailout” was officially repaid.
But then he said, “Then what about him carrying me back from the Longevity Hall? Or his Body-Protection Charm saving my life in the Abandoned Sword Tomb? What about those two?”
…Fine. Those could be repaid later.
If Shen Di’an had been there, he’d have dragged Mingzhu over by the collar and roared at Zhou Fuxue, showing him what real quibbling looked like.
Zhou Fuxue dozed fitfully under the walkway, knees hugged to his chest, and at first light was jolted awake by the sound of the courtyard gate being shoved open. He started, scrambled up, and hurried to look outside.
The rain was still falling, hanging like a sparse curtain, everything wreathed in mist. Mingzhu came picking through the haze in red robes beneath an umbrella. Perhaps believing no one was about, that bewitching face held no expression at all—feathered lashes lowered, strangely cold.
Zhou Fuxue stood on the walkway watching him and said blankly, “Senior Brother?”
Mingzhu, climbing the steps, seemed to snap awake. He raised his eyes, gazed at Zhou Fuxue blankly for a heartbeat—then a smile rippled across his expressionless face. He quickened his pace up the steps. “Good morning, Little Thirteen. Why are you up so early? Off to morning lessons?”
Zhou Fuxue didn’t mention having waited all night, only asked, “How is your wound, Senior Brother? Has Master cooled off?”
“I’m fine. I stopped by your Tenth Senior Brother’s for medicine before coming back. Nothing serious.” Mingzhu ruffled his hair and pushed the door open for him. “Of course Master has cooled off—why else would he have let me come home?”
Zhou Fuxue nodded glumly. Seeing Mingzhu’s cracked, bloodless lips, he considerately poured him a cup of water.
Mingzhu sat in a chair, eyes narrowed, watching Zhou Fuxue with a gaze as benevolent as a father’s—brimming with pride. Leaning back comfortably, he sighed, “Little Thirteen really is the best. All those other junior brothers are ungrateful wolves that can’t be raised to love you—forget pouring me water; it’s more like I wait on them.”
Zhou Fuxue said, “Don’t lean back. Doesn’t your back hurt?”
Mingzhu drank lazily. “Your Tenth Senior Brother, if nothing else, has exactly one skill worth mentioning on his entire person: medicine. After his treatment, the pain stopped ages ago.”
Zhou Fuxue remained unconvinced.
Worried that Mingzhu was slapping his face swollen to play the rich man, Zhou Fuxue skipped morning lessons for once and stayed at his side the whole day, giving Mingzhu a true taste of the pampered life—clothes reached for, meals delivered to hand.
In the afternoon, the ungrateful wolf Lu Qingkong finally learned from the other disciples that Eldest Senior Brother had been made to kneel all night for trespassing in the Abandoned Sword Tomb. After long deliberation, he clutched a small wooden box and dawdled his way to Buzhiya.
Mingzhu, having lost so much blood and then stood in cold wind all night, had inevitably come down with a burning fever despite his sturdy constitution, drifting dazed and dim. Zhou Fuxue bustled about feeding him medicine and pressing a wet cloth to his forehead; only after a long while did the fever stabilize.
By the time Lu Qingkong arrived, Mingzhu was asleep. Zhou Fuxue sat on the doorstep reading one of the commoner storybooks taken from his Eldest Senior Brother’s desk; whatever its contents, his face flushed scarlet and his fingers trembled, as if he wanted to hurl the shameless book into the yard.
Lu Qingkong: “Where’s Senior Brother?”
The sight of him reminded Zhou Fuxue of the unearned calamity Mingzhu had suffered on his account, and he had no intention of offering a pleasant face. “Go back. Senior Brother has retired.”
Lu Qingkong frowned. “Retired in broad daylight? Move. Let me in—I have business with him.”
Zhou Fuxue shot to his feet, arms spread to block the door, glaring coldly. “Senior Brother caught a chill last night; his fever hasn’t broken… What—what are you doing?”
Lu Qingkong was a contrary, defiant creature by nature, and being obstructed again and again had long since exhausted his patience. Exploiting his height, he seized Zhou Fuxue by the collar, flung him aside, and barged straight through, slapping the door open as he entered.
Zhou Fuxue had always been slight; though he’d finally gained a little flesh after half a month on Rizhao Mountain, he was still no match for the full-grown Lu Qingkong. Caught off guard, he was flung onto the walkway, nearly landing flat on his back.
By the time he scrambled up, grinding his teeth, Lu Qingkong was already inside.
Lu Qingkong charged in, slapping the door aside. “Mingzhu, I heard that this time you—”
He swept aside the gaudy beaded curtain strung from jades of every color; it clattered and chimed, tremendously noisy. But before he could finish, he saw Mingzhu lying on the couch, face corpse-pale.
Lu Qingkong sucked in a breath; the hand holding the curtain froze, terrified of making any louder sound.
Zhou Fuxue came storming up from behind, and at the sight his fury boiled over. Throwing all caution aside, he marched up and shoved Lu Qingkong back, snarling, “You—out!“
Lu Qingkong staggered back two steps, caught off guard; the curtain slipped from his fingers and chimed again.
Mingzhu, sleeping fitfully, was woken by the racket anyway. Cracking his eyes open, he beheld the tableau of Zhou Fuxue and Lu Qingkong locked together—Lu Qingkong shoving Zhou Fuxue out by the shoulders while Zhou Fuxue, fury written across his face, clutched Lu Qingkong’s waist sash in a death grip. For the moment they were dead even; by the look of it, they’d been at it a good while.
Mingzhu struggled upright at once. “Hey, what’s going on here? Good heavens, why are you two brawling in my room? Trying to tear your senior brother’s house down around him?”
Zhou Fuxue had Lu Qingkong’s sleeve in his teeth, eyes red with rage. “He—woke you!”
Lu Qingkong sneered and delivered an unceremonious kick to Zhou Fuxue’s knee, saying through his teeth, “What I do is no business of a little whelp like you. Scram!“
Zhou Fuxue bit down hard on his wrist.
Mingzhu: “…”
Weak all over, head pounding, he floundered out of bed and forcibly pried the two whelps apart—earning a fiery scratch down his own arm from Zhou Fuxue in the process.
Some time later, Zhou Fuxue sat cold-faced on the walkway outside, cradling the half-drowned flower Mingzhu raised, eyes darting glance after glance through the carved window.
Lu Qingkong’s wrist bore a bloody bite mark, seeping slowly. Mingzhu pressed a hand to his forehead and rummaged through the cabinet forever before finding some leftover medicine, frowning as he dabbed it onto the wound.
“That little whelp—actually learned to bite,” Mingzhu muttered under his breath. “Does it hurt?”
Lu Qingkong was constitutionally incapable of admitting defeat; hurt or not, he would never say so. He shook his head, expressionless.
As Mingzhu bandaged the wound, he marveled inwardly. Zhou Fuxue always seemed so cold-faced and cold-hearted, playing the solemn little adult—Mingzhu truly hadn’t imagined he had such a childish side: unable to win a fight, so he’d learned to bite, like a little wolf pup.
Feeling Mingzhu’s scalding fingers moving over his wrist, Lu Qingkong seemed on the verge of saying something, then swallowed it back down.
Mingzhu lowered his lashes, winding white gauze around the wrist. The fever must have risen again—his eyelids were burned crimson, his lips bloodless, even his exhaled breath scorching.
Having patched the wound hastily, Mingzhu flung himself back onto the bed, dizzy and foggy. He raised one hand, pressing the back of it to his forehead, chin tilted up, listless. “I know you don’t come to me without something important. Out with it—what is it this time?”
Lu Qingkong pressed his thin lips together; a trace of sheepishness surfaced on that ever-gloomy face. He set the little wooden box he’d been cradling onto the couch and gently undid the delicate clasp on its side, revealing a jumble of odds and ends—all, by the look of them, exquisite little trinkets.
Mingzhu perked up, reaching in to sift through them. “Oho, I know this one—always treasured on your nightstand, guarded by a formation array and everything. And this one—your Mechanical Clasp, the one you wouldn’t let me so much as touch.”
With every item he named, Lu Qingkong’s ears reddened another degree; the hands gripping the box trembled faintly.
Mingzhu counted through the box’s contents like a public execution, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “Aren’t these all your favorite things? You’ve emptied out the family vault. Junior brother, are you presenting these as betrothal gifts?”
Lu Qingkong’s neck went stiff as he refused to look at him, ears red enough to bleed. Striving for composure, he stammered, “Th-this time it was my… my fault, getting you punished by Master. I apologize. These are all my favorite treasures. Y-you can pick any of them.”
Mingzhu: “Ho!”
For Lu Qingkong—a boy of such twisted temperament, who loved nothing in this world but iron and mechanisms—to willingly give up these things of his own accord… Mingzhu began to wonder whether the fever had him hallucinating.
Having said his piece, Lu Qingkong shut his eyes and would look no more, hands trembling lightly in his sleeves—whether afraid Mingzhu would refuse, or afraid he would pick away everything he loved most.
Watching that expression of mingled fear and dread, Mingzhu nearly died laughing. But he feared that if he laughed aloud, Lu Qingkong would fly into a humiliated rage and deck him, so he coughed dryly and swallowed it down.
Lu Qingkong said, “Have you chosen or not?”
Mingzhu reached into the box and plucked out an exquisite long kite’s skeletal frame no bigger than two finger joints, pinching it curiously. “This is that long kite we caught in the Withered Wood Forest, isn’t it? I remember your eyes practically catching fire when you saw it—you fought tooth and nail to snatch it up. What, you can bear to give me even this?”
Lu Qingkong’s expression was one of unmistakable, excruciating reluctance—the pain of parting very nearly brought tears—but he still nodded through gritted teeth. “Th-these are all my favorites. Take whichever one you want.”
Mingzhu: “Hmm…”
He made a show of rummaging through the box, apparently agonizing over the choice. Every “hmm” made Lu Qingkong’s shoulders jerk; it almost gave Mingzhu a bully’s guilt.
Lu Qingkong was like a man with a fell blade hanging above his neck, waiting in terror for the blow to fall, fear and dread churning together.
At last, a hand gently ruffled his hair, mussing those meekly-hanging long strands into a bird’s nest. Lu Qingkong’s eyes flew open and he shot Mingzhu a glare on instinct.
Far from cowed, Mingzhu only ruffled harder, laughing. “You—any ordinary day, so much as brushing one of your magic artifacts earns an hour of roaring abuse. If I took your most treasured prize, you’d probably chase me through my dreams and murder me at midnight—ai, and your senior brother isn’t even blaming you. Why carve the flesh from your own body to bring me the things you love?”
Lu Qingkong pressed his lips together and bore the ruffling motionless, saying quietly, “You… you brought me back lots of things from the Abandoned Sword Tomb…”
Mingzhu said, “That was just on the side. I don’t really know what materials you need for your artifacts and mechanisms, so I grabbed a messy pile of things. I’ve been meaning to ask—can you actually use them?”
Lu Qingkong nodded. “I can. Th-thank you, Senior Brother.”
In five or six years on Rizhao Mountain, this was the first time Mingzhu had heard the boy say something soft. He decided the wounds he’d suffered had been worth it after all.
Mingzhu said, “No need to thank me. Just pack those things back up. Tsk tsk—does your senior brother strike you as the sort who takes what others prize?”
Lu Qingkong, repacking at lightning speed, answered, “Yes.”
Mingzhu: “…”
Lu Qingkong looked up—relieved, apparently, of the duty of carving flesh, he reverted at once to his usual sharp-tongued self, skewering with practiced ease: “Didn’t you snatch the Kuayu Sword from Hundred Swords Mountain in the first place? We ran into the Stele Human Face on Hundred Swords Mountain—the moment it saw my Rizhao Robe, it tried to pin us dead. That was your doing too, wasn’t it, Eldest Senior Brother?”
Mingzhu: “…Er. Are you hungry? Your senior brother will go cook for you?”
Lu Qingkong: “…”
Judging by that guilty expression, Lu Qingkong knew the face on Hundred Swords Mountain had told the truth. But he had always favored kin over principle, so he didn’t press it. He was just about to pack the long kite away when a thunderclap split the sky outside, startling him so badly that his hand slipped and pressed down on the long kite’s wing.
The next instant, the half-palm-sized long kite reverted to its true massive form, bursting straight through Mingzhu’s entire house. Wood shards and dirt rained down as the roof came apart, burying them all beneath a stretch of ruins in a breath.
The long kite raised its head and gave a long shriek, the piercing cry carrying across all of Rizhao Mountain.
