Chapter Text
Lan Zhan has his daily rituals, before the medium shows up.
Each morning, he wakes before the sun rises. He makes his breakfast and tea. He meditates for a half an hour on his small wooden deck; inhales the sea breeze and then exhales it, matching his breath to the ebb and flow of the tides. Most mornings, he does a half hour of yoga flows, to warm his blood and muscles for the day. After he’s fully awake, he checks his email and texts for case leads and emergencies while the rest of the outdoors rustles awake. His house, somewhere between small and quaint, never talks back. It breathes quietly with him and gives him little trouble. Most of the time.
The average goings-on of his days depend. Sometimes it’s a cultivation case, if the location is within the driving distance radius of his home. Other days it’s housekeeping, or taking runs along the coast, or foraging. In the evenings, Lan Zhan makes himself dinner, showers, reads, and then turns into bed early. The next morning, he wakes before dawn in an empty bed with cool white sheets. Again, he resets, and again. All in all, the underlying commonality between one day and the next is that Lan Zhan’s life is almost entirely uneventful.
So it's a little alarming when this routine is disrupted by a ghost.
A particularly angry one, at that. Its presence in the first place is a consequence of what was admittedly an outlier in a long string of unstimulating cases, a spirit-cleansing gone wrong at the house of a client. The spirit seems to be about as happy with its new lodging as Lan Zhan is. Like a spiteful cat, it knocks things over, attempts to destroy the furniture, and leaves Lan Zhan with thin red scratches on his arms. Lan Zhan considers himself a pacifist, but more and more often, he finds himself plagued with sourceless, red-hazed visions of vengeful murder. It had been at the point when he’d woken up in the middle of the night with the taste of blood between his teeth and a voice chanting kill kill kill kill in his head that he’d become duly alarmed and called someone.
It’s an ordinary Saturday, other than the unordinary haunting. Strangely enough, at this point in their relationship, the spirit has become somewhat easy to ignore as Lan Zhan walks through his chores, pinning up sheets to dry on clotheslines on the deck. From the vantage point of his house, the ocean spans as far as the eye can see, a smooth blue stretch. Lan Zhan’s family owns most of this private beach, although none of them except Lan Huan have ever visited it. As a result, ghost notwithstanding, Lan Zhan passes most of his days undisturbed.
It’s another aberration when halfway through his laundry, three bangs ring out on the front door.
For a moment, Lan Zhan thinks he’s hallucinated it, or that the ghost is playing tricks on him again. Then another impatient rap sounds out, and Lan Zhan has no choice but to answer it.
When Lan Zhan opens the door, he’s greeted by a startlingly handsome face. The stranger is a little flushed, panting for breath and sweat collecting on his hairline and between his brows. When he sees Lan Zhan, he flashes a blinding smile, white as the strike of a meteorite. Equivalent impact. Lan Zhan catches it somewhere in his chest, a strange inward tremor.
“Hi,” the man says, still out of breath. “You called for me.”
Lan Zhan stares. After another blank moment, he says, “I did not.”
The man frowns. “My friend said he referred me to you. Nie Huaisang?”
Oh. Yes. Earlier this week, Lan Zhan had called Nie Huaisang, an old family friend, about getting in touch with a medium. If anyone were to have such connections, Nie Huaisang would. Nie Huaisang had promptly given Lan Zhan a name, said he’d be in touch, then hung up. But he wasn’t supposed to be . . .
“I was expecting you tomorrow,” Lan Zhan says.
The stranger — Wei Ying, Lan Zhan remembers in a flash — tilts his head with a puzzled look. “Huaisang said he’d set us up for Sunday.”
Lan Zhan stares more. “Today is Saturday.”
Wei Ying catches himself on the door frame with an elbow and wheezes a little. “Is it?”
It has been some time since Lan Zhan has physically been near another person. His house-ghost has been chanting at him since Lan Zhan first opened the door, but it’s impressing images upon Lan Zhan quite forcefully now, colorful visions of putting something sharp through Wei Ying’s major arteries.
“I apologize in advance,” Lan Zhan says. “The impulse to kill you is quite strong at the moment.”
Wei Ying flares another bright smile at him and winks. “I get that a lot.” He sticks out a hand. “I’m Wei Ying.”
“Lan Zhan,” Lan Zhan says, and takes it.
“I know,” Wei Ying says. He doesn’t let go. “I have to say, Huaisang said you’d be . . .” He makes a vague gesture with his free hand to encompass Lan Zhan, but his eyes don’t leave Lan Zhan’s face. “But I really thought he was exaggerating.”
Lan Zhan isn’t quite sure what that’s supposed to mean.
“Come in,” he says, to break his own awkward pause.
“Oh, wow,” Wei Ying says when he steps through the front door and shimmies out of his shoes. “What a cute place! You live here all by yourself?”
Lan Zhan pauses for a moment to shut the door, then says, “Yes,” and directs Wei Ying to the kitchen for tea. He indicates a place for Wei Ying to sit at the table, but Wei Ying ignores the cue, moving instead toward the large window to gawk at the ocean view.
“You get to wake up to this every day?” Wei Ying whistles low through his teeth. “Not a bad deal if you can get it.”
“Yes,” Lan Zhan says, at a loss for how else to respond.
Wei Ying turns to smile at Lan Zhan over his shoulder. “You’re so lucky to have a place of your own this nice.” One corner of his mouth curves down in a pained grimace, and he brings one hand to his temple. “It’ll be even nicer with your murder-ghost gone. Really kills the vibes.”
“I’m sorry.”
Wei Ying waves the apology away with a dismissive gesture. “Not your fault, of course. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”
Wei Ying finally takes up his place at the table and talks at him while the kettle comes to a boil, peppering Lan Zhan with questions about his job and his lifestyle and his family. Lan Zhan neatly dodges most of the interrogation with one-word answers, a little overwhelmed by the brunt of Wei Ying’s attention. The walls of this house have likely never encountered such a racket. Wei Ying is still talking even when Lan Zhan sets his mug down in front of him, and Wei Ying cheerfully thanks him and brings the mug to his mouth.
Lan Zhan takes this moment, when Wei Ying is distracted, to sneakily study him. He’s even more handsome up close. He has big, earnest eyes and a hundred-watt smile, the slope of his nose slightly turned up. When he’d walked over to the window, Lan Zhan had noted his frame: slender but not overly skinny, clad in a rumpled sweatshirt and dark-wash jeans that hug his thighs and calves. There’s a magnetic quality about his charm that Lan Zhan has never encountered before, or at least been on the receiving end of. It’s so opposite from Lan Zhan himself that he finds himself helplessly drawn to it, curious despite his surface-level discomfort. Given his isolation and his intermittent job responsibilities nowadays, Lan Zhan rarely interacts with others his age, let alone attractive men. His palms feel a little clammy. He writes it off as the condensation from the tea steam.
After a long sip, Wei Ying grimaces and sets his mug down on the table. Lan Zhan opens his mouth to ask if the tea isn’t to his liking before Wei Ying says apologetically, “I try not to inflict this on unsuspecting strangers, especially ones so handsome, but sometimes spirits come through with strong messages and they’re very, aha — insistent until I convey them, so forgive me for asking: Is your mother passed?”
Lan Zhan blinks, disarmed by the question. Despite Wei Ying’s job description, he hadn’t expected this.
“Yes,” he says, after another moment.
Wei Ying nods, his eyes closed in concentration. “Passed when you were younger, right? It wasn’t quick.”
Lan Zhan swallows to wet his throat. There it is now, the rhythmic beep of hospital monitors in his ear; the drip of the IV, the rattling rasp of a ventilator. He wonders suddenly if Wei Ying can hear them too.
“That’s correct,” he says quietly.
Wei Ying smiles. It lights up every inch of his face, the crinkle of his eyes deepening into early laugh-lines. “She comes through with so much love for you. She’s showing me a jar of seashells?”
Lan Zhan is startled into nodding. “Yes,” he says. He refolds his hands in his lap. “I . . . collected some for her on the beach when I was still a child. She kept it until she died.”
“Ahhh, cute.” Wei Ying shakes his head, laughing. “Ah, she wants me to call you Zhanzhan. A little informal coming from me, I think.”
The name sends a shock through Lan Zhan. It’s been many years since anyone has called him that. It sounds even more odd in the mouth of a stranger.
“She’s showing me pieces of other things that are important to her,” Wei Ying explains. “Sometimes they do that, to prove to whoever I’m reading that it’s them . For you, she’s showing me a loquat and some purple flowers. Violets? No . . . wrong shape.”
“Gentians.” Lan Zhan nearly smiles, around the sudden ache of missing her; of loving her and missing her. “Her favorite fruit, her favorite flower.”
Wei Ying nods, beaming back at Lan Zhan before he glances over Lan Zhan’s shoulder.
“There’s something else,” he murmurs, his brow creasing. His gaze goes distant, seeing something beyond the walls of Lan Zhan’s home. He speaks softly to himself. “What is that? Give me a minute, she’s showing something that I can’t quite. . .” After another moment of quiet muttering to himself, Wei Ying’s face clears, brightening again. “Ah! Okay, this is strange, and it might not make sense to you, but it almost looks like it might be Baigujing? You know, from Journey to the West?”
“Yes,” Lan Zhan says, quick in his eagerness. “It was her favorite book.” He closes his eyes. “She used to read that chapter to me all the time when I was young.”
Wei Ying laughs softly. “I see, I see. Well, sometimes spirits will show me things like that to strengthen the connection before they start sending messages through. She didn’t get along with your father, but she wants you to know that was never your fault. Yours or your brother’s.”
Lan Zhan blinks. His eyes feel hot and very dry. He finds he can’t say anything at all, having the most private parts of his life pierced through by a man he doesn’t know.
“She’s very adamant about that,” Wei Ying tells him. “And she knows you’ve been carrying around this albatross about not doing enough for her before she passed, like you could have saved her.” His gaze is very gentle now on Lan Zhan. “She wants you to know there’s nothing you could have done, and nothing could have been different. That’s what she came through to tell you. Whatever you’re still holding on to from that day, she’s asking you to let it go so you can move forward with your life. Her crossing over was peaceful; she wasn’t in any pain anymore. And she knows how much you loved her.”
It feels like there isn’t enough air in the room. There’s a sharp splinter in the center of Lan Zhan’s chest. It must show on his face, because Wei Ying reaches out and squeezes one of his hands on the table. He wouldn’t usually, but Lan Zhan allows it.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Wei Ying says. He’s very beautiful, this close. Lan Zhan has never encountered a kinder set of eyes. “But she’s not gone, you see?”
Lan Zhan nods. Strangely enough, Wei Ying’s words confirm an old suspicion: There have been . . . moments, in which he’s felt he’s seen his mother, dreamt her; felt her presence in the room.
He tells Wei Ying so, who nods as though unsurprised.
“Yeah, she’s a strong spirit,” Wei Ying says. “You would have definitely encountered her before now.”
Lan Zhan hesitates, debating asking the question before his curiosity wins out. “And . . . my father?”
Wei Ying nods slowly, serious once again as he focuses. “I can see that he’s also crossed over. He and your mother, they didn’t come through together. Usually married couples do. I can see that he’s there, but I’m not getting anything from him.”
Lan Zhan nods, a faint bitterness curling through him. In death as in life, he supposes.
“I’m sorry,” Wei Ying says, looking crestfallen.
Lan Zhan shakes his head. “Don’t be.”
He leans back in his seat, sliding his hand out from under Wei Ying’s. He feels a little flayed open. As the shock of the reading recedes, he has to marvel at the impressiveness of Wei Ying’s abilities.
“You’re very gifted,” Lan Zhan tells him.
Wei Ying shakes his head and laughs again. “You know, people are always telling me that. Some days it feels like more of a curse.” He bounces up from the seat with a spring in his step, with no trace of the heaviness of what’s just transpired. “Okay, now back to the real reason I’m here. Your friendly neighborhood murder-ghost.”
Wei Ying moves around Lan Zhan’s house with an ease as if he’s been there a hundred times, scampering from room to room. His exuberance is surprising, given the subject matter of his job. Lan Zhan voices as much to him, not in quite so many words, and Wei Ying smiles sideways at him and says, “Well, I sort of have to be, don’t I? I mean, don’t get me wrong — some days, doing this physically drains me to where I can’t get out of bed for hours. There are always going to be heavy readings, really awful tragedies, that kind of thing, you know? But for the most part, I like helping people. Because I’m giving something to them when I do this. It’s what’s within my ability to give them.”
Wei Ying turns toward the kitchen, his short ponytail slipping off the nape of his neck as he does. There’s a dark freckle on the top knob of his spine. Lan Zhan feels something inside him go soft and hot all at once, and wonders if whatever is haunting him can affect him in more ways than just bloodlust.
“The resentment of this one is strong,” Wei Ying says from the kitchen. He turns to appraise Lan Zhan a little curiously. “I’m surprised you’re not more affected. Most people wouldn’t be nearly as . . .” He scans Lan Zhan from head to toe, clearly searching for a word. “. . . collected.”
“My brother and I underwent spirit-calming ceremonies when we were younger,” Lan Zhan says. “It can ward off the effects of resentful spirits.”
Wei Ying raises an eyebrow. “Perks of being raised in a family of cultivators, huh?”
Lan Zhan remains quiet. It’s possible Wei Ying is familiar with the Lan family name, as universally known as it is among cultivation circles, but he’d prefer to have Wei Ying form his own impression of him apart from it. Not many others do.
“And you?” Lan Zhan asks to deflect.
Wei Ying begins to wander around the kitchen, his socks black against the wooden floors. There’s a hole in one of the toes. “My adoptive family are cultivators, so I learned what I could from them. Allegedly I come from a long line of tongji and mun mai poh, but my real parents have been dead a long time, so.” He gives a flippant lift of his shoulder. “Guess I’ll never know.”
“I’m sorry,” Lan Zhan says, stricken by their similarities. “About your parents.”
“Don’t be,” Wei Ying echoes Lan Zhan’s earlier words, then grins at him. He continues to move around the house, talking quietly with figures that Lan Zhan can’t see, and once his rounds are complete, they both end up back at the front door.
“Okay, well,” Wei Ying says cheerfully, “this gives me a sense of what I’m dealing with. Nasty piece of work. How’d you get saddled with it, anyhow?”
“A case from about a month ago,” Lan Zhan replies. “I cleansed one spirit from a client’s home and unwittingly brought home another.”
Wei Ying rubs a thumb along his chin, his brow furrowed. “Like you said, a cultivator of your caliber tends to be pretty resistant to resentful effects. Usually vengeful spirits attach to weaker targets that they can manipulate. It’s powerful to have gotten its hooks in you enough to hitchhike.”
“My guard was down,” Lan Zhan allows.
Kill kill kill kill, the spirit suggests helpfully.
“Aiyah, alright,” Wei Ying snaps at an empty space, then digs a thumb into his temple with a weary air. “Noisy fucker.”
Lan Zhan’s brows lift in surprise. “You can hear it?”
“Unfortunately,” Wei Ying says. “Granted, I can hear most spirits. But this one is particularly annoying.”
As if in retaliation, the murder visions in Lan Zhan’s mind’s eye grow alarmingly specific.
“You should probably go,” Lan Zhan says, not impolitely. “It’s unhappy that you’re here, and we may have better luck cleansing it when it isn’t so activated.”
“An expert instinct, gege,” Wei Ying says, then winks again. The smile is back, twin dimples notched in his cheeks. Lan Zhan feels his heart do something strange, a little lurch and then a ticklish sensation between his ribs. “We’re still on for the same time tomorrow?”
“I will plan on it,” Lan Zhan says as he follows Wei Ying to the door. It’s not as if he has anything else going on.
“It’s a date then,” Wei Ying says over his shoulder, then flings open the front door before Lan Zhan can say a word to that, if he could. “See you tomorrow!”
And then he’s gone, taking noise and color with him.
Lan Zhan shuts the front door, latches both locks, and leans his back against it. He tips his chin toward the ceiling. Silence settles into the house like a blanket of snow.
“Ma,” he says quietly to the empty room. “What do you think of him?”
◈ ◈ ◈
The next morning, Lan Zhan tries to prepare the house before Wei Ying’s arrival. He dusts. He sets out a bowl of fresh fruit. He lights a candle, then decides it’s too conspicuously romantic and blows it out. He cracks the windows so that some of the sea breeze can circulate through the rooms. The air outside has cooled in advance of a coming storm. A legion of dark clouds as tall as castles churn on the horizon, the waves white-capped from the growing winds.
Wei Ying shows up approximately a half an hour late. He greets Lan Zhan and invites himself in, then chatters cheerfully to Lan Zhan as he makes the rounds around the house, explaining what he’s doing as he goes. He’d brought a small singing bowl with him, which he tells Lan Zhan helps him to pinpoint where energy is strongest in a room, as well as several sticks of incense and peach wood to help with the cleansing. More gradually as he works, the stream of conversation tapers off. A crease starts to form between his brows, his expression more grim as the minutes tick by. Nearly an hour in, Lan Zhan notices most of the blood has drained from Wei Ying’s face and asks if he needs a break. Wei Ying gives a wan smile and shakes his head.
“No, it’s fine,” Wei Ying says, his eyes closed. “I’m just trying to tap into its energy so I can communicate with it, encourage it to move on, but it doesn’t want to talk to me. It’s feeding on me, for my trouble.” He gives a shaky little laugh. “It hates me a lot.”
At some point during Wei Ying’s walkthrough, the storm had reached the beach. It had begun as a light tapping on the windows, which Lan Zhan had quickly sealed shut. Now, sheets of rain rail against the glass panes. Intermittent thunder shakes the windows, and the wind screams around the house like it’s personally infuriated to find an obstacle in its path.
“Storms get bad up here, huh?” Wei Ying says, raising his voice to be heard.
“They can,” Lan Zhan says. “The stormwall blocks the worst of them when the sea level rises.” Hurricanes are rare this far north, but Lan Zhan usually has to board up and evacuate for a few days if they do crop up.
Wei Ying hums and makes a few more rounds around the house. Lan Zhan follows from a distance, not wanting to interfere. On his end, at least, it’s quieted a little, the murderous anger that’s been a constant in the back of his mind over these weeks. The house-ghost has been furious all morning at the prospect of Wei Ying’s arrival. Lan Zhan had woken to one of his favorite vases shattered on the floor. Despite the meditative blocks Lan Zhan had put in place, the spirit had flooded Lan Zhan with unpleasant imagery of what it would like to do to Wei Ying for most of the day. To know a modicum of peace again is a relief.
“I can’t hear it anymore,” Wei Ying says eventually, but he doesn’t seem relieved. He’s still frowning. “Which means it’s either moved on or hiding.”
By now, Wei Ying’s face has completely blanched, blue veins visible in his temples and forehead. His lips are pale. Lan Zhan directs him to sit down on the couch and fetches him a mug of hot water and a packet of pocky, in case his blood sugar is low.
“Forgive me for taking so long; I’ll be out of your hair soon,” Wei Ying says with strained cheer as he accepts the mug and the snack. His eyes are still shut, one hand against his temple. “Sometimes after a powerful reading or exorcism, it takes me a while to . . .”
“Stay as long as you need,” Lan Zhan says. He glances toward the windows, where a bruise-like tint has colored the beach outside. The storm hasn’t let up, a furious slash of rain against the roof and windows. “You shouldn’t drive in this weather.”
“I’ll stick around for a while, to make sure it’s truly moved on,” Wei Ying says, then yawns. “Best to be on our guard, in case it . . .”
Within moments, Wei Ying is asleep, his head slumped forward into his chest. It’s nearly impressive. With gentle hands, touching him as least invasively as possible, Lan Zhan guides him into a more comfortable position, then covers him in a wool blanket. Wei Ying’s face is still worryingly pale, the circles stark under his eyes. Lan Zhan keeps a close eye on him for the next few hours, firmly telling himself it’s for medical purposes and nothing more. He’s surprisingly still in his sleep, for all of his animated mannerisms while awake. Lan Zhan doesn’t know Wei Ying enough to know if he should be concerned about that, but as the hours pass and Wei Ying doesn’t stir, it becomes clear that he’ll likely sleep through the night.
The spirit had certainly been a powerful one, to drain Wei Ying so completely. Lan Zhan feels a prickle of guilt. It had been his case, after all. Exorcisms like this are Wei Ying’s job, but they take a physical toll all the same. Lan Zhan anxiously checks Wei Ying’s pulse and breathing a few more times as he readies himself for bed, but nothing seems to be abnormal, beyond the slowed vitals of a regular sleeper. Some of the color has returned to Wei Ying’s cheeks, so clearly rest is helping. Lan Zhan layers an extra blanket on him for good measure before he heads to bed. He leaves the lights on in the main room, in case Wei Ying wakes up disoriented.
The house seems to hold its breath as Lan Zhan moves to bed. The storm hasn’t let up outside, and it’s to the sound of rain battering the windows that Lan Zhan falls asleep.
His ensuing dreams are strange. To be expected, perhaps, after a spirit cleansing. He first finds himself in a hallway, a yawning shadow at the end of it. His mother is there, too, with her hands in his. She speaks to Lan Zhan in words he doesn’t understand, but her tone is unmistakably urgent as she tries to pull him away. Lan Zhan keeps drifting toward the dark, the fingers of it reaching out for him. It seems to offer a warm and heavy gravity, like he could bed down within it and hibernate for a long time. Various figures keep trying to pull him away from it, tugging him back down the hallway. First it’s his mother leading him away, then his father, and then it’s Wei Ying, his hands warm in Lan Zhan’s.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says. It’s the first phrase that Lan Zhan has understood clearly since he began dreaming. His name, the clarity of it like the peal of a bell. It sounds lovely in Wei Ying’s mouth, a slightly different inflection from how his family calls him.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says again. The tone is wrong; it’s urgent like his mother’s had been, almost frantic. The hallway has disintegrated now, giving way to a coastline that springs up around him in vivid color. At the far end of the beach, he can see a dark cave, its mouth gaping. Invisible teeth. There’s a song deep in the throat of it, calling out to him. Lan Zhan moves toward it, his bare feet moving through the hot sand.
“Lan Zhan.” Wei Ying is there again behind him, urging him back.
Lan Zhan keeps walking.
“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying says again, and Lan Zhan wakes up.
It takes him a moment to process where he is. He’s not in his bed, nor on the beach. He’s on the couch, straddling Wei Ying with his knees on either side of his waist. Wei Ying has both hands around his wrists; restraining, pushing back. His arms are shaking with effort against Lan Zhan’s strength. In one hand, Lan Zhan is holding a kitchen knife.
Horrified, Lan Zhan tries to let go, his hand spasming with the attempt, but he has a white-knuckled grip on the hilt. He can feel the strain in every muscle as his body attempts to drive it through Wei Ying’s skull.
Wei Ying’s face is pale as a sheet, but he doesn’t look afraid. Not quite. That’s the first thing Lan Zhan notices before Wei Ying speaks in an unfamiliar tone. “I told you to get out.”
It’s clear he’s not talking to Lan Zhan. There’s not a trace of the usual humor or lightness in his voice. It cuts like a blade, sharp and dark.
“Get out of him,” Wei Ying says, still pushing against Lan Zhan’s hands. “I won’t ask nicely again.”
Lan Zhan’s body tries to shove the knife down harder against Wei Ying’s restraints, a furious scream ringing between his ears. The volume and the hatred of it leave him dizzy.
“I gave you a warning,” Wei Ying says, and his eyes change, red filling the corners like blood, then the irises. The scream in Lan Zhan’s head recoils as something like a hand reaches out to it, grips it in a chokehold and twists. The lights in the room flicker and bounce before the bulbs shatter on a clap of thunder, the room falling under a shroud of darkness.
There’s one last deafening, furious shriek, and then Lan Zhan feels his body go lax, the knife falling from his hand to the floor. He pitches forward, nearly into Wei Ying’s chest, and catches himself with one hand. Wei Ying’s grip on his wrist turns gentle, a light squeeze. For a moment, they catch their breath together, Lan Zhan still hovering over him.
“You . . .” Lan Zhan says hoarsely. His throat feels scraped raw. He tries to speak around the lingering haze addling his mind. “You’re a . . .”
“Should I see myself out?” A flicker of lightning whites out the room, illuminating Wei Ying’s face in a brilliant flash. There’s still blood-red webbed in the whites of his eyes. He is unsmiling. “Or is a demonic cultivator welcome in the house of a Twin Jade?”
◈ ◈ ◈
Lan Zhan makes them tea.
The power had gone out earlier, from either the storm or Wei Ying’s ritual. After he passes the mug to Wei Ying, Lan Zhan takes a moment to light several candles, casting the room in a low amber glow. It’s still storming furiously outside.
“Are you alright?” Lan Zhan says, when he finally rejoins Wei Ying on the couch. He deliberately puts distance between them, giving Wei Ying his space. Replaying the last few minutes, how close he had come to . . .
“I’m fine,” Wei Ying says with a wave of his hand. “Pretty disappointing, actually. When I imagined waking up with a beautiful man on top of me, that wasn’t quite the scenario I had in mind.”
Lan Zhan nearly chokes on his tea. He tries valiantly to hide it with another deep sip.
“Are you okay?” Wei Ying’s voice is kind. “Speaking from experience, getting possessed is no joke.”
“I nearly killed you,” Lan Zhan says, the horror of it still fresh. He wouldn’t have even known until he was awake.
“Eh,” Wei Ying says with alarming nonchalance. “I wouldn’t have let it get to that point. Your little house-ghost didn’t know what it was dealing with.”
“A demonic cultivator,” Lan Zhan says, finally completing the sentence he’d tried to say earlier.
Wei Ying directs a smile at him, but it doesn’t touch his eyes. His gaze remains cautious, watchful. “I did say I picked up some cultivation from the Jiangs. I just took my own route with it.”
“Hm,” Lan Zhan says, and drinks his tea while he processes this.
“So, will you kick me out?” Wei Ying persists. “I know your family doesn’t take kindly to cultivators of my kind.”
“You knew,” Lan Zhan says. To Wei Ying’s questioning look, he clarifies, “You knew who I was, when you came.”
Wei Ying chuffs a small laugh. “Of course I did. How could I not? We small-fry cultivation families practically had posters of the Twin Jades plastered on our walls growing up.”
He’s kidding, of course, but the image of it — his young and brooding face, hanging above a teenage Wei Ying’s bed — makes Lan Zhan’s cheeks heat.
“My adoptive brother hates you, you know,” Wei Ying says, his tone conversational. To Lan Zhan’s frown, he adds placatingly, “Not your fault! Like, it’s not personal. It’s just that you and your ge were these godlike models of perfect filial behavior when we were growing up that my aunt would wield against us, you know? Like, whenever we’d misbehave, she’d be all, Do you think a Twin Jade would embarrass their mother this way?!” The tone that Wei Ying mimics leads Lan Zhan to believe his aunt is an unpleasant woman.
“My mother was dead,” Lan Zhan feels obligated to point out.
To his credit, Wei Ying doesn’t bat an eye. “Dead or not, she still probably received better treatment from her children, in my aunt’s view.”
“Hm,” Lan Zhan says again into his tea.
“I mean, the hypothetical standards we were held to,” Wei Ying complains, setting down his tea on the table with renewed heat. “Her imagined version of you was a perfect student, a perfect cultivator, a perfect housekeeper, a perfect son — it was exhausting to live up to! Jiang Cheng and I were in constant competition with some rich boys we didn’t even — oh , sorry, sometimes I run my mouth, ahaha, I just meant that . . .”
“You aren’t wrong,” Lan Zhan says. He swallows. “I was all of those things. And I was deeply unhappy.”
“Ah!” Wei Ying smiles sympathetically at him and picks up his mug again. “To think, all of those years ago, I was envying someone who was just as sad as I was.” It’s hard to tell in the candlelight, but it seems like most of the red has receded from his eyes. His skin is still a shade too pale, but it at least looks like there’s blood in his face again.
Lan Zhan isn’t sure what possesses him to ask the question, but he finds himself curious, with the new knowledge that he isn’t a stranger to Wei Ying.
“And do you still?” he says. “Resent me?”
Wei Ying blinks, seeming either surprised or delighted by the question. “Nah,” he says after a moment. “I mean, as a kid, maybe, but I didn’t actually know you. Now that we’ve met in person, I can confirm that all the rumors are true.”
“Rumors?” Lan Zhan asks. His mouth feels a little dry. This is possibly verging on flirting.
Wei Ying flashes a gleaming look at him from under his lashes. “That the younger Jade of Lan is indeed ethereally handsome, and a perfect gentleman to boot.”
Lan Zhan’s ears go hot. Definitely flirting.
“This is the last place I expected to find you, though,” Wei Ying continues. “I honestly would have assumed you were in Suzhou with the rest of the Lan family.”
“I was,” Lan Zhan says. “For a long time, after my mother died. My uncle and most of my father’s relatives are still there. Most of my mother’s side, those that are still living, are here in the U.S.”
“What about your brother?” Wei Ying asks.
“He . . . commutes,” Lan Zhan says. “Splits his time between Shanghai and New York for work.”
“Sounds shitty,” Wei Ying offers.
“He does not particularly enjoy it,” Lan Zhan agrees, “but it allows him to visit.”
The conversation is possibly the highest volume of personal information Lan Zhan has ever volunteered about himself. There’s something about Wei Ying that makes him want to be known. It continues into the deeper hours of the night, a trading back and forth of information: Wei Ying had been born in Chongqing, but as a child had relocated to the States with the Jiangs when their cultivation work had transferred them here, close to Lan Huan’s current corridor. It had been an alienating time. Wei Ying had spent most of his childhood furious with his adoptive parents and deeply homesick. His biological parents had died in the field when he was still a baby, and the Jiangs had given him limited information about them. He’d often felt like an unearthed tree without roots, Wei Ying explains to Lan Zhan, and staring at the shape of his mouth as he talks, Lan Zhan can only think, I know. I know.
As he’d grown up, Wei Ying’s budding abilities had been another matter entirely, another form of alienation. The Jiangs had no experience in mediumship, and offered no guidance for the terror and confusion as spirits entered Wei Ying’s daily life. His aunt routinely accused Wei Ying of lying, acting out for attention, behaving like a freak of nature. His adoptive siblings had tried their best to be understanding about it; they believed him, at least, but by their teenage years, even Wei Ying’s brother had grown exasperated with his strange mood swings, his night terrors, his one-sided conversations with invisible figures in the room. Oddly enough, the isolation had honed Wei Ying’s abilities. Spirits were always within reach, after all, when no one else was.
The Jiang parents had moved back to Shanghai seven years ago for proximity to the bigger cultivation families, but Wei Ying and his adoptive siblings had remained here to finish out school. He’d dropped out before graduation and started making money through mediumship gigs instead. It had been a temporary seasonal assignment that put him near Lan Zhan’s current home, the ongoing exorcism of more than a hundred spirits from a historical asylum.
Lan Zhan listens far more than he speaks, but he sponges up all of the information offered to him with a quiet greed. Wei Ying lists in place as he talks, clearly as exhausted as Lan Zhan is. Finally, Lan Zhan’s regular sleep patterns overpower him, and he drifts off to the fading murmur of Wei Ying’s voice, a push-pull like the tides.
When Lan Zhan wakes again, early enough in the morning that the room is still dark, he finds himself unusually warm and thinks, A blanket, Wei Ying must have — and shifts, only to find that something human shifts with him. He goes very still, then peeks down his shoulder. Wei Ying had also dozed off against his arm, a warm press against Lan Zhan’s side. He’s dead asleep, a small patch of drool wetting the sleeve of Lan Zhan’s sleep-shirt.
The candles have burned down the bottom of the wicks by now. A light rain is still drumming against the sides of the house, blending with the crash of the waves. Lan Zhan doesn’t move from under Wei Ying, but stares at the darkened window feeling wide awake, more awake than he’s ever been, his heart thrashing like a fish in his chest, hooked in the throat by some massive feeling he can’t even begin to name.
◈ ◈ ◈
The rain lets up a little bit, the following day.
Wei Ying spends the morning making rounds through the house, testing for any remaining resentment or spiritual activity. He seems rejuvenated by the night’s rest. His appetite, at least, seems unaffected by his near-murder at Lan Zhan’s hand; he happily wolfs down the congee and baozi Lan Zhan makes them. Wei Ying had woken on the couch alone, as Lan Zhan had moved back to his bedroom and proceeded to get no additional sleep at all, staring at nothing with his eyes peeled open and his hands folded on his chest until the room lightened. It’s possible, Lan Zhan realizes gloomily during his morning reflections, that he’d located the only demonic cultivator on the entire East Coast and then developed a crush on him. He spends most of his morning watching Wei Ying do his work and trying to quash this growing suspicion.
Wei Ying chats to Lan Zhan at random, bits and pieces that come through from the other side as he works. Your brother’s partner should take the promotion. I’m sorry about the diagnosis, for the aunt on your father’s side. Is your cousin pregnant? and so on. Later into the hour, he gets more quiet, concentration in the lines of his face as he moves around with the singing bowl.
“Anything?” Lan Zhan asks, after another half an hour of Wei Ying scanning the house.
“Nothing from our good friend,” Wei Ying says. “That I can sense, at least.”
Lan Zhan glances out the window. It’s midday now; the sun has climbed above the roof of the house, scorching the beach sands to white. Wei Ying has spent almost three days here.
“Do you have other obligations today?” Lan Zhan asks. Surely Wei Ying is a busy man, and Lan Zhan has kept him here on business long enough.
The question has an unexpected effect. If Lan Zhan had blinked, or was observing Wei Ying any less than he has been all morning, he might have missed it: Wei Ying’s smile brittling, fastening in place.
“Ah, of course, you must have other things to do,” Wei Ying says, still cheerful, and then he’s moving so suddenly that it takes Lan Zhan a few seconds to catch up. When he turns, Wei Ying is already shrugging into his jacket, smiling at Lan Zhan. “Thanks for letting me crash here for the night! If there’s anything else that comes up, you can give me a —”
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says, to the sudden lurch in him that goes no. He’s seized by the sudden instinct that if Wei Ying walks out the door now, he’ll never see him again.
Wei Ying pauses at the sound of his name.
“I only asked,” Lan Zhan says. “In case you.” He tries again with a useless hand gesture. “You don’t need to . . .”
Wei Ying stares at him across the room, halfway into his jacket. One arm through a sleeve, the other one hanging empty like a hose at his side. He looks . . . surprised. Maybe a little confused.
“Where are you staying?” Lan Zhan asks, to make up for his own stumble.
“In a rented townhouse, about two and a half hours south of here,” Wei Ying says, still halfway into his jacket. “I’ve got a roommate. He kind of sucks, and the place has roaches, but it’s paid for with a stipend through the summer, so —”
“Two and a half hours,” Lan Zhan repeats. Wei Ying has been making nearly five-hour round trips to come here. Had Lan Zhan not insisted he stay the night, Wei Ying would have driven home in pitch-black, pouring rain, on winding roads where the fog grows as thick as mountain clouds.
“I don’t mind the drive,” Wei Ying says with a shrug of the un-jacketed shoulder. “I’ve got a cassette deck in the car and stuff.”
Lan Zhan considers this for another moment. He isn’t often struck by impulses; he’s even less prone to follow them. One rises in him now that trembles just out of reach, if he dares, if he dares —
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says into his silence, quizzical-sounding.
“You don’t like your roommate,” Lan Zhan says slowly. “You have roaches.”
“And rats,” Wei Ying adds, rubbing his nose. “But they’re a lot nicer than the roaches.”
“You should stay here,” Lan Zhan says. There. It’s out before he can take it back, and he watches it land: Wei Ying’s blink of surprise, the rest of his jacket slipping down his arm.
“I really couldn’t,” Wei Ying says with a laugh that sounds nervous. “I mean, you only have one bedroom, I’d have to pay you and I don’t have the —”
“No payment,” Lan Zhan says. “The couch pulls out. You said yourself you’d like to monitor the house for the next week. It’s a five-hour drive.”
“Yeah,” Wei Ying says slowly.
“You should stay here,” Lan Zhan repeats.
Wei Ying is quiet for another moment, studying Lan Zhan thoughtfully. Lan Zhan’s heart is beating hard enough that Wei Ying can surely hear it; surely it’s reverberating through the roof, the floors, the walls of the house.
Staring at him, Wei Ying’s expression shifts. The corner of his mouth curves up, a dimple digging into his cheek. Most of Wei Ying’s smiles are showy and exuberant, a limelight to anyone in radius. This one is shyer, almost private.
“Well, you can’t beat the view,” Wei Ying says. It sounds like a concession.
Lan Zhan nods, trying to appear impartial.
“Although it isn’t as beautiful as my host,” Wei Ying says with a wink, and Lan Zhan tilts his face away with heat under his collar. Men have flirted with him before; just as many have complimented his appearance. None of those comments have ever rendered him as inept as Wei Ying’s.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says, more seriously. “If I do stay here, even for a little while, I’ll have to get a contract signed in your blood that I’m not putting you out.”
“I am not easily put out,” Lan Zhan says, meaning it.
Wei Ying tilts an eyebrow at him. “You don’t put out?”
Lan Zhan sighs.
“Okay, last one, last one,” Wei Ying rushes to say, then gives Lan Zhan a full-toothed beam. He clasps his palms together flat with a small incline of his head. “Please don’t retract your offer, lao-Lan, I promise I won’t flirt! I’ll be on my best behavior.”
“The offer remains,” Lan Zhan says. For as long as you like goes unsaid.
“Great! Wow, okay, thanks. Okay, here’s the thing, I have to go for a bit,” Wei Ying says, and just as Lan Zhan’s heart starts to sink in disappointment, he adds, “I’ll be right back. It’ll take a while, though, with the drive. I just need to grab some things from the house, let my roommate know I’m not dead in a ditch somewhere, and then I’ll come back.”
Lan Zhan accompanies him as Wei Ying searches around for his missing car keys, then leads him to the front entryway.
“Drive safe,” Lan Zhan says, and it sounds — it sounds like something else, for just a moment. He nearly flinches at the obviousness of it.
Luckily, Wei Ying seems oblivious to it as he shoulders open the front door. “Will do! See ya in a bit.” And then he’s gone.
Lan Zhan tidies up for the entire afternoon, just for something to do. He devotes a few hours to this until there’s absolutely no surface in the household that could warrant more cleaning. He takes a walk around the house, then onto the deck to meditate. He finds himself too distracted even for that. As a last resort, he calls his brother. They usually talk at least once a week, but they haven’t spoken since Lan Zhan initially contacted Nie Huaisang.
“So the spirit is taken care of, then?” Lan Huan asks, his voice fading in and out through the phone. He sounds half-distracted and on the move, like he might be in the middle of a task.
“Yes,” Lan Zhan says. “Huaisang referred someone very . . . skilled.”
“That’s great,” Lan Huan says. “Were there any issues?”
“A minor hitch,” Lan Zhan admits. “I was possessed. Briefly.”
There’s a clatter and a thunk on the other end like the phone’s been dropped, then some rustling against the microphone. Lan Huan’s voice is half-muffled when he speaks again. “You — ?!”
“But W— the medium took care of it,” Lan Zhan says quickly. “He will be at the house this week, to ensure there’s no lingering trace of the spirit.”
By his silence, Lan Huan seems to digest this for a moment. Then he says, “All of this week? That’s certainly . . . thorough of him.”
Lan Zhan quickly changes subjects. He asks Lan Huan general questions about work, and while his brother talks, Lan Zhan watches the gulls dip low over sea and lets his mind wander to Wei Ying. He’d never thought he was the type of person to succumb easily to infatuation; he has encountered pretty boys all his life, and he’s had no trouble casting them aside, apart from brief aesthetic interest. Has he grown soft, in his loneliness? That would be convenient to believe, but once he considers this, he can just as easily imagine Wei Ying catching his attention in the street, in a coffee shop or a bar, on the train. No matter which context Lan Zhan envisions, he finds Wei Ying’s smiling face and his own defenselessness over and over again, a series of inevitable fallings.
“Ge,” Lan Zhan says suddenly. He almost never interrupts. Lan Huan, who had been in the middle of describing a recent case, stops talking. “How did you know you wanted to be with Mingjue-ge?”
Lan Huan goes quiet for a moment. He sounds surprised when he speaks again. “Why do you ask?”
Lan Zhan doesn’t answer. He drags his finger along the wooden windowsill, collecting grains of dust under the pad.
“Hmm. It’s hard to pin it down to a specific moment,” Lan Huan says. “Although one does come to mind. There was a day, after we’d been seeing each other for a few months, when I started to think about when I would next be able to visit Ma’s grave. And suddenly, when I was imagining it, I pictured Mingjue there with me. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I could picture going anywhere with him, for a very long time.”
Lan Zhan doesn’t respond. It hasn’t even been three days since he met Wei Ying. It’s absurd to even be entertaining such an idea. Wei Ying’s tenure here is not permanent; as soon as the week is over, he’ll breeze out the door on the same hurricane gale he’d swept in on. Even in their short acquaintance, Lan Zhan knows Wei Ying is a restless sort, drawn to excitement and intrigue. Surely, he seeks company that’s the same. What could Lan Zhan possibly offer him?
Lan Huan keeps his tone light, but his curiosity is unmistakable. “Is there a reason you ask?”
“No,” Lan Zhan says. He pauses for another moment, then says, “Mingjue-ge’s job offer. You should tell him to take it.”
There’s a beat of silence, and then Lan Huan says, “How did you — ”
The sound of the front door creaks open, and then Wei Ying’s voice trills through the house. “Honeyyy, I’m hooome!”
Lan Huan’s voice rings in Lan Zhan’s ear, sharp with intrigue. “Who is that?”
“No one,” Lan Zhan says quickly. Wei Ying traipses into the kitchen with plastic grocery bags hanging off of either arm, his hair windswept and in disarray. Lan Zhan is immediately distracted, his conversation with his brother already forgotten.
“It doesn’t sound like no —”
“Bye, ge,” Lan Zhan says, then hangs up.
“Your brother?” Wei Ying asks. He’s wearing a cropped tie-dye sweatshirt and low-slung black sweatpants. At the sight of him, Lan Zhan feels it in his chest: a thump like an old dog’s tail wagging against the floor. A happiness found only in the return of someone missed.
“Yes,” Lan Zhan says when he finds his voice again. “I was telling him about the case.”
Wei Ying nods, unearths a bottle of red wine from one of the bags, then squints at the label. “Your mom appreciates it when he visits the cemetery, but he doesn’t have to do that to pay respects to her, especially when it’s so far out of the way. Paper money is enough. She doesn’t like when he makes that long drive on the turnpike by himself.”
Lan Zhan finds himself at a loss for words. At his silence, Wei Ying peeks up at him through the fall of his hair.
“Shit, sorry, rude,” he says, widening his eyes. “Ahhhh, sometimes I find myself talking for them —” He makes a circular, wavy hand gesture above his head. “— on autopilot and I don’t realize until after I’ve run my mouth that it’s basically . . . eavesdropping? Sorry.”
“No need for apologies,” Lan Zhan says. “He did bring it up on the call. I’ll mention it when we speak again.”
“Cooo-oool,” Wei Ying says, his attention already diverted. “Okay, I brought some stuff back from the house. Change of clothes, toothbrush . . . mostly liquor and junk food that you probably hate.” He points a winning smile at Lan Zhan. “I have my dietary needs.”
“Those being . . .” Lan Zhan fishes around in one of the sacks and comes up with a neon orange plastic bag. “Hot Cheetos.”
Wei Ying snatches it out of his hand with a petulant huff. “Don’t be a hater.”
Lan Zhan continues to help strip the grocery bags away, and makes a questioning gesture to the four bottles of wine he finds. There’s also a six-pack of beer and a small handle of vodka.
“Sometimes alcohol is the only thing that helps,” Wei Ying says with a shrug. “It sort of . . . dilutes the connection with the other side, I guess. Makes things nice and foggy. It’s pretty much the only thing that does the trick when I need some peace and quiet. That or weed, which I wasn’t sure you were on board with.”
“It makes no difference to me,” Lan Zhan says. The admission concerns him, though. “Are substances the only remedy?”
“Pretty much, especially when I can’t sleep,” Wei Ying says. “I’ve tried out other stuff to help with it — you know, psychedelics, shrooms, that kind of thing, but it was a huuuge mistake. It just made everything go frenzied and loud and technicolor, like I was being bombarded by voices in every single direction.” He shakes his head at the memory. “Those trips take like full days to wear off, too. So I tend to stick with the lighter stuff.”
Raising a brow, Wei Ying offers the closest wine bottle to Lan Zhan and wags it back and forth. Lan Zhan does not drink, as a general rule. His tolerance is abysmal, and he usually has no need or desire to, anyway. Something about Wei Ying’s entreating expression makes him want to try it, just to see what will happen.
Lan Zhan pulls down unused glasses from the top shelf, clears the dust from them, and pours them both helpings. With a flourish, Wei Ying clinks his wineglass against Lan Zhan’s, saying cheers and something else that Lan Zhan ends up unable to recall later. Lan Zhan takes a few sips, and the next thing he knows, they’re in his living room, night fallen outside. Wei Ying is swaying around the room in his socks, his sweatshirt hiked up over his hips and his eyes closed. His mouth is stained dark with wine, his small ponytail knocked sideways.
“She was dancing just like that,” Wei Ying says insistently to Lan Zhan, the continuation of a story Lan Zhan doesn’t remember. “I mean, like a lunatic — ”
Time jumps again, and they’re on the couch. Wei Ying has his hands on Lan Zhan’s shoulders, giggling in small hiccups.
“Lan Zhan, I think you’ve had too much,” Wei Ying whispers. His face is very close, his breath hot and sticky. “I think we both had too much. Am I a bad influence? Is this my f — ”
Lan Zhan wakes up in his bed, his mouth dry as sand and a deep throbbing in his skull. The room around him is dark, and the house is silent. A quick peek under the sheets reveals that at some point before bed, he’d lost all clothes except for his underwear. This is the first anomaly; he nearly always sleeps in pajamas. His skin reeks of wine, a sour cloy in his nose. His mouth tastes like something died in it. What had happened . . . ? He plumbs through his memory, but there are only those few patches he can recall, Wei Ying warm and sweet-smelling and curling into his personal space. Dancing in his living room in his socks to no music, saying hushed I think we both had too much —
Lan Zhan rolls out of bed with a wince. The dark room rolls with him like the pitching of a ship deck. He encounters his discarded clothes in his doorway, crumpled and dark-stained. He stumbles to the bathroom and flicks the light on. He pees for a concerning length of time. He washes his hands, then makes his way to the kitchen for a glass of water, or several.
He stops short at the sight of Wei Ying curled up near the armrest of the couch, his face illuminated by the glow of his phone screen. He has earbuds in. He’s gnawing on a thumbnail.
Lan Zhan remains frozen for another moment, long enough for Wei Ying to glance up, jump, and swear.
“Shit!” Wei Ying says, yanking his earbuds out with a gasp. He puts a hand to his chest. “You scared the shit out of me. Hah! This, from someone who sees ghosts.”
There then transpires a mutually felt moment where they both become aware Lan Zhan is not wearing clothes. Wei Ying’s eyes drop to take him in with evident interest, a sweep from head to toe. A dull warmth spreads up Lan Zhan’s neck.
“What happened last night?” Lan Zhan says. His head is still ringing, his tongue tacky in his mouth.
“Nothing happened!” Wei Ying says quickly. “Well, I mean, you got really drunk off of like, less than a glass of wine. Lan Zhan, I had no idea you were such a lightweight! I wouldn’t have asked you to drink if I knew!”
Lan Zhan waves this away impatiently. “It’s fine. What happened to my clothes?”
“Oh, we didn’t,” Wei Ying says, then makes a strange sound that’s hard to interpret. “Ahaha, if you think we — I promise we didn’t — you took them off yourself.”
Lan Zhan stares at him for a moment, then says, “I assumed.”
“You spilled some wine on them,” Wei Ying rushes out. “You were reaching for another glass and you know, I was saying, like, you know, nnoooo Lan Zhan come on, you’ve had enough, and you pulled away too fast and spilled on yourself. I helped you out of them because you were a little, ah, out of it, but I didn’t — if you’re asking if we —”
“Have you slept?” Lan Zhan says, desperate for a change in subject. For something that will stop making the pounding in his head worse.
“Oh, uhhhh, no,” Wei Ying says. “Not yet. It’s okay, I stay up really late.”
“Would you prefer to take the bed?”
“No!” Wei Ying says, flapping a hand. “The couch is perfect, I promise. Are you okay? Do you feel okay?”
“Like death,” Lan Zhan admits.
Wei Ying sneaks a peek at Lan Zhan again, his eyes trailing down to his waistband, and then darts back to his phone. “Yeah, I bet! Once you started, it was hard to get you to stop. You were so chatty, too.”
Hearing this, a cold feeling gathers in Lan Zhan’s chest. “Chatty?”
“Oh yeah, just saying this and that about me being here,” Wei Ying says to his phone. The cold-chest feeling spreads. Something must show on his face, because Wei Ying takes one look at him and says hastily, “Nothing embarrassing, I swear! It was really cute, actually. You just kept thanking me over and over and over again.”
Lan Zhan swallows. He feels a little sick for reasons unrelated to the hangover. “Was there anything else I . . .”
“No!” Wei Ying says. “No, that was about it. Don’t worry, you didn’t share any, y’know. Family secrets, or anything like that.”
Family secrets, Lan Zhan thinks, would be preferable to the alternative.
“I’m getting water,” he says. “Do you want anything?”
Wei Ying shakes his head. The room falls quiet, other than the tinny sound of a video playing through Wei Ying’s headphones.
“I apologize,” Lan Zhan says, stiff in his embarrassment. “For my . . . behavior tonight.”
“Wait, huh?” Wei Ying protests, sitting up straighter on the couch. “Lan Zhan, you didn’t do anything. It’s not like it’s a crime to have a bit too much to drink.”
Wei Ying doesn’t know him very well yet, so there’s really nothing Lan Zhan can say to emphasize how unusual the behavior is for him. Wei Ying can probably guess, based on Lan Zhan’s general demeanor. He clearly hadn’t done anything too egregious, but Lan Zhan still can’t shake his embarrassment, to have made such a fool of himself.
“Good night,” Lan Zhan says as he passes the couch.
“Good night,” Wei Ying replies, sticking his earbud back in.
Lan Zhan drinks three tall glasses of water, then shuffles back to bed without another word to Wei Ying. He falls into sleep again, dreamless and shallow. When he wakes again at his usual time and returns to the living room, he finds the couch empty. A quick search around the house finds Wei Ying on the deck, huddled into one of the chairs with a blanket draped over his shoulders. For a couple of minutes, Lan Zhan stares at his silhouette, colorless and dreamlike in the gray morning light, before he moves to the kitchen and puts the kettle on. Fifteen minutes later, he wordlessly joins Wei Ying’s side with two mugs in hand. The sun has just begun to rise, a peach sliver on the horizon.
“Did you sleep at all?” Lan Zhan asks, in a soft voice so as not to startle him. Wei Ying doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t seem surprised by Lan Zhan’s presence.
“Nah,” Wei Ying says, still staring out at the ocean. His wind-tossed hair curls around his face. “Sometimes I don’t. It’s all good.”
Lan Zhan passes the mug into Wei Ying’s hand, who takes it with a small smile and a quiet thanks. Lan Zhan joins him in the other chair and turns his attention to the sea.
“I keep seeing whales out there,” Wei Ying says. “At first I thought I was dreaming them.”
“They’re real,” Lan Zhan answers. “Pods are migrating north this time of year.”
“I keep seeing their little tails,” Wei Ying says, smiling into his tea. “Or I guess they’re called flukes, right?”
Lan Zhan nods. The sun has tipped over into the water now, a glittering stripe of rose-pink that nearly touches the shore. “I like to watch them. Sometimes I can track individual pod movements.”
Wei Ying is silent for another moment. Then he says, “Did you ever hear that story about the loneliest whale in the world?” Lan Zhan hesitates, then answers no. “Yeah, there was this one whale who got separated from the rest of its pod or something. And it spent all of these years wandering the world alone and calling out, but no one ever answered. Because it was speaking in a language that no one else could understand.”
Lan Zhan glances over at Wei Ying, caught by something in his tone of voice. Wei Ying’s eyes are misted over from the wind. There are deep circles under his eyes as he stares dully out at the ocean, but a small smile still pulls at his mouth.
“Those documentaries are so manipulative,” he says, returning Lan Zhan’s stare with a self-deprecating grin. “They always edit in those really sad lonely whale sounds to make sure you’re crying about it.”
Lan Zhan hums in assent and sips his tea.
Wei Ying is quiet for another moment, then says, “But I still think about it sometimes. That one whale. Whales are so intelligent, you know. They feel emotions like we do. You know. How lonely it must feel, with an entire empty ocean.”
Wei Ying lapses into silence again. In the absence of his voice, there’s the distant crash of the waves, the sounds of birds rustling awake. Out on the water, there’s another breach, the heart-shaped flip of a tail out of the blue.
“There!” Wei Ying says. “Did you see it?”
“I saw,” Lan Zhan says softly.
The melancholy clinging to Wei Ying seems to have lifted, for now. Like the sun rising, cutting through mists and fog. He says to Lan Zhan, much brighter than before, “Thanks for the tea.”
They sit together for some time, steeped in a long silence. It’s not within Lan Zhan’s character to break it. He wants to tell Wei Ying that he’s felt it too; that empty-ocean feeling, existing on a frequency that others can’t understand. But he doesn’t have the words, so he drinks tea in silence and watches the sun spill over the sea.