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The knife gleamed in the lantern’s light as it laid on the table, still quivering slightly from where Yue Qingyuan had put it on the table with perhaps a little too much force.
“I… what?” Liu Qingge asked.
“I couldn’t reach my back on my own,” Yue Qingyuan repeated, and his smile didn’t falter for a moment. His hands did not shake. “Surely Liu-shidi would be willing to assist?”
Liu Qingge stared at the knife, then at Yue Qingyuan. “I don’t understand.”
Yue Qingyuan didn’t mind explaining. He hadn’t understood either at the start.
“My Shizun,” he began, pretending he didn’t see Liu Qingge snarl at the mention of the man, “found a solution to a conundrum we’ve been dealing with for a while now.” He wet his lips. “And quite the innovative one too! This issue has repeatedly baffled the foremost experts over on Qian Cao, so you understand how, hah, relieved we are all to—”
“Stop stalling.” Liu Qingge poked the hilt of the knife, setting it to spin slowly in its position. “Plain words.”
Yue Qingyuan laid a finger on its blade, stilling it. “I need you to cut me up,” he said crisply. At his shidi’s silence, he pulled a bottle out of his qiankun pouch. It felt heavier than it was. “Shizun was kind enough to provide me with a numbing cream.”
Liu Qingge rose from his seat. “Yue-shixiong—”
“—can’t be seen having scars like mine.” He tried to take a deep breath. His lungs refused. “I can’t. I have to get rid of them. Soon.”
Perhaps if they’d been flecked with gold, or if they forked all over his body in obviously mystical patterns, he’d have been allowed to keep them.
But they weren’t; they were as outwardly mundane as possible, only telling tales of human weakness and failure. Nothing that would impress anyone who happened to oversee them. Nothing that was befitting of a Sect Leader of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect.
He noticed his hands were shaking. He hid them underneath the table and counted to ten. When he was finished, they were still again. “They can’t heal the way they are, but they will if the skin is re-opened.” He licked his lips. “I checked.”
“And you need to be the person to do this,” Liu Qingge said plainly. A statement more than a question. “He couldn’t have got Mu Qingfang to do it, or even Meng-shibo.”
“It’s fair this way.” It must be. “I was the one who gave myself these scars, so I need to be the person who removes them as well.”
Liu Qingge’s breathing was carefully measured. “Except your back. Because you can’t reach it on your own.”
“Except the back, yes.”
“You’ve tried and failed?”
“I thought it was—I thought it’d be better if I started. Here.” Yue Qingyuan matched his breathing to his shidi’s. In and out. “Because then when I finished on my own, I’d be—done.”
“Good.” Liu Qingge sounded almost soothing; like he was talking to one of those beasts they kept on Bai Zhan for their tracking capabilities, spooked after it had got too close to the monster it was tracking. The traces of underlying awkwardness with seeing Yue Qingyuan like this ended up aiding a lot more in setting Yue Qingyuan at ease. It was almost funny. “One more thing.”
“I—yes.”
“You didn’t ask Shen Qingqiu,” Liu Qingge said, slow and testing.
“I did not, no.”
“Even though he would have done it. No doubt.”
Yue Qingyuan finally felt his smile drop. “I know our relationship could be better, but I don’t think he’d be that eager to—”
“Not like that,” Liu Qingge cut in. “He is vain. Obsessed with his image. He’d have understood.”
“There are many eyes on him,” Yue Qingyuan countered. Anticipation stirred inside his chest, and was then quickly pushed down again. “He’s Head Disciple, soon to be a Peak Lord. He is well within his right to care about the way he is perceived to the degree he does.”
“That’s not my point,” Liu Qingge said mercilessly. “And you know it.”
“Liu-shidi—”
“No.” Liu Qingge snatched the knife from the table, only pausing to feel its weight for a brief moment before deftly throwing it at the wall. It hit it where a hole already was, doubtlessly from many knives before this one all hitting the exact same spot. “I won’t.” He paused for half a second before forging on. “You had to have known I would never.”
He didn’t look very confident, despite the briskness of his voice. Yue Qingyuan was torn between denying and admitting it. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth as he opened his mouth, then closed it again.
The silence was enough. Liu Qingge nodded once, sharp and certain. “Good,” he repeated.
Yue Qingyuan’s eyes kept being dragged back to the knife now stuck deep inside the wall. If he stood up now, he barely had to take five steps to dig it out of the wood. Liu Qingge couldn’t, wouldn’t stop him.
He stayed seated.
Yue Qingyuan drifted. He felt light-headed, like he’d only barely been pulled back from tripping over the edge of a dizzying precipice. He ran a thumb over Xuan Su’s hilt, trying to steady himself with the constant thrum of energy flowing underneath his fingers. It seemed oddly distant.
“—Qingyuan.”
“Hm? Yes?”
“Will your Shizun check?”
“He won’t ask me to unclothe.” But, “the ones on my hands and neck…”
“Bai Zhan has many cosmetics,” Liu Qingge offered. “Whole rooms full of them. We must have something in your skin tone.”
Yue Qingyuan laughed, small and hollow. “I didn’t know that.”
“Of course not.” Liu Qingge looked pleased. “We only have so much because we never use any of it.” He added, “We have some products from the Liang generation.”
“That can’t be healthy.”
Liu Qingge waved his concerns away. “We’ll sniff the stuff before using it.”
Yue Qingyuan sat up straight. His hand fell from Xuan Su’s hilt. “Liu-shidi,” he scolded. “That’s how you get infections!”
“Only if you have open wounds,” Liu Qingge replied glibly. He stood up, dusting his robes off. His gaze was sharp when it landed on Yue Qingyuan. It felt grounding. “You will tell me if that is an issue, now or in the future.” It wasn’t a question.
“I will,” Yue Qingyuan promised, and he was startled to find he meant it.