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“I mean, think about it,” Shi Qingxuan carries on, completely oblivious to the tight set of He Xuan’s jaw, voice echoing in the empty space that is the sitting room of the Earth Master palace, “the play wasn’t very inaccurate, was it? The one about taizi-dianxia and Crimson Rain Sought Flower, I mean!”
“And I care because,” He Xuan deadpans, eye twitching.
Shi Qingxuan pouts, whacking He Xuan with her fan. “Stay with me here, Ming-xiong! All I mean is that the plays have to be sourced from people with at least somewhat reliable accounts because really, the way taizi-dianxia and Crimson Rai—”
“I really don’t care about H—Xie Lian’s love life, Shi Qingxuan.”
“I don’t know if it’s like that,” she muses, “though I can’t imagine who else would release three thousand lanterns for a god who was banished until recently…”
If He Xuan has to keep listening to Shi Qingxuan prattle on about fucking Hua Cheng’s stupid fucking miraculously successful attempts to woo Xie Lian, which He Xuan truly does not give a single shit about, he might just tear his ears off. Maybe Shi Qingxuan’s tongue too, for good measure. He instead thinks about how cool the ocean floor will feel when he finally gets away from the stuffiness of the heavens and redirects, sharp, “yes, and the ones about you and your brother?”
She makes a face. “Yes, well, those are based on sordid rumors, nothing more.”
“Really,” He Xuan says, voice dry as desert sand.
“Really!” Shi Qingxuan insists. “Honestly, Ming-xiong, you’ve known me for so long at this point, I’m offended you could even begin to have such thoughts!”
“They only talk like that about you because you insist on prancing about like that in female form.”
“And aren’t I pretty?” she grins, spreading her arms wide and twirling about on the spot. He Xuan’s eyes track the movement of her skirt, her outstretched arms, before landing on her beaming, smug face. It’s true that Shi Qingxuan is exceptionally beautiful, enough so that she always has admirers on her tail—but beauty is not a rare thing in the heavens, and He Xuan does not care nearly enough.
“What pretty,” he snaps. Shi Qingxuan giggles.
“You can tell me I’m pretty, Ming-xiong,” she singsongs, dancing a circle around him. He Xuan sighs, gritting his teeth. “It’s okay to call me, your one and only best friend, the prettiest god in the three realms!”
“That’s—” He Xuan shakes his head. “Are you that bothered about the play? It’s like this every year at this point.”
(He will not say it, but there is something uniquely infuriating about sitting right next to the siblings at the banquet every year, and watching their rankings rise and rise. More and more worshipers; more people kneeling at the altar of possibly the greatest deception Heaven has ever known. Go figure.
(It had taken so much in him to not react. Years of practicing self-restraint do come in handy.)
Shi Qingxuan pauses in the act of looping her arms around He Xuan’s neck from behind. “It’s always disconcerting and embarrassing,” she admits, hooking her chin over He Xuan’s shoulder. “I mean, that’s not what I am… and anyway, you know how ge is, about my… whole thing.”
“The ridiculous plays they put on up here are nowhere close to the real thing,” He Xuan says, and immediately realizes he’s messed up. Shit.
Shi Qingxuan stills, and then steps around to face He Xuan, eyes shining. Dammit. “Ming-xiong,” she beams, voice rising up to become coy, fan spreading to peer him over the top with wide eyes, “are you telling me that you know how all that works?”
“Wipe that creepy grin off your face,” He Xuan snaps. Too late.
“Ming-xiong,” the pout is audible in her voice. “I’m just excited to learn something else about my very best friend!” He Xuan glares. She hardly flinches, far, far too used to being the spoiled brat that she is: absolutely certain of her victory, of her right to get away with her deliberately annoying antics. She’s right to believe it, too—there are very few instances when she does not get what she wants.
He Xuan lets it happen, he knows this—he has to make exceptions, allowances, if he intends on flying under the radar like this. So far, he’s managed to not draw any suspicion, which he absolutely does not intend on blowing up at this stage.
“Come on,” Shi Qingxuan wheedles, fan falling away from her face, “you didn’t tell me you knew things like this! Does this fall under Earth Master jurisdiction, or something?”
“Of course it doesn’t,” He Xuan scoffs. “Why would it?”
“Then it has to be from your mortal life!” she crows triumphantly. She leans all the way in, their faces just inches from each other. He Xuan’s dead heart is suddenly in his throat. “Tell me, Ming-xiong! Were you involved with plays and theater when you were a mortal? Is that why you can tell all of that is evidently not up to standard?”
“It’s sloppy is what it is,” He Xuan says, and immediately regrets it. Shi Qingxuan’s grin is not dissimilar to the one his fiancée had worn when she discovered He Xuan had a deft hand with makeup, both functional and theatrical.
“What,” he grits out, trying to steer her off-course by weaponizing a guilty conscience she apparently does not have, because he can already see the way she pouts again before he’s even done speaking, “makes you think you are entitled to anything about my mortal life at all.”
“Am I not allowed to ask for elaboration on things you choose to tell me,” she huffs. “I guess you don’t have to tell me, but really, Ming-xiong, ah… sometimes it feels like you’ve been more cranky since we rescued you from Hua Cheng’s dungeons.”
He Xuan would really not like to think about Hua Cheng beating him up for ‘appearances, it’ll be realistic,’ as he called it, right now. Especially when the fucker has already threatened to triple his debt for the crime of accidentally passing the cup to Xie Lian during the banquet. He truly understands nothing about how Xie Lian is so fond of that bastard.
“Anyone would be annoyed after that,” he retorts.
“Double-timing as an agent does tend to come with consequences,” Shi Qingxuan returns neatly, which—He Xuan glares. He hates that she’s right and hates that she still has no idea of what is right in front of her and will remain to be just that oblivious. The safety blanket of being so damn oblivious—
“Fine,” he relents. “What do you want to know?”
Shi Qingxuan’s eyes sparkle with delight.
“For one thing,” He Xuan says, striding across the room to sit on the divan by the window. Shi Qingxuan follows after him, eyes doubtlessly wide even if he can’t see it. “Most plays and skits put on have much more professional work put into it, not just a hollow mockery of it.”
“That can’t be right,” Shi Qingxuan says, skipping ahead of He Xuan and smoothly sliding into the spot he’d been planning to sit down in. He glowers at her, and she, of course, pays no mind to it. “The plays aren’t bad, if ridiculous due to… the content displayed, so to speak.”
“Well, obviously,” He Xuan glowers, giving up and sitting down a good two feet away from her. “Heaven is heaven, it wouldn’t be that without throwing around their prestige and splendor on trivial matters.” He sounds a bit like Hua Cheng, he realizes, and is annoyed at the realization.
“You speak as if you aren’t one of us,” Shi Qingxuan pouts.
“Who’s us?”
“So mean!” she scolds, and then, “go on, Ming-xiong! Tell me more!”
“The actors and actresses prepare for months in advance,” He Xuan finds himself offering up bits and pieces his memory for the purposes of this conversation, and it’s discomfiting, how easy it is to have held onto this for centuries, only to lay it out carefully across the lap of the goddess sitting a mere two feet away. A ‘friend,’ or so she claims. “It’s a grand affair. Procuring the materials required for props, the costumes… it’s elaborate, and all involved put their souls into it.”
“I can’t imagine you putting your heart into anything,” Shi Qingxuan muses, “except perhaps eating, and taking your work too seriously.”
“Bold coming from the Wind Master.”
She waves a hand. “So, your childhood was spent involved in these plays?” she asks, eyes glittering with curiosity, hungry to learn more, but: clearly overjoyed to learn this one thing from the man she believes to be her best friend. It’s laughable.
“More or less. When I had time to.”
“I can just imagine it!” she sighs, scooting closer. He Xuan eyes her with a warning that she pays no heed to. “Little Ming-xiong, so serious and hardworking as he rehearsed his songs—or maybe you did dances?”
“Neither,” He Xuan pushes at her lightly, but she doesn’t move, as expected. “I worked mostly behind the scenes. My… my neighbors did most of the performance; my job was to make sure they could go and perform their roles.” He’s speaking too much. Did he have too much to drink earlier?
“Wait,” Shi Qingxuan says, perking up. Oh, no. “Do you know how stage makeup works?”
“Hold still,” He Xuan grabs her by the shoulder, forcing her to stop squirming. “Do you want to look like a drowned water ghoul?”
“Pretty sure water ghouls are all people who drowned anyway, in one way or another,” Shi Qingxuan hums, but stills regardless.
You’re looking at a water ghoul that didn’t drown, he bites back. Your brother made me into what I am now.
“Too bad we can’t do the stage makeup right now,” she says mournfully. Stage makeup requires different materials than the standard fare, and He Xuan was not going to go hunting for those on one of this fool’s whims. “I like this enough, though!”
There’s something curiously strange about holding Shi Qingxuan’s face with one hand and applying, perhaps too-gently, perhaps with more care than she deserves, rouge to her lips. He scowls as he does, demanding to know why such a simple, elementary thing can’t be done herself; she does it all the time, anyhow. She just shrugs and, when He Xuan pulls the brush back, smiles at him too-brilliantly and says, “I don’t know, I just like that Ming-xiong is willing to do it, that’s all.”
Is it willingness? Or is it something easier to twist into the shape of what needs to be done to avenge his sister, his parents, Miao’er? Something to hold over Shi Wudu’s head, maybe.
“You,” he starts, and then refuses to finish. Shi Qingxuan’s eyes crinkle even as the ever-soft bristles brush over her cheeks and forehead, a repetitive back-and-forth motion that has her eyes closing in contentment. You’re really… so spoiled.
Abruptly, he remembers: Miao’er loved when he found time to do things like this for her. He Xuan had not been a man with much free time on his hands, and whatever time he did have, it was devoted to working alongside his parents—which Miao’er insisted on doing herself as well—and, as he is so charitably demonstrating to Shi Qingxuan at this very moment, pitching in to help with the annual festivals, parades, plays, and the like Fu Gu had always held.
(He goes back to Fu Gu every few years. He sits in a restaurant high above the roads, and watches the Bloody Fire Social pass by, and listens to the reenactment of his terrible, misfortune-filled, wretched life with nary a change in expression, listening as small details are twisted here and there, corrected and then relayed wrong before being corrected again. He listens to them ask the spirit of Scholar He to grant them protection.
For at least a decade following his infrequent visits, no malicious ghost or yao dares to enter territories marked by Black Water Demon Xuan.)
“Me?” Shi Qingxuan asks. Her eyes are wide and luminous, and so close to He Xuan. They tear into him with a gentle curiosity, the sort of kindness she keeps extending even though He Xuan must’ve given her every reason in the book to just stop caring—and yes, it works well for his purposes, but he never would’ve thought that Shi Wudu’s beloved treasure would be this stupid.
It’s an unfair assessment of Shi Qingxuan’s abilities, and he knows it. He doesn’t care.
She makes an inquisitive noise—he’s staring. Damn it. He does not deign to reply to this; simply moves the brush, up and down, up and down, across Shi Qingxuan’s skin, wondering how it would feel to unhinge his jaw and swallow Shi Qingxuan whole, if she’d feel just as soft and pliant as she does under his hands now.
Miao’er was like this, sometimes.
And, frighteningly enough: he’d done Shi Qingxuan’s makeup in the same style he’d done for the last festival dance of Miao’er’s life.
art by @kintsu-tai
“Gege,” his sister tells him, groaning, quickening her pace to match He Xuan’s, “you are taking this way too seriously!”
“What seriously!” He Xuan retorts, swiping his arm at her. She ducks neatly under it, popping back up to give him a Look, nearly slamming headfirst into a man going the opposite direction from them. “Don’t look at me like that!”
“Okay, Scholar He,” she says. “Okay.”
“You!” he tries to grab at her again, but she’s far too agile, using the flowing crowd around them to dance out of reach. He scowls; the girl spends all her time running around outside while he is constantly hitting the books, much to his dismay. It doesn’t seem right his younger sister can be so much more physically-inclined than he is…
“What’re you getting so worked up for?” his sister demands to know, nudging his side. He exhales, nudging her back. “You know I’m right.”
“It’s a big deal,” He Xuan argues back. “Of course I want it to go well.”
“Be that as it may,” she points a finger at him (and nearly trips over her own two feet, making He Xuan grab her by the shoulders), “you can’t control every part of the thing! It’s a whole festival, gege, not just an isolated show.”
He Xuan, though a scholar training to take the Imperial Exam, has a love for the performance arts and festivity—he often feels guilty that this could be time well-spent helping his parents, constantly working themselves to the bone, but he’s quite skilled at running the show, it seems. He even has a talent for it, his mother likes to say.
Still, coming from his younger sister—
“Miao’er’s been getting to your head,” he accuses.
“Maybe that’s a good thing!”
“How is that a good thing!” he says, properly annoyed now. “Stay out of my business, brat!”
She sticks her tongue out at him, but loops her arm around his anyway, and drags him towards the town square faster. He sighs, irritation dissolving in a heartbeat; his meimei has the tendency to do this to him. He doesn’t spend enough time with her, he knows it—naturally, older brothers have little to do with their sisters’ lives, but their family is tight-knit in a way that makes guilt coil in his gut—and he feels terribly about it.
“Meimei,” he says, attempting to diffuse the snappishness still lingering in his tone (after all, who in this world isn’t loathe to apologize to a sibling, especially a younger one, at that?) “aren’t you going a bit too fast?” He’s nowhere as agile as she, his footsteps stumbling one after the other as he lets himself get pulled along.
“You’re the one who wanted to get there faster!” which is correct, he supposes. At the very least, it’s clear who she takes after, and whom she looks up to the most—which is why, this year, He Xuan is determined to make this festival a success, and finally pass the Imperial Examinations. He’s more than determined for it, practice for it being the only thing he appears to be occupied with for the past few weeks, if not the festival.
Perhaps that’s why his family has been eager to push him out the door whenever he exits his room in order to help out. “Focus on what you have to focus on,” his mother would say with a kind smile, making his sister roll his eyes and Miao’er grin at him, mouthing, meet me outside in an hour? as if they were already married.
Though, wholly unsurprising; Miao’er lives as she pleases, is a bold woman with incredible talent and cares not for how it’ll make her look; a woman who once dared He Xuan to write the lines he needed to memorize on her nude body—and He Xuan is no pushover, either.
What a good match, the elders like to say, a truly upstanding young man, and a beautiful, devoted wife! Such luck must be the will of the Heavens. May they be blessed with a long and happy marriage. At this, He Xuan will become tongue-tied and look away, unsure of what to say, and Miao’er would beam, grasping He Xuan’s arm and grinning brightly with a flush dusting her face.
And then, He Xuan will wonder how he’s been this lucky.
In the town center, everyone is mostly frazzled and at their wit’s ends, the cacophony of shouts and desperate yells never-ending, almost. And yet, He Xuan is hardly intimidated; rather, he steps forward and hefts a large box into his arms, plucking it out of a young teen boy’s arms. “Go help them,” he says to this boy, who he’s known and been close to since he formally asked the theater group to accept him.
“Yes, sir!” the boy mock-salutes, making He Xuan snort as he walks off to a side and places the box down so that no one is bothered by it or at risk of falling over. He watches as the boy skips off to help a bunch of men attempting to hoist the large sign advertising, more or less, their theater and what they plan to hold today.
Then, he stands up and surveys the area, his sister standing at his side and watching the chaos beside him. He frowns as he runs through a mental checklist of what needs to be done before he can move onto doing what he really wants to do—there’s too much, is the thing, and his sister is at least right in that he can’t quite literally take on everything to do around here by himself, if only because he’s just one person.
She gives him a look. He frowns. “Scram, if you have anything useful to say or do,” he orders.
“What, you don’t want to see Miao-jiejie?” she asks, an impish grin spreading across her face. He Xuan scowls at her, suddenly rather aware that he can’t tackle her like he used to when they were children. Instead, he lunges for her, and she squeals, darting out of the way, coming to a stop only a few feet from him.
“Since you have so much to say,” he points to a group of girls standing around, holding a bunch of umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun, “go help them with their hair and makeup.”
“Can’t you do it?” she asks, bounding up to the girls anyway before he can retort back. He rolls his eyes. He has no idea where she gets that attitude, but her being compliant when it matters is all he can ask for, really. He hopes she isn’t too much trouble when he’s shut away, busy with studying, but Miao’er wouldn’t lie to him in case of trouble… he hopes.
He really should say something about his sister and his fiancée being in cahoots, basically, but mostly he just finds that he’s very glad they get along well. It bodes well for formally welcoming Miao’er into the family, when he finally manages to pass the exams. (And he won’t say it, but he’s glad someone is looking out for his sister when he’s not around to take care of her.)
Shaking off that train of thought, he strides off to help a group of men who are trying to figure out the best way to position the musicians’ instruments, scattered around the area where the girls are going to perform their dance later today. Though, mostly, it appears they just don’t know what they’re doing.
He sighs. It’s going to be a long day.
Some hours later, he manages to extricate himself from the rush, knowing everyone ever worried about his health will have words to say about him getting carried away. He tells an old grandmother that yes, he’ll be sure to secure her a good spot where she can watch her daughter and granddaughter dance without much trouble, and promises one of the neighborhood kids that yes, he can have a free sweet treat if he doesn’t cause trouble, and so on, and on, and on—until he finally manages to free himself.
Never let it be said that He Xuan doesn’t love his town. It’s also that being so well-known among certain circles does mean he’s sort of… beloved, in a way he doesn’t know how to process sometimes. It’s different out here than inside his parents’ establishment, where he has that thin barrier of needing to be a good host—out here, he’s just He Xuan, and he’s just… himself, bearing the brunt of it all.
He truly doesn’t know when this came to be so, but he has no choice but to let it happen now. He suspects his sister’s involvement in this somehow. She always has her nose in this kind of thing.
Grateful for the break, he makes a beeline for where his sister had said Miao’er would be waiting earlier, a tent that had been set up earlier to provide cover for the dancers from the weather. People are streaming in and out from within, and it’s easy for him to slip between the crowd and stumble inside, searching for her.
“Gege!” his sister waves a hand, hopping up on her tiptoes to be seen (she had not been as fortunate as to inherit the height that her brother had inherited from their father). “Over here!”
He goes over, and then pauses dead in his tracks a few steps away, eyes widening at the sight of Miao’er standing with her friend, who’s fussing over the layers of her robes, while she turns as directed, expression somewhat exasperated. Then, that exasperated expression falls upon He Xuan, and it shifts first in greeting, smiling at him, filling him up with something like distilled sunshine, and then nodding her head at her friend as if to say, can you believe this?
“Gege,” his sister snickers. He Xuan scowls reflexively, but he does feel a bit like he’s been dunked in water.
Miao’er is beautiful; everyone knows this. She may not compete for top beauties in the world, and this may be a fact gone untested because lower-class women do not compete with those of nobility, but Miao’er is beautiful all the same, and he has nothing to say except, “you’re…” rather weakly, because even dressed in simple white robes with resplendent colors layered over the top, silk cloth bunched in her hands, she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen in his whole life.
“He-xiong,” she teases, laughing, “tongue-tied, are you? I haven’t even done my makeup yet!”
“I am not,” he protests, ears warm. His sister laughs and laughs, and He Xuan has half a mind to tell her exactly what gets him tongue-tied—if he didn’t fear his mother’s wrath, and if she were not a child. “Miao’er—are you all ready, here?”
“Mostly! Just need to get my hair and makeup done, and we’ll be free to go,” she says. “Though I guess that’s what you’re here for, hm?”
“I promised,” he shrugs, gestures towards a row of empty chairs near the back. His sister darts off to retrieve a makeup set when he reminds her, giving him a meaningfully exasperated look right back as she does so; he resolutely does not think about that until she returns, pressing it into his hands and guiding Miao’er carefully so that she doesn’t trip and fall over her robes.
Seated, Miao’er looks up at him with mischievous eyes. “You’re awfully enthusiastic.”
“I can just leave right now,” he offers. “See how meimei does it when you let her get her way?”
“Hey!” said meimei cuts in, offended. He Xuan snorts, giving her a light kick she knows better than to return, choosing to sulk balefully at him for insulting her skills with the art of prettying up a woman, but she can’t help that her interests lie elsewhere, anyhow.
She sits beside Miao’er, accompanying them for propriety’s sake, if a thin pretense of one, because most women don’t have their fiancés do their makeup for them the day of the first time they take front and center stage in the silk dance, for the very first time. She’s practiced long and hard for this. He Xuan had watched her do it—many nights, she’d practiced in the courtyard outside his house, while he sat by the window, reviewing for the imperial exams, or simply reading for fun.
She moves like a spirit of the nature, this one, and something in He Xuan’s pulse quickens when he thinks about how she’ll look with the fully-put-together costume, dancing to music that will echo through the air for a long distance, instead of a melody in her head, or He Xuan’s own terribly off-key singing.
He puts a brush to her face, and begins to work. She closes her eyes, letting him work, and begins to hum, a tune from their childhood. Miao’er’s mother had often sung it to her when she was suffering from night terrors, things she’d tell He Xuan about as they sat in the doorway of his house, watching his sister trying to learn how to walk more than a few feet by herself.
He smiles despite himself, gripping her face gently, turning it this way and that, amused by how relaxed she becomes. His sister observes them for a moment—she does this sometimes, fascinated by their relationship. She had grown up a bit distant from Miao’er on account of their ages, but she had been aware that her brother was quite in love with her.
(She’d been the one to tell him that asking her family for permission to marry her wouldn’t be a bad idea at all.)
“He Xuan,” Miao’er says when he lifts the brush from her lips, “you’re going to be watching, aren’t you?”
“Obviously?” he raises his eyebrows at her, sticky delight growing beneath his ribs when he sees how she looks, opening her eyes and completing the picture of the beautiful dancer she makes.
“I’m glad,” she smiles. “This dance is for you.”
His heartbeat stutters, even now.
Miao’er is the most beautiful thing in the formation.
Up on the stage, all the girls whisper and giggle to each other as they find their places, looking to Miao’er—the one who organized the dance for today—for direction. She remains calm and collected, directing dancers to where they need to be, adjusting the younger girls’ positions, and stepping back to see if it all makes a coherent image.
It does, of course; Miao’er, like He Xuan, is a stickler for detail, and will do her utmost to make sure that anything she commits to is complete perfectly down to the last detail. It’s one of the things that simultaneously annoy them about each other, while remaining something they understand of each other regardless.
“She’s so cool,” his sister whispers to him. He Xuan smiles, a small, secret thing.
When the music begins, he is immediately entranced. Miao’er—well, all of them, but he’s focused on her—raises her arms, the white cloth delicately fluttering with the movement; her face half-hidden with the movement. A tilt, a slow, slow turn, completely immersed in the song, face peeking in and out of the fabric and her hands.
And then, the music bursts to life, and she moves as if she is one with it. White cloth flutters and snaps with sharp, vigorous movements, robes swishing and shaping out a story that He Xuan can only begin to grasp the edges of, that forms and fills out the longer it carries on. Twirling and spinning, Miao’er completely loses herself into the dance, the bold colors of her outer layers complementing every other color worn by the girls so perfectly that it’s a wonder she stands out at all.
He glances at his sister, who’s practically vibrating with excitement—and the moment he raises his eyes back to the stage, ears ringing with the volume of the music, he catches Miao’er’s eyes as it emerges from behind another whirl of the white silk, and there’s such a fire to her expression that it sweeps right through He Xuan’s whole body.
She even has the daring gall to smirk at him. He gapes. This woman—!
His sister catches this exchange, and she bursts out laughing, laughing and laughing so hard she has to hold onto the very person she’s laughing at for purchase lest she lose her balance and fall over. He Xuan’s face burns with embarrassment, but he can’t keep his eyes off of Miao’er for long. Or at all, really.
“Oh, gege,” she gasps for air, “you’re really… she’s too much for you!”
“Not at all,” he shakes his head, watching as she navigates the music so expertly she may well have been born dancing. “She could never be.”
His sister shakes her head, but her expression cannot be mistaken for anything other than fondness, and how grateful is He Xuan for it, that this is his life.
There is so much to be done. Exams to pass (again), a shop to run alongside his parents, planning the rest of his life with Miao’er, making sure his sister grows up well and marries into a good family. It’s so much, but he’s content. Happy.
The music comes to an end, and Miao’er’s incandescent joy visible in her every movement as she bows to the crowd’s roaring applause could light up the universe.
He Xuan, fresh off the wake of his sister and fiancée's deaths, learns that prison cells are not pleasant places at all.
Of course, he had known this intellectually; prison cells aren’t nice places to be in at all. But being in one, locked up in one—well, that’s a different story entirely. It’s a lonely little place to be in, darkness with the barest bit of light peeking through the bars, and the screams and cries of other prisoners begging to be released from the cells all around him.
It’s so cold, too. Cold in a way he had only ever experienced when stepping out of the house in the dead of winter, with not enough layers to protect him, except where that was momentary, this stretches on and on, sinking into his bones, settling within them as if making a home in the marrow.
Miao’er, he thinks, blank. Meimei.
It seems surreal, like a faraway dream, that the warmth of the festival was only a while ago. It had been unusually warm and sticky that day, and hadn’t Miao’er complained about it, even as she adjusted her robes and stood tall, refusing to be put off from making one technically counted as her big debut?
His sister hadn’t complained, a bit. She’d watched Miao’er dance with a sparkle in her eyes, and when Miao’er stepped offstage, flung herself at her, excited yells of “jiejie, jiejie, that was so good, you were so good,” cutting through the roar of applause flooding the air.
And He Xuan? He’d watched, a little bit faraway. Maybe a little drunk on the way the warmth seemed to expand inside him, watching two of the most precious people to him laugh and converse. Miao’er a bright splash of color, head tilted and sleeve raised to hide the laugh that bubbles out of her at this.
There is a cruelty to laugh at when he remembers this, but he sits there, wordless and hollow, slumped against a wall; so cold and so hungry that it is threatening to break him in half from within, but doing nothing to alleviate it—what could he do, anyway?
It all came crashing down when he saw their bodies, long gone cold, anyway.
“You’re the new Earth Master?” a voice calls out, and He Xuan, heart still jack-rabbiting in his chest at how easy it had been to trick all the officials who’d gathered at the site of his ‘ascension,’ turns around, preparing himself to be questioned and worse by some insolent heavenly official who doesn’t know their place. It’d be inconvenient, seeing as he hasn’t had a chance to question Ming Yi just yet for enough relevant details, and his agreement with Hua Cheng is precarious enough as it is.
Instead, it’s someone who hadn’t been there earlier, in the crowd of officials. A heavenly official dressed in green-and-white robes, the make so fine it’s discernible even from a short distance away. A thin silver chain flashes on his neck momentarily before it disappears beneath his collar and the closed fan he holds.
“That’s me,” He Xuan replies, straightening up. “May I ask who this esteemed—?”
“Ah, no need for such formalities!” the god says, waving a hand. The ring on it flashes with the light of a precious jewel. “We’re both colleagues now, so let’s forget about all of that.” He snaps open his fan, grinning at He Xuan over the top of it—and He Xuan’s eyes widen.
The character for wind is emblazoned on it, in bold, swift strokes.
“Lord Wind Master, at your service!” he holds out a hand, guileless, completely trusting. “But you’re going to be my friend now—Shi Qingxuan’s the name.”
A moment of silence. He Xuan could slit his throat open right now and leave, slash it open with such ease, tearing through the soft skin and muscle to claw out the insides, wrenching it all out with one move. Shi Wudu’s grief would shake the oceans and heavens; it’d be delicious to witness.
It would not be enough. It would never be enough.
So he takes Shi Qingxuan’s proffered hand—ignoring the slight confusion that has clouded his expression—and says, flatly, “Ming Yi.”
Shi Qingxuan beams, immediately looping his arm through He Xuan’s, giving him no choice but to stumble along at his side. “I’m so glad that there’s another elemental master around here now,” he sighs. “It’s just me and my brother, you know? I mean, there’s also the Thunder Master, but they prefer to keep to themself. I’ve never really gotten through to them! And the Rain Master doesn’t live around here, she likes the mortal world more—”
“Lord Wind Master,” He Xuan begins, eye twitching, but Shi Qingxuan tuts.
“Nope, too formal! We’re going to be friends now, so none of that!”
“…Shi Qingxuan,” He Xuan finds it is indeed easier to say this. Bestowing an honorable title upon the one who stole his fate—
“Hm?” Shi Qingxuan looks at him, head tilted curiously. Something about that makes his chest twinge with a memory he dare not examine too closely.
“I think,” He Xuan says evenly, not bothering to take in the splendor of the palaces they pass by, “that I am perfectly capable of walking on my own.”
Shi Qingxuan blinks, and then gasps, stepping away. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes, seeming genuinely sorry. “I got carried away, in my excitement…”
“It’s fine,” He Xuan says, hiding his irritation quite well, if he does say so himself. “Just—hands off, if you would mind.”
“Of course,” Shi Qingxuan nods, fan coming closed and clutched in his hand. He Xuan doesn’t dwell on that, and raises an eyebrow at the Wind Master.
“Well?” he asks. “Not going to show me around?”
How predictable this liar and fate-stealer is—immediately brightening up and darting ahead, gesturing for He Xuan to follow him as he begins up his stream of constant, non-stop chatter again, as if nothing had happened at all just now.
He Xuan follows, ever-hungry stomach tightening with the irritation of the realization that in order to get Shi Wudu, in order to punish both of them, he has to stay close to one or both of them. He isn’t particularly willing to try his luck with the Water Tyrant, but… he considers the Wind Master darting about ahead, pointing to different palaces and explaining who lives in which.
His little brother seems to be perfectly naive enough to get at with ease. (His little brother, who pokes at something in He Xuan’s mind, something he can’t quite name.)
What’s more infuriating than having to spend time with one of the two people you’re plotting revenge on? The fact that the person in question is evidently completely, utterly, totally clueless as to what his brother has done to get him up to the heavens.
He Xuan grits his teeth, striding through the Palace of the Earth Master with footsteps that are heavier than it should be, Ming Yi’s skin slipping as he does. Even after months, it doesn’t get any less fucking infuriating that Shi Qingxuan, while aware that his brother is far from a good person, still remains obedient towards him, and has absolutely no idea of why he has been able to ascend.
Stealing off his fate. He Xuan’s. The lives of his family.
It would be unthinkably easy to sneak into the Palace of Wind and Water and get the job over and done with. It wouldn’t be enough to make Shi Wudu repent. It wouldn’t be even a fraction of the pain he deserves. He Xuan’s fingers itch to do something. He wants—
“Ming-xiong?” a voice rings out from the hallway behind him, and He Xuan startles, whipping around (only barely remembering to slide the Ming Yi disguise back into place; he’s never dropping it around here again) to find a female heavenly official standing behind him.
“Who?” he demands, glad he has the stupid shovel he’d gotten from Ming Yi strapped to his back.
The woman pouts, affecting a hurt expression. “How cruel, Ming-xiong!” she exclaims, stepping further inside. The firelight from the torches cast her face into stark relief. “You don’t even recognize your best friend like this? I thought we knew each other better than that!”
He Xuan blinks. Her face… and her clothes, though in a female cut… “Shi Qingxuan?”
“That’s me!” she beams.
“Wh—” he’s grateful for the fact ghosts don’t need to breathe. It means he can continue pretending to breathe normally, and there’s nothing to exhale, nothing left of his momentary slip-up. “What are you doing?” he asks instead, narrowing his eyes. “Sneaking into my palace, taking a female form—?”
“Can’t I visit my best friend when I feel like it?” she asks. He Xuan levels her with an unimpressed look, and she either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care (either is likely, to be honest, when it comes to her), because she walks right past him, shooting him a playful smile with a tilt of her head as she does. “And can’t I just take this form because I feel like it?”
“Prancing around as a female heavenly official just because you feel like it?”
“I’m worshiped as a female god sometimes too, you know?” she calls back. He has no choice but to follow her inside, watching her warily as she perches herself on the divan by the nearest window. “I’m in the mortal realm more often like this. My brother doesn’t really like when I take this form.”
“Thinks it’s unbecoming, I expect,” he doesn’t bother to hide his disdain. The way she barks out a laugh is entirely unladylike, but it fits perfectly well on Shi Qingxuan, Wind Master, royal pain in He Xuan’s ass, possibly the only god in heaven without dreams and schemes of deception, trickery, and backstabbing.
“He’ll have to get used to it eventually,” she says, leaning back. Her beauty is evident even from this distance, across a room, and the moonlight streaming in through the window gives her an ethereal quality. The light makeup. The strained peace on her face. It reminds He Xuan of—
“Is this a thing you’re going to do all the time, then?”
“Sneaking into your palace, or taking a female form?”
“Both, clearly.”
“Well, of course!” she laughs, and against all odds, against every bit of willpower He Xuan has, it colors something in his dead, blackened heart with gold. “I’m just me, and I’ll do what I want. Neither you nor my brother can stop me!”
There’s a thread of defiance there that He Xuan chooses not to question. “Don’t annoy me,” he settles on, already knowing it’s a useless stipulation, “and you can do whatever you want.”
He Xuan is not stupid. He’s far from stupid. Shi Qingxuan smiles brightly at him, and it’s this kind of smile, uninhibited and joyous and so indescribably fond, that is often the first sign of someone falling deeply, deeply in love.
“Ming-xiong,” she complains, “stop ignoring me!”
He Xuan blinks, coming back to himself, brush poised over Shi Qingxuan’s closed right eyelid. He’d… he’s been doing that more often, lately. Deciding to put his plan into motion is coming with more setbacks than he had expected; but no matter.
“Don’t go zoning out the moment I ask you about your mortal life,” she continues, though she obediently remains in place, not moving an inch from where He Xuan had ordered her to sit still. He doesn’t actually remember if she’d asked such a question… “I was saying, you still have to tell me about how all of that works!”
“Theater plays and the like?” he asks, frowning at her. Dammit, he’s smudged the makeup a bit. He uses his finger to smoothen out the corner of her eyelids, using a bit more force than necessary, but she doesn’t do anything about it beyond a noise of complaint.
“Yep.”
“To be perfectly honest,” He Xuan says flatly, “I don’t remember many things about it.”
It’s a blatant lie. He has forgotten many things, his mind simply refusing to hold onto it, and that’s without accounting for the weathering of time. But the theater, the dances—he remembers those all too well. He doesn’t believe this will actually get Shi Qingxuan to back off, either, and is proven right by the way she makes a pleading expression at him, lips pulling into a pout yet again.
“I was more involved with the creative side of things,” He Xuan tells her, absolutely determined to keep the fact that he used to semi-regularly act in roles—minor ones, mostly, but sometimes lead roles—during actual plays far away from her prying hands. “Costuming, props in a pinch. That sort of thing.”
“So creative, Ming-xiong,” she says, awed. Inappropriately so. He could say anything and she’d take it as gospel if she’s not given reason to doubt him. “Were you good at it? I mean, obviously, you were, but what I mean is—”
“I was fine,” He Xuan says, tone providing no room for further argument. She sighs—
Wait. He Xuan raises an eyebrow. “I thought you wanted get prettied up.”
Shi Qingxuan waves a hand dismissively. “What,” he asks, “you don’t think I can be pretty like this, too?”
“Your face structure is different,” He Xuan deadpans.
“And does it look horrible, then?”
“…no.”
“There’s no problem then, is there?” he smiles, satisfied. “Don’t you think I am pretty like this, too?”
He Xuan has no time for this, so he mutters a “full of yourself” that make Shi Qingxuan laugh out loud, and continues with this godforsaken task he’s been pulled into, bringing up a brush to Shi Qingxuan’s lips instead. He parts them obediently, shivering a bit at the ticklish sensation. He Xuan has half a mind to shove it down his throat.
(So close, so close. Set the Reverend free when he’s least expecting it—)
(The distance between them is too little. Close enough to kiss, drag his teeth across skin. If he had a heart, it’d be beating wildly out of control right now, the way he feels right now, his traitorous, traitorous attachment to the one who has stolen everything that belonged to him, satisfaction skittering in his veins at the sight of the makeup sitting prettily on Shi Qingxuan’s skin, and of course, of course he wears it the best out of anyone He Xuan can think of.)
(He knows what this traitorous feeling is. He should tear out a facsimile of a heart and offer it up before it his family’s urns as penance.)
“You know, sometimes,” Shi Qingxuan says, suddenly, “I switch between male and female forms so easily sometimes, it’s almost like breathing. Effortless. Just—” he snaps his fingers. “Like that! I just… know, that sometimes I want to be or don’t want to be.”
He Xuan realizes he’s been done for—a minute, maybe more, and steps back, hoping the movement doesn’t look too jerky; humming to give indication that he’d heard. Oblivious, or perhaps just used to the inconsistencies that surface with He Xuan’s behavior, he continues, “like… right now, I want to be this way. But a minute ago, I would have hated it.”
“I did say,” He Xuan says, affecting apathy, but failing, “that you can do whatever you want.”
That earns him a laugh and a smile so fond it leaves He Xuan dizzy. Get it together, get it together. “That’s true,” Shi Qingxuan says. “I’m happy… or, well, really glad, but also happy, that you’re my best friend, Ming-xiong.”
“Who’s your best friend?” he mutters, instinctive. It slides right off of the fool in front of him.
“And I guess I’m especially happy because,” a pause, as if deliberating, “well, my brother really doesn’t approve of it. He really, really doesn’t like it, when I want to be a girl, even though I love it so much, even though oftentimes I really don’t want to be anything else.”
“Why do you wear your female form more often outside of the Upper Court?” He Xuan asks, almost without meaning to. It’s just something he’s always wondered about but never voiced. Though he has a pretty good guess.
“Well,” Shi Qingxuan says pointedly, “if your brother was mine, and you had to deal with him all—no, that’s harsh,” he bites his tongue. Holds He Xuan’s gaze for a second before he looks away.
“You are under no obligation to suffer his nonsense if you don’t want to,” He Xuan points out. He’s lost track of how many times he’s said this. He has no reason to be saying this, except…
(He has a stupid wish, of sorts: that Shi Qingxuan will come to know of his brother’s crimes, and come to stand at He Xuan’s side instead. Would he do that? Does he have any guarantee at all? Is knowing that he’s a much better person than his tyrant of a brother enough proof of any such thing?)
“I know that, but he’s my brother,” Shi Qingxuan says, helpless. He Xuan wishes he didn’t understand. He hates that he does understand. “I can’t just…”
“You can,” He Xuan says. “You’re just too afraid to.”
Stung, Shi Qingxuan rises to his feet. “Don’t say anything about my brother if you don’t have anything useful to say,” he snaps, rising to an uncharacteristic moment of anger directed at him. “You know full well it isn’t that simple.”
“Yeah, I know,” He Xuan agrees. He says nothing else, looking at Shi Qingxuan expressionlessly until he backs down, whirling to turn his back on He Xuan.
“I… sorry,” he bites out, shoulders rising up, fists clenched tightly at his sides. His fan lies discarded on the divan. “I didn’t mean to. It’s just, the makeup…”
“You don’t like it?”
“No!” he cries out, turning to face He Xuan again. “Of course not, you did well, and I…”
Like this, standing right by the window, he looks gorgeous. Beautiful, in the way He Xuan known he would be. He does not doubt his own skills, nor does he doubt Shi Qingxuan’s ability to take anything and wear it well. And he had known, even then, that when he sees this finished product, he’d be stunned in a way he cannot quite describe.
“Then?” he manages. “You haven’t even seen yourself in it.”
“Easily fixed,” Shi Qingxuan decides, and makes a beeline for the sleeping quarters. He Xuan curls his right hand into a fist, elongated claws digging into the skin, and follows after him to find him peering at the mirror located in the corner of the room, turning his face this way and that to closely examine his face.
“Ming-xiong, you work miracles!” he says, awed, as if barely a minute ago, he hadn’t gotten upset. “How do you do that?”
“Practice,” He Xuan deadpans, standing in the doorway. His thoughts are akin to quicksand, looking at Shi Qingxuan—the bold splashes of color across his eyelids, the rosy red of his mouth; bold and even… cute, in a way Shi Qingxuan normally wouldn’t wear, least of all in male form.
“Ming-xiong!” he bounds back across the room—switching to female form halfway through—and grasps his hands (he retracts the claws just in time), eyes shining. Smiling up at him like he is the whole world. “You’re amazing, you know? As expected of my best friend!”
He Xuan almost tells her to get off, but he silences himself. For what, he doesn’t know.
“I’m not doing this for you again,” he settles on saying, struck by how warm she feels. Her presence. In just a few days, he’s going to listen to her screams of terror and relish in it. Even heavenly officials are not immune to the monsters of their childhood, and for someone like Shi Qingxuan, who flinches at the mere memory of it, it’ll be incredibly efficient.
Shi Wudu will regret the day he decided he had any authority to perform the fate-swapping spell, and so will anyone who had aided him.
But—
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Shi Qingxuan snickers, turning as if to drag him further into the room, hand so, so warm over his. “Whatever you say, Ming-xiong. I believe you.”
“Insufferable!”
—is it foolish, to hope for a chance, to hope that she’ll take her chance and—
“You love me,” she insists. He Xuan has nothing to say in response, only a scowl that feels more self-directed, and his traitorous, helpless feet following where she leads, something in his core sparking to life at the coquettish look she shoots him over her shoulder. It’s so much like Miao’er for a second that it throws him off; and then the image refocuses, and it’s just Shi Qingxuan, playful and bright and reminding him of every single way he is helpless to her whims.
Helpless, helpless, always a slave to every misfortune that is thrown his way.
art by @shagandaishi / @stomachbooks
(He does not regret anything when he rises from bed with Shi Qingxuan’s bare form sleeping peacefully under his blankets, her expression relaxed and content. He Xuan’s teeth has left imprints all along her skin.
When the Reverend eats her alive, it won’t be nearly so gentle. Ship-Sinking Black Water won’t be nearly as kind, all masks and facades stripped-away; their flesh torn from skin, bones laid bare to assuage his wrath, the grief and fury he carries with every step of his accursed existence. To shatter their souls and spirits as thoroughly as his own had been. A life for a life; heaven shall witness that their sins, the ease with which they swept his suffering and misery under the rug, will be met with the appropriate retribution—appeasing Ship Sinking Black Water’s bitter hatred will be next to impossible.
No second chances if she comes to his side, he’ll let her come to him and no regrets.
This is how revenge works, for the Calamity borne of the desire to rend the heavens helpless with the force of his hate.)