017. considering the options

Sunset was already falling away into night by the time the Luanshi convoy returned back to their home on Yunji Mountain. The sun’s long yawn steadily receded into darkness, laying the bright fires of day to rest beneath the hard line of the horizon and stars were called to return by the pounding of hoofsteps rumbling up the dusty pathways leading to the mountain’s sacred retreat. By the time the dust settled back onto the ground, dinner’s ritual was over—Xueyu’s disciples were milling about before lights out. The hallways were crowded with rowdy packs of youths engaging in horseplay, their laughter frenetically bouncing off the stone-lined, metal-boned walls.

Normally, this downtime was primetime for the Wei sisters and their petty wagers. The pair of girls were always scheming in one way or another, convincing more gullible disciples to bet against one another in skirmishes, or to try and best their friends in quick-round games that could easily be scattered if their master were to come survey his halls. Today, however, Chongwei found herself too thrilled from her trip to the city to play bookie for their carefully constructed plots; too concerned about the moody reticence of her brother to engage in such tomfoolery. She didn’t want to hustle—she wanted to gossip.

The teen left her sister and her overfed pet squirrel, Chonk’wei, to conduct their wicked ceremonies, squeezing past a group of disciples huddled over a makeshift game of dice outside of the dining hall. She moved down toward the dormitories, seeking out that boy she considered her best friend, her brother by circumstance.

“Laike!” she called, approaching his door set high in the stone wall, “Lai, are you there?”

“Go away,” Laike shouted. His voice carried down the ladder leading up to his roost. “I don’t want any.”

“Want any what,” the girl’s eyebrows furrowed, voice already brassy. Chongwei started up the incline, unable to see the body inside. “Company? Don’t be a jerk, Lai!”

“You don’t be a jerk,” the shadowless boy grumbled back, sticking his head out to peer down at his visitor, narrow hazel eyes suspicious of her intent. So often the Weis came calling to pull him into some grift and Laike really wasn’t in the mood for games. Letter still wrapped tight in his palm, the scolded boy had been considering his options: to open his gift and accept his feelings for Yuhui or to toss it away and simply forget. “I don’t wanna play right now—whatever betting pool you’re running, I’m out.”

“Good news for you: I don’t want your dumb money anyway!” The teen stuck her tongue out, fists balled and placed upon her hips as soon as she reached the top, a child trying to imitate an adult’s frustration. “I’m not doing games tonight, Lai, I want to know how your day in Fanxing was. Gods, why are you so grumpy?”

“Whatever,” the boy groaned as he retreated into the room—either in surrender or in acceptance of Chongwei’s visit. Either way, it was a signal that the girl was free to enter since he no longer blocked the entrance. He settled inside cross legged on his bed with that tightly folded letter in his hand.

“Ugh, come on, Lai!” Chongwei whined, kneeling next to the shadowboy on the floor. “Well: I had a super great day, thank you very much for asking!” She spoke like everything was normal, overly chipper to combat his moodiness, bobbed hair flopping back and forth in an exuberant nod. “Princess Miyan is really cool and she bought Jiewei and I these MASSIVE bowls of tsua-bing and we talked about all sorts of things and I think we’re going to be best friends if we get to see her again. What did you do? Did you have fun at the palace? What’s that in your hand? Come on, talk to me! Talk to me! Laaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!”

Reaching out, the lone Wei sister grabbed the boy’s arm, using it to jostle him back and forth.

Unmoved from the placid insolence that consumed his face even when being physically assaulted, Laike stared back at the dark-haired girl attempting to make him seasick in their mountain home. 

“It’s a letter,” the fighter replied, grim. He wore a funerary face, drawn despite their return from a place so full of life. Finally, that shadowless boy squinted over at Chongwei, exasperation slowly leaking from his expression till his brows twitched up: as though he was ready to confess his soul to the girl shaking the defiance out of him. “I don’t know if Fanxing was kind or cruel to me today.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Confusion dampened Chongwei’s bright expression. “Didn’t you spend all day with Prince Yuhui? You don’t know if you had fun? I mean, I know you’re probably upset because you broke the Princess’ tea sculpture and stuff but, like, come on. It’s no big deal in the grand scheme of things.” Tilting her head side to side, the teen took a moment to observe her sibling-by-hostile-demand further. “Who wrote you a letter?”

Laike looked at the letter in his hand before he sighed, tucking it away in his belt. “Does it matter? The end result is the same, with or without a letter.” The boy frowned, looking out the window toward the misty starlit night. “Master Xueyu scolded me. Severely. Yuhui kissed me in an alleyway at the market and we were attacked by bandits—no one important got hurt but Master Xueyu saw us together. He told me I’d be nothing to Prince Yuhui and I can’t decide if he’s right or wrong. Even if he’s wrong, I’m not sure it would change anything.” With a sigh, Lai’s shoulders slumped.

“What? That’s so dumb, Laike. How would Xue know what the Prince is thinking?” Chongwei folded her hands in her lap. “I’ll have you know that Princess Miyan was saying that her brother was really curious about you. I mean, obviously I can’t tell you all the details of everything we talked about because of girl-to-girl confidentiality, but you shouldn’t listen to what dumb ‘ol Xue tells you all the time. He doesn’t know everything.” Her eyes rolled in their sockets, dismissive of the older man when he was somewhere else. “If the Prince gave you a letter, maybe you should read it and see what he really thinks, huh?”

“Master Xueyu has never led me astray,” the sullen fighter said, crossing his arms over his chest. He pressed his lips together, trying to resist the urge to ask after the girls’ conversation: he’d come to believe in the sanctity of the Weis’ confidentiality agreement, superstitious of the repercussions to his own fortune should he force either sister to break truce.

“…He had his sister ask about me?” Laike’s chin dipped a little as his wanderer’s gaze finally settled on Chongwei’s face. “What’d she want to know?”

He bit back his next question, but it was plain upon his face:

What did you tell her? What did you find out?

“Just stuff, Lai. Just stuff.” Chongwei was obstinately aloof, as if the boy before her was a small part of a larger business scheme, a small fraction rather than the whole. “And anyway, yeah. Maybe Xueyu hasn’t led you astray before, but the man lives a sparse life on a mountain. He’s old. What does he know of youthful feelings anymore? People are different, right? He’s never been a prince, he can’t guess what anyone’s thinking but himself.”

With a sudden grin, emergent on features that grew sly in the low light of the boy’s room, Chongwei leaned in. “You want me to read the letter for you? See what it says and then tell you if it’s good or bad? I have no problem doing this, you know. I will do whatever is necessary for my dear brother.”

“No—” Laike replied as his hand came to rest over the letter’s hiding spot, instinctively protective, as though Chongwei was more than capable of picking the paper off his person. “I… um. I… want to know if… you should tell me what you found out about him. I know you sold me out for something but I know you always get info back. Tell me what you found out.”

“It wasn’t anything super deep, you know. If you want information about boys, Lai, then you’re going to have to pony up.” Chongwei sat up straight again. “We basically asked her if his intentions were good and wanted to know if he was this secret stuck-up asshole who would take advantage of you. She said he’s usually alone except for the company of his best friend. Like his whole ordeal keeps him from engaging with a lot of people. He asked about you because he was curious. He sends her out to ask about all the boys he’s interested in. Princess Miyan said he’s genuine, hasn’t had a lot of actual boyfriends. I threatened to hurt him if he did something to upset you.”

“And what’d you say about me?” Laike tilted his head and turned toward his visitor. “It’s important, c’mon—if you’re giving up my information don’t I deserve to know what I’m gonna walk back into?”

“Ugh, Gods, you’re so annoying.” The young brunette grumbled, posture bent in an exaggeration of her passing frustration. “Okay, so she just wanted to know what sort of things you liked. If you liked boys, which we guessed that you did because you always made heart eyes at Chen when he was still here. We told her that you can’t keep secrets and that you’re an actual badass and that your favorite food was just food. Also that you’re just super great and gave us blankets when we first came here.”

Laike fell quiet at the mention of Chen—Gods, how long had it been since he’d seen the elder disciple? The shadowstalker’s face rose and fell like the tide: calm and placid in one moment, frustrated in the next. Now the boy grew sore, chewing at the inside of his cheek with his brow furrowed.

Yuhui wrote him a letter

and it hadn’t even been a day—

why hadn’t Chen?

“You think he’s genuine?” Laike asked, mind still working through points of contention in his own recall.

“I dunno, Lai. I haven’t said one word to him.” The teen straightened, looking to her not-blood brother more seriously. “The Princess said he is, and she seems genuine, soooooo—hey, do you think he’s genuine? You kissed him, which… nasty, by the way.” Chongwei wrinkled her nose. Now she would have the image of her brother kissing a person and that was a true cruelty to be stuck with.

“He felt genuine,” he replied softly, ignoring the girl’s closing statement. “Everything felt genuine.”

“Well then don’t look so glum. He wrote you a letter. Maybe you should read it and not listen to what your dumb, meathead dad says for once in your life.”

Laike laughed, head bowed to obscure his grin at the disrespectful remark—as Xueyu’s head disciple, his favorite student, his surrogate son, he should have been up in arms over the slight against his Master. Always and ever, Chongwei escaped his wrath in regards to her feelings on Xueyu: he knew somewhere, deep down, she had some respect for the Great Swordsman of Yunji.

“I cut off two people’s hands today,” he offered when he looked up, a reward for her patience. “You wanna hear all about it?”

“UHHHHHH, YOU KNOW I DO!” The girl was instantly a rapt audience, turning on her knees to face the older boy in full, to watch him through her eyes gone wide and ready for the story.

Laike’s grin reached his eyes this time as he turned to face the girl he regarded like a sister, ready to set the scene.

“Well, I told you we were in the alleyway at Zhongxin market and these three guys came up…”