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It’s a sunny day. Shi WuDu rests on his side, his cheek propped up on his palm as his eyes follow the irregular flight of a butterfly circling around Xuan-er, interested in the row of flowers falling from his fingers. It doesn’t seem to bother his little brother in the slightest, even as it comes to rest on his toe, nor does it bother him how relentless the afternoon sun shines on his pretty little head. How can anything bother Xuan-er, when his world is the size of their house, the town, and the flower field where they like to play, and he’s too busy braiding one fragile stem after another, focused like it’s a matter of life and death.
If Shi WuDu was just a little bit more selfish, he’d build his house right here for the two of them, gift his brother a secluded space where he never, ever had to worry.
Not much is stopping him. He just doesn’t want to snatch Xuan-er away when he looks so happy at home, unaware of the kinds of looks he receives from the townspeople and the servants of the house. And, gods, the things Shi WuDu has heard. It irks him. Even if the townspeople don’t know Xuan-er is a boy, he’s still only ten! What he wouldn’t do to cut out the tongues and pluck out the eyes of anyone who’s dared to say Xuan-er brought misfortune to his house.
“Done!” A colorful ring flies across his vision, startling Shi WuDu back to reality just in time to see the butterfly escaping Xuan-er’s powerful swing. A light weight lands on the side of his head.
“I have a question,” Shi WuDu begins, sitting up to adjust his new flower crown. Xuan-er’s smile rubs off on him, and he can’t help but indulge himself with a squeeze of his brother’s cheek, which Xuan-er accepts with a giggle. “But you have to promise not to tell mom and dad.”
The sun makes Xuan-er squint as he looks up. Shi WuDu moves to shield him.
“If you could leave this place and go anywhere, where would you like to go?”
“Gege,” Xuan-er replies.
Shi WuDu hums, prompting him to continue.
“I want to go with gege!” Xuan-er explains
Shi WuDu plucks a couple of flowers and returns his gaze to Xuan-er, whose eyes are following his movements. Watching him is how he learned to make flower crowns, to braid his hair, even to walk. For years now, no matter where Shi WuDu went, Xuan-er wouldn’t be far behind.
The first time Xuan-er followed him out the house, he’d almost had a heart attack. His little legs were wobbling with his weight, but he did his best to run, holding up his dress and yelling for Shi WuDu to wait up. The nannies only caught up once Shi WuDu had taken Xuan-er into his arms. They apologized profusely, trying to take Xuan-er back. When Shi WuDu asked why they’d taken their eyes off him, they replied, Young master, it’s not that. Xuan-er started crying right after you left and nothing would calm her down. Haven’t you been indulging her too much?
Shi WuDu extends his palm, asking for Xuan-er’s hand. “Naturally I would be there too,” he explains. “I mean if both of us left this place, where would you like to go?”
Xuan-er watches his brother make a bracelet around his wrist as he considers his question seriously, thinking of every place his gege has taken him, and imagining living there.
He realizes, as gege finishes his new piece of jewelry, that he likes the market, where he spends most of the day with gege looking at the toys; he likes the woods, where gege taught him to climb trees; and he likes this flower field, where gege sits with him for as long as Xuan-er wishes, and then carries him back home after he falls asleep on the grass. To him, any of these places sound like the perfect home for them.
After a while of not answering, Xuan-er can only repeat, while playing with the stems tickling his wrist, “with gege...”
Shi WuDu isn’t sure what to say to that. He sighs, patting Xuan-er’s head, which had become very hot under the sun. He pulls him into a hug to better cast his shadow over Xuan-er and protect him.
“Gege might want to go very far.”
“I want to go with gege,” Xuan-er replies, muffled against Shi WuDu’s chest.
---
Shi WuDu looks into Shi QingXuan’s eyes, and the moment stretches out for an eternity.
He wants to commit to memory the shy sparkle on QingXuan’s sea green pupils, the shadow of his trembling eyelashes, his erratic blinks hiding a split second of worry, sorrow, despair. Shi WuDu realizes, then, that an eternity is not enough; he wants to spend ten, twenty more lifetimes committing his brother to memory, carving in his mind’s eye not just his features, but every waking moment, to experience again and again the fullness with which QingXuan loved him, the trust; the bitter tears that burned the back of his hand as he wiped QingXuan’s face and told him, with his heart in his throat, legends are just legends, QingXuan; the rolling wave-like sob that followed, that crashed into Shi WuDu’s core: I don’t want it to be just a legend! I can’t just pretend to be your wife and continue listening to the tales of your love when I— when you—; the realization, warm and bittersweet, that left him dazed; the I love you, I always have that got stuck in his tongue when QingXuan beat him to it, not with words but with a pull; the soft hesitance of their first kiss, the certainty of every one that followed, the immediate regret after their last one.
That kiss… If there’s one thing he could take back, it would be that one. As a goodbye kiss, he’d prefer any other than the one he took by force while QingXuan was tied to his bed.
The one before that, the quick see you later peck on the corner of his mouth right before QingXuan left to visit his friends, yes, that one would do.
What he wouldn’t do for one more see you later kiss.
Instead, the last glimpse his brother will have of him is… No, he can’t show himself weak and fearful in the face of death. Ge does not regret this, he’d like to say, but he only has seconds left, and he’s feeling faint. He hasn’t memorized QingXuan’s last words to him yet, he’d like to let them run across his tongue a couple hundred times until they lose meaning, and only then turn to He Xuan and say okay, kill me now.
There's fear in Shi QingXuan’s eyes as well. Something that Shi WuDu never wanted to see, and if he could erase himself entirely from Shi QingXuan’s mind, so that his brother may not suffer his loss, he’d do it in a second.
“QingXuan, gege will go ahead first." He swallows down a mouthful of blood and promises, "I will wait for you down below."
---
“CRIMSON RAIN SOUGHT FLOWER” a strained voice disrupts the calm afternoon hustle. A fit of sickly coughs follows, then a choked breath precedes a yell that startles every bystander around the bridge, where a lone man stands with his eyes towards the heavens. “CRIMSON RAIN SOUGHT FLOWER!!!”
A couple and their child see the man and turn around before daring to cross the bridge. He’s mad, they think. He’s seeking death.
The madman takes another deep breath. “CRIM—”
“—Are you going to keep screaming?”
“AH!” Shi QingXuan jumps.
On the previously empty bridge now stands alongside him a young man clad in red, unamused with his display.
“Well, you’re not exactly easy to track down,” Shi QingXuan says after clearing his throat, arranging his hair behind his ear, patting dust off his clothes; hiding away any remnants of the confidence bordering on insanity with which he was screaming just moments ago.
Hua Cheng doesn’t humor him with a reply.
“Do you… already know why I’m here?”
“To cause a scene? To piss me off?” Hua Cheng guesses, crossing his arms over his chest.
Shi Qingxuan opens his mouth, as if wanting to retaliate, but he is in no position to talk back to the Ghost King. He’s no god, he has nothing. Submissively, he lowers his head.
“To ask for a favor.”
If Hua Cheng is surprised or even intrigued, he does not show it. Shi QingXuan’s words might be going through him, for all he knows.
“If there’s anyone that can do it, it’s only you,” Shi Qingxuan explains. He had a speech prepared, though he knows that beating around the bush would just piss Hua Cheng off more. To Shi QingXuan’s surprise, Hua Cheng finally reacts.
“What do you think I can do that no one else can?”
“My brother—” he begins, and he can already sense Hua Cheng’s disinterest returning. “He isn’t entirely gone, is he?”
Before Hua Cheng can open his mouth, Shi QingXuan continues, “You lied to me, and you lied to his highness because of your friendship with Blackwater, but you can’t lie to me anymore.”
Hua Cheng raises his eyebrows like it’s a challenge; Shi Qingxuan backtracks, “you don’t have a reason to lie to me anymore.”
“I don’t?”
“Do you? I’m struggling to believe you have anything against me.”
Hua Cheng looks to the side, hiding his expression behind the hair falling over his face. What he’s thinking remains a mystery to Shi QingXuan.
“I know I’m… spoiled and annoying, I should have died a long time ago, and even now I should be dead. The only reason I’m not is thanks to my brother. I stole someone’s fate and—”
“Your brother stole someone’s fate,” Hua Cheng corrects, turning his head back to Shi QingXuan, cold and ominous like restless water. It reminds Shi QingXuan a bit of Ge. “And he paid for it.”
Shi Qingxuan looks down. “It’s not like I never questioned the circumstances of my ascension, but I wanted to believe I was good enough like my brother…”
“You still think he’s good after what he did,” Hua Cheng says, and the next words out of his mouth, Shi QingXuan guesses, are going to be about how he does have something against him after all.
Shi Qingxuan raises his head. Hua Cheng can’t tell if he’s frowning because of the sun on his face or if what he said had upset him.
The dying afternoon wind barely blows on his hair, and with the same calm, Shi QingXuan responds,“‘To watch helplessly as your beloved is trampled and ridiculed—’”
Hua Cheng winces.
“‘—That is the worst suffering in the world.’ Is that not what you once said?” Shi QingXuan takes a soft step forward, almost shy, but Hua Cheng can tell “shy” is the last thing he feels as he says, “Tell me, Crimson Rain Sought Flower, with the power to change fate in your hands, could you live with yourself knowing you didn’t do everything you could to save them?”
Hua Cheng’s arms fall limp at his sides. He refuses to meet Shi QingXuan’s eye, instead he watches the horizon.
“There’s no way to erase what happened.”
“But there is a way to bring him back,” Shi QingXuan ventures, hoping. If the legends are to be believed, apart from his brother there is only one more person capable of defying fate.
---
Hua Cheng was nice enough to provide something for Shi QingXuan to bite into, since nothing else about their arrangement was going to be as comfortable.
“Take anything you want from me! Anything is fine!”
"You really think you have anything I want?"
Shi QingXuan pouts sheepishly. After a moment, Hua Cheng sighs.
“Do you have your longevity locket?”
Shi QingXuan grips his one treasure, the last piece of Ge that he has. He put both on the same chain after his brother's death. Don’t hesitate, he thinks, though his hands tremble. As he’s pulling them over his head, though, Hua Cheng stops him.
“I don’t need it, put it back on.”
The longevity lockets weigh more than the shackles on his wrists and ankles, like Shi QingXuan alone is carrying himself and his brother on his chest, two souls that might as well have been one before, but now only feel each other like ghost pain on a severed limb. He’s never liked pain.
His skin vibrates with anticipation, and some of it no doubt bleeds into the lockets as well, as if, wherever he is, Ge is telling him not to do this. QingXuan isn’t a child anymore, Ge. You do not have to make decisions for me. QingXuan will always, always choose Ge.
When Hua Cheng breaks his arm, Shi QingXuan’s entire body goes numb. A colony of ants crawl inside his muscles devouring down to his bone marrow. The cry of the longevity lockets drowns out his own muffled scream. Inside his head, a fog begins to take over as a searing pain pulses down his heavy limb, as if pumping it full of hot air. The shackles stop him from kicking.
Hua Cheng says something he can’t hear through his screams. A cold hand rests on his shin and Shi QingXuan understands it’s a warning, it makes his insides twist with nausea. Shi QingXuan cries, shaking his head. It’s enough, it’s enough, it’s enough, he wants to say. It hurts. It hurts. The lockets’ shrill cry is so loud it makes him ache and shiver.
When he comes back to reality, he feels heavy on one side, like he’s being pulled down by dead weights. There are dry tears on his face and there’s a faint ringing in his ears.
Only one of his hands is free. He reaches up to wipe his eyes.
The ringing, he realizes, is coming from his chest. The lockets have not stopped crying, though they’ve lowered their volume, like they too are exhausted.
“It won’t be long now.” A weight falls on his chest, but Shi QingXuan can’t lift his head to look. It feels like a paper lantern, delicate and light. “This will trap your brother’s soul if it decides to show up.”
Shi QingXuan feels a familiar pain between his eyes, but he cannot cry any more tears.
---
Shi WuDu’s eyes flutter open. He remembers swimming, formless, faceless, in a sea so claustrophobic it felt more like a bottle, with the neck around his neck. He feels heavy.
Just a moment ago, he felt a pull on his scalp before his world went dark. But now he is lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, like all his life had been a dream.
And QingXuan?
“Ge?”
QingXuan… QingXuan’s voice is like a bubble right after it bursts, like a firework at the height of its beauty. It’s gone too fast, yet it reverberates inside Shi WuDu’s head, and if he concentrates hard enough, he can hear it just as clearly.
A strained “QingXuan,” leaves his lips in response. It’s a habit. A long exhale after a deep breath. Shi WuDu frowns and holds the face of the person that appears in front of him, and looks into a pair of eyes he’d know in life or death. “QingXuan,” he repeats, like a prayer.
Sea green shines with a wet sparkle as tears begin to flow.
“Gege, it’s me! It’s didi!”