SU TANG (素醣)

  Day 24, 4th Month of the Lunar Calendar, 6000th Year of the Yun Dynasty, Taishan Province, Tian’an Sect

  When I awoke, Xiao Wu was gone.

  I just laid there.

  Xiao Wu.

  There didn’t seem much point to anything.

  Not anymore.

  Death would’ve been a welcome option.

  My head no longer ached as ferociously as before, and my vision slowly returned to its usual sharpness.

  I distantly recognised the bland paintings that lined the walls of my room. No, it wasn’t my room at all. It didn’t matter anyway. I was borrowing it. Just as I borrowed time. Just as all those royal bastards dressed in riches and power lent me mercy, so that one day they could snatch it back. Snatch it all back and then some.

  Why didn’t I listen to Ju Ying? Why didn’t I listen to anyone?

  Why…I covered my eyes as a new stream of warmth flowed from my eyes. Why did Xiao Wu have to pay for it?

  Maybe Xiao Wu had been talking to me, his final words a reminder ‘what an idiot’ I was.

  Xiao Wu.

  I stayed there.

  No one visited me. No one called for me.

  Which was probably for the best. Because I wouldn’t have answered anyway. Couldn’t have answered.

  So, there no reason for me to get up and face anyone.

  Not to eat. Not to think.

  Certainly not to look into a mirror and be reminded of the girl kneeling in snow, hands soaked in someone else’s blood.

  I laid there when the sun climbed overhead and cast long shadows across the courtyard. I laid there when it dipped again behind the palace walls and pulled the golden light down with it, leaving only the flicker of servant lanterns and the hiss of oil being lit.

  The world went on.

  Because of course it did. Why should it stop for him?

  Who was he, in the grand tapestry of Fate? A mere alchemist.

  I closed my eyes.

  I dreamed of carefree days. The warmth of sunlight filtering through linen curtains, of crystal waters where koi darted through lily pads. Of trees in bloom, pollen thick in the air like powdered sugar. We ran through fields in shoes we weren’t supposed to dirty, chasing butterflies with bamboo nets and squealing with laughter. Ju Ying would shout after us, scandalised, swatting at the hems of our grass-stained uniforms.

  I dreamed of classes. Of the monotonous and repetitiveness of school. Of ink splotches on calfskin paper, and the shriek of chalk scraping against stone boards. The air always smelled like wet parchment and fermented brush glue. Students chattered behind their hands, pretending to study whilst comparing who had the latest embroidered sleeves or whose father had a higher post. Cliques rose and fell over trivialities—someone’s accent, the colour of their ribbon, the way they tied their belts.

  Back then, exclusion felt like a death sentence. Back then, I thought loneliness was something that could be avoid if I tried hard enough.

  I dreamed of Xiao Wu.

  Not the limp body that kept tormenting my mind.

  Not the blood.

  Not the cold.

  But the real Xiao Wu.

  The one who ran like spring itself was chasing him.

  The one who had two feet.

  The one who never walked when he could skip, hop, or do that ridiculous half-dance thing he claimed was ‘practicing martial arts.’

  The one with eyes too big for his face, round and brown like toasted chestnuts, who blinked up at you like you were the most important person in the world. And made you believe it too.

  He was clever. Could memorise formulas with half the effort, solve puzzles in minutes. But he had no poker face. Every time he tried to fib, his ears would go red. He’d try to bluff through it with a grin, but that grin always gave him away.

  And I would pretend to be stern, to scold him for eating candied lotus behind my back or skipping herb-drying duty. But the truth? I loved him for it. Every terrible lie. Every stolen bun. Every cheeky excuse.

  He was Xiao Wu.

  He was going to be the best alchemist.

  Somewhere far off, the door scraped open with a long, reluctant chhhh. Somewhere even further, someone whispered like they were afraid the room might shatter.

  The world went on.

  How was that fair? I stared blankly, snippets of conversation passing through one ear and out the other.

  Who would cry for him if not for me?

  No one. That was the answer. No one would. No one could. Not properly. They didn’t know him. Because servants were made to serve. They were replaceable.

  To those mighty Immortal cultivators, life meant nothing. Death didn’t count if your soul reincarnated.

  Servants had one life yet had no right to live.

  Maybe that’s where I went wrong. I thought I had a right. I thought we all did. That somewhere in the great cosmic order there was a line that even cultivators wouldn’t cross.

  Even though I was proven wrong over and over, I held onto this stupid ideal. And Xiao Wu paid the price.

  There’d be no grave. No name at all, once we—Lao Zhe, Ju Ying, Ying Yue and I—were gone.

  I squeezed my eyes shut.

  Lao Zhe. Ju Ying.

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  What would I say to them? Could I say anything?

  No, they couldn’t know. I wouldn't let them. If they knew, if they even saw a fragment of what I’d seen—

  No.

  I wished they’d never know. I wished the world could stay bright for them, that their lives would remain wrapped in laughter and crushed plum blossoms and the scent of fresh paper ink.

  My chest tightened. My breath shallowed. A tremor bloomed in my fingertips. I dug my nails into my palm. Harder. Deeper.

  I had to protect them. I had to.

  They should never know of evil. Never of death. Never of the grief that gnawed at the lining of your stomach, or the kind of guilt that wrapped itself around your lungs and squeezed until you begged for breath.

  If I stripped them of the truth... they would be happy.

  Wouldn't they?

  “Lying is for cowards.”

  My head snapped up. That voice.

  Xiao Wu?

  I bolted upright. Pain lanced through my ribs, but I ignored it. My ears strained. My vision blurred. Somewhere between shadow and sleep, there he stood, just beyond the reach of candlelight.

  His face was soft, boyish, lit by a smile that had once annoyed me with its sheer audacity. The same mischievous grin he used when pinching snacks from the kitchens, or when sweet-talking Xue Wan’er out of her sweetcakes.

  “Lying is for cowards,” he repeated.

  His lips didn’t move. But I heard him.

  I reached toward him, my hand trembling.

  I was crazy. I knew it. But I didn’t care. I would’ve given anything to hear his voice again, even if it came from the cracks in my sanity.

  You’re right. You’re so right, Xiao Wu.

  I’m a coward.

  Two figures moved in my periphery. Real ones this time. The sharp clack of a bowl against a table startled me.

  “His Highness asked me to check on you.”

  It was An Lingqi. Beside her stood Jiang Feng, all awkward limbs and nervous glances. At any other time, I would’ve teased him. Tried to lighten the mood. Snarked about his giant puppy crush.

  But this wasn’t any other time.

  I shattered.

  The sob hit me like a blow to the gut. It tore out of me before I could trap it behind a clever thought or a sarcastic comment.

  My knees curled to my chest. My arms wrapped tight.

  And I howled.

  Howled like some half-starved beast in a cage.

  Warm arms wrapped around me. I didn’t know if it was my body shaking or her. I didn’t know if her arms trembled because of me, or because she too was falling apart.

  She said nothing. Just held me. Just rocked me back and forth, as I had once rocked Xiao Wu. Back and forth. Back and forth.

  The room dissolved. The walls. The floor. The ache. The fear.

  And I wanted to stay there forever.

  ***

  Eventually, she coaxed me into silence. Not with words, but with her presence. A still, soothing kind of quiet. The type that slips under your skin and drowns your sobs in exhaustion.

  She handed me a bowl, some bland herbal congee likely to help me recover or whatever the official explanation was. But I couldn’t hold it. My hands were trembling too badly, and my fingers were frozen in that brittle way where I wasn’t sure I still controlled them.

  She didn’t push. She just waited beside me.

  An Lingqi always looked like celestial goddess. And even now, with her pale face whiter than usual and drained of its usual poise, those fine features—the ink-dark lashes, golden irises, and radiant auburn curls—remained impeccable.

  “When we—when the Crown Prince found you—Xiao Wu...he was already gone,” her voice cracked, just once, but it echoed like a split in the sky. It was the first time I'd seen her express anything in centuries. Ordinarily, I would’ve made some sort of passing comment. But that seemed silly now.

  Of course, she would be sad. Xiao Wu was dead.

  Her mouth opened again, and this time it wasn’t the celestial maiden or Blossom Deity or talent of four-thousand years, but just a girl. Just a girl trying to hold something inside from spilling out.

  A friend.

  “I thought I lost you too.”

  My breath hitched. Another tear rolled down, uninvited, warm against my cheek like betrayal. I pressed my lips together hard.

  “You were just lying there, with that horrible black line down your arm. And Xiao Wu was just—” she drew in a breath. Tearless. Emotionless. But perhaps her ragged breathing itself was revealing of the inner turmoil she was experiencing. “I thought that you were both gone. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know.”

  I thought I was gone too. Part of me wished I still was.

  She looked down, then swiping her sleeve across my face, efficient and caring in the medical kind of way. “I’m sorry.”

  An Lingqi, beautiful, emotionless, and faultless. Regret didn’t belong to people like her. She was one of them. The cultivators. The ascendant. The ones with celestial veins and big purposes and spiritual backing. Regret was for people like me, the petty mortals staggering through life with dirt under our nails and mismatched socks. The broken ones. The forgotten.

  But maybe she was broken too.

  Maybe she'd always been broken, and I’d never noticed because I was too obsessed with the tragedy of myself.

  I thought she hated me. That she didn’t trust me. That she didn’t want to. But I never stopped to wonder why. Never once considered what silence cost her, or what memories she kept behind those glassy eyes. I just... assumed. Because it was easier to be angry than to admit I was the one who hadn’t asked.

  All I ever saw was what people didn’t give me. Never what they were trying to keep from breaking.

  And now Xiao Wu was dead. Dead because I thought I knew what I was doing. Dead because I underestimated the palace. Dead because I believed I could help and that wanting to help was enough.

  Even now, they were apologising to me.

  Xiao Wu, smiling even as he burned. Qi Qi, confessing regret.

  I would have wanted to scream: No. No. No. You don’t understand. I don’t deserve it. It’s me. It’s me who should be sorry. It’s me who should pay.

  But I couldn’t.

  The dead cannot hear.

  And I was still too much of a coward to say it to the living.

  ***

  Somehow, the Crown Prince left me to be.

  He was also someone I misjudged.

  It was unexpected. I had assumed he’d send at least Jiang Feng to trail me like a well-dressed shadow, making sure I didn’t cause him trouble. Not that I would have. Today wasn’t about that.

  But still. He let me go.

  Let me leave the compound.

  Even let me erect a monument for someone who, by law and class and every cold bureaucratic technicality, shouldn’t have been allowed a stone at all. And he gave me a basket of fruit too.

  Oranges. Xiao Wu would have loved them.

  I laid the oranges down at the base of the stone, which was simple grey and uncarved, save for the name I had chiselled myself with great difficulty. I placed the tattered remains of his clothes beside it, and lastly, the worn-out copy of his favourite Mr. Shen’s Unsolved—Volume IV, the one with the absurd twist ending that had made him yell in outrage for three days.

  I had no wine to pour. No incense to burn. Just the wind, the dry mountain grass, and the pathetic little ritual bowl the Crown Prince’s steward handed me on my way out.

  One by one, I dropped the offerings into the bowl.

  The fire caught quickly. Silent. Unnatural. It danced in blue-gold tongues, flickering without smoke or scent, pulsing like something alive. Like a heartbeat. It stared back at me.

  Watch, it seemed to say.

  So, I did.

  I watched the book curl and blackened and split into ash, the words Xiao Wu once loved vanishing into heat. I watched the scraps of his uniform, stained and torn from that day, crumple into nothing.

  I sat on my knees in front of the monument.

  My knees were numb. My hands clenched in my sleeves. I was afraid that if I let them go, they’d shake too much, and I’d embarrass myself. There were guards watching, after all.

  There are always guards watching.

  But no one came near.

  The fire dwindled.

  My world didn’t.

  It just...tilted. Quietly. Unfairly. Permanently.

  A wind passed through the grove, lifting ash into the air like lazy snowflakes. Some stuck to my robe and I didn’t brush them off.

  Maybe I wanted to carry part of him back.

  Maybe he wanted me to carry him back. If only that were true. He probably hated me for failing to protect him.

  I bowed my head to the earth; forehead pressed against the roots of the stone. It smelled like burnt paper and wet clay.

  “I hope to see you again,” I whispered. My little brother.