Chapter Text
The earliest memory Sizhui has for most of his life—is of waking up in a soft bed, a large bed in beautiful room, sunlight flooding all around him. He remembers waking up too warm, a cool compress on his forehead, and remembering nothing. Not his name, not what he ate the night before, not what his favorite toy was, not what sweets he liked. There is a boy at his bedside, holding a bowl of soup in his lap. His robes are simply-layered, all white, a ribbon just as plain and simple across his forehead.
Sizhui remembers, at that moment, wondering if that was his father—too young to be able to tell whether someone was of a logical age to have had him themselves. His throat hurts too much to speak, and the boy doesn’t seem to be expecting him to say anything anyway. The boy immediately sets the soup onto the nightstand beside the bed, and stands, facing away from Sizhui’s bedside and saying, “Hanguang-jun—he’s awake.”
Sizhui remembers, then, realizing that there has been music playing, softly, the entire time—from the moment he had opened his eyes. He remembers plucked strings, a yearning melody that tapers off into silence at the boy’s words. He remembers the young man who approaches after the music stops, a far more intricate ribbon across his forehead, hair piled high and held by a silver crown. His robes are just as elegant, shades of pale blue woven with the white.
Sizhui remembers, when the young man sat at his bedside, when he leaned in to press the back of his hand against Sizhui’s cheeks and forehead, the flash of bandages over his pale wrists—peeking from beneath his inner robe as well.
Later, several years later, when Sizhui begins classes towards a path of becoming a cultivator, he’ll let slip in front of his classmates how his earliest memory of Hanguang-jun is being spoonfed soup by him and he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the looks on their faces.
As most children do, Sizhui doesn’t question why things are the way they are for as long as he has pet bunnies to play with—other little boys to make friends with, paper to paint on, and plenty of room to run around in (quietly though, no yelling, even if he’s playing). He does wonder, though, eventually, why the other children return to their parents after playing in the fields or near the river—why they are picked up by their mother or father from classes—while Sizhui always returns home with a different Lan Sect junior every afternoon—why does he live among some of the older trainees, treated kindly as if he is their youngest brother, but still with no parents.
He wonders why, since that first morning when he awoke to soft plucked strings and warm soup, he hasn’t seen that young man again.
He wonders, but he does not question until he does see that young man again.
“You must behave better than how you behave for us,” one of the Lan Sect juniors says, as he leads Sizhui by the hand out from the more populated clusters of wooden roofs and corridors and courtyards. “You’ll have to be even more obedient, all right? It’s a privilege to be raised by the Second Young Master. Especially if you aim to become a cultivator—you’ll learn plenty from him.”
Sizhui wonders if this means he won’t see the bunnies anymore—wonders if this means there will be less time in the fields, the river, the waterfalls, and more time with books and calligraphy.
As the approach the house, sequestered away from the rest of Cloud Recesses, Sizhui hears a familiar melody—one that has become, even then, a vague memory to him. Three years, to a child, is a long time. Still, he somehow remembers it—and from that moment, he certainly remembers how the Lan Sect junior holding his hand stiffens beside him as they approach and the melody can be heard clearer.
“Pity,” the junior whispers, under his breath, so softly that Sizhui almost believes he imagined it.
The music halts after the junior has knocked on the door.
“What is that song?” Sizhui asks, while they wait.
“Come in,” a deep voice sounds from within the walls, and the junior never responds to Sizhui.
The older boy simply shakes his head, profusely, and repeats, “Behave for Hanguang-jun.”
The junior is wrong.
Hanguang-jun is strict, but fair and gentle. Sizhui didn’t think that someone could be both unrelenting and kind, as well as reasonable and—well— fun. If Sizhui wants to run around and lose all of his energy for the day, he still would have to do so with the other little boys his age, but Hanguang-jun accompanies him to feed the bunnies (and Sizhui finds out that they have actually been Hanguang-jun’s bunnies this entire time, maintained by the juniors during the absent years that no one has explained to him yet).
Hanguang-jun has him practice his calligraphy until his hands ache, and then brings him out, by the hand, to the fields—burying him in bunnies and allowing him to play in the shallow water, as long as he takes care to tie his robes up high enough and does not wade too far out. He has Sizhui recite twenty of the thousands of sect rules a day, for memorization’s sake, and then he asks Sizhui—every day as well—what Sizhui thinks of each of the rules.
He never tells Sizhui that his opinion is wrong—only question back why Sizhui thinks the way he does of each rule.
The rules that Hanguang-jun enforces relentlessly is that of sleeping and waking. Without fail, Sizhui should be in bed by nine at night—and up by five in the morning. “You’ll embark on night-hunts, one day,” Hanguang-jun says, without looking up from his writings as Sizhui slips into his sleep robes for the evening, “and those nights will become the exception.”
Sizhui doesn’t ask about the nights when he knows that Hanguang-jun is not on a night-hunt at all, but near the doors that open up into the courtyard. Sizhui doesn’t know whether it is every night—there are some nights, after all, when Sizhui does fall asleep the moment his head falls on the pillow. Other nights, when he isn’t too tired from his lessons and from playing, he will lie awake, pretending to be asleep, listening to Hanguang-jun’s fingers dancing over the strings of his guqin.
Whether warm or cold, he will always move close to the veranda to play when he plays at night—the same melody that Sizhui has always remembered hearing.
Sizhui is eight when he first hears about the Yiling Patriarch.
Hanguang-jun has been gone for the past few days, investigating for a night-hunt case that, from what Sizhui could hear, was far too insignificant and simple to call for one of the Young Lan Masters—Hanguang-jun insisted on going anyway, and Sizhui was to be looked after by one of the lower Lan Sect cultivators.
On the fourth day of Hanguang-jun’s absence, Sizhui asks for assistance on his rule writings, and inquires in the same way he has become accustomed to with Hanguang-jun over whether a rule is truly just or not. The lower cultivator is a man who looks to be just a few years older than Hanguang-jun himself—but his eyes are pinched and rigid, so unlike Hanguang-jun’s clear, bright and open ones.
“If you keep questioning the laws of our clan,” he says, clearly irritated because Sizhui has not moved on from the fifth rule, out of twenty, that he needs to get done today before the cultivator can stop overseeing him, “you’ll be set out of Cloud Recesses for the evening for punishment and then the Yiling Patriarch’s ghost might get to you!”
It sounds as if it was meant to be said in the same tone that Sizhui has once had the Lan Sect juniors, who raised him early on, when he refused to eat certain vegetables—teasing and playfully threatening, using wolf monsters and vengeful ghosts. Instead, it comes out truly angered and impatient and Sizhui freezes up, palm sweaty around the handle of his calligraphy brush.
The doors slide open in that precise moment, and both Sizhui and the lower cultivator’s heads whip around to see Hanguang-jun breezing in, expression cold as ice.
The lower cultivator immediately scrambles to his feet, visibly shaking, as he brings his hands together and bows low. “Hanguang-jun, you’ve returned earlier than—”
Hanguang-jun brushes past him and leans his sword against the wall, folding himself smoothly down onto the cushion beside Sizhui. “Gather your questions for the end,” he says, without so much as a glance to the lower cultivator. His eyes are calm and solemn, always steady, as they meet Sizhui’s gaze. “I will answer them once you have finished.”
The lower cultivator gapes. “Hanguang-jun, I—”
Hanguang-jun turns his gaze onto the other man for a total of ten, silent, excruciating seconds before the man bows again and scrambles backwards for the door, sliding it shut with a slam behind himself in his haste to leave.
Sizhui finishes his work in silence. Normally, when Hanguang-jun has returned from a night-hunt, or from clan duties otherwise, Sizhui would ask after the events that happened—whether there were any exciting stories—whether Hanguang-jun saw any animals on his journey from town to town, city to city.
Somehow, even if Sizhui understands that the tenseness in the atmosphere is not directed at him, he still doesn’t truly dare speak when Hanguang-jun’s expression is so closed off. Those who are not familiar with him, who have not lived with him, perhaps, mistake him to have only one face—one look in his eyes.
Sizhui knows the reality to be very different.
Hanguang-jun always carries an even, almost unreadable, expression—but it is not colorless. His eyes can be warm—they can be cold—they can be gentle, angry, patient, amused, knowing, surprised.
Today, his eyes are sad.
Lost.
(Sizhui cannot fall asleep for a long, long time that night. He hears the ever-familiar melody again. He thinks perhaps he has memorized it by now, knowing which measure comes after the other—which is how he knows that something is not right when the song tapers off suddenly.
He hears, right before he falls asleep—so close to unconsciousness that he wonders if he dreamt it—a sharp, bitten exhale.
If Sizhui were older, he might have even likened the sound to a sob.)
Sizhui is twelve when he joins the dormitories for the Lan Sect juniors, beginning full cultivation training. A part of him worried initially that he might be isolated by the other boys from the knowledge that he was raised by Hanguang-jun for a good part of his childhood—whether from intimidation or believing that he would be arrogant because of it. It was a worry that he would never speak out loud, fearing how ungrateful it would sound of him even after one of the clan’s young masters himself had taken him in after his parents were killed during the siege.
His worries end up becoming assuaged completely during his first week of classes, when he finds a fast friend in a boy with a loud voice, quick wit, and perhaps quicker temper. Porridge falls right out of Lan Jingyi’s mouth when he learns that Sizhui is the boy that all the others in their year had been whispering about. “I was expecting you to be—different,” he says, once he’s wiped the food off of the table it dropped onto, and off of his face.
“More like Hanguang-jun?” Sizhui asks, amused, offering up his own handkerchief for the remains of the porridge that still haven’t been sopped up.
“Yes,” Jingyi admits, almost apologetically, accepting the handkerchief. “Some of us thought you would be copying the clan rules before you even had hair on your head.”
It’s Sizhui’s turn to nearly spit out his porridge.
Sizhui is fifteen when his cultivation level has been deemed advanced enough, his core strong enough, to begin guqin lessons. The master himself performs for them to open their first lesson, saying that he will introduce the song after he has finished.
The first few measures pass with Sizhui simply admiring the way the master is plucking and moving over the strings—the next few measures have Sizhui reeling, breath catching at the sudden familiarity of the melody before it dissipates into something else entirely that he does not recognize.
“Inquiry,” the master says, once he places his hands over the strings to end their vibrations shortly, “or—at least—one of the many variations of it. As a method to converse with spirits and the dead, there is no one true melody for Inquiry—only different notes, and short tunes, strung together just as we string together words and phrases for sentences.”
Sizhui’s arm jolts into the air almost as if on reflex.
Surprise coats the master’s face as the lesson has not even passed the ten-minute mark. “Yes?”
“What was the conversation played just now, Master?” Sizhui says, as mildly as he can—as if his mouth wasn’t suddenly dry with anxiousness and curiosity.
“You learn the alphabet before you learn words—you learn words before you learn to speak,” the master says, not unkindly. “If you work diligently, you may be able to speak before the week ends—or at least, how to read.”
Sizhui does not sleep that week.
Jingyi thinks he’s gone mad, stating that even the other juniors in their year who have opted to learn guqin are not studying as abruptly hard as Sizhui is. “You don’t need to do this to impress Hanguang-jun,” he says, shaking his head as Sizhui stumbles into breakfast, forehead-ribbon slightly crooked after yet another night spent completely pouring over scores. “He already favors you, even after you’ve left his care, and I heard the guqin master already favors you as well.”
“Pass the soup, Jingyi,” Sizhui mutters, blearily stifling a yawn.
Are you well?
It is a simple, and common, enough phrase—one that Sizhui does not have to sacrifice any hours of sleep for in order to learn. It is on the list of initial scores that they are taught and given to memorize and perfect on the second day of class.
It is also, recognizably, part of the melody that Sizhui knows by heart—the first measure.
Where are you?
Is it warm there?
Sizhui begins writing notes from memory once he learns how to decipher the music into words, and from words to music. He cannot play everything he remembers hearing, nor can he play everything he has learned to read from the scores. Within the first few days of lessons, however, they have learned enough for him to understand the system of translating one to the other and back to one.
He realizes that even though, as a song, the Inquiry Hanguang-jun always plays is one of decent length—as a conversation, it is not long at all.
Are you in pain?
Are you happy?
Sizhui has always been aware that Hanguang-jun lost someone during the siege—so many cultivators died during the war that it was nearly impossible to find someone of Hanguang-jun’s generation who hadn’t lost someone. He would ask, he thinks, if the situation was not like this—if there didn’t seem to be so much secrecy, by the way their Clan Leader, and their Clan Elder, always seem to look at Hanguang-jun when he returns from night-hunts that he truly shouldn’t waste time embarking on.
Sizhui knows now that he has begun going on a few himself, some even led or intervened by Hanguang-jun, that the type of night-hunts Hanguang-jun selects truly make no sense for the Second Young Master of such a powerful clan to go on. They are always strange occurrences, but never anything truly dangerous.
Sizhui wonders who it was that Hanguang-jun lost, because he knows that he will never be able to ask—he knows he will never receive a true answer.
I believed you, and I believed in you—always.
It takes him three sleepless nights, in succession, to piece this out.
While it is possible to play only statements with Inquiry, as the tool was mainly a method to investigate the dead, most of what they learned with the master were questions—and it is also much simpler to compose questions. Sizhui isn’t even sure how he would play what he has just figured out—the previous measures are questions that he knows he would be able to play eventually.
He recognizes this part of the melody as one of the most intricate in Hanguang-jun’s Inquiry—beautiful and longing.
Are you at peace?
If Hanguang-jun had had a close friend, so close that they had known each other since they were children, cultivating together, fighting alongside each other, companions nearly like brothers—Sizhui puzzles out that, by that logic, that cultivator would be known, loved, and respected throughout the Lan Sect as well.
He reasons out that that cultivator should also have had his death mourned heavily and his name widespread throughout the clan as well—as reality would have it, however, the closest to Hanguang-jun is still only, and has ever been, Zewu-jun.
I’m sorry.
I’m so, so sorry.
I miss you.
If Hanguang-jun had had a lover—
Sizhui places his brush back into the inkpot shakily, staring at the last measure that he has just finished translating. The sun is beginning to rise, light filtering through his window and rendering the candles he still has lit unnecessary.
He supposes, with the thousands of clan rules that exist, someone like Hanguang-jun would take it to his grave if his lover was not someone his clan would allow him to be with even before death took them.
When Sizhui is nineteen, he knocks on the doors of the hanshi, bowing to where both his Clan Leader and Hanguang-jun are seated around the table. Zewu-jun smiles at him over a cup of steaming tea. “You are embarking for that case at Mo Village, Sizhui?”
“Yes,” Sizhui remains bowed for another moment before raising his head. “I’ll be leading the hunt. It shouldn’t take long—we should be back in a few days including the time for the journey.”
“Be safe,” Zewu-jun says warmly.
Sizhui bows again.
“Tell Jingyi to think before he acts,” Hanguang-jun says smoothly.
Sizhui bites back a laugh, rising from the bow to give a nod before he turns to make his exit.
He is about to slide the double doors closed after himself, when he hears Zewu-jun’s gentle tone, “You aren’t thinking to come along with them, are you, Wangji?”
Sizhui doesn’t know why his movements to shut the doors pause in tandem with Hanguang-jun’s pause as well. He shouldn’t be listening on when the other juniors are waiting for him anyway to depart.
“The case is interesting,” is all Sizhui hears as the quiet reply before Sizhui forces himself to turn on his way.
He hasn’t lived with Hanguang-jun for years now, and he has no way of knowing what Hanguang-jun does once he retires to his secluded home. They’ve gone on several night-hunts together, and he visits to show Hanguang-jun his improvement in swordsmanship as well as guqin, but he has not lived with him since he was a child.
There was a point, some years ago, when Sizhui let go the matter of all those nights of Inquiry—he’d reasoned out, after finishing decoding Hanguang-jun’s chosen melody, that anyone would mourn their lost lover for years, constantly attempting to contact them in any way they could.
It had been sixteen years, now, since the end of the war—no one would mourn for that long.
Yet, earlier this week, Sizhui had returned from another night-hunt, sometime past midnight, entering the outer limits of Cloud Recesses with the other juniors. He had told the others to go on along without him, intending to see if, by any chance at all, Hanguang-jun was still awake finishing writings or perhaps returning from duties of his own.
Sizhui had not expected to be greeted by the ever, so familiar—ever longing, ever haunting—melody the moment that he approached the jingshi.
He had turned away, continuing on to the dormitories, hoping, with an ache in his heart for the man who’d raised him, that tonight just happened to be a rare night of nostalgia and memory—that the man who’d raised Sizhui, with so much warmth and care that he had never felt the missing hole of a mother and father, had not spent the past sixteen years inquiring without response every single night without end.