Page 12

Z hi Lan was drenched in pond muck. Her clothes were heavy and stuck unpleasantly to her skin. There was something slippery in her shoes. She was out of breath and shivering.

And skies, she was probably a wanted criminal now.

Zhi Lan stumbled to a halt when she made it to a small clearing. They were in a patch of wilderness, though she could tell it didn’t extend very far by the sight of buildings speckling the distance through the trees. She fumbled for Master Dan’s painting, which she had shoved into the back of her collar right before Shao Qing had flung her into the water.

Her hands trembled, dread roiling in her gut when she found the silk brocade wet to the touch. When she unrolled it, her stomach dropped.

Every meticulous detail Master Dan had layered on was gone, dissolved into dark, blue green splotches. The red signature stamp, too, was illegible. All that was left was a hazy landscape of bleeding pigments.

Zhi Lan’s breath hitched. “It’s ruined!”

The sneaking, the climbing, the running—all that for nothing! How was she supposed to face Master Dan now?

Zhi Lan broke into a sob at the thought of her poor master. He had spent three months on this masterpiece, yet the pond water had washed it all away in minutes. She’d always thought art was eternal in the way it was meticulously preserved, passing from teacher to student. Yet here was the truth before her—art was nothing more than ink on silk, fragile and transient.

Shao Qing stood at her periphery, wringing out his sleeves. She turned to him.

“What were you thinking?” Zhi Lan demanded shrilly, shaking the ruined painting in his face. He hardly blinked at the violent motion, instead stepping away to remove his outer robe and drape it on a nearby branch. “Couldn’t you have waited for me to put it somewhere safe?”

Still nothing. Zhi Lan watched, utterly appalled at the calm manner in which he removed the dragon painting he had stolen from a bag at his hip and unrolled it.

It was a small handheld scroll, on which an ink washed dragon curled across paper. The painting was dry.

Shao Qing studied it for a beat, tracing his finger over the lines. He held it to his chest.

Then in a sudden motion, he flung it hard enough that it splashed back into the water they had just come from.

“What. Did. You. Just. Do?” Zhi Lan hardly recognized her voice, dark and guttural with anger. Her muscles hurt. She felt hot and cold all at once. “You had a waterproof bag all this time, and you used it on a painting you didn’t even want?”

Shao Qing finally turned around. She expected him to defend himself, to be as jittery and angry as she was. But he looked as if he hadn’t felt the effects of anything. Not the swim, not the chase. Not her anger. Like a wooden puppet whose strings had been cut, Shao Qing collapsed on the debris covered ground, his legs splayed before him. His eyes were blank. So terribly blank.

Zhi Lan knelt before him and pushed his shoulder. “I asked you a question,” she said, her vision blurring with tears. “Answer me!”

Nothing.

There was something unnatural about him. He was like a still pond, but no matter how many rocks Zhi Lan threw at him, his surface did not break.

“Demon,” Zhi Lan whispered hoarsely. “There is something wrong with you.”

She wanted to shake herself for being so foolish. She should have never left Master Dan. Now, she was stuck in another city with a thief. They were both probably wanted criminals. Magistrate Li and his guards had seen their faces. She couldn’t go to anyone else for help without risking arrest.

Zhi Lan clenched her clammy hands, fighting the tears welling in her eyes. She had no idea where she was. She had no money. The clothes on her back were not fit to be seen. Her escort seemed to have stopped functioning entirely.

What was she going to do ?

Panic clenched like a fist around her throat, but Zhi Lan clung desperately to the last shred of sense she had. Ma and Ba had taught her to keep her head in the most dire of situations. Like during the month they had starved. Like when Ma had lost the baby. If her family could rise resilient to such hardships, so could she.

Shao Qing, with all his oddities, had gotten her this far. Even if he were a demon, Zhi Lan refused to believe that he was without honor.

A red pouch stuck out from the folds of his inner robe. It was the sentimental ornament he held. Sentiment was human, as far as Zhi Lan knew. Without thinking, she grabbed it from him.

Shao Qing looked up sharply, as if the pouch were a magnet and he couldn’t help but be drawn to it. “What are you doing?”

Zhi Lan squeezed the pouch in her hand, pond water dribbling down her wrist. “Tell me about this.”

A crease appeared between his brows, and he looked away. “Why are you still here? We’ve finished our bargain, haven’t we?”

“You need to escort me back to Zhu City.”

If she were doomed, at the very least she should go back and be there for Master Dan.

Now, to shake some sense into her escort.

Shao Qing leaned forward and tucked his legs underneath him, his movements stiff, as if he had just regained control over his limbs. “You can go back without me.”

“I don’t know the way. If you don’t tell me what’s wrong with you, I’m going to throw this pouch into the pond.”

“Back with your threats?”

Zhi Lan couldn’t describe the relief she felt in this exchange. He was back to normal. Or at least as normal as he could be. The emptiness, though not completely gone, gave way to his usual cool detachedness that was more human than anything else about him.

“Why do you want to know?” Shao Qing finally said.

“You clearly suffer from some sort of...condition. You fumbled our bargain. I deserve to know why.”

Shao Qing looked at her. She couldn’t tell if he was thinking, or if his mind was merely blank.

“Fine.” He stood up slowly. “Let’s start walking.”

The two, still dripping wet, continued deeper into the trees.

Zhi Lan supposed the beginning would be a good place to start. Had he always been this way? She drew in a shaky breath. “What were the circumstances of your birth?”

Shao Qing glanced at her for a moment. She wondered if she had been too rude in her questioning before he finally spoke. “I was found in the back of a pleasure house. They say my mother was one of the courtesans there, but no one would claim me so I was sent to the orphanage as an infant.”

“Were you treated well there?” Zhi Lan ventured to ask. She wanted to keep him talking, terrified that he would revert back to an inanimate puppet like before.

He shook his head. “There was never enough to eat and we were put to work, harvesting silk from silkworms.”

Zhi Lan blinked rapidly, wiping the pond water out of her eyes. “I thought orphanages were supposed to take care of children until they were adopted.”

“Adoption is rare in Zhu City. Most prefer to raise their own. And the children who leave the orphanage with a guardian are likely to be servants...or worse.” He said all this without feeling. Zhi Lan was almost afraid of what else he was going to reveal.

“So you spent your childhood there?”

“Not all of it. I ran away.”

She nodded slowly. “Then you joined a band of thieves?”

“Not immediately.” His pale gaze slid to the red pouch in Zhi Lan’s hand, which she had held onto since Shao Qing never made a move to take it back. “I had a little sister, Su Su.”

Zhi Lan held her breath. So that was who he had been apologizing to in his sleep.

“She was found in the same place I was, three years after me. Perhaps we were blood-related, perhaps not. Either way, we had kinship, and we took to each other,” Shao Qing said. “Su Su had a sickly constitution. The winters in the orphanage were harsh, the rules were strict, and the hours we worked only made her worse. I knew she wouldn’t survive for long if we went on.”

“You ran away with her for her sake?” Zhi Lan asked gently.

“That was what I told myself. But it was a selfish decision. I ran away because I chafed under the rules, and I thought there were better things waiting for me. That I could feed and clothe us better than the orphanage could.”

“How old were you?”

“Thirteen.”

Mere children on the streets of an expansive city. Zhi Lan thought of her own childhood, of the fields and rolling hills, of the rivers and houses that held well-meaning adults and her own caring family. She had never been without protection or warmth when she was that young. Children were not meant to suffer so.

Zhi Lan fidgeted with the pouch in her hands, shivering. Her clothes were still wet, but their walking warmed her limbs. “How did you manage?”

Shao Qing shrugged. “We begged and we stole. It was difficult for me to find a respectable job—no one trusted a lone child. Without money, we slept on the streets. But I was too proud to go back to the orphanage. Su Su didn't want to return either...though, perhaps she was only humoring me.” He said all this with cold composure, as if the story didn’t affect him at all. “Eventually the proprietor of an herbalist shop took pity on me and let me be his errand boy. For a time I was making enough to feed Su Su and myself, though not enough for permanent shelter. I thought we were living grandly. Our stomachs were full, we slept under the stars, and we could go wherever we pleased.”

“That’s good,” Zhi Lan said softly.

“Su Su thought I was...” Shao Qing let out a mirthless laugh. “She thought I was her hero.”

“Of course. You rescued her from the orphanage and took care of her, like any good brother would.”

He did not disagree with her, but he didn’t look like he agreed, either. “My foolishness caught up with me. My employer was generous and often I ended the day with more coin than we needed to spend. Su Su was eager to help, so I let her keep our money safe while I worked.”

Shao Qing’s eyes slid to the red pouch in Zhi Lan’s hands. The accessory suddenly felt heavy.

“There were other boys on the street who decided we were easy targets. They took everything we had. Including Su Su’s life,” he said shortly. “I saw it happen but I was too afraid to stop them.”

Zhi Lan sucked in a breath.

“Money is so easily acquired,” Shao Qing said. “Yet Su Su sacrificed herself for a few coins.”

Tears burned at the back of Zhi Lan’s eyes. She couldn’t help them—it was a tragic story.

“I should’ve been consumed by thoughts of revenge after that. Any man would,” Shao Qing said. “But I barely remember those boys. It wasn’t revenge that drove me mad. It was grief. Regret. I resented myself. I wished that I hadn’t been a coward.”

“Shao Qing...”

He kept his gaze forward. “You don’t want to hear the story anymore?”

Zhi Lan shook her head. “Continue.”

“I went to the bamboo forest at the outskirts of Zhu City one day. I met a demon. A bamboo spirit.”

A shiver ran down Zhi Lan’s spine at the mention of such monsters. Demons were notorious for preying on humans, making bargains and stealing their essence. It was the only way they’d be able to cultivate into immortals, or so the folktales say.

“What did it say to you?” Zhi Lan asked.

“That if I gave it my soul, I wouldn’t be afraid anymore. So I did.”

“What?”

“The numbness was better than grief. I felt free. My soul was a burden.”

“Your soul is not a burden, it’s what makes you human!” Zhi Lan said, aghast. She was horrified by his admission. He must’ve truly resented himself to willingly do such a thing. She halted in her tracks. “The way you acted back there, it was because you’re soulless? You were gone for a moment. You looked like a puppet, a husk of a person! How is this good? ”

Shao Qing hadn’t stopped walking, so Zhi Lan was forced to catch up to him.

“There are drawbacks,” he said calmly, as if they were chatting about tea. “Colors are duller. Food tastes like dust. Sometimes I can sit for hours and forget where I am.”

Zhi Lan was bewildered. She suddenly saw Shao Qing in a new light. A foolish boy. A frightened child. A grieving brother. Someone who loved and grieved to such an acute, painful point that he had rid himself of his feelings entirely. Now, he was a soulless man.

Yet he didn’t seem entirely lost.

“You still...function,” Zhi Lan said. “How is that possible?”

“I sometimes wonder that myself,” Shao Qing admitted. “I feel it getting worse yearly. But when I joined Yao and his gang...the thieving made me feel alive again. Danger brings me back to myself. Somewhat.”

“Is that why you stole that dragon painting back there?” Zhi Lan demanded. “To feel something?”

Shao Qing studied the forest floor. “I’ve had dreams every night that my soul was in a painting of a dragon,” he said slowly. “Two days ago, when I met you, I felt something change. I’m not sure what it was. But it must have something to do with the painting.”

“The demon took your soul. Why would it be in a painting?”

“Perhaps that’s where the demon chose to keep it. I’ve attempted to find it a few times before. I’ve been unsuccessful.”

“So you’ve been looking for your soul all this time?”

Shao Qing gazed blankly at the scenery before them. “I suppose it’s an interesting challenge.”

Zhi Lan frowned. “The only reason you’re trying to find your soul is because it’s challenging?”

Shao Qing merely shrugged.

Zhi Lan’s mind whirled with this information. She doubted he could give a true answer in his current state. A body was meant to have a soul, just as a painting was meant to hold meaning. A part of Shao Qing must know this, however subconsciously. Perhaps that was why he wanted to look for his soul—to restore the balance within him.

“I’m sorry,” she finally said. “You’ve suffered greatly.”

He glanced over at her. There was nothing much behind that gaze, but it only made her feel worse.

“Maybe I can find your soul, if you haven’t had the luck.” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.

Shao Qing stopped in his tracks. Zhi Lan turned to face him, feeling feverish and reckless.

Guilt and grief were not easy feelings to sit with. They had weighed upon her like stones ever since she refused that nobleman’s offer all those years ago. Zhi Lan’s situation was nowhere near as tragic as Shao Qing’s, but at the very least, she had the support of her loved ones.

Shao Qing had no one.

She understood why he would want numbness over grief. But to lose grief was to lose love, and that was a steep price to pay.

They had reached the edge of the forest, the trees falling away to an open expanse of city. Zhi Lan held the red pouch in one hand and Master Dan’s ruined painting in the other. She had nothing left to lose. Perhaps if she couldn’t save herself, she could save someone else.

“What do you want in return?” Shao Qing finally said.

“Nothing.” Zhi Lan pushed the wet hair out of her face. “This isn’t a transaction.”

Shao Qing had helped her all this time. She wanted to return the favor even if she didn’t have to—even if nothing came of it. She was not entirely without manners, after all.

“Why, then?”

“Because I have a soul.”

He shook his head slowly. “Does having a soul make you that foolish?”

“I’m only trying to help,” she said hoarsely.

Shao Qing walked toward the city, not bothering to look at her as he said, “Save your effort. You should worry about yourself.”

Zhi Lan glanced down, assessing the objects in her hands and her disheveled clothing. Her throat tightened, the sting of his words sobering her.

Ma had always said to leave broken men to their own fate—that there was no one who could fix them but themselves. Zhi Lan knew this to be true, yet Shao Qing was in no condition to fix himself. He needed a push, and she was willing to give it.

Still, did she really have time to argue with a husk of a man who seemed almost content with his condition?

Zhi Lan drew in a breath and centered herself. Her first duty was to her master. She had gone on this journey for his sake, and she couldn’t be side-tracked quite yet. Master Dan was waiting for her. She needed to hurry back and bear the consequences with him.

Zhi Lan pressed her lips into a grim line and followed Shao Qing into the city.