The world goes slightly out of focus, like in a dream.
There is grass under me. That much is clear, the particular texture of riverbank grass, soft and slightly damp, leaves dirt on my sleeves. I can hear water. A river, close by, moving at a comfortable pace over smooth stones. The sky above is warm.
I am small. My hands, held up in front of me, are a child's hands, and in them are three bread buns.
Burnt. Properly burnt, the crusts blackened in patches, the bottoms a shade past acceptable. They smell like ash and something sweet underneath the ash, and they are the most appealing things I have seen in several days.
'Look what I got!'
'Did you steal from the baker again.'
The voice behind me sounds tired. Not angry-tired. Just — tired. It is a young voice, I think, though something about the weariness in it sits strangely with that. I cannot see his face. There is a shape behind me, and where the face should be there is a soft blurring, like shadows hiding the face from memories.
I know this boy…at least the child me does.
'It is not stealing if he was going to throw them away,' I say. My voice is younger. I am sticking my tongue out.
I lay back on the grass with a sigh that comes from somewhere deep and content, and bite into the first bun. The best thing I have eaten in days. Maybe longer.
He is still standing behind me. Just standing there.
'Ekkk! Don't stand like a creep, come sit and eat with me. It doesn't taste as good if I eat alone.'
I pat the grass beside me.
He has that same deadpan expression… I know this without being able to see it. He sits. He does not do it immediately, but he does it.
'I told you,' he says. 'I don't need to eat mortal food.'
'Yeah yeah — demon this, demon that, oh I can't smile because I'm a demon, oh I can't eat candy because I'm a demon, blah blah—'
I am mocking him. I am doing a voice. I break off mid-ramble because something has snagged—
Demon.
Why am I talking to a demon?
But the question dissolves before it finishes forming in my mind, because that is just how it is, apparently, and I am already continuing:
'You know, just because you don't need human food doesn't mean you can't eat it. Not everything has to be for survival.'
He looks at the burnt bread in my hands. I know that look. He always makes that look — that particular, slightly thrown expression — whenever I am casual about the fact that he is what he is. As if he keeps expecting it to matter to me and keeps being surprised that it doesn't.
In this small age, in this small moment by the river, I genuinely cannot find a reason to be frightened. He looks like as good a playmate as any. Demon or not.
'Why else do anything?' he says.
'Because it's fun! And delicious!'
I break the bun and push the other half into his mouth.
He looks funny like that. I remember thinking so, clearly, even through all the blurring — the crumbs at the corners of his mouth, the slightly stunned expression, the eyes—
Red.
Dark red, wide, startled. Blood-red. I cannot make out a single feature of his face but I know the color of his eyes exactly.
'Delicious…' he whispers, still a little dazed.
'I know, right — HEY. STOP BITING MY FINGER—'
CRACK.
The sound of fire splitting stone snaps me back so hard I nearly tip forward into the oven.
I catch myself on both palms against the cave floor and blink. The orange glow of the oven. The smell of bread, now properly baking. My own hands, adult-sized, braced against cool rock.
I sit back slowly and stare at the oven mouth for a moment.
Strange.
The quality of it had not felt like a dream. This had felt like pressing a thumb into a bruise that has always been there. The grass under me. The smell of the ash-burnt crust. The river.
The red eyes.
I do not remember ever meeting a demon. I am fairly certain I would have noted that.
I turn it over once, carefully, the way you might turn over a stone you are not entirely sure you want to look under.
Then I set it aside.
The bread will burn if I don't manage the heat.
That is the more pressing issue at the moment. I lean forward and check the oven, adjusting the airflow with a small redirect of wind cultivation — barely a breath's worth — and settle back into my crouch.
Whatever that was, it can wait.
The bread cannot.
The crack makes immediate sense the moment I look over.
Xiao's fire has gotten away from him entirely , great lurching tongues of it climbing the sides of the oven, the kind of heat that would char the outside of the buns black in minutes and leave the inside a cold, raw disappointment. He is already scrambling, both hands out, trying to pull it back.
"Hey — hey. If you keep it up like that you'll burn the outside and the inside will still be doughy." I sigh and move him aside with a nudge of my shoulder.
He scrambles to smother the excess flame, flushed and frustrated. "Not my fault! Even the sect leaders at the academy say fire is the hardest element to control — it's so volatile, so destructive, it just—" He stops. Stares. "How are you doing that?"
I have lit a fire underneath the stone oven. It is the right size. It is doing exactly what I asked it to.
The cave fills with the warmth of it, orange and yellow catching in the mist from the waterfall, and where the light meets the falling water outside it makes something that looks soft and amber and honestly quite pleasant to sit in front of. The smell of the dough beginning to work in the heat is already doing good things for my mood.
I settle back down.
"If you start by thinking fire is inherently destructive, you end up fearing it," I say, feeding the flame a slow, measured trickle of spiritual energy. It does not require much. It never does if you come to it right. "And fire is no more frightening than water."
Something moves through me as I say it. A coldness that has nothing to do with the cave.
Images — flashes, incomplete — dark water, unruly and filling my lungs until—
I blink them away and keep going, keep feeding the fire, keep my voice even.
"There is no point fearing fire more when I fear drowning just as much."
I do not know where that came from. I move past it.
"Fire is not only destruction. It is what keeps people warm at night. It is where we share meals with our neighbours. It feeds us." The flame settles under my hands, its crackling mixing with the waterfall behind us. "Fearing it leads you to lose control of it. You do not need to master it — just direct it. Guide it to where it needs to go."
I pause.
"Which right now is making delicious bread buns."
I add cheerfully. I am very ready for those bread buns.
Xiao sits beside me and is quiet for once, which I appreciate. The warmth spreads through the small cave. The smell of the bread is getting better by the minute. Outside the waterfall catches the late afternoon light and the whole thing is really quite a decent situation.
Then Xiao says, "You know — you could ascend."
I tilt my head toward him.
His voice had come out strangely. Not the usual chirping.
"Where did that come from?"
His doe like innocent brown eyes catch the firelight and go determined. "You totally could! The main requirement for the fourth level trials is elemental spiritual energy — Ye Fen, you have water, earth, fire, you already have levitation — if you actually tried you could pass. You could ascend with me—"
I yawn. Rest my head back against the cave wall.
"Even if I could, I don't want to. Too much work. Besides, what's the point."
I genuinely have no answer to that question. It is not a complaint. It is just true. I know he hates whenever I insult the heavenly bastards divine plans, but when did those pompous assholes ever bothered listening anyways?
Silence.
Then his voice repeats, smaller: "What's the point?"
Something in the way he says it makes me open my eyes.
His fists are closed in his lap. "Don't you want to stay with me?! Aren't you scared you'll be all alone here once I ascend?!"
His voice cracks on the last word.
I stare at him.
Ungrateful little brat. I have been engineering an entire stone oven and managing fire cultivation and mixing dough since yesterday, all of this specifically because of his face when he mentioned his mother's cooking, and now he is yelling at me.
"I'd still know plenty of people," I say. It is true. The academy maids are quite friendly toward me, probably because none of the other disciples bother talking to them, and in that way we have always understood each other fairly well.
"B-but—" He stops. Swallows. "I care."
A hiccup.
Then another.
I look at him properly.
Xiao is crying.
He is clearly furious at himself for it, jaw tight, eyes bright and spilling anyway. He looks very young right now. Younger than usual. Younger than he lets himself look anywhere else.
I am quiet for a moment.
The bread crackles softly in the oven.
Between the hiccups and the sobs I can barely catch the last words.
"I— it is me who doesn't want to be alone."
Ah.
So that's it.
Something pulls in my chest at the sight of him. In the end I am always reminded, he is still a child. Died too young and found himself dropped into the middle of immortal realms that do not particularly account for that. Endless cultivation schedules and trial rankings and spiritual energy quotas and not one person stopping to notice there is a kid in the middle of all of it who just wants someone to stay.
He is a good kid.
I reach over and ruffle his hair. He hates it. I do not particularly care right now.
"Haaah." I sigh, long and dramatic. "Okay. Okay — I'll ascend with you. Fourth level only. And stop crying, it sours the taste of the bread."
His eyes, still wet, go wide. Bright. Very round.
"R-really?"
"Really."
I hold out my pinkie.
He stares at it for a second like he is not sure it is real, then hooks his around mine and squeezes hard.
"Now let's eat. I'm going to need significant incentive if I'm apparently studying for trials now." I turn back to the oven. Both our stomachs answer at the same time and we look at each other and laugh, and then we are pulling the buns out and they are warm and the crust is exactly right and the inside tears apart soft and steaming and honestly — worth every bit of trouble.
It is a good afternoon.
...I just realized I have to study now.
Ugh.
Still. I have gone through worse for less. I can manage a little trouble for this kid.
***
The sun is setting by the time we make our way out of the sacred grounds, the sky gone deep orange-red through the trees, the light is like a warm blanket over everything. Xiao is practically skipping beside me. I have the remaining buns wrapped in cloth and am already thinking about which of the maids would appreciate them most. The one on the east corridor has been working double shifts. Probably her.
The red light through the leaves does something strange to my head.
Red eyes. That demon boy. The river grass and the burnt bread and the way he had looked — stunned, crumbs at the corner of his mouth — when I fed him half of mine.
I wonder what his face looked like. I have the eyes and nothing else, just that specific dark red, and it bothers me in a distant, idle way.
Pretty, though.
Thud.
Pain. Immediate and specific, radiating from the center of my face outward.
My nose.
I have walked into something very solid.
I open my eyes, one hand already pressed to my face, and look up.
Coal-black eyes look back at me. Slightly widened. Just slightly.
No.
Absolutely not.
"You there! Show some respect and apologise to the young master for your carelessness!" Fan Yuan's attendant is already shrieking.
"It was your master who wasn't looking where he was going, he should apologise first!" Xiao fires back immediately.
I cannot hear either of them properly because Fan Yuan is right there and his eyes are doing that thing where they pull focus from everything around them and I am still holding my nose and blinking like an idiot.
He tilts his head. Looks down at me. He is slightly taller. His expression has not moved at all from its default setting of carved, frozen disinterest.
"You smell," he says, "strange."
I come back to myself.
Excuse me. Why are you even smelling me?
I take a step back, putting sensible distance between us, and scoff. "It is probably the bread. Though I imagine it is too lowly for the heavenly master's palate."
No one insults my bread. Not even indirectly. They are my babies.
"Bread..." He tests the words in his lips. Why does he act so shocked and dazed?
"That's right!" Xiao puffs his chest out beside me, chin up, deeply proud like a chicken "Ye Fen made them just for me."
I open my mouth. Close it again. I had in fact been planning to distribute the remaining buns to several people and Xiao was perhaps one of four intended recipients but I genuinely cannot be bothered to correct him right now. I am tired. I want my bed.
"As if the young master would want your lowly mortal—"
"Give me some."
Silence.
All three of us look at Fan Yuan. His attendant looks mortified.
Fan Yuan, who has apparently just said what he said with his full chest, standing there looking exactly as cold and remote as always, as though the words came from somewhere entirely separate from him and he is merely reporting them.
The attendant looks like he has swallowed something the wrong shape.
Xiao's mouth is open.
Mine is too, probably.
"Y-young master, surely you don't mean—"
"I want one." He looks at the buns in my hands and points at them. One finger like some bratty child…
I pull them closer to my chest on instinct.
These are my buns. I spent yesterday on the dough. I built a stone oven through negotiation with actual rocks. There is no way in hell I am handing them over to someone who booted me out of the alchemy wing this very afternoon.
"Make your own," I hiss at him as I try to hide the buns away.
I must be losing my mind because I could swear — I almost certainly imagine it — the very corner of his mouth moves. Almost. Not quite a smile. Gone before I can confirm it.
Why the hell is he here anyway. Is this bastard following us?
Before I can think it through further Fan Yuan raises one finger and Xiao makes a sound like a startled bird as spiritual binding threads yank him straight up into the air, dangling him there with his arms pinned and his feet kicking at nothing.
"Give me some," Fan Yuan says, "and I will release your friend."
I stare at him.
He stares back.
This is extortion. Bullying. This is spiritual energy being used for the explicit purpose of extortion over bread. I am looking at the perpetrator directly and he does not look even slightly embarrassed about it.
I look at Xiao. Xiao mouths help at me from mid-air.
I look back at Fan Yuan.
I sigh so deeply it comes from somewhere below my stomach.
I am defeated, because I do not have nearly enough power to go against those bindings, nor energy for it.
"Fine." I unwrap the cloth, break off one single bite-sized piece, and hold it out on my palm with the energy of someone surrendering something precious under duress. "Just one bite."
I am not prepared for what happens next.
He leans down and takes it directly from my hand.
With his mouth.
Not just the bread — the bread yes, but also my fingers, the warmth of his lips closing around them for one brief as I feel strange wet and hot sensation of his tongue licking my finger, deliberate second, and then the very specific sensation of teeth, light but absolutely intentional, grazing the tip of my finger before he pulls back.
I snatch my hand back so fast I nearly drop the rest of the buns.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING BITING MY FINGER YOU CREEP—"
Fan Yuan straightens up. He runs his tongue once across his lower lip, and looks at me with those dead-fish eyes that are somehow doing something entirely different from dead-fish right now, and mouths the word at me, slowly:
D — e — l — i — c — i — o — u — s.
My ears are on fire.
The spiritual bindings drop. Xiao lands on his backside on the path with a thud.
I grab Xiao by the collar and walk. Quickly. Away. I am absolutely not looking back.
"Honestly," Xiao is saying, rubbing his tailbone and trotting to keep up, "he was so rude. Licking your buns like that right in front of—"
I clap my hand over his mouth.
"Stop. Saying it. Like that."
Xiao blinks at me over my palm.
I stare straight ahead and keep walking.
Behind us I do not hear footsteps following, which is good, because I need at least several hours and a full night of sleep before I am capable of processing any of what just happened.
My finger still feels warm.
I am going to pretend it doesn't.