Chapter 80: A dangerous feeling
Tang Xiaoli stood at the entrance of her lab with singed sleeves and the expression of someone who had already rehearsed her apology but was not sorry at all.
"The formula was ninety eight percent stable," she announced to the small crowd gathered outside.
"What happened to the other two percent?" asked a passing disciple.
"The other two percent happened very suddenly."
Lan Yue sat on a garden bench and listened to Tang Xiaoli explain herself to the sect safety committee, which consisted of two very tired instructors and one very done janitor. The explanation involved a lot of hand gestures and the phrase "thermodynamically unexpected" more than once.
She was not really listening.
She was pressing two fingers to her lips and staring at the stone path like it owed her money, replaying the staircase in her head for the forty seventh time.
Zhao Lingxi’s mouth had been warm.
That was the detail her brain refused to file away and move past. Warm and soft and there for about one full second of absolute catastrophic silence before Lan Yue had ripped herself backward and started pointing at things.
She groaned quietly into her palm.
"You are doing the face again," Bai Xuelan said, appearing beside her with a cup of tea and absolutely no sympathy.
"I do not have a face."
"You have a very specific face. It involves your ears turning red and your eyes going unfocused. I have documented it six times in the past three weeks." She sat down and adjusted her glasses. "What happened on the stairs?"
"Gravity happened. And wet stone. And my complete inability to function on zero sleep." Lan Yue lowered her hands and looked at Bai Xuelan with the expression of someone confessing to a minor crime. "We kissed. By accident. It was terrible. She laughed at me. She compared me to a fish."
Bai Xuelan was quiet for three seconds.
"An alarmed fish," Lan Yue added, unnecessarily.
"She laughed," Bai Xuelan repeated.
"She laughed until she slid down the wall."
Another pause. "I have known Zhao Lingxi for eight months. I have never once seen her laugh until she slid down a wall."
"Well. Now you know it is possible."
Bai Xuelan picked up her tea. She drank it slowly. Over the rim of the cup, something moved in her eyes that was not quite a smile but was close enough to be suspicious.
"Congratulations," she said finally.
"I fell on her face."
"Yes. And she slid down a wall laughing. For her, that is practically a written declaration." She stood. "Sleep tonight, Lan Yue. You look like something the spirit beasts dragged in."
She walked away without another word, which was typical, except that she was definitely smiling into her tea.
Lan Yue had seen it.
...
Zhao Han’s second letter arrived two days after the first.
The first had been formal. Properly spaced brushwork, correct titles, the careful handwriting of someone who had grown up with very strict tutors. His request to come for a longer stay at the sect had been politely worded and very determined underneath the politeness.
The second letter was not formal at all.
It said, in its entirety: "Elder Sister. I heard about the tournament. I heard about everything. I am coming whether you tell me to or not. Also please tell Lan Yue I want a rematch on the chess game because I have been practicing. Also I think General Fluffbottom is afraid of me and I need to fix this. I will arrive in four days."
Zhao Lingxi read it twice. She set it on the window ledge beside the championship medal.
"He says he wants a rematch," she told Lan Yue.
"He should want a rematch. I let him win twice and he knows it." Lan Yue was braiding her hair badly in the reflection of the small copper mirror on the table. She had been doing it badly for several minutes. "When does he arrive?"
"Four days."
"Good." Lan Yue gave up on the braid and let her hair fall loose. "He needs to see that you are alright. He has been worrying, even if he writes about chess and birds to avoid saying so."
Zhao Lingxi looked at her.
"He is obvious," Lan Yue said. "He gets it from you. You are both obvious and think you are not."
A pause. "I am not obvious."
"You put a plum blossom on my tea saucer this morning."
"It fell."
"From where? The ceiling?"
Zhao Lingxi turned back to the window. Her ears were pink. Lan Yue counted it as a victory.
...
Zhao Han arrived on a morning when the fog was still sitting low over the training grounds and the sect smelled like damp earth and breakfast.
He came through the east gate at a pace that his two attendants were clearly struggling to match. He had grown again since the tournament, which seemed unfair given that he was already taller than Lan Yue now. His robes were slightly crooked in the way that meant he had dressed in a hurry, and he was carrying a wooden practice sword under one arm as though he had simply forgotten to put it down.
He spotted Zhao Lingxi first.
Then he spotted Lan Yue standing beside her.
His face went through several expressions very quickly, landing on something that was equal parts relief and the particular excitement of someone who has been waiting to say something for a long time.
"Elder Sister." He crossed the remaining distance and hugged Zhao Lingxi with the total commitment of someone who had given up being restrained about it. She caught him, patted the back of his head twice with the efficiency of someone who had been doing this since he was five, and released him.
He turned immediately to Lan Yue.
"You look terrible," he said.
"Thank you, Zhao Han."
"I heard about the tournament. I heard about everything." He looked at her very directly, with that serious expression he had inherited from his elder sister and applied to completely different situations. "Were you actually not sleeping? Because Elder Sister’s letters stopped mentioning you for a while and that was the part that worried me most."
Lan Yue blinked. "The part that worried you most."
"When she does not mention someone, it means something happened." He shrugged. "She mentioned you every letter before that. Even when she was pretending she was not mentioning you."
Zhao Lingxi said nothing. Her expression was neutral in a way that meant she was choosing not to respond.
"We had a disagreement," Lan Yue said carefully. "It is resolved now."
"Good." He seemed satisfied with this, moving on with the efficiency of someone who had gotten the answer he came for. He looked around at the sect grounds, taking in the training courts and the garden paths and the distant rooftop of the alchemy wing which still had a faint greenish tinge from two days ago. "Where is Tang Xiaoli? I brought her fire crystals from the capital market. The vendor said they were grade three."
"She is in her lab. Please do not tell her that until she is standing away from all open flames."
He thought about this and nodded seriously. "Reasonable."
He had the same direct, practical quality as his sister, turned in a slightly different direction. Zhao Lingxi applied it to tactics and danger. Zhao Han applied it to people. He had a way of going straight to the thing that mattered without making it feel like an interrogation, which Lan Yue suspected he had developed from years of being overlooked and learning to ask the right questions quickly, before adults decided children should not be asking questions at all.
"The medal," he said to Zhao Lingxi. "Do you have it with you?"
"It is in our room."
"Can I see it?"
"Later."
"Elder Sister."
"Later, XiaoHan."
He turned to Lan Yue with the expression of someone seeking a second opinion. "She is going to put it in a drawer, is she not."
"She has had it on the window ledge for a week," Lan Yue said. "That is better than average."
He considered this. "That is actually better than I expected." He shifted the practice sword from one arm to the other. "Can I train with you today? I want to show Elder Sister the third form. My foot placement is still wrong but Liu instructor said my spirit flow improved significantly."
"Your spirit flow improved because of the medicine," Zhao Lingxi said. Her voice was careful, the way it always was when she said things that mattered a great deal and did not want to make a production of it. "You were always capable of it. Your meridians simply needed support."
Zhao Han looked at her for a moment.
"I know," he said quietly. Then, because he was sixteen and could only hold still for one emotional moment at a time, he immediately turned the practice sword sideways and held it out to Lan Yue. "Rematch. Chess. Tonight. I have been studying."
"You have been studying chess."
"I have been studying how you think. It is different." He grinned, which turned his face completely young again, bright and straightforward. "You let me win twice because you felt sorry for me. I want to win once properly."
Lan Yue took the practice sword from him and inspected it with exaggerated seriousness. "You have been sharpening this."
"For the chess match?"
"For the sword forms. You have been working on it."
Something shifted in his face. The grin softened into something more genuine, the expression of someone who had been seen doing something they cared about. "I told you. I have been practicing."
"Then show me the third form," Lan Yue said. "After breakfast. We will see if your foot placement is actually as bad as Liu instructor says."
He was already moving toward the training grounds.
Zhao Lingxi watched him go. Her face was doing that thing it only did for him, soft around the edges in a way she never allowed otherwise, the expression of someone who had been afraid for a long time and was slowly, carefully letting themselves stop.
"He is going to exhaust everyone within three days," she said.
"He is going to exhaust everyone within three hours," Lan Yue corrected.
The corner of Zhao Lingxi’s mouth curved.
"Thank you," she said. Not for anything specific. Or perhaps for everything at once. It was hard to tell with her and Lan Yue had stopped trying to parse it.
"Go eat breakfast," Lan Yue said. "He will want you watching the forms."
She went. Lan Yue followed, two steps behind as always, and somewhere above the alchemy wing a bird was singing very loudly into the clearing fog, and the morning felt like something beginning rather than something that had just survived ending.l
