#meanwhile been trying to finish a novel-length proj but it's really kicking my ass

[pppppiamo]

Title: South for Spring

Author: Piamo

Length: 5.5k words

Synopsis: A boy discovers a dying crow. When life and death are merely stops along the long road of existence, can love take wing? (Xianxia-inspired, danmei-inspired. CW: death.)

Before Emptiness and under Finality, everything in the world appeared minute and transitory. "Qi Siyu, it's you."

South for Spring

One day when Qi Siyu (祁思煜) was little, he happened upon a dying crow.

He lived in a big city. The houses in his neighborhood were all painted the same grey-green, each one containing a plot of grass in front that, in the summer, yellowed under the blistering sun. As it was Saturday, he was spending the afternoon at a small yogurt shop down the street from his house. Since he was still only in elementary school, he had no money. Nevertheless, the old woman working there would give him a handful of mochi and tell him stories about her grandson, Gu Yuan (顾鸢), while he half-listened, kicking his legs.

At the time, Qi Siyu did not know that Gu Yuan had passed away from illness many years ago. Out of repetition, Qi Siyu only gathered that the boy in her stories was a year older than him, liked taking pictures, was good-looking, and that the old woman bought him a new pair of shoes every time he came to visit her.

Qi Siyu was an only child who grew up in a strict environment. His parents were neither rich nor poor, but certainly it couldn’t be said that they doted on him. Rather, they seemed to have forgotten about his existence entirely. His current pair of shoes even had a little hole worn through the tip, which he often poked his big toe through wearing a disgruntled expression. Thus, he thought Gu Yuan sounded like a spoiled brat and immediately didn’t like him.

What kind of eight-year-old has a digital camera anyway!

On the day Qi Siyu stumbled upon the dying crow on his way home, the old woman had said something extremely peculiar to him before he left.

“Xiao-Yu, do you believe in ghosts?”

Qi Siyu’s eyes had tripled in size at the mention of something so eerie. The plastic spoon which he’d been gnawing on was still hanging out of his mouth, and he debated whether to shake his head or nod. He settled on a shrug, pretending an aloof expression in the hopes that she would change the subject.

The old woman’s back was facing him. When she turned around, rather than holding a handful of mochi as usual, she carried a cardboard cup filled to the brim with cream-colored yogurt and strawberry slices. From an outsider’s perspective, the dessert seemed to have been tenderly crafted, but Qi Siyu was more guarded than the average child—having been pricked by the subject of ghosts, he didn’t miss the cool glint in her eye. She handed the treat over to the young boy, along with a stack of napkins a few centimeters thick. “Good behavior is rewarded by heaven,” she said, patting him on the hand.

Silently, Qi Siyu took the yogurt outside. He threw it in the trash and ran home.

Out of the corner of his eye, the houses flew by like a river. By the time Qi Siyu reached his front doorstep, he was out of breath. His mind was filled with images of hungry ghosts, mouths puckered and sucking at the air as if through a straw. When Qi Siyu heard a dry croak emanate from the potted shrub to his left, he grabbed the door’s handle with both hands. The sun was so hot that the brass metal scalded his skin, but he continued to tug and push, his heart pounding.

The door was locked. As it turned out, the house was empty, too.

As his heart began to freeze over, Qi Siyu took a step back, the realization slowly draining the color from his face. His father was at the office working overtime; his mother was at his aunt’s house currently engaged in gossip. As for Qi Siyu’s whereabouts, they couldn’t have cared less. He might as well have been a succulent placed on a shelf, left to fend for itself in the heat. 

Another croak resounded, causing Qi Siyu to nearly jump out of his skin. 

His reflexes simply got the better of him. One leg kicked out as if tapped by a tiny hammer and slammed directly into the potted shrub. Subsequently, a tangled black mess of feathers tumbled out into the sun.

Qi Siyu held his breath. He squinted at the crow that seemed barely even half-alive.

Its teal-blue eyes stared vacantly at him. Upon closer inspection, Qi Siyu saw that a piece of tan twine had somehow wrapped itself around its body, causing the pitiful creature to look like a roasted chicken for sale at a market—albeit an unappetizing one. Beak open, it panted. 

Notably, the old woman’s words jostled around in Qi Siyu’s head. At this age, the word “karma” meant nothing to him. Whether there were six gates of reincarnation or fifty, he wouldn’t have been able to guess. He gripped the corners of his shirt with sweaty hands, feeling hateful towards that old woman and her peerless Gu Yuan. If heaven rewarded good behavior, it might be said that he was fearless of heaven for lack of grasping its immensity.

“It’s feral,” his father had said once, pointing to a disheveled cat that showed up on their doorstep in a rainstorm. “Don’t go near. It’ll bite.”

While Qi Siyu peered into the crow’s open beak in search of teeth, the suffering bird’s eyelids began to droop. Rasping, it tipped over, legs tilting towards the sky. At that moment, without thinking, Qi Siyu suddenly stooped over, casting a shadow forward that swallowed the bird up in a cool embrace. As gently as possible, he unwound the twine. Once or twice, he was thwarted by a severe knot, though eventually he persevered. 

When the crow was finally freed, Qi Siyu sat down and wiped the glistening sweat off his forehead. He then poked his big toe out of the hole in his shoe and touched the tip of the closest tail feather. 

With that, the crow exploded into the sky, its wings flapping clumsily. The ungrateful creature didn’t even spare him a backwards glance. 

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Looking back at this event many years in the future, Qi Siyu could only inexplicably feel that his run-in with the crow had been a matter of destiny. A week later, the crow was fully out of sight and out of mind—that is, until it showed up one morning scrabbling on his bedroom windowsill, a gold chain dangling from its beak. This was only the first of a series of “gifts” that would follow Qi Siyu far into adulthood, sometimes as often as every other week. 

As he aged, his wariness of animals gradually shed like a second skin, but he never quite outgrew his wariness of other humans. 

A person cannot stay young forever. In the end, Qi Siyu could not follow his parents into old age—he remained an indistinct figure in the periphery of their vision, and just a few weeks before his thirtieth birthday, he departed the Earth. 

According to legend, the Platform of the Underworld would be composed of a series of vast white fields. Only a small detail had been left out. The primordial artificer had cleaved a fissure down the middle with a knife, naming the resulting river “Emptiness” and the stars reflected therein “Finality.” When Qi Siyu first arrived at the Platform, he felt this information swirling inside him, indistinct as smoke. A warm breeze ruffled the wide, plain-woven sleeves hanging down to his wrists, the skin of which appeared a little transparent. 

So, I’m dead? he thought, tucking his hands behind his back so he wouldn’t have to look at them. 

Surveying the white fields, one didn’t have much to look at. Qi Siyu took stock of his life. Overall, though he couldn’t complain, the events of his thirty years were brief enough to catalogue on a single napkin. In his memory, he could recall only two or three moments of true import, which lay embedded in his heart like grains of sand.

Before Emptiness and under Finality, everything in the world appeared minute and transitory.

Here, time had ground to a standstill, but elsewhere the seasons still came and went, the planet turned, the tides rose and retreated beneath the moon. Qi Siyu felt a twinge of unplaceable wistfulness. 

He was neither cold, nor in pain. Instead, it was an all-encompassing thirst and the lull of the nearby river that eventually stirred him from his reverie. Within a few steps, he came to a spot where the white blades of tall grass terminated at a sandy bank, dark as night, and got down onto his knees. The river was passing by very slowly; in a daze, Qi Siyu sank his fingers into his reflection. Although he perceived the cold bite of water, his body seemed incapable of shivering. He cupped his palms together to drink.

The river, which sprang sourcelessly from the horizon, would in turn wash away every last memory of his previous life, like a slate being wiped clean. 

The soul, which arose sourcelessly from the ether, would in turn return to the elements, becoming true to itself to the utmost.

Thinking this, an imperceptible smile crept onto Qi Siyu’s face. In all his life, he never smiled that often. Even when he did, it was like he was holding an immense weight in his heart, his curved lashes lowering as if to obscure a wateriness. Truthfully, in an effort to not disturb the mood, he was only holding back a laugh. Eschatologically speaking, the afterlife seemed a bit too nebulous— 

“Caw!”

Just as Qi Siyu’s lips were about to touch the river water, a familiar sound caused him to jerk upright. 

Winging overhead like a distant halo was a black crow.

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Perhaps it was owing to his recent separation from worldly affairs, but Qi Siyu was not all that surprised to find, upon turning around, a lantern had appeared out of thin air, hovering just a few meters away. Its black flame twisted behind a paper curtain, painted with the word “impermanence.” Once again, inexplicably, he understood that this particular tool would only manifest at the behest of an Underworld retainer. The flame contained inside could dispel the anxieties of the departed and cleanse evil. 

Qi Siyu stared through the lantern blankly. While alive, he was customarily a disagreeable person who liked to come to his own conclusions and railed against the ideas of others. Only now, his eagerness to fight had dried up, leaving him hollow. 

The crow floated toward the ground and transformed into a person. 

He was no longer alone, but Qi Siyu registered nothing. Only when a pair of fingers gently pressed the space between his eyes did the feeling of lightness in his body begin to disperse, and the face before him came into clarity—teal-blue eyes partially obscured by dusky hair and a faint smile that seemed familiar, as if from a dream. Qi Siyu blinked back the mistiness that had gathered in his eyes.

“After all this time,” the man chuckled, “you really kept something so trifling?”

By instinct, Qi Siyu touched the gold chain hanging around his neck, tucked beneath the folds of his robe. At the Platform, even his treasured memories had barely remained intact, but this little artifact, which in reality had been misplaced long ago, had somehow become reunited with him.

It took only a simple touch of recognition for the gold chain to stir. Suddenly, a thought leapt into Qi Siyu’s head unbidden: Gu Yuan, it’s you. 

It quickly became clear that speaking in one’s head in the Underworld lacked the same privacy found on Earth. The man cocked his head, eyes glittering. “I didn’t expect to be recognized. After passing away, I was recruited to the ghost realm, but at that time I was very young. It took me twenty years just to refine my primeval soul. In the end, I was too impatient to visit my laolao. It was inevitable that a crow spirit devoured me on my first trip back to the human realm. 

“Some time after that, I gained enough consciousness to appropriate the crow’s body as my own, but even then, I found myself acting in strange ways. Crows are naturally disposed to gratitude. When you saved me that summer, I kept coming back to you with so many trinkets. In my state, I thought I was making you a rich man.” Gu Yuan sighed, his smile fading slightly. “Unfortunately, spending so much time in the vicinity of an Underworld escort… It’s probably owing to me that you incurred an untimely death.”

Qi Siyu’s eyes lingered over the lantern’s black flame before trailing along Gu Yuan’s flowing, damask silk robes, coming to rest on his face. Were it not for the man’s smile, that pale visage and those eyes darkened by shadows might have conspired to make him look like a true dyed-in-the-wool ghost. Looking at him now, it was clear the specter of death clung to him like a chilling aura. 

But resentment and regret were reserved for the living. Qi Siyu could only think, It’s no one’s fault, least of all yours. 

Gu Yuan’s face remained unchanged, his thoughts a mystery. The old woman had described that very same disarming smile to Qi Siyu many years ago. Embarrassingly, now of all times, Qi Siyu could not deny that the man before him was, by human standards, incredibly handsome. Besides that, the lantern’s black flame was probably performing its duty, coaxing the agitation away from his heart and leaving him uncharacteristically soft. 

Reading his mind, Gu Yuan waved his hand. The paper lantern flamed out, dissolving into ash. In its place, a jade pendant dropped into his open palm. He held it outstretched to Qi Siyu.

“This karmic pendant will ensure you a safe journey home. My last gift to you.”

══════════════════

The moon-white jade pendant appeared in the shape of a three-legged crow. It glowed faintly in the twilight. As for the years of primeval refinement Gu Yuan had carefully invested, upon transporting Qi Siyu back to Earth, they would be transmuted into an extension of Qi Siyu’s own lifespan, granting him an additional twenty years. 

A low-level Underworld escort might struggle for a century to cut a single blade of grass growing on the Platform. To endeavor to rewrite a person’s karma was surely a thousand times the effort—yet Gu Yuan only continued to smile, brows lifted, seemingly unfazed. 

Qi Siyu regarded this “parting gift” with a complicated expression before ultimately flicking a sleeve at Gu Yuan.

“No one can call back yesterday,” Qi Siyu said. “In any case, won’t I just end up here again in twenty more years? Imagine what additional unfinished business I’ll rack up if you give me the chance. I’ll be rolling in my grave until the end of time.” 

Gu Yuan replied, “Actually, in twenty years you can accomplish quite a lot. You were a professor, weren’t you? Maybe think about burning some paper money for me after class, hm?” Having said so, he reached forward to append the karmic pendant to Qi Siyu’s sash. 

Qi Siyu in response batted him away with a transparent hand. 

Thus, one human and one immortal pushed these twenty-some-odd years back and forth between them like the last piece of shrimp on a dinner plate. Both Emptiness and Finality, the silent river and stars, were entertained for the first time in a millennium. 

In a land that never saw daylight, dawn never came. Only a warm breeze threaded through the white fields and traced ripple after ripple along the river, following an unfathomable pattern. As Qi Siyu admonished Gu Yuan—first for imprudence, then for fickleness, and finally for full-blown impishness—they walked side by side. Their conversation became increasingly mundane. At one point, Gu Yuan even inquired about Qi Siyu’s egg toast recipe, which he recalled during his time as a crow as having been fed pieces of through the kitchen window. 

Each time Gu Yuan was sure that Qi Siyu had lowered his guard and discreetly approached to slip the karmic pendant into his pocket, Qi Siyu summarily dodged. For a bookish misanthrope, his primeval soul was surprisingly nimble. 

The year Gu Yuan passed, before his health seriously declined, he played around a lot with a digital camera. He especially liked to photograph people and would fearlessly ask strangers to model for him. Now that he was an Underworld escort, his personal possessions were of a different nature. Despite this, he couldn’t shake his tendency to see others through the eye of an inexperienced photographer. With Qi Siyu walking beside him like this, noticing that the man’s lips were perpetually pursed, he flew a few steps forward, turned around, and framed the image between his thumbs and forefingers. 

“What are you doing?” Qi Siyu asked. 

Expectedly, Qi Siyu’s dissatisfied expression was only magnified by this limited view. Gu Yuan said nothing and just laughed mischievously to himself. 

To the south and invisible to Qi Siyu, lantern-lit ferries floated restfully upon the sea of grass. Beyond that was the Affectless City, currently only a string of golden lights lying on the horizon. Gu Yuan had almost forgotten his original intentions in coming here. He slowed his steps to a halt and gazed at Qi Siyu’s back, running his thumb along the grooves of the pendant. It was a part of him, yet was cold to the touch. 

A low, mournful howl echoed over the fields. 

As if to answer the call, one of the ferries, accelerated by an unearthly gust of wind, began making its approach. “Qi Siyu, I have to go,” Gu Yuan finally said. 

Qi Siyu turned to face him. The light behind his eyes had dimmed, and his contours seemed to tremble like the edge of a flame. Gu Yuan realized that walking just that short distance together had nearly exhausted the man’s spiritual essence. If they continued on like this, Qi Siyu would soon expend himself entirely and fail to reenter the cycle of reincarnation. 

Gu Yuan suddenly felt like twenty years was not enough after all. 

“When I was young,” he rambled, “my laolao used to tell me stories about a boy who died before I was born. She told me that he had a frustrating temperament and complained so loudly in his heart about every little thing that in his following lifetime, he was cursed to wear holes through his shoes. Every time I thought about him, it made me worried.”

“You had a closet full of shoes. It seems your head is full of them, too,” Qi Siyu said, not failing to jab him. 

“The Dao is heartless.” And so are you, Gu Yuan wanted to add with a laugh. 

Only in the presence of the black Wuchang flame did Qi Siyu at last become more agreeable, his hackles lying flat. After the karmic pendant was finally accepted into Qi Siyu’s hands, Gu Yuan boarded the ferry and bid the man farewell. 

All around him, the grass parted like waves. Gu Yuan watched Qi Siyu’s figure until it was swallowed up by the distance; thereafter, he stayed on the deck, not taking his eyes off the horizon. 

Meanwhile, his heart felt like a stone sinking lower and lower, until eventually he lost sight of it in the depths of a fathomless lake.  

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In the blink of an eye, half a century passed. 

Gu Yuan had just returned from a lengthy mission and had ascended in rank from a minor ghost to a full-fledged Underworld officer. The Clear Equinox Festival was in full swing, and within the Affectless City, the narrow streets were filled with vendors selling precious ornaments to fit the occasion. Various spirits, having cultivated their way up from the natural world, came bearing pockets of spiritual stones to purchase rare relics with.

Gu Yuan’s living arrangements were lavish enough; even the gold patterning of his robes was considered by others to be a bit too flashy. Unfortunately, having spent so much time as a crow on Earth, his primeval soul was corrupted, and as a result, he had an insatiable greed for shiny objects. If gems were fake, he could tell from several li away, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t still buy them.

In short, he was a favored customer within the Affectless City’s shopping district. 

By the time the firebird asterism had reached its zenith in the sky, his arms were tired from holding so much junk. Gu Yuan the shopping addict was about to hail a carriage when something caught his eye at a nearby jewelry stand. After staring for a moment, he stepped forward, eyes widening.

Hanging from a wooden post was a jade pendant in the shape of a three-legged crow.

If a tool had been hewn from a person’s own spiritual essence, then it would be easily identifiable by its original creator. For that reason, it took only one glance from Gu Yuan to determine that this was the same karmic pendant he’d given to Qi Siyu at the Platform. 

It was designed to crumble away upon fulfilling its duty. So why was it here now?

According to the jewelry stand’s owner, the ferryman who’d sold it to her found it on the northernmost shore of the Underworld Platform. Naturally, owing to its superior craftsmanship, the pendant was being sold for a hefty sum. Gu Yuan had to run back home to fetch his savings in order to purchase it. 

However, to his disappointment, rather than feeling icy to the touch, the karmic pendant was as lifeless as a piece of ordinary stone. 

Whether through its one-time use or by years of dormancy, it appeared the immortal tool’s internal energy source had long since dried up. In his hands, it was nothing more than a luxurious paperweight. 

Gu Yuan’s eyes clouded over with a distant memory. For fifty years, he hadn’t set foot once in the human realm. While he was traversing the Unquiet Pass as a ghost, he had even resorted to consuming resentment from those half-finished devils he met along his path. Having nearly forgotten the meaning of the word "warmth," he realized that the same insidious weightlessness that had overcome Qi Siyu on the Platform had already numbed him from the inside out.

As for Qi Siyu, the man was gone.

And Gu Yuan? That man was probably as good as gone, too. 

These thoughts left him in a sullen mood. He wasn’t used to being introspective, so Gu Yuan’s emotions naturally caused his spiritual energy to overflow. As a result, the golden birds embroidered on his robes began to imitate life, flapping their wings in vexation. A total of thirty people crowded around to gawk at the sight, which only made him feel worse. After just managing to slink away, Gu Yuan sighed and went to stow the karmic pendant into his sleeve. 

As if merely wanting to tease an old friend, the “paperweight” suddenly stirred under his fingertips, emitting a band of white light one cun in length that pointed due north. 

This was a compass charm. Gu Yuan’s heavy heart began to race. 

That day, a hundred people at the Clear Equinox Market claimed to have seen a crow spirit clumsily flying off, clinging to a piece of jade that was probably half its own weight. 

══════════════════

Gu Yuan flew for eight days, avoiding sleep and pausing only to drink.

He followed the compass’s white light to the very edge of the Underworld. Beyond, the stars stretched indefinitely. The first time Gu Yuan had tried to exit the ghost realm on his own, he had nearly expired his essence exerting himself crossing this void; this time, having learned the method of “inaction,” he intuitively rode the sky’s veins, rising higher and growing paradoxically heavier with each wingbeat. 

Upon first laying eyes on the human realm, he found that nothing had significantly changed. The compass charm led him to a neighborhood where the houses were all painted the same grey-green. 

He alighted in a tree, at eye-level with a small second-floor apartment. Thereafter, the karmic pendant in his claws flashed brightly and crumbled into dust. 

Ultimately, though Gu Yuan was a young immortal who had in total lived the length of a generous human lifespan, his time on Earth had been limited. As a result, he possessed a childlike heart that was predisposed to impatience. When he caught sight of movement inside the apartment, Gu Yuan didn’t even have the presence of mind to preen the few unsightly feathers sticking up on his head. Unaware of the influence of his bird-brain, he took to the air and glided in for a closer look.

Thus, with a doleful smack, he flew directly into the glass sliding door. 

Lying on his back under the hot sun, the dazed Gu Yuan could only think, Was I struck by a lightning tribulation just now? 

Since he was in significant pain, he didn’t move for a full minute. Following an unfamiliar sound, a shadow suddenly enveloped his entire body, and he felt a pair of human hands moving him into the shade. When Gu Yuan finally came to and righted himself a few minutes later, he found a dish of water and a shred of egg toast on the patio beside him. 

He shamelessly gobbled up the toast before noticing that the sliding door was open a hair. Since he wasn’t shy, he decided to pay his rescuer a visit. 

The first time Gu Yuan had sought shelter inside a human dwelling in his new crow body, he’d been chased out with a rolled-up newspaper. Now that he was an Underworld officer with a reputation to uphold, if such a thing were to happen again and the Adjudicator got word, he might seriously face a demotion. 

Undeterred, Gu Yuan wriggled his way inside. He performed a few awkward hops on the hardwood floor before winging up to perch on the back of a wooden chair. He swiveled his neck around, taking in the messy living room, before the sound of footsteps made his pupils shrink. 

Coming face to face with a staring person, a smile entered his heart.

Qi Siyu, it’s you. 

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Of course, on the surface, this person didn’t look like the Qi Siyu who Gu Yuan had met at the Underworld Platform fifty years ago. Having been reincarnated, this man had an entirely different face. He appeared to be thirty years old, but his hair was short, his eyes more well-rested. Rather than telegraphing a prickly nature, even in the face of a strange animal entering his house, his lips were relaxed in a wry smile.  

The exterior was unimportant. Gu Yuan’s immortal eyes could see through any living being to its spiritual core—but Qi Siyu’s primeval soul had been scrubbed clean by the Empty River. 

He recognized him, but wasn’t recognized in return. 

“You ate the toast? Did you come in here just to beg for more food?” Qi Siyu asked the crow, folding his arms. 

Gu Yuan puffed up. He emitted a displeased croak at this misunderstanding.

It was the height of summer, but Qi Siyu was still wearing a long-sleeved shirt and socks. Perhaps it was because his air conditioning unit was so efficient that he needed to keep warm indoors. Struck by an idea, Gu Yuan fluttered down to the floor and began ceaselessly pecking at Qi Siyu’s toes until the man exasperatedly backed into the sofa. To thwart the bird, he went to tuck his feet under his thighs. 

Gu Yuan did not miss that the underside of his socks had two large holes. 

A slow wavelength of calm entered Gu Yuan’s heart. Reassured, he flapped his wings twice, landing on Qi Siyu’s shoulder, and nibbled at his ear. 

If anyone had been around to view such a sight, they would have remarked that Qi Siyu must have hand-fed the bird from a young age since it was so tame. For that matter, had the Adjudicator witnessed this unseemly behavior, they would have punished Gu Yuan with three hundred years of paper-sorting duty. 

Coming and going between the human realm and the ghost realm was not especially taxing. In the years that followed, Gu Yuan’s crow form fattened up from eating so much egg toast that all the earthly crows he met on his way shot him envious looks. He always returned to Qi Siyu’s side with a gift. In the hands of a cultivator, some of those souvenirs from the Underworld might even be considered dangerous, but in Qi Siyu’s hands they were nothing more than trash. 

Meanwhile, Qi Siyu could only admire that, no matter how many wrinkles he developed, no matter how many grey hairs sprouted on his head, this crow with teal-blue eyes always looked as fresh as a photograph. 

Qi Siyu never married. After he retired from his work as a public servant, he kept only a few people as close friends. Like the holes in his socks and shoes, his introverted nature from his past life had carried over. Nonetheless, he was happy. The big crow that came to visit him without fail would sit beside him and listen to him talk nonsense, which truly was the best gift he ever received. 

One morning, it wasn’t a crow that came to visit him, but a man dressed in exquisite black and gold robes. 

Qi Siyu had grown accustomed to waking up with a terrible back pain, but on this occasion, his body felt as light as a feather. He found he didn’t even need to reach for his glasses on the nightstand to see well. He lay in bed and only wiggled his toes.

The robed man had invited himself in. Qi Siyu never locked his front door, so this was unsurprising. Moreover, he felt comfortable in this person’s presence. He only wished he had gotten the chance to clean up a bit before hosting.

When the man smiled, an incredibly familiar feeling rose up in Qi Siyu’s heart.

“You brought me so much junk all these years,” Qi Siyu said. “I would bet my life on the fact that more than half of it you stole outright. Aren’t you worried heaven will punish bad behavior?”

“If you feel like punishing me, by all means,” the man said cheekily.

Qi Siyu had a thought, but swallowed it down out of embarrassment. However, the man seemed to have the ability to read minds, because he suddenly took a few steps forward and crouched at Qi Siyu’s bedside. Before Qi Siyu could protest, their lips were touching lightly, the effect like a dragonfly skimming water.  

The only thing that brought Gu Yuan back to Earth was a finger flicking his forehead.

“How does it feel kissing a man three times your age?” Qi Siyu growled.

“How does it feel being kissed by a bird?” Gu Yuan dug back at him.

Neither one could hold back a laugh. 

By now, the room and its contents had been replaced by a sea of white grass extending endlessly in all directions. Qi Siyu, apparently standing, felt better than ever. Since he was still somewhat bashful, he took the opportunity to bolt, running directionlessly until even his newly youthful body was left panting. Thinking he’d left that dashing fellow in the dust, he turned around, only to find that the man was still standing at his side, brows quirked.

Teleporting like a real honest-to-god ghost! 

“If I tell you my name, you’ll have to remember it next time,” the man said, tenderly brushing the dark hair out of Qi Siyu’s eyes.

Qi Siyu said, “It’s Gu Yuan, of course. Tell laolao I said hi.”

Gu Yuan hadn’t gotten the chance to see his laolao in many years. Hearing about her suddenly, he paused his hand, a handful of memories flooding back into his heart. He looked down at his cloth shoes, then looked up into Qi Siyu’s eyes and nodded. 

The river trickled by their feet silently, and the stars were equally hushed. Emptiness and Finality were in no hurry, but every person knows when their time is up. 

“I suppose,” Qi Siyu said with a sigh, “this is where we say goodbye.”

“Listen, I never got the chance to live like a real human. Everything you do in life from now on, good or bad, you’ll have to tell me about it,” Gu Yuan replied. He was presently fussing with the folds in Qi Siyu’s robe, but in actuality, it was he who wanted attention. 

Unsure of how to placate him, Qi Siyu just patted the side of Gu Yuan’s face. 

Gu Yuan: “...”

Looking up at the stars, even an immortal could feel small. In the end, it was all only coming and going, nothing terribly serious. 

For a thousand years and more, Gu Yuan would return to the Platform. Some days he had to wait longer than others, but every time, standing beside Qi Siyu with their fingers interlaced, Gu Yuan would re-record the meaning of the word “warmth,” revitalizing all the channels in his heart.

“What do old friends say when they part ways?” Gu Yuan finally asked.

Qi Siyu smiled, his lashes lowering. “See you again soon.”

End.

#original writing #original story #oc story #short story #fiction #writeblr #boys love #5k words #reincarnation story #OEL danmei #danmei inspired #mm romance #am doing the tagging thing right #i wrote this almost 2 years ago and its been languishing in a file so i figure why not post it... its the first BL story i ever finished #some of the afterlife imagery is inspired by chinese mythology but a lot of it is just from my imagination #meanwhile been trying to finish a novel-length proj but it's really kicking my ass