Chapter Text
Thereafter commences a great many minutes of silence, disrupted only by quiet sips of tea amongst the shuffling of paper and the scribbling of a charcoal pencil against it, as Liu Qingge references scrolls and books full of what looks to be qi diagrams and takes a studious amount of notes.
Ju Qingsong watches him quite avidly throughout this, his eyes barely migrating elsewhere, much like one might watch the rapid and wild descent from sky to earth of a disciple who has not quite figured out how to properly fly on their sword.
Rong Qingsheng knows this because, while Ju-shidi watches Liu-shixiong, Rong Qingsheng is watching Ju-shidi.
His face of concentration, after all, is amusing.
Rong Qingsheng may have even, at some point, swiped one of Liu-shixiong’s leafs of paper and a spare pencil, and is currently sketching out that face for his collection.
Well, there’s not really a collection, per say. It’s mostly just to show Ju-shidi later, because his reactions are the best. Then, Rong Qingsheng will simply file the drawing away with all the others.
He doesn’t really keep them for any reason other than it would be a shame to just throw art away, after all — and who knows? Maybe he can use the old ones again someday, to get another funny reaction out of Ju-shidi after he’s forgotten about them?
It’s while he is glancing up for reference in his attempt to capture the angle of Ju-shidi’s jaw that he sees his shidi abruptly turn away from studying the studious in order to cast Shen Qinqiu an inquisitive look.
“Shen-shixiong, does Qingge-shixiong live here now, too?”
Shen Qinqiu had been mid-sip in his tea, cup raised delicately to his lips, eyes closed calmly as if savoring the taste in a muted fashion that is not too indulgent. As austere as a jade sculpture, truly. The epitome of the scholarly. No doubt as to why he was chosen to be the head disciple of the second peak, indeed.
That image of a jade sculpture shatters, however, as Shen Qingqiu slams his cup down into its dish with a sharp clack, and his eyes snap open and immediately narrow in Ju-shidi’s direction, as if Ju-shidi had just given him the greatest of insults.
“The hell he does.” The near-peerless dashixiong of the immortal Qing Jing peak bites out, sneering so deeply that one can see the bite of his teeth. “What on earth makes you think that?”
Rong Qingsheng slowly sets his pencil down, tilting his head to the side as his gaze slips from his Qing Jing shixiong to his Bai Zhan one.
Liu Qingge has momentarily pulled himself free of his note-taking to pin Ju-shidi with a dark and lifeless stare that is, quite frankly, far more shiver-inducing than even one of Shen Qingqiu's glares.
“Well, it’s just…” With such a stare on one side, and the aforementioned glare on the other, Ju-shidi is cleanly cornered, and he squirms uncomfortably in his seat.
The cold eyes of their two shixiong do not relent and, at this point, the rest of their shixiong gathered around the table have turned to watch as well. No one says a word whilst Ju-shidi struggles to find his.
“He has made himself right at home, it seems?” Their most junior martial brother finally blurts out, frantically avoiding meeting anyone's eyes. “And he has clearly been here for a long time? Only, it struck me as a bit… unusual. So, I was just wondering… I mean….”
As the stares continue even after his voice trails off into a squeak, Ju-shidi ducks his head down.
“That’s all.” He finishes, and falls silent.
The rest of the room indulges in that silence for a long, stilted moment. Not entirely interested in watching his shidi continue to flounder, Rong Qingsheng turns instead to cycle his gaze across everyone else.
Even as Qingqiu-shixiong and Liu-shixiong stab their twelfth-shidi with their eyes, others have similarly turned away as Rong Qingsheng has, their eyes finding elsewhere to rest.
Shang-shixiong, for example, is staring burning holes into the polished wood of the table beneath the tea tray — resolutely refusing to raise his eyes, most likely to avoid the chance of meeting anyone else’s. He clutches the delicate ceramic cup in his hands as if it is a life-line.
Qingfang-shixiong, however, has twisted around in his seat to raise an immaculate eyebrow at Liu-shixiong, who steadfastly refuses to meet his eye, though the tips of his ears are beginning to take on a slightly pink hue.
Hm, Rong Qingsheng thinks, tapping at his bottom lip with his stolen pencil. That color combination is kind of fetching, actually?
The paper before him begins to acquire another section, this time a side-profile of a different subject entirely. After all, there are no rules when it's just doodling for fun, right?
Finally, deciding that the length of the silence has gone on for an appropriate amount of time, Shen Qingqiu tilts his head and casts a narrow glance toward Liu Qingge.
“He is not wrong,” the older disciple allows, his mouth slightly twisted in something that isn’t quite a sneer but isn’t not one. “Why do you insist on continuing to invade my home like this?”
Liu Qingge’s lips twitch downward in a frown.
“It is not as if you’ve turned me away.” He says, a mullish set to his jaw.
“Neither have I actually invited you? You simply show up, unannounced, and I suppose I have just been too gracious of a shixiong to turn you away.”
“You like when I visit.” Liu Qingge insists.
His voice carries a flat inflection to it that makes it seem as if he is not just replying, but more like he is quoting a script that has been spoken so many times before that he has become used to it.
Liu Qinggee slides a roughshod pile of his notes into his hands and sets about reorganizing them with a near-singular focus, clearly wishing to be done with the conversation but just as clearly unwilling to physically leave to put an end to it, as would have been characteristic of him before….
Well. Before.
“That is not an answer to my question.” Shen Qingqiu points out, near gentle in that his tone does not carry anywhere close to the level of bite that it once would have even a month ago.
Rong Qingsong supposes that they have all become, as effects, different people than they had been before.
Maybe each of them, all in their own rights, have been forced to rediscover themselves just as he is beginning to think he may have to.
Perhaps it is their only choice, Rong Qingsheng thinks, if they truly want to completely climb their way out of this dark hole that they have been buried — and, in many ways, unknowingly helped to dig themselves — into.
The only chance they have at the hope of possibly, one day, seeing the sun again.
He watches silently as Liu Qingge’s fingers appear to tremble, ever so slightly, around the stack of paper. With a soft, quiet sigh that barely whispers past his lips, he drops it back onto the table with a rustle. At the same time, his shoulders also drop, fractionally, as if in defeat.
It feels bitter, in Rong Qingsheng's stomach, to see such a thing in his typically undauntable shixiong.
“It’s quiet here.” Liu Qingge says, softer than any of them are used to hearing.
Shen Qingqiu watches him without a word, and even Shang Qinghua’s eyes flicker upward to gaze at him questioningly.
Liu Qingge hunches in on himself slightly, turning his shoulders to them like one might turn the collar of their robes to shield their vulnerable neck from the elements.
“Bai Zhan is… too loud.” He explains, haltingly. “It’s… easier to study, when it is quiet. And…”
Another beat, and his shoulders drop another inch, and Rong Qingsheng tastes something like bile at the back of his throat when his shixiong continues.
“I don’t… want to be there as much.” Liu Qingge's jaw tightens, even as he presses words past it. “The way that shizun teaches. It gets results, and so… I never paid too much attention to it, before…”
His eyes flicker up and to the left and then back down to the table quicker than lightning, but they all knew where — or, rather, who — he was glancing toward.
“I don't like it.” He says, a note of finality in the statement. As if it were his final answer to a hard decision and not simply an opinion.
Liu Qingge’s brow crinkles into a sharp glare that he directs at the table, and the papers that lay before him. An anxious wave of energy seems to take hold of him, and it’s with near-frenzied motions that he begins to re-organize the notes he’d only just organized.
“It’s easier to study here.” He reiterates, this time without any hesitation in his words. As if they are meant to convince — perhaps them, or perhaps himself. “I can focus better when it’s quiet, and I need to study. I need to be —”
Liu Qingge’s jaw snaps shut, cutting off whatever he has been about to say. He shakes his head, frustration in every line of his tense form.
No one, it seems, has a reply ready for him.
Rong Qingsheng sets his pencil down. The sketch is too sharp now, not anything like the softened silhouette he'd started with.
He draws in a slow, deep breath, and then glances down when he feels a sting against his palm only to realize his other hand, which has been resting atop his knee, is clenched so tightly that his knuckles have bleached white.
Even though his shidi clammed up and fell into silence, Rong Qingsheng already knows the words he’d been about to say. He knows them, because they are the same words that have been ringing inside his own head like a hollow drum, and harshly twisting deep within his heart over and over, ever since that day when everything came tumbling down on top of them all.
I need to be better.
Because, what if Rong Qingsheng had looked harder at the people who were meant to be his martial siblings, and sooner than just the day he was instructed to do so? If he'd introduced himself far before he was only obligated to, went in with the intention to actually build a relationship with those who would be his family for the rest of his life and beyond even that — wouldn’t he have had more time, more opportunity, to notice that something was so horribly wrong?
If only he had seen it, if only he had had the chance to know about it —
Could he have stopped it? Could he have, at the very least, done something? Before it has ever gotten so bad; before it could have ever reached a point as to hurt his martial brother so horrifically that it would continue to affect him for the rest of his immortal life?
I need to be better.
Rong Qingsheng swallows against the sick feeling that has sat in the back of his throat ever since that damned, forsaken day.
I can’t let this happen ever again.
Shen Qingqiu suddenly turns away from Liu Qingge beside him, turns away from the shiny sheen of Shang Qinghua’s honey-glazed eyes, and instead faces the opposite side of the table — where Mu Qingfang and Rong Qingsheng sit.
“That answers that.” He says, tone carrying barely any inflection at all aside from the accusatory. “Now, it’s your turn. Why are you two here to darken my doorstep?”
They both blink, straightening in their seats. Rong Qingsheng glances briefly at Liu Qingge’s hunched and silent position over his scrolls, and then just as quickly moves his gaze across the room to the table where they’d placed their burdens when they had first entered the house.
He turns back to his interrogator and says, brightly, “We come bearing gifts!”
Beside him, Mu Qingfang lets out a sigh.
Shen Qingqiu’s brow ticks up at the corner of his stony expression.
“What’s this?”
“Last time I visited, I noticed that the room Shang Qinghua is staying in was a little bare,” Mu Qingfang explains, “given how little personal belongings he brought over with him. I was also concerned about his lack of exposure to nature, since he has shown little interest in going outside. So, to address both matters, I approached Rong-shidi for help in finding an indoor plant that would be beneficial to Qinghua-shixiong’s recovery.”
Rong Qingsheng beams, as smoothly and brightly as he feels the occasion requires, folding his hands together eagerly as he adds to the explanation.
“I thought it was such a great idea that I had to join in on it! So we picked out a pair of plants that will work in tandem to help aid Qinghua-shixiong’s meridians. The succulent is an emitter that releases balanced nature-qi into the air, while the bonsai acts as a purifier of already present qi. Having both in the same room should help shixiong relax a bit easier, and even aid his sleep.”
He finishes off with a smaller but no-less sincere smile in Shang Qinghua’s direction, while those amber eyes stare back at him with something akin to baffled relief swimming in their golden gleam.
Rong Qingsheng wonders when last it was that his shixiong was able to get a good night's rest, what with… everything.
“Qinghua-shixiong should recognize the bonsai, since he was the one who finalized the trade agreement for them. Shou Cheng peak can’t thank him enough for his efforts! It’s such a rare treat, and our disciples were so excited to start working with them. This sapling here is actually one of our first successful results! I hope that it serves shixiong well, so that it can prove to him that his hard work, together with ours, has paid off.”
Shang Qinghua, who had turned to stare with wide eyes across the room at where the two plants so innocently rest upon the table by the entrance, jolts and twists back around to gaze at him with an expression so monumentally touched that Rong Qingsheng himself begins to feel choked up.
He wonders, also, when last it was that anyone had ever thanked his shixiong, for any of the things for which he’d nearly killed himself to accomplish.
The sour taste is back on his tongue, when he considers the possibility of the answer to that being never.
“Th-Thank you,” Shang Qinghua manages, past the thickness of emotion in his voice.
He clears his throat, holding one sleeve of his robe aloft before his mouth in a futile effort to hide its vulnerable curve that all of them are steadfastly pretending they cannot see.
“Everyone seems to be in, um, a…gift-giving mood today?” Their shixiong murmurs, fixing his eyes on the threaded hem of his maroon sleeve and the simple Qian Cao vines that are embroidered there.
“Indeed.” Shen Qingqiu interjects, after a moment wherein Qinghua-shixiong falls silent once again. The sharpness of his brows had softened, somewhat, in the wake of their explanation, and Rong Qingsheng’s fingers itch to sketch the lines of it.
“In fact, Qing Qi-shimei came by just this morning with a gift of her own.” He says, monotonously. “It seems that the lot of you simply cannot help yourselves but to crowd my home.”
Ju-shidi perks up from where he’d previously fallen quiet.
“Qing-shijie was here? What did she bring?”
He turns to address his question to Shang Qinghua, who ducks down further behind the barrier of his sleeve — this time to try and cover the faint blush climbing up his cheeks.
“Um, she gave me some... really nice paper and ink….” The head disciple of An Ding mumbles abashedly.
Rong Qingsheng, suddenly, finds himself thinking back to all the times the head disciples have gone to An Ding recently, in order to collect and divvy up the paperwork involved in Shang Qinghua’s head discipleship that he was missing out on during his recovery. He remembers the few stray pieces of prose and poetry that can be found across the surface and drawers of his shixiong’s haphazardously organized desk that have nothing to do with the actual work, and thinks that their martial sister is onto something with her choice of gift.
A bright light enters Ju-shidi’s eyes, and he grins.
Clearly, he is thinking the same thing as Rong Qingsheng, because he opens his mouth excitedly to say, “If you write any more poems, will you let me read them? Please!”
A look of mortified panic eclipses Shang Qinghua’s face, and Mu Qingfang and Rong Qingsheng both let out identical, nearly gutturals sighs of exasperation as Liu Qingge jumps to his feet just to smack Ju-shidi over the head with a scroll.
“Shut up!” The Bai Zhan disciple hisses. “You idiot! You weren’t supposed to read those!”
He says it as if they all hadn’t taken a peek at them. Rong Qingsheng takes a long sip from his tea, glancing away and catching in his peripheral the sudden way that everyone else is, in similar silent sheepishness, finding somewhere else to look at.
“But they’re so good!” Ju-shidi whines, clutching at his head and leaning away as Liu Qingge moves the scroll into position for another whack.
And he isn't wrong! The poetry was excellent. But it had just been lying there, for anyone to see… it was simply unavoidable; to accidentally glimpse a few lines… here and there…
“I didn’t mean to! I just saw one, and it was an accident; but once I started, I couldn’t stop, okay?! Qinghua-shixiong, please forgive this wretched shidi! I’ve wronged you! Ow, Liu-shixiong, that hurts!”
“I-It’s okay!” Shang Qinghua squeaks out, barely stopping Liu Qingge from smacking Ju-shidi for a fifth time.
He has forgone the sleeve entirely in favor of covering his reddened face with both hands, and peeks at them through his fingers with a horrified expression.
Liu Qingge huffs. He sits back down, dropping the scroll to the table, smoothing down his robes and acting like he hadn’t just been beating the life out of his shidi.
For absolutely no reason, Rong Qingsheng must say, if only in the privacy of his own mind. Because, he is pretty sure, from the faint pink of Liu Qingge’s ears, that his shixiong had also spotted and read — and liked, just as they all had — a few stanzas himself.
Shang Qinghua’s hands lower by just a fraction. His big, honey eyes seem a bit wobbly somehow as he stares at Ju-shidi, something almost-shy in the way he holds himself now.
“Did you really like them?” He asks, and it comes out so quietly that it’s barely louder than a whisper.
Rong Qingsheng isn’t alone in the way he feels in his own expression go soft. He sees, clearly, how all of his martial family at this table seem to melt in the face of their brother’s meek search for assurance.
Thankfully, Ju-shidi has always been one to lift others up without hesitation, and his grin returns in full-effect.
“I loved them! Shixiong has such a way with words, it's like a new world opened up inside my mind just by reading them! That’s why I couldn't stop myself — though,” a regretful look flickers across his features, and Ju-shidi slouches in shame, “I am sorry I didn't ask first.”
“It’s okay,” Shang Qinghua says again, immediately, as if he hadn’t thought about it. As if the words were a reflex.
He does think about his next words, though, clearly, as they take a moment to form before he decides to speak them. “Um… I guess, if I do write anything else, then… Ju-shidi can read it. If he wants.”
Ju-shidi nearly glows with eagerness. He nods his head rapidly like his neck is broken and he can’t help it. “Yes, I do! Thank you, shixiong! I can’t wait!”
Both he and Qinghua-shixiong alike seem blind to the sudden looks of miffed jealousy that have darkened the faces of everyone else at the table. That is one thing that Ju-shidi’s shamelessness seems to always get him: glorious opportunities that no one else gets, due to their habits of respecting propriety and manners! Damn him!
Maybe Rong Qingsheng can stand to follow his shidi’s example and be shameless, at least once in a while.
Shang Qinghua coughs a little bit into his hands and looks away, apparently having met his quota of eye-contact for the day. He’s lasted so long up to now, though! Rong Qingsheng is proud of him!
Now that it seems that Shang Qinghua has exhausted his willingness to speak any further, Shen-shixiong steps back into the conversation.
“All this taking, but not giving back in return?” He asks, head canted to the side and most of his unamused expression hidden behind an open fan. “What reason do you have to be visiting my house today, Ju Qingsong?”
Ju-shidi’s sunny disposition goes quite pale in response, and he straightens as if he’s been struck by lightning.
Truly, the force of Shen Qingqiu’s stare could be said to feel about the same.
Their most junior martial sibling opens his mouth to reply but, instead of words, a soft, squeaking mewl comes out.
The table goes completely, deathly still. Even Shang Qinghua raises his eyes to stare at their shidi in befuddlement.
Rong Qingsheng’s gaze slowly drops from Ju-shidi’s face to his slightly askew collar, then down further to where the front of his robes are pulled taught, as they always are, across his broad chest.
Except, the robes seem even tighter than usual, and his chest seems a little too broad.
The front of Ju-shidi’s robes appear to squirm and writhe.
Ju-shidi’s face blazes bright red under all of their gobsmacked eyes.
“A-Song,” Rong Qingsheng says, slowly, chidingly. “… What do you have in your robes?”
With a slightly trembling hand, Ju Qingsong reaches into the front of his robes and, unable to meet any of their gazes, withdraws a tiny, white, writhing little ball of fuzz. It is so small that it fits neatly in the palm of his hand.
It stares back at them with round, glistening blue eyes.
Shen Qinqiu’s fan closes with a sharp clack of wooden ribs hitting against one another.
“What,” he says, just as sharply, “is that, and why is it in my house.”
Ju-shidi opens his mouth to provide what Rong Qingsheng just knows is going to be an inefficient and not-very-well thought out explanation, but he is once again interrupted by a gentle coo.
This time, however, it comes from across the table, where Shang Qinghua has both hands pressed to his cheeks and is staring down at the fuzzball in Ju-shidi’s hand with a soft look of adoration.
“It's a baby.” He says, honey eyes just as round as the creature’s, entirely enraptured.
Ju-shidi throws whatever explanation he’d been about to give Qingqiu-shixiong, shixiong out the window, and beams at him.
“It’s a Goliath Sabercat kitten!” He says, completely deaf and blind to the abject horror that overshadows the faces of everyone else present. “The lady that our peak fosters just had a litter, and this is the smallest one!”
He strokes a finger down the spine of the infant version of one of the largest and most deadly feline beasts to ever cross the rivers and valleys of the jianghu, and it elicits another soft mewl. The tiny creature unfurls from its ball and its miniscule limbs stretch outward, tiny claws stretching even further. It yawns greatly, showcasing its little, needle-like fangs, and gives a long, slow blink. It begins to emit a deep, graveling sound from inside its chest that is just like what Rong Qingsheng imagines being dragged to the underworld after you die in a bloody, inescapable war might sound like.
“Awwww,” Shang Qinghua cooes down at it.
Rong Qingsheng finds himself sharing a commiserating look of exasperation and muted horror with Liu Qingge of all people, while Shen Qingqiu and Mu Qingfang do the side beside them.
Ju-shidi smiles abashedly, looking at Shang Qinghua from underneath his tousled bangs. “She’s the runt of the litter, so her siblings and mom don’t really pay much attention to her. So I’ve taken to carrying her around with me so she can still get some of the qi-contact required for her to grow up healthy.”
Shang Qinghua nods, eyes completely soft and never once leaving the tiny little form still squirming around on their shidi’s palm. “That’s good of you to do, shidi.”
“And, um…” Ju-shid becomes even more shy. “Well, cuddling the babies always makes me feel better when I’m down. So, I figured that, maybe, it might help Qinghua-shixiong, too…?”
Shang Qinghua’s eyes snap up to meet his, golden honey gleaming.
“Really?” He asks, breathless in a way that, for once, has nothing to do with his faulty lungs. “I can hold her?”
“Yes, shixiong, that’s why I brought her!” Ju-shidi, the idiot, affirms.
Shang Qinghua turns to Shen Qingqiu with such a naked eagerness that the second head disciple’s face is instantly wiped clean of any of its previous displeasure, replaced with something caught between helplessness and endearment.
“As long as it doesn’t make a mess, I suppose…” Their shixiong grumbles, unable to say no to such an expression on the face of their martial brother who has been through far too much.
Rong Qingsheng cannot fault him; he would do exactly the same, if he were in his shoes.
Ju-shidi and Qinghua-shixiong both brighten even further, if possible, and Rong Qingsheng watches in similarly helpless silence as Liu Qingge scoops all his notes and scrolls into his lap while the creature, gleaming silver fur and tiny claws that will one day drip acidic poison potent enough to burn through a cultivator's bones, is passed across the table.
Well, Rong Qingsheng sighs. Every peak has its own specialities. It is at least touching, regardless of the specifics, to see them each being used toward Qinghua’s shixiong’s benefit.