Till the end, Wen Kexing couldn't pry off Long Que's corpse from the bed with the metal bars and shackles. So he set the bed on fire too.
Murder followed by arson: no doubt a fittingly fiendish way for him to accomplish a charitable act.
Zhang Chengling stood not far away, watching the smoke rise. Out of the blue, his nose prickled as an inexplicable sadness overwhelmed him.
A hand grasped his shoulder.
His vision hazy, Zhang Chengling looked up to his shifu' s face: the man's eyes glinted as he stared at the blaze, reflecting its dancing light.
"Why cry?" Zhou Zishu said, his face impassive and his voice low, making it unclear whether he was talking to himself. "Everyone dies in the end."
And that was jianghu, all right. Some drank and laughed as they gamboled through rivers and mountains, while others quietly reached the end of the road in remote places such as this one. With, to see them off on the cold and desolate path to the Yellow Spring, only a handful of strangers had nothing to say as they each cradled their intimate plight.
Every day, there would be a youth brimming with joy at getting a step closer to realizing their dream. Every day, there would also be someone who passed away.
And so, the three of them stayed at the Marionettes Manor.
Wen Kexing found a great boulder and erected it in front of the small jailhouse whose walls were now blackened
with soot. He carved the outline of the words "The 8th day of the La month, on the Bingchen year "1 onto it and declared that he would take his time to calligraph the rest. He planned to work on it until the coming of spring.
Zhou Zishu let out a snort but didn't otherwise comment. Zhang Chengling, however, rejoiced in secret.
Only a day ago, the boy thought the place with its countless traps a downright menace, but now he reflected that it may just be paradise. Isolated from the outside world, there were neither people he had to fight for survival here nor people he had to flee from to save his neck.
Every day, all he had to do was to practice kung-fu, daydream, and get scolded. And frankly, the scolding wasn't even that big of a deal. It wasn't as if his Shifu could chop his head off to use it as a chamber pot for real, anyway.
Just like how a debtor would stop worrying once the bills had piled up high enough, the skin grew thicker once one had got upbraided a few times — a truism that dated back to the olden days.
There were a few buildings besides the jailhouse. A couple of guest rooms, and several sheds that looked like servant quarters. Though, all of them had fallen into disuse a long time ago and were in a state of ruin.
To prove his filial zeal, Zhang Chengling busied himself with tidying the place up. The result wasn't much of an improvement, but since the three of them had grown used to sleeping under a starry ceiling with Mother Earth as their mattress, they made do.
On that very night, Zhou Zishu had just gotten into bed and was dozing off when the door to his room emitted a long creaking noise as it was pushed ajar. A gust of icy breeze rushed in before whoever had opened the door hurried to shut it again.
Zhou Zishu went from asleep to wide awake in a split second. But although not a trace of drowsiness was left in him, he didn't open his eyes for some undefinable reason. Instead, he acted as if he didn't give a damn about the intrusion.
With blankets in arms, Wen Kexing walked up to stand by Zhou Zishu's bed and smiled a smile that was as slimy as it was lewd.
"My room isn't fit for a human to stay in," the guy said. "There is a marionette in one corner that's got a huge spider web on its head — it looks like a demon. Anytime I open my eyes from the bed, it stares at me as if..."
"You can turn it around so it faces the other way," Zhou Zishu cut him off with his eyes resolutely shut. Wen Kexing set his blanket down.
"I have no interest in the buttocks of automatons. Budge over some and make room for me, would you?" Zhou Zishu remained silent, playing dead.
Wen Kexing worked up a sermon.
"A-Xu, as humans, we must feel compassion for others. You keep saying that you want to do good deeds to accumulate merits, but here you are, unwilling to even share half of your bed with me after everything we've gone through together. We've faced death side by side so many times, and have been dancing around each other for so
long now2 — do you think your behavior is appropriate?"
Zhou Zishu cracked an eye open and threw the guy a sidelong glance.
"I was on the fence a moment ago," he said. "But now I'm quite sure it's appropriate..."
He was stopped mid-sentence, however, as Wen Kexing decided that action was mightier than persuasion: the guy sneaked a hand under Zhou Zishu's knees, another under his shoulders, and hauled his whole body up.
Zhou Zishu was thus shifted several inches towards the wall, before Wen Kexing happily plonked his ass onto the mattress, lying down and sprawling himself out like a cuckoo taking over a magpie's nest.
The maneuver was concluded by a drawn-out, contented sigh.
The bed wasn't small, but with the additional occupant, it felt too cramped to even flip over. With his entire body rigid from unease, Zhou Zishu tried his damndest to pretend nothing had happened while he turned over with his back to Wen Kexing.
He ensconced himself deeper into his blanket as if he couldn't wait to get to sleep, whereas he had opened his eyes as he spun around, and found that he couldn't close them again for the life of him.
For his part, Wen Kexing seemed to find Zhou Zishu's bed extra comfy as he wiggled about without cease. He'd roll over one moment, before squirming about the next, moving around like an overgrown monkey stretching himself.
With their shared space limited enough that even a fart from the other could shake the bedframe with a small-scale earthquake, Zhou Zishu felt the guy's every movement. Mounting irritation soon overtook him and he came seconds from shoving the guy off the bed with a well-aimed kick.
After some time, the guy finally settled down and Zhou Zishu forced himself to close his eyes in an attempt to ignore the person behind him entirely.
Wen Kexing piped up then. "A-Xu..."
Zhou Zishu refused to acknowledge it. Only to hear the noise of hair rubbing against the pillowcase: the guy had turned over to stare at his back.
The mere thought made Zhou Zishu uncomfortable and he felt as if tiny insects were crawling up and down his spine.
Wen Kexing paused. Since Zhou Zishu did not indicate reacting in any way, he next extended a fiendish claw3 to rest it lightly on Zhou Zishu's waist.
"A-Xuuu..." he tried again in a murmur.
Every hair on Zhou Zishu's body stood on end. Furious, he spun around and lashed out.
"Are you sleeping or not? If not, bugger off to your room to pester that puppet of yours!"
Wen Kexing was nonplussed. His head pillowed on his bent arm, he peered at Zhou Zishu with his face turned sideways. When he replied, it was in a tone full of self-righteousness:
"Come on. I'm right here in your bed, and you're getting to sleep without a word. Haven't you clued in yet that I harbor for you designs that are unchaste?"
Zhou Zishu thought the guy's shamelessness had reached such an apex that it could be said to be without precedent. It would also undoubtedly remain unmatched thenceforth.
He truly had no words.
The guy's dog paw that rested on his middle seemed well-behaved enough at first glance, but the fingertips would feel him up now and then, without moving from their spot on his waist.
Out of reflex, Zhou Zishu was about to bat the offending hand away, but he took one look at the rotten expression
on Wen Kexing's face — it was a perfect illustration of the saying "a dead swine doesn't fear scalding water"4 — and changed his mind. Instead, he lay back down and turned over intending to sleep like the dead.
"Do as you please," he threw out as his final line.
Thereupon, he marshaled his willpower and went back to acting like the corpse.
Wen Kexing badgered him for a while longer but was only met with the inflexibility of his cadaverous poise. Reflecting that Zhou Zishu was indeed a true master amongst men, with grit made of iron, he gave up at last. And, after a bout of silent sniggers, he too shut his eyes.
Thus, the time elapsed till the dead of the night, at which point Wen Kexing felt the slightest tremor from the man at his side. He woke up at once, knowing that midnight had come.
Doubtless because of the cold temperature and their thin blankets that weren't insulting enough, the both of them had rolled toward the same spot during slumber: Zhou Zishu's back curved towards his bedmate, looking as if he was spooned against Wen Kexing's chest.
That sleep should elude him in the second half of the night was nothing new to Zhou Zishu. He woke up as per usual and remembered he wasn't alone only when he heard the breathing of the man behind him.
Feeling awkward, he tried to slip away unnoticed. But the double internal injury afflicting him prevented him from summoning the energy to do so. Hence, he was left with no other choice than to stay in place and grit his teeth to bear through it.
Wen Kexing frowned. He retracted his arm and lifted his upper body to free his other hand so that he could rest it against the middle of Zhou Zishu's back. He didn't dare act blindly, though.
"What is it? Does it hurt?" he asked in a whisper.
Zhou Zishu failed to reply as, quite out of his control, he curled up further while gripping the beddings.
Every day, the agony would always peak right when midnight struck. If only he could pull through it, the pain would lessen, and he'd be able to meditate and harmonize his breathing.
It was the bleak of winter, but sweat beaded at his temple as he tried to steady and slow down his respiration with his eyes tightly shut.
Despite Zhou Zishu's efforts, Wen Kexing still heard the shuddering intake of air between each of the other man's exhalations.
Wordlessly, he reached out to pull Zhou Zishu's entire upper body close, using his other arm to circle Zhou Zishu's waist and press his head against his chest. That way, as if soothing a child who was having a nightmare, he hugged the man while gently stroking his back.
Zhou Zishu didn't protest for once.
At that moment, they were both awake, but neither of them made a sound.
The night stretched outside the window, interminable — time and pain unfolding at such a sluggish pace they demanded to be engraved in the mind and heart.
Zhou Zishu was quietly amazed. During the day, that other man and he would undermine each other without reprieve. Yet, here they were, clinging onto each other as if their lives depended upon it at night.
Wasn't that peculiar?
1. Date expressed using the traditional lunisolar calendar (lunar months) and sexagenary cycle aka Stems-and-Branches.
The La month is the 12th month in the lunisolar calendar.
The Bingchen year is the 53rd year in the sexagenary cycle.
Since, according to the lunar calendar, the new year begins either on the new moon before the spring equinox, or the one after the winter solstice, making each year begin in spring — when WKX says he wants to stay till next spring, it means he wants to stay until New Year's eve. And since they are on the 8th of the La month/12th month, the duration of their stay is either approx 20 days or, if the year has a leap month/13th month after the 12th month, 50 days.
As per the next chapter, the year doesn't seem to have a leap month after the 12th month. So, at this point, WKX plan on staying for about 20 days.
Since there are only 60 years in the sexagenary cycle, another element — generally the regnal year/era — is necessary to date events. Here it would be the fictional Daqing or Rongjia.
2. WKX describes their rapport "you and me, me and you/you are me, I am you". The poem that describes intimacy between lovers.
3. "Lushan claw" in the original. Refers to general An Lushan who scratched Yang Guifei's breast by accident. Which was a big deal because they feared Emperor Xuan Zong (Yang Guifei's husband) would see the mark. Means a brusque move in flirtatious rapport.