Yan Zheyun had never been in so much pain before. Each lash of the whip seared into his back like a brand. After the third stroke, he began struggling. After the tenth, he began screaming. And despite the torment, he still clung to the thought that at least, when they'd removed his robes to expose his skin, they'd left his shoes on. So no one had discovered the knife he'd tucked away in there after stealing it from the kitchens.
He didn't realise when he'd fainted, but someone tossed cold water onto him to wake him up. This made the pain even more excruciating, which he hadn't realised was even possible. The entire ordeal couldn't have lasted for more than an hour or two, but it felt like an eternity before it was finally over. Yan Zheyun only had a couple of shallow breaths left in his body by the time they released him from the pillar he was tied to. He crumbled to the ground, his throat burning from shouting itself raw.
The world turned hazy. He felt like this was it, he was going to die. And it was ugly, but he regretted trying to help Xiqing. All that pity he'd brought along with him from the modern 21st century had no place here in this society.
So much for being kind.
Perhaps it was the hate that kept him alive because instead of losing consciousness and sinking into blessed oblivion, he was aware that they were transporting him somewhere. Through his ragged attempts at breathing, the strong foul stench of animal manure invaded his nose. It was nauseating but Yan Zheyun had no strength left to retch.
They propped him up in a haystack somewhere and he could feel wandering hands groping at his body, along with mocking laughter. But he was probably in such a bad state that no one tried to take things any further. Probably didn't want to get his blood all over themselves because it would no doubt be a mood killer.
His lips were dry. He felt parched and craved desperately for a drop of water. But no matter how much he tried to move, his limbs wouldn't obey his command. He found himself thinking of his family again and realised it'd been almost half a year since he'd last seen them. He wondered how they were doing now. His siblings would be in second-year uni now, did they hate him for dying? For being absent when he'd promised to be there to watch the best years of their lives?
A tear slipped from the corner of his eyes. If he died here, maybe he'd wake up back with them…
A young face appeared in his vision. It tapped at his cheeks frantically.
"Hey, don't sleep," it said in an urgent tone. "You're burning up—"
The speaker disappeared. Yan Zheyun's eyes slid shut.
When he next awoke, he was lying on his side in a shabby room, with low wooden ceiling beams that were green with mould. The pallet he was on was threadbare and the pungent scent of herbs filled his nose.
"You're up."
The person sitting by the bedside and wringing a dirty cloth in water was Wu Zhong. He shook the cloth out and folded it before slapping it on Yan Zheyun's forehead. On any other day, Yan Zheyun might try shirking away from the grime, but he was too exhausted to even consider moving now.
"I—'m…alive," he croaked out.
Wu Zhong shot him a glare. "No thanks to yourself," he retorted uncharitably. "Let's see if you ever play the hero again."
Fine. Lesson well learned, Yan Zheyun was going to mind his own business from now on. His throat felt like sandpaper, and he swallowed to try and ease some of the discomfort, but it didn't work. Wu Zhong must have noticed though because a cracked cup was soon held to his lips roughly. He didn't even mind Wu Zhong's terrible bedside manner, gulping the water down so quickly and nearly crying as the soothing cool liquid flooded his mouth.
"Xiqing killed herself," Wu Zhong said, out of the blue. "Over her sister's corpse."
Yan Zheyun froze for a second before continuing to drink.
"How come you're here?" he asked, after coughing and clearing his throat.
Wu Zhong's mouth pressed into a thin line. "Matron Wang's permission," he said curtly. "You owe her for the medicine too, few servants can afford the cost of the herbs on your wounds."
"…" Matron Wang. Yan Zheyun wasn't sure why she took such good care of him, given that he was just another common slave under her watch, one of many. But he was grateful nonetheless, and guilty for using her money. There was no way for him to repay her now, but he would remember this favour.
"Please help me convey my gratitude," was all he could say.
"She'll rather you stop acting like a fool, I'm sure."
[…and I'm sure that's more your opinion than hers, but okay, I deserved that.]
He was still feeling weak and was running a temperature, so it wasn't long before he'd dozed off again, to fevered dreams that were a mishmash of his past and current life. One minute, he was attending his own funeral while his family cried in front of his portrait. Another, he was running down the endless hallways of Meiyue Tower as he tried and failed to find that painting of the plum blossoms. He knew it was a key, but to what, was less clear…
The second time he woke, it was late in the night and the room was dark except for the streak of wan moonlight stealing in through a crack in the window. His sweat-soaked trousers clung to his skin, and his naked torso was swathed in bandages that were stained a pale pink. But at least the fever seemed to have broken. He pressed the back of his hand to his forehead, even though he knew that it was impossible to accurately check his own temperature.
"Did you need anything?" A tiny voice mumbled from his left, out of the blue. Yan Zheyun was startled. He hadn't realised there was someone else in the room.
A young boy, perhaps around 13 or 14, climbed out of a nearby pallet and stumbled over while rubbing his eyes blearily. Now that Yan Zheyun's eyes had adjusted to the dark, he could faintly make out the boy's face as belonging to the servant who had tried to keep him awake earlier on. This was also a familiar face, come to think of it. He was the stable boy, whose main role besides taking care of the horses was to lead them to the carriages and offer his back up as a stepping stool for the nobles to climb up.
They'd met before, on that one occasion Wu Bin had taken Yan Zheyun into town.
"It's you," Yan Zheyun said.
"Mm," the boy hummed with an abashed smile. He filled a glass of water and handed it to Yan Zheyun.
"Thank you." Yan Zheyun took a sip and regarded the boy with a considering expression. "I'm Yan Yun. What's your name?"
"My foster father calls me Little Horse," he said. "Xiao Ma." He rubbed at his nose sheepishly. "He found me abandoned behind the stables and asked the masters if he could keep me."
It turned out that his foster father was the stable master, an elderly servant who had been working this job for over half a century now. Xiao Ma insisted on helping to change the bandages, despite being obviously sleepy. Yan Zheyun had no idea how to even go about with his own first aid since the wounds were on his back, so he caved and accepted the assistance.
He just thought of another thing he sorely missed. Hospitals.
"My foster father was the one who taught me some medicine," Xiao Ma commented, his fingers surprisingly deft as they cleaned up the wounds and applied fresh ointment. "We need to be able to treat the horses."
"It's just the both of you?"
"Mmhm! And now you too, I guess. The masters don't keep many horses within the estate itself. They have more in the range on the outskirts of the city, where the nobles go to ride and hunt. But there are other caretakers responsible for those."
Yan Zheyun gritted his teeth through the pain of the medicine application. It had been one thing to scream during the whipping itself, but now, here in front of a kid that was half his age, call it manly pride or whatever but he felt too embarrassed to make a sound.
"Thanks," he muttered, once Xiao Ma finished tying the bandages in a neat knot. He surreptitiously wiped off his cold sweat on the back of his arms.
"No problem," Xiao Ma replied. He hesitated for a bit before adding, "I remember you too, Big Brother. You…didn't step on me. That time. Thank you."
Yan Zheyun's eyes widened as he looked at Xiao Ma, who gave him a tentative grin.
"I told my foster father about it. He said he'd met you before when you were younger and not yet…" He trailed off like he was worried the rest of that sentence would offend Yan Zheyun. They both knew what he was going to say.
'When you were younger and not yet a slave.'
"What did he say about me?" Yan Zheyun asked evenly, even though the person the stable master had met was actually Yan Yun.
"He said that you had always been polite and kind to him. And to the horses. You're a good person."
And wasn't that the truth? Yan Yun or Yan Zheyun, they were both foolish saints, which was why had and were continuing to suffer in a novel like 'Hurt Me in a Million Ways'. Because only a saint would allow themselves to be hurt that many times without retaliation.
Yan Zheyun had had enough of that.
"What time does work start?" he asked, trying gingerly to shift onto his back before giving up. The crick in his neck would just have to stay until he regained his mobility.
"Ah?" Xiao Ma shot him an incredulous look. "You're going to be stuck in bed for at least a week, Big Brother." He waved off Yan Zheyun's protests. "Don't worry about it, we've managed for so long with just 2 of us, you can join in once you've recovered."
Was this karma because he'd done a good thing once? Yan Zheyun didn't know, but he was too tired to argue. He'd just have to work harder once he was feeling better, to thank them for it.
——————————
By the time Yan Zheyun was really feeling up to the task of manning the horses, it was close to the mid-autumn festival. The pain had taken around two weeks to stop being troublesome, and the wounds on his back had finally scabbed into itchy scars that had nearly driven him crazy. But the grumpy old stable master had only assigned him light work, such as brushing the horses down or fixing their harnesses.
Both had taken Yan Zheyun ages to master too. It turned out that CEOs might not necessarily make good stable boys. Yan Zheyun's siblings were avid equestrians, but he had personally preferred tinkling with technology in his free time.
On the morning of the festival, Yan Zheyun woke up as per normal and went to feed the horses. His arms had developed a svelte layer of muscles, firm but not too chunky, and they were on display as he rolled up his sleeves and carted bags of mixed grains over to the feeding trough. Initially, the manual labour had torn open some of the scabs, and the stable master had complained about what a pansy he was, but had taken him off duty again.
But Yan Zheyun was fine now. He'd survived and come out even fitter as a result of it. What's more, the Minister of Rites might have thought he was punishing Yan Zheyun by banning him from the main compound, but Yan Zheyun truthfully couldn't thank him enough for that.
The only thing that he found astonishing was that, even after a month or so of constant sunshine, his skin hadn't tanned in the least. He'd tried avoiding the sun initially out of fear of skin cancer, but that had proven impossible. Resigned to his fate—and praying that the ozone layer, if it existed in this universe, was still intact—he'd stepped bravely into the relentless rays day after day.
But his skin was still as fair as Disney's Snow White's. It was almost humiliating.
"Oi." A low grouchy voice called out from behind. Yan Zheyun recognised it as Wu Zhong's and he raised an eyebrow as he turned around to return his friend's greeting.
"Oi," he replied. "Fancy seeing you here this early, are you looking for another punishment from Matron Wang?"
The kitchen matron had allowed Wu Zhong's visits up until the point she'd realised that he'd been running off every other day to hang out with Yan Zheyun. Wu Zhong had disappeared for a week after that, and when he'd returned, it was with snacks from the kitchen and ten red lines of welts on his back from a fresh caning.
Wu Zhong rolled his eyes and tossed a white cloth bundle at Yan Zheyun. "I've permission to be here today. Matron Wang sends mooncakes." He nodded towards Xiao Ma, the spritely figure a couple of feet away, who was harnessing some horses to one of the carriages. "I added one for the monkey."
"Am a horse, notta monkey!" Xiao Ma shouted back, clearly eavesdropping on the conversation.
Wu Zhong gave him an unimpressed look. "And you're so proud of that, because? A horse is still a beast."
"…hey!"
Yan Zheyun shook his head, used to their noisy banter by now. He accepted the gift with thanks. Matron Wang's periodic favours had become commonplace by now, but they still left him troubled as he had no way of returning her kindness.
"Do you want to go into town tonight?" Wu Zhong asked suddenly.
Yan Zheyun blinked. "For the festival?" Oh yeah. He recalled Mingyue mentioning ages ago that servants were allowed to take the evening off during Mid-Autumn. He wondered how she was doing, and whether he would bump into her tonight too.
Maybe he could use some of his meagre earnings to buy Matron Wang a present. It was tempting. It would also be his first time out to properly relax, without having to deal with Wu Bin's insane ploys.
"Sure," he agreed at last. And then catching sight of Xiao Ma's big, hopeful eyes, he relented and added, "All three of us, then, let's make a night of it."