Following the lesson, Wu Ling approached Su Xiang with a delicate smile on his face, hiding the turbulent feelings that swirled beneath his well-trained mask. "I'm sorry if my playing bothered you Sister Xiang," he said when he saw her staring at him as though she'd encountered a strange and never-before-seen spirit beast. "I just thought, it's been a long time. Seeing you again should come with flowers, but," he trailed off at the end, spreading his hands helplessly. "I have only music to offer at the moment."
"You!" Su Xiang didn't know what to say as she looked from Wu Ling to her cousin hoping for some help. "Is Bro, er, Sister Ling always like this now? Always so, so…" she didn't even know how to finish the sentence. Yun Ling had climbed trees with her and swung wooden practice swords in pitched pretend battles in the dusty practice yards of the outer sect. She and Yun Ling had promised to become sword-sworn companions to adventure across the world together. They'd been simple childhood games but the rambunctious Yun Ling of ten years ago had none of the charm and elegance of the Wu Ling before her now.
"No, she isn't," Su Yao said, looking at her cousin with a bit of renewed awe. There was always a bit of awe from members of the family who hadn't yet become cultivators towards those who had but this was a bit different than that. "She never improvises. For anyone."
"Sister Su Yao is exaggerating," Wu Ling said with a charming smile. "Sister Xiang is all grown up now. She's a flower that bloomed, a disciple of the sect, and a friend I haven't been able to visit. Next to ten years of not visiting and not writing, I'm sure my little improvisation is…"
"Stop, just stop," Su Xiang said holding up a hand. "Is there a teahouse nearby where we can speak in private? I can't talk to you like… this. With everyone around and…"
"I know one that will give me a room for the asking as long as I agree to play for the patrons before I leave," he offered.
"I can pay for a room, that's not a problem," Su Xiang said, waving off the notion of waiting around while Wu Ling bartered for a room to have a private conversation in. Was this how he'd been living these years? Performing for meals? What was he doing with all the spirit stones people like her cousin had been paying him for paintings then? As soon as the thought came, she chased it away, ashamed that it had occurred to her in the first place. He'd been caring for his mother, that's what he'd been doing. A private room at a tea house wasn't likely the sort of thing he could justify spending spirit crystals on. "Show me the way," she said, impatient to find out what had happened for her childhood friend to be living such a strange and from the sounds of it, tragic life.
"So you can chase me again?" Wu Ling said with a teasing wink. "I can't run from you like before you know, I'd trip!"
"Brat!" Su Xiang hissed, restraining herself from punching him in the arm the way she would have when they were children. Now that she'd become an Awakened cultivator, even though she was just a middle-stage Brawler, her strength could accidentally shatter the bones of mortals. The way Wu Ling kept her ever so slightly off balance, she didn't trust herself to not accidentally hurt him.
"Sister Su Yao, I know Sister Xiang is your protector today but I'd like to borrow her alone for a little while to talk about old times," Wu Ling said gently. "Do you think you can wait at school for her to come back for you?"
"Well…" Su Yao said, drawing things out as though she might not agree before decisively nodding her head. "Of course, Sister Wu Ling can borrow her. You helped me meet the person who may be my fated one, I can at least give you time to have tea with my cousin," she said with a warm smile.
"Thank you, cousin, we'll be back soon, I promise," Su Xiang said, giving her cousin a brief hug before following Wu Ling to the tea house across the street.
Once they'd closed the doors of their private room, Wu Ling began preparing tea with slow practiced movements demonstrating once again the refinement expected of a young lady who studied the arts and further unnerving Su Xiang. "Could you not," she started before stumbling over how to articulate her discomfort. "Could you not act like you're some nobleman's housewife in training?" she finally managed to say.
"Tea is tea, Xiang," Wu Lin said with a smile, passing over the first cup of the second steep. "It doesn't care if you steep it or I do. It doesn't care if a man steeps it or a woman does. Tea is tea. Take a sip," he said, drinking a bit from his own cup and relaxing into the soft cushions around the low table. "Tell me what you think."
Taking a deep breath, Su Xiang took in the sweet slightly floral fragrance of the tea before taking a delicate sip of her own. The mild flavor reminded her of the tea served by one of the elders in the sect, something that would become richer and sharper each time you steeped it. The elder said that a sword cultivator could learn from any sharpness so long as they honed themselves into a blade but she didn't think Wu Ling was offering her tea to remind her of swords. If there was a meaning in the flavor or the aroma of the tea, Su Xiang had no idea what it might be. "I think I'm still too simple for tea," she finally said, unsure of what kind of message she was supposed to derive from the cup Wu Ling had so carefully prepared for her and feeling embarrassed because of it.
"Does it taste good?" Wu Ling asked with a teasing smile.
"I like my tea sweeter," she answered honestly.
"I'll make the next one sweeter then," he said, reaching into another small box on the tray and preparing several pieces of dried fruit peels to add to the next steeping of tea.
"No, that's not what I meant," Su Xiang said, flustered at the way he seemed to be taking everything as some kind of, almost order that he had to respond to with some kind of service. It felt wrong, like she wasn't seeing her real friend but a mask he didn't know how to take off. "Do I have to rub that makeup off your face before you'll be the real you with me?"
"Xiang," Wu Lin said slowly, setting down the tea set and looking directly into her sapphire eyes. "I'd be the same even without the makeup. What you're getting right now, that's real. What I played at the school for you, that's real too," he explained, genuine passion seeping into his voice as he opened himself up to one of the few friends he'd felt he had in this world before everything went so horribly wrong. "I learned to play the zither so people can feel what I feel along with me. I learned to paint so I can show people the world the way I see it. I learned tea because I wanted a way to show a few people who really matter to me just how much they mean to me. Sometimes, words get clunky, and polite things we're supposed to say get in the way," he said, reaching out to steep another pot of tea. "But tea is tea. Art is art. The feelings are pure and those things can reach where words can't go."
"Now I feel bad," Su Xiang said sullenly. Just like when they were kids, she'd always been the one who rushed in and did what she felt like without realizing that she might hurt someone along the way. Yun Ling had always forgiven her with that confident little smile of his and now she saw that same smile on Wu Ling's face again. "Why do you have to dress up like this and pretend?" she finally asked, giving up on any subtle approach. Subtle had never been her strong suit and Wu Ling had never minded her being blunt when they were children, she just hoped that it was the same now after so much had changed.
"After father died," Wu Ling started, pouring a cup of fruit-sweetened tea for Su Xiang. "My mother tried to go back to the places she'd worked as a dancer. I was too old though. They wouldn't allow a boy that old to stay in the courtyards of the working courtesans. Even though my mother never did anything improper, there were others who did. Male eyes weren't welcome. After the first several places rejected her, she dressed me up as a girl and called me Wu Ling instead of Yun Ling. She told the Bamboo Silk House that my father wouldn't acknowledge me and that she was looking to start over in a place away from his family's prying eyes. That worked for a few years until she accumulated enough accomplishments in the sect that we could have our own space in the back of the sect away from prying eyes but I still had to dress up as a girl whenever I went anywhere in the sect."
"But here you are," Su Xiang said, sipping her tea and smiling at the sweet fruity taste. "Dressing up like a girl again."
"That's different," Wu Ling said, waving off the idea that he was hiding himself somehow like he was shooing away a fly. "You have to understand that things were rough for Mother and me for a little bit. The Bamboo Silk House is divided into Light and Dark sides. The Light side of the house is what most people see, trained courtesans skilled in dancing, music, and any of the arts you could wish to be entertained by. The Dark side of the house, however, uses those arts as a cover for thieves, spies, and assassins," he said, looking deep into her eyes for her reaction.
"I thought places like that only existed in the novels read by mortals. How could a real organization of cultivators like that exist in the shadow of the Paragon Sword Sect and all the other righteous powers of Silver Sword City?"
"Because some of the people who would police a dark organization are its best customers," Wu Ling explained. "While we were there, I spent time learning the arts. I didn't know about the Dark side of the house, not until much later, but I think there were people there who felt I'd be a good tool once I was old enough. Then a few years later, something happened between my mother and one of the women from the Dark side of the house. They didn't kill her, just crippled her so she'd never dance or hold a sword again," Wu Ling said in a gentle voice that masked the pain accompanying those memories.
"How old were you when that happened?" Su Xiang asked, trying to imagine what it would have been like to have to care for his mother all by himself.
"I was almost fourteen," he answered, his grey eyes slightly unfocused as though he was gazing into the past. "I missed my first chance at Awakening and used what we'd set aside for the ceremony to pay the rent for a small courtyard outside of the sect for the next year. I had to figure out something to do, mother needed medicine even after the alchemist treated her injuries. There's a poison that prevents her tendons from being restored so she needs regular medicine to prevent the poison from spreading any further in her body. One night, when the cupboards were getting empty, I borrowed one of Mom's performing dresses and I took my zither around to the nearby tea houses until I found one that would let me take home some food if I played for the evening," he explained, his voice trailing off as he became lost in the memories of the struggles in those early days.
"One day," he finally said, shaking off the memories and resuming his story. "The headmistress of the Pure Virtue Musician's Hall found me in a tea house I was playing at. She told me that if I really wanted to make something of myself with my music, I needed a real teacher, and she brought me to the school to audition. I've been there like this ever since," he finished with a smile. The years had been hard to be sure, but there had been some bright spots along the way. He wouldn't be nearly as capable of a musician or artist without the help he'd received from the teachers and the senior students in the school, and the connections he'd made to wealthy cultivation families let him sell his services as an artist for a much higher price. Without all of that, caring for his mother would have been all but impossible.
"Okay," Su Xiang said, slowly sipping on her cooling tea. "So, I guess the real question is, will you stay like this?"