After spending his afternoon helping out around the temple, Bai Guo was on his way back to his quarters. He came across another group of monks, Chun De among them, and they all briefly stopped to exchange polite greetings.
But as they passed each other by, Chun De quietly peeled away from the group and caught up to him. As Bai Guo noticed and turned to say something, she pressed her palm against his mouth and pushed him into a small room stocked with scriptures.
Chun De shoved Bai Guo back-first into a wall and pinned him by the arms.
"Are you avoiding me?" She asked. "I haven't seen you all day."
"I was helping around." Bai Guo said. "Why would I avoid you?"
Though the bald girl looked like she had something to say, she could only glare silently.
As the staring dragged on, Bai Guo grumbled. "How does such a tiny person always manage to occupy so much of my personal space?"
"This tiny person kicked your ass! Show some respect!" She bent over and rammed her bald head into his stomach.
"You little...!" Bai Guo grunted in pain. "What was all that back at the tournament?"
"You lost!" She exclaimed.
"Why did you surrender?" He asked.
"I realized it wouldn't get through to you unless I hurt you, so I just saved myself the trouble." Chun De turned up her nose. "I'm a monk. It's not like I have any use for the prize money, and obviously I didn't want to become that guy's disciple. So their acknowledgement of my victory didn't matter to me."
"I see..."
"You're not mad, are you?" She suddenly asked.
"No. But you should have seen the crowd. Now those people were furious."
They both chuckled.
"That aside..." Chun De digressed. "Are you holding up alright? I watched you get roughed up by that big guy with the saber. You were bleeding all over by the end. It looked real bad..."
Bai Guo assured her that he was fine. But the girl just wouldn't accept his words at face value. Placating her took some time.
Chun De finally let him go and sat down on the carpet.
"You promised you'd tell me more about your master." She said.
"Does it have to be now? I'm kind of tired..."
"Sit down." Chun De demanded, patting the carpet.
Bai Guo reluctantly took a seat. He pondered where to begin, and eventually decided to simply tell her about some of their adventures together.
Though somewhat reserved at first, as his stories went on, his narration became ever more animated. His retellings of his master's feats soon began to resemble bragging. He had ended up so absorbed in his storytelling that he ceased to pay any heed to the passage of time and the increasingly growing proximity of his listener.
Chun De listened with a grin on her face. Before Bai Guo realized it, the nun had gotten so close that the storyteller felt compelled to speak in a softer voice. When their closeness finally dawned on him, he attempted to make his escape, but his shoulder bumped into a wall.
"You're so useless!" Chun De laughed. "You weren't there for any of her biggest fights. You missed out on the most exciting parts. So frustrating."
Bai Guo chuckled. "I can live with that. I get enough excitement in my life as it is!"
"Your life sounds like so much fun..." She whispered.
"I don't know if that's the word I'd use..."
Chun De cast down her big eyes. "Seeing the world, meeting new people, doing anything you please, fighting whoever you want... How could it not be fun? I can only dream of that..."
Bai Guo sighed. A smile crept up to his face.
"Again with that twisted perspective of yours. Something tells me the two of you would get along really well."
"With your master?" Her eyes suddenly widened. "You really think so?"
"I'd be very surprised if you didn't." Bai Guo shook his head in amusement. He detached himself from the nun and stood up. "It's getting late. We should get back."
As he tried to walk away, Chun De rushed after him. Once again his arms had been grabbed, and once again he'd been pressed against the wall.
"You're really starting to get on my nerves with this!" Bai Guo tried to wrangle his arms out of her grasp. He was met with ever fiercer resistance. He noticed a particular gravity in the girl's expression that prompted him to cave in and cease his struggling. She seemed to be building her courage up to something big.
Chun De suddenly asked, "What do you think of me?"
"I feel like I've been making myself pretty clear every time we spoke."
"I'm not joking. I'm asking you seriously." Her tone was urgent.
"What's gotten into you all of a sudden?" His empty question prompted the girl to squeeze his forearms harder. He soon felt compelled to relent to her frantic insistence and elaborated. "You're brash and obscene, but I can tell there's a good person beneath it all."
"I didn't get anything from that." She muttered, annoyed. "Just tell me if you like me or not."
Asked so directly, Bai Guo hesitated. "Just what's gotten into you today?"
"Just tell me!"
"...Sure. I do like you." Bai Guo relented. "What made you think that I don't?"
"Do you really mean it?" Chun De kept insisting.
"Enough of this already!" Bai Guo finally shook her hands off, his embarrassment reaching its peak. "You heard me the first time! I'm not repeating myself."
The nun meekly backed away. "Then..." She took a deep breath. "When you and your master leave this place, can I come with you?"
Bai Guo's eyes widened. He unconsciously backed up into the wall on his own. "Not so long ago you were telling me how much you liked it here, that you'd even be willing to do something drastic to remain. What brought this on?"
"I only said I like it here compared to my previous temple." She explained. "But it's still a temple all the same. I'm not cut out for the religious life. You get that, right?"
Chun De once again pressed her body against his. Her big eyes stared up into Bai Guo's. "I'm tired of pretending to be something I'm not. You see me for who I really am, and you don't hate me. I don't know if I'll ever find someone like you again. No, I just know for sure that I never will."
Bai Guo helplessly froze up. Chun De kept going.
"I'd love to live like you. I'd love to see the world with you. So take me away from here." The girl pleaded. With a smile, she continued. "I'll grow out my hair. Can you even imagine what I'd look like? I'll never be a tall beauty like your master, but I bet I'd still look pretty. Wouldn't you like to see that?"
At the mention of his master, a sudden thought crossed Bai Guo's mind. The young man remained in his dumb stupor for a time. He could feel the incessant drumming of both of their hearts.
He gently brushed the back of his hand against her warm cheek. "You don't look bad even as you are now."
Chun De giggled at his words. "Don't joke. I know I look stupid."
But when she found not even the hint of a smile on his face, she couldn't keep staring at those serious eyes.
"I'd like to take you with me. But..." Bai Guo's lingering phrase made her still her breath. "It's not up to just me. You know that."
"You said your master would like me." Chun De muttered.
"And it's not only about her either." Bai Guo said. "I can't imagine the abbot would allow you to go through with this. But even more importantly, what about your master?"
"I don't care what that old fart thinks." Chun De snorted. "But master... Well, I think he wouldn't mind if I went with you. He knows how I feel about living here. He's the one who covered up my absence for the tournament. He would definitely agree to this, I think..."
"Chun De." Bai Guo's tone grew stern. "Your bond with that man isn't something you should be taking this lightly. You can't just guess at his intentions, you have to be absolutely sure. And what kind of a man would let you run off with strangers he's never even seen before? He needs to at least know who you're leaving with."
Chun De was overcome with frustration, but she couldn't disagree. "I know! But the abbot won't let you meet with him. This would all be solved with a simple meeting, I just know it. Master is a good judge of character; he'd know right away that you can be trusted. But that stubborn old man..."
She lightly thwacked Bai Guo chest with her fist. The two of them held each other in silence, thinking.
Chun De suddenly gazed up. "I'll just bring you there in secret."
"I really don't know, Chun De. What about the abbot?" Bai Guo expressed his hesitation.
"Who cares about him!" Chun De readily dismissed his concerns. "I've known my master for many years now. The old man is wrong about this. Nothing bad could come out of a meeting with you. It will be good for him."
Her big eyes were filled with a fiery decisiveness. "Let's do it. It's too late to steal the key now, so we'll have to go tomorrow night. In the prayer hall, there's a hidden switch behind the elephant statue that opens a secret passage. I'll guide you and your master through the underground maze."
With her plot decided, Chun De grinned ear to ear. But her enthusiasm flickered when she realized that Bai Guo still looked hesitant.
After a painful moment, the young man nodded. Chun De hugged him even tighter, laughing.
Her celebrations ceased abruptly. "We really do need to go back now! Before anyone catches us..."
The two of them separated.
Bai Guo saw the girl off with a smile. When she was gone, he exhaled sharply. His body slid down the wall as though overcome by utter exhaustion. He ran his palms across his pallid face. As he lied there, what wracked his heart was not desire, but guilt.
The young man soon returned to his room. His golden eyed master was already waiting for him. He suddenly remembered that they had previously agreed to practice in the evening.
"I ran into Chun De." Bai Guo explained, his tone nearly apologetic. But it appeared that the woman paid little heed to his tardiness, lost in her own thoughts. "Do you remember when she surrendered during the tournament? She said it was because I lost and hadn't realized it. She didn't want to hurt me just to win."
"Oh really?" She seemed dismissive of the matter. "It never looked to me like you were close to losing."
"...Are you sure, master?" Bai Guo asked. "I feel like I made some serious mistakes during that fight."
The Golden Witch chuckled. "That's true, but you recovered before she could have done anything about your openings."
"I assumed she didn't properly capitalize on them because she took pity on me."
"From what I've seen, even if she tried her hardest to cut you down, she might not have managed it." The woman shrugged. "But, perhaps, who knows? Anything could happen during a battle. That girl could be right."
Bai Guo thought that her polite concession was entirely unconvincing. But even though he doubted her conclusions, with his master being who she was, he felt that arguing any further would just make him look foolish.
"Shall we begin?" She asked. But she found her disciple overcome with reluctance. The Golden Witch patiently waited for him to speak his mind.
"Chun De also brought up another matter..." He reluctantly began. "She wants to take us to her master against the abbot's wishes."
Her golden eyes widened as Bai Guo outlined their conversation. He included Chun De's terms and the hidden mechanism that was supposed to reveal the secret passage into his explanation.
The Golden Witch smirked. "She can come with us. I don't mind."
Though she had made an effort to contain herself, her mounting excitement promptly turned to giddiness.
They attempted to go through with Bai Guo's training as they planned, but both of their minds were elsewhere. They parted after an hour with little progress made.
But that night, neither master nor disciple could lull themselves to sleep. And while Bai Guo was content to toss and turn in his bed until morning, the Golden Witch couldn't bear to lie still. She stepped out of her room. She wandered the temple halls like a ghost, her steps leaving not the slightest sound.
The golden haired woman soon reached the closet that caught her attention the other day, the one full of theatrical costumes. Her eyes twinkled as they ran across the colorful masks loosely arranged on the walls, eventually stopping on one that was a bare, unpainted white. Her long fingers ran along the bone, tracing the grimace of a horned demon.
The Golden Witch graced the demon's grin with a bewitched smile of her own.
She put on the mask.
...