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If it weren’t for how often they were both sending and receiving letters, Wen Qing didn’t know when she would have taken notice of Jiang Yanli.
The other students at the Cloud Recesses’ seminars received occasional messages. From what Wen Qing heard—and it wasn’t much; she was kept carefully at arm’s length by most of them, due to the Qishan Wen’s reputation—those messages were mostly notes from parents reminding them to work hard. Sometimes, Wen Qing wished she received anything along those lines; Wen-zongzhu sent her scathing rejoinders about how little she told him, while Wen Ning told her how much he missed her. A parent telling her to work hard would be heartwarming in comparison.
Still, Wen Qing went to send letters every three days like clockwork, and received them just as often. And Jiang Yanli was there too, her hands full of letters from her family—both parents, both younger brothers—and missives to send back.
Wen Qing learned which handwriting went with which of Jiang Yanli’s family members by the end of the first month. It was the most useless thing she had learned, and she didn’t know why she even bothered knowing it until she passed Jiang Yanli in the little mailroom and said, “Your brothers both sent long letters today; did something happen?”
Jiang Yanli stiffened for a moment, shock a strange expression on her sweet face, and then shook her head with a soft laugh. “A-Xian is very proud of himself for finding and fighting two water ghouls all on his own, and Jiang Cheng is upset that he wasn’t present to show his own skills.”
Wen Qing covered her mouth with one hand, hiding her smile. “You must miss them very much.”
“I do.” Jiang Yanli’s eyes flickered to the papers in Wen Qing’s hands. “I know the whispers say that you’re a spy, but… Your eyes are too soft when you read your letters.”
“My little brother misses me.” Wen Qing bit her lip—what she wanted was so contrary to what Wen Ruohan had sent her for, but she didn’t want to live only as his tool—and asked, “If you would like, perhaps we could trade stories about our families?”
Jiang Yanli’s eyes brightened. “I would enjoy that.”
Wen Qing breathed out in relief, feeling herself grow lighter from the idea that she might find even one person willing to befriend her for who she herself was, and not the connection to the Qishan Wen she represented. “Perhaps this evening, after the lectures have finished?”
“You want time to read what your didi says,” Jiang Yanli said with a little laugh. “I understand. This evening sounds lovely.”
Wen Qing tried to hold back her blush at being so easily seen through, and bowed slightly. “Then I will take my leave for now.”
For the rest of the afternoon, Wen Qing was haunted by the quiet smile on Jiang Yanli’s face. She read Wen Ning’s letter (almost entirely about a stray kitten he’d found and wanted to raise, with some reassurances that his health was perfectly fine) and found herself thinking about what Jiang Yanli would think of her kind-hearted brother instead of what she could write back to Wen Ning. Wen Qing thought that she would like him; at the very least, Jiang Yanli wouldn’t find Wen Ning’s gentleness to be a moral failing the way many Qishan Wen seemed to.
During the lecture, Lan Qiren kept droning on about a topic that would usually interest her (the signs of corpse poisoning and how to cure it), but Wen Qing’s attention kept drifting sideways to where Jiang Yanli sat. Jiang Yanli’s posture was very proper, her eyes fixed forward and her robes spread around her like pale petals, and Wen Qing realised that she wished she could see Jiang Yanli wearing Yunmeng Jiang’s purple instead of Gusu Lan’s academic white; it washed out all the pale subtleties of Jiang Yanli’s coloring and made her seem so frail.
When the lecture ended, they bowed to Lan Qiren as their teacher and then the disciples scattered. Wen Qing took her time gathering her notes and standing, because she didn’t want to seem too eager to spend time with Jiang Yanli. So when she stood up, and Jiang Yanli was right next to her, she almost dropped her pens. She didn’t, but Wen Qing felt far more flustered than she’d expected.
“I’m sorry,” Jiang Yanli said, traces of a smile in the corners of her eyes. “I didn’t think I was so quiet.”
“I was inattentive.” Wen Qing shook herself a little internally. “Where shall we go?”
“There’s a bench by the river that I like,” Jiang Yanli said. At Wen Qing’s nod, shei took the lead decisively, winding through the Cloud Recesses’ complicated tangle of garden paths.
Wen Qing didn’t think she’d ever come this way before, but she also knew that there were dozens of ways to reach any given point in the area; it was simply a matter of some ways being more efficient than others. In one of the first lectures, they had been told that the founders wished for those who lived within the Cloud Recesses to be able to stop and meditate upon the life and beauty of the natural world at any moment, and the paths had been designed with that in mind.
Usually, Wen Qing found it frustrating in comparison to the straight paths of Nightless City, but today she couldn’t bring herself to mind. Jiang Yanli was telling her about how excited Jiang Cheng (his courtesy name was Wanyin, but Wen Qing got the suspicion that it was very rarely used at Lotus Pier) and Wei Wuxian (her shidi, treated as another son in the family by adoption) were for when they would be able to study at Cloud Recesses. “I’m sure Wei Wuxian will get lost,” Jiang Yanli laughed. “It might even be true sometimes, and not a way of avoiding the lectures.”
“Wen Ning—I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to think of him as Qionglin—would get lost too, I imagine.” Wen Qing sighed. “I understand why they don’t use maps, but it does make things difficult.”
“You could make one for him,” Jiang Yanli suggested, as they rounded a stand of sighing cypress and the river finally came into view. “Though—I understand why you might not want to.”
Wen Qing looked down at the river, wishing she could more easily have its burbling peace. “If I knew it would be for Wen Ning alone, I might. But still, trees grow and fall; who knows what changes the next years might bring?”
“How much older than him are you?”
“Three years.” Wen Qing bent down to trail her fingers in the water. “It feels like more, sometimes.”
Jiang Yanli touched her shoulder lightly. “If he comes to learn here, he should be in the same group as my brothers.”
Wen Qing looked up at Jiang Yanli, startled by the touch as much as the words. “Do you think they would help him?”
“My brothers are good people.” Jiang Yanli crouched down beside Wen Qing, her eyes never changing their focus. “If I asked them to, I’m sure they would.”
“Even though we’re Wen?”
“What is your brother like?”
“His letter today was about wanting to raise a stray kitten.” Wen Qing wasn’t sure why Jiang Yanli’s hand was still on her shoulder, but she knew she didn’t want it to leave. “He has health issues, and so he has learned medicinal basics—it’s also why I’m a doctor.”
Jiang Yanli’s fingers slid down Wen Qing’s arm. Before Wen Qing had a chance to be sad that the touch was withdrawn, she took Wen Qing’s hand and squeezed it gently. “If your brother comes here, I will make sure that my brothers treat him well.”
Wen Qing smiled, and watched Jiang Yanli’s face bloom in response. “Thank you.”
“Isn’t that what you do for friends?” Jiang Yanli asked.
Wen Qing didn’t answer right away, because she first had to get over her surprise at being considered a friend, and then she had to sit with the idea that a part of her heart wondered if it were possible to kiss this new friend to express her thanks. By the time she managed to say, “It is,” it felt like far too much time had passed.
Jiang Yanli didn’t seem to mind, if she noticed. She simply tugged Wen Qing up to her feet and over to the bench (which was shaped with simple elegance, and was indeed lovely), and said, “Tell me more about being a doctor, Wen Qing.”
Wen Qing followed, still in a daze, and did.
(Two months later, when Jiang Yanli kissed her for the first time, Wen Qing wondered belatedly when this had become an option and why she hadn’t noticed. Then she put that thought aside and returned the kiss for all she was worth, because it was happening now and she was happier than she could remember being in a long time.)