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You were… aware of Ye Baiyi, before. You just didn’t care. He was a piece on the playing board, but he seemed so disinterested, so detached, and you had concerns of your own to worry over.
It it isn't until he toasts you at Yifu's banquet that you become more conscious of him. His attention—his attention pulling the attention of the room to you—catches you perfectly off-balance and distracted, leaves you uncertain of how to respond. It should have been everything you ever wanted, not only Yifu's acknowledgment, but the acknowledgment of others that you were Yifu's as well, and—
It should have been a moment of purest satisfaction, and instead, it leaves you more disoriented than you had been before, terribly conscious of Ye Baiyi’s eyes still on you.
—
After the meal concludes, you wander out into the estate, looking for a quiet courtyard to sit and think over… everything. Yifu. Everything. You don’t want to hide right now. Haven’t you earned the right not to hide? Haven’t you earned the right to be seen? But at the same time, just imagining being observed right now leaves a sour taste in your mouth.
It takes you longer than it should to find a place that has the correct balance of visibility and privacy to begin settling your emotions. And yet, you sit down on a bench and barely have time to draw a single breath before Ye Baiyi wanders into the courtyard as well.
He’s holding several sticks of tanghulu. You have no idea where he got those. They certainly weren’t served at the banquet. He looks you up and down, his eyebrows rise, and he bluntly asks, “What are you sulking over?”
You blink, once. You think you would like to kill him, perhaps, though it would possibly be an ill-considered move in this time and place. And you can’t ignore the possibility that he is a great deal stronger than he has allowed the rest of you to understand.
Instead, you take your time rising to your feet, turning to face him, cupping your hands, and addressing him as, “Senior.”
He snorts, takes a bite of tanghulu, and then says, “Senior? I’m your ancestor.”
You suppress a fresh flash of irritation, and hide it with a smile. “Of course. This junior must have been mistaken.”
He takes your seat. On the one bench in the courtyard. He takes another bite of tanghulu. Without even looking at you, he says, “I would have thought you’d be busy celebrating with that Zhao Jing.”
Your smile is too tight, though if he isn’t looking at you, he shouldn’t be able to tell. You still don’t know if you want to tie Yifu to you forever, inescapably, or if you want to kill him, slowly, and leave him dead without an intact corpse. You don’t know if you could bear killing him, but you don’t know how you’re supposed to bear looking him in the face again. You don’t want to bother responding, but in the end, you can’t resist the urge to say, “If Yifu desires my company, he will know how to find me.”
It comes out too sharp, too bitter. But there’s no taking it back now. Fortunately, Ye Baiyi barely reacts, only gives you a casual sideways glance. He’s paying much more attention to his tanghulu.
You keep waiting for him to say something more, but it never comes. You want to snap at him to tell you whatever it is he clearly wants to say. You stand there, waiting, until he finally takes his last bite of tanghulu and stands again, shaking out his sleeves. Absently, he says, “I need some tea. Where were the kitchens again?” Before you can say a word, he says, “Never mind, I remember,” and wanders back out of the courtyard.
You stay there for some time longer, but your thoughts refuse to settle, and when you return to your rooms, you sleep poorly.
—
The next morning, you give in to the urge to find Ye Baiyi and make him tell you whatever it is that he didn’t say last night. But when you send a servant to his quarters, the servant returns with the news that Ye Baiyi is absent. You give up on making use of the servants, and instead order your Scorpions to search the whole estate.
He’s not here.
Finally, in a foul mood, you make your own way to the nearest town. It’s full midday by this point. On an impulse, you go into the largest teahouse.
And there he is, sitting in a booth, with a comical number of emptied bowls in front of him. He’s still eating. People are openly staring and whispering, but he completely ignores them. He ignores you too, even though you know his martial arts are good enough that he couldn’t have missed your entrance.
You make your way to the booth and seat yourself across from him. He doesn’t even give you a glance. You ruthlessly repress your own irritation and wait to be acknowledged. You can be patient. And you have a growing suspicion that if you snap at Ye Baiyi, he’ll only treat it as a victory.
The waiter brings him three more bowls of food before he sets the last one aside, sighs with satisfaction, and finally looks at you. He says, “Well? Are you paying?”
Expressionlessly, you take out your money pouch.
Ye Baiyi lounges in place until you’re done paying his bill, and only then says, “So? Do you think you’ve bought something from me now? What are you after?”
You don’t greet him, since he didn’t greet you. “What didn’t you say to me last night?”
“There are lots of things I didn’t say last night.” Anger flares up hot in your chest, but before you can react, he scoffs and says, “If you’re never going to get what you’re hoping for from that relationship… why are you still there?”
You aren’t sure whether you’re furious or devastated. You sit there, not responding, not sure what you would even say to him.
After a moment, he adds, “What, are you waiting for him to offer you something he never bothered to offer before? Are you waiting for everything to suddenly change and he’ll give you whatever you’ve hoped for, after all this time?”
Furious. You’re furious. “He had his reasons,” you faintly say, even though you know it barely counts as an excuse.
Ye Baiyi only snorts and stands. “I don’t know why I bother,” is all he says before he turns and leaves.
You sit in place for a moment, frozen, before you return to your senses and rush after him. You catch up to him in an unremarkable, empty side street. He hears you coming, he must, but he doesn’t react at all. You grab him by his lapels and slam him into a wall.
You have a dagger pressed against his stomach, but he looks completely unconcerned. His hand is on your neck. You aren’t sure whether you could kill him before he killed you. You aren’t sure whether it might be best to provoke him into killing you now, so you could die still clinging to the last bit of hope that your yifu truly wants you.
For a breath, he waits, his eyebrows raised, watching you. When you don’t move, he rolls his eyes and knocks your hands away. “Your martial arts aren’t completely useless,” he says, as if you still aren’t wondering whether you should kill him. “But if you won’t even bother trying to learn from this ancestor’s experience— The younger generation is truly hopeless.”
With that, he leaves.
—
You don’t return to the estate until that night. Du Pusa tells you that your yifu still hasn’t come looking for you. At first, you think you manage not to react, but you still see her hide a wince as she watches you.
—
Zhou Zishu’s accusations are nothing that you didn’t already know or expect. You find yourself distracted, imagining what you might have done if you didn’t already know he was… right. What you would have done if you knew he was right, but believed that your yifu loved you.
It’s a beautiful dream, imagining standing up on your yifu’s behalf, challenging the strange man attacking your family. Perhaps Yifu would have reclined in his seat, watching you, completely unworried, confident in your skills.
You’re shaken out of the fantasy by Wen Kexing’s arrival.
He cripples Zhao Jing, as planned. You watch. Even now, you could have perhaps stopped him, if you chose. You could have left Yifu a single arm. Two, even. Left him dependent on you, unable to escape the knowledge that you’re there to let him live at ease, but still able to paint for you, embrace you.
Or you could make him even more helpless. Let Wen Kexing take his revenge, and then take your own. The jar with the pill that will take your yifu’s voice forever is a hard lump in your lapels, a constant reminder that you still have the ability to take him, to keep him, to ensure that he’ll never be able to push you away again.
What are you waiting for? What are you hoping for? How are you supposed to trust that even if you prove to him just how deeply you care, even if you prove how devoted you are— It won’t be enough. What are you expecting to change?
In the end, you watch, and you leave, without so much as a backward glance. You feel hollowed out inside. You notice Pretty Arhat and Du Pusa exchanging a meaningful look when they think you’re distracted, but you’re too numb to do anything about it.
—
You leave the estate, as soon as you can gather all your people. It happens strangely quickly, in the end. It feels like it should be harder to leave a place you were so invested in for so long. But you want to be far away before Yifu can even try summoning you to talk to him.
—
You don’t have anywhere to go to, and nobody is waiting for you. You’ve lived like that before. You’re capable of living like that again. You have enough money to live comfortably for quite some time before you have to worry about finding paying work again. It would be foolish to wait until the situation was urgent, but it still gives an odd, unreal, air to proceedings, and it’s strangely difficult to determine what to do next.
For lack of anything better to do, you send your Scorpions to find Ye Baiyi.
If he’s disappeared back up Mount Changming, this will all be an exercise in futility. It takes your people long enough to find him that you’re half-convinced that’s where he’s gone. But the news does reach you, eventually, and you make your way over to an unremarkable small city, and meet with your Scorpions there to track Ye Baiyi down to a particular inn.
—
Unsurprisingly, you find Ye Baiyi eating. You take a seat across from him, expecting to be ignored. But he pauses with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth, and gives you a considering look. He says, “So the child can learn,” and takes the bite of food.
It stings less than it would have, once. You smile without too much difficulty and say, “Perhaps even Ancestor Ye will someday learn to be gracious.”
He laughs out loud and says, “Doubtful.”
—
He has you pay for his meal again.
—
It isn’t possible for you to aimlessly follow Ye Baiyi forever. He doesn’t tell you to leave, but you have no reason to stay. You aren’t even entirely certain why you’re here. Ye Baiyi is happy to let you pay for his food, but gives you little in return. He doesn’t offer and you don’t ask.
He’s happy to talk, but when you think back on your conversations, you’ve realize you’ve… learned very little. He’s strangely inaccessible. Even with the white in his hair, he looks barely older than you, and even calling him ‘senior’ gives him more face than he deserves, but when you think about how little he reveals to you, you have to truly ask yourself if he’s older than he appears.
So eventually, you leave. A life of wandering from town to town, eating food and seeing the local sights isn’t enough to satisfy you. Pretty Arhat and Du Pusa are capable leaders, and you trust them, but you still command your Scorpions yourself. You avoid news of Zhao Jing and the Five Lakes Alliance—difficult, but not impossible—and focus on refilling your purse instead. When you feel less restless and have nothing else you’re meant to be doing, you go looking for Ye Baiyi again.
—
It does, of course, take you longer than expected to find him again. You feel oddly impatient to see him by the time your men send word back. By the time you hunt him down to another inn, he’s in his room, and you… hesitate.
You wait until he emerges to eat. Then you wait for a short while longer. And then you walk in to sit at his table. This time, you don’t take a seat across from him. You take a seat at his side.
He pauses, studying you. You pretend not to notice. You keep your eyes on your hands, neatly folded in your lap.
Ye Baiyi says, “Foolish infant. I’m much too old for you.”
—
He’s wrong, first.
Second, it’s terribly rude of him.
Third, you hadn’t even known that was what you were doing, until he said it so bluntly.
Unfortunately, he takes you so thoroughly off-guard that you have no deflection at hand. You have no choice but to ignore him for the rest of the meal, until you’re finally able to pay for the food. He still lets you do that.
He never thanks you for the meals you buy him. You never feel slighted, and you don’t know why.
—
You feel a powerful urge to flee, but stubbornly, you stay. You’re ready for Ye Baiyi to push you away more firmly, but it never happens. He allows you to drift in his wake and makes idle conversation and never raises the topic of your age or intentions again.
There’s an odd tension in you, waiting for him to mention it, but it never happens.
Ye Baiyi is not a gentle or merciful man. You don’t know what he’s waiting for. After a handful of days, you run.
—
It does you no good. In a single day, you’re already impatient to return. You resist the urge for a little longer, but you have no business to occupy you elsewhere, and the considering looks that Du Pusa and Pretty Arhat give you are a pressure of their own. You’re almost certain that Pretty Arhat loses some kind of wager, because one evening she walks up to you and asks if you have any instructions for them before you leave.
She was never the most subtle woman.
You take the hint and go.
—
Fortunately, you left Scorpions to follow Ye Baiyi. It’s only been a few days, but he’s already several towns from where you last saw him, apparently moving aimlessly with no clear goal or destination.
When you reach the inn where he’s staying, it’s too late to expect him to be awake. You hesitate in the street, wondering whether you should simply take a room and present yourself without warning him in the morning, or stay elsewhere and pretend to happen upon him tomorrow. While you’re still thinking, an upper window opens, and he leans out, looking down at you.
“Are you taking a room or not?” he demands. “You’ll need to sleep soon if you’re hoping to wake up in time to pay for my breakfast.”
Instinctively, you cup your hands and salute him. “As Ancestor Ye says.”
—
When you leave your room in the morning and walk down the inn’s stairs, Ye Baiyi is already eating. He gives you a quick, amused glance as you approach, though you aren’t sure what there is to be amused over.
You hesitate for an instant, considering where to sit, and then confidently step forward and take a seat at his side. When he doesn’t react, you shift, very slightly, and let yourself lean into him, your cheek resting on his shoulder.
He pauses, though he doesn’t look at you or react in any other way. He takes a few bites more, then says, “What did I tell you?”
You hum noncommittally. “Ancestor Ye said a great many things. You told me that the tea in the last inn wasn’t fit for human consumption, but you drank it all regardless.”
He laughs, once. “Insolent,” he says. And then he goes back to eating.
—
Ye Baiyi lets you follow him to the next town. And when he picks out an inn to stay, he lets you step ahead of him to speak to the clerk.
But when you ask, specifically, for a single room, he moves forward and cuts you off. “Two rooms,” he firmly says.
You look at him with wide, worried eyes, and hold up your nearly-empty money pouch. “Senior, I don’t have enough money.”
He glances at you, snorts, and then hands the clerk enough money of his own to cover the cost of two rooms. Your cheeks heat, but he doesn’t say anything else, even when the two of you sit down for your next meal and you pull out a different, much fuller money pouch.
He pays for his own meals when you aren’t there. He pays for his own lodging. Why does he still keep letting you pay for his food? You lean into his side and sip your wine as you try to think it over. You don’t make much progress, but you’re distracted enough that you don’t notice when he finishes eating and begins to study you instead.
You attempt to recover as gracefully as possible, but you’re still rather lost in thought as the two of you ascend the stairs to your rooms. It’s late, and surely nobody would notice if you—
You hesitate for a fraction of a moment outside your door, wondering whether to shamelessly follow Ye Baiyi to his room instead. But before you can even finish making that decision, you’re seized by your robe and pinned against the wall. Ye Baiyi’s forearm is a heavy weight across your chest.
Indifferently, he says, “What did I tell you?”
This isn’t the time to play games. “You said that you’re too old for me.” You pause, and add, “You’re wrong.”
He laughs, and you can’t tell whether he’s angry or not. “Child. Toddler. Infant. Did you never learn what’s best for you?”
Before you can begin to argue with him, he pinches your chin, painfully hard, and tilts your head up so he can take your mouth in a bruising, suffocating kiss.
It’s overwhelming. Ye Baiyi pins you against the wall effortlessly, as immovable as a mountain. You didn’t have enough warning to draw breath, and when you try to gasp for air, his tongue invades your mouth, insistent and demanding.
It’s a struggle to string your thoughts together but you think— you think he’s trying to frighten you away. It isn’t working. It won’t work. You manage to clutch at the front of his robe, but rather than push him away, all you can do is try to pull him even closer, even more flush against you. You want to struggle to breathe under the weight of his mouth. You want to slip out of consciousness with his tongue against yours.
Perhaps you should have pretended to be frightened after all. He pulls away much too soon, when you’re only barely dizzy from lack of air.
It’s difficult to read his expression at the best of times, but it’s impossible now. You don’t know what to make of the way he’s studying you. He untangles your hands from his robe, briskly, but you tell yourself that it isn’t done unkindly.
Ye Baiyi gives you another unreadable look, then sighs and reaches up to rub the top of your hand, careless of your braids. He says, “Foolish child. Absolutely hopeless. I despair of the younger generation.”
Before you can respond in any way, his door is already sliding shut behind him, and all you can do is slowly drift into your own room.
—
When you move on to the next town, you hesitate at the inn, until Ye Baiyi looks at you, raises his brows, and says, “Well?”
If he wanted a way to frighten you off, he chose poorly. What will he do? Correct you again? You step forward and ask the clerk for a single room.
Ye Baiyi doesn’t say a word.
—
The bed is large, but it’s the only one in the room. A single bed. You try not to stare at the bed or the man too obviously, but you’re certain he’s able to guess the direction of your thoughts.
Abruptly, he says, “I’m too old to care about sex.”
You blink at hearing it said so bluntly, so coarsely. For lack of anything else to say, you reply, “This junior would never presume.”
He laughs out loud at that, for long enough that you begin to consider taking offense.
—
Still, that night, lying awake next to him—
When you roll onto your side and let one hand come to rest on his waist, as if it had accidentally fallen there, he doesn’t say a word.
—
Ye Baiyi doesn’t kiss you often. But still. Sometimes. Sometimes you’re able to lean into his side and tug at his sleeve, and he gives you a considering look and a word of agreement, and you know that sooner or later, he’ll trap you against a wall and kiss you breathless. Sometimes you’re able to steal little glancing kisses, brushing your lips against his jaw, against the corner of his mouth.
He could be kissing you more. There is a great deal of time he spends not kissing you. But still, just this much, from him— It already feels like riches.
—
The first time, between towns, when Ye Baiyi casually offers to exchange pointers with you, you can’t help wondering if it’s… euphemistic.
It is not.
By the time he declares he’s finished sparring, you’re soaked with sweat and your arms are shaking with exhaustion. He could have killed you several times over. You’d been aware that he’d probably hidden his full strength from you, but even your revised estimates fell far short of the reality.
He comes up to you afterwards, and you’re too tired to react in time when he ruffles your hair. “Not completely useless,” he says. “You’d better hurry, if you want to reach the next town before nightfall.”
—
Eventually, you do have to leave to attend to your people. You won’t neglect them, and as much as you trust Du Pusa and Pretty Arhat, it’s best to confer with them directly on occasion.
You only meant to be gone for a few days. But you’re almost certain that the moment you’re out of sight, Ye Baiyi decides to be as difficult as possible. It comes naturally to him.
Of course, you left people to watch him. It does you no good at all. Within a day of your departure, your men are sending you panicked messages that they lost him. It is painfully obvious to you that he was only allowing you to monitor him before.
If… if this had happened earlier, you would have been more angry, you think. But you’ve spent days sharing his bed. He lets you rest a hand on him as he sleeps. He kisses you, sometimes. Rather than anger, you feel irritation, and order more of your Scorpions to go hunt him down.
—
They do find him, eventually, making no effort to hide, but a remarkable distance away from where you left him.
When you storm into the teahouse where he’s eating, making a very serious effort to control your frustration, he lifts his eyebrows at you and says, “It took you long enough.”
You’re almost certain that if you yell, he’ll only be entertained. You sulkily settle yourself in at his side, and then, in a fit of temper, take his arm and wrap it around your back, pinning his hand at your waist.
He gives you an amused, indulgent look, which doesn’t do wonders for your mood, but he doesn’t reclaim his arm either.
And then, in his room, without you even having to ask, he pins you against the wall the moment the door slides shut, and kisses and kisses you, leaving marks all down the sides of your neck until you’re gasping for breath and clutching him. You don’t know how long he has you trapped there, but it’s the middle of the night when he finally frees you, and you would do anything in the world for him to give you more.
You can’t help giving the bed a quick glance, and of course he notices. He pinches your chin and pulls your head up so you’re looking at him and says, “What did I tell you?”
“That you’re too old for me,” you say. “But haven’t I already proved that wrong?”
He chuckles once, but doesn’t let go of your chin. “Besides that.”
You’re oddly reluctant to say it out loud. Quietly, you respond, “I didn’t ask.”
He gives your chin one last little shake before releasing you. He reaches up to put your hair in disarray before turning away. “Do you think this ancestor can’t see you wanting? Children these days— Absolutely transparent.”
You feel your cheeks heat, but it feels safe enough in the dim of the room. “As senior says.”
—
Still, that night, he lets you burrow into his side, using his chest as your pillow. You don’t even wait until he’s plausibly asleep, you simply place your head on his chest and your arm over his waist. You deserve this. It’s been days.
Ye Baiyi sighs heavily, but doesn’t tell you to move, and you wake up in the morning to the steady rise and fall of his chest under your cheek.
—
There’s more white in his hair than there was when you met him. You try to tell yourself that you’re seeing things, and then you try to tell yourself that some men grow grey at a surprisingly young age.
Ye Baiyi is the one to shatter your illusions, when out of nowhere, he abruptly says, “You know, I won’t be around for as long as you’re hoping.”
You try to ignore him.
But Ye Baiyi doesn’t let it go. “Infant, you need to be aware of how this will end.”
You don’t want to have this conversation.
He refuses to leave you be, and finally traps you against a tree trunk, holding you by the chin, telling you in a horribly direct, unambiguous way that he’s going to die soon.
You’ve never hated him so much.
You jerk your chin out of his grip, and snap, “You don’t know anything. Why would I believe you?”
Ye Baiyi doesn’t laugh or mock you, and your heart twists.
He only pats your cheek and says, “Do you want to cry? You’d better get it out of the way now, then.”
Your eyes are burning, but you furiously blink it back. “You’re wrong. You don’t know anything about this.”
“What would you prefer? That I keep it from you, and let it take you by surprise? Would that have made you happier?”
You struggle to find the words for a response. But all that comes to you is a helpless plea of, “But you’re still so young.”
Ye Baiyi pulls you forward, into his chest, and tucks your head underneath his chin. He strokes your back like he’s soothing an upset infant, and murmurs, “Foolish child. No. I am very, very old, and no man was meant to live forever.”
—
That evening, when the two of you retire to a room together— You think it’s meant as an apology when Ye Baiyi turns to you and asks, “Well? What do you want?”
It takes you completely by surprise. For a moment, all you can do is stare.
His eyebrows rise. “Nothing, hm? I shouldn’t have asked. Well then—”
In a panic, you blurt, “You’ve never called me Xie’er.”
The look he gives you makes your cheeks heat. But you don’t take it back. He’ll call you ‘infant’, ‘child’, ‘toddler’, but it’s been so, so long since you had anyone to call you by your name.
After a brief silence, he says, “That’s all? You’re easy to please.”
You’re allowed to ask for more? You bite back the urge to ask him to stay, because you know his answer won’t change, and you can’t— you can’t hear it again, not after this afternoon. You look desperately around the room for inspiration, and when your eyes land on the bed, you freeze.
Ye Baiyi will notice you looking, you know, and you swallow, trying to find the words to say that you didn’t, didn’t mean it, that you’ll think of something else.
But he only laughs, affectionately, and says, “Predictable.”
Your cheeks burn hotter, but you’re so terribly aware that he hasn’t said no.
“Senior said he was too old to be interested,” you whisper.
“Did I?” He sounds perfectly unconcerned. “Perhaps Xie’er has just spent too much time proving me wrong.”
Hearing your name from his lips, a small helpless noise escapes you, deep in your throat. Ye Baiyi doesn’t comment on it, but he closes the short distance between you and takes you by the chin, tilting your face up. He says, “And does Xie’er have any other ideas about what we should do with that bed?”
—
You spend half that night with your face buried in the pillow, muffling sobs, and half on your back, your arms locked tight around Ye Baiyi’s neck. He’s just as demanding and merciless as you beg him to be, and even when you’re exhausted, shivering, on the edge of collapse, he still looks like an unruffled, untouchable immortal, apart from the marks your teeth have left in his shoulder and that your nails have left along his back.
Even then, he indulges you, and lets you cling. Your arms are too weak by now to truly hold him here, but he allows you the illusion, and permits you to bury your face in the side of his neck as your heartbeat gradually slows and steadies.
You’re half asleep, by then, but you can’t help begging, “A few more years?”
“A few more years,” he agrees. His hand rests in the center of your back, lightly holding you against him. “So Xie’er had better think carefully about anything else he would like this ancestor to grant him.”