Chapter Text
You’re a big kid in a small town.
Also, the smartest kid in your small town, actually. And that's not even an ego thing. You’re the first person in ages (or so the town elders say) who’ll be leaving town to go to university, after all.
Kunlun University, no less! With a scholarship and everything!
Honestly, when you sent in your application, with your messy hypotheses drawn from even messier cross-references between ancient rhizomatic column blueprints and current-day energy flow theorems, you weren’t expecting much. You felt like you were onto something, but it couldn’t have been anything revolutionary.
Maybe, you had dared to think, it'll be worth a digital certificate of acknowledgement, and a nice bursary I could use to buy what I need to finally replace the faulty heating in Nainai’s senior home.
Not a thick, physical envelope hand-delivered to your door, containing an enrolment offer with fully-covered tuition, housing, and a scholarship cheque with a number that made your head spin.
After that thing with the faulty heating in Nainai's senior home, almost the entirety of your town district comes to see you off. You promise that you’ll come back, when you graduate, with all the knowledge you’ve gained to give back to the community that raised you.
You leave for the lightrail to the sound of their well-wishes behind you.
You've always had an interest in the giant rhizomatic column that loomed dormant over your small town, standing its silent vigil like a sentry. You’ve heard all the stories about the churning pillars of energy that your ancestors erected, used to tap into an infinite wellspring of power directly from the roots in the Turbulent Era.
We leave them up as symbols, your history teacher had said, a reminder of how it doesn’t matter what your intent was when you create something, if it is later turned on your fellow solarian. This is so that we may never forget that just because we are capable of crafting something, or given the means to craft whatever we may wish, doesn’t necessarily mean that we should.
You raised your hand. Because if the stories were true, couldn’t that one column alone eliminate their town’s power shortage issues entirely? You asked her exactly that.
She had given you a look, then. Apparently, you’d missed a point.
You never really paid much attention in history class, after that.
But things are different now, because you’re going to the Kunlun University! The institution that was founded by the brilliant minds of the Tiandao Council for the sole purpose of educating the next generation of scientists, nurturing the atrophied fields of discovery back to health for the advancement of solarian-kind!
The tiny college near your town was by no means below standard, but you’ve long since outgrown that place. The thought that you’re meant to attend the very academic institute where your favourite studies on rhizomatic energy were conducted makes the blood in your veins absolutely buzz with excitement.
Except, apparently, when you attend Kunlun University for a specialized degree in Rhizomatic Engineering, it matters that you’re from Ying.
(Not so different then.)
Your professor for Applied Mathematics asks a question, and you raise your hand, giving an answer that exceeds his expectations. He smiles, impressed, saying that he should’ve figured someone from Ying would know so much. Some of the other students look at you.
You ask your professor for Electromagnetic Physics about a theory and its potential application with something more experimental. She answers gladly, enjoying the opportunity to speak in-depth on a subject rarely brought up. Some of the other students look at you.
You give a presentation in your Rhizomatic Circuitry lab about the rhizomatic columns themselves, based on the very pet project that got you here in the first place, the information reworked and polished with what you’ve learned so far in class. The lab TA looks utterly fascinated, taking notes and asking questions that make your hands itch for your own notebook. All the other students in the lab look at you.
People don’t stop looking at you, because you excel. You attend seminars, join clubs, burn the candles at both ends to study for exams that you put off because you were too busy answering letters from home, and people look at you.
You know they do. You know there are whispers, too. The campus is big, but not so big gossip can’t disperse through it like maomu seeds on the wind. You try to pay it no mind.
In your third-year Advanced Rhizomatics class, you’re given a group project. To present on one of Lear’s Theorems of Energy, alongside an example where it applies. You all organize yourselves into groups of four in the lecture hall and start talking amongst yourselves.
Discussion goes well—your group deciding to present on Lear’s Second Theorem of Rhizomatic Flow—right up until it’s time to decide on the example. You make the mistake of saying too much.
“Whoa, brother,” the lax looking solarian with short, beige fur says casually. “We’re presenting this in class, not to a war council.”
The other two members of the group blink, looking as dumbfounded as you feel. Their eyes dart between him and you.
They don't say anything, though.
And, as much as you'd like to, can you blame them? You don't know what to say. What do you even say here?
You’re not sure, but you’re tired. Sick and tired and the scab at the back of your mind itches.
The town elders told me that my mother died the day she gave birth to me, you want to spit. An entire district of the town went dark that day because the only power line that fed it was damaged in an accident. The district with the only hospital for miles around otherwise had to rely on a single power line for energy. And you know what? Constructing more lines would’ve been useless, because there wouldn’t have been enough energy to flow through them anyways.
I was born in the dark and they told me my mother died in the dark and my father was never in the picture to begin with. What the fuck does war have to do with my interest in any of this?
You don’t say any of that. Obviously. You’ve gotten very good at not picking at that scab.
Instead, you do the next best thing. You stand up abruptly, silently pack your things, and ignore your other group-mates trying to placate you as you leave the lecture hall right then and there. The look you catch on the beige solarian’s face as you slip through the doors almost makes you feel better.
Later that day, you email your professor to discuss whether or not you could do the project independently. You can. And when the due date comes around, your presentation outperform's your old group by so much, calling it a contest would be mean. Because of course you do.
You’re not sorry!
You move on with your life.
…
When the trajectory of a life is permanently altered, changed forever, for better or for worse, it's preceded by something significant. Sometimes, it's easy to tell when that happens. You could tell when you first got your scholarship.
The next time your life is knocked irreparably askew, you don't even notice the moment it happens.
You’re invited to have a display at the annual science convention that Kunlun Uni hosts. This is an incredible honor. One that your professors and counsellors congratulate you excitedly for (you've long since endeared yourself to the university staff), and that the other upper-year students eye you enviously for (you've long since decided they can suck it).
That was not the moment.
The moment comes when you are standing awkwardly by your table, the one you’ve handmade to project the 3D model of the updated Rhizomatic Column schematic you've spent your… honestly, your entire academic career working on, now. You are standing slightly behind it, having been answering whatever questions you get and laughing convincingly at little jabs you don't find funny and deeeeesperately regretting forgetting your water bottle in your dorm—you finished your bubble tea ages ago and WOW your mouth is DRY—when two white ear-tips pop into the edge of your vision.
You look down.
A short, white-furred solarian with cheek tufts is looking at your model with an unwavering intensity. In the five seconds before he opens his mouth, you are absolutely convinced that someone brought their teenager to the convention.
“Fascinating,” he says, in a voice that’s way too deep and entirely too smooth. “I’ve only ever seen rhizomatic columns in a dilapidated state. The reconstructions in the official articles hardly do them justice.”
“Yeah?” You reply, commending yourself for not tripping over your words from the sheer dissonance of a voice like that coming out of a frame like that. “...Do you live near some?”
“Not currently,” the other solarian hums in response, still inspecting your display. “I live on campus.”
“Oh! Me too,” You reply easily.
“You’re also from abroad?” He finally turns, slightly, to look at you. (Now that you're making eye-contact, yeah, no, no one could mistake eyes like that for anything other than a fellow university student’s).
“I am,” you say, before you can stop yourself. “I, uh… I'm from Ying.”
You brace yourself, habitually. Just a bit.
“Ying, you say!” The other solarian’s eyes widen in interest. You… think that’s interest. “The craftsmen there are quite famous!”
“Yeah. They sure are.” You wait for the other shoe to drop.
“The quality of Ying’s products speak for themselves,” he continues, before sighing and shaking his head. “Frankly, it's a shame that Ying was made to close so many of its workshops after the Turbulent Era ended. I think I would have enjoyed taking a trip to see them in person, at the height of their time.”
Oh.
“Heh. You're telling me.” Carefully, you let yourself get a bit more invested in this conversation. “It's getting better though, nowadays. The workshop in my town is small, but they let me snoop around as a kid, and, thank Fusang for that, now I’m here.”
“...I’m not so sure the Primordial Roots have anything to do with it.” The other solarian tilts his head, ever-so-slightly, his eyes still fixed on you. “I think someone of your intellect would have ended up here, regardless, if your work is anything to go by.”
“Oh! Uh…” You would die for this man. NO. No, okay, reel it back, no you wouldn’t, that’s insane. Do not let that come out of your mouth—“Th-Thanks! That’s… wow, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me in.. a while!”
…That’s! Not exactly better! The look he’s giving you is weird now! Say literally anything else—
“If.. uh… the projection table looks like a bunch of cannibalized qiankun boards, that’s because… it… is.” You stammer out. “The mall was throwing out a recalled shipment and I thought… the star designs would look cool. So.”
There’s a beat of silence between the two of you.
Just when you’re about to light yourself on fire for fumbling the first normal social interaction you’ve had with someone who wasn't a part of the faculty in WEEKS, the other solarian snorts.
He chuckles, soft and clear, like a hidden spring bubbling water into a creek.
“Fascinating,” he says again. He sounds like he means it. “A projection table this sophisticated… out of qiankun boards? Brilliant. I have other matters to attend to, but you’ll have to tell me how you managed that.”
“O-Of course!”
And that’s how you end up with Yi from Xia’s number.
(And you DEFINITELY play it COMPLETELY cool when Yi from Xia WALKS ONTO THE CONVENTION STAGE to give a REALLY INTERESTING PRESENTATION on the MANIPULATION OF RHIZOMATICALLY SATURATED AZURE SAND SUBSTRATES.
BECAUSE APPARENTLY. HE’S A DIRECT PROTEGE OF A MEMBER OF THE TIANDAO COUNCIL.)
(His gaze lingers on you, as he looks over the crowd.)
(The moment has already happened, by then.)