TSBIRBV Ch 89

Chapter 89 Heaven above, Suzhou–Hangzhou below (1)

“Truly, nothing here has changed.”

At last, Red Thunder arrived in Hangzhou. Held in Haryang’s arms, Yegyeol glanced about.

A water city with a mood unlike Cheonghae or Sichuan, it dazzled as brightly as Yegyeol’s own childhood. Yet this city was at its most beautiful at night.

Swallowing a feeling too prickly to call nostalgia, Yegyeol surveyed the surroundings. True to a city famed for textiles, the colors and patterns of passersby’s garments were especially eye-catching.

“Would the dyeing workshops still be here?”

There had been a certain heterodox gang that had taken cut-money from a begging child like Yegyeol back then, and whenever they gave chase, he’d hide amidst those bolts of cloth.

The sight of cloths in all colors rippling in the wind had been undeniably pleasing. But Yegyeol looked not to the sky, but down at the ground.

For things fair and lovely, soft and kind, were not his to claim.

Yet sometimes, when the sun was very fine, the light filtering through the cloth made colored shadows on the ground.

There were moments that were beautiful, unawares.

“Gyeol?”

Startled by Haryang’s call, Yegyeol turned back to him.

“Yes?”

He must have sounded odd, but his senior brother, without smiling, said calmly,

“Shall we go straight to the lodging and unpack? Then go buy clothes.”

“All right.”

Stray thoughts scattered easily.

Guiding Red Thunder, Haryang headed for a manor a little way off from Hangzhou’s center. At first, Yegyeol had thought they’d go to an inn; before he knew it, they had left the noisy market far behind.

With high walls and quiet surroundings, this was clearly a residential area.

“There’s a manor here too?”

He asked Haryang, who handed Red Thunder’s reins to the steward with a faintly reluctant tone. Haryang ah’d and nodded.

“Coming for rest, we couldn’t very well stay in a bustling place, so I procured something separate.”

In the Kunlun days, Je Haryang had seemed such a born ascetic that one could never have guessed he was from a prosperous house.

He hand-washed the few sets of robes he had and wore them neat, and used a sword inherited from the sect head.

To Yegyeol, who remembered that frugal senior brother, the man before him became more astonishing with every encounter.

“Senior brother… I’ll earn a lot.”

Perhaps doubling—no, tripling—current production of cinnabar-red wood would do.

While Yegyeol was making meticulous calculations, Haryang burst out laughing.

“You once said you’d make Cheonghae one of the Three Great Trading Houses of the Central Plains, didn’t you? And even gift me a ship.”

His senior brother’s eyes curved exquisitely.

“I’m very much looking forward to it.”

Once back, they would make refined-soaked wood and sell it immediately.

Yegyeol resolved this, checking he wasn’t getting a nosebleed.

Even the famed “one glance topples a city” beauties would be outshone by that smile.

“Since you’ve trusted and entrusted me, there will be no disappointment.”

Forcing his voice even, Yegyeol boasted.

Thinking back, from the moment they set out, his senior brother’s mood had seemed particularly good. Yegyeol’s was the same, so he hadn’t probed.

“Don’t overdo it. If you stayed only in Sichuan, Gyeol, I would feel very lonely.”

“Who in the world are you competing with…”

He knew full well he spoke so blithely to conceal that other identity of the Black Ghost. And yet to Yegyeol’s ears, it sounded as though, being the Black Ghost himself, he was jealous of the Black Ghost, and thus spoke.

“If interpretations run so far afield, that’s troublesome.”

Tormented by fantasies growing wilfully in all directions, Yegyeol suffered. He had barely wound halfway around his senior brother; it would be bad to lose judgment already.

This was not a sprint but a marathon. He had only just cleared the hurdle of “do not break the sect-brother bond.”

“Even after a decade and more returning to the Kunlun Sect, I kept thinking of senior brother.”

All his life, the reason Yegyeol had longed for Kunlun had been to prove that Je Haryang’s existence was there.

There had been a time when he seriously worried, What if this is a hallucination conjured by a mind broken by awakening? So he hunted down every scrap on Mount Kunlun—and even leafed through martial novels.

Even knowing those around him thought him mad, he could not give up. Reality lapped up to his chin; standing on tiptoe, he needed something—anything—to cling to.

Perhaps that was why he longed for senior brother beyond need, and embellished him until he nearly went mad.

If he could dream without end, the protagonist of that dream would surely be Je Haryang.

Lowering his eyes, Yegyeol spoke quietly.

“So I will always return to senior brother’s side.”

“I see…”

Sweeping back Yegyeol’s fallen hair, Haryang whispered,

“I never did well by you, and yet you followed me strangely.”

“How can you say you never did well? Senior brother—”

Yegyeol moved to protest, but Haryang hadn’t finished.

“I am still lacking. To return what I have received from you, I am far too lacking.”

“Please don’t only say ‘too lacking.’”

Reaching out, Yegyeol drew Je Haryang’s wrist closer. Haryang yielded, and Yegyeol set his hand upon his chest.

“You’re alive. I hear your heart, and it’s warm… right?”

“Yes.”

“Yet you keep trying to fill me to overflowing, so it feels like I receive far more than I give.”

Haryang lowered his gaze. He said not a word, but his face looked displeased.

Yegyeol took a small delight in realizing he could now read some of his senior brother’s expressions.

If they spent more time together, longer and more often, he would surely learn more.

At the thought, his chest swelled.

“Our views are precisely opposed.”

“Then we must narrow the gap, slowly.”

At Yegyeol’s grin, Haryang reached out unthinkingly and ruffled his hair.

Like treating a younger sibling, the touch was dearly affectionate, and though Yegyeol swallowed a grumble, he yielded docilely.

“When will you start to find me uncomfortable…”

He wished he’d be more self-conscious, and find him more daunting than now.

Whatever his inner thoughts, Yegyeol lowered his eyes beneath the mask of a meek disciple.

Satisfied with how thoroughly he had mussed his disciple’s hair, Haryang changed the subject.

“Truth is, this manor has a fine bathhouse. I hear the house was built where a hot spring rises.”

“Truly a water city,” Yegyeol murmured, nodding.

He had spent his childhood in Hangzhou, but had never seen a hot spring; curiosity stirred.

“Shall we go in together?”

Perhaps for that reason, when Haryang made such a suggestion, he didn’t understand for a moment.

“No. I’m fine.”

Yegyeol spoke before he could think. His brain didn’t have time to process—his instincts answered.

He worried the refusal had been too blunt, but he truly had no confidence he could keep his wits if he shared a bath with his senior brother.

“I’ve been clinging to Red Thunder’s back for days; I’m a bit tired. I’ll wash lightly and turn in early tonight.”

Still, to avoid giving his senior brother room to misunderstand, he rattled it out in one breath. His disciple having refused decisively, Haryang looked regretful.

“My, my—you must be very tired. Then another time…”

“Rest well, too, senior brother!”

Half-bowing, half-not, Yegyeol bolted past him.

There is one thing an esper must never trust in life.

That is one’s own reason when facing one’s guide.

As his disciple fled the scene, Haryang looked down at his hands.

“Too impulsive.”

Hearing his disciple say he would not leave, that they should close the gap slowly, he had moved without thinking. Only at the last instant did he realize, and deliberately limited himself to mussing Yegyeol’s hair.

Knowing why Yegyeol had kept his distance, he had prattled about hot springs for that very reason.

Annoyed by the thought that, while he was in Hangzhou, his disciple might circle Sichuan waiting for the Black Ghost, he had brought him here—only to do something that might make Yegyeol avoid him in the days to come.

It was foolish in the extreme.

“It feels like being back in childhood.”

He liked the way his disciple looked up to him, and so strove to look good. Haryang had never known what a young Yegyeol could possibly give up for him. He had been only a foolish boy drunk on a passing fancy.

Haryang’s luck had been good; Yegyeol’s had been abysmal—that they met at that time.

Years passed; Haryang forgot that boy. Yet upon meeting Yegyeol, the past became the present too easily and swayed him.

Always watching his disciple; smiling more; and doing things outside the bounds of what he could control—these all shared the same grain.

“Your Excellency of the Pavilion, I greet the sky.”

The steward who had, with a gentle face, introduced the manor, appeared before Haryang now alone. The middle-aged man knelt, looking like an emotionless puppet.

“Where is Yang?”

Despite the hair-raising nature of it, no agitation touched Haryang’s voice.

“He works as an undertaker in Hangzhou’s back alleys. A child who visited as a patient confirmed the hidden mark on his wrist.”

“Good. Well done.”

Those taught by the demonic physician were all of them vicious. Even when he thought he had killed them all, somewhere another lived.

In recent years, Haryang had not slackened in uprooting the man’s roots, and the garden he cultivated was now clean.

Only, this one had fled the demonic physician’s service while the man still lived; only recently had he been able to find his location.

“Shall I bring him?”

“No.”

A chilly curve touched Haryang’s lips.

“I shall go myself.”

The night was far too long to be spent listening to the sorrows of a boy who had been nothing if not frail.

Footnotes

• “Heaven above, Suzhou–Hangzhou below”: A famed saying praising Suzhou and Hangzhou as earthly paradises; frames Hangzhou’s allure as a water city.