Chapter Text
They say that you don’t forget the moment you hold your firstborn in your hands.
In Jiang Cheng’s books, that's a phenomenally low bar for parental affection, but something golden - with all the tenderness of a hot honey-lemon on a sick day -had swelled around Jiang Cheng’s heart when he'd cupped that tiny black chick in his hands. The chick had promptly relieved itself, and that's how Jiang Cheng had known that its business would, henceforth, also be Jiang Cheng’s business.
The little old lady had been selling the chicks for 10 RMB each. She had parked her deckchair outside the front gates of the Lan Yi Institute of Science and Technology, and somehow had managed to evade Lan Qiren's attention long enough that when Jiang Cheng had left the laboratory at sunset, she still had her wares laid out on the pavement. Jiang Cheng had discovered this by nearly tripping over them.
In that instant, Jiang Cheng’s eyes had met those of the little black chick.
“That’s a smart one, that one,” the little old lady had said, giving the chick a fond look. It had leapt up and started dancing for Jiang Cheng's attention in the crate's corner. Her gaze went to Jiang Cheng. “Child, you look sad. Such a handsome child shouldn’t look so sad! Buy a lucky chicken. It’ll help you pass your exams! It'll make you happy!”
“I don’t believe in lucky anything.”
"It'll bring you company! Love! Affection! An end to your loneliness!"
"Do I look lonely, grandma?" he had said, but the hand not occupied by a ball of black fluff had already been depositing coins into the old lady’s palm, and the old lady had given him a much too knowing smile.
And this was how Jiang Cheng came to be the owner of a loud, inquisitive and overly intelligent cockerel, which he, naturally, named Wei Cluckxian.
After his brilliant bastard bitch of a brother, who had with his brilliant bastardry gotten a scholarship for some far off university that Jiang Cheng would likely never set foot in the nearest airport of - somewhere that would make good of his overabundant genius - and leaving Jiang Cheng alone in the dust of their old family house.
It was revenge of a kind. Now, every time Wei Wuxian skyped and complained about the spotty internet because he was ‘so far away’ or dangled in front of Jiang Cheng his overflowing social life (Jiang Cheng had given up counting how many Wens Wei Wuxian had gotten to know), Jiang Cheng could tell him about the stupid things his chicken counterpart did in his absence.
It wasn’t in the least bit because Jiang Cheng missed him.
“Not in the slightest bit,” Jiang Cheng told Wei Wuxian over the camera, before ending the call and slamming the laptop shut on his brother’s laughter.
Then jumped up with a yell, as, at his feet Wei Cluckxian clucked and pecked his ankles. “Wei Cluckxian, I’m going to break off your legs and deep fry them!”
He spent the rest of the night chasing down the chicken that had, somehow, again escaped its coop and sneaked into the house, making enough noise for three people, so that the halls of the old house echoed, for once, as if with more than just Jiang Cheng.
No, he didn’t miss Wei Wuxian. Not even the slightest little bit. Of course, he missed Jie, but she was happily married, and Jiang Cheng couldn't begrudge her decisions.
He emphatically did not miss Wei Wuxian.
Eight years after buying that chicken, Wei Wuxian was still abroad, headhunted from institution to institution, on the final year of a PhD in Astrophysics somewhere that Jiang Cheng tried not to think about, because it stirred something irrational and ugly in his belly. Jiejie, who had stayed in the city on completing her business degree, had opened the fifth shop of her ‘Cloud Dreams Pork Rib and Lotus Root’ restaurant chain, and was sickeningly sweetly married to her university sweetheart.
Wei Cluckxian, despite being a rooster who should have been seeing the autumn years of his life, was still crowing himself hoarse every morning, every evening, with every passing emergency service vehicle, at every sign of a cat (even though he had kicked and pecked into submission every cat in the neighbourhood), at the postman and the milkman, and the Pinduoduo delivery man, and was such a noisy nuisance that it had become routine for Jiang Cheng to wake up screaming, “Wei Cluckxian, would you shut up!?”
In the eight years, the rooster had adopted two rabbits, one black and one white, which might have been escapees from the animal behaviour centre neighbouring Jiang Cheng’s pathology block, but had taken up residence in Wei Cluckxian’s coop after the damn chicken had fought off a fox for them. Twice.
“Why did you have to go and be the hero again, huh?” Jiang Cheng had grumbled, painting antiseptic over the big black bird’s battle scars in the rare moment that Wei Cluckxian was standing still. “Should have just let them die if the world just wants them dead. Ouch!” Wei Cluckxian had pecked him hard on the thumb. “Alright! Fine! Don’t think about how much you make me worry then!”
He didn’t know when it was that his day-to-day daily mental well-being came to revolve around the care and maintenance of a black rooster who wouldn't know the meaning of ‘shut up’ if Jiang Cheng painted it in neon on Wei Cluckxian’s coop doors (which, of course, Wei Cluckxian wouldn’t, because he was a chicken and couldn’t read – as far as Jiang Cheng knew).
And then one day he came home and Wei Cluckxian was gone.
“Shit.” Jiang Cheng crawled out of the chicken coop, dirt and dust on his knees, black feathers in his hair. There were no holes in the mesh, no signs that the coop had been tunneled into. He looked wildly about the garden. The rabbits were foraging on clover in the corner, but of the big black rooster that usually strutted about the shrubbery, surveying it like the local lord, there was nothing. “Shit. Oh, shit. Oh, god. Damn bird. Damn stupid rooster. Damn – “
There was a loud joyous crowing from the front of the house. “Damn bird!”
When he hurried to the front, a large blue van was parked in the road. Red letters on its side spelled ‘Gusu Home Removals’. Men in uniform overalls were dutifully and efficiently ferrying large boxes into Jiang Cheng's neighbouring house.
A tall man was leaning against the fence and petting Wei Cluckxian under the chin. Wei Cluckxian was a heavy and large breed of chicken that should not have been able to jump to the height that he had in order to perch on that fence. This wasn’t what made Jiang Cheng pause - although the ugly simmer of betrayal (that this bird that he’d raised, cleaned and wrapped diapers around to bring him into the house for winters and stormy nights, and expounded the virtues of family loyalty and actually being there when Jiang Cheng needed him (yes, this is absolutely about the chicken) could so quickly start cooing and fluttering its eyes for a handsome stranger who knew exactly where to scratch a chicken) almost did.
He’d also deny that he’d been made to pause by the fact that this stranger was handsome. Very handsome.
And he’d also deny that he’d paused because the stranger was balancing a three feet stack of pathology textbooks, bound in string, on one hand as lightly as a butler in an English period drama might hold up a tray of napkins.
Apparently determined to draw attention to how this innocent display of strength was making Jiang Cheng have a minor crisis in the driveway of his house, Wei Cluckxian chose this moment to ‘Pockawp!’ loudly and bob his head in Jiang Cheng’s direction.
The handsome stranger looked his way, saw Jiang Cheng standing (desperately not staring), and smiled. “A Croad Langshan, if I’m not mistaken?”
Jiang Cheng blinked away stars. The stranger’s smile hadn’t been blinding. It had been too soft, too gentle, but it had caught him like a sucker punch. He pushed back the thought that he couldn’t remember when anyone had last smiled at him – Jiang Cheng, Bad Temper Supreme of the Pathology Department - like that, and strode forward, saying, “Yeah, that’s right. What’s he done?”
“Done? Oh, nothing at all!” The man tickled Wei Cluckxian under the chin. “I just wasn’t expecting quite such a loud welcome! What a lovely rooster. Quite charming! And how unusual for a Croad that he can fly so high.”
All thoughts of apologising for not being able to apologise - because as a new neighbour this man was just going to have to get used to Wei Cluckxian until the rooster drove him as crazy as all of Jiang Cheng’s previous neighbours - slipped from Jiang Cheng’s brain, along with all thoughts of how to make a normal conversation.
“You seem to know chickens.”
The man laughed, and used the hand he’d been petting Cluckxian the treacherous fucker to push back a long strand of hair from his face. “I’ve an interest, you might say.”
“I’m Jiang Cheng,” he blurted, face feeling strangely tingly and hot.
The stranger hesitated. He looked at Jiang Cheng for another moment, and just when Jiang Cheng had begun to wonder if the dimming of the man’s smile, a sudden clouding, like the man had been abruptly reminded of something pressing, some kind of shackle, wasn't just Jiang Cheng's imagination, the man bowed his head and replied, “I’m Lan Xichen. Would I be correct in assuming that you're my – ?”
“Neighbour, yes. The one with the rooster. Yeah. That’s me. Yeah. And apologies in advance for this one,” Jiang Cheng picked Wei Cluckxian off the stake, ignoring the way the chicken squinted at him with a look of affront. “He is the loudest, noisiest, most shameless animal for three miles.”
“I’m sure I’ll learn to cope. Well, Jiang Cheng, my charming neighbour with the charming rooster,” Lan Xichen said with a quaint seriousness that said he had carefully filed what paltry (poultry) facts about Jiang Cheng had given him for future reference, “it was a pleasure to meet you.”
“Yes, you too.”
Lan Xichen gave Wei Cluckxian one last pet then disappeared into the house.
Jiang Cheng stared after him until Wei Cluckxian twisted round and pecked him in the face. “Damn demon bird!”
“A new neighbour?” Wei Wuxian finished mixing his drink and settled back in front of his webcam. Behind him was a small bar of novelty alcohol. One giant bottle like a bell jar had a whole pit viper steeped in some kind of agave-spirit. It was one Wei Wuxian insisted that he was saving to open with Jiang Cheng when he paused being brilliant long enough to come home. Whenever that would be. Wei Wuxian swigged down his new cocktail invention and beamed through the videochat. “Want to make a bet on how long they last before chicken-me scares them out of the street?”
“Don’t slander my chicken like that. He’s nothing like you.”
“Yes, yes, I’m sure you’ve raised that bird to have that shame and dignity Aunt Yu never could whip into me. So, did you talk to this neighbour? What are they like?”
“You’re asking about my neighbour before you ask about me?”
“You don’t like me asking about you, so I’ve got to be sneaky.” Wei Wuxian’s expression softened. “Alright then, didi. Take it away. Tell me about how you’ve been. Your big brother’s all ears.”
Jiang Cheng opened his mouth. Words pulled at his tongue, demanded to tell him how heavy their parents’ Nobel Prize-winning legacy was, how scared Jiang Cheng was that he’d never live up to their reputation, how he was so glad nobody on campus knew how wonderful Wei Wuxian was and how Jiang Cheng, for all that he was far from stupid, paled in comparison beside him, how he’d kept that he was the son of Nobel Prize for Physiology double act Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan secret for years, so that his colleagues wouldn’t see him as a disappointment, how he wanted Wei Wuxian to come home and tell Jiang Cheng that he had the strength not to bend to the pressure of expectations, how he missed Jiejie, but she couldn’t call often enough.
He gritted out, “I’m fine. You?”
Wei Wuxian swung his feet off his desk, frowning. “A-Cheng – “
“I’m asking about you now.” Wei Wuxian sucked in a deep breath. He looked ready to say something gentler than what Jiang Cheng could bear, so he said, “Is it all still wonderful in Yiling?”
Wonderful enough that you barely come home. To Jiang Cheng’s dismay, Wei Wuxian broke into a wide smile. “Well, actually, since you ask – I met this guy at fencing the other day. He absolutely tried to kill me, and not just with a sabre! He had these moon-princess laser beam eyes – “
“…moon-princess?”
“- and, damn, if looks could kill, but it turned out he just couldn’t decide if he wanted me dead or in bed, so – “
Jiang Cheng pulled the plug on his desk-top. An extreme reaction, but Wei Wuxian’s love life didn’t deserve the electricity.
He went out to the chicken coop in the dark and crouched by the galvanised mesh. Sensing his presence, Wei Cluckxian stuck his head out of the roost, then approached, clucking with what Jiang Cheng liked to think concern, but was probably just bitching about food.
He opened the coop and waited for the chicken to climb into his lap. When Wei Cluckxian had done so, Jiang Cheng hugged him tight, running his fingers through the smooth black feathers about the vibrant red crest. “You won’t go falling in love with some random moon-princess and forget about me, will you?”
Wei Cluckxian clucked and nibbled at his cardigan sleeve, and for the time-being Jiang Cheng was satisfied.
Said time-being lasted for a week and a day.
“Damn bird!”
“Can I help you?”
Jiang Cheng stilled. From the neighbouring garden had come the voice of none other than his new (handsome) neighbour.
“Lan Xichen?”
“Well remembered. That’s me, yes,” he sounded amused. “Are you alright? You sounded distressed.”
It had been a full week and a day since he'd spoken to the man who might have rewritten the standards of male beauty in Jiang Cheng’s aesthetic sense, and in that time Jiang Cheng had not seen him once. He had, however, heard Lan Xichen playing a woodwind instrument of some kind. Every evening, when Jiang Cheng returned from the Lan Yi Institute, the soft reedy sounds were already there, shaping long mournful tunes out of the soon-to-be summer night. He’d listen to the music as he let Wei Cluckxian and the rabbits run about the garden, and wondered why they made his hands slow and his nose sting, and why he ached a little when the sounds stopped for the night.
Jiang Cheng cleared his throat. “You wouldn’t have seen my rooster, have you?”
Lan Xichen paused, then said with a smile in his voice. “I have, actually.”
“You have!?”
“He’s here, in fact. In my garden, right now.”
Jiang Cheng groaned. “I’m sorry. He sometimes let’s himself out of his coop. I still have no idea how he does it. I’ll come round to get him.”
“Oh, you don’t have to. He’s not being any trouble…”
“Yet.” Jiang Cheng rolled up his sleeves. “Give me a moment.”
Lan Xichen met him at the side-gate to the garden. He was dressed in a pale blue T-shirt and ivory culottes, long hair tied loosely out of his face. He smiled with crinkles bracketting his eyes. “Hello, Jiang Cheng.”
“Hi.” The gate was covered with galvanised wire up to a man’s chest height. A horrible thought crossed Jiang Cheng's mind. “Have you got a small dog or something?”
There was a sudden loud squawk and a stream of clucking from the garden. Lan Xichen let out a quiet chuckle. “Ah! Sounds like Wingji’s found him. Come in and you’ll see.”
Jiang Cheng did see.
He saw the weirdest chicken he’d laid his eyes on yet. To be fair on the chicken chasing a squawking Wei Cluckxian about Lan Xichen’s garden, Jiang Cheng didn’t actually know about any breeds other than the Croad Langshan he’d studied religiously on as soon as he worked out that that was what hellbird Wei Cluckxian would be growing into. But this one was nothing like what he’d seen before.
This rooster looked like it was made of clouds. Its feathers were brilliant white fluff, its legs were blue-black, and at its head it had bright turquoise earlobes. It was pursuing Wei Cluckxian in the fastest waddling circles Jiang Cheng had ever seen in absolute, slightly terrifying, silence.
“What kind of chicken is that?”
“A Silkie bantam,” said Lan Xichen, eyes smiling fondly as they followed the white bird. “From what I've read, it’s an old breed, much like your Croad. They’re supposed to be universally renowned for being docile, quiet and sweet-natured.”
“Sweet-natured,” Jiang Cheng repeated, watching the white rooster speed after a dancing Wei Cluckxian with a ferocity more suitable for a hawk. “Sure.”
“Wingji is, to the right people. Wingji!” Lan Xichen called, and the white rooster, to Jiang Cheng’s astonishment, skidded a halt. “Why don’t you let your new friend go for now? You’ve punished him enough today.”
Jiang Cheng looked sharply at him. “How long has Wei Cluckxian been here?”
Lan Xichen blinked, echoing incredulously, “Wei Cluck…”
“Oh. That’s my bird. Feel free to call him Cluckxian. Has he been here all noon?”
“I think so.”
“I didn’t even hear him!”
“He was being very quiet, yes. I only noticed him under the azaleas around two when I started building Wingji’s coop.” Lan Xichen indicated the half-finished chicken coop with an attached pen he had been building close to the house. At the sound of his name, Wingji the white rooster rushed up to Lan Xichen, who picked him up gently. “He was hiding from Wingji, I believe. Perhaps, scouting out the new arrival in his territory?”
Jiang Cheng turned to glare at Wei Cluckxian just to avoid contemplating Lan Xichen’s wry smile. “Hah! So I hear you were hiding! Finally met your match, have you?”
Wei Cluckxian crowed loudly, flapping his wings. Jiang Cheng sighed. Scooping him up off the lawn, he turned to Lan Xichen. “Thanks for keeping an eye on him.”
“The pleasure’s all mine. It’s nice to see Wingji making friends.”
Jiang Cheng looked down at the rooster in Lan Xichen’s arms. If he didn’t know better, he’d think it was glowering – at both him and Wei Cluckxian – with a sour, stern glower that, for some reason, made him think of the phrase ‘moon-princess laser-beam eyes’.
He clutched Wei Cluckxian and glared straight back. No. Absolutely not.
“Is everything alright?” When Jiang Cheng didn’t answer, Lan Xichen's smile shrank. “Ah. Yes, of course, you must’ve been worried. I’m sorry to have kept him here, but...he did make it lively. Wingji and I aren’t especially loud…and I don’t mind the noise...“
“Look,” Jiang Cheng held up a hand, and Lan Xichen trailed off, “you don’t have to be so nice. I know that Wei Cluckxian’s been a bloody nuisance to you here today.”
“No, no, that’s what I’m trying to say. We enjoyed – “
“Just let me do something to compensate. Anything. Is there something I can help with?” Jiang Cheng’s eyes landed on the half-finished chicken coop. That was it. That was his answer. Finishing the chicken coop meant that Lan Xichen’s Wingji could be locked up, which meant that he wouldn’t be chasing around Wei Cluckxian, which meant that he wouldn’t be able to ‘make friends’ with him. Ever. “How about I give you a hand with that? I’ve got some wire left over.”
“That’s very kind of you to offer but…” Lan Xichen trailed off. His gaze drifted from Wingji to the coop to the house, and then as if coming to some admission to himself, he let out a long breath. “Actually, yes, I’d sincerely welcome the help. I’m…I get tired quite easily, these days, if you understand, and I’ve been putting off building this all week. If I don’t get this done today, I can’t say with much confidence that I will at all.”
Jiang Cheng urged him to say no more. He returned Wei Cluckxian to their house, locked him in his coop, then when he had gathered all the materials necessary, he stopped to put his face against the wire, looking Wei Cluckxian in the bird’s too clever eyes.
“Don’t go after that rooster,” Jiang Cheng told him firmly. “I mean it. That Wingji or Wangji or Wengji or whatever doesn’t like you, and strutting about his territory like you belong there isn’t going to change that.”
Wei Cluckxian let out a mutinous burble. Jiang Cheng returned to Lan Xichen, humming under his breath and ready to make sure that that Wingji could be put out of Wei Cluckxian’s reach.
“Alright.” He grinned, holding up mesh, planks of wood and nails, “where shall we start?”
And when Lan Xichen smiled beautifully back, he almost forgot about the chickens.
“And let me guess?” Wei Wuxian spun in his flute in his fingers before pointing it at the webcam like a wand. “Did chicken-me work out, not only how to escape from his own coop, but how to let your neighbour’s out of his own?”
“I just don’t know how that bird does it,” Jiang Cheng confessed, pouring himself another shot and downing it. At the sight, Wei Wuxian raised his own glass and downed it too. “It should be impossible. Chickens don’t have opposable thumbs. They don’t have fingers. They shouldn’t be able to pull back locks or undo combinations, and yet - !”
“He keeps on breaking out of his coop,” Wei Wuxian finished for him, when Jiang Cheng had descended into drunken largely incoherent but coherently angry muttering, “without actually breaking any of the locks, and doing the same for your neighbour’s bird. Are you sure the old lady you bought this chicken off wasn’t, like, a fairy?”
“She probably was,” said Jiang Cheng miserably. “Just my luck. She’s cursed me with a chicken who could probably finish my PhD for me.”
A treacherous chicken that was currently doing its best to embarrass Jiang Cheng in front of his new neighbour as often as possible. Wei Cluckxian had decided not to take Jiang Cheng’s words to heart at all. Jiang Cheng had started receiving texts from Lan Xichen almost every other day, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, that Wei Cluckxian had somehow made it back into Lan Xichen’s garden to ‘play’ with Wingji again.
Are you sure they’re not fighting? Jiang Cheng had texted one lunch break, when he had scarfed down a bowl of chicken curry and thought dark thoughts about the chicken that had died for his meal.
Quite sure, had come the reply, followed by a video clip. Wingji’s quite taken with his voice.
It showed Wei Cluckxian stretched to his full height on the roof of Wingji’s coop, crowing for the entire neighbourhood to hear in midday. Wingji, squatting below, was glaring murderously up at him. Then Wei Cluckxian went on to what Jiang Cheng had long thought of as proof of the bird’s demonic weirdness: mimicry.
This was not, in the least bit, normal chicken behaviour or ability, but Jiang Cheng had long gotten used to Wei Cluckxian apparently taking inspiration from his namesake and succeeding in impossible things.
He watched with grudging fondness as Wei Cluckxian went through his repertoire of favourites: the car backfiring, an ice cream van’s jingle, the beeping of a rice cooker, and then, tossing back his little red and black head, screaming like a human being murdered in a horror movie.
Specifically from Psycho, though Lan Xichen wasn’t to know that, and the video had jerked as Lan Xichen dropped his phone on the ground. Before Jiang Cheng could send an apology or ask if the phone had been broken because of his damn bird, Lan Xichen had messaged:
Goodness, that was a shock, but I haven’t laughed this hard in a long time.
Jiang Cheng might have smiled a little too long at that, but it was quickly followed by a photograph of Wingji the Menace that made Jiang Cheng sober up quickly.
Wingji’s enjoying this.
He’s ecstatic to have such stimulating company.
The close-up blank, sour, stony, glowering chicken face Lan Xichen had sent him should have needed a microscope to spot the ecstasy in, but Jiang Cheng didn’t have the heart to tell Lan Xichen that.
Glad to hear it.
He was not glad to hear it. Not glad at all.
And he poured himself another shot, just to be clear about that in his own mind. Jiang Cheng was glad for Lan Xichen, not the damn chickens.
“He sounds like he’s at home all day.”
Wei Wuxian’s statement brought Jiang Cheng out of his reverie. “Yeah? And? How’s that your business?”
“You’re right it’s not.” Wei Wuxian paused, and the fan of the computer whirred between them. “I’m just glad you’re talking to somebody other than a chicken for the first time in forever. I’d say ‘be nice’ but that’d be like telling an armpit, ‘Smell like vanilla and sunbeams’.”
“Wei Wuxian – !”
Laughing, Wei Wuxian had ended the call, and Jiang Cheng had fallen asleep at his desk.
Now Jiang Cheng had noticed that Lan Xichen was reclusive, but for what reason, as far as Jiang Cheng was concerned, he didn’t need to know. That was between Lan Xichen and the world at large. In between visits to collect Wei Cluckxian from the man’s garden and discussions (that Lan Xichen seemed to engage with mostly out of humour) on how to better defend both their coops and gardens against Wei Cluckxian, it had slowly filtered into Jiang Cheng’s understanding that Lan Xichen didn’t see many people. Or any people, for that matter.
Music would be flowing out of Lan Xichen’s house from his xiao (Jiang Cheng had been given a demonstration of the instrument) at midday but the curtains would all still be drawn. Jiang Cheng would knock on the door, and he’d hear several locks clunking aside before Lan Xichen let him in with a fistful of keys and a smile that would be askew for the first second or so, like a mask settling in place.
“Nice to see you,” Lan Xichen would say, covering up something grey and drawn at the back of his eyes. “Wei Cluckxian’s in the dust bath. How was your day?”
It took Jiang Cheng a month and a half to realise he had never asked the question back. That day, he plucked up his courage, wondering why such a simple thing should need courage at all, and how pathetic that made him, and replied, “Fine. And yours?”
“Quiet,” had come the honest reply. Lan Xichen poured them both tea, then sat down with Wingji on his lap. Wei Cluckxian, oddly well-behaved for once, was nestled on Jiang Cheng’s feet. Apparently getting chased around and chasing back Wingji tired him out. Who’d have thought this damn demon chicken could have limits? Jiang Cheng was almost happy that the two birds had met, before he remembered that this, this shifting of attention and focus, away from Jiang Cheng to something else, was what he didn’t want to bear. Lan Xichen went on in a quieter tone, “You might’ve noticed that I don’t do much.”
“You play the xiao beautifully,” Jiang Cheng told him with every bit of sincerity he could muster.
“But that’s all.”
“That’s something.” It’s magic.
Lan Xichen’s hands tightened about his tea. “I’m not earning a living. I’m not studying. I’m not in training or on a break between jobs. I’m not…doing anything. I’m not really living at all. Right now, Jiang Cheng, I think I’m a coward. A spoiled coward. Hiding away from the world. Don’t you think so?” Before Jiang Cheng could reply, Lan Xichen let out a soft laugh that didn’t reach his eyes. “No, don’t answer that. I won’t put that onus on you - but I know that I’m truly lucky that my family is wealthy enough to provide all this for me, while I’m like this. I’m lucky that I can hide. But it’s only for time-being. Not forever. I hope.” His smile fizzled. He looked down at his hands. “It scares me that it might not be so, that I might not be able to escape myself, or resist how much I want to hide. And disappear.”
He stroked Wingji’s feathers with a distant, distracted expression, as if he wasn’t seeing the bird at all, only feeling it with his fingertips. “It does scare me…”
The bird shifted, made a low sound more like the hum of a phone than a bird-call. Lan Xichen blinked, and looked up.
The pleasant smile was back, nimbly transforming his face. “Ah, I’m sorry. Don’t mind me…Just…practicing. For a part. Yes, a part. Of some kind. Playing a part does tend to help. Out in the world. So I find.”
For once, Jiang Cheng rued his way with words. If he were more eloquent, if he were, say, Wei goddamn Wuxian, maybe he could have said something like, You’re handsome, you’re strong and clearly kind. You're good-tempered and intelligent. What happened to you? Whatever it was, I hate that it happened to you. I’m angry that it happened to you. I’m angry that someone isn’t here being angry for you.
But because he was Jiang Cheng, what came out of his mouth was: “What did you do?”
Lan Xichen’s eyes flew wide.
Then at the same time as Wei Cluckxian pecked at Jiang Cheng’s ankles, Jiang Cheng screamed ‘That’s it, A-Xian, you’re noodle soup!’, Lan Xichen knocked over his tea and Wingji jumped down off Lan Xichen’s lap with as determined a look as a near-silent chicken could have to restore order to the kitchen, the doorbell rang.
Lan Xichen and Jiang Cheng froze. So too, miraculously, did the chickens.
Lan Xichen moved first, grabbing both chickens and shoving them into Jiang Cheng’s arms. “Keep them out of the way.”
“Who is it?”
“No one.” Lan Xichen pushed Jiang Cheng into the living room. “Just stay out of sight of the front door. And, perhaps the kitchen too. If you wouldn’t mind. Please.”
The doorbell rung once more and Jiang Cheng took one look at Lan Xichen’s pale face and fled. He’d hidden on the landing of the first floor by the time Lan Xichen had undone had the last of the locks and let in his guest.
Curious, Jiang Cheng peered between the banister railings. He saw a blue anorak that was vaguely familiar. Whoever they were, they demanded tea, and Lan Xichen dutifully, tiredly, led them through to the kitchen.
The acoustics of the kitchen amplified their voices, enough that Jiang Cheng could hear everything spoken. Tucked under his arms, Wei Cluckxian and Wingji were both mercifully still, as if they too were listening closely.
“I went to speak with the Nie lawyers again.” Jiang Cheng stiffened. He knew that voice. “They’re still refusing to drop the accusations again Jin Guangyao. Their ridiculous demands concerning you haven’t changed either. Ridiculous! Absolutely ridiculous!”
“Uncle.” The kettle whistled. Lan Xichen was brewing a fresh batch. “I already said…Before…didn’t I say that I’d rather you didn’t speak for me?”
“Well, I wouldn’t have to if you’d only speak for yourself, and tell that Nie pipsqueak that all this talk about murder is utter codswallop! Xichen, Nie Mingjue was losing his mind. Those letters he wrote at the end are just raving paranoid drivel! You should know this better than anyone! It’s your field of expertise!”
There was a light, delicate crash. Something small had dropped, shattering on the floor. A teacup maybe. Jiang Cheng held his breath.
“Xichen?”
“It’s all my fault, Uncle.”
Lan Xichen’s quiet words cut through the shadows and silence, piercing in their honesty, filled with a yearning that Jiang Cheng recognised instantly, because it was the same yearning that touched the voice of the man’s xiao: a deep yearning to be heard.
What do you want us to hear, Lan Xichen?
“You said that before.”
“I know, Uncle. But it’s the truth. I can’t explain it but – “
“Xichen, you say this every time I come to see you, and I’ll say what I said to you before - that you’re wrong, my dear boy. Nie Mingjue isn’t dead because you couldn’t save him. He – “
“That’s not what I mean. That’s not what I mean!” There was a frustrated thump. A hand, Jiang Cheng though, hitting a counter-top, before Lan Xichen repeated in an almost whisper-scream, “That’s not what I mean…”
“Then can you explain to me what you mean?”
The chickens were both absolutely still, heads cocked, listening.
“If I did,” Lan Xichen said eventually, “we may all be ruined. Not only me, or A-Yao, but you. Wangji. The university. All of us.”
“What if I said that it may be worth all the ruin in the world to have my nephew back?” After a long, fraught silence, there was a sigh. “I’ll come again, Xichen.”
“Uncle – “
“We’ll work through this. Thank you for the tea. Don’t see me out.”
When the door closed, Wei Cluckxian and Wingji immediately squirmed out of Jiang Cheng’s arms and fluttered down the stairs. Jiang Cheng followed them hurriedly, catching both birds before they could enter the kitchen and run all over the broken ceramic Lan Xichen was sweeping up off the floor.
Wingji made that strange humming noise that made Jiang Cheng want to check his phone.
Catching sight of Jiang Cheng and his precious white rooster, Lan Xichen stood, wiping spilled tea from his hands with a tea towel.
“You kept them both very quiet,” he said.
“They kept themselves quiet.” Jiang Cheng held out Wingji and Lan Xichen took him, cradling the bird to his chest. “You’re the nephew of Lan Qiren, Vice-Chancellor of the Lan Yi Institute of Science and Technology?”
Lan Xichen stiffened, but when Jiang Cheng showed nothing on his face other than honest curiosity, he seemed to ease. “You did know before today that my name is Lan Xichen, didn’t you?”
“Well, I can’t assume all Lans are related to each other.”
“True. You attend there, don’t you?”
“How did you - ?”
“You’ve sent me selfies from the cafeteria,” Lan Xichen replied with a twinkle in his eye, but just when Jiang Cheng thought he might be coming back together, had found some grip on himself by which to claw out his own mind, broken crockery crunched under Lan Xichen’s heel. Thankfully, it was under the soles of slippers, but Lan Xichen went rigid, instantly tensing, eyes scanning the spilled tea and duck egg blue tea cup shards about the kitchen like he was seeing them for the first time.
“Oh,” Lan Xichen said, blinking quickly, and Wingji shifted in his arms, likely being held too tight. “That’s really quite the mess, isn’t it? Quite the mess. Really. Where do I start cleaning up all this? And, you’ve seen this too…Seen all this…Goodness, this is embarrassing. So embarrassing…”
“You’ve already started. Look, see. That’s the dustpan and brush you were using before I charged in here,” said Jiang Cheng, not gently, he wasn’t good at that. His tone was just too brusque, but Lan Xichen gave him a slow, tired nod, breathing hard. Under Jiang Cheng’s arm, Wei Cluckxian made a soft hissing noise then pulled at his shirt collar. “I’ll help you clean up – “
“No!” At the sharp rebuttal, Jiang Cheng flinched. Putting Wingji under one arm, Lan Xichen covered his face with his hand and let out a shaky breath. “I’m sorry. I meant…thank you, but no. Please. Let me clean up after myself. I’ve got to clean up after myself. It’s the least…the lowest…thing I can do. I really would like to be able to clean up…just this mess. I can do it.”
He thrummed with an energy that probably should’ve made Jiang Cheng nervous, but he remembered that raw yearning earlier, that yearning to be heard in some way, that had twisted through Lan Xichen’s words, and didn’t have the heart to deny this strange sad man this one small thing.
“Alright,” he said, “I hear you.”
Lan Xichen’s eyes had widened and the relief evident in every line of the man’s body, like the sagging of a willow branch, made Jiang Cheng want to throttle something. But not his chicken.
“You’re keeping something bottled in,” observed Wei Wuxian, squinting at Jiang Cheng through the camera. This time he was drinking something his lab-mates had allegedly ‘home-brewed’ and wearing a T-shirt that Jiang Cheng knew wasn’t his. It was pale blue, for one thing, so completely outside of Wei Wuxian’s colour scheme, and bore some slogan in French about swords. It was like he was flaunting how inventive and multi-flavoured his life was in comparison to Jiang Cheng’s minimal social life, which currently revolved around a house chicken, and had maybe, briefly, expanded to his xiao-playing socially withdrawn NEET neighbour. “Come on, A-Cheng. What’s happened?”
“Wei Cluckxian’s made a friend.”
That wasn’t what Jiang Cheng meant to say, but it was close enough, and Wei Wuxian lapped it up, bursting into laughter. “Are you jealous?”
“That bird is a traitor. He spends more time chasing after that white rooster now than he does with me. What kind of behaviour is that towards the one who feeds and shelters him?” Jiang Cheng sniffed. “But as if I could be jealous of someone low enough to betray a bond of trust? Hah!”
“A-Cheng,” Wei Wuxian began, side-eyeing him, looking all too knowing, “chickens, like humans – may I remind you – are social creatures, who can, and do, and will, make more than one friend in their lifetime, and can, do and will learn how to keep, defend and cherish all those bonds. Tell me about your neighbour. He’s the white rooster’s owner, isn’t he? Are you seeing him often?”
Jiang Cheng’s face tingled. “We’re neighbours. What do you think?”
“I don’t know, A-Cheng, but I’m pretty sure that you don’t even remember the name of the previous inhabitants of next door and never spoke to them but for that one time with the power cut.” Wei Wuxian was absolutely right, and Jiang Cheng hated him for it, and he hated his brother more with the next question, “Is the new guy devastatingly dashingly handsome?”
“You - !”
“You’ve got high standards, A-Cheng. It’s a compliment.” Jiang Cheng bit back the retort that came to him first. Lan Xichen wasn’t handsome. He was a beautiful man brimming with that kind of grey blue rainfall pain that Jiang Cheng couldn’t stand, but could also stop and gaze at for hours. “What’s his name?”
“I’m not giving it to you.” Wei Wuxian could be terrifying with a computer. Jiang Cheng could protect Lan Xichen from at least that. “I remember what you were like with the Peacock.”
Wei Wuxian spluttered on his drink. “I’ll have you know, Jiang Wanyin, that that was a team effort, and you were trying to find as much dirt on him as me. Speaking of the Peacock, if you’re not going to give me a name for your neighbour, what am I to call him?”
“You don’t need to call him anything.”
“White Rooster Papa?”
“No.”
“A-Cheng’s New Squish.”
“He isn’t – “
Wei Wuxian leaned into the camera, letting the webcam distort his nose and buckteeth. “What does he look like then? Give me something to work with. I can’t keep calling him ‘A-Cheng’s Perfect Neighbour’. I’ve been telling my lab-mates here about this, you know. You and your mysterious neighbour and your chickens. People have been getting invested.”
“You’re the worst brother.” Jiang Cheng buried his face in his hands. “He’s…clean.”
“Clean,” repeated Wei Wuxian with a sagely nod. “Good personal hygiene. Important. That’s good. And?”
“He’s tall. About your height. Got big shoulders. Erm. Nice shoulders.”
“Shoulders. Good things to have, shoulders. Has he got his own teeth?”
“Oh, come on – “
“Well, you’re not really giving me much, so I’m going to have to start filling in the gaps myself. And?”
“…he wears a lot of blue.”
“Colour-coded for character personality indication. Smart dresser. Check.”
Jiang Cheng wondered if there existed some disease that burned the face right off, because he felt as if he was afflicted by it. “He’s got these…big eyes, only they’re not actually that big, it’s just…They always like they’re in that moment between stunned and...blinking from having something thrown in your face. Like, it’s as if he’s always surprised that something bad isn’t happening to him, but he’s ready for it, in case it starts, and he can’t think it won’t.”
He was conscious after a moment that Wei Wuxian had gone very quiet. He was staring at Jiang Cheng, tapping his mug against his front teeth with the contemplation he usually reserved for the most difficult of puzzles. There was a chance, Jiang Cheng realised with a strange swoop of gratitude, that his big brother was taking him seriously.
Then Wei Wuxian snapped his fingers and said solemnly, “Blue Bambi.”
“Ge, don’t you dare –“
“Toodles, xiao-di.”
Wei Wuxian ended the call.
Jiang Cheng groaned. This was the end. This was it. He wasn’t going to be able to look Lan Xichen in the eye again.
It was Jiang Cheng’s worst day in the laboratory for a long time, which probably meant he’d been due one. The ultrasonic homogeniser had given one last distressing beep and died. He’d discovered the grad students’ summer stash of ice cream, tucked at the back of -40 degree freezer, which should have been reserved for samples, and likely added another batch of votes to his current reputation as PhD Student Most Likely to Have a Villain Leitmotif. To cap it all…
“All my Lassies are dead!” Jiang Cheng wailed into Wei Cluckxian’s crest, sniffling into the rooster’s feathers. “Again! Damn it all, they grow in puddles and laptop keyboards! What does it take to grow them on a measly plate! It's not like they're fussy!”
Wei Cluckxian was not sympathetic. He huffed and struggled, beating Jiang Cheng over the head with his wing, before finally letting out that bloodcurdling horror movie scream.
There was a knock at the door, soft and polite. Jiang Cheng rose, scrubbing his face on the back of his hand, and Wei Cluckxian clamped firmly under his arm.
When he opened it, Lan Xichen was stretching forward to try the knocker again. He started back at the door’s movement, then pasted on his usual pleasant smile.
“That was Wei Cluckxian and not a man being ripped apart in your living room, wasn’t it?”
This was the first time that Lan Xichen had knocked on Jiang Cheng’s door, and not the other way round, and for a moment, Jiang Cheng forgot all about what had happened the last time he’d seen him, how he’d left him cleaning up the broken shards of a teacup like he was compensating for some other bigger mess entirely.
“Oh. Right, yeah.” He sniffed and rubbed his eyes again. “Yep, that was the bloody chicken.”
“Ah, right, I see,” said Lan Xichen awkwardly. The lines of his shoulders, Jiang Cheng, realised were tense. There was a low phone vibration hum. Jiang Cheng looked up. What he’d taken for some kind of weird high fashion hat that Jiang Cheng would never be able to fathom but would look impossibly good on Lan Xichen anyway turned out to be Wingji, fluffed up and roosting on top of Lan Xichen’s head. He glared down at Jiang Cheng as if daring him to put a single word wrong. Jiang Cheng glared straight back at it. Like hell he’d lose a glaring match against a chicken. “Are you…alright?”
“Sorry?”
“You look like you’ve had an upset.”
“Oh. Oh! Yeah, an upset! No, not one bit. I’m not in the slightest bit upset.” Jiang Cheng let out a laugh, and somehow it wasn’t a fake one. It was funny, in a way, his whole day. “Just lab problems. Research quibbles. Nothing I can’t sort out. Do you need something?”
As soon as he deflected the focus back to Lan Xichen, the man shrank in on himself, fingers curling into his fists at his sides. Then he laughed too. “Do you know, I’m actually not sure. When I stepped out of my house, I thought I was coming here with an apology - for how I was the other night - but now that I’m here, I feel like I’d rather say ‘thank you’.”
“Then just say that.”
Lan Xichen smiled, but it was different from the initial one. It went below just a twist of skin. “Then as both thank you and apology, I was wondering if I could do dinner for us both, tonight.”
“Dinner!”
“Yes. At mine. Nothing extravagant, I’m afraid. I’ve only the ingredients for day-to-day recipes. I’d understand if you have plans.” Wingji hummed. Lan Xichen added, “Of course, Wei Cluckxian is invited too.”
Wei Cluckxian crowed happily, then when Jiang Cheng continued to stare, saying nothing, pecked hard at Jiang Cheng’s ribs. “Ouch! No, no, I’ve got no plans. Why would I have plans? I’m planless.”
“Excellent. Would eight do?”
Eight couldn’t come soon enough, and Jiang Cheng was at the door with what little he could contribute – a tub of caramel cone Haagen-dazs – just a little after the dot. Lan Xichen opened the door for him, sleeves of his pale blue long cardigan rolled up to his elbows and hair tied out of his face. “Evening, Jiang Cheng. Come in. Oh, is that ice cream?”
“Are you sure about this?” Jiang Cheng hesitated. He eyed Lan Xichen closely. “You look tired.”
“I find that it’s easier to cope with being tired in good company.” Lan Xichen turned away, Wingji still riding his head. “If we eat in the living room, we can keep an eye on the birds in the garden.”
And Jiang Cheng followed him.
It was a warm summer night. Mosquito incense burned at the windowsills. They ate at a low table in the living room, sat on the floor, watching Wei Cluckxian and Wingji run about the garden in a way that Jiang Cheng wasn’t entirely convinced was not hostile, although Lan Xichen insisted that Wingji liked the company – and true, if Wei Cluckxian didn’t like being with that damn Wingji, he could use whatever mysterious portal he used to get into Lan Xichen’s garden to go back to Jiang Cheng’s (where he belonged).
Lan Xichen's cooking was simple and plain, with soft steamed white fish, tofu cooked in broth, pickles to flavour, lightly stewed beans, and, as Lan Xichen didn’t drink, they had a jug of ice cold barley tea to share. An uncharitable part of Jiang Cheng thought ‘luxury hospital food’ which he hastily beat down. ‘Temple food’ maybe. ‘Mountain hermit food’. He held back from thinking it was suitable for a social recluse hiding from something in the world at large.
But throughout the meal, Jiang Cheng couldn’t help but notice the small things. Maybe because he was looking out for them. Maybe it was because the living room was so bare of anything to look at but Lan Xichen. Undecorated, unlived in, the room was furnished with only the one sofa, this low table, and a music stand in the corner. There wasn’t a TV or a music system. Lan Xichen probably thought anything but his xiao and Wingji were extravagances he didn’t deserve.
Sometimes Lan Xichen would be talking but his eyes would wander off to the room’s corner, leaving him hanging in mid-sentence. He repeated conversation starters like he’d forgotten he’d used them already. His hand reaching out for vegetables or fish from the bowls frequently shook, making him drop food from his chopsticks, and Jiang Cheng pointedly did his best to look too engrossed in the meal to notice. The worst part was, he could see how much it bothered Lan Xichen, and without Wingji in the room to distract him from his frustration with himself, it only got worse as the night wore on.
“Did I ask already about what I overheard earlier at your front door? About ‘your Lassies being dead’?” Lan Xichen asked for the second time that evening.
“Oh, that. You did, but I didn’t give you an answer.” Jiang Cheng swallowed down his rice. The first time, Wei Cluckxian had started making a racket outside, so he’d gone to check on him and found the weird bird doing some kind of chicken dance whilst Wingji plucked the galvanised wire of his coop. “So...I’m researching chlamydia.”
“Naturally.”
“To genetically modify Clara…I mean, the chlamydia, I needed to grow a batch of E.coli.”
“Clara…Lassie…Oh, I see.” The corner of Lan Xichen’s lips turned up. “Coli, ergo collie, ergo Lassie?”
“Right! My brother used to make up codewords and nicknames to talk about things, and it kind of stuck. He used to say it made us sound cool, like we were movie spies.” Blue Bambi chose that cursed moment to trot through Jiang Cheng’s head. He coughed on his rice, then took a swig of barley tea to get it down. “I saw on the first day that you had some path reference books…”
“Well-spotted. Yes, you’ve got me,” Lan Xichen indicated himself with an elegant sweep of a hand, “I was a pathologist too, a post-doc.”
Jiang Cheng ignored the past tense. “So that makes you my qianbei?”
“Yes, I suppose it does. But I’d caution against following this qianbei’s example.” A shuttered look flickered across Lan Xichen’s face, gone before Jiang Cheng could put his finger on it. "And please don’t begin calling me ‘qianbei’. It’s not a formality I’d deserve.”
“Alright, sure. What’s your area of research?”
Lan Xichen paused. “Prion diseases.”
“Oh, right. So, like scrapie, kuru, Creutzfeldt-Jakob - ?”
“Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, yes.” Lan Xichen set down his chopsticks, disguising his shaking hands by folding them onto the table in front of him. “And my speciality was Variant CJD.”
“Mad Cow Disease in people?”
“Yes, that’s the one. Transmitted to humans through food, or possibly blood products…”
Lan Xichen broke off. He stared into space. His hands, clamped to the table, trembled anyway.
In the garden, Wei Cluckxian exploded with a noise that he’d recently added to his repertoire: a kazoo he’d picked up off a variety show.
“Sorry,” Lan Xichen shook himself as if from sleep, and smiled shakily. “You were saying, about chlamydia?”
“I...er…Well, er, for some reason, I can’t stop phages getting into and trashing my E.coli colonies, and it’s just such a pain. You’d think bacteria that’d grow down ass cracks wouldn’t be fussy or too difficult to grow when it’s being waited on hand and foot like a princess and given all the best environments to do so, but…” Lan Xichen was nodding along, listening attentively. Jiang Cheng wasn’t used to such attention, not even from his own lab colleagues. His face warmed. “I…er…that’s it. About Clara. I don’t have much else to say. Lan Xichen – “
“You may call me Xichen.”
“What? Really?”
“Sometimes the family name feels heavy. It’s tiring to hear, and tiring to say,” said Lan Xichen, refilling their barley teas. Then he smiled with amusement. “Oh, look. They’re friends, after all.”
Outside, the solar-powered lamps along the overgrown flower beds softly glowed with white lights. In the shadows they cast, Wei Cluckxian and Wingji were foraging, side by side.
Jiang Cheng gritted his teeth. He rose from the table, slamming down his chopsticks, and cracked his knuckles. “Like hell I’m going to sit by and watch that dumb demon chicken let himself get seduced – “
“How much of the conversation with my uncle do you remember, Jiang Cheng?”
At the sudden diversion of topic, Jiang Cheng stumbled, caught off guard. Slowly, he sank back down to the tableside and met Lan Xichen’s gaze across the dishes. “Someone died. Someone else says he was murdered. You’re stuck in the middle of all this, somehow, and you won’t come out to say you’re not a part of it.”
Lan Xichen dug his nails into the wood of the table. “What do you think?”
“Well, you’re obviously hiding from something. Didn’t your uncle mention lawyers? Most people would hide from lawyers. I’d hide from lawyers.” Jiang Cheng rambled, unsure where this was going and whether he really wanted to be heading where he thought it might be. “Look, er, Xichen…I’m just your neighbouring chlamydia PhD student with a rowdy chicken. Your business is yours. I won’t stick my head into it or demand details.”
“You don’t think that I’m refusing to say that I’m not involved in Nie Mingjue’s death because of the fact that I may, in truth, be so - and I can’t bear the thought of the lie it would require me to tell concerning one of my closest, oldest friends?” Jiang Cheng opened and closed his mouth, at a loss for words. Lan Xichen fixed him with a look of fierce determination. His hands, clasped and trembling in front of him on the table, were white-knuckled. “You asked last time, ‘What did I do?’”
“Er- “
“What would you do, Jiang Cheng, if telling the truth could endanger the world of everyone you cared for?”
What kind of a question was that?
Jiang Cheng became creepingly aware that his jaw was hanging open, just enough for mosquitoes to probably fly inside. He closed it with a click and cleared his throat.
“Well, the truth will probably come out eventually. It usually does. And usually horribly. So…I say, better get it out and off your chest as quickly as possible. Like a plaster. Then you’ll have more years of your life, more time, to clean up the mess and for the world to forget, and if you sort it out early enough, you’ll get more years of your life to enjoy with a clean conscience. And that goes for everyone you care about as well,” Jiang Cheng folded his arms across his chest. “If you’re really thinking about other people, and not yourself, you’d tell it. Whatever it is that needs to be told. To be brutally honest, I reckon it’s pretty selfish to keep everyone waiting in the dark. Everyone will just keep on wondering if they’re ever going to have to suffer for something they don’t know anything about. It’s waiting for the bomb to drop.” Lan Xichen was silent, his face pale, everything about him so still and rigid he might as well have turned to stone. “Xichen?”
After a long pause, Lan Xichen looked up from his hands. He blinked tiredly, glassy-eyed and smiled.
“I’m sorry, Jiang Cheng,” he said, so sincerely that Jiang Cheng wanted to hide in shame. “I don’t think I can continue tonight…I’m very tired. And this isn’t going well, is it? This dinner? I wanted this to go well, and yet I feel like I’ve been drifting in and out of it. You wouldn’t think that I used to be good at this sort of thing, would you? Entertaining and small talk, and all that.”
“What the!? Where’d you get that idea from? This is going well! You cooked great food! You know what would’ve happened if I’d try to make dinner for us in a pinch? We’d be eating instant fried noodles from the box and I’d still somehow manage to overcook it, and muck up a sauce or something,” Jiang Cheng said quickly, earnestly, honestly, because, damn it, it didn’t take a scientist to be able to tell that Lan Xichen had been trying tonight. “As for small talk, small talk can sod itself. We did big talk. That’s important. Like, we talked about my Lassies. And that big truth that’s your business, and not mine. Which you need to get sorted.”
“Yes, I do, don’t I?” Lan Xichen let out a long breath. He eased his hands apart, flattening them on the table, and stared at them. When they didn’t tremble, he picked up his chopsticks again and laid them over his bowl. “Thank you, Jiang Cheng. For being straightforward.”
“Tell you what,” Jiang Cheng said, thinking hard about what someone more personable might do, like Jiejie or (gods forbid) Wei Wuxian, and the answer came down to something simple. “Why don’t we open that caramel cone ice cream?”
“You’re distracted today,” Wei Wuxian whined, patting the top of his webcam, as if he was pawing at Jiang Cheng for attention. “What are you doing? You’ve got me open as a side-tab, haven’t you? How dare you, I’m your one and only brother!”
“Yeah, well, I never got a choice in that,” Jiang Cheng shot back, but it was true that Wei Wuxian’s call had dropped in just as he’d found the articles he’d been looking for. “Just research, that’s all.”
Wei Wuxian narrowed his eyes. “A-Cheng, I know you’re alone at home, but taking Clara and Lassie out of the laboratory – “
“Shut it. I’m bad-tempered, not stupid.”
“Then what’s this research about?” Wei Wuxian pushed him, and Jiang Cheng knew that his eyes had been drifting across the screen again. “Is it something to do with Blue Bambi?”
“No!”
“Oh, yes, it is,” said Wei Wuxian gleefully, and he sat forwards. This time, he had apparently been at a conference all day and was impeccably dolled up in a black suit and tie. He looked so sleek that somebody else must have ironed his collar and trousers for him. Jiang Cheng wondered who had decided that Wei ‘Would Dress Like a Suburban Dark Lord’ Wuxian was worth the effort, then decided that he didn’t want to know. “A-Cheng, you get louder and frown harder when you’re lying. Is it detective work? Can I help?”
“You are not internet-stalking my neighbour, Ge. You’re to leave him well alone. Got it?”
“For once, I’m actually going to agree to that. He sounds much too sad. I’d actually, just possibly, feel bad about it.”
“Good.”
“It’s not like you to dig into other people’s business, though.” Wei Wuxian loosened his tie and peered into the webcam with concern. “That’s usually my end of things. Is everything alright? Have you spoken to Jiejie lately?”
“No,” said Jiang Cheng forlornly. “I got an e-mail from her last month, but nothing since. Occasional texts. You?”
“The same, so…” Wei Wuxian cleared his throat and looked a little guiltily to the side of the camera, “I might’ve done a little digging.”
Jiang Cheng’s heart sank. “Wei Wuxian! You - !”
Wei Wuxian flung up his hands as if Jiang Cheng could punch him through the screen. “It’s for her own good! And the damn Peacock’s!”
“What did you do?!”
“Research, that’s all. Research.” Except Wei Wuxian’s idea of research had once led him into casually hacking the International Space Station, without anybody noticing. “It turns out the Jins are in trouble. Do you remember that there was this one brother at the wedding reception, who was kind of shady? The lawyer brother? A bit too clever with words? Liked the sound of his own voice?”
“You can talk.”
“Er, excuse you.”
Jiang Cheng struggled to remember. “The Peacock had a lot of brothers.”
“Jin Guangyao? Ring any bells?”
It rang bells, alright. Recent ones. Jiang Cheng paused. “What?”
“Oh, good. Well, it’s all being kept secret at the moment, because the Jin International Hotel Corporation can buy some pretty expensive silences, but from what I read in the internal e-mails and Jin Zixuan’s private messages – “
“Oh, god. Jiejie is going to kill you. I’m going to kill you.”
“ - someone’s accused Jin Guangyao of murder, and right now, the Jin Corporation’s doing everything to try and lawyer their way out of it. They’ve been trying to get the accusing side to withdraw their accusation, or, worst comes to worst, settle quietly outside of court.”
“Settle quietly for murder?”
“One law for the rich, right? The moral of this story, Jiang Cheng? Make sure you marry rich.” Wei Wuxian wagged his finger at him. “Then you’re a man free to be as shameless as you like. Anyway, this has all been going on since spring. Jiejie’s been having her e-mails and communications strictly monitored by the Jin Corporation security since May. These past couple of months, it’s all taken a turn for the worse, apparently.”
“Why? What’s changed?”
“One, someone leaked to the press that Jin Guangyao might have been linked with the mafia, and had been using them to gather dirt on his legal opponents, fix them up or flat out assassinate them into convenience. The entire Jin Corporation’s been on lockdown whilst they try and work out who leaked that, in case it was an internal source – which, from the e-mails I’ve seen, it absolutely was, and Jin Xuanyu should get a medal – and they’ve been trying to silence the press left, right and centre, but it’s like whacking gophers. Two,” Wei Wuxian held up a second finger to the camera, waking Jiang Cheng from his fugue state of horror, “the man that the lawyers on both sides have been trying to get to speak out on the case as a witness has gone into hiding – and they’re all looking for him.”
Ice pooled in Jiang Cheng’s stomach. Murder. Corporations. Media cover-ups. The goddamn mafia.
And he’d just wanted to spend time with a sweet but sad man whilst making sure his chicken’s innocence was protected.
“Who’s the accuser?” He swallowed the scream that had risen up his throat. “What’s their basis for the accusation? They must have some kind of proof, right?”
“The accuser’s Nie Huaisang, the brother of the dead man, a journalist for the National called Nie Mingjue. According to Nie Huaisang, Nie Mingjue left a load of letters accusing Jin Guangyao of having found a way to kill him slowly, and that he’d succeeded. He flat out puts it in his handwriting, ‘If I die in these next few months, Jin Guangyao the little weasel slime did it’. He’d been investigating Jin Guangyao’s ties to the mafia and extent of his corruption, and apparently found out too much to be allowed to live. It’s pretty straightforward.”
“But it’s not evidence of murder,” Jiang Cheng pointed out.
“No, not the letters on their own. They could’ve been faked, his handwriting forged. I reckon Nie Huaisang was in contact with Jin Xuanyu, and that’s how evidence of Jin Guangyao’s communication with the mafia got leaked to the press. When I say Nie, apparently it’s the Nie, the family that runs Nie Media Corp, own The National, The Weekly and BHeavenB. What it all comes down to now is that witness,” said Wei Wuxian, tone low and serious, "whoever they are."
“Yeah, whoever they are,” Jiang Cheng echoed with dread, the newspaper article he’d been reading on Nie Mingjue’s strange death suddenly making too much sense.
This wasn’t trouble that Wei Wuxian had uncovered. This was scandal. This was ruin. This was a truth that could endanger people.
“I’m thinking that I might come home.”
Jiang Cheng blinked. “What?”
Wei Wuxian was nodding, all too determined. “Jiejie needs help with this.”
“You think she’s going to want your help after you explain hacking into her husband’s e-mails? Wei Wuxian, do you know how much trouble that could cause her?” Jiang Cheng wanted to grab his brother and shake him by the shoulders. “You already said that the Jin Corporation’s on the lookout for sources for the leak on Jin Guangyao in their organisation! How do you think this might affect Jie’s marriage when it gets out that her brother has been hacking them? Do you have no goddamn shame? Stay the fuck where you are in Yiling, Ge! Don’t come back!”
Wei Wuxian’s face went white. His voice was tight with anger. “I don’t think that’s your decision to make.”
“It’s plenty my decision to make when you’re so wrapped up in how clever you are, your hero complex, your busybody busy-ness, that you fail to see how you might go too far, and the rest of us have to suffer for it! Your head,” Jiang Cheng thrust his finger at the camera, getting into his terrible stride, “is stuffed so far up your own incredibly competent, overly brilliant ass, that you probably can’t even comprehend how the rest of us might not be able to think our way out of the trouble you cause like you do! You said that Jin Corporation’s got all its lawyers and security working on this? Then leave it to the Jin Corporation. You stay out of it, Wei Wuxian. Don’t get involved, and don’t come home!”
Wei Wuxian raised his eyebrows. “Ever?”
“You know what? Why not? Just stay in Yiling for good. It’s been great here without you. For once in my life, people have been looking at me, and my achievements, and not yours! And it’s been great, Ge! Absolutely great!”
“I got an offer the other day,” Wei Wuxian went on quietly, in that silky warning tone that Jiang Cheng knew from experience meant he was sharpening some kind of verbal knife. “For NASA, actually. The astronaut traineeship - to go the International Space Station one day, or even the Mars mission.”
“Take it!” Jiang Cheng said roughly, ears ringing, eyes stinging. He’d hate himself for this later. “I was stupid to think you’d stick around, and actually be there for me, like a brother. Go fuck off to space, Wei Wuxian!”
He ended the call feeling like he’d won some personal victory. By the time he closed his laptop, having finished reading up on the case of Nie Mingjue, that feeling was gone. He was sick with himself and of himself. He missed his brother, missed his sister, missed the parents who’d died in a car crash his first year of university, and he missed them all so much that crying about it didn’t help one bit.