赤伶 — yan & ulysses

Post by lucius branwen / 10 — fox on Dec 15, 2022 19:54:25 GMT -5

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The older man rises, peering at you over the half-moons of his glasses. You watch him fold and unfold his hands, finally gripping onto the edge of the chair he'd pushed back, legs screeching sharply on the wood floor when he'd stood, as if to herald your arrival.

"Where's the other guy?" He asks.

What an ugly skepticism in his tone.

You take your time. Your aunt says you've got a sharp tongue, bladed-tongue, all teeth and uninviting.

The previous handler had bled stupidity like a buck shot in the woods. He was exposed iron, reeking of rust. He failed his assignment.

You had the cleaner come the previous night. You met her at the outskirts of Nine by the forests, where she sat idly with a shovel as you examined the body of the old handler with a flashlight and latex gloves. She'd taken care of him. His apartment was already spotless.

The sigil was sliced from his arm. His fingertips were burned. You pry open his jaw. The incisors were filed down and molars carved out. You watched a millipede crawl out of his mouth. His irises were like blue marbles.

She buried him. You paid her in cash, and she scattered the ashes of his teeth on a garden bed in the city, freshly raked, still dormant with seed.

Rivera watches you unfasten the locks on the briefcase. His gaze feels like a nuisance.

You think of the fly. You think of the millipede over the contours of his face. The taste of dirt on his tongue. The burn of bleach clings to you, deep beneath your nail bed, deep in your throat.

You need to learn how to speak like a human, your aunt said.

You give the softest form of an answer.

"Plant food."

Rivera had a gambling problem – the legal kind, the kind that made the economy run. He had loan sharks picking up his grandkids from school, buying them chocolate bars and giving them envelopes to deliver to their grandfather. He wanted to be extricated from his financial woes. A favour paid back from the Forum.

You give the man the spreadsheets in a manila folder. The insurance claim his wife would make after his death would be enough to pay off his debts. His children would be fed with it.

He's reading the proposition. The room becomes quiet. The morning light is pale gray. You can see smoke rising from the apartment complex across from you, between the heavy drapes, a sliver of sunlight in early spring. It's funny how you hadn't notice the way the seasons changed until you were ankle-deep in hellebores over a grave. Winter always ends slowly, the last dregs of snow clung to the roads for weeks, dirty and desperate to remain.

A loud bang cracks through the air. He's there, head leaned back, shaking the room with a bellowing guffaw, hand slapped on the table. The buttons of his shirt strain against the rise and fall of his belly. He keeps laughing.

He tells you you're invited to the funeral.

He shakes your hand.

The documents are being printed now. You still have to arrange for the passage to Eight, the staging of his death, the transfer of funds after.

The audience claps. You look up. Your temples feel like they're being squeezed. You're tired. It feels permanent now, the sleeplessness. Your skull is water and memory. Sometimes you can feel the push and pull of your lungs, the odd way it sputters and starts, the labour of remembering how to be alive. You press your fingers against your forehead and wait for the throbbing to subside.

The curtains part for another act. Your little swallow kills himself on stage again. His body is postured towards the sword. The blade is silver silk against his neck.

Li Yan the troupe leader had told you. "He's a little temperamental," he'd said cautiously the first night you had wanted him. The man was shifting with a kind of nervous energy, his stretched smile faltering as he stared down at the stage at Yan.

You smiled, thanked him for his gracious concern.

You watched him perform for three more shows when you came to conduct business. Sometimes there were little differences that made it interesting. You noticed how the embroidery on his costume changed from birds to a tiger, back to the birds. And sometimes he was a little more expressive – in the second show, he leaned into the Jing actor as he drew the blade up to below his chin, tilting into Xiang Yu's arms as the warlord lamented. You didn't like that as much.

It's been a little over two months since you first saw him. You've been busy. It seems like something always requires your attention. But the morning deal had gone well, and in the brief lull of the evening, you came to finally meet him.

He dies on stage – so you stop paying attention. A black box rests on the seat beside you, imported in two weeks ago. You sit through the rest of the performance and think about Rivera's retirement plan. You think about how his wife might grieve him before she realizes the worth of his life compared to the worth of his death. You think about how the waterfall of wealth might make his kids miss him a little less.

When the opera finally ends, Cao Daming greets you at the steps to the balcony box as the audience streams out. He smiles and you smile and then he starts babbling. "Mr. Xie. I didn't know you had come. I would've–"

It's dull.

"I've come for Li Yan."

He pauses in a way that makes you think he hasn't forgotten, merely hoped that you had. Daming wrings his hands and grows a shade paler. He doesn't want to give up his best performer. He can't afford to lose his star if the silly thing slips his tongue and gets himself killed. He can't afford to say no either to the son of his financier. You watch him squirm like a fat rat caught in claws all the way backstage, weaving between the actors, to Yan's door.

青出于蓝而胜于蓝.

Your lips twitch into a smile.

When the door opens, he's sitting there, in front of the mirror. You catch his gaze in the reflection. He's less dominating up close, a little more delicate underneath the makeup, but his lips are still stained red in a way that looks like a smudged flame billowing in the wind. A girl flutters around him with a cotton pad, and Daming gestures towards the door, dismissing her. Bowing her head, she quickly exits.

The troupe leader rocks on the balls of his feet before speaking in a tight little voice. How grating. You're growing tired of his apprehension.

"Yan, this is Ulysses Xie. His family has always been a great patron of Baishe. He watched your last performance."

You dip your head in greeting, watching the way he turns leisurely in his chair. He's very graceful even off-stage.

"A pleasure to meet you." You speak like a human. "I'm a fan of yours."

Then, you present to him the black box, a pure silk shirt folded between white tissue paper, threads of gold stitched into patterned motifs of acanthus leaf and rinceau. The little bird likes pretty things, you've noticed. You've seen him preen. "Please accept my gift."