探窗 — yan & ulysses

Post by lucius branwen / 10 — fox on Jun 11, 2023 16:28:15 GMT -5

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Raw as a wound, the air clots around him as you speak. He stares at the expanse of fabric, eyes narrowed, the irritation plain on his face – and it's different from his casual arrogance, his dismissiveness of when he had first met you. When he turns to face you, Yu Ji slips away from his expression, and there's something familiar that supplants it.

You have seen how his attention sharpens his loose-limbed disdain into a knife. Now, it catches the light.

If Yan was any other person, you'd think he'd heed your suggestion. If he was smart, he'd say something reasonable. But you watch him choose his words, the line of his jaw tightening.

If his devotion was cloying, then his displeasure is like wine, poisonous and heady. A person could drink him in, dizzy from the astonishment of their own anger. You've observed how he draws people in with taunting, and you begin to understand a kind of underlying principle of his control.

If he could not be liked, then he would be hated completely.

Your mere annoyance is not enough. He wants something much more terrible from you. He tests your name, fingers curled into fists, and you anticipate something spiteful.

Instead, he wants to know you.

It's almost a surprise.

He isn't mocking. It's serious. You study him, amused.

When you first met him, you didn't expect him to know you, except for perhaps a feigned courtesy. But he hadn't bothered even with that, contemptuous until you proved useful against Cao, careless until this moment.

Now there's an undertone of curiosity to his demand. Terribly arrogant, nearly absurd.

Laughing lightly, you turn away from him and meander towards the door, stopping at the wooden screen briefly, stopping to stare at the mask on the wall.

Swaths of District Nine had been rebuilt in the aftermath of war by your great-grandfather. There are companies that you have never even set foot in that pay a chain of dividends to your family, the wealth locked in institutional structures that provide income without needing to do much at all.

Your initial education was in the foundation of your family, known to be land developers, built from the collapse of the First Rebellion. But this name was barely on anything, the presence strangely scarce, buried beneath more than ninety years of crafted levels of ownership. Your grandfather preferred to be discrete. He had held the belief that control was invisible, and your family benefited from the anonymity. You understood this attitude and acquired it before you were old enough to even enter society, the first tenets of life you'd learned, passed between blood and gravestones.

You spent four years spreading speculation as a ghost in the streets, but everyone who would betray you in the Forum is dead. And the other you – he was supposed to be mourning. No one had seen much of Ulysses Xie since he was a child. But who were they to question grief?

Now eighteen, you are treated with delicate, meticulous care. You are both exiled and allowed. Your uncle wants to bring you back into the fold, but your aunt wants you to transfer the line of succession of the estate to someone else. They rinsed you of rumours in your absence, but they never asked what was true. They understood what they needed; they didn't want something as unimportant as confirmation.

Even Daming – what more did he know except that you were the one paying him?

It's not a mistake, your facelessness.

You glance at Yan from across the room. There's an imperceptible easing of your chest, a polite smile that you wear faintly, idly, but your tone is dismissive when you speak, dipping into boredom.

"I said something measurable."

His request feels strikingly artless. The silence rings in the room, and this is the tempo of every interaction, vindictive and then suffering stillness. Your expression is opaque, eyes catching the skirt on the chair, flickering back to his face.

"I'm a fan," you answer with a half-shrug and a swift, sly smile that disappears as you continue. "I wanted to see the famous Yan Li up close, and you were so kind to invite me backstage again. What an honour."

It sounds mocking despite the evenness of your voice. It's a lie, but you say it with the cadence of something true. This is the story, there's nothing else. That is what he knows about you.

"We'll meet in two weeks." Yan burns with the intensity of a flame, and you ignore it pointedly, now hand on the door. "Because you enjoyed our conversation enough to invite me to see you again. Or perhaps you wanted something –" Your eyes meet his, cool and steady as you open the door, speaking over your shoulder. You think of the favour he asked for, the triumphant expression on his face, your insinuation.

A clear, painful streak of spite splits through you briefly.

It's gone in an instant, you let the sentence die. You only ask him "Orchids again?"