Truth was, he yearned.
But he had always been the other. A sad, pathetic intruder looking into a world where he wasn’t allowed to exist. A boy who fell in love with a mansion and all its locked doors.
Tonight, one door unbolted. All he needed to do was to push it and walk through. But he was afraid he would find himself still unworthy.
The girl’s scowling face appeared in his mind. What was her name?Rui.It was a pretty name. The owner of the name was pretty in a way that reminded him of a wildflower bloom in the desert. His chance meeting with her had left him with the impression that she had a sizable chip on her shoulder and believed shouting was an effective way to communicate. Yiran wanted very much for her to survive her injuries.
Impulsively, he turned around.
Zizi was kneeling with his hands over Rui, blocking her from Yiran’s line of vision. A mysterious glow radiated from the boy, illuminating him. Lines of black ink, sharp like a knife’s edge, ran over pale skin from his scapula down toward his narrow waist, ending at the small of his back. Swooping and looping, the dark curves were at once delicate and cruel.
Feathers.
Yiran was reminded of the bloody imprint Rui left on his car seat. He stared, fascinated. There was something so real about the tattoo that he wouldn’t be surprised if Zizi suddenly sprouted real wings, like a sullied angel cast down to earth.
Zizi shifted, and Yiran glimpsed his face. His eyes. They were not pale blue like before, but eerie black pools of nothing. A shiver skittered across Yiran’s skin.
Rui made a small sound. The tension in her body released, and her head tipped back onto the armrest. Color returned to her face, and her breathing sounded less labored.
Whatever Zizi did to save her, it was nothing short of miraculous. Was he a healer? Yiran had heard of healers. The term made them sound like people who specialized in herbs and exotic tea, but he knew that some of them were Exorcists too. Yiran didn’t think an Exorcist would be livingin a place like this, which could only mean that Zizi was from the underground magic community.
The glow from Zizi faded, and the temperature in the room dropped back to normal. Slowly, that precious new thing in Yiran’s veins dissipated and he was left with a hollowness he’d never felt before. He heaved a lungful of air, trying to fill himself up. He didn’t want to lose that feeling of being complete. Of beingenough.
Zizi got up, palms rust red, the bare skin on his torso blood-dappled like an avant-garde painting, looking as if he might have tumbled into the world exactly this way: fully formed, bloody and bare, eyes naked like a winter’s lake.
“I’ve done all I can,” he said quietly. His eyes were blue again. Deep emotion lingered in them, and Yiran knew immediately that this boy would go to the ends of the earth for the injured girl. “I thought we agreed you would look away.”
Yiran tilted his head toward Rui and saw why Zizi was making such a fuss. He averted his gaze as Zizi threw a large silk shawl over her. Scrounging around, Zizi pulled out another slinky piece of fabric from between cushions. He put the pajama top on and buttoned it up like it was the normal thing to do in a situation like this. Like he left pieces of clothing all over the house so he could dress and undress at varying intervals.
He tucked a cigarette behind his ear with care and gestured at Yiran as if he was beckoning a puppy. “Come along.”
With some uncertainty and much irritation, Yiran followed. The kitchen was a menagerie of coffee beans stored in an assortment of mismatched jars and decorated with instruments that looked like they could be used to conjure up a frothy cup of latte with some light torture on the side.
“Sit.”
Yiran didn’t appreciate the condescension in the other boy’s tone, but he was tired. He got onto the barstool and propped his elbows onto the counter.
Zizi rinsed his bloody hands under the tap and puttered around. He threw a handful of coffee beans into a mortar and pounded them furiously with a pestle. Yiran wasn’t versed in the intricacies of barista work, but he couldn’t fathom why Zizi wasn’t using the electric grinder instead.
Zizi seemed to sense Yiran’s question. “Helps me think,” he said, giving the beans a particularly hard smash.
“Is she going to be all right?” Yiran said.
Zizi put his pestle down, staying silent for a few seconds.
“She will be,” he finally replied, a catch in his voice. “Her spiritual energy is at the bare minimum, but that’s not quite it. It’s like she turned into anormie, which doesn’t make sense at all. If a Revenant drank that much from her, she would be dead, she wouldn’t be like this. And if the Revenant didn’t drink that much, Rui would have recovered some of her spiritual energy by now and still be able to do magic. But...” Zizi shook his head. “I found new signs of magical trauma in her spirit core. What happened? Did she cast a spell on herself?”
“I’m not entirely sure....” Yiran pulled out one of the swords he’d retrieved earlier from Rui’s sword bag. He tried to remember that buzzy feeling. Tried to reach the magic that was supposedly in him now.
He didn’t feel a thing.
The gnarly hand of desperation gripped his throat, tight enough to choke.Did you really think it was going to work? Did you really think you could do magic? You are nobody. You are nothing.He wanted to stomp the voice in his head out. He wanted to strangle whoever it belonged to.
But he was afraid the voice was his own.
Zizi tapped the counter impatiently. “You were saying?”
Ignoring him, Yiran thought of Rui. She’d been so certain when she taught him how to use her weapon, so certain that he could do it.
