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Junyi’s eyes flicker to me.

I try to give him an encouraging nod. “Go on.”

“All right. The Heavens . . . What is conferred by the Heavens may be known as the Nature of things . . . and only those who live by the laws of Nature may walk the Path of—”

“Wrong,” Keran cuts in.

Junyi shrinks back. “Which part?”

“Practically every word,” Keran says, casting me a dark look that makes abundantly clear his unwillingness to do this. “They’re all in the wrong order. If you’re unable to memorize the texts exactly as they have been written, word for word, you will fail. And this particular text isn’t even long.”

“Well, it’s not short,” Junyi protests.

He tosses the book to Junyi, who barely catches it before it can hit his nose. “I’ll give you the morning to memorize the first thirty pages—don’t look at me like that. You should’ve mastered it already, and at the pace you’re going, you’ll be ninety years old before you’re ready to take the exams. You may begin by copying everything out seventy times.”

Junyi chokes. “Seventy—”

“Start. Now,” Keran says.

Cautiously, Junyi unrolls a sheet of blank parchment paper, pushes up his broad sleeves, and takes the brush from the table, dipping it once in ink. He then proceeds to sweep it across the parchment in a series of strokes so messy and hideous that at first I don’t even recognize the characters. All the lines wobble and bleed into one another, the ink bristling out at the edges. If I had been presented with his writing alone, I would have assumed it done by someone half asleep.

Keran and I both fall into stunned silence.

With the sheepish air of someone confronted by a flaw they are already aware of but unable to correct, Junyi stares back at his own writing for a few beats, then up at us.

“I’ll teach the classics,” Keran mutters to me, pinching his nose. “You can teach him calligraphy.”

Our first day of lessons goes even more smoothly than I had anticipated, in large part because nobody ends up murdered.

When the sun has climbed to its apex outside, and the table is covered with opened books, Junyi pushes back from his seat and croaks out, “Si-Gege, can I please eat soon?”

Keran stares at him as if he has asked for a favor as bold and unnecessary as a massage. “You ate earlier this morning. I remember clearly, because it took you many attempts to start the smallest of fires, and that was hours ago.”

“I know, but . . .” Junyi looks both bewildered and embarrassed, like a child who’s been wronged for something they didn’t do. “But that was hours ago, Si-Gege. I’m hungry again.”

“Already?” Keran’s mouth curls. “Surely not. I thought mor—”

I shoot him a warning look, and he catches himself.

“I thought men took days to starve to death,” Keran continues briskly, inspecting the paper where Junyi had been copying out a passage from The Doctrine of the Mean. “And you don’t look like you’re starving.”

“I mean, I won’t die if I don’t eat today,” Junyi says, his bewilderment more pronounced than ever. “But it’s getting harder for me to concentrate, and I’m worried it might affect my memory . . .”

“Your memory is so terrible I doubt it could possibly be any worse.”

Junyi snaps his mouth shut, his face red. I do not blame him; anyone else would wither under the Death God’s glare. I cannot blame Keran for his incredulity either. Gods like us can go into isolation for entire months without speaking or eating or moving an inch. I had done it myself when I was nearing the end of my schooling, and though I’d found the long stretch of silence rather dull, the emptiness in my stomach had soon morphed into a feeling of lightness, as if I’d transcended the physical planes of the universe. Half a day seems an unreasonably short amount of time for the mortal body to go hungry.

But not long after Junyi has fallen quiet and returned to his paper again, his stomach starts rumbling.

“Sorry,” Junyi mumbles. “I’m not doing it on purpose—”

“Where is the food?” Keran asks with forced patience.

“I—I’ve grown potatoes in the backyard,” Junyi says.

Keran’s eyes narrow. “And? What do you expect me to do with that?”

“Well, I just mean . . . there isn’t much else in the kitchen, and the potatoes should be ready . . . I can go dig for them myself and boil them,” he adds quickly. “I wasn’t implying that you would have to—”