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Chapter Text

✺ Shang Qinghua
A hand lands on Shang Qinghua’s shoulder, shaking him awake from where he lays crashed out in a mess of paperwork.
“Bed.”
Shang Qinghua makes a disgruntled sound as he jolts awake, twisting his neck to see Mobei-jun standing over him in all his glory. Illuminated by the nearly burnt out candles, softened with a thick layer of his fur cloak, he looks calmer than he usually would when waiting for Shang Qinghua.
“Okay, my king,” Shang Qinghua pushes himself up with a loud yawn. One hand is asleep and tingly from being laid on. Mobei-jun steps back, inspects one of the abandoned ledgers, and follows Shang Qinghua to the bedroom to watch him make the bed.
It’s already made. Every morning a demon servant tidies the chambers and makes the bed. But no matter how many times Shang Qinghua instructs them, they never seem to get it right and Mobei-jun insists he remake it right before bed. Even when Shang Qinghua cleverly tries to remake it in the afternoon, it is not correct and he has to remake it for his king. It’s the flaw in being the one serving him since they were both teenagers. His king’s preferences are attuned to his actions, a flaw of his own accidental design.
Mobei-jun changes behind him. Shang Qinghua very nearly dares to take a peak but there isn’t enough time to do it unnoticed before Mobei-jun returns and climbs into bed.
“Well…” Shang Qinghua says awkwardly. “You know. Good night. Um,” he scratches the back of his head. “What time are you leaving tomorrow?”
“Before sunrise.”
Shang Qinghua ignores the small pang in his chest at a whole week without Mobei-jun. It just means he doesn’t have to make the bed and do all these annoying chores, right? He can instead climb into the giant bed and sprawl to his heart’s content as he does paperwork both for the sect and the Northern Desert. 
He awkwardly replies, “Right. Um…”
As though reading his mind, Mobei-jun indicates for Shang Qinghua to get into the bed too. A little aggrieved that he has his own decently sized bed that he could be asleep in, Shang Qinghua climbs up onto the soft bed and lays down on the very edge facing Mobei-jun. He barely manages to withhold a flinch when Mobei-jun’s hang reaches out to tug at the ribbon tying back his hair. Seeing the gesture is gentle, Shang Qinghua closes his eyes.
“When I go, it’ll get cold again,” Mobei-jun says.
Eyes still closed he says, “Okay. I’ll find my furs.”
Mobei-jun has been keeping the cold away for him the past few days so he could stay and finish processing all the ledgers instead of being tempted by the warmth of the human realm. Outside the palace the winter is harsh with ice cold winds and flurries of painfully freezing snow. 
“I’ll get them out before I leave,” Mobei-jun replies. Shang Qinghua nods and yawns again. Sometimes Mobei-jun has hidden his winter furs to prevent him from leaving the palace before his work is done. It does a good job trapping him.
“That’s kind of you, my king. I’m sure this servan–”
Cold fingers press against his lips. Shang Qinghua stops talking and lets his lower lip drag against the pad of Mobei-jun’s thumb.
“You will sleep here.”
“Thank you, my king.”
Mobei-jun makes a noise from the back of his throat but Shang Qinghua is already most of the way asleep. 
[System update required: [install now]   [remind me later] ]
Shang Qinghua groans.
Every night for the past three months the system has flashed an update request before his eyes with increasing annoyingness, and every night he’s had too many things to get done to sit around for hours waiting for it to install. 
Next to him Mobei-jun shifts on the bed making it slump towards the center. Shang Qinghua’s body slips, sliding against the silken sheets to slide closer to Mobei-jun. The air in the room is warm and Mobei-jun is the perfect cold. Shang Qinghua vaguely thinks that as long as he doesn’t move and if Mobei-jun doesn’t shove him away, he’s safe to sleep this close.
[System update required: [install now]   [remind me later] ]
He just wants to sleep.
Thinking that because Mobei-jun will be gone tomorrow long before he wakes, he’ll have time to sleep in and let the update install even if it requires ten hours, for the first time he doesn’t press remind me later and instead accepts the update.
He wakes vaguely when the bed shifts. It’s still dark out. The room is pitch black until Mobei-jun strikes a fire into the fireplace, then a soft glow emanates from it as his king moves around the shadows in total silence. He fills a bag. He tidies the desk Shang Qinghua fell asleep at the night before. And from a shelf far too high he takes down a box of furs, laying them out at the foot of the bed for Shang Qinghua come morning when the palace cools.
Shang Qinghua is only vaguely aware of it. His field of view is overtaken by the update module, telling him that it’s 45% complete and currently working on memory acquisitions. 
He quietly mumbles, “My king?”
Mobei-jun takes his time meandering to the side of the bed where he towers over Shang Qinghua like a sleep paralysis demon. 
“I wanted to remind—” he yawns again and buries his face in the pillow not wanting to lose his sleep.
“Do I need to know right now?”
“Not really, but I–”
“You can remind me later, then.”
“Mn. Thank you, my king.”
He’s already drifting back into sleep when he feels a slight tug of the blankets being pulled back up over his shoulders.
And then the heavy door grinds closed and Mobei-jun is gone.
A pang of something unnamed passes through Shang Qinghua.
A pang of something else spears through his head. White hot and blinding, forcing him to clutch his head as he rocks back and forth, gasping for air as he silently screams in pain.
[UPDATE ERROR]
UPDATE ERROR
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░░░░░░░░░░░

…
..
.

His  heart hurts. He slowly sits up, pushing himself upwards clutching his head. He pinches his eyes shut. Every heartbeat is a hammer against his head. He shifts in the darkness, curling in small and begging any mercy in the world to draw away the pain.
Slowly, horribly slowly, the pain begins to recede.
He can open one eye first.
He’s in a bed. An unfamiliar bed. One with luxe sheets that are silky. Across the room a fire flickers. In the grey hours of the morning, the window reveals a thick layer of snow. 
He closes his eye again, trying to process what he saw before opening them both to look around.
The room is vast. Stone. Like a prison made nice. Dark shadows cling to the edges the room even with the fire burning.
He shivers. The air outside the blanket is cold.
He closes his eyes again. He can’t quite piece together thoughts but he tries anyways. First thought is that he doesn’t know where he is. Second is he doesn’t know how he got wherever he is. Third thought is….
Third thought is he can’t remember anything. He can’t even think of his own name.
The realization slams into him all at once. He flings himself out of the bed in a sudden panic. How easily would it be for him to have been drugged and dragged to this- this– bedchambers? Probably not hard. His stomach growls telling him he’s starving. He’s always starving. He can feel it in his bones; a drawn out state of constant hunger that could kill him. All it'd take is a single potato chip to lure him into dangerous fates from how hungry he is.
He remembers nothing. Everything is unfamiliar.
He wants to cry looking around but panic won’t let him. He spins around in search of an exit. There’s a massive door that looks too heavy for him to even bother trying to open and there are the windows piled with snow. The windows are clearly his only escape. He just needs to break the window.
On the opposite end of the room is a desk. He runs to it, searching for anything implement heavy enough to break a window. He can’t help but notice the papers. Rows and rows of information on hunts and kills reported. His entire body quakes. He can’t help but flip through the papers in search of where he might be.
Northern Desert.
Tithes to the lord of the Northern Desert.
He looks out the window again. This certainly looks fucking northern from the snow and chill.
He looks again. All the papers have the same signature, a simple Shang Qinghua.
The handwriting feels familiar. The name too. That has to be his name. Or else something he can at least call himself as he mutters frantically trying to calm himself down enough to think.
Shang Qinghua finds a paperweight and clutches it in his hand, running back to the window. His hands are sweaty and shaking. It’s raised and ready to throw when the doors grind open. Everything in Shang Qinghua locks up, frozen like a statue as a small figure enters with a tray.
“Shang Qinghua?” a nasally voice calls without setting further into the room. She calls again before saying, “I’m leaving breakfast here by the door. I’ve been told you’re not to leave the palace in the lord’s absence.”
The heavy door drags over the stone again and she’s gone. Shang Qinghua slowly resumes breathing. He's not dead. Yet. But he is clearly a prisoner in this room, held captive by some lord, unable to leave. His fingers unclench around the paperweight and it falls to the floor making him jump and yelp with the same force as if it had fallen on his foot.
It would be stupid to eat the food. It would be stupid to. Really really stupid to.
He runs to it. He’s so hungry and his head still hurts. He very quickly gobbles it all down with his hands before grabbing the thick winter robes neatly folded on the foot of the bed. After far too long he manages to get them on as best he can. They fit perfectly. And the furs are soft and warm. They’ll make due in the frigid weather outside.
He breaks the window and clambers through. He ducks his head and pulls up the cloak as he moves through the knee deep snow and twists of what can only be called a palace designed by someone with no idea of what a blueprint is. People….if they could be called people with their terrifying visages, pass by him. Some hurry past without looking. Some bow. A few of the most terrifying ones leer at him bearing their awful jagged teeth as though they want to eat him. These people… are not people. Some look like they could be people, perhaps a little too pretty or too ugly, but many don’t even begin to resemble humans. They’re terrifying.
Kidnapped or no, he has to get out of here before someone decides that he’d be better for eating than letting pass.
Shang Qinghua has to fight to keep himself upright when all he wants to do is collapse and pretend to be dead until nightfall and the grounds clear out for bed. He trembles trying not to reveal himself.
“What the fuck?”
Shang Qinghua hiss and jumps badly when something flashes in front of his vision. 
[Ŗ̵̪̹̮̟̗̝̪̐Ȩ̷͖̦͈͋̇̀͋̉͊́́͂̊ͅ]
[R҉E҉B҉O҉O҉]
[REBOOT LOADING: 3%
System temporarily offline]
Shang Qinghua keeps moving. Whatever that is, he can't let it stop him. He's still half certain he's been kidnapped. He finds the kitchens and slips inside, stuffing a bag with as much as he can before anyone notices. He frantically plows his way through the snow, cutting in over a vast empty field littered with snow laden trees towards what he can only hope are stables from the look of it. Every few steps he looks over his shoulder to see if he’s being followed.
He’s not. But spots several figures bunched together standing and watching him go. It sends a shiver through his entire being. His escape is not a secret like he might have hoped. How could it, when he leaves a thick line in the snow cutting to the outbuildings?
The outbuildings are lit up, braziers burning bright. Inside he can hear voices talking in a language he can’t understand. Someone laughs loudly from within and two others groan. Shang Qinghua has to stand on tiptoes to peer inside where there blueish-tinged people sit around a table playing some game with small glass balls on the table. One flicks a ball and all the other’s jeer. The room they sit in is surround in tack and feed for horses. He successfully found the stables.
Shang Qinghua drops down. They’re all occupied. If he’s silent then maybe he can steal a horse and get out of–
He slips on a patch of ice, slamming hard on his knee and against the wall with an thud loud enough even the snow cannot pad it. The voices pick up. Someone asks “What was that?” and chairs rub against the floor. Shang Qinghua scrambles, trying to get to his feet. He realizes he’s too slow when the stable doors bang open with the frigid wind. He collapses onto the ground and hopes the might think him dead and leave him to freeze.
“Who’s that?” One of the person-like people asks.
Another answer in that language Shang Qinghua can’t understand.
He’s shaking now. His entire front is soaked from the snow. His cheeks sting. His fingers hurt so badly but even more terrifying is the prospect they might not hurt soon because then he can’t steal a horse.
“Isn’t he Mobei-jun’s pet?” a third person asks, provoking an entirely new fear in Shang Qinghua.
“Gongzi?” The first one asks, crunching through the snow towards him. Shang Qinghua keeps his face pressed into the snow pretending to be dead. He wishes he had a weapon. Any weapon. He should have dug through the snow for the paperweight at least. But of course he would be overpowered three against once and he’s…he’s a pet. Apparently. A prisoner in the lord’s bedchambers and a pet.
Hands even colder than the ice and wind drag his head around by his hair to look at him, touching under his nose to check his breath.
“Shang-gonzi? Are you dead?”
One from behind jokes, “He’d taste good if he were.” From the yelp the third kicks the one who speaks. 
“How brittle are human necks?” The one gripping his hair asks, lightly shaking his head back and forth. It makes him feel light headed and dizzy. It exposes him to the harsh wind battering at him to make him colder. “Does this look broken to you?”
He can feel the two others lean inwards to leer at him and assess whether his neck is broken. They mutter back and forth. They seemingly reach some sort of conclusion because they scoop him up and carry him inside, setting him on the floor of the barn. Two run back out into the snow while one paces back and forth muttering.
One eye open, Shang Qinghua tries to determine his chances of stealing a horse and getting the hell out. Like the one who delivered his breakfast, this– this– Person? Demon? Creature? Is small. Much smaller than him. But beefy, bound with muscle from wrangling the horses Shang Qinghua can hear.
Whether he wants to or not, this might be his own chance to escape the prison-palace. He waits until the demon has its back to him and leaps to his feet.
…Stumbles to his feet.
…Trips and falls back to his hands and knees, his entire body shaking from cold.
His captor screams in shock, jumping back and running towards him with a loud chatter. “Shang-gongzi! Oh Shang-gongzi we thought you were dead! Quick, quick we must get you back to the palace before you freeze into a raw feast platter.”
“Don’t touch me!” Shang Qinghua manages to rasp out. In throwing on hand over his head to keep the demon from grabbing it and turning it into a feast platter, he loses his balance and collapses back down.
“Oh Shang-gongzi!” the demon coos crouching over him with her hands drawn over his face. Her nails are long and tinged brownish-red in what he can only think is dried blood. “What do you need? Tea? You humans like tea, right? I can get you tea.”
“Y-yes. Get- get me tea.”
Somehow it works. The demon jumps up and leaves him crashed out on the floor. It’s his one chance to escape. With trembling legs he forces himself up, clutches his bag of food and runs through the barn to the stables. He passes line after line of warhorses and massive steeds. All are hardy, bred to survive the ice and wind. It’s only at the end of the line that he spots a horse clearly built for speed.
He doesn’t know if he knows how to ride a horse, but trying and failing it better than not trying at all. He throws open the stable doors and climbs onto the impatient horse. With a single kick the steed is running, galloping into the flurry of snow so thick Shang Qinghua can’t see the palace when he looks back.
Good.
He wraps his weak arms around the horse’s neck and rests nearly flat against trying not to fall off. Everything burns with cold but he’s out. He’s free. He’s not a prisoner or a pet of this lord of the Northern Desert.
Good. 
The first night is rough. After riding for most of the day all there is is snow around him. Sparse trees offer little coverage and no shelter from the wind. He’s shaking with cold. He can’t feel his fingers and when he does its worse because they hurt. Somehow, by some miracle of luck, he finds a small outcropping of rock that can block the wind. He curls on the ground wraps the thick cloak around himself so that only his face peeks out from the fur lining. Unbothered by the weather, the horse merely stamps its foot and rubs its neck against a tree.
Shang Qinghua’s jealous of the stupid horse. His teeth can’t stop clattering. His heart keeps jolting when he tries to remember anything about his situation and he can’t. He does at least feel confident his name is Shang Qinghua. That’s one thing. The literally only fucking thing he has right now.
He paws through his back of food stolen from the kitchens and eats a smaller meal than he’d like. Only then does he curl up with his eyes closed and tries to sleep despite the howling wind and pelting snow.
He has a single dream. A strange dream. One of a handsome man with long dark hair and broad shoulders deftly covered by flowing fabrics and a luxurious fur cloak. Cold eyes the same color as a frozen lake that pierce through him. His lips are drawn into a thin line. There is no kindness in his face despite its beauty. He looks down at Shang Qinghua who kneels at his feet. Shang Qinghua has a fraction of a second to process all of him when he raises a hand and brings it down at Shang Qinghua.
He wakes with a violent jolt as though he really has been hit. His chest rises and falls. His face stings and it takes a moment to process that it’s from the small opening in the hood of his cloak. He can’t stop thinking about the look in the man’s eyes. It was intentional. Disdain. Disgust. Like if he hit Shang Qinghua for a reason, or else he had a reason his his heart. Shang Qinghua buries his face in his hands trying to do away with his piercing eyes and cold cruelty but he can’t shake himself of it.
When he manages to poke his head up from his hiding place the wind strikes him with a cruel force. But the frigid night has granted him the singular grace of a new blanket of snow hiding his tracks. The only tracks around him are from his horse wandering through the night.
He finds her and struggles to mount and when he does he clings to her neck as she lopes through the snow, taking him further and further away from that palace he was a prisoner and pet in.
That word twists in his mind. 
Pet.
There are so many things that pet could mean, all of which are terrifying to a man with no memories.
Pet could mean something to be kept, a companion of sorts. But when he thinks that, his mind jumps to something sexual. He did wake up in a bedroom, caught in the sheets of a vast, silky bed and warmed by a softly burning fire. That sends an unbidden warmth through his body that leaves him lightheaded. The dream of the exorbitantly attractive man hitting him flashes through his mind and pet takes on a new meaning, one much worse.
[SYSTEM REBOOT: 5%]
  A jolt of fear.
  An order.
  An aching side.
  A leash around his neck.
  Curled under a table in fright, the leash around his neck drawing back to a bed where a man lays asleep. A mildly familiar man with dark hair and handsomeness that is unparalleled, only now twisted in discomfort.
All the air is ripped from Shang Qinghua’s lungs when he hits the ground having lost his grip on the horse’s mane with a new memory flooding his mind. He lays on his back inhaling ragged, fractured chokes of air.
Snow slowly drifts from the sky downwards. His horse stomps its foot in annoyance. And Shang Qinghua lays there on the ground trying to make sense of the memory that flashed before him. Because that’s what he knows it was. A memory. An answer to what pet might mean. He was a prisoner to this Mobei-jun. He needs to get out of here. Beyond the snow. It doesn’t matter where he goes. He just needs to make sure he’s far enough away.
His side aches in combination of the memory and the fall. Very gingerly he pushes himself upright. He doesn’t get back onto the horse, instead taking her reins and slowly walking through the knee deep snow.
He at least makes some progress getting away. A long day of walking and the landscape begins to change. He has hope of escape. And the system progress bar at the base of his vision, whatever it is, has increased to a whole 7%.
At nightfall he dares to make a small campfire to warm his fingers and toes. And eat the small bun he swiped from the kitchens. He sits warming himself and nibbles around the edges of the bun first before biting into the center. His hunger overtakes him and he takes another huge chomp, and another. Three big bites is all it takes for the bun to be in his overfilled mouth.
He chews on it, heavy chomps trying to eat through it, but it’s hard. A knot catches in his throat making eating feel impossible. He keeps chewing and tries to swallow but the knot rises, blocking the food. He struggles, fighting it, before he suddenly bursts into aggrieved tears and a wretched sob around the bun.
It’s a flurry of emotions that overwhelm him. Confusion and fear are overwhelming. He knows he’s terrified of this Mobei-jun. The injustice of it all sits at the top of his heart too. How unfair he lost his memories, or if he never had them to begin with. But frustration is the worst. Frustration that he doesn’t remember who he is or where he is or how even much danger he’s in. Frustration at how entirely helpless he is curled in the snow with a morsel of stolen foot as his measly fire struggles to sustain itself in the wind. Frustration at the world and frustration at himself. He wants to kick and scream. But there’s nothing he can kick aside from the snow. All he can do is shiver as he forces down the three bites of food to subside the piercing hunger in his stomach.
That night he dreams more of the recovered memory. He dreams about being woken to a foot in the center of his back and being kicked out of the bed with a hard thud onto the floor. He remembers how fast his heart beat, fast enough to make him light headed. And he remembers day after day passing bound to the man, caught in service as a pet and prisoner. He remembers Mobei-jun flashing with anger so much his eyes illuminate like crackling lightning. He remembers the distrain, the look at Shang Qinghua when he says “An Ding Peak” that tells him he doesn’t even view him as a person and instead something to be crushed under his heel with disdain.
Shang Qinghua wakes with the same sickening feeling that tormented him through the night. He lays on his back watching the snow trying to let his heart calm its rapid grind against his chest. 
“An Ding Peak…” he murmurs to himself watching the snow lazily drift onto him. One snowflake in particularly drags a long slow spiral through the air. The bright sun catches against it. Is An Ding Peak somewhere he wants to go? Or somewhere he must avoid at all costs? Would this Mobei-jun know to hunt him there if he dared try to find it?
“Fuck me” Shang Qinghua murmurs to no one when a snowflake lands square in his eye. He scrunches his face and admits that he should keep moving. There’s no use in fleeing to simply freeze to death. He pushes himself up and covers the fire with snow. His horse his under the trees a short ways away and wakes as he approaches.
He starts the morning walking. After riding for so long the thought of getting back on the horse is unbearable. His ass is sore like it never has been before. Or maybe it has and he just can’t remember. He laughs to himself for the first time and digs through his bag for a strip of dried meat to gnaw on in his good mood. Even the dreary landscape can’t kill his good mood.
The further he walks through the trees a strange feeling grows on him. It’s been two nights now, long enough that his absence would surely be noticed. If he was a valuable pet then he had to have been reported gone. At first he has a petty bitterness that he’s not even a valuable enough pet to send people to hunt him down, but soon that pettiness morphs into paranoia that he is being hunted and he doesn’t know it. The hairs on the back of his neck prickle and he can’t help but looking over his shoulder every few minutes.
His anxiety mounts when he meets the first road he’s encountered. He stands at the edge of where the snow is clear and wagon wheels have clearly passed through recently. He doesn’t dare step onto the road as if it were weighted with alarms to announce his location. 
He looks around again.
There are no signs of anyone nearby. Still that paranoia persists and intensifies.
He travels at a distance parallel the road. He keeps himself to the shadows of the trees feeling that this will be safer. 
The more he walks the more he wishes he had a weapon. He picks up a long stick from the ground and experimentally thrusts it into the air. It really isn’t much. It’s kind of pathetic really. He can’t imagine having swarms of those demons descending upon them and trying to wield a rotting stick to defend himself. He might laugh them to death with the comedy of it, but truly protect himself? It’s less than useless. He tosses the stick aside with a loud groan and kicks the snow in that same frustration that rose up in him before.
What he needs is a real sword.
“WHat the fuck!?” Shang Qinghua yelps when his outstretched hand fills with a sword. It’s heavy and he drops it into the snow. “What the fuck? What the fuck?! What???” he gasps over and over, dropping to his knees to cautiously poke it with a single finger to make sure it’s real and he isn’t losing his mind.
The metal is cold, even against his cold hands. It’s solid. He’s not hallucinating, or at least he doesn’t think he is. It feels distinctly different from the bark on the stick.
“Am I magic?” he gasps to himself grabbing the hilt and raising it up towards the sky. A smile crests his face. “Am I an absolute god?!”
Excitement at a real weapon floods him. He jumps to his feet and swings the sword hard into a tree. The impact of metal on wood takes him by surprise and makes his shoulder ache but it only makes him more excited. He leaves the sword in the tree and focuses hard on anything he can think of, anything any wayward tendrils of memory might latch onto and finds a faint memory of a drink called coffee. He holds his hands ready for a cup to appear and focuses hard on making the warm drink appear.
…
Nothing appears.
He tries again, this time scrunching his face to force the drink into existence but his cold hands remain empty.
“Ahhh” he groans kicking the snow in disappointment. Now he has a faint memory of sitting under a blanket in an uncomfortable chair sipping at the drink as his eyes burn from a bright light, he wants it badly. He bitches to the nearest tree. “Really? Just swords? I have the power of a god but I can only pull swords from the air?”
He tries what he did with the sword again and nothing happens. He tries a third time hoping that his single super-human power wasn’t single use and wasted to whack at a few trees. To his absolute relief, the cold weight drops his hand and the sword from the tree is back in his hand. Shang Qinghua stares at it for a beat before jumping up and down whooping.
[User Purchase-Perk: Mobei-jun proximity alert. Radius 3]
He immediately falls silent and drops to his hands and knees, flattening himself in the deep snow. He doesn’t even breathe. He peers over the edge of the snow expecting to see the man in his dream marching over the snow, his long cloak billowing out behind him and hair drifting with the icy wind. But all there is are trees and snow and the sound of his horse huffing.
“Don’t do that! We’re being quiet!” Shang Qinghua hisses but the horse betrays him by pawing at the snow in search of food beneath. The horse isn’t going to give up and will keep making them both a massive target.
Giving one more look around hoping radius 3 means far away and not say, three feet away, he runs bent to the horse and scrambles onto her back, kicking her hard to make her run.
This time he nudges her to the road. They need to move fast and they need to not leave a trail. At least on the road hoof prints won’t look out of place and they can move fast, even if they’re exposed.
Shang Qinghua is faint. He wraps his arms around the neck of the horse and begs her to move faster and hopes they won’t bump into someone he doesn’t want to. The palace was huge. What if Mobei-jun has fleets of demons closing in to surround him? Suddenly he curses his bitterness at not being a valuable pet. It would have been better if he were garbage. Nothing worth taking a second look at. Worthless and unloved instead of waking in the center of a massive fancy bed warmed by a grand fire with a demon delivering breakfast.
The wind stings his eyes and tears escape. They freeze as the roll down his cheeks, becoming crystal drops before they reach his chin.
  “Spoiled!”
The single word plunges through his memory like an arrow through the center of a target. It isn’t his voice. It’s the same voice of the other memories, except this time deeper. Matured. And angry. Full of rage. Shang Qinghua winces at it knowing the single word is directed at him. He feels pain around it even if he can’t remember why.
“Please hurry faster,” he whispers to the horse. Faster where, he doesn’t know. Just away.
He doesn’t get another proximity alert. He does however suffer through the system recovery hitting 7.5% and remember sitting in a vast throne room, dark and flicking with candles as he hunches over a mountain of scrolls. Without warning a large hand hits him in the back of the head hard enough to slam him forward into the stone table. He feels the crack and the flow of hot blood in his nose. He clutches his face and turns to look up at Mobei-jun frowning down on him with a detached coldness at the blood he just spilled. Unlike the previous memory, he’s an adult now and fucking huge. If it weren’t for how terrifying the memory is, Shang Qinghua might have thought he was attractive.
Or, well, he’s a masochist apparently because he thinks that anyways.
Nightfall arrives and he finally see the glow of civilization. Excitement rushes through him until he gets to the town and is chased away in terror at the very distinctly nothing-like-human people occupying the village. Like a woeful little creature, he’s left out in the snow for another night until he realizes that his clothes are soaked through and surely he’s about to die. Only then does he tuck his tail between his legs and scamper back into town in search of somewhere to stay.
Somehow even these demons have inns. Warm ones that seal out the cold. And they even have baths where hot water can be delivered and he can thaw his bones. He even has a fancy necklace on his chest that he assumes is a marker of being a pet because their eyes widen when he hands it over in payment.
The water, barely lukewarm, scalds him when he lowers himself into the tub. He winces and hisses and whimpers lowering himself in but once he’s in all his muscles relax and he lets out a long hum of delight. He even reaches for the cup of warmed wine that was sent up to him without his request. When his body gets used to the temperature he leans over the edge to drag the buckets of scalding water over and dumps them into the bath.
Before getting into the tub he had passed his clothes off to the innkeeper to lay out by a fire to dry. Laid back in the tub with his eyes closed he can only hope that he won’t be caught while buck-ass naked luxuriating in a tub and finally, finally feeling a little human for the first time in his memory. 
  Shang Qinghua hides under a table watching Mobei-jun undress. Layer by layer, he peels back his clothes to let them drop onto the floor into a dark pool of fabric at his feet. In front of of him a large bath steams. Given how pruney Shang Qinghua’s hands are, he knows he’s the one who carried those buckets into the room. 
  Mobei-jun ignores him as he steps into the tub. He doesn’t look the least bit concerned that Shang Qinghua will hurt him. Will attack him. Will rip the leash from his neck, summon his sword with his super awesome sword summoning ability and cut his master’s head off. No, instead Mobei-jun lazily points a single finger to the door without even looking at him and says, “Get me something to eat.”
Shang Qinghua makes a face at the memory. This is meant to his his moment to relax, not get obtrusive flashes of someone else relaxing. He pinches his nose and sinks under the water. There he remains until his heart rate finally slows. 
He recovers his clothes from the innkeeper after his bath. They’ve been washed. The yellows are bright again and fabrics soft. Shang Qinghua pulls on the inner most layers and collapses face first onto the bed, rolling in delight at the soft blankets before laying like a starfish over the whole entire thing for far too long.
He dreams of many things. Of running over a mountain with others, each carrying a heavy stack of books. Of delivering pancakes with extra sugar to an old man. Of tea with a narrow faced man that calls him Airplane and asshole in equal measure. Of laying in the rafters of a high room, leg hurting and shaking in fear. Helplessness. And he dreams of Mobei-jun beneath him, pacing back and forth, snarling to himself in anger and muttering about catching Shang Qinghua. 
He wakes in a cold sweat. His one night in a comfortable bed ruined by the memories.
The small bar at the bottom of his vision tells him that the system recovery is up to 9% but stalled  entirely now. If this is 9% of his memories, then he’s scared to see what the other 91% are. So far his past has been less than kind to him.
The past may be unkind, but the present is very kind. He nearly cries when there’s a knock on the door and breakfast is delivered. It’s a little…raw and bloody and frozen… but given he ran out of stolen buns and only has a few dried fruits, dried meat and handfuls of uncooked rice left in his bag he chokes it down with a delighted grimace. He eats it hunched by the fire in a back room, slowly rotating to warm himself thoroughly. He gulps down cup after cup of hot tea. And he partakes in a few of the small cakes they offer him too, admittedly shoving a few into his pockets for later when no one is looking and asking for more.
Shang Qinghua wants to throw a tantrum and stay forever when it’s time to pull on his cloak and leave the warm inn. He would stay another night, another week, another year if not for the proximity alert flashing before him again. Even as the innkeepers insist that he stay a little longer, enjoy one more cup of tea, eat one more cake, or have another rest by the fire he insists he has to leave immediately. 
All the warmth and relax is pulled from his body and he quickly hurries into the snow and biting ind after bidding they not mention his stay to anyone…not that it will do him any good given how terrifying and powerful Mobei-jun clearly is.
He forgot his thick cloak running out so quickly. He almost turns around to return to the inn when his entire body fills with tension when for the first time the proximity alert changes. From a radius 3 to a radius 2. As he’s fleeing as fast as he can from the inn, it flashes radius 1 before expanding back out to a radius 2 the further away from the inn he gets. A deep horror fills him when he realizes that the innkeepers wanted to feed him and make him stay because they likely summoned Mobei-jun upon payment of the necklace and tried to keep him there like a fattened hog in a feed lot. It makes him want to sob that his one moment of safety was truly the most danger he’s been in since his escape.
Another half day of riding when the second worst thing that could happen does: his horse gets spooked. Seemingly over nothing, his horse rears back knocking him off. For the second time he lays in the snow gasping to recover the air knocked from his lungs, only this time his horse keeps running while he remains in the snow. Before he can even get on his feet again, she’s out of sight. Shang Qinghua stands bent over with his hands on his knees cursing and trying not to let that knot of frustration in his throat win again.
It doesn’t. But he walks along the side of the road sniffling and trying to fight back tears. He kicks a rock through the muddy slush thinking himself lower than even it. He shivers every few steps. He doesn’t have much to hate but right now he hates everything and most of all he hates Mobei-jun.
…Most of all he just feels sad and pathetic and utterly hopeless. He has nowhere to go. He doesn’t even know anywhere to go. When the proximity alert goes off for a third time and that feeling of being hunted presses against his chest to suffocate him, he almost gives up and plops his ass into the center of the road to lay down and play dead until a cart runs over him for real or he’s caught.
He keeps moving as quickly as he can. The dull grey landscape is overwhelming. All he knows is that Mobei-jun is whatever radius 2 means distance away from him. He can’t see him. He can’t hear him. All he hears is the low caw of a bird and the shake of wings. Snow falls around him but suddenly it’s disorienting. He stumbles as he climbs over the bank of the road, refusing to get caught like a rat in a trap. He half trudges, half runs through the snow, through the walls of trees, hoping to find somewhere he can hide but no hole in the earth opens to swallow him up. 
He trips and face plants over a branch under the snow with a grunt. 
Everything hurts. He’s freezing cold. He’s hungry again. His fingers hurt. His feet hurt. Even his cheeks hurt. The injustice, the fear, the frustration. All of it is enough to leave him face down in the snow given up. The [User Purchase-Perk: Mobei-jun proximity alert. Radius 1], however, is too much to remain on the ground.
The feeling of being hunted is too powerful. Every noise, real and imagined, causes him to spin around. The wind betrays him, the rustle through the trees. The crunch of snow under his own foot sends him into a frantic run. He can feel eyes on him, feel the prickle at the back of his neck and hairs stand on end. He can feel how vulnerable he is, how tender he is. He can imagine the agony of that remembered strike slamming into him, piercing him through the same as the cold pierces his lungs. 
   “If you want to keep your legs, stay there and don't move!”
The bellowed words cause him to stumble. He can’t tell if they’re in his head, his memory, of if he’s finally been caught. All he knows if that he wants to keep his legs and if Mobei-jun would even threaten that, the odds of him keeping them after running away are exceedingly low if caught.
He keeps running.
In the corner of his vision he sees movement, a flash through the shadows, something dark shifting.
   “Qinghua.”
Shang Qinghua ignores it and dives through the trees in the opposite direction, slamming into them and bouncing off as he runs until he breaks into a clearing where the snow hangs in the air in gusting cascades. There’s nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run. His tracks through the snow will betray him no matter what.
“Qinghua!”
Shang Qinghua spins around and stumbles, backing away from the edge of the forest where he came from. A cold sword appears in his hands. They can’t stop shaking him. He tries to yell but his voice catches in his throat.
From the shadows steps a man. The man of his memories. Tall and cold. An unreadable expression that can only be rage at his pet escaping. Terrifying. The wind whips his cloak around, the fine fibers of fur on his collar catching snowflakes and warping in the wind. The snow crunches under his foot when he calmly walks towards Shang Qinghua as though a chase where beneath him. 
“Qinghua, come here.”
The cold order is detached. Truly a command fit for property, not a person.
Shang Qinghua’s knees are weak. He clutches his sword in both hands, raising it to chest hight. He knows he doesn’t look scary. He knows he looks as terrified as he is. But he’s rather die fighting than submit himself.
The knot in his throat catches again and he chokes on the cold air.
Mobei-jun takes another step forward.
Shang Qinghua backs up. He’s trapped at the center of the clearing now with nowhere to run. His eyes flit upwards to the sky wishing he could sprout wings and fly. 
“Qinghua!” he barks, this time with more urgency. More anger. The same anger as when he snarled “if you want to keep your legs, stay there and don't move!”
Shang Qinghua truly has nowhere to go, nothing left he can do except fight. It only takes Mobei-jun three steps to close the space between them, three simple steps to lose his freedom. All he has left between life and captivity is the single flimsy point of a sword against a man who looks more like a demon or a god than a person.
He doesn’t know if he can do it. He doesn’t know if he can stab him even for his own freedom.
He tightens his shaking grip on the sword, raising it, and barks his final warning before collapsing into the snow to fake his death or beg forgiveness.

“This Mobei-jun will help you remember.”
He says that staring into Shang Qinghua’s eyes. There is intensity, an intensity that is downright terrifying, but there is something more to it. There is no anger, no rage or distrust. No haughty ownership or power to assert over an escaped pet. Instead Mobei-jun looks softer than any recovered memory. Anxious. Worried. He’s scared.
He’s scared that Shang Qinghua won’t believe him.
His fingers move, brushing along Shang Qinghua’s cheek. Even in the frigid ice, his touch is cold. It doesn’t hurt though. It's the sort of cold to calm an ache. The touch is gentle and assuring.
At his side, his other hand drips with blood from where he grabbed the sword. It hangs limply by his side, dark drops staining the snow they stand on with the same intensities the memories he holds stains Shang Qinghua’s heart. And yet the hand on his cheek wins and Shang Qinghua shudders into it.
“Help… me remember?” Shang Qinghua asks quietly.
“Mn,” Mobei-jun says. He closes his eyes and touches his forehead to Shang Qinghua’s. “I’ll help you remember. Just don’t leave me again.”
His words settle into Shang Qinghua, a heavy blanket over the quivering terror demanding he keep running. He believes them. Every memory he has tells him not to, but he believes Mobei-jun with their foreheads pressed together. He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t trust him. But he believes him.
In the state he’s in, that has to be enough, right?
Voice caught in his throat, he gives the tiniest nod. That seems to be enough because the edges of Mobei-jun’s lips quirk upwards.
“Thank you, Qinghua.”
Shang Qinghua suddenly realizes that he’s no longer cold. The air around him has warmed. The harsh wind has died. The grey landscape feels more vibrant behind Mobei-jun, as though the world is responding to their tenuous reunion. 
Mobei-jun draws back. His fingers trace up Shang Qinghua’s cheek to brush his dampened hair from his face. Shang Qinghua can’t help the way he winces, expecting the memory of a strike to actualize. No strike arrives on him skin. Nor does any touch. Mobei-jun’s hand falls and a frown returns to him. It sends a jolt of lighting through Shang Qinghua, his fear awakening inside him again.
He shakes in his boots.
Mobei-jun draws half a pace back. He unclasps his massive fur cloak from his shoulders, gracefully spinning it from his back and onto Shang Qinghua’s in a single smooth movement. The cloak is soft and warm, and the high fur collar gives Shang Qinghua a place to cower.
Again when a hand is placed at the small of his back, Shang Qinghua’s body tenses and demands he run. Or faint and play dead. He almost faints. He suddenly realizes his legs are weak and head is light. He can barely keep himself balanced when he takes a single step forward.
Mobei-jun doesn’t notice because he asks, “Can you fly?”
“No,” Shang Qinghua replies. It’s a stupid question. If he could fly, he would have sprouted wings and flown away the second he decided to flee. He pulls the cloak tighter around himself. He fumbles with it as an excuse to stop walking and regain himself before he wavers right into the ground. Mobei-jun stops and waits. His hand never leaves Shang Qinghua’s lower back.
When Shang Qinghua can’t fidget with the cloak any longer and he thinks he can walk without his knees buckling, they resume walking. They return to the road where Mobei-jun tosses his hand into the air, sending a small drift of ice speeding away. Not two minutes later, a carriage pulled by those massive black war horses he saw in the stables emerges into sight.
“M-my king?” Shang Qinghua stammers suddenly realizing that he’s about to be taken back to the prison of a palace and collared again. He shrivels when those cold eyes cast downwards at him again, and the beg not to return dies in his throat.
Mobei-jun’s expression tightens seeing him shrink. His fingers curl against Shang Qinghua’s back and he asks “Yes?” in a demanding tone that won’t accept silence for an answer. 
His knees suddenly feel weak again. He stumbles the last few steps to the carriage and stops with a hand out on the cold wood to balance himself.
“Qinghua?”
He lets his knees buckle, collapsing to the ground to kneel in front of Mobei-jun and beg forgiveness. Before he lands, he’s caught. Large hands catch under his arms and encase him, slowly lowering him so he makes no hard impact with the ugly slush of snow at the side of the road.
His entire body is shaking from every memory he holds slamming against him. He doesn’t even know whether to beg for his freedom or simply beg for his life.
He doesn’t have to beg because Mobei-jun scoops him out of the snow and easily lifts him into the carriage. He sets him on a thick, padded seat lined with dark blue velvet. Shang Qinghua leans away from him, pressing himself against the opposite door like a scared creature in a confined cage with a hand reaching in to grab him. Mobei-jun says something about a town to the driverless horses and climbs in and sits opposite him, making the carriage lurch when his weight shifts. Wanting to hide, Shang Qinghua pulls the cloak tighter around himself and hides in the fur collar, his eyes barely peeking over the dense fur to watch Mobei-jun who watches him in turn.
A new memory stirs in the back of his head but it doesn’t quite draw itself forth. It sits in the back of his mind like an itch.
The carriage begins to sway. Mobei-jun doesn’t speak. He sits with his hands clasped in his lap between his spread legs. Shang Qinghua can still see the deep cut on his palm from where Mobei-jun grabbed his blade. The whole hand is pink, but the wound is deep and black from the depth of blood. He doesn’t look like it bothers him, but it bothers Shang Qinghua. He could face retribution for it.
Shang Qinghua tries to focus on anything else. Without his cloak, Mobei-jun's chest is exposed. His muscles. His collarbone. His long neck framed by thick, dark hair. His jaw is tensed, powerful and square as he directs all attention at the man cowering in his own furs. Shang Qinghua can’t help but stare at him.
“Where are we going, my king?” Shang Qinghua squeaks after a long time.
“Crystal Rhyme Inn” Mobei-jun replies as if that’s an answer that means anything.
Shang Qinghua purses his lips and looks out the window at the passing landscape. Maybe there’s still time to pretend he died and hope he’s a useless enough pet his body would be abandoned on the side of the road. Although, he argues with himself, if so much effort was put into hunting him down surely he won’t get away that easily.
So maybe to get away with his life and limbs intact he needs to stop thinking about escape and think about hugging those thick thighs.

They arrive back at the inn Shang Qinghua stayed at the night before. Shang Qinghua wants to stay in the carriage where the enclosure feels safer than the vast outside, but Mobei-jun stands expectantly at the carriage door. He awkwardly scoots along the velvet seat keeping his eyes down as if he's trying to sneak past a panther hunched and ready to attack. He holds his breath at a new memory of Mobei-jun grabbing him by the back of the neck, scruffing him and lifting him high in the air as he yelps and begs, promising he just needs to finish two more orders before they can go to bed. It makes his entire body hurt.
He yelps loudly when Mobei-jun touches him getting out of the carriage as if the brush again his arm were a blow to the back of the head.
Mobei-jun grabs him. “Are you hurt?”
Shang Qinghua shakes his head with his eyes pinched shut and shoulders pulled up to his ears. “N-no.”
He's led inside. He's taken to a different room than before, a larger one on the upper floor. Light flows in from the vast windows overlooking the street where what could be called people but certainly aren’t people pass along the street. One side of the room has the bed, large and vast and plush, although nowhere as nice as the one Shang Qinghua woke up in. The other side of the room has a silk screen divider and a tub. Beautiful paintings hang on the wall and a handsome sculpture of a wolfen figure rests on a chest of drawers. 
Shang Qinghua stands just beyond the threshold waiting for an order. No order comes. Instead Mobei-jun moves past him to the small hearth surrounded by lovely crystal blue tiles. Shang Qinghua stares at him moving, building a base before striking a flame and breathing life into the little fire.
Realizing that no order is going to be cast over him, he wanders through the room. He’s half looking for escapes and half taking it in. He keeps his ears perked for movements behind him, worried that an attack from behind might still be coming.
He touches the blanket over the bed. It’s impossibly thin. It looks like it wouldn’t hold in any warmth at all, leaving the bed’s occupant shaking with cold given the nipping ice outside. Through the window a gust of wind picks up, sending snowflakes swirling. The sun is beginning to set, casting a purple and blue-grey haze through the air.
“It’s yours tonight” Mobei-jun suddenly says from behind him. Shang Qinghua’s hand jolts back, hiding under the vast cloak away from the bed. He wrings them together and asks, “Where are you sleeping?”
Mobei-jun studies him for a moment then sits in a firm armchair in answer. Shang Qinghua swallows hard and looks back to the bed. Hesitantly, expecting the bed to turn into a vast black hole and devour him alive, Shang Qinghua clambers up onto it and sits facing Mobei-jun.
There’s a long silence where the only sounds are the snow battering the window and Shang Qinghua’s pulse beating loudly in his ears.
Mobei-jun readjusts, settling into the chair. He studies Shang Qinghua intensely. Finally he says, “You forgot things.”
Shang Qinghua rejects the words. They sound accusatory. Like it’s something he did. He can’t forget what he never knew. He has no memories, not forgetting a few miscellaneous facts. 
Mobei-jun accepts his silence as confirmation and says, “What do you remember?”
“I–”
Is it better to tell him he knows he kept him as a pet on a leash and in his bed? Or better to pretend he knows nothing at all? Surely from how he winces and yelps, Mobei-jun has pierced together that he knows enough to be properly scared of him. His mind is working so hard he can’t think. 
“Qinghua,” Mobei-jun says. “It’s okay.”
Shang Qinghua snaps his mouth shut. It’s too late though. A knot rises in his throat hearing the simple words. He wants to believe it so, so badly but everything he knows rejects the possibility of okay trapped alone in the room with this massive man who is more than capable of hurting him. He balls his fists around the edges of the robes and twists in a mindless attempt at distraction. 
It feels like hours pass as the sky darkens outside.
Shang Qinghua tries to remember something, anything that isn’t terrifying. He keeps rolling the words ‘my king’ in his mind over and over and over again. Those words, those two tiny words feel so familiar, so warm and safe. Words that can break through his panic, words that become almost a mantra repeated in his mind.
He jolts when Mobei-jun suddenly stands, effortlessly spanning the distance between them in two large steps. The bed dips next to him, descending under Mobei-jun’s weight. Shang Qinghua tries and fails to stop himself from bumping shoulders with the man.
Closer he can feel the way the cold clings to Mobei-jun despite sitting so close to the fire. He can smell the faintness of the forest he chased Shang Qinghua through. He can see fine lines of faded scars on his chest. And he can suddenly see the shadows under his eyes, the fatigue creeping over his elegant face. And he can see that strange softness again.
“You are trying,” Mobei-jun says to him. It knocks him out of his revelry. “I see that.”
He raises his hand, soft enough this time that Shang Qinghua does not flinch although he still steels himself. He doesn’t strike Shang Qinghua at all. Instead he pats Shang Qinghua on the top of his head.
Once.
Twice.
Three head pats for Shang Qinghua.
Softness fills Shang Qinghua. Each head pat is a release from the agony he’s felt since waking. A touch that he wants to melt into. A most absurd reassurance in his tousled hair.
And then Mobei-jun stands up and walks away. He stops at the door before saying, “You think. I will make you food….” there’s a pause in which he studies him. “Forgive me, Qinghua, but I’m sealing the room. I can’t have you leave me again.”
The door closes and latches.
Shang Qinghua waits to the count of twenty and jumps up. He tries the door but it won’t open despite not hearing a lock grind shut. He scurries to the window and pries it open. Cold air and snow blasts against the warmth heated by the fire Mobei-jun built. He tries to climb out but is met with a force that prevents him from crawling away.
“Shit!” Shang Qinghua exclaims trying to hit the force. He even summons his sword again, now stained from Mobei-jun’s blood, and tries to stab and slash at what he can’t see. Between slashes he curses to the world “Are you telling me I can summon swords but he can make a fucking prison! Anytime he wants!?”
Four more good slashes and a massive gash in the window frame and Shang Qinghua gives up. There’s no use trying to escape again so he closes the window and moves onto the only two alternatives: playing dead or hugging thighs.
He looks at his sword and contemplates how he could play dead more convincingly than just flopping on the floor like a dead fish, but those three head pats linger in his mind.
He can remember himself calling Mobei-jun “my king!” but can’t remember anything else except his outburst. He knows it doesn’t feel scared. What is feels he can’t figure out though.
He ends up sitting by the fire wrapped in the fur cloak letting the warmth finally push all the cold from the depths of his bones. Again he murmurs to himself  “My king” again and again, hoping those two words can offer not only calmness but answers to who he is, what he’s doing, and why he clearly matters to Mobei-jun enough to hunt through the snow but not immediately kill.
His chest feels horribly empty as the word clatter around his heart. He feels so empty it hurts but he doesn’t understand what’s supposed to fill it or how to recover his memories of what once did. All he can do is mumble “my king” over and over to sooth that ache. 
There’s a rap on the door and that deep voice calls “Qinghua” through the wood.
“Y-yes, my king!” Shang Qinghua says trying to unwind himself from the massive cloak to run to the door and open it. He’s barely up, still on his hands and knees trying to push himself up when Mobei-jun lets himself in. He supports a tray with a large covered bowl, several smaller bowls and three cups in one hand. With the other he closes the door, making sure it latches.
“I made noodles,” he says approaching Shang Qinghua. The way he speaks carries emphasis, as if he thinks that these noodles are special to Shang Qinghua. They might be, but Shang Qinghua doesn’t remember if they are. 
He sets the tray down on the chest of drawers. The moment he lifts the lid of the bowl Shang Qinghua’s mouth waters and stomach growls loudly. It’s torturous as he sprinkles something over the bowl before delivering it to Shang Qinghua, holding it out to him knelt on the ground.
Shang Qinghua feels like a beggar reaching up for the bowl of noodles but he can’t even care. The moment his fingers close around the hot ceramic he’s ready to gulp them down, heavens be damned if his scalds his entire mouth off. 
The first bite of noodles nearly sends him spiraling into a heart attack. The noodles are thick and chewy, clearly hand pulled. And the broth that clings to them is rich and salty. There’s a little heat to it but not an unbearable amount. And the green onions scattered over the top are still vivid and bright instead of wilted had they been added when the noodles were served. And there’s large chunks of meat in the bowl. Shang Qinghua lifts one up and pops it into his mouth, chewing with a moan at how the marbled fat melts against his tongue.
He returns to the noodles, shoving them into his mouth like it’s a final meal. Or a first meal. In all of his memory, this is his first proper meal. One good enough to bring tears to his eyes. 
   Shang Qinghua lays on a couch dragged into a kitchen. His leg is wrapped with a splint bound to it. It hurts but a dull throbbing ache rather than a sharp pain. He sprawls on his stomach with his chin resting on his interlocked fingers. He’s watching Mobei-jun who looks utterly befuddled.
   “This is supposed to work.” Mobei-jun says staring at the noodles as if their lack of cooperation is a personal affront against his royal bloodline. “Qinghua, what am I supposed to do?”
  “Little me has to get up and help?” Shang Qinghua says with a groan and grimace as he rolls to move.
   “No!” Mobei-jun says. “Your only task is to rest and heal. I will figure it out.”
   Shang Qinghua snorts.
   Mobei-jun turns pink and tries pulling the noodles thin again. This time they don’t break and he deems them good enough to place in the pot. He then turns his attention to cutting vegetables.
  “My king?” Shang Qinghua calls. Mobei-jun immediately lowers his knife to give Shang Qinghua his full attention. Shang Qinghua waves him over saying “Come here and kneel down.”
   Mobei-jun kneels in front of him, his head facing downwards as though about to pledge his life to him.
  “Look up?”
   Mobei-jun meets his gaze. Shang Qinghua smiles, a big toothy smile. He reaches out and brushes a streak of flour from Mobei-jun’s cheek, joking, “I can’t let my king walk around covered in flour or someone might think I asked for noodles just because I wanted to embarrass you.”
  Mobei-jun blinks slowly at him. In all seriousness he says, “I wouldn’t be embarrassed serving Qinghua noodles.”
   Shang Qinghua snorts loudly. Mobei-jun remains kneeling. The broth and noodles bubble loudly on the stove.
   “Qinghua?” Mobei-jun says suddenly. 
   “Hm? What is it?”
   There’s a pause before Mobei-jun says, “Thank you for saving me.”
   The snorted laugh fades and Shang Qinghua stares at him in shock at the thank. His mind is blank except for a strange lurch filling his chest. 
   Mobei-jun stands. Shang Qinghua looks up at him still in shock. A hand reaches out, hesitates, and pats his head.
  Once.
  Twice.
  Three head pats.
  He returns to the noodles that have been cooked and serves a bowl to deliver to Shang Qinghua who grunts and flails his leg outwards in an attempt to sit upright. The bowl isn’t neat. The presentation is less than perfect. But he delivers the noodles to Shang Qinghua saying, “Hand pulled noodles. As Qinghua requested.”
Shang Qinghua doesn’t even realize that he’s crying into the bowl as he shoves noodles into his mouth, choking on them but unwilling to stop eating. The memory is utterly overwhelming, the taste of the noodles combining with the noodles of the past. The noodles fill that aching hole of missing memories in his chest.
“Qinghua?” Mobei-jun asks. He lowers himself to kneel in front of where Shang Qinghua hunches over the bowl of noodles. With noodles hanging from his mouth and tears rolling down his cheeks, Shang Qinghua looks up at him. “Is it too hot?”
Shang Qinghua shakes his head. He slurps the noodles dangling from his lips, chocking and gaps, “They’re perfect.”

Chapter Text

❆ Mobei-Jun

Mobei-jun never likes leaving his frozen palace.

Or, well, he never likes leaving without Shang Qinghua. He has no problem leaving with Shang Qinghua under his arm. Or, when Shang Qinghua leaves him first, he rather enjoys passing through the shadows to the little man’s room so he may wait for him to enter and scare him. He’s cute when scared, and now he’s learned that it’s not fun when Shang Qinghua cowers in fear, a little jump scare is the best he can get of that sharp inhale, widened eyes and squeaked “My king!”

It’ll only be a week in the far northern territories that are so cold that the weak human wouldn’t survive even with all of Mobei-jun’s protections combined. A devastatingly long period away. He’s put this trip off for months and now there is no delaying it without unrest growing. No demon clan would understand that he defers his responsibilities to sit beside a scrawny human all day. He can’t really explain it to himself, so all he can do is resign himself to his rulership and make the trip as brief as possible.

He made sure everything was set up for Shang Qinghua before he left. Meals to be delivered to his room and orders that the first stay stoked. He tried to reassign the tasks that Qinghua’s workload would be minimal to prevent too many sleepless nights. The poor man has no internal sense of the passage of time and often falls asleep with the sunrise if Mobei-jun isn’t there to herd him to bed. And despite all these preparations, he can’t help but feel the chill of worry.

That worry is frivolous, he tells himself the first day and a half of travel. Qinghua is, despite all appearances, very capable and powerful. Weak, snap-able, utterly pathetic, but extraordinarily competent. He will be fine. And so will Mobei-jun.

That self assurance that it would be gone evaporates the moment he sees the vague shape of a large woman on a horse barrels through the snow at his envoy. His stomach drops seeing her speed, how her cloak whips out behind her, and how the snow kicks up around the legs of her horse. Mobei-jun immediately pulls his own steed around and barrels in her direction.

He doesn’t even manage to get out the question when her horse slips in the snow to stop parallel to him.

“The the little human administrator is gone,” she says. Her cheeks are tinged green with cold, the frost clinging to her eyelashes. She’s weatherbeaten and surely travelled unstopping through the night. The wind bashes against them both. “Those that saw him say he was acting strangely, and he broke into the stables to steal a beast.”

Mobei-jun pulls on his steed’s reins and kicks hard to charge them into a gallop until he can find a patchwork of shadows to fling himself. The messenger gallops next to him trying to fulfill her report. Mobei-jun can only half hear her from the way his pulse pounds in his ears. All he can hear is that Qinghua is missing. The moment he left, Qinghua vanished. He’s missing again.

And last time he want missing, he planned to stay.missing forever.

He shouldn’t be gone forever. Mobei-jun has been good to him. He hasn’t hit him. He hasn’t even said anything cruel in the past year. He has served him, doted upon him, even invited him into his bed and let him arrange the bed as he likes rather than how Mobei-jun prefers it. He has given Shang Qinghua everything he has asked for and tried to give him even what he hasn’t.

He can’t breathe. The cold has never pierced his lungs before, but suddenly he understands exactly how Qinghua feels when they appear in the frigid frozen tundra. It hurts.

It feels like an eternity before he spots a towering stone pile that casts a weak shadow. It’s just enough for him to pass through, one that will scrape against him like pressing himself through jagged metal bars. The steed is still galloping when he flings himself off and into the shadows.

He emerges at a run in his room, stumbling on the carpet and barely catching himself. The warmth slams into him, the abrupt change in temperature jarring after the painful shift through shadows.

The room is wrong. He sees it instantly. The bed torn apart, the notes on Shang Qinghua’s work table aren’t in their tidy stacks. The furs he neatly folded on the bed are gone, but only a few. Other’s are scattered over the floor. And on the floor, between the fire and the door, is a plate of food left abandoned.

Mobei-jun kneels down and touches it. Half the plate is warm from the fire, the other half cold from the frigid air.

A knot grows in his throat. It’s unfamiliar and jarring. It hurts to swallow as he frantically takes in the room one more time.

Qinghua wouldn’t have left.

He couldn’t have left.

Before he left, before he got out of bed, Qinghua shifted closer to him and threw an arm over Mobei-jun’s chest. He was sound asleep with a smile stretching his lips taut. As Mobei-jun watched him he faintly heard the murmur of my king and his smile grew. He was happy.

The only answer is that something happened. Something awful. A raid or possession. Something to corrupt his mind and make him leave the warmth and safety of the palace. Someone took him. Kidnapped him.

The thought jolts him from fright into anger. He pushes himself upright, grabbing one of Shang Qinghua’s yellow robes, and marches through the palace bellowing a demand for anyone who saw Shang Qinghua last to stand before him.

A row of sixteen demons stand in front of Mobei-jun covering. One by one they step forward.

Breakfast was delivered by a maid

A frostkeeper saw Shang Qinghua peering out his bedroom window at something no one lay witness to.

Kitchen workers saw him skirting around snatching food, but said nothing of it, thinking him always a little flighty.

The stable workers recount how strange and erratic he was, although they cannot tell what human behavior is normal or strange for their kind.

Mobei-jun has nothing to work with. Nothing substantial. Barely a direction, although even that is confused.

Outside the snow catches in the wind in a violent swirl. Mobei-jun stares out into it, falling into the depths of despaire. The temperatures are falling, the coldest days of the year soon to arrive. Without him there combating the cold, a humans will freeze. As a cultivator, Qinghua might not die right away, but at best he will fall ill. If he’s exposed for long, he will surely die.

“If…” he swallows around that unfamiliar knot. The small cohort of advisors around him quiver. “If he was kidnapped and there is a summons for a ransom, pay it. It does not matter how much.” 

He would give anything to get Qinghua back in one piece. He owes Qinghua his life, after all. Even demons who cannot understand the other strange emotions he feels for the little man, they can understand this. And if a ransom is paid and it costs the Mobei family their fortune, that will be something that Qinghua can figure out. He’s good with the books. He understands the clan’s finances better than Mobei-jun ever could. He’ll be able to figure it out, he just has to be here.

“And were are you going, my king?”

“Don’t call me that,” Mobei-jun say without looking at the form kneeling at his feet. Suddenly, in Qinghua’s absence, my king sounds wrong coming from anyone else’s lips. “I’m going to go get him back.”

The first step of getting him back is to find him. Because not a single soul in the palace can recount where Shang Qinghua went or if anyone travelled with him, Mobei-jun has no choice but to find a sage. He finds one, an older woman that Shang Qinghua once laughed about Shen Qingqiu visiting. It takes scaring Shen Qingqiu by appearing in his chambers snarling his demand without explanation to garner her location. There he passes through the shadows to her stoop.

The air is hot and oppressive. He feels light-headed from the heat, or perhaps the way his heart jolts every few moments, racing wildly until it abruptly stops. He grits his teeth trying to keep his patience as the woman takes her time, drawing out her process as long as humanly possible. The sweat collects at the base of Mobei-jun’s neck, making his hair glue uncomfortably to his back. His fist is clenched so tightly his nails dig painfully into his palm. Already two heavy bags of precious stones and gold rest on the table and still the woman’s eyes remain closed and her lips pursed tightly, feigning an expression of confusion.

Finally she opens her eyes.

“I don’t know how to tell you this exactly, but your human seems to be missing—”

Mobei-jun cuts her off. “I know he is.” He wants her to hurry up and get to the important things.

“—his memories.” She says it with force, daring Mobei-jun to cut her off again lest she cease relaying the results of her fortune. She pauses, letting the silence stretch out in threat. When certain that Mobei-jun won’t take her for granted again she presses on explaining where she saw. Mobei-jun presses her until she tells him of a patch of shadows she saw. It takes every ounce of self restraint not to leave immediately and instead ask for more information.

“He’s scared,” she says with some contemplation. “Terrified of something. Would there be anything he might instinctively be frightened of? The emotions were very strong so it’s something he had strong feelings for…” she studies him, studies the beads of sweat he endures to find out where his human went. “You, perhaps.”

“He’s not scared of me.”

Anymore.

He once said “I’ll follow my king for the rest of my life.”

She tuts.

“Old scars linger. I may not specialize in the past but I can feel it. Was he ever afraid of you?”

Mobei-jun doesn’t reply. He can’t reply because he knows the answer and now the answer feels like and old, gnarled scar twisted and stretched. 

“I thought so. That fear is so deeply interwoven with his sense of self he feels it even without his memories.”

Mobei-jun is crushed leaving the fortune teller. She couldn’t even give him a location of where he is, just five places that he will be soon. If he misses him, if he goes to the wrong one, Qinghua might be gone forever.

He spends all day searching the first location. It’s the one nearest the palace and he feels like he might be there. Qinghua isn’t ambitious in certain ways and even running away he likely wouldn’t stray further than he needs to. Indeed,  Mobei-jun finds a small campfire put out by the snow. Looking around he spots a shoveled away area and searches, getting on his hands and kneels to crawl through the snow for any signs of Qinghua.

Chewed on melon seeds.

Qinghua likes melon seeds and nibbles on them all the time.

He picks up the shells one by one, pocketing them. Qinghua was here. He can’t tell if anyone else was here too, but he knows Qinghua was here. But that relief is gone in a second when he realizes that this means that Qinghua already left. He moves outwards searching, going by the fact the coals were still warm when he plunged his hand into them upon arrival. He wishes he could fly overhead to look for him, but all he can do is step through shadows to reappear 50 meters away, searching and moving as quickly as he can.

Finally he decides he can’t waste time searching for where he isn’t in the hopes he’s still nearby. He moves to the next location and hunts but finds nothing at all. Nightfall has fallen over the landscape and Mobei-jun knows that Qinghua wouldn’t move at night under his own volition. So unless he really is kidnapped and forced to keep going, he will hunker down. Mobei-jun might be good at stalking his prey but he knows he won’t find Shang Qinghua if he’s curled in the snow in the dark.

He travels to the furthest location the fortune teller described. A town. It does not look like the sort of place Qinghua would voluntarily stop. He’s always intimidated by demons and even more so by demons that don’t look particularly human like the occupants of this town. He seems to think they’ll eat them, not realizing that he’s under Mobei-jun’s protection and any demon who would dare take a nibble would meet a fate worse than death. Shang Qinghua has been claimed by him and any demon should be able to sense that.

He moves through ever building of the town, knocking on doors and demanding people out into the snow. He demands to know where any humans are, or anyone who even looks remotely human. When he finds none he passes through the shadows into every house and shop. Finally, when certain that Shang Qinghua isn’t here and hasn’t been here yet, he tells the town that they must contact him immediately if and when he appears. If they don’t, if they harbor him and hide him, if anyone sees a single curl or flash of yellow robes without telling him, he will level the entire down and stain the ground with blood, leaving a curse on the unholy ground for the next hundred generations of demons. Every single demon quivers in fear and bow with their faces pressed into the snow, pledging to send their fasted to find him if the human appears.

Mobei-jun departs to search the third location the sage told him of. He’s still scared of his human in the snow for so long and wants to find him as soon as possible. He’s truly starting to feel panic now.

What could have destroyed Shang Qinghua’s memories?

What will bring them back?

Why is he so scared of Mobei-jun even without his memories?

His panic leads to him getting sloppy in his searches. No longer does he move through the shadows in an even grid hunting for Qinghua. Instead he flings himself through the snow and shadows at a run, realizing too late that he didn’t take anything in, that he’s just looking for a flash of gold and not a body covered in furs curled on the ground. He has to retrace his steps, research where he already has.

It’s a relief when he finally finds a road. Qinghua likes roads. Humans like roads. Surely Qinghua grew weary of the knee-deep snow and decided to follow the road. Surely…

But the road is muddy. Horse prints and cart tracks make it impossible to tell if any are Qinghua’s. He moves up and down the road for a long ways, at least an hour in each direction. When he reaches the end, he steps off the road, traveling a ways and running parallel to it. He does this again on the other side. 

He can’t find him.

He would be angry if not for the fact that he’s growing panicked. The ice is cold enough to bite at him, nip with just enough sting that he begins to feel it. 

After nightfall arrives he loses the tracks again. It’s too dark and the snow still falls, obscuring the past beyond understanding.

Rather than stepping through the darkness back into the town tens of miles away, Mobei-jun walks. He peers through the dark hunting for sighs of Qinghua as he walks.

His legs burn and fatigue grips him from walking through the night without rest, but he would rather collapse than slow his hunt. He doesn’t even know how many days it’s been since Qinghua vanished. He just knows it feels like a lifetime.

He remembers his rage last time he tried to leave Mobei-jun. Last time Mobei-jun was screaming, snarling helplessly wanting to scare Shang Qinghua into staying. Is that why Qinghua is scared of him? Because even when Mobei-jun is most desperate for him to stay he expresses it through threats? That that fear cuts so deep that even a year studying human rituals, human expressions of affection can’t undo what has been done?

And if he finds Qinghua, what will come of it? Will he run? And what can Mobei-jun do if he does? He can’t fight him. He can’t break his legs to force him to stay. He can’t pin him down or tie him up or beat him into submission. He has no means to make him stay if he’s scared of him. Not without making that fear cut deeper, carving a new, bloody wound over the already existing scar.

It makes Mobei-jun feel like his chest is torn open. He would, if that means Shang Qinghua understanding his heart. He would dig his fingers under his ribs and crack every bone apart for Shang Qinghua to see how much he means to him.

The sun is fully up by the time he meets a messenger on the road. A teenager who’s face is flushed and heaves choking on the cold air, unable to fill his lungs entirely. The boy chokes out that a human in gold checked into an inn in town last night and that the innkeepers would try to keep him until Mobei-jun gets there.

Mobei-jun leaves the boy gasping for air on the muddy road. He finds the nearest patch of shadows, a patch so small that it cuts deeply against his skin making him want to snarl in pain. He appears in the inn and demands to know what happened. The innkeepers cower in terror when they report that the golden human left an hour before. They bow their heads expecting the final seconds of their lives, but Mobei-jun doesn’t have time to kill them. Qinghua is close and this time the demons can point him in the correct direction.

Repeatedly he finds and loses the trail. He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t slow down. He only stills when he spots a familiar horse without Qinghua on it, pawing at the snow in search of something beneath to eat. He backtracks and a short ways away finds a place evidencing Qinghua fell from its back.

He moves faster. It’s the first sign of Shang Qinghua. First real proof of life. He runs, half traveling by foot, half splitting himself through shadows to leap several yards ahead. He never stops staring at the ground looking for footprints nor staring at the trees ahead. 

Finally he sees it. Movement catches his eye. A person running through the trees ahead, a flashing sliver of yellow.

“Qinghua,” Mobei-jun hisses under his breath and bursts through the shadows. He emerges close enough to see Shang Qinghua careening, twisting to switch directions towards a clearing ahead. Mobei-jun’s stomach drops. A clearing means Shang Qinghua can summon his sword and fly away where Mobei-jun can’t follow. He’ll lose the trail and Shang Qinghua, that golden little human, will be gone.

“Qinghua!” Mobei-jun’s shout cuts through the trees, sharp with plead for Shang Qinghua to stop. His hand is outstretched, the beg of Qinghua please, stop dead in his throat, the knot of panic too tight to let even a whisper past.

Shang Qinghua stops in the center of the clearing, turning around with his sword in his hand. Absolute panic overwhelms Mobei-jun. He really is going to leave him. He really is going to soar away, buffeted by the winds but still gone.

Mobei-jun tries to keep himself calm. He tries to slow down, walk instead of run. Approach him like a terrified animal. Make himself smaller and softer, not a threat at all.

The wind laps at both of them, hitting them hard with ice and snow. Shang Qinghua is shaking and Mobei-jun has no clue if it’s from cold or fright. His fingers adjust on the sword.

One movement. One movement and he’s gone and Mobei-jun will never get him back.

“Qinghua-” his voice catches, twisting a blade against his throat just like the last time he begged Shang Qinghua not to leave, only this time it’s different. This time  there’s no rage. Only fear. He holds out an open hand, weaponless, and begs, “Come here.”

When Shang Qinghua doesn’t move, Mobei-jun dares take a single step forward. The snow crunches under foot. 

Shang Qinghua backs up, backs further into the clearing where he can shoot into the sky. 

“QINGHUA!” Mobei-jun shouts, a frantic beg over the wind when Shang Qinghua moves to step on the sword. 

“Stay away!” Shang Qinghua shouts back. His other hand flies to the hilt and he levies the blade at Mobei-jun’s chest. They’re close not. He’s let Mobei-jun close the distance between them enough that an outstretched hand could bat away the sword.

He finally sees the absolute terror in Shang Qinghua’s eyes. The absence of memories. The fact that he has no idea who he is, where he is, or what’s going on. Just that he’s scared. Terrified.

He’s not a coward. Everyone says his Qinghua is a coward, but Mobei-jun knows that he isn’t. He never has been. He’s clever and sustaining. He survives. He’s smart. He runs a kingdom and carries one of the human realm’s greatest sects balanced on his shoulders. But right now he’s a terrified man with only snow beating against him. 

The sword could pierce through Mobei-jun’s chest right now. A single lunge and it would press through bone into his heart. Shang Qinghua could kill him and he would let him because dying by his hand would be better than losing him forever.

The blade is cold when he reaches out to touch it.

He wraps his fingers around the blade. It grows hot with pain. Slowly he corrects the aim, pointing the steel straight at his own heart. He is vulnerable. Shang Qinghua has the weapon. Shang Qinghua has the control. Shang Qinghua is in possession of whatever happens next.

The sword shakes from Shang Qinghua’s grip. It shakes drops of Mobei-jun’s blood off onto the snow, red droplets falling like petals between them.

Realization dawns on Mobei-jun.

“Qinghua,” he says staring at Shang Qinghua and aiming the sword directly at his heart. He slowly lessens his grip on the blade and gently pushes it aside. “You wouldn’t hurt this king.”

Something in Shang Qinghua’s eyes flicker. Fear, yes, but uncertainty. 

“...King?”

It’s quiet. Fear laces the single word. But there’s hope in it. 

Mobei-jun’s heart leaps with enough force it hurts hearing the long word.

The sword falls to Shang Qinghua’s side, hanging limply in his grasp.

Terrified that it’s wrong but terrified if he does nothing the moment will pass and Shang Qinghua will flee, Mobei-jun reaches out. Shang Qinghua flinches but doesn’t retreat as Mobei-jun cups his cheek against his palm.

“This Mobei-jun will help you remember.”

Now Mobei-jun kneels on the floor of the inn in front of Shang Qinghua who hunches over a bowl of steaming noodles, tears rolling freely down his cheeks as he chokes them down.

He wants to reach out and place a hand on his shoulder. He wants to brush away those tears. But every time he reaches out Shang Qinghua flinches, so he retreats and keeps his hands clasped tightly in his lap. There’s nothing he can do. Not really. All he can do is show that he isn’t scary.

“Does Qinghua need something more?” Mobei-jun asks. Shang Qinghua already said the noodles are perfect but he can’t stop himself. He feels helpless and he hates it. He wants to fix it by doing something.

He cannot meet that helplessness with anger. He won’t. This once he needs to stop himself.

Shang Qinghua shakes his head and keeps eating, choking down the noodles while trying to hide his tears. He won’t look at Mobei-jun. He keeps his body turned away but still wary enough to keep one eye on him.

It’s a grief Mobei-jun never imagined feeling. It’s all consuming. Something much, much worse than an ache or a shock to his system. It’s being plunged into fire only to watch his most adored person freeze. He knew, as he clutched the sword and aimed it at his own heart, that Shang Qinghua wouldn’t kill him but now he almost wishes he had because then maybe Shang Qinghua wouldn’t look at him with such distrust.

But then Qinghua would be alone in the demon realm with no memories and no one to protect him.

Mobei-jun stands.

Shang Qinghua stops eating with a wince, warily watching him move. Tension grows in his shoulders as he prepares to abandon the noodles and fling himself out of the window.

Mobei-jun backs away from the bed where Shang Qinghua hunches over his food like a starved creature and returns to the chair he’s occupied by the fire, regulating the temperature of the room to make sure it’s perfect for the soft little human. 

He sits in a forced relax; his arms rest on the armrests, his thighs spread. He lets himself slump into the chair rather than maintaining his upright posture in mimicry of Shang Qinghua’s hunch, trying to make himself smaller and less imposing. 

They remain at this uneasy position for several hours. Eventually Shang Qinghua slumps on the bed, exhaustion overtaking his willpower to remain awake. He doesn’t even draw the blankets over himself. He just drifts off, lowing himself onto the blankets and letting his eyes close.

Mobei-jun stays precisely where he is. He doesn’t move a muscle. For the first time since recovering him, Shang Qinghua looks peaceful. He hopes he feels at peace in his sleep. Perhaps his dreams will fill with good memories of Mobei-jun. They had a lot. Mobei-jun put a lot of time learning what strange eccentricities Shang Qinghua holds delight in over the past year especially. He’s tried to show he him he can learn his strange human ways. And he saw many moments of Shang Qinghua’s joy. Many moments where his heart skipped a beat because Shang Qinghua looked at him with vibrant eyes, a smile stretching over his entire face to drown Mobei-jun in an unparalleled sunbeam of joy to melt his own inward frost.

Outside the snow batters against the window. The wind howls. The momentary warmth of finding Shang Qinghua has faded outside. Even if the darkness the snow glows in the lantern lights outside the inn. Downstairs voices can be heard from those taking refuge from the harsh weather, eating and laughing and talking all too loud.

Shang Qinghua shivers with a minute whimper.

Carefully, silently, Mobei-jun rises from his chair. He gathers the armful of blankets neatly folded by the door. He carefully feels through them one by one until picking the one that Qinghua will like most. He passes through a shadow to get closer to the bed without accidentally making the floorboards creak. He unfurls the blanket and drapes it over the man curled so small on the bed.

He remains standing over him, taking him in. He’s scratched up. His cheeks are pink. But he’s unharmed. Mobei-jun reaches out and finally does as he’s wanted to since he brought him back to the inn and brushes away the dried tear track. He follows the line of his cheek to tuck stray hair behind Qinghua’s ear.

His exhale rises in a plume of cold. He can’t stay lurking over Qinghua’s bed. On a normal night he could, but not now. Not when they’re like this.

He moves to back away, but somehow in bending over Qinghua to tuck the blankets in the man’s hand has hooked around a line of fabric, holding Mobei-jun in place with the weakest grasp.

It would be so easy to pull away, but Mobei-jun is weak with lingering fright. He lowers himself onto the bed so he sits on the edge. He just watches Shang Qinghua. He watches his expressions form in his dreams, watches his lips part so he can breath through his mouth, watches his eyes half open and close again. He watches him and strokes his hair away from his face with a gentleness even he isn’t used to.

“I won’t let you leave again,” Mobei-jun whispers before realizing that that’s wrong. It’s not up to him to chain Shang Qinghua and keep him leashed to his side. He remembers Shang Qinghua saying I’ll follow my king for the rest of my life. With more certainty, he softly assures, “I’ll follow my Qinghua in return.”

It’s still dark when Mobei-jun wakes. The fire has burned to embers. A comforting chill fills the room. There’s a warmth pressed against his chest. It takes him a moment to realize the warmth is Shang Qinghua. Somehow together they moved in sleep so Shang Qinghua is curled against him, his arms wrapped around Shang Qinghua’s narrow shoulders to keep him in place. They slot together perfectly, a most natural formation of limbs. 

He stays there holding Shang Qinghua. Finally the panic and fear that has clung to him like a filth he couldn’t scrub away finally alleviates itself from his chest. He buries his face against Shang Qinghua and closes his eyes again.

There’s a moment of peace. A single moment of true and real peace accompanied by the wind and low glow of the embers.

Shang Qinghua makes small noise and shifts slightly, his legs stretching out and kicking Mobei-jun in the shin. Mobei-jun remains still. He keeps his eyes closed and lips pressed to warm skin. Shang Qinghua shifts again, this time rolling in his arms.

“FUck!”

The small gasp, an intake of air so abrupt it sounds painful. Shang Qinghua goes stone still except for a tremor that runs through his body.

Mobei-jun forces himself to relax and not react.

Every so slowly, moving slower than a caterpillar or snail, Shang Qinghua lifts Mobei-jun’s arm off of him and slowly, carefully, rolls off the bed. He lands on the floor with a small thud. Mobei-jun keeps his eyes closed and body limp. He doesn’t want to scare Shang Qinghua. Nor does he want him to think he did anything untoward. He fell asleep after draping a blanket over the little man and together they rolled into each other’s arms.

His eyes are open just enough to see a thin line through his lashes. Shang Qinghua stands over the bed with his hands over his mouth, an expression of anguish on his face. He looks to the window, then the door, and finally back to Mobei-jun slumped half off the edge of the bed. 

“Mo-My king?” Shang Qinghua whispers. It’s barely audible. Mobei-jun doesn’t react to it. Shang Qinghua looks around again and whispers something in a language Mobei-jun hears him speak fragments of sometimes but doesn’t understand. He knows it means exasperation or confusion. It has to be confusion today.

Shang Qinghua inches forward. A small shuffle closer towards Mobei-jun supposedly sleeping.

He jumps back when Mobei-jun’s eyelashes involuntarily flutter.

He shuffles forward again, his feet scraping on the wood.

He jumps back.

Skittish.

He inches forward. He leans in over Mobei-jun to look at him.

He jumps back.

Forward.

A hand outstretches towards Mobei-jun, not quite touching him.

He spooks and jumps backwards again.

Mobei-jun’s heart is breaking seeing that the fortune teller was right and Shang Qinghua is genuinely scared of him. It’s been a long time since he was this scared of him. Mobei-jun doesn’t want him scared of him at all.

He keeps his breathing measured, a promise to Shang Qinghua that he’s safe to approach.

Finally after what feels like an eternity of this show of bravery broken by fear, warm fingers touch against his hand. Slowly Mobei-jun’s fingers are uncurled and a thumb brushes over the wound.

Mobei-jun had forgotten the gash over his palm and fingers entirely. Suddenly, gently brushed by Shang Qinghua, it hurts again. His fingers involuntarily twitch. Shang Qinghua doesn’t jump away again. He inhales sharply and his eyes flit to Mobei-jun to see if he’s awake or not, but he doesn’t flee. His fingers are exploratory and unsure, seeking a familiarity in the hand once struck him but now holds him.

He brushes the gash as if he expects Mobei-jun to be delicate and break at any moment. Mobei-jun does feel as though he’s going to break between Shang Qinghua’s fingers.

There’s seventy-one seconds of this delicate touch. Mobei-jun counts each and every one of them. Through his eyelashes he can see Shang Qinghua lost in thought, trying to figure something out or remember something. Sometimes he stares at the hand wrapped in his palms. Sometimes his gaze raises to look at Mobei-jun, tilting his head so his loose hair flops to one side. And sometimes his eyes move without reason, studying the room at large, or something invisible that Mobei-jun can’t see.

Without warning, Shang Qinghua drops his hand and jerks away. It lands with a thud on the bed.

Shang Qinghua stumbles backwards, clutching his head and his face tangled in a tight grimace. He falls backwards hard, hitting the leg of a table rolling with a choked gasp. He clutches his head shaking it back and forth. Tears catch at the corner of his eye, pressed out to stain his cheek.

Immediately Mobei-jun’s soft drowsiness is gone. He’s on his feet and on the ground next to Shang Qinghua with a frightened cry that does nothing to help. It only seems to scare Shang Qinghua, resulting in a croaked beg not to touch him.

When he finally opens his eyes he looks at Mobei-jun with such deep mistrust that Mobei-jun knows a memory was recovered and it was not a good one. He hangs his head, letting the pang of rejection and fear pool in his chest.

What if Shang Qinghua never recovers his memories and this is all they have?

Distrust.

Rejection.

Pain.

Hurt.

Mobei-jun’s heart hurts.

A few day later and Mobei-jun decides that they can’t remain cooped up in this inn. It feels safer to keep Shang Qinghua here while he’s weak, but Mobei-jun has come to realize that his memories need to be triggered. In the inn, it seems his only memories recovered at those of their first meeting when Shang Qinghua saved his life. As a hurt and angry teenager, Mobei-jun was less than kind in how he exercised his power over what he thought was a pest of a person.

So far, the only time Shang Qinghua seems happy is when Mobei-jun brings him food. Especially when he makes the food himself because he knows that the inn’s chefs and surrounding restaurants are not the sort of food humans like to eat. He’s learned exactly eleven of Shang Qinghua’s favorite foods, only three of which he’s proficient at making. But Shang Qinghua appears to like even the meals that are made with an imperfect hand.

Therefore, once Shang Qinghua’s cold has receded, Mobei-jun packs up and they leave. He gives Shang Qinghua his thick fur cloak until they get out of the snow. Shang Qinghua wraps himself in it, the fur encapsulating him entirely to make him look somehow smaller, just a little honey head popping up from the dark fur. He gives Mobei-jun a weak smile but there’s an emptiness to his eyes.

Mobei-jun asks, “Is there somewhere Qinghua would like to go?”

“I don’t know,” Shang Qinghua replies. He walks to the window to look out before walking back, shaking his head. Throughout the passing days Mobei-jun has taken to asking Shang Qinghua questions seems to help. He stops and thinks. Sometimes he’s still confused while other times he looks up at Mobei-jun with an expression of hurt. But sometimes, a few times that give Mobei-jun and Shang Qinghua hope, he lights up with an answer.

“That’s fine,” Mobei-jun replies simply. He holds out a hand to Shang Qinghua, palm open and empty revealing the sealed wound from gripping the sword. Shang Qinghua is still looking at the room, taking it in as the only place in the world he knows before he notices Mobei-jun’s hand. He reaches out and lightly sets his hand in the much larger palm.

Mobei-jun tries to smile. It’s unnatural and feels like a creature bearing its teeth in a wary hiss or a growl. Shang Qinghua doesn’t seem to like it either so he immediately lets the smile drop into his flat, icy expression of neutrality. 

Shang Qinghua doesn’t seem to like that either.

They leave in the carriage. Shang Qinghua peers out the window at the passing landscape. His eyes regularly flit towards Mobei-jun, eyeing him from head to toe, evaluating again and again if he poses a threat.

“The beach.” Mobei-jun finally says when Shang Qinghua stares at him but avoids meeting his eye, his gaze lingering at Mobei-jun’s chest, likely wondering if demons have hearts like humans do.

“What?”

“You told me once humans like the beach. In the human realm. You visited it once.”

“There’s a human realm??” Shang Qinghua stares at him in shock. “You mean- Where are we?”

“The demon realm.”

Shang Qinghua still looks confused.

“We’re in the demon realm. In the Northern Desert,” Mobei-jun explains. “It’s under my rulership… You help me.”

Shang Qinghua scratches his head and scrunches his nose. “How would I help you with that?”

“Qinghua is excellent at balancing books,” Mobei-jun says. “You manage the Northern Desert and a sect in the human realm.”

“Nooo,” Shang Qinghua exhales with a plume of cold air. He drags the sound out in disbelief. “I’ve never been good at that sort of thing.”

“Qinghua doesn’t remember. You are very good.” He contemplates for a second before saying “This king couldn’t rule without you.”

Pink gathers in Shang Qinghua’s cheeks. Thinking him cold and uncomfortable at offering such open praise, Mobei-jun focuses on the air around them. He warms it to an uncomfortable degree but a temperature Shang Qinghua calls tolerable but chilly. 

Mobei-jun looks out the window. “Do you want to go to a beach?”

“I think I’d like that…” Shang Qinghua says. He still sounds unsure.

Mobei-jun offers, “We can get food too” to which Shang Qinghua lights up.

The travel to the beach takes a long time. Mobei-jun doesn’t know what beach Shang Qinghua has been to so the moment they pass into the human realm, the heat of summer melting all of Mobei-jun’s pride, they stop at an inn for the night. Mobei-jun insists on a full itinerary from the inn-keepers. From food to shopping to where to find a beach.

They go shopping first. Mobei-jun tells Shang Qinghua to buy whatever he likes. He follows behind Shang Qinghua as he passes through the night market’s bustling streets, stopping and inspecting various goods. He buys a few items, mostly sweets and a new pair of sandals.

Several times does he stop and talk with people. He lights up when the talk to them. He speaks with them full of animation, hand gestures and a grin that are never directed to Mobei-jun. But inevitably he says something in a language no one understands or makes a joke that only confuses those he talks to. There was a small period Mobei-jun heard him doing this in the past. Small slip ups that he clearly tried to hide. Seemingly, only Shen Qingqiu understands these gestures.

Holding a new wide brimmed hat he returns to Mobei-jun.

“Bend down,” Shang Qinghua says.

Mobei-jun doesn’t understand but he does as commanded. To his surprise, Shang Qinghua plops the hat on his head.

“For my king when it’s sunny,” he says.

“It’s not sunny.”

“I know. But later. If we’re going to the beach it’s going to be sunny.”

Mobei-jun reaches up and brushes his fingers against the brim of the hat. It feels strange. He doesn’t actually remember ever wearing a hat.

“Hey, so I wanted to ask,” Shang Qinghua says taking back the small bottle of juice Mobei-jun was holding for him. “Do you know where I come from? Because people don’t understand what I’m saying sometimes.”

“Somewhere around Cang Qiong Mountain,” Mobei-jun replies. Shang Qinghua told him exactly where he grew up once and he didn’t listen. The guilt of not listening to the little man’s rambles is new. It’s a fresh scab to be picked at. How many memories could he have triggered if he spent all their years together actually listening to him instead of just issuing demands. “You had a mother and a father. You were young when you became a cultivator.”

Shang Qinghua makes a pouting face with a sound of contemplation.

“Does Qinghua remember anything about growing up?”

“No,” Shang Qinghua says. “Well. I don’t know. I remember things…. They don’t make any sense…”

“Qinghua?”

“No. I don’t. I don’t think so.”

Mobei-jun doesn’t know what else to say so they keep walking through the street. Mobei-jun cuts an intimidating figure so minimal people bump into them and when Shang Qinghua darts towards a shop the shop-keeps are intimidated by him and let his companion pick up and fondle whatever he likes.

Mobei-jun ends up buying an armful of goods for Shang Qinghua. He walks holding them all with his new hat perched on his head. Shang Qinghua walks next to him looking around with wide eyes, the orange glow of the lanterns illuminating the wonder on his face. 

When they return to the inn Shang Qinghua thanks Mobei-jun. Mobei-jun isn’t expecting the simple word to hurt him. He didn’t think thanks to feel like the edge of the sword. But since he had all but given up hope for the future, this first evening of joy cuts him deep. Memories or no memories, things might be okay.

Like the books that rest stacked on Shang Qinghua’s writing desk, Mobei-jun takes him for a sunset horseback ride on the beach the following evening. The waves lap against the dark sand. When Shang Qinghua looks to Mobei-jun with a sprite-like flicker in his eye, he kicks his horse into a gallop. Mobei-jun hesitates, not wanting to look as if he’s chasing Shang Qinghua down, but then Shang Qinghua looks back at him and shouts loudly “Come on, my king!”

Mobei-jun kicks his horse into a matching gallop. He nearly catches up. He could catch up, but a strange little part of him wants Shang Qinghua to win. 

He couldn’t catch up even if he wanted to.

At the speed of the gallop, at the rock of the horse’s hooves over sand, at the gust of wind that makes Shang Qinghua’s hair fly out from his bun to catch fiery in the setting sunlight, the wide sunhat that Shang Qinghua bought him the night before flies off his head. Not wanting to lose a gift from Qinghua when he has so few, Mobei-jun pulls hard with a deep lean to direct the horse towards the water where the hat has landed. The waves crash against him and he has to lean far enough his sleeve and hair are splashed by gentle waves, but he manages to catch the hat before it falls in.

Shang Qinghua is waiting for him up shore. He’s dismounted and buried his feet in the sand, watching hesitantly unsure what he should do. 

For a second Mobei-jun is worried. Again Shang Qinghua looks small and unsure without the sparks of vibrancy that have lit in him the last few days. He slows his horse to a walk on his approach, stopping next to Shang Qinghua.

“The wind caught the hat,” Mobei-jun says flatly. He brushes the wet brim and sets it back on his head.

Even with the sun setting the air is uncomfortable hot for him. Mobei-jun’s lightest robes still cling to him, stuck to his body with a thin film of sweat. Only the wind offers a reprieve and yet it glues grains of sand to his body. All he wants to do is leave the heat and return to the deep cold of the demon realm but Shang Qinghua seems happy here in the warm so he will remain gross and sticky with a wet hat on his head.

Shang Qinghua snorts and turns away covering his mouth. He won’t tell Mobei-jun what it is, but it doesn’t seem bad so Mobei-jun doesn’t press him.

That night Shang Qinghua sits on the bed while Mobei-jun sits in a chair by the window in attempt to catch what little breeze he can. Shang Qinghua recounts two new memories. One is working on some ledgers, copying them from one book to another and balancing numbers. Another is him and Mobei-jun walking through the snow with a line of demons behind them. Mobei-jun has no clue when specifically either memory is from, but at least neither is painful.

Unable to bear the heat much longer, Mobei-jun returns them to the demon realm. He doesn’t take him to the center of the Northern Desert again where Shang Qinghua is always shaking with cold, but instead to a border where the snow and frost covers the ground but flowers peak their way out of the blanket of white. He leaves Shang Qinghua at a restaurant while he passes through the shadows to a nearby frozen lake, demanding everyone out by the time he returns or a layer of blood will paint the ice.

He returns to Shang Qinghua who flinches ever so slightly not expecting a hand on his shoulder, but still gathers all his food into his arms and walks with Mobei-jun.

“Want some?” Shang Qinghua says holding out a tanghulu stick with the first hawthorn berry already eaten off. Mobei-jun has never liked these candies and thought it strange that Shang Qinghua does. For a man who hates when others bite through bone and crunch on it, he seems to like the crunch of the hard sugars.

Even so, he’s not one to refuse an offer from Shang Qinghua these days and takes it as a sign of good fortune. He accepts the stick and bites off one of the candies, trying not to grimace at the overly sweet sugar coating.

Shang Qinghua smiles up at him and takes the candy back, happily crunching down on the next orb on the stick without notice of Mobei-jun’s plight holding the candy in his mouth.

The frozen lake is cleared by the time they get there. Only the teenager in small stand renting ice skates remains. She’s shaking as she passes over the shoes and runs away the moment she’s dismissed.

They each lace up the boots. Shang Qinghua talks the whole time. He doesn’t even seem to notice he’s talking as he tells Mobei-jun all about going skating when he was little and the pond next to their house would freeze over.

“We didn’t have shoes like these so we’d just grab some with smooth plasteek bottoms and slide around.”

Mobei-jun finishes tying his boots off and watches Shang Qinghua working on his own. “So Qinghua knows how to skate?”

“Oh, no. No. I’ve never skated before. Or at least I don’t think I have,” Shang Qinghua replies. He grins at Mobei-jun. “Always wanted to try though.”

Mobei-jun doesn’t mention that he was just mindlessly talking about iceskating but forget the second he thought about it. He remains silent as Shang Qinghua wobbles to his feet and they walk to the ice.

Shang Qinghua does, in fact, know how to skate. Or his body does. The pair spend a while wobbling around the pond, Mobei-jun effortlessly moving over the ice while Shang Qinghua repeatedly nearly falls and grabs onto him with red-faced huffs of “Sorry, my king” and “I’ll do better. Just finding my feet. Heh…” until his body remembers the motions. Then, while Mobei-jun skates an even pace around the perimeter, Shang Qinghua flies over the ice, lapping him multiple times with a bright grin.

Mobei-jun sees it before Shang Qinghua does. Halfway across the massive pond, Shang Qinghua toe catches on a lump of snow and he begins to fall with a loud yelp of shock. As if in slow motion, his body twists, his arms flying out, his face wracked in fright.

Mobei-jun doesn’t hesitate. He flings himself into he narrow patch of shadows and scrapes his way through the sunlight to next to Shang Qinghua. Right before Shang Qinghua becomes a splatter of sunshine yellow fabric over the ice, Mobei-jun’s hand is around his scruff and pulling him up, up, up into the air where he dangles, his feet kicking out and arms covering his face.

Not wanting Shang Qinghua to misinterpret the way he dangles him by his collar, Mobei-jun quickly drops him. He expects Shang Qinghua to land on his feet like any cultivator older than ten years old should be able to, but Shang Qinghua is no longer aware of his own abilities. He falls to the ice, his blades skittering to find purchase and collapses into a pile.

“Qinghua?” Mobei-jun asks staring at the pile of yellow robes and the man slowly pressing himself up. “Are you-”

“Fine,” Shang Qinghua says. He gingerly raises himself to his feet. He doesn’t look at Mobei-jun though. He avoids him, even twisting away when Mobei-jun holds out a hand to offer help rising. “Don’t. I’m fine,” he repeats with a twinge in his voice that repeats itself in Mobei-jun’s chest. “You keep skating. I’m going to…”

His voice fades and he awkwardly skates towards the edge of the pond without finishing what he was saying, leaving Mobei-jun standing alone in the scuffs where Shang Qinghua fell.

Shang Qinghua’s skates are off and his boots back on by the time Mobei-jun realizes he’s standing at a complete loss of what do to and returns to shore. He’s taken off Mobei-jun’s cloak and stands with his arms wrapped around himself, his teeth clattering ever so slightly. He stands with his back to one of the snow-laiden trees as if to avoid being snuck up on and knocked down again. 

He won’t look at Mobei-jun.

“Are you hurt?” Mobei-jun asks. He doesn’t bother taking off his skates. He cares more about checking on Qinghua. He looks cold but not hurt. His legs bear all his weight and there are no signs of cuts or blood. Given how fast he was going when he tripped, Mobei-jun knows he saved him from greater injury, but given the betrayal clear in his eyes, perhaps that would have been better. He might have seen Mobei-jun tending his wounds rather than grabbing and dropping him onto the hard ice.

“No.” Shang Qinghua shoots him a wary glance and adds “My king.”

The way he says it is awful. My king sounds laden with disgust, as if he’s required to call Mobei-jun that rather than what he called him from the moment they met.

Unused to feeling like he’s in the wrong, defensiveness rises in Mobei-jun, scraping against his heart with barbed edges, catching and tugging the flesh to make his own frustration at being misunderstood feel raw. There have been many times when he’s hurt Shang Qinghua on purpose. Many times he did it without care. Many times when he did it simply because he was annoyed or bored or playful. But this time… this time he was genuinely trying to prevent him from becoming a splatter on the ice, even going so far as to shove his way through the absence of shadows to get to him before he hit the ice. 

He tries to repress it by clarifying for Shang Qinghua- “You fell.”

“I sure did,” Shang Qinghua replies in a huff. He still doesn’t move and still looks away but keeping Mobei-jun in the periphery of his vision. “Are we done? Or are you going to keep skating?”

“No,” Mobei-jun says through thinly veiled frustration at being misunderstood. “We’re done.”

The ride back to their inn is awkward. Shang Qinghua sits pressed against the far door and looks at the passing landscape. Mobei-jun does the same, trying to figure out what the hell he’s supposed to say.

He’s not used to this.

He orders hot water be brought up to their room and leaves when Shang Qinghua bathes. He paces around the park trying to cool down and assemble his thoughts until he sees a human approaching. He all but runs to the man who blanches at the demon incoming fast.

“What do you say when you help someone but it doesn’t go right and now they’re mad?” Mobei-jun demands without any preamble. The man flinches back from Mobei-jun. He takes too long to process the question. Confusion washes over him and he doubtfully says “Apologize?” He sounds like he expects answering to be a trap and with even more doubt adds, “Or… explain what you wanted to do?…So they understand why you were….?” His words rise in pitch until they’re lost.

Apologize and explain.

Words.

It makes sense. Humans like words. Qinghua really likes words. He writes them all the time. He was right to ask a human because his instinct of a display of power would not be correct way to settle the matter.

He leaves the man cowering in the middle of the street, hurrying back to the inn.

Shang Qinghua has finished bathing. He’s wrapped in the warm sleep clothes they bought at the market before. He sits with one of the books on demon culture Mobei-jun also bought, his expression tight and smallest corner of his tongue sticking out as he reads.

“Qinghua, we need to speak.” Mobei-jun says from the doorway. He occupies all of it, even having to duck his head a little to pass the threshold. Shang Qinghua looks up and slowly lowers his book. He sets it on the table and adjusts himself in a position that he can get up quickly if need be.

“You were falling. I did not want you to fall,” Mobei-jun says. Suddenly all words have left him, the speech he prepared on the walk up the stairs has vanished entirely, a snowflake lost in a blizzard and all finess of tongue gone. “I also did not want you to think I was trying to hurt you. You used to be able to land on your feet but now you fall down.” He’s rambling. He’s used more words than he thinks he’s ever spoken before. What did the man say humans like again? Apologies? Demons don’t apologize. They— 

“I apologize.”

Shang Qinghua stares at him in disbelief. Slowly he draws one leg back up onto the chair, no longer poised to run but still stiff. He raises a hand to his temple and closes his eyes.

“Qinghua? Are you hurting?”

“No…” Shang Qinghua inhales deeply. Silence is heavy in the room. It’s a weight on Mobei-jun that is crushing. He’s certain Shang Qinghua can hear his heart beating too. It pounds so loudly in his chest, exposed and cut open at the apology.

“So you saw me falling and caught me?” Shang Qinghua asks. He finally lowers his hand and opens his eyes. For the first time since the fall he looks to Mobei-jun without the darkness of distrust. Instead it’s a wary attempt to understand. “And then you dropped me.”

“Set you down. Normally you’d have landed on your feet.”

Shang Qinghua nods. “It wasn’t to hurt me.”

“This king would never hurt Qinghua… ever again.”

“Okay.” Shang Qinghua leans back in the chair and pulls the other leg up so both rest on the seat. He wraps his arms around his legs. The pants of his pajamas are a little too long for his legs and pool at his feet with only his toes sticking out. The same with his hands when he wraps his arms around his legs. His hair is down. He looks so different with it down than tugged into a messy bun. Softer. More vulnerable.

Or many he looks that way because he is more vulnerable without his memories.

Mobei-jun asks “Okay?”

“Okay.”

Okay is as best as Mobei-jun could hope for so he accepts okay.

That night, after the lanterns have been snuffed and Shang Qinghua is in bed with Mobei-jun sitting in a chair by the window, a small voice waivers through the darkness to jolt him from his doze.

“My king?”

“Yes, Qinghua?”

“Do you often manhandle me like that?”

Mobei-jun knows the answer in his heart but fails to voice it. He does. And he knows that it’s why Shang Qinghua holds so many awful memories of him. He won’t lie to Qinghua, even if it’ll break his heart and break whatever tentative trust Qinghua might have in him. He sits up straighter, preparing himself.

“Yes.”

Waiting for a reply to his confession feels like waiting for lightning to strike him.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

Shang Qinghua doesn’t say anything else, leaving Mobei-jun twisting himself into knots over what okay means. Finally, after a long time, he can’t stand it anymore and asks through the darkness “What does okay mean?”

He’s surprised that Shang Qinghua is still awake because he replies, “Oh. It means things are fine. I didn’t realize that was one of the words that I made up.”

“Things are fine?”

There’s a rustling from the bed. One of the blankets slides off onto the floor. He can faintly see the outline of Shang Qinghua pressing himself up on his elbow to look at him.

“You grabbed me to keep me from falling on my ass and it was my fault I fell like a bag of bricks, right? You did that to help me. So it’s fine.”

“But—” Mobei-jun doesn’t even know how to express that it isn’t fine. That none of this is fine. That Shang Qinghua has memories of him grabbing and throwing him because he was trying to show he could lift him easily should danger ever arise yet never understood that’s what Mobei-jun was doing. That he should have been able to catch himself because he lacks his memories and Mobei-jun is terrified they’re gone forever. And that Shang Qinghua should have to accept he was trying to help as a reason to being okay with being dropped like that. He doesn’t have any of the words to express that at all.  He just has a violent need to do something to prove to Shang Qinghua that he isn’t just that.

He gets up and gathers the fallen blanket from the floor, brushing off the dirt before draping it over Shang Qinghua.

“Sleep well, Qinghua,” he says and returns to his chair.

The following day Mobei-jun decides to return to the tried and true method of food. He brings Shang Qinghua to a renowned baker that Shang Qinghua once vehemently insisted they stop at years ago when Mobei-jun mused he wanted something mildly sweet. Shang Qinghua gets a cake infused with some dreaded fruit from the human realm that he once convinced Mobei-jun to try but the acid burned his tongue in an unpleasant way. Mobei-jun gets a meat-cake and chilled tea.

As they sit inside watching the snow drift down over the trees valiantly forming small colorful buds, Shang Qinghua pinches his eyes shut and drops his cake, holding his hands to his head. Mobei-jun watches helplessly, anxiety morphing into a monster that the memories regained will be bad.

The seconds drag out to feel like years.

Finally Shang Qinghua looks at him and smiles.

Mobei-jun awkwardly returns the human gesture, bearing his teeth at his little human.

The days pass slowly.

Each day Mobei-jun tries to ask questions that might trigger memories.

The days vary in quality. Some days Shang Qinghua is happy. Some he’s miserable. Some he won’t look at Mobei-jun and one particularly bad one he yells at Mobei-jun to leave him alone. But other days are wonderful and that gives Mobei-jun hope. They give Shang Qinghua hope too.

Mobei-jun keeps taking him places hoping to trigger memories. He takes him to the road they first met on and Shang Qinghua winces, asking if he really tried to bash Mobei-jun’s head in with a rock. Confused at this false memory, Mobei-jun tells him no, he didn’t.

He takes him to the halls of recording where Shang Qinghua once negotiated the best lambskin scrolls from the human realm for barely more than cheap paper squares.

He takes Shang Qinghua to a beautiful lake with geese lazily paddling through the dark waters, a basket in hand full of all the materials needed to write poetry. They spend the entire day sitting together in the shade writing. Shang Qinghua is eager to share his work, writing poem after poem after poem in rapid succession as if his mind never stops and he could write ten thousand poems in a day. Mobei-jun holds his poems close to his heart and only shares one about taking down a herd of yellow-eyed recluse pather-nymphs. He doesn’t think Shang Qinghua picks up on the yearning he tried to embed into the poem with his bulky words.

In truth this last activity is not trying to trigger a happy memory. Instead, Mobei-jun decided that since speaking to that one human proved helpful he would speak to more. He went to where humans are most like to find experts on love: a brothel. There he paid an obscene amount of gold to ask the women and men how one might show affection. They offered all sorts of human courting rituals for him to consider like bringing flowers, picnic dates, or visits to the theater.

He isn’t just trying human courting rituals to show Shang Qinghua what he means to him in the absence of his memories, of course. He performs several proper demon rituals too. From the death defying hunts in which he pretends his kill and offers Shang Qinghua the first bite to demonstrations of his prowess in impressive displays.

One day, as they sit together in front of a warm fire with books per the list of human activities, Mobei-jun is overwhelmed by the need to show his affection for the man leaned against his shoulder. He just wants to crush him entirely. He suddenly says, “Hit me.”

Shang Qinghua startles. “What??”

Mobei-jun leans in to make himself a better target. “Hit me.”

“What the fuck?” Shang Qinghua leans back.

Mobei-jun catches Shang Qinghua’s hand and raises it to his cheek. “I want Qinghua to hit me because you don’t like being hit.”

“I’m not going to hit you!” Shang Qinghua jerks his hand back and rolls further away. “What the fuck why would I hit you because I don’t like being hit? Is this some sick test?”

“Demons hit the things they like,” Mobei-jun explains succinctly, thinking that enough of an explanation.

Shang Qinghua stares at him. He slowly crawls back towards him and raises a hand. Mobei-jun doesn’t close his eyes.

Shang Qinghua lightly taps Mobei-jun’s cheek.

“More than that,” Mobei-jun says. “It doesn’t count if you don’t make the blood flow.”

“I’m not going to make you bleed!”

“A bruise is fine.”

Shang Qinghua clutches his hand to keep it away from Mobei-jun, hissing about how this sounds like a pretty fucked up way to show like. The moment he says that he stops and stares at his hand, then Mobei-jun, then his hand.

“Do…you like me?” he asks.

“I want Qinghua to hit me.”

Shang Qinghua slaps him squarely on his cheek.

A week later Shang Qinghua remembers something. He prods Mobei-jun side and says he remembered something important. Mobei-jun jolts awake. In the darkness, Shang Qinghua stands next to him, hand still out to poke him again. Shang Qinghua jumps at the way Mobei-jun’s eyes immediately open, a slight white glow illuminating them through the darkness.

“I- uh-” suddenly Shang Qinghua hesitates, clearly doubtful of the importance of what he remembered now that his initial excitement has passed and he’s face to face with a freshly woken demon lord.

Seeing his hesitation, Mobei-jun reaches out and softly pats his head. His hair is tousled, the naturally weak attempt at curls his hair gives each day only results in it being a little frizzy. It means with each pat his hair is crushed and rises, giving Mobei-jun an indication when to stop applying force.

The head pats seem to do what Mobei-jun wanted, because Shang Qinghua resumes speaking, rapidly explaining that he isn’t even sure if it’s real or not because he was sleeping but he thinks so because he feels like there was a big jump in his memories last night.

“In the Northern edges in the windswept crystal-dale there’s a small protected spot that some super rare flowers grow. They’re also super beautiful. And when they’re in full bloom they’re said to be the most beautiful thing imaginable, that if men will die over a woman’s beauty, they’ll die a thousand-fold just to see these flowers. But! But where they are is so cold that people just die trying to get to them. Even ice demons. They don’t even get close. It’s basically a graveyard around them.”

“I’m not taking Qinghua somewhere dangerous,” Mobei-jun interjects. Merely iceskating was dangerous enough. Plus he’s heard of these flowers before. A few years ago Shang Qinghua told him about them and mused that he’d really like to go see them. He hadn’t asked Mobei-jun to take him but did vaguely state that he was too weak to go alone and he’s sure his king would appreciate them. Mobei-jun had brushed him off. Shang Qinghua often rambled about random places and things and Mobei-jun ignored it. He didn’t realize that was Shang Qinghua’s way of asking to go see.

“No, you’re not listening to me. Listen. Normally its so cold that nothing living can even get close, but there’s a, like, 12 hour span once a year when the chill of the Northern realm and the heat of the human realm meet at a rift and create a narrow passage of survivability. And then under the setting sun of a deep winter blue moon they bloom fully, so really more like half an hour that they’re open and pickable, if that.

“And they can be used in medicines. I think I remember a story of a man going there with his wife cursed with a mountain lava’s heat on his back, walking through the bitter cold for days as he tried to keep her alive, and getting there just in time. He crushed up the flowers up and fed them to her and it cured her.”

“Qinghua isn’t going,” Mobei-jun says and stands. Shang Qinghua falls back to sit on his butt. Mobei-jun realizes after the decision is past his lips what it sounds like. Humans like words so he parses through his mind and finds some.

His finger catches under Shang Qinghua’s chin to raise his lowered head.

“I won’t take Qinghua anywhere he can get hurt. If Qinghua thinks these flower can cure his memory, this king will go find these flowers and bring them back for you.”

“No! That’s not what I meant.” The excitement in his voice vanishes and slips towards despair. “I meant- I don’t know what I meant…Ignore me.”

“Qinghua, look at me.” Mobei-jun orders.

Shang Qinghua looks up at him in the low light.

“We will find another way to fix your memories if these flowers are too dangerous. This king is not done trying. But I won’t place you in danger.”

Shang Qinghua nods and mumbles something about not actually wanting to go all the way to pick them, but even just seeing them in bloom would be nice. It’s the same way he mumbled the last time he suggested seeing the flowers, making Mobei-jun’s heart twinge at how he didn’t understand it was something Shang Qinghua really wanted.

He sends a missive back to the ice palace demanding to know all about these flowers and when there’s safe passage before they return to sleep.

Come morning, a letter waits for him that it appears the heat of the human realm’s summer will leak through the divide between worlds for a few hours each day in the coming week.

Mobei-jun is hesitant. He buys Shang Qinghua the best winter clothes possible. He makes him promise to stay close to him. And he makes him swear on his life that if Mobei-jun decides it’s too dangerous he won’t resist them leaving.

Shang Qinghua even jokes, “You have permission to pick me up and manhandle me, my king.”

Multiple times does Mobei-jun want to turn around on their long trek, but Shang Qinghua wants to keep going saying he’s always wanted to see these flowers. It’s the first time he’s expressed true want, so until they truly cannot press on, Mobei-jun will swallow back his anxiety.

There are a few points he does pick up Shang Qinghua. He doesn’t manhandle him. He carries him dutifully under his arm or slung over his shoulder. Mostly when Shang Qinghua is shaking like a leaf and needs warmed, but sometimes when the jutting ice is too treacherous for his delicate human form he scoops him up and ascends the ice.

As they walk the narrow passage of survivable temperatures Mobei-jun explains how to channel spiritual energy. He explains it poorly, not used to human biology. Shang Qinghua is a natural at it though. After only four hours he’s able to figure it out and warm himself.

It’s a jarring loss to Mobei-jun who didn’t even realize how much he liked Shang Qinghua reaching for him whenever he gets too cold.

He still reaches for him when the wind bashes into them, it’s strength stronger than the fledging cultivator’s understanding of how to generate warmth. He also reaches for him when he slips on the ice, grabbing onto Mobei-jun to keep himself upright. Mobei-jun makes sure he’s always there to catch him. He follows two paces behind Shang Qinghua on the narrow path, placing his feet into the deep grooves that Shang Qinghua cuts in the snow.

They sky has darkened to purple by the time they reach the ledge of the ice gorge of flowers. They lay flat on their stomaches to let the wind pass over them as they peer over the edge.

The flowers are in full bloom. Their poppy-like petals are crystalline, sprawled open to catch the light and reflect back the purple glow that illuminates far beyond them. A thin layer of ice coats each petal to make them look like glass. A white fox composed of ice is amongst the flowers, hunting intently. It leaps high and lands, disappearing entirely.

With the sun nearly set, there is little time to harvest the flowers. The wind is picking up enough that even Mobei-jun is shivering. He can hear Shang Qinghua’s teeth clattering next to him. 

Get the flowers. Get back to Shang Qinghua. Use the darkness of the set sun to pass to where ever is warmer.

“Stay here,” he orders. He unclasps his cloak and drapes it over Shang Qinghua for added warmth.

The slope of the gorge is steeper than he’s expecting, with sharpened masses of ice carved into the slope like a wall of spears meant to gore through an invading force. Mobei-jun tries to be careful at first but each passing second the sun sets further, darkness blooms around them, and the petals are beginning to close. If Qinghua is right that these flowers can restore his memories, he needs to get them for him.

“My king!” Shang Qinghua shouts after him the moment he’s gone. “It’s too late! I’m happy to have just seen them!”

Mobei-jun whips around to see Shang Qinghua starting to descend the slope too.

“GO BACK!” Mobei-jun snarls. “I will break your legs if you take one step further!”

Shang Qinghua stops, his hands clutching the dark cloak Mobei-jun draped over his shoulders. The wind catches it’s edges trying to drag it away from his body.

“GO BACK UP!”

Shang Qinghua doesn’t move. Mobei-jun wants to go back and bodily drag Shang Qinghua to the safety of the ledge but if he does so the sun will set, the air will chill and the flowers will close their petals and freeze so solid that they cannot be picked.

Mobei-jun presses on, slipping on the ice as the light fades and he realizes he needs to hurry up. Already the temperature has dropped and he’s shaking with chill. This is for Qinghua, he reminds himself. If these can help then he’ll grab one and slip through the darkness back to Qinghua before getting them out. He just needs to make sure…

Glancing back, Shang Qinghua is exactly where he was when Mobei-jun snarled at him. He hasn’t retreated but he hasn’t further descended either.

The darkness expands over Mobei-jun and the temperature drops again.

Far above, Shang Qinghua’s voice is dragged away by the wind, carried far in the opposite direction.

Mobei-jun keeps going, his limbs locking and trembling, determined to get even a single petal to give Shang Qinghua as he fights the growing cold.

He’s never actually been cold before. Not like this.

Darkness is fully cast over him by the time he reaches the edge of the valley where the flowers rest. The fox is gone, vanished into a tunnel somewhere. The flowers have all closed their petals, a thin layer of ice sealing them up once more. Those furthest away and cast in shadow are already encased entirely in ice.

Mobei-jun feels like he’s moving in slow motion. Every movement stings his body. He barely manages to land one hand on a flower, two fingers catching on a slowly furling petal, when he’s jolted backwards and up.

Above him, Shang Qinghua lays on his sword, fear painting his face and twisting it. For a moment Mobei-jun’s stomach drops think he’s evoked the fear. In truth, it’s fear of flying when he has no memory of knowing how, just a flash that he could.

He clings to Mobei-jun like his life depends on it. Mobei-jun’s life depends on it. The darkness has flooded the valley and anything left living in it would surely drown in cold. 

“I’m sorry, my king,” Shang Qinghua gasps. He feels Mobei-jun start to slip and tightens his grip. His cheeks and nose are bright red from the cold. “But I didn’t take a step so you can’t break my legs.”

They crash into the embankment above the jagged ice where the sun still casts the dullest purple light. Shang Qinghua rolls with a pained grunt while Mobei-jun drops heavily in the snow. He quickly scrambles to his hands and knees, crawling to Shang Qinghua who gingerly presses himself up.

It’s Mobei-jun’s turn to manhandle Shang Qinghua, grabbing him and with the last of his energy scraping through the dim air to arrive in a shadowed corner of the very first inn they stayed at when Shang Qinghua fled.

They crash hard onto the floor, a crumpled mass of limbs shaking with cold.

“Are you alright?” Shang Qinghua asks. His voice shakes. He manages to press himself up.

Mobei-jun doesn’t even know if he’s alright. But he knows caught between his fingers is a single petal of the frosty flowers. With a shaking hand turned white he holds it out to Shang Qinghua.

“You got one?!” Shang Qinghua almost shouts. His eyes light up and that glint of life has finally returned. He drops back down to his knees in front of Mobei-jun. “You almost fucking killed yourself and you got one!”

“For Qinghua.”

Shang Qinghua takes it and stares at it. His lips curl into a huge grin and he says, “This is exactly what I remembered. It’ll cure any malady. Even a petal should— are you okay? You’re bleeding!”

Is he? He didn’t even notice. His whole body feels the same numbing cold. There are no distinct pang of pain. He feels Shang Qinghua’s hand though, and he sees when he draws it back it’s covered in blood from a spear of ice.

“Here,” Shang Qinghua passes him back the petal a little too frantically for someone barely injured. “Eat it.”

Mobei-jun presses it back towards Shang Qinghua. “Qinghua, please. It’s for you.”

He tries to push himself up and stumbles, his arm giving way before he can even get onto his knees as he finally feels the wave of pain from the ice gored through his side. Shang Qinghua attempts to steady him but collapses under his weight.

“No, really, eat it, my king. You’re actually hurt.” Shang Qinghua says. 

Mobei-jun stares at him. His own eyes sting and water.

Shang Qinghua meets his stare with his own, bright and sparkling in contrast to the patches of pink kissed by cold.

That knot that’s rested in Mobei-jun’s throat ever since he got word of Shang Qinghua’s absence swells. It expands and expands until he doesn’t think he can breathe because he doesn’t want take the cure that he was willing to nearly die to get for Shang Qinghua.

His heart skips and stalls, jolting against the knot in his throat to make it echo through the void in his chest.

He’s used to Shang Qinghua being a coward. He’s used to him backing down and giving in when Mobei-jun insists.

He’s used to him playing dead to avoid fighting.

He’s used to him…saving his life.

He doesn’t even realize he’s wiping his eyes. He didn’t even realize they stung enough to well tears.

Shang Qinghua reaches out towards him. Like that first night he reaches and withdraws, reaches and withdraws before he steals his nerves and brushes a finger against Mobei-jun’s cheek.

All too brightly, trying to convince himself in addition to Mobei-jun, he insists, “Besides, whatever I’ve forgotten, you can remind me of later.”

Shang Qinghua’s eyes are glassy too, Mobei-jun realizes. He understands exactly what he’s giving up even if he has no idea what he’s giving up. It’s a sacrifice on faith, and his faith in in his king. The brilliant little human has made up his mind that the lone petal is for Mobei-jun.

Shang Qinghua presses the flower to his lips. Mobei-jun has no choice but to let it be placed on his tongue and chew the petal, a sweet, honey-like medicinal taste filling his mouth. Warmth fills him. He’s suddenly aware of his body and how much it hurts, how his muscles have been transmuted ice in the shadows of the valley and bore through by speared icicles in his descent. 

Thawing hurts. His entire body radiates an agonizing warmth.

He wraps his arms around Shang Qinghua, hugging him as tightly as he can. Shang Qinghua flinches, his entire body tensing under the sudden weight of Mobei-jun. It takes all of ten seconds before he relaxes, burying his face against Mobei-jun’s chest as warmth flows from him into Shang Qinghua.

Chapter Text

✺ Shang Qinghua

Shang Qinghua does not know much about himself, but he has learned one thing: he is a selfish man.

Usually, that selfishness seems to fall solely into the category of self preservation. Frantic lies to spare his life. Collapsing to avert attacks from himself and redirect towards others. Secret schemes that make his heart race. Hugging thighs and committing treason. He’s learned this about himself.

But, for some reason, seeing Mobei-jun looking so pathetic with glistening eyes and a body collapsing from where the cold bit him, having very nearly killed himself to get even a single petal for Shang Qinghua…

Well, that does something to him.

He might regret it a little bit. He’s still scared of everything. He’s seen terrifying memories and he’s seen soft moments he desperately wants to be intimately familiar with again. But that regret compared to the pathetic look Mobei-jun gave trying to convince him to eat the flower petal was nothing.

He’s seen that patheticness once before now. Only a briefest second when Mobei-jun touched him and he responded in fear. The way it rent his heart open to see Mobei-jun deflate and hang his head twisted Shang Qinghua’s heart, and seeing it again, he knew he had no choice but to hand it over.

And now, days later, Mobei-jun is sick. Or, in truth, Shang Qinghua is sick but on his feet while the heat of the human realm combined with only a wilted petal not being enough to fully draw Mobei-jun back into health has left the ice demon sprawled on the bed of the inn, shirt off and hair tugged up in a bun. Twice now he’s said that Shang Qinghua doesn’t need to fan him but he looks so sad in the heat. It makes him want to dote on him and take care of him. Massage his back and hold a cool cup of juice to his lips so he needn’t so much as move.

And attractive, half naked and glistening in sweat… So what if Shang Qinghua wants an excuse to sit on the bed next to him. He is, after all, a selfish man.

A selfish man with very inappropriate thoughts.

The heat is fully oppressive even to Shang Qinghua, although tolerable for him. The humidity grants no relief. His only relief is the small back waves of air when he lifts the fan. Up and down, this way and that. Fan his king and stare at his chest.

Shang Qinghua coughs and Mobei-jun instantly presses himself up.

“Qinghua should stop,” Mobei-jun says. He holds out a hand for the fan. “This king can help you cool off.”

“It’s fine,” Shang Qinghua assures. His eyes drift downwards to where bare skin glistens and forces his eyes upwards with an awkward smile. Mobei-jun is watching him intently and catches the motion. His expression flickers, his brows pinching together and lips tightening.

Shang Qinghua gives an awkward laugh and starts fanning again, looking out the window at people passing outside.

“Qinghua, you can stop.” Mobei-jun says. He reaches forward and lightly touches Shang Qinghua’s hand to stop him from fanning. His touch is cool. Cold. Icy. Oh how Shang Qinghua longs to lay down next to him and bury his face in that sweaty but ice-cold chest to alleviate the heat. It’d be so nice. Even nicer if Mobei-jun then wrapped his massive arms around Shang Qinghua and pulled him in, encasing him entirely in ice.

At his sharp inhale of delighted surprise Mobei-jun’s hand snaps back, falling into his lap. Shang Qinghua’s hand falls too, letting the fan drop onto the bed.

“Sorry.”

The lone word from Mobei-jun confuses Shang Qinghua. He doesn’t bother trying to hide it, scratching his head and asking, “Am I forgetting why my king would be sorry for that?”

It’s Mobei-jun’s turn to look confused at Shang Qinghua. It’s a pity that that pathetic expression vanishes by his consternation, as if Shang Qinghua is supposed to know why he’s confused  and sorry already.

“Qinghua doesn’t like being touched,” Mobei-jun says. In his lap his fingers knit together as though to keep himself from touching Shang Qinghua.

“I don’t?” Shang Qinghua asks. That surprises him. So far he very much likes being touched, especially by cold hands when it’s hot or arms that radiant warmth when freezing. He has a feeling he very much likes being touched, in fact, and it’s purely being struck that he doesn’t like. To be fair to himself, he doesn’t think anyone would like being hit.

Mobei-jun shakes his head. He once more looks as he always has, haughty and arrogant and looking down on him, but now that Shang Qinghua has seen him pathetic and desperate to save him, it’s no longer as scary. He has enough memories and enough lived moments now to see that there is something behind his eyes that he keeps far beneath the permafrost of his very being, but he chased Shang Qinghua for a reason.

The memory of Mobei-jun demanding Shang Qinghua hits him comes back to him. What was it he said, that demons hit things they like because he wants Shang Qinghua to like him.

Okay. Maybe he was wrong then that no one would like being hit. But still, his point stands.

In a moment of pure impulse and stupidity, Shang Qinghua reaches out and slaps Mobei-jun. Not hard. Just enough to make a satisfying sound of palm against cheek. The shock that ripples out through the larger man is hilarious. His eyes widen in shock, the pupils dilating to black orbs that take up his whole eyes.

“Shit!” Shang Qinghua squeaks, tossing himself backwards. He pushes himself across the bed until his foot tangles in the folds. He kicks out trying to release it and only kicks Mobei-jun, forcing Shang Qinghua to freeze lest he make his situation worse. “My king I don’t know what came over me!” he quickly blabbers. “I just was thinking about you saying I don’t like being touched and then you saying that demons like being hit and oh fuck I just hit you!”

“Qinghua remembers what I said?” he asks. His hand rubs his cheek where a small patch of pink rises to the surface. Dark hair falls into his face. His eyes are still blackened.

Shang Qinghua stammers, “I- I mean I remember what I’ve done. Just not before.”

“As long as Qinghua is starting to remember,” Mobei-jun replies. His fingers still touch where he was slapped.

Shang Qinghua slowly relaxes, realizing that there is no threat to him. Mobei-jun has no intention to hit him back. In fact, the edges of his lips curl up ever so slightly as he lays back down.

They remain in the human realm for a while. Mobei-jun takes him to more places he’s supposed to remember, even asking if he wants to go back to ‘the mountain,’ whatever that is. It’s frustrating to Shang Qinghua to be presented with so much information he’s supposed to know, memories he’s expected to hold. He’s an empty vessel but there’s a hole in the bottom, never letting him be filled. He’s constantly starving, full of thoughts and words but no order to place them.

Sometimes he finds it too hard not to remember anything. He finds himself unable to hold it in. One time, even he bursts at Mobei-jun when his frustration peaks. He turns to him and yells. Jabbing Mobei-jun in the chest he releases his pent up frustration.

Mobei-jun lets him. He doesn’t react in the slightest to be yelled at, even when Shang Qinghua reaches up onto his tip toes and pinches his cheek hard trying to force any reaction because he’s so frustrated at having no memories and just needs Mobei-jun to react. He doesn’t though. He just stands there until Shang Qinghua yells an anguished scream at the sky and turns to leave. Only then he grabs Shang Qinghua by the wrist and says, “Don’t go.”

“I- just need a minute.” Shang Qinghua says, his hand curling into a tight fist in Mobei-jun’s hand. Mobei-jun’s painfully tight grip loosens just enough that Shang Qinghua could tug his hand away if he wanted to. He lets it remain caught behind him as he slowly inhales and exhales, trying to calm his racing heart filling the void where memories are supposed to be.

“We can go see Shen Qingqiu,” Mobei-jun says as if that’s supposed to mean something.

Letting the frustration nip at his heals again, Shang Qinghua spits “I don’t know who that is.”

“He’s also a peak lord and you two… get along.”

The way he says it is strange, a hidden meaning that is obscured. Shang Qinghua can’t help but asks “Sexually?”

Mobei-jun’s grip tightens ever so slightly. “No.”

Shang Qinghua spins around. “Okay. So why would I want to talk to him?”

“You and him are friends. He understands your strange language.”

That peaks Shang Qinghua’s interest to learn about these words he uses and no one knows so he agrees. As they return to the inn Mobei-jun randomly asks, “Is Qinghua missing something sexually?”

“What?” Shang Qinghua yelps. Has he been that obvious staring at Mobei-jun’s chest all the time? “No. Me? No. Ha. Hahaha no. Why would you think something like that? No I don’t need anything sexually. I don’t even know what I like sexually. For all I know I only like human woman. Ah ha. Ha…ha.”

Shang Qinghua’s laugh dies when he realizes how forced it sounds.

Mobei-jun doesn’t reply.

They don’t pass through the shadows to where they’re going. Instead they ride on horseback. It’s clear that Mobei-jun is hoping that memories will be triggered on the supposedly familiar journey to what is apparently Shang Qinghua’s home outside the ice palace. And they are. Most notable is along a bamboo lined road where the rest of their first meeting returns to him, confirming what he recalled before. He looks to Mobei-jun and says “…I really tried to kill you.”

Mobei-jun is silent. Shang Qinghua can’t read his expression at all.

“My king?” Shang Qinghua says hesitantly. He drops down to his knees to beg forgiveness just like he did at their first meeting, but before his knees touch the dusty ground, Mobei-jun is pulling him back to his feet saying, “Qinghua has saved my life many times.”

Shang Qinghua gets back on his horse while Mobei-jun walks holding the leads to both their horses.

At the base of Shang Qinghua’s vision, the system recovery is stalled at 21.5%, flickering between increasing and decreasing. It rises as high as 29% and drops as low as 16.5% before hovering at 21.5%.

He learns the reason for this discrepancy when he meets Shen Qingqiu. They sit together in a lavish bamboo house on the other man’s peak, served fancy snacks that make Shang Qinghua’s mouth water as Shang Qinghua tells Shen Qingqiu Mobei-jun told him to trust him and what happened, and in turn Shen Qingqiu tells him that he lived in another world and died, and likely the system is struggling recovering the memories of both lifetimes.

Shang Qinghua gawps at Shen Qingqiu.

“No fucking way,” he stammers and reaches for the sugared nuts.

“THat!” Shen Qingqiu says pointing at him with wild excitement that contrasts his usually passively elegant face. “That exactly. Fucking is not used. It’s a different language called English. You learned it probably online. What else. Hmm, I mean aside from slang you mostly just use swear words. Or you’re draw out emojis when you write sometimes, but you seem to have passed that on to your disciples so it’s more common now.”

“None of that makes sense!” Shang Qinghua complains, but at the same time it makes sense. In a weird, fucked up way. The recovery bar sometimes flits between how repaired his memories are, and sometimes he gets flashes of the strangest memories that make no sense.

He ends up spending the entire day with Shen Qingqiu, who fills him in on vast chunks of his life that he didn’t know existed. He learns he wrote a smutty novel, which feels right. He learns that it was het, which feels wrong. He learns that he became head disciple young, which feels wrong. But he learns that he earned his position by sabotaging sugar levels of pancakes, which is funny and feels right.

He learns that he saved Mobei-jun’s life, which feels like a lot of things. He listens to Shen Qingqiu recount the version of events that Shang Qinghua apparently told him, of catching Mobei-jun from the sky as he plummeted to certain death. Shang Qinghua listens and wonders if that’s why Mobei-jun cares about him and feels indebted, especially given those in the palace referred to Shang Qinghua as a pet. How could anyone not feel indebted to a pet that saved its master’s life?

By the time he returns to Mobei-jun, thoughts overwhelm his mind. Each rushes through his fingers, too quick for him to grasp onto and process in full. He doesn’t even realize that Mobei-jun is walking him across a rainbow bridge, leading him through the sect where people jump back and half draw swords seeing the two. He only realizes it when he’s set down on a bed that is familiar.

His bed. The bed that he’s supposedly spent much of this life in. He bounces ever so slightly on it. It has little give, but enough to be comfortable. The blankets send a small puff of dust upwards, telling him he hasn’t slept in this bed for a very long time. How long?

He looks up at Mobei-jun who stands over him. He almost asks how long it’s been since he slept in his own bed, but the question dies in his throat, shoved aside by a million other questions.

Suddenly it doesn’t feel like he should take things as they come and trust that it will be okay. Suddenly he wants to know what his life was. Both lives. He could ask Shen Qingqiu. He could ask Mobei-jun. But neither of them know the full story of his existence. He wants his memories back.

It’s utterly exhausting and his eyes are heavy, the bitterness of frustration and sweetness of curiosity carved away by fatigue like water undercutting a stream bank.

“Does Qinghua need anything?” Mobei-jun asks. 

Shang Qinghua lets the fatigue win and lays down, closing his eyes. “Mn.” He hums. “A big mango smoothie. And some chips.”

With his eyes closed, the system’s progress bar quivers, trying to recover more. Maybe if he actually rested, it would let the system work it’s magic. Plus he’s so tired and the bed is comfy and familiar feeling, the blankets soft wrapped around him and the room cooler than the air outside. He really could just close his eyes and-

Shang Qinghua jolts awake. His arms flail violently through the dark, slamming hard into the back of chair making him yelp in pain. Within a matters of seconds the room is illuminated and Mobei-jun is sitting up from the floor where he lays.

Shang Qinghua stares down at him with wide eyes, his own chest rising and falling, heaving to gasp air that is hot but in his recovered memory was so cold. The dream clings to him, the final seconds before Mobei-jun nearly hit the ground falling the height of a mountain, the pain of his limbs pulling apart catching him, struggling to wrap his fingers around him and trying desperately to hold on, the overwhelming panic that he might not be fast enough and Mobei-jun might actually die.

The absolute fear in Mobei-jun’s eyes makes him shiver in terror.

“Qinghua?” Mobei-jun says. His voice is sleepy. It’s soft and floats through the air to combat Shang Qinghua’s ragged inhales. He reaches out a hand but stops himself, drawing it back. His hand drawing away evokes the memory of Mobei-jun’s hand slipping out of reach. On instinct of the lingering panic, Shang Qinghua lunges and grabs his hand. 

“Is it bad?” Mobei-jun asks. His hand sits limply in Shang Qinghua’s clutch, not drawing away but not clasping back.

“No,” Shang Qinghua says and pinches his eyes shut. It was terrifying, yes, and that fear clings to him, but more than that, the memory also uncovered feelings of why he was so desperate to save Mobei-jun even if it cost him his own life in a far fit of mindless bravery. They’re feelings he’s felt ever since seeing him in that clearing, but even knowing they exist, it’s overwhelming to know that these feelings are a part of him.

“It’s okay, Qinghua,” Mobei-jun says. A finger brushes against his cheek where his eyes have pinched so tightly a tear rolls out. “You’re safe.”

In Shang Qinghua’s grasp, Mobei-jun’s hand turns to interlock his fingers with Shang Qinghua’s. His hand is so cold and it feels so good.

“I know,” Shang Qinghua says. “I know,” he repeats, needing to reaffirm it to himself. 

“My king?” Shang Qinghua asks after a moment. “Do you remember when I saved your life?”

“Mn.”

Shang Qinghua lays back down. He lays on the edge of the bed so that they can keep holding hands. “Can you remind me?”

Mobei-jun is silent for a moment and Shang Qinghua is about to say that he doesn’t need to when he begins to recount a moment Shang Qinghua has no memory of. He speaks of bringing Shang Qinghua to an ancestral hall, of Shang Qinghua telling him he was leaving forever, and of his fear that he truly was. As he speaks, Shang Qinghua wiggles closer and closer towards the edge of the bed until he’s half hanging off it. At that point, when Mobei-jun is telling him about his uncle’s schemes, Shang Qinghua finds himself wiggling off the bed onto the pad Mobei-jun has arranged for himself on the floor. In the heat, the cool of his body cools him and helps ground him. 

To Shang Qinghua’s surprise, as Mobei-jun talks he raises an arm for him. Shang Qinghua wiggles in, slotting himself against the cool. In the dark room, all there is is Mobei-jun slowly speaking.

“Is that why you were so determined to find me?” Shang Qinghua asks after Mobei-jun finishes speaking, having told finding Shang Qinghua with ice gored through his leg and hauling him back to safety on a cart.

“Yes.” Mobei-jun says after a drawn out beat.

Shang Qinghua smiles through the dark. It’s not the memory he wanted to be told of, but it’s one he’s glad he now knows of and hopes to remember himself one day.

Mobei-jun’s hand lands on his head. It’s a little hard. A little crushing. But he strokes his hair back and forth softly.

“My king?” Shang Qinghua asks.

“Hm?”

Shang Qinghua wiggles his toes in anticipation for the question that feels so foolish to ask but he needs to know. Mobei-jun is powerful and terrifying and fucking hot. And while Shang Qinghua feels that his attraction is unrequited, listening to Mobei-jun’s story and knowing he woke in Mobei-jun’s bed and was called Mobei-jun’s human pet, it all adds up to feel like something different from merely master and servant, traitor and king.

“Do you like me?”

Mobei-jun tenses, his arms inadvertently pulling Shang Qinghua inwards. When he senses no danger in the question he admits, “I like Qinghua very much.”

Shang Qinghua grins and rolls in Mobei-jun’s arms to face him in the dark. His kiss misses the first time, sliding against Mobei-jun’s cheek. The second kiss catches the corner of Mobei-jun’s lips. It’s met and returned, tangling them together. Warmth against cool, demon against human, an overwhelming volume of memories against hardly any at all but just enough, Mobei-jun and Shang Qinghua press together caught in what Shang Qinghua can’t help but wonder is their first kiss.

Draped over Mobei-jun, Shang Qinghua lays his head down over his chest and teasingly demands, “Repeat what you said about liking me.”

Mobei-jun’s fingers twist in his hair and stroke down his spine, sending a shiver through his entire body. “Doesn’t Qinghua remember?”

“I remember,” Shang Qinghua assures, “but you can remind me anyways.”