GWID Chapter 42

Little Phoenix had originally been holding back his tears, but the moment Xingyi said “It’s your turn to comfort me,” he immediately burst into crying. “You won’t even comfort me, yet you want me to comfort you. You’re the one who threw a tantrum and refused to have hot pot with me, and then you deliberately made yourself bleed just to upset me. How can there be such a terrible husband as you, and you still want me to comfort you — you’re being completely unreasonable.”

Little Phoenix cried in hiccupping sobs, wiping his tears between hiccups. “I won’t comfort you, I simply won’t. You’re nothing but a big pig’s trotter, and yes, you really are a big pig’s trotter.”

All the way back to Fuli Palace, with Xingyi carrying a sopping-wet Little Phoenix in his arms, Little Phoenix was still sulking, lips pressed flat, refusing to speak.

Xingyi didn’t know what to do. He brought Little Phoenix back to the room and had servants carry in buckets of hot water, wanting Little Phoenix to change out of the clothes soaked through by the waters of the Wangchuan River. But Little Phoenix sat bolt upright and refused to move, curling himself into the corner of the bed in silence. When Xingyi came over to hold him, he stubbornly refused to budge, and the moment he was touched he would cry and whimper, as though he wanted to cry out in one go all the unhappiness and misery that had accumulated inside him over the years.

Xingyi looked at him, wanting to reach out and wipe away his tears, wanting to drape a thick blanket over him, but Little Phoenix wouldn’t let him touch him at all. Xingyi, rarely at a loss, simply watched as Little Phoenix cried until he hiccupped, his eyes a vivid red, great teardrops rolling down unceasingly, his water-soaked hair clinging in disheveled strands against the front of his robes — a picture of utter wretchedness.

Xingyi couldn’t quite say what he intended to do, but after being evaded by Little Phoenix many times over, he reached out once more and rested his hand on top of Little Phoenix’s head. Little Phoenix stirred and shrank back — only to find he had already retreated to the very innermost corner of the bed, and one more step would send him into the wall. With a dull thud, Xingyi hadn’t managed to stop him in time, and watched as Little Phoenix flinched in pain and clutched the back of his own head, burying his face in his knees.

Something indescribable and anxious rose in Xingyi’s chest. He sat down beside Little Phoenix and forcibly drew him into his arms, heedless of his struggling, and pulled him close to examine the wound.

Little Phoenix was perhaps truly hurting this time, and didn’t think to push him away. He obediently let himself be held as Xingyi examined the spot where he’d bumped his head, then channeled healing arts through his fingertips, parting the thick black roots of Little Phoenix’s hair and laying his hand gently on the warm skin of his scalp, carefully massaging it.

Xingyi looked down and said, “And you still claim you’re not a little quail? Managing to knock your own head on the wall just sitting there — how foolish.”

Little Phoenix said nothing.

He finished healing him and still didn’t leave. His fingers slid down through Little Phoenix’s hair, slowly and gently smoothing out the tangled strands, and then he held him, patiently pressing Little Phoenix’s head against his chest.

Little Phoenix stirred again — though this time he made no attempt to escape from his arms. He reached out, and with forefinger and thumb pinched Xingyi’s right sleeve, his voice still thick with the remnants of tears. “You should heal yourself too, you know everything, don’t you?”

Xingyi soothed him. “I’ll heal it in a little while. Stop crying.” In truth, the leaf-blade he had used was one of the ancient divine weapons, and the wounds it dealt carried the power of curses and killing — they could not be healed by healing arts. Only medicine applied slowly over time, and waiting for it to close on its own.

Little Phoenix fell silent again. A moment later, Little Phoenix muttered in a congested, muffled voice. “What’s wrong with quails — you just look down on quails. You’re awful, you just don’t like me.”

Xingyi found that tonight he seemed utterly set on the subject of quails, and so he held him a little tighter, resting his chin against the crown of Little Phoenix’s head, and asked him softly, “But you are not a quail. You are a little phoenix.”

Little Phoenix said gloomily, “When I first hatched, I didn’t know I was a phoenix. Back then everyone called me the white-feathered quail, so I thought I really was a quail, and I went everywhere looking for quail nests, wanting to find my own kind — but none of them would take me in.”

Xingyi was quiet for a moment.

A moment later, Little Phoenix felt his voice just above his head, reverberating through the skin where they pressed together, traveling along his bones in a faint tremor, buzzing softly against his ear. “So how did you find out you were a phoenix?”

Little Phoenix said, “I got into a fight with someone, and just when I was about to lose, I suddenly discovered I could breathe fire. Afterwards, an old tortoise grandfather told me that only the phoenix clan and the golden-winged bird clan can breathe fire. The young birds of the golden-winged bird clan are slender and graceful from birth, but the young birds of the phoenix clan look exactly like I did when I was little — round and plump just like me. Since I could breathe fire, I must be a little phoenix.”

Xingyi said softly, “…I don’t dislike quails either. Whether you’re a phoenix or a quail, I like you all the same. You are the one who is to be my Empress — do you think I would cast you aside? Do I look like someone who breaks his word?”

Little Phoenix said nothing.

Xingyi suddenly realized something — in that second life of his which he could not remember, had he also made promises to Little Phoenix before his ascension? Those soft and tender words, those careful instructions written on slips of paper — were they not also proof that he had later broken his word and abandoned him all alone? Because he had forgotten him.

Xingyi’s voice was hoarse. “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have left you behind alone, and made you search for me all those years.”

Little Phoenix froze.

Xingyi asked quietly, “If no one had told me any of this — were you planning to keep it buried inside you forever, and spend your whole life as a little bird who tells lies?”

Little Phoenix raised his head, opened his mouth, and found no words would come. He blinked several times, seeming a little lost, and then as though he had suddenly realized something, the tears that had just subsided welled up again.

Little Phoenix’s voice had gone quite hoarse. “You — you already knew everything, Weijian.”

Xingyi said: “Mm. Phoenix Mingzun told me everything.”

Little Phoenix’s voice grew smaller and smaller. “I — I’m not a lying little bird. I told you before, you are my husband — but you didn’t believe me.”

Xingyi held him tighter. “It was my fault. Don’t be sad. You’re not foolish — I’m the foolish one. Don’t cry anymore, all right? My little Yuan Yuan, stop crying, be good.”

Little Phoenix obediently stifled his sobs, hiccupping as he added, “Let me — let me finish saying this. Actually, if you still don’t like me and don’t want to keep a little bird anymore, that’s all right too. I don’t want to force you. That’s why I didn’t tell you about what happened before. That day, Yue Lao — Yue Lao told me that in the mortal world everything ends after one lifetime. In the next life no one recognizes anyone, everyone marries someone new and has children and grandchildren, and even if they meet again, they won’t know each other. It was I who — who insisted on coming to find you. I’m sorry, Weijian.”

He talked on for a little while, but couldn’t hold it back anymore and began to cry. “But I really missed you so much. Decades, decades of not being able to see you, and no matter where I went I couldn’t find you — I really missed you so much. I missed you when we were eating hot pot too. Hot pot really is so delicious. And look at you now, shut away in Northern Heaven all day long, never playing with the other immortals, so that everyone is afraid of you. You can’t eat anything good, and there’s no one to keep you company. It made me so sad to see it, Weijian.”

He cried in a jumble of words and thoughts. Xingyi listened quietly without interrupting, only patting Little Phoenix’s back in comfort, listening to him talk about the mortal world, and about that lifetime on the immortal mountain, with occasional stories from his later search for him — most of them happy ones. Even at the saddest moments, he spoke only of having no money and not being able to eat fruit, of going every day to a barren immortal isle to search one by one for small sour fruits, until Queen Mother of the West took him in and gave him a job delivering peaches where he could eat peaches too.

Little Phoenix said, “I’ve already been very lucky. I’m very glad. But Weijian — I’ve heard people say you can’t morally pressure the person you like into anything, because liking someone is a matter between two people. I like you, but if you don’t like me and don’t want to keep a little bird, I can go back to Fan Tian and carry on working.”

He paused. Before Xingyi could say a word, he watched the young man before him wipe his eyes and fling himself into his arms, saying in a muffled voice. “No — I won’t. I take back what I just said. I don’t want to go back to Fan Tian to work. I want to stay here with you. Weijian, you were right — I really am very awful. I think I must be the most greedy phoenix in the whole world.”

Xingyi pulled him up, bent his head, and kissed his forehead. His throat was burning, his voice burning and hoarse. “Then I must be the luckiest person in the world, to have the fortune to meet a little phoenix like you. Since you don’t wish to go, I won’t allow you to go either — you are my little bird, mine alone. No one can take you from my side, not even you yourself. Do you understand, my little Yuan Yuan?”

Little Phoenix nodded as hard as he could, laughing even as he cried, nuzzling against his chest, clutching his shoulders urgently. “Pinky promise.”

Xingyi reached out and made the pinky promise with him. Little finger hooked with little finger, then a shake — one shake, two shakes. Their warmth seared, and in that moment it was as though a thread had connected the two of them; Little Phoenix’s panic, his bewilderment, his joy and sorrow — all of it was felt completely and utterly by Xingyi in that single instant.

So this was what it was to be liked?

Xingyi thought: so this was what it felt like for Little Phoenix to like him?

He pressed his hand against his own chest — it was hollow and still inside, perfectly calm. And yet he felt that some things were not necessarily governed by the heart, because without thinking anything at all, in the instant that Little Phoenix placed his pinky-promise hand in his, he kissed him deeply, pressing down on the young man’s shoulders and bearing him back onto the bed with the utmost tenderness. Little Phoenix’s body was so soft and gentle and tender; his fingers passed over his cheeks, over the thin skin and delicate collarbones — it was as though the slightest carelessness might make him disappear, like a frail and fleeting dream drifting away on the wind.

A tingling ache traveled up his spine, and he did not know what to make of it. He didn’t even dare to kiss too hard, because he feared it would hurt Little Phoenix.