"Sui Zhou?" he calls out from the hall. "Are you home?" Even if he can see his dependable black workboots set in the rack by the door, well-worn soles beginning to peel back from the toes, well, who could be sure? These are extenuatingly unordinary circumstances, after all.
And, well. If Cui-mama wanted her number to stay decorative, she wouldn't have plugged it into Jin San's phone the moment she decided they had earned the dubious honour of being one of Huanyi's chosen regulars. Nor would she have constructed a reputation as ostentatious nightlife host-cum-den mother for every cracking egg hitting Changping's pavement.
Tang Fan is susceptible to long jaunts into his own self-preoccupation at the very best of times, as is needless to say, but waiting brings out the worst of his whiling.
"I can’t even take you home," he says, with coolly enforced casualness. "You know that, don’t you? Even if I ripped up every threshold in The Unclean Realm, the bagua will stop you. The Stone Castles can’t shelter you, either, nor can the Sabre Halls."
It is not at all something terrible that must be endured for a greater good’s sake.
Sui Zhou is the first of them to wake, as he so often is.
“Jin-zongzhu,” comes a voice, “have you ever thought that while you may be the mantis, tonight, there is an oriole in wait behind you?”
Behind Jin Guangyao, Nie Mingjue — the sage, the keeper, the forgotten part of the tale — stands, stretches out his hand, and snaps his neck.
There are many things that Nie Huaisang and Nie Mingjue do not talk about.
He may not always be the most patient man, but Sui Zhou has come to be good at waiting. He has taken well to the lessons Tang Fan has taught him.
This, Sui Zhou knows: the grief that whets a body so keen that it draws blood in the handling.