India takes the cup. (Or: people disappear all the time, but seldom to such scenic locales.)

He feels Sui Zhou's smile unlace over his pulse, languid and nude in its amusement. "You've had the morning," he answers, unmoved. "The day won't keep for you."

Tang Fan returns early, only to arrive late.

"You would not hurt me," is what he says, careful, caged in. "You could never hurt me."

This, they have argued to a stalemate of irreconcilable disagreement; could so continue to press in unwinnability until the Heavens broke open overhead and the mountains crashed down astride them. But Sui Zhou serves to live as much as a man as he does a blade, and in that he is long intimated with the lay of blame for a tool in the wield of a hand.

"Tang Fan," she starts carefully.

Tang Fan has no such concern. "Sui Zhou," is her counter. She dumps their bag at her feet, where its gaped mouth is swiftly fed her belt and chopsticks. "Your poor delicate Qing'er," she complains. "I will find a man and his wife to show me the pity here that you won't."

With their house's liveliness lapsed to quiet, and the looming summer rain hanging heavy in the air, Tang Fan seizes upon a temptingly rare proposition of opportunity.

Tang Fan is not a simple man, by any means.

Given such a tender gift, how can Seimei not tease him?

It makes little sense for Tang Fan to continue to take his suppressants, after everything, so of course he stops doing that.

"Do you still need to be told?" he teases, reaching up between them to path his finger across the pattering pulse in Sui Zhou's throat. "I thought I had you taught."

"No," Sui Zhou assures him. He does not.