“Oh,” Qingming breathes out, his shoulders sinking deep with it, “how fortunate.”

Yes, Boya thinks, foolish and giddy and wrecked with affirmation, how fortunate.

In the wake of Qingming’s revelation, the night bleeds out into a sombre quiet.

Is it him that courts such misfortune, Qingming wonders, neither for the first nor the last time in his long baned life, or is he the misfortune courted?