bloodletter

Following the tragic and sudden suicide of General Hanazawa, Ogata and Tsurumi debrief.

“They'll have to make a few surgical incisions, of course.” With a single finger of each hand, Tsurumi traced two lines, one across each side of Ogata's face, from the corner of his warped jaw to the centre of his cheek. “You'll still look fetching as ever, I'm sure.”

He Xuan had been ready to leave the desert well before Shi Qingxuan had finished her little investigation. It wasn’t the sun, or the sand, though both were unpleasant, but Crimson Rain’s stupid voice on the private communication array: « Oh, sorry, are we walking in on something? If I knew there was a dress code I would have gotten done up. » And if it wasn’t that, it was the tinkling of jewelry in Shi Qingxuan’s hair as she moved, or the meaningless asides that were disorienting in the scale of their inanity: “Isn’t this fun? I love having fun with you.”

The possibility that keeps him up at night is that Meng Yao came into his service an honest man, and over time changed into what he sees before him now. That, as his ambitions rose and his world grew grander, he reshaped himself and discovered the things he was capable of, all the while looking like his familiar self, but transforming under his skin into something Nie Mingjue could hardly recognize.

Tsukishima knew if he didn't look now, he never would, so he steeled himself. “If you want to show me, then show me, sir.”

Tsurumi kept one hand on Tsukishima’s shoulder and pulled away the headplate with the other, setting it down on the bedside table.

“Why do you wear your face like that?”

Nie Huaisang's hand comes up partway to Meng Yao's face before his fingers curl inwards. Meng Yao's eyes go wide and tremulous before the corners of his mouth curl into a small smile, like one of the soundless laughs shared between them in the midst of a banquet speech.

There is a susurration of cloth as he makes his genuflection. He does not intend to fall on his knees, but it happens. The resignation and dignity he has sought to cultivate throughout his confinement dissolves like wet sugar in the face of that which he has held out for, despite himself, despite all that he knows about the workings of the King of England, which is everything. Or so he has thought, often, and never correctly.

At the blade—or claw—of an enemy is the only way Liu Qingge has ever imagined he will die, and though it would obviously be preferable for it to happen after thousands of years of immortal mastery, he would settle for thirtyish if it was epic.

There is nothing less epic than being spared by Luo Binghe, except for being spared by Luo Binghe every day for the past two and a half years.

Talking at someone is only fun for so long. That's all being a sect leader is: talking and talking to people bound by courtesy to listen to you. It's so fucking dull. A relief, then, to face one’s equal, and no less an old friend who is inclined to interrupt you whenever you ramble. He likes it. It’s one of Jiang Cheng’s best qualities.

In the years after Guanyin Temple, Nie Huaisang attends to unfinished business.

Of all the prisons in which she's spent time, Lotus Pier may be the kindest.