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Until the very end, Zhou Zishu’s hair remained black, as dark as ink.
Wen Kexing loved to play with their hairs as they lay scattered across the bed, braiding the strands together. “Ah Xu and I, yin and yang,” he hummed, pressing a quick kiss onto Zhou Zishu’s shoulder. “We are truly well-matched; under the heavens, there is no one more suitable for me than Ah Xu.”
Zhou Zishu used to hate it when Wen Kexing twined them together, for it meant he had to take the time to unravel Wen Kexing’s handiwork before he could get up and go anywhere. Nowadays, he found himself not minding as much. He watched Wen Kexing’s long and clever fingers weave the two strands as one would fate into one. White over black, black over white. Although Wen Kexing claimed there was no one for him but Zhou Zishu, Zhou Zishu thought a person like him, black-haired and ordinary, was not hard to find. Wen Kexing, however, was another matter altogether. After descending from Mount Changming, as if afflicted by the curse of a white-clothed immortal, his hair had rapidly turned white, the colour of moonlight. Perhaps he was unable to forget the frost of three months of waiting for someone who might never return. With Wen Kexing’s delicate features and hair like liquid pearl, since Mount Changming, Manor Lord Zhou had spent a lifetime watching strangers and acquaintances alike watch his wife.
By Zhou Zishu’s calculations, the fortune of the match was his. So Zhou Zishu told Wen Kexing as much: “Shut up.”
Something complicated stirred in Wen Kexing’s eyes, disturbing the reflection within. “Is that what you want, Ah Xu? For me to be silent?”
Zhou Zishu closed his eyes to the strain in his voice but saw it behind his eyelids, nonetheless. As a child, he had stood underneath a plum tree in bloom, crowned in red, cloaked in white. That flowering branch had not given a sign, yet Zhou Zishu heard it echo in the cold: the quiet of a snow-laden bough before the breaking. He was too young and too short to reach that straining branch; by the time he returned with his shifu, the branch had fallen, alone and unheard. He remembered the petals staining the snow like blood.
A sudden warmth pressed against his palm, prompting him to open his eyes. Wen Kexing murmured into the skin of his palm. “Husband, won’t you take this wife along?”
Zhou Zishu laughed. It was a harsh and lonely sound. “And what would I want you for?” he gasped. “You are only good for cooking. Meng Po and her soup would have me covered. I will take this chance to be rid of you!”
He was still laughing—silently, for the strain of those sentences had drained him of his voice—when Wen Kexing climbed into the bed and on top of him. Wen Kexing’s silvery hair draped over Zhou Zishu like a veil, and Zhou Zishu’s hand idly went to those strands, letting them slide between his fingers. He wondered if the fog in the road to the underworld would feel as silken.
“My Ah Xu is so cruel,” Wen Kexing said, even as something cold and cruel crossed his eyes. Zhou Zishu remembered—he had been remembering a lot lately—the cold wall of a cave behind his back, a hand rending the stone beside him in lieu of his core. The same voice, on the verge of breaking: I understand. For the beat of a breath, Zhou Zishu understood, and wondered if Wen Kexing would reach with that hand and keep him by his side.
But Wen Kexing only leant down to press his lips against Zhou Zishu’s.
Zhou Zishu let Wen Kexing kiss him breathless.
Dying is an art, Zhou Zishu an old hand. This was, after all, his second go at it. The first one was a much slower process, paid for with two years of his life, and a much more voluntary endeavour.
After Jiuxiao’s death, his heart was already unmoored. He had merely cast his body adrift on the green waters. Travelling was a bleak and nameless joy, both a penance and a punishment, and his map was drawn by the blood of those whom he had sent on their way.
Then Wen Kexing and Zhang Chengling happened. He did not seek it; he did not want it. Adrift and unmoored, a home built itself around him in the wilderness.
Having known the joy of an early return, how would the traveller feel, knowing he had to set out once more?
“Ah Xu.”
“Lao Wen.”
“Ah Xu.”
“Lao Wen.”
“Ah Xu.”
They curled up around one another like two beasts turning their backs on a monstrous world. In a moment of strength, Zhou Zishu took Wen Kexing’s hand in his and wrote:
“Hurry not the traveller to Naihe Bridge…”
When Wen Kexing could not withstand the pain of the words and tried to take his hand away, Zhou Zishu held him there. Not with strength, but with love.
His love was selfish and honed to a sharp edge. Wen Kexing, the last master of the Ghost Valley, undefeated in his travels through the jianghu, trembled under its hurtful touch. Slowly, Zhou Zishu continued,
“No wind will carry the catkin across.”
When Wen Kexing reached for him, Zhou Zishu went with him, his body as limp and powerless as a ragdoll. Skin and bones, flesh and blood, Zhou Zishu let Wen Kexing embrace him so tightly that their souls touched.
In the last few days, Wen Kexing had been wearing red, sitting by his bedside, holding his hand.
Unlike his old regalia, this was a simple red robe, with long sleeves that hid both of their hands. Zhou Zishu watched Wen Kexing’s hair spill over the fabric like snow on a flower-laden branch and twitched his fingers in his attempt to brush the hair back.
Wen Kexing read him, anyway. Tossed his head and threw his hair back in a smooth motion.
Zhou Zishu had always liked him in red. He had not known this before, but what a blessing it was to know it now. Trying to hold onto this thought, he curled his fingers around Wen Kexing’s. Tears prickled at the corners of his eyes, and it felt like the snow thawing.
“So you know how to cry at leaving your wife alone, at the very least.” Wen Kexing brought their twined hands to his lips. “Don’t be afraid.”
His teeth grazed each and every one of Zhou Zishu’s knuckles as he explained his newest and last scheme. “Do you like the red? I’ll tell Meng Po that I had died on my wedding day, out of grief from losing you. I’ll put on such a convincing show that if the flowers had feelings, they, too, would despairingly gaze. Surely she will take pity upon us and let us meet again in the next life, hmm?”
Something flared to life in the embers of Zhou Zishu’s eyes. A flash of fire, quickly smothered by the cold winter that had draped itself like a cloak over his body these days. Wen Kexing held his hand between his, trying his best to warm it up.
“Zhou Xu, don’t be afraid.”
“Ah Xu?”
The fire grew bright and warm around them. It bathed Zhou Zishu in its generous light, casting a glow on the angles of his face: his pronounced brow bones, the dark brushstrokes of his eyelashes, the straight line of his nose, his high cheek bones, and the familiar curve of his cupid’s bow. He might have been only sleeping. Wen Kexing held Zhou Zishu’s hand in his, their palms lying on top of each other, lying on top of his heart.
Wen Kexing could not believe his luck. Twenty years in a living hell was the price for the honour of catching this hand twice in his: once in this lifetime and once in just a moment to come, down in the Yellow Springs, by the Three-Life Rock, under a blooming willow tree.
He did not flinch as his meridians gave way under their conjoined palms, but he did whisper a name as he collapsed onto Zhou Zishu, their lips brushing past each other like two leaves in fall, two lifetimes touching one another in the immeasurable vastness of existence.
Floating clouds obscured a white sun; the traveller did not seek to return. Even as their bodies turned to ashes, they were still holding hands.
Long is the road that leads to the Yellow Springs. Its length is exactly how long it takes for a man to walk and forget his mortal attachments, worries, and grievances. To forget all, except for love.
Zhou Zishu walked down the road to the Yellow Springs with his fingers curled around that warmth in his palm.