Chapter Text
« Yuan’er, I believe you have traumatized our a-Jiu for a lifetime » Tanhua softly intervened, as gentle and unyielding as a steel blade wrapped in embroidered silk.
Shen Yuan blinked.
« How so ? He’s the grown-up, and I am a child. By his words and deeds, he holds the power. He can hurt me so much more easily than I ever could. »
Shen Jiu twitched, his body shaking and quivering as a leaf about to be ripped away from its tree by a violent gust of cold northern wind.
« Are you sure of this ? » Tanhua insisted, her hazel eyes calm and solemn.
« Losing your parent is just like losing an arm, because you are given one single pair of these in your lifetime » the reincarnated soul fired back. « Losing a wife or a child, how does it matter ? You can replace them with the slightest effort. »
The former courtesan was frowning now, but that wasn’t like she could openly criticize the Confucean ethics. Shen Yuan personally believed it was quite the shitty philosophy – Mama Shen certainly would have murdered her husband if he decided he wanted to replace her with a younger, fresher woman, and she would have dragged him back from the grave to murder him a second time if he had claimed their children ultimately were disposable.
(well, considering Shen Yuan used to be a sickly waste of space in his previous life, perhaps his death didn’t matter that much to his first family, after all they already are well-compensated with two driven and hard-working sons and a lovely daughter)
« That is the most inane and infuriating bullshit I have heard » Auntie Mao deadpans, because she didn’t give an inkling of a shite about proper social convention and apparently lived to shock people into mute horror.
Seriously, Yinghua was eyeballing the Mistress Alchemist with the look of somebody pondering if the careful whacking of a head against an unforgiving wall would manage to scramble this brain matter into rearranging itself in something more closely approximating sanity.
« Xiao Mao » Shen Jiu meekly uttered, and actually he might not have wished to pursue this line of conversation, but she wasn’t ready yet for a distraction.
« I mean, take my a-Yao » she rambled. « My masterwork no matter how you wish to turn his coming in this world, and when I name him masterwork it means he’s most darling to me, as the apex of my alchemical studies. »
Wasn’t he some kind of happy accident , Shen Yuan couldn’t help but think but he kept silent because happy accidents were part of the scientific method too. The French doctor Pasteur wouldn’t have stumbled upon the very first antibiotic without his lab assistant forgetting to put the samples in the fridge for the night, letting them to be tainted by mold, and that was one example among many.
A-Yao was very quiet, and Shen Yuan gently poked at his mind – yes, he had noticed a tiny ribbon weaving itself into existence between the two of them, fragile still but gaining substance and strength every second it was there, barely enough for the reincarnated soul to get a feel over the artificial human’s inner world. From the brief glimpses he got, it was rather similar to Auntie Mao – quite justified, she was his mother – something akin a mountain peak but that was hazy right now.
Still, a-Yao wasn’t agitated. He was… indifferent ? As if Auntie Mao was commenting on water being wet ? Because obviously he was her masterwork, obviously she was proud of him. He never had been given a reason to doubt her love for him.
(envy gnaws at the corners of Shen Yuan’s heart, because he knows his own mother’s love is flawed now, conditional rather than boundless as the sea, you are loved as long as you are deemed acceptable, and that isn’t alright, not a bit)
« The thing is, a masterwork isn’t a cheap trick you can pull thrice, or even twice. It’s a unique achievement, and because of this unique status you will cherish it so more deeply than a series of copies. This Mistress Alchemist might find herself bereft of her treasure one day... »
« Surely this day won’t come before many decades in the future » Yinghua piped in, trying to lighten the gloomy shade hanging over the frumpy zhongyong’s explication. « Or centuries, if you teach him how to cultivate a golden core. »
« There might be an unfortunate accident, or anything » Auntie Mao shrugged off, « and I would lose a-Yao, and my heart with him. I couldn’t make his like anew, see, and it always hurts to lose what you cherish. »
« Ah » the artificial human breathed, anxiety surging through his body. « That – I don’t want. For you to be sad. If that happens. »
The Mistress Alchemist looked at her creation.
« Darling » she sighed, « you don’t get to decide my feelings for me. This is my choice, and I made it as soon as I first held you. »
« Bad choice » a-Yao muttered, his tone bordering on rebellious and frustrated.
« An acceptable bargain. Good needs to be balanced with bad, for life to be a worthwhile experience, don’t you think ? »
As she said these words, Auntie Mao’s dark eyes slanted toward the nine-year-old kid sprawled over her masterwork’s lap.
« So that is my opinion on the matter, the creator might be more vulnerable to the creation than you would like. I would mislike for a-Yao to cause me sorrow, and some little beastling is far less lacking in fangs and claws to wield against his mother than he insists on believing. »
« So what ? » Shen Yuan snorted. « That doesn’t resolve the fundamental lack of equality in this relationship. It might fiddle a bit with the weights, it might throw a bit of dirt in the gap to lessen the fall, but it doesn’t build a bridge over said gap. Frankly, it likely have to wait until I am physically mature as a grown up for us to stand on the same level. »
« Yeah, but my point remains. You can hurt a-Jiu, and him having the possibility to do worse to you doesn’t invalidate your ability. »
« Nope, it only serves as a warning » the reincarnated soul retorted, stubborn.
(because it’s not the modern era, with all the laws and ethics hammered in your skull as soon as you are able to remain seated in a classroom more than a few minutes, and even in the modern era you couldn’t erase the importance of money, the importance of family )
(even in the modern era kids are powerless to protect themselves from caretakers who ought to love them with all their hearts and spare them mankind’s ugliness until they have grown enough for their eyes to lose the rosy varnish tainting their clear sight, otherwise Social Services wouldn’t even be a thing)
(it’s ancient xianxia China, in all its cruelty and pitilessness in which anyone weak deserves to be trampled, and a kid will always be weaker than an adult, especially one adult who’s calling the shots because he’s Teacher or parent, the amount of power wielded in such cases is staggering, you wouldn’t believe)
(this is the society in which Shen Yuan has to survive now, he won’t be ashamed of his deeds toward this goal)