Chapter Text
The pain was unbearable, truly unbearable.
Their new master was ruthless:their broken legs to match the ruined legs of his horse. The twins hadn’t meant to do it, but in their haste to save one another and Qi-ge they had cut through its leg muscles and rendered it useless, making the young master look like a fool in front of the whole market as he tumbled off of the creature.
Afterwards, the servants had dragged the boys through the garden. Then they threw them into a stone shed and bolted the door. Their new master would only let them out once his temper stopped flaring.
“Xiao-Jiu! Yuan-er! Are you there? Can you hear me?”
The boys jolted, lifting their heads off the floor. There was no way. There was absolutely no way that Qi-ge was up and running and here of all places instead of recovering in the brothel.
“Xiao-Jiu! Yuan-er! I’m going to break the door down, so stand back!” Heavens above, it absolutely was Qi-ge.
“Qi-ge!” Shen Jiu shouted, just as the door rattled against the older boy’s weight.
The rattling stopped. “Xiao-Jiu!”
The two boys inside the shed dragged their bodies against the cold, dirty floor, trying to get closer to the door. Just outside the shed, Yue Qi was a bloody, mangled mess, though he was still in a far better state than the twins.
“We’re leaving, we can’t stay. I grabbed the money we saved up and I already burned my slave contract. We can find and burn yours later but first we need to leave this town.” There was a desperation in his voice, an urgency that Shen Yuan couldn’t quite understand.
“Are you stupid, Qi-ge? How are you going to break the door down when it’s locked and you have a broken arm?” Shen Jiu said. He propped himself up on his elbows, staring up at that wooden door.
“I still have my other arm! I’m not leaving without you two!”
“Qi-ge, how are you going to carry the both of us? They broke our legs, we can’t walk.”
“I can’t leave without you! I won’t!” Yue Qi scrambled at the door, trying to find some sort of weak spot or crack, anything that would help him break it down.
“You can’t Qi-ge!” Shen Yuan said. “Someone will catch us and then they’ll break your legs too! Just go! Go and come back for us later!”
The rattling started up again, louder and more desperate. “I’ll come back for you! I’ll, I’ll get stronger and I’ll come back! I swear I will! I promise! I won’t break it this time, I promise!”
“Qi-ge! Stop it! Stop shouting and banging on the door, someone will hear you!” Shen Yuan begged. The pain in his legs would not allow him to crawl any further towards the door, and so instead he clung to his brother’s waist, hiding his face and his tears in his shirt. “Someone will hear you and they’ll take you too. Please, Qi-ge, please!”
Shen Jiu knocked his head against the door, his chin tilted up towards the shed’s roof, his eyes tightly squeezed closed. “I believe you,” he whispered. “I believe you, so go, Qi-ge! I’ve given you my loyalty, and I’ll give you my faith too! But just go now, before they catch you!”
“Xiao-Jiu…”
Shen Jiu couldn’t help it any longer. The pain and frustration became too unbearable and his tears escaped, slipping down his face and falling into Shen Yuan’s hair. “Go, Qi-ge!”
There was nothing left to say, only the unspoken things that Yue Qi and Shen Jiu never had to say out loud. They certainly wouldn’t say it now, because this wasn’t a goodbye. Yue Qi would be back, because he promised, because he swore that he would. And so he left the twins, the Qiu manor, the town—taking winter’s last frost with him.
The next morning it seemed that their new master’s curiosity outgrew his anger, and the servants dragged the boys out of the shed and through the garden once more, until they were kneeling in front of the manor’s young master. Buckets of cold water were dumped over them, washing away the dirt and grime that they rubbed on their cheeks like rouge. It was so much water that Shen Jiu and Shen Yuan could do nothing but splutter and cough, pushing their hair out of their face in an attempt to breathe a little easier.
“A-Luo, let’s play—oh! Who are they?” A pretty young girl who looked to be the twins’ age came running out of the house and into the courtyard, her steps only faltering once she saw the boys and the sorry state they were in.
“New servants, Tang-er, I just bought them yesterday,” Qiu Jianluo said, his grin terribly wide and full of teeth.
“Oh what poor things! Their legs are bent so weirdly, it’s such a shame!” The girl said, huffing and pouting and crossing her arms over her chest. “They’re quite pretty, don’t you think, A-Luo? Oh it’s such a shame! They’re pretty enough to be playmates for me, but I don’t think they can play that well if their legs are broken.”
Qiu Jianluo drew a quick breath, and though Shen Jiu’s vision was a little blurry with the bite of the cold and the pain from his legs, he could see an idea, a plan, begin to form in the man’s head. The man’s gaze darted between his sister and the two boys, like he received some sort of epiphany.
“I’ll have the town’s doctor look at them, don’t worry, Tang-er. I’m sure they’ll make wonderful playmates once they’re healed,” Qiu Jianluo said to his sister.
He turned to the twins. “This is my sister. You will, of course, address her as Young Mistress Qiu. You will serve us, once your legs are healed again. Until then, you’ll work and sleep in the kitchens.”
The town doctor was brought in to look at Shen Jiu and Shen Yuan’s legs, and by some luck, their injuries looked worse than they really were. Shen Jiu’s legs needed to be retwisted back into his knee sockets and Shen Yuan’s left leg was wrapped in a splint, but they would recover, and they probably wouldn’t be crippled for life.
The twins were put on strict orders to rest their legs as much as possible, though they couldn’t really afford to stay on bed rest like they ideally should have. Instead, they were temporarily put up in a corner of the kitchen and the auntie in charge tasked them with peeling vegetables and fruits.
She would have them peel all of the vegetables in the morning, and that way they could rest for most of the day, unless the young master or young mistress requested fruit as a light snack or dessert, in which case the auntie would wake them up and give them the basket of fruits to cut while she finished preparing everyone’s meals.
The other servants who worked in the kitchen, a rough looking butcher and a haughty server girl, ignored the boys for the most part. They even turned their eyes away when the auntie would give them an extra slice of bread or her share of the meat from their dinner stew. Sometimes the server girl also gave them a share of her meals, since the boys had lightened her workload by cutting up the fruit for her. She even showed them how to cut the fruit into pretty shapes, that way she wouldn’t have to put effort into arranging them nicely herself.
It was the most well-fed the boys had ever been. And though it really wasn’t much, it was enough to sate their small stomachs in a way that stolen pastries and thrown away scraps never had.
For a fleeting moment, the boys thought that, maybe, maybe this would be bearable. Maybe waiting for Qi-ge would not be as hard as they thought.
Young Mistress Qiu was a strange girl. Sweet, certainly. Pretty and prim, for sure. All the things that a noble young mistress should be. But she was also fickle, prone to temper tantrums and suddenly cruel without warning.
She favored Shen Jiu and Shen Yuan over the other servants in the manor, and yet there were times where she couldn’t stand the sight of them and would gladly hand them over to her brother for punishment over some perceived slight. Sometimes her upset worked in the twins’ favor. She didn’t like that they couldn’t read or write, and so she demanded that they attend her tutoring sessions with her and receive lessons of their own.
Other times, she would throw porcelain at them and cry incoherently, and nothing the twins did would console her unless they brought her to see her brother.
Still, she was far more preferable to Young Master Qiu, who, as long as his sister was out of sight, would never hesitate to treat the two boys harshly.
Young Master Qiu was the one who Shen Yuan was wary of. He loved to linger whenever the two boys were attending to his sister, often under the guise of tutoring them or “playing”. More often than not he would order them to dress up in his sister’s clothes, or he would buy cheaper clothes specifically for them to dress up in. He got this look in his eyes, thinking about things that Shen Yuan could not even begin to guess.
Young Mistress Qiu didn’t see anything wrong with it, and in fact delighted in it. She confessed that she had always wanted a little sister or at least another female companion her age who she could play dress up with and practice different hairstyles and makeup on.
Shen Yuan tried not to complain, really, he did.
They had their own place to sleep—sort of, having been moved into the stone shed once their legs were healed enough to walk around. They had three meals a day, small as they were and taken away from them just as readily as they were given. Though it felt weird to dress up like they were Young Mistress Qiu’s female companions, at least that meant he was permitted regular baths and the cloth felt nice on his skin. And, more importantly, Young Master Qiu was far less likely to beat him or his brother whenever they dressed up according to their master and mistress’ whims.
Sometimes, when the brothers weren’t assigned to wait on Young Mistress Qiu or she was out of the manor, visiting relatives or going to the new teahouse with her brother, they would be back in the kitchen, helping the auntie and the server girl. They’d go back to peeling vegetables and cutting fruit into pretty, spiraling patterns.
Sometimes, whenever the kitchen wasn’t too busy and there were no other servants coming in and out and eating their own meals, the boys would be allowed to pick at the scraps without any protest and suck on fruit peels. If they were really, really lucky, the young master and young mistress of the house would be having dinner at a relative’s house and most of the servants would be dismissed for the evening. Whenever this happened, the auntie would make them a small treat, but only if they promised to eat it quickly and help her clean the dishes afterwards. And, of course, they always did as she said and ate the food quickly, giggling and doing their best to hide their laughter as she crouched down to hide behind the counter and eat with them.
It was moments like these that kept making them think, maybe, maybe they could wait a little longer. Another week, another month, another year. Maybe the world could be good.
Maybe they would be fine.
Shen Jiu was not kind or timid. For all that he and his brother seemed to look like Qiu Haitang when they were clean and dolled up, he was the farthest thing from an ideal noble or even an upstanding, moral character. Leave the morals to Yuan-di or Qi-ge, he would say. No, he was the type that would get hit by the world eight times and then would turn around and return it tenfold, teeth bared and nails clawing into anything he could get purchase on. He had never been the type to lay down and take it.
And yet.
The hand around his throat tightened, careless of Shen Jiu’s rapid, thunderous pulse. “Stop squirming, you bitch.”
And yet.
Shen Jiu could do nothing but whimper, his lip bleeding after he bit through it so that his cries would not echo out into the hallway.
Qiu Jianluo didn’t care, bringing his head down to whisper in Shen Jiu’s ear. “Now, now, A-Jiu. Don’t do that.” He finally removed his hand from Shen Jiu’s throat, instead choosing to pry open the boy’s mouth and prevent him from continuing to bite his lip. “Be a good slave, or I’ll take your brother instead. I’m sure he’d be far more obedient than you’ve been.”
Shen Jiu shook his head. “N-no.”
“No, what?” Qiu Jianluo grinned, knowing, indisputably, that he had won this conquest once again.
“No, A-Luo.”
The hand returned to Shen Jiu’s throat. “That’s right, Tang-er. My Tang-er.”
If there was a hell on earth, Shen Jiu had surely found it here, in Qiu Jianluo’s bedroom.
Young Master Qiu hated seeing him, Shen Yuan knew that was undeniably the truth.
Shen Yuan didn’t even have to do anything to attract his master’s ire. He could be breathing wrong and that would be enough to set Young Master Qiu off. One time he had tripped over a loose stone in front of him and it had earned him twenty lashes and no dinner. Shen Jiu had been beside himself with worry, fussing over him the entire night and giving him his meals so that he would have the energy he needed to recover.
It wasn’t so bad when Shen Yuan was with his brother. In fact, whenever the twins were together, it seemed like Qiu Jianluo simply ignored Shen Yuan unless he had the two dress up. It was when Shen Jiu was assigned to a different chore than Shen Yuan and the two were separated that the danger came.
Young Master Qiu got so, so angry whenever he realized that he’d mistaken Shen Yuan for his brother.
“A-Yuan, you’ve really irritated me now,” Young Master Qiu said, unfurling his whip from his belt.
“I, I’m sorry! I’m sorry Young Master, I don’t know what I did, I’m sorry!” Shen Yuan said, trembling as he dropped his broom and moved down to his knees to bow.
The whip cracked against the stone, shattering the pot that Shen Yuan was supposed to clean after his sweeping. “How insincere! Apologizing when you don’t even know what you’ve done!”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Honestly, this master of his must be sadistic! Shen Yuan really couldn’t help the tears that began to gather in his eyes as he peered up at the man.
Young Master Qiu paused, staring at Shen Yuan’s face with a pinched expression, before shaking his head and barking orders at him again. “To my study, now!”
“Jiu-ge…”
Shen Jiu wiped the feverish sweat from his brother’s face. “Hush, Yuan-di, just rest.”
Shen Yuan’s back was a terrible, mottled mess. He had been whipped before—he had been whipped plenty of times before Young Master Qiu bought him and his brother—but there was something particularly cruel about Young Master Qiu’s punishments. He always made sure to hit below the collar, in places that could easily be hidden by their servant robes, and always, always aimed for the same spots. His methods made sure that Shen Yuan’s scars never fully healed.
It left Shen Yuan bedridden and often sick, and it made Shen Jiu fret incessantly.
“We’re out of salve and bandages.” Shen Jiu said, getting up and grabbing their coin purse. “Stay here. I’ll ask Young Mistress Qiu for a day off for the both of us and I’ll go buy supplies at the market.”
“Wait,” Shen Yuan said, stretching his hand towards his brother.
“Yes, Yuan-di? Is something wrong? Is it the scars? Just bear with it a little longer, the salve will make it better.” Shen Jiu held his brother’s outstretched hand. He kneeled back down into the dirt, next to the pile of straw and blankets that the two usually slept on.
Shen Yuan shook his head. “No, it’s okay, it’s not that. I just, it’s just…”
“Hm?”
Shen Yuan was scared.
It was what he saw on Young Master Qiu’s face, though he never mentioned it to his brother. The satisfaction whenever he inevitably collapsed from the pain, yes, but far more distressingly, that strange gleam in his master’s eyes every time Shen Jiu came running after him. The uncomfortable tension that would grow each time his brother got on his knees to help him limp back to their shed, his eyes downturned so that he wouldn’t show Young Master Qiu his seething rage.
But something had shifted in his eyes recently, and Shen Yuan didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.
“I’m scared, Jiu-ge. Don’t go, don’t leave me here,” Shen Yuan finally said.
“I’m not leaving. I’m just going to the market, Yuan-di. You need medicine or you won’t get better,” Shen Jiu said, removing his hand from his brother’s grasp and getting back up. “I’ll be quick, just wait a little, okay?”
Shen Jiu was from the landfills, the slums, the sewage and trash and sluggish grime of the world. He knew the depravity of men and the desperation of women. He knew what happened when men got that look in their eyes—that hungry, greedy shine that promised violence and vengeance and things that Wu-jie and the brothel jiejies refused to speak about. He knew, logically, that Shen Yuan knew these things too. He knew this because Shen Yuan was from the same places he was from and experienced all of the same things he did.
But a part of him hoped, naively, to shield Shen Yuan from the gross underbelly of humanity. A part of him wanted Shen Yuan to stay naive, to believe in good things and good people, like tanghulu from kind aunties and loyal puppies and Qi-ge coming back.
After all, Shen Jiu was the older twin, the meaner twin. He was the one who got into scraps and fights first. He was the one who volunteered to do the dirty work. He was the one who Qiu Jianluo approached and propositioned, not Shen Yuan.
So, why? Why, why, why? Why was this happening?
(What Wu-jie had never told him or Shen Yuan or Yue Qi was this: there was never a reason for all the terrible things in their life. There was never a reason or a logical answer, or at least there was never going to be an answer that you would accept, that was satisfying and easy to make sense of.
Wu-jie could never tell him why he and his brother were left in a landfill or why Yue Qi’s parents sold him for ten copper coins. She could never bring herself to tell him that sometimes the world was just cruel. Sometimes you were just dealt charcoal instead of jade.)
Qiu Jianluo was never supposed to stand above Shen Yuan with that greedy look on his face. He wasn’t supposed to be here, in the stone shed, alone with Shen Yuan. His hand wasn’t supposed to touch his brother’s bare skin.
What had Shen Jiu done wrong? What had he done to deserve this reality? What had he done to cause Qiu Jianluo’s attention to stray towards Shen Yuan?
He shouldn’t have left Shen Yuan. He should have listened and stayed like Shen Yuan had asked. He should have crawled into Qiu Jianluo’s bed instead to beg for the bandages and salve. He shouldn’t have gone to the market to keep his little dignity and pride.
(And what Shen Jiu had never told Wu-jie was that of course he knew. He had always known, ever since he woke up in the trash. He was always going to be shoved into charcoal and mud; he was always going to be the dirt under some rich master’s boot.
But a part of him had selfishly, selfishly hoped—prayed—that Shen Yuan could escape it, could escape this .)
Shen Jiu couldn’t take it.
He saw red.