That night, back near the Pavilion gates, guilt clawed at Yujin like a cold hand.
"I should have said 'I'll come back'," he scolded himself. "Instead, I left like every other man ... paid for a smile, then vanished at dawn."
The alley lay quiet, wrapped in fog thick enough to dampen even the lantern's glow.
For a long while, Yujin just stood there, robes heavy with travel dust, eyes fixed on that single flickering light behind lattice wood ... Xiao's window.
"You're nothing to him," the colder voice inside sneered.
"He smiles at every man who brings silver."
But another voice, softer, stubborn as frost on bamboo, whispered back:
"But I didn't pay. And when he teased me… it felt real."
"Or maybe you're fooling yourself, Lan Han Yujin."
By next dusk, he returned... cloak damp with pine-scented mist, boots stained from road dust.
Inside, the Pavilion hummed the same as ever: laughter, half-slurred poems, cups clinking on carved wood.
And Xiao was there... hair brushed into soft, loose waves, a thin red ribbon tied at his wrist.
New, Yujin thought. Or maybe just freshly dyed.
The moment Xiao's gaze caught his, the fox's grin bloomed across tired lips.
"You really do come crawling back," Xiao teased, stepping closer, voice low and velvet-soft.
"Childe Wei would be proud... you're almost shameless."
"Childe Wei?" Yujin echoed, the question slipping out before his pride could stop it.
Xiao's lashes lowered; mischief flickered into something wistful.
"The one they called Yiling Patriarch," he murmured.
"Demon or hero... depends on who's telling the story. But he walked his own path. Collarless. Free."
For a breath, the Pavilion noise fell away.
The lamp-glow caught on Xiao's pale throat, half-hidden bruises like faded shadows.
"So that's why you wear red," Yujin realized silently.
"Why do you keep coming here, Lan?" Xiao asked, voice so quiet it cut sharper than any blade.
Truths swirled behind Yujin's teeth:
"To watch you fall."
"To see if you'll burn me first."
"Because even silence feels less cold near you."
None reached his tongue.
Instead, silence settled...heavy as dusk mist.
Later that night, Xiao lingered behind a carved screen, absent-mindedly tracing painted plum blossoms with two fingertips.
"If he saw my bruises, would he ask?"
"And what would I even say? That a customer was rough? That the man who calls himself my father beat me for refusing to get under anyone as always?"
But Yujin said nothing.
And maybe that was better.
Some truths sounded too pitiful, even in candlelight.
Far from Yinshi, high above cloud-choked moonlight.
In a stone-cold hall, Hanguang-Jun paused before a table where a single old flute lay across pale silk.
Wind brushed his sleeve; his eyes did not shift.
A voice seemed to stir faintly in the mountain air:
"Wei Ying … if you were here, you'd find them before dawn."
[ End of Chapter 10 ]