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 Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2023 12:28 pm
Since Huanxi had arrived on Earth, Liánlí had wanted very badly to take Huanxi up to his Wonder. He’d tried not to press the matter too terribly much. Aside from wanting to give Huanxi time to adjust to life on Earth (time to find a Mauvian and get him his senshi phone and civilian glamour; time to get him a set of house keys and a civilian phone, the latter process made much easier thanks to one of Liánlí’s assorted brand deals on Youtube; time to show him around and introduce him to life in the twenty-first century), there was pretty obvious emotional significance bound up in the fields of Kaifeng for Huanxi.
Really, how could there not be? Huanxi and Xīngyì had been in love, even if they hadn’t been quite as married as Liánlí had first assumed and even if Xīngyì had been exceedingly dense about letting Huanxi know how he’d really felt. Every memory that Liánlí had so far recovered up at his Wonder had featured Huanxi in some capacity, as had both of the memories that he’d gotten out of drinking the strange golden liquid from those mysterious vials he’d found up there. It only made sense that Huanxi might have trouble, emotionally, with visiting Kāifēng the Wonder. So many things he’d done there, so many visits made to someone he’d cherished and who hadn’t believed himself worthy of Huanxi’s time (much less his help), so many reasons why traveling there might hurt.
If Huanxi needed time before he felt like he could visit the fields and the tower and all the rest, then Liánlí wanted to give him that. Whatever he needed to help visiting the Wonder with his knight feel like a good thing, rather than an exercise in hacking open old wounds just to fill them up with salt.
Finally being able to power up together and take Helene up to the Wonder, then—about a week-and-a-half after the battle at the sleep center that Kāifēng had haplessly wandered into—made Liánlí-Kaifeng feel all giddy and pink inside. As they teleported in toward the southern corner of the fields, where he always came in, he felt torn between bouncing with said giddiness, and the impulse to sigh softly over the state of everything around the Wonder. To explain everything as much as he could, because he wasn’t a mind-reader and didn’t immediately know exactly how Helene felt about seeing the Wonder in such a state, but some impulse within Liánlí-Kāifēng felt like maybe, he could help lessen any emotional impact by telling Huanxi how he’d been trying to restore things around here and what progress he’d made since the first visit.
Even with the work he’d been putting in while visiting by himself or with Selenga, though, Kāifēng knew that his Wonder had not yet returned to the state it had been in before, when Xīngyì had been alive to care for it. The ominous black trees leading up to the tower still looked dead (which also seemed to have been their state a thousand years ago, but it didn’t really help Kaifeng’s Wonder to look less like a ruin). The vines that had grown into the bricks of the tower, Xīngyì’s little cottage, and the outbuilding where he’d prepared people’s remains for burial still remained, not least because Liánlí didn’t know if he could remove them without somehow damaging the structural integrity of said buildings. The scenic river running along the perimeter, right next to where Kāifēng and Helene teleported in, still overflowed with algae that didn’t smell particularly nice.
Since it was right there to look after, Kāifēng sighed and crouched beside the river. On a previous visit, he’d found a rather long stick—long enough to have been a staff, really, though it lacked the magic of a proper knightly weapon—and he’d left it near the entry-teleport point, so he could use it to check on the state of the algae without needing to touch it. From his crouched position, Kaifeng picked up that makeshift staff and prodded it at some of the algae in the river.……
“It’s moving more easily than it has before.… Still not really loose, or loose enough to come out, but……? Maybe it’ll let me dredge some of it up soon,” he said, partly thinking out loud and partly hoping to reassure Helene that he, Kāifēng, recognized the disrepair his Wonder had fallen into and cared about trying to put things right.
“I’ve been researching ways to clean up algal blooms like this ever since my first visit here? But everything I’ve found has had Terran algal blooms in mind, and……mn?” Kāifēng shrugged in the way of someone who was quite upset about the state of affairs he was dealing with, but also not certain what to do. Looking up at Helene, he said, “Part of it’s an abundance of caution, y’know? I don’t want to introduce some kind of Terran method for cleaning up algal blooms to a Saturnian ecosystem and make a huge mess out of everything. But part of it is with the river, too……”
Kāifēng huffed softly, staring down at the stagnant water as his little wispy friend buzzed around his head. “It should be moving, right? And it’s like, if I bring in some Terran means of cleaning up the algae but don’t figure out how to fix the stagnant water, the algae will probably regrow anyway.”
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Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2024 2:29 am
The centuries had not been kind to Kāifēng the Wonder.
It was the first thing that Helene noticed, appearing on this familiar ground with his knight at his side. He remembered it, of course--remembered all of it vividly, as well as he remembered the once-verdant mountains of his own homeworld. And just like his own world, the centuries had ground it down.
It had never been entirely welcoming, not a fine garden or a perfectly tended graveyard, but it was tragic to see the foliage dead and the river choked. He hadn't realized how much it would affect him, to see the inevitable vagaries of time on display here, too.
He had needed time, to be sure that he was ready to see this place again. And Kāifēng the Knight had been very good about giving it to him, but it felt...right, to be back here again. To be able to help put it back together.
Fixing his world, poisoned by Chaos, was hard. But cleaning up an algal bloom in Kāifēng's river seemed...much less so.
"Should find the source, see if it is choked up. Might be something blocking it, impeding the flow, keeping the river from running as it should."
He moved over and laid a hand on Kāifēng's shoulder. "I can see where you've been." Places where things were obviously better tended, as opposed to the overgrown ones that had been abandoned to time. Places where the care of a human hand showed. "It will be good, to help where I can." Something he could do for Xingyi and Lianli both.
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Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2024 7:00 pm
Helene’s suggestion made perfect sense, and Kaifeng hummed as he nodded, drinking all that in.
“Should try to see if there are any maps or anything in the cottage or the tower, maybe,” he said, partially thinking out loud but mostly trying to build on Helene’s ideas. “A couple of Xingyi’s memories have mentioned people being buried here after they wandered off from somewhere else on Saturn, got lost, and perished.… And I mean, I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to read maps we might find? The first time I came, I went in the tower without our signet ring. Fell into the catacombs. And I obviously found my way out—came out in Xingyi’s wine cellar underneath the cottage, actually—but there was, like……”
As he held his hands out and slightly above his head, part of Kaifeng realized that Helene might have already known about exactly the thing he was discussing. Maybe he didn’t? Xingyi seemed to have been secretive with a lot of things, in the memories of his that had returned to Liánlí-Kaifeng. But maybe Helene knew exactly what literal writing on the very literal wall Kaifeng meant to indicate by tracing his hands through thin air, vaguely following a path that could have easily held written lines.
“Something on the wall that looked like writing? And the way the characters were laid out, they looked like a poem. So, I sort of had the idea that maybe it was meant to be some kind of warning poem for malicious sorts who fell in, like ‘Enter, stranger, but take heed, / for what awaits, the sin of greed’—or, like? Something else. Something better. Something that I don’t feel ashamed of having memorized, because it wasn’t written by an obscenely wealthy bigot, ahhh……”
Clawing in a deep breath, Kaifeng pushed himself up from his crouching position. It had, unfortunately, been a little while since he’d last had the opportunity to bust out the memorized lines he was thinking of. Made them a little more distant for him, rather than having them come to him right off the bat—a state of affairs that was not helped by the fact that Kaifeng did not actually speak the language the lines in question had been written in. With a few moments to gather his thoughts and a little bit of effort, though, Kaifeng called them back to mind.
“‘Per mi si va ne la città dolente,’” Kaifeng recited, slipping easily out of his normal speaking voice and into something more resonant, something with a more appropriate amount of drama, “per me si va ne l’etterno dolore, / per me si va tra la perduta gente.’” After all, one could not simply say the lines inscribed on the gates of Christian Hell as if one were rattling off a grocery list. Poetry like this required gravitas, if one meant to present it properly, as it was meant to be heard. “‘Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore; / fecemi la divina podestate, / la somma sapïenza e ’l primo amore.’”
The fact that this was the only Italian that Liánlí-Kaifeng had ever learned to speak in his entire queer life was irrelevant, if you asked him. Maybe he only knew the lines’ meanings via different translations that he’d read in ninth grade Western Lit and undergrad, but poetry was poetry, regardless of the language. All poetry deserved to be read with love, with care, and with the utmost reverence.
“‘Dinanzi a me non furor cose create,’” Kaifeng spoke even more slowly and more deliberately as went into the last stanza, trying to up the menacing sound for the big climax, “‘se non etterne, e io etterno duro. / Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate!’”
Objectively, concluding his recitation with an over-the-top maniacal laugh probably wasn’t necessary. But for a line like All you who enter, let no hope survive—or as it was more commonly known, Abandon all hope, you who enter here—adding that flourish simply felt Correct.
It fell off Kaifeng’s face immediately as he turned back to Helene, replaced with his more typical eager and optimistic smile. “So, yeah, something like that? I thought maybe Xingyi had written it there for……I don’t know, whatever reason?” Kaifeng shrugged as he started heading toward the buildings that sat closer to the center of the fields. “But I couldn’t read it, so I was just judging based on how it looked like writing and the shape of it looked like poetry, y’know?”
Humming pensively, he looked between the tower and the horizon. “What do you want to see first, gege? I know there’s a room in the tower that I had a memory about? It has something fun in it. But I’ve done more to keep the cottage clean, since……I’ve been able to get into every room there. Plus, there’s……Xingyi’s studio? I don’t know—I haven’t gotten a memory of him showing it to you before? Which doesn’t mean that he didn’t, but……I feel like Huan-ge should see what’s in there.”
If nothing else, Helene deserved to see how many times Xingyi had painted his portrait……to see the love and care that he’d put into each brushstroke.
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Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2024 10:55 pm
Helene nodded, thoughtfully. "Both good places to check for a map," he acknowledged. That seemed like something Xingyi would have--his dedication to his Wonder had been unmatched, and it seemed to Helene that it only made sense to have it mapped, even if only for himself.
An amused smile tugged at his face as Lianli described his first visit to the Wonder--since he'd come out unharmed, he couldn't help but think that Xingyi might have been entertained to know that his reincarnation was so enthusiastic to explore that he had accidentally ended up tripping into some of the less dangerous traps.
Also, it was a delight to watch him recite. Lianli was clearly a born actor.
"Yes, Xingyi warned me to take great care in the tower," he confessed. "Created as a distraction, to draw the attention of graverobbers from the Wonder proper. Did its job quite well, as I understand. So you are not wrong, to guess that whatever is written there is a warning. Don't remember the exact wording, but it was something intended to frighten and entice in equal measure." A wry little smile. "You perform well."
He cast his gaze over the field before them, before coming to a conclusion with a nod.
"I...would like to see his studio. Was never able to, before."
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Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 6:05 pm
Kaifeng smiled fondly as he came closer to Helene, reaching for one of his hands, with a mind to twine their fingers together. No, he didn’t need to hold Helene’s hand, and yes, Helene could certainly have handled himself. It wasn’t as though anything nefarious would come for them up here. Even if something like that had been able to happen, Helene had experience as a senshi regardless of what his current power level said. Kaifeng knew that he could trust Helene to handle himself.
……But he wanted to hold Helene’s hand. Not for reasons of thinking that he needed to, but just because Helene’s hand was there, and it deserved to be held.
“That’s brilliant of Xingyi-ge to have come up with,” Liánlí-Kaifeng said brightly as he led them around the fruitless pomegranate tree Xingyi had planted for his parents (they could come back to visit later; he would want to do so before leaving). “And yeah, I sort of got the impression that, whatever he was trying to do with the traps, he succeeded? At least one I found while exploring had old stains that looked like blood on the spiky bits, so……” Kaifeng shrugged, still smiling despite the objectively gruesome topic of discussion. “And I’m glad that Huan-ge liked that recitation.… It’s literally the only Italian I know, but I have fun with it.”
When they reached the cottage, Kaifeng did need to let go of Helene’s hand. Even knowing that nobody could come here to break in, it just……felt more respectful, locking up when he left. Like he was protecting some part of Xingyi’s memory by making sure that no one could get in. Still, he needed both hands to get the ornate silver key out of his subspace pocket and then to open up the cottage.
While the signs of his work out in the fields may not have been exceptionally visible, the cottage’s interior was a very different story. Despite some slight dust gathering from the two-week lull between each of his visits, the kitchen and dining area, immediately to the left of the front door, looked spotless enough that Kaifeng and Helene could have eaten there without an issue. Similarly, the living room had been scrubbed and vacuumed to within an inch of its life, and both the sitting pillows on the floor and the duo of fainting couches shone, perfectly clean. Time had faded their colors somewhat, but Liánlí-Kaifeng had cleaned them up regardless.
“Everything was a lot messier when I first came to visit,” he said, leading them inside and shutting the door behind him. “The kitchen honestly looked like it had been ransacked or something? Cabinets all turned out. Pots and pans everywhere. There were, like, remains of an ancient meal around—those dishes, I didn’t think were salvageable—and then a bunch of stuff that hadn’t been used had gotten thrown all over the floor with the pots and pans. So, I got some water from a spring at the northern edge of the fields and used it to clean everything up. Brought some cleaning supplies with me, the next time, so I could work on all the dust and the grime. It was a bit of a project, but……worth it, I thought.”
Thinking about some of what he’d found upstairs, Kaifeng swallowed thickly, got a more somber expression. “Getting all the empty bottles out of the upstairs and the studio was worse than the grime,” he said softly, ducking his chin. “There was sort of a game in some of it? Like, look at the labels, try to figure out things like ‘Oh hey, this one has that ouroboros from Murikabushi’s brooch and tiara, it must be from his planet, I wonder what the deal is with these black roses on the label’? Or like ‘I haven’t seen a senshi with this symbol of a little monster guy screaming at the heavens, but I guess their world made a lot of drinks that Xingyi enjoyed, this label with the art of the bleeding apples looks really neat’? But that could only distract so much from, y’know. How many of them there were. And the feeling like ‘I really don’t want to judge when I don’t know the context, but I don’t like how this looks and want it might’ve meant about what Xingyi’s life put him through.’”
Liánlí-Kaifeng sighed softly and reached, instinctively, to squeeze Helene’s hand again. Even if he wasn’t saying anything that Helene didn’t already know about the man he’d loved, he couldn’t imagine that hearing it was easy.
“Qiye-jiejie’s been breaking the old bottles down and turning them into art,” he said, gently tugging Helene around the staircase, toward the studio. “It’s not like the art Xingyi made, but……I don’t know? I like to hope that he wouldn’t mind it?”
With which, Liánlí-Kaifeng nudged open the door into Xingyi’s studio. As much as he disliked silence—as much as it made his nerves itch and made his head spin—he kept his mouth shut as he led Helene in. Some things, Kaifeng figured, needed to speak for themselves. Despite all the effort he’d put into cleaning up the dust and grime that had been here the first time, he hadn’t ultimately moved all the portraits of Huanxi that much. Some movement had been necessary—all of them had needed dusting off, and ones in frames had needed those cleaned up as well—but ultimately, everything had gone back more or less where he’d found it.
The task had been more than a bit herculean, given how many portraits there were, hanging on the walls, leaning against them, or propped up on easels of different sizes. Xingyi had tried out different styles for his different pieces: some, more realistic and others, more stylized, not entirely unlike paintings that Liánlí-Kaifeng would have expected to see in an exhibit of art from the Warring States period. Some greyscale or only done with black ink, others full of so much vivid color that it almost strained the eye, and still others in varieties of limited palettes. Some, clearly ahead of their time, even reminded Liánlí-Kaifeng of artists and movements that wouldn’t have existed until centuries after Xingyi had died; El Greco, Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Salvador Dalí, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Douglas Crimp had all lived closer in time to Liánlí than they had to Xingyi, yet a few of his paintings reminded Liánlí-Kaifeng very strongly of those artists styles.
Two things, however, were undeniable: every painting in Xingyi’s studio depicted Huanxi, whether as himself or as Sailor Helene, and every brushstroke that had gone into them positively ached with love.Noir Songbird The alcohols that Kaifeng mentions here are meant to be: Murikabushi rose-wine (made with the petals and the hips of Murikabushian true-black roses, a symbol of deep spiritual significance, associated with the senshi; basically vantablack-looking and it would get a b***h absolutely REKT); and Farbautian bloodwine (uses a sweet-tangy apple for its base; fruit has golden outsides, red insides, and viscous juice. The recipe also uses honey and spices. Does not taste like blood at all, but kinda looks like it).
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Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 7:01 pm
Sometimes, it was the little things.
Helene had never once been able to hold Xingyi's hand--not like this, not in the way of two lovers who simply wished to touch. It was a simple joy that he was lucky enough to have with Lianli-Kaifeng, the person who had found a home in his heart. Two lifetimes over, at that.
He let himself be led to the familiar little cottage, where he and Xingyi had shared many a meal, or a pot of tea, and a thousand long discussions into the night. A cottage Helene had sometimes dreamed of running away to, when the longing for his Knight overwhelmed his sense of duty. But his good sense always won out--doing that would only have brought more trouble for Xingyi, who had far and away enough.
The weight of memories kept him silent as they approached, and even once they stepped through the doors. It was a long moment of taking ti all in--taking in how it looked so well cared for, how it was obvious that Kaifeng had done so much work to clean up his predecessor's home.
"It looks...very close to how I remember it," Helen said. "And the things that are different--they are things you cannot change." And, in truth, it felt silly to be potentially fussed about the little things, when the most important thing was right in front of him.
"Not surprised it was messy. Things...went badly very suddenly, as I was told." Because he hadn't been there to help, when Xingyi needed him most. "I was not here, and only heard what happened secondhand, but there would have been little time to do things like clean up." To say the very least.
The mention of bottles made him shake his head. "Xingyi enjoyed liquor from all across the universe. you know I am not so much of a drinker, but I know that second symbol. Or, I suspect I do. Farbautian bloodwine, made from a fruit not unlike apples, imported from another moon of Saturn. Saw Xingyi drinking it a few times."
More than a few times, but that was true of most liquors.
He let Kaifeng lead him around the stairs, towards a part of the cottage he had never been in. This was Xingyi's private space, and even so many years later--even led by his reincarnation--it almost felt wrong, to enter it.
But enter he did.
And his heart dropped.
Helene did not cry often or easily, but he felt tears spring to his eyes, looking upon the many, many portraits that Xingyi had put to canvas. All of him, all--
All expressions of a devotion he had once convicned himself could not possibly exist.
"Oh," he said, softly, and then his legs gave out and he sank to his knees, overwhelmed.
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Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 8:58 pm
It wasn’t that Liánlí-Kaifeng didn’t care about the history of what had gone wrong at Kaifeng prior to Xingyi’s death, because he did. Likewise, he cared very much what Huan-ge had to share about Xingyi’s history with alcohol, and about learning what at least one of the bottles was for (which made him wonder about the Sailor Farbauti who must have been out there somewhere). All of this, however, sounded like something for another time, compared to the necessity of letting Helene into the studio, letting him see this remaining evidence of how much Xingyi had loved him back.
Liánlí-Kaifeng expected the reality of it to be overwhelming.
Maybe not “Helene falling to his knees” levels of overwhelmed, but that made more than perfect sense, and Liánlí-Kaifeng joined him on the floor shortly after he dropped. For a moment, he hesitated, uncertain if physical contact would be welcomed or not—but with a soft sigh, he reached out to caress Helene, resting a hand between his shoulder-blades. Edging closer, Liánlí-Kaifeng pressed down two kisses, first one on Helene’s rope harness, and then one on his shoulder proper. The impulse to say something itched in the back of his mind, wailing like a cat who’d been shut outside their person’s office while the human took an important call, yowling that the silence was too much, even with Helene right here beside him and his nerves perfectly steady overall.
As he opened his mouth, though, Liánlí-Kaifeng noticed something laying under one of the nearby easels. Something bright red, at that; so bright that it almost didn’t seem like it could have been an ancient relic. He didn’t remember seeing anything of that color while he’d cleaned up the studio, either, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. All kinds of things might have slipped his notice while he’d come up here and worked to clean the cottage up. Still, curiosity won out, compelling him to crawl over to the easel and bend down to pick up the bright red something-or-other.
Bringing it up into the light, Liánlí-Kaifeng saw that it was a ribbon. As he returned to Helene’s side, he considered tying it in his hair, but as he got closer, something else of a similar red shade stole Kaifeng’s attention. While the ribbon remained in his hands, a crimson string had appeared around his left wrist……and it led right to Helene, tied around his right wrist.
Holding up that hand, Kaifeng looked from the string to Helene, then back to the string, then back to Helene. “……Oh,” slipped out of Kaifeng’s mouth so easily. Feelings rushed within him, warm and flustered and So Very Much, refusing for several moments to be put to words. And maybe the ones that came to him weren’t words he’d written, but Liánlí had always best expressed himself with song: “Yet, I know it’s true, that visions are seldom all they seem.…”
He sighed softly, going dewy-eyed himself but smiling anyway. “But if I know you, I know what you’ll do. You’ll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream.…”
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Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 9:29 pm
Kaifeng's touch was grounding, keeping Helene in the present moment instead of letting him drown under the ocean of memories that threatened to pull him under.
How many times had he been here, in this little cottage, with all of this so close, and he'd had no idea? Not a single clue that Xingyi felt so intensely about him as to do....all of this?
But Lianli was distracted, and Helene turned to look when he moved, eyes catching on that bright red ribbon, blurred by the tears that he could not stop from falling. And that soft little "oh," making his chest hurt, making him long--long fro someone inches from him, singing for him, bound to him by a magic ribbon that seemed like as not to be reminding him that their souls were connected, across as many lifetimes as they might live.
Helene reached out, cupping Kaifeng's face in his hands, and pulled him in for a long, lingering kiss. It was wet, and a little salty, with both of them tearing up, but it was everything he could imagine wanting. This. Them. Together, at last.
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Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2024 12:24 am
Kaifeng went exactly where he was tugged, both slightly caught off guard and all too eager for this kiss. Of course, he and Helene had kissed before. He’d even started that kissing, when he’d first shoved his tongue into Helene’s mouth, before getting the poor boy some basic level hydration. Since then, they hadn’t really stopped kissing. Like, sure, enough to eat, and sleep, and brush teeth, and go on patrol together, and other similar sorts of things—but in some sense, all of those activities simply occupied the interstices between kisses.
Oh, but this kiss.…… This kiss felt the same, but also different.
Once upon a time at Harvard, when Liánlí had regularly made Hayden endure then-new episodes of Glee, he’d actually managed to get Hayden excited about a Valentine’s Day episode by telling him that one of the songs from it was supposed to be a Queen song. This had been an accurate statement, though Liánlí had sort of left out the fact that the song in question was “Fat Bottom Girls,” instead allowing Hayden to speculate as he pleased. Having gotten Hayden so interested in a show that he normally only tolerated for Liánlí’s sake because no one else would humor him about it, Liánlí had talked Hayden into a little two-person party in their dorm to watch the episode together.
For the most part, the episode had been Just Okay, and even Liánlí and his three Glee: In Concert souvenir t-shirts-he-now-wore-as-dresses could admit that. Not enough Santana and Brittany, honestly (though it had had a truly iconic moment, when Santana had declared through her crocodile sobs, “I just try to be really, *really* honest with people when I *think* that they *suck*!” because Santana Lopez had been a Queen like that). A serviceable episode of Glee, but not amazing. Throughout the episode, though, there had been one central, recurring motif that had irritated Liánlí at the time: when the characters whom the show had wanted viewers to ship that week had kissed each other, stock footage of fireworks had played over images of their gobsmacked faces, because the kisses had been like fireworks (which had, of course, culminated in Rachel Berry singing Katy Perry’s “Firework” even though it should have gone to Santana, Mercedes, or Tina Cohen-Chang because Lea Michele’s voice had not been the right one for it because Glee).
At the time, the motif had irritated Liánlí with its overwrought nature. He’d kissed more than his fair share of people. None of those experiences had been so terrible that he’d overly regretted them, and none of them had been bad enough to make him question whether or not he’d really wanted to be kissing anybody (even though he had, in retrospect, rushed into more than a few of them). But by the same token, none of those kisses had made him feel fireworks. Statistically, it couldn’t have been the case that everyone he’d kissed had been so damn lousy at doing so that they couldn’t have made anybody feel fireworks like that, so the far more plausible explanation was that the Glee writers had gotten too purple with that metaphor and even if it more or less accurately reflected the way that teenage emotions went over-the-top about absolutely everything, it didn’t overall work because it was obviously just a setup for the climactic musical number that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
Kaifeng felt the fireworks, now. Bursting like stars throughout his chest and lungs as he dove further into the kiss and snaked his arms around Helene’s shoulders. If the red string got tangled, that sounded like a problem for five minutes into the future or whenever it became an issue. Because right now, Kaifeng only cared about Helene, and Helene’s mouth, and his own mouth all up on Helene’s mouth, a skein of yearning and a love that burned.
This was all Kaifeng cared to care about, as well……until his lungs rather abruptly decided to care about breathing.
Even though he separated enough to breathe, Kaifeng tugged Helene down enough to press their foreheads together, unwilling for the moment to be Not Touching. “……Sorry that I kept Huan-ge waiting for so long,” he murmured, saying literally the first thing that came to mind. “Unless I didn’t really get a choice about that, I……? I don’t really know how the reincarnation cycle works or any of that? But……still. Whatever the truth is? I’m so happy to be here with Huan-ge now.”
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Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2024 12:42 am
Helene was only so inclined to indulgent metaphors when it came to kisses--he had found, usually, that the act itself was more than enough, especially when shared with Lianli. It did not need poetry, because it was poetry.
This kiss, entwined together with the red string of fate, and the moment after, with Lianli's forehead pressed against his and all of their love and affection between them--it was more poetic than usual. And even though Helene could not find the words he wanted, he could feel the itchings of a song--of notes that he would have to write out, later, lest they burst from him unbidden.
It had been a thousand years since he felt a song inside him, but of course Lianli would find a way to bring that back, too.
"Mmm. Would have waited a thousand years more, if that was what it took. Glad it was not." He pressed his lips to Kaifeng's nose, this time, with a soft, fond smile. "Glad to have a new lifetime to spend with you."
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Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2024 1:00 am
The kiss pressed to his nose made Kaifeng smile and giggle, everything inside him feeling all pink and light and bubbly in a way that, some thirteen years ago, he had sworn he hated even thinking about because he’d assumed that it would never happen for him, not in a million years. There had been reasons for teenage Zhìháo to think so, reasons why he’d felt very justified for buying his own garbage wholesale like he had. Of course, the biggest one had wound up being: how could he have known that The One was out there for him, but The One was trapped on a moon of Saturn and wouldn’t reach Earth until about six weeks before Liánlí’s twenty-ninth birthday?
“Very glad that Huan-ge didn’t need to wait that long,” Kaifeng said softly, slipping his left hand back off Helene’s shoulders so he could brush it down Helene’s face instead. What a good face. And what magic, to brush his fingertips down Helene’s cheek. To have this chance for such intimacy and to just let himself feel so good. “Hope to share so many adventures in this life with you. Like……” Kaifeng trailed off, briefly feeling guilty about the first thought he had, which felt at least slightly heartless. But—maybe it didn’t need to be like that. Maybe there was a good balance to be struck here. “Do you want to stay here a while longer, Huan-ge? I just thought, going to that room I had the memory come back about might be a good adventure? But if you need more time in here, we have as much time as you need.”
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Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2024 1:09 am
Ah, Kaifeng's little laugh. The sound of it made Helene's heart skip, a little--made him feel something soft and warm inside that he had thought he might not be capable of anymore, after Xingyi's death.
Yes, he had survived for a thousand years. But it had taken arriving on earth for him to live again.
"Mm. We can come back here another time, and I can have my time with ghosts. Right now, I have a living Lianli who wishes to show me something on his Wonder." A smile, the kind he knew he only ever gave his Kaifengs. "It would be impossible to say no to that. Show me this room."
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Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2024 12:49 am
Getting Helene to smile like that hit Kaifeng in the heart like a ******** truck.… Gege, please, Kaifeng felt very loudly, certain that his thundering heartbeat could probably be heard all the way back on Earth. Please, gege, I am only a simple Saturn Squire, and your little smile has such power in it.…… Huan-ge was always gorgeous, of course, but seeing his smile felt like such a special privilege, not least because Helene smiled so infrequently. Kaifeng almost wanted to drown in that smile.
But only almost. Helene was very right that he had a living Liánlí, who stood now and extended a hand to help Huan-ge back to his feet, who stuck close to his side as they made their way out of the cottage and only released Huan-ge’s hand so that he could lock the door. As he led them through the fields, over to the tower, Liánlí-Kaifeng could not help but hum pleasantly, something sweet and perky that captured at least some of what he was feeling after that moment in the studio: But now you’ve come along and brightened up my world. In my heart, I feel it, I’m that special kind of girl. Finally, you come along. The way I feel about you, it just can’t be wrong. If you only knew the way I feel about you, I just can’t describe it.…
The urge to skip was palpable. Kaifeng didn’t, because it would have interrupted his ability to lean his head on Helene’s shoulder while they walked, but that was really the only reason why he restrained himself.
As they entered the tower and headed toward the stairs, Kaifeng stopped humming, but only so he could explain things instead. “So, in the memory I got out of the vial of golden liquid,” he explained brightly, “there was a room that’s up a few flights and down a corridor? Huan-ge and Xingyi-ge were coming back from some misadventure, getting his cousins and their friends out of trouble, and Xingyi-ge was carrying some kind of ornate box. The two of you didn’t say what was in said box, in the memory? I figured you probably didn’t need to? Xingyi-ge said that it rightfully belonged on Saturn, in the care of a Saturn Knight, and he had no idea how the twins had gotten their hands on it—them, and some friends of theirs he called Grieve, Puck, Alexis, and……and……”
Kaifeng hummed pensively, trying to remember the last name as they reached the floor where he and Selenga had gotten off to visit the room with the puzzle lock portrait of Xingyi’s mother, the room where Liánlí-Kaifeng had found Yùchén. They still had a couple flights to go, though, and as they passed by the puzzle-lock room to reach the next staircase, something clicked together in Liánlí-Kaifeng’s mind. Maybe it was from looking at the tiles that Selenga had figured out how to arrange and seeing them all mixed up again? Maybe it was from noticing the one tile that had the little beast guy from the cameo brooch on the choker that Xingyi’s mother had worn, the lion with the crow wings and the dragon tail?
Whatever it was, though, Liánlí-Kaifeng went on, “Airan! That was the other friend of the twins’ Xingyi-ge mentioned. But in a way where……” He made a throaty, perplexed noise. “I don’t know, really? The way he talked about Airan, it sounded like maybe, they weren’t super closely involved with whatever the twins and their friends did? But they had nobility or money or some other kind of social power that they could throw around to come get the gang out of trouble when Huan-ge and Xingyi-ge couldn’t prevent them from……I want to say ‘getting arrested’? But that’s just a guess. The conversation didn’t really give a play-by-play account of what had happened, so I had to mentally fill things in based on the clues from what Huan-ge and Xingyi-ge had said.”
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Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2024 9:23 am
Helene let himself be led back out of the cottage, was glad to walk beside Kaifeng, with Kaifeng's head on his shoulder, to bask in his presence and feel like one of the pairs of lovers he'd seen on his travels. Such open displays of affection would have been taboo--scandalous, even--on Helene; a lack of inhibition and restraint on clear display.
But the people who would have cared were centuries dead, and Kaifeng's head on his shoulder felt like music. Like the feeling that inspired love ballads and soft romantic orchestrations. Like everything, at last, was right.
The memory stirred something in Helene, a sort of nostalgic fondness he never expected to feel about his and Xingyi's adventures with the Nameless. But they had been perhaps the closest thing he had to friends, once--it would be good, to meet them again, given the opportunity.
"Nameless mercenaries," Helene said. "Or so they called themselves. A company from many walks of life, willing to take on many jobs. The twins worked with them, and thus Xingyi and I were often drawn into their misadventures. That particular one took us to Murikabushi."
He sighed, heavily.
"Kaede was displeased about my presence. Expressed it loudly. Refused to listen to reason, got herself and the others....arrested, is a close enough metaphor. Sailor Murikabushi--Airan--had to intervene." A less dignified person might have rolled their eyes at the memory. Helene was, fortunately for the memory of Kaede Kurogane, more dignified than that. "Xingyi was right. The artifact in that box belonged in his care. Not dangerous, but Saturnian and magical. Airan agreed, let us take it with us."
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Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2024 6:24 pm
Listening to Helene recount the memory, Liánlí-Kaifeng felt positively giddy, all sparkly and eager and bright. Getting this chance to learn about things that Huan-ge and Xingyi had gotten up to over a thousand years ago, before Xingyi’s tragic death……it was entrancing, even if Xingyi’s cousin sounded like a hellishly stressful little gremlin to deal with, who had caused Huan-ge in particular an undue amount of stress. (She didn’t sound too terribly dissimilar from Jiayi, really, but being fair, plenty of girls out there in the universe were headstrong, sharp-tongued, argumentative, and rude.)
Moreover, the true identity of the Airan person from the memory made Kaifeng gasp slightly and perk up. “Oh, I think I’ve met Airan’s reincarnation then,” he said, practically bouncing up the last flight of stairs (as much as he could while still very wrapped up in Huan-ge’s side). “He’s one of the Chaos senshi back in town right now, but he’s one of the ones who’s pretty okay overall? Muri and some other Dark Mirror senshi protected me on the gameboard last year, before I knew that I’m the Knight of Kaifeng. Then, I didn’t really see him for a while, and he didn’t recognize me when we did cross paths again? Glamour and all.
“But Muri was at this big battle that I wandered into on a patrol, a little while after I awakened. He rushed in to try and protect another long survivor senshi, Daedalus, from getting kidnapped by a Negaverse senshi. Then, he tried to protect a Cosmos Squire, which……” Kaifeng made a dithering sound and shrugged. “So, a White Moon senshi popped out princess wings that night, right? And she broke out her princess magic to break up the battle and send the Negaverse people running. I guess it targets anyone who’s with Chaos, so Muri was at risk but not his Cosmos Squire friend, but in the heat of the moment, he didn’t realize? Tried to protect the Cosmos Squire with his body anyway.
“Plus, Encke and Pendour-jiejie vouch for him,” Kaifeng added, leading them off the stairs finally, “and they’re both good people with a lot of experience? And Muri snitched on me to Selenga after that battle, which was like, slightly inconvenient for me? But I’d lied to Ming-er and Qiye-jie about an injury I’d gotten in the battle—told them it was an accident, rather than what actually happened—and they deserved to know the truth, so Muri honestly did the right thing by snitching on me, y’know?”
From the staircase, it wasn’t a long journey down a corridor to find the door. Not that Kaifeng didn’t expect to find a lock—it only made sense, for a room where Xingyi-ge had stored something that needed protection from people who might take advantage of it and its power—but he still sighed at what waited for them on the door. A knob protruded from the door with a metal circle around it, looking like the combination lock that Kaifeng would have expected to see on a high school locker, but embedded in the wood. The metal even had the degrees within a circle marked out at regular intervals. Unlike a similar lock, though, numbers didn’t label the notches but rather, scales and musical notes.
Liánlí-Kaifeng wrinkled his nose bemusedly, then idly nuzzled at Helene’s shoulder. “……The memory faded out before I got to see how the lock worked,” he admitted. “Do you remember it? Or do we need to try and puzzle out what Xingyi-ge had in mind?”
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