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 Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2023 6:57 pm
The youma went down easily.
It probably would have done the same if Kaifeng had kept his folding fan. Nothing about this particular youma seemed to fall especially far out of the normal realm for youma. Maybe it was a bit big overall. Maybe the oil spill rainbow-colored pelt and vaguely tiger-looking build were moderately interesting. Sure, Kaifeng could respect the inherent hilarity of a largely tiger-looking youma with four snakes coming out of the back, where it should’ve had a tail, but otherwise? The youma hadn’t impressed Kaifeng much before he finally dusted it.
What impressed him—and confused him, more than slightly—was how his own outfit had changed in the middle of the fight. Kaifeng had taken a few good swings at the tiger-youma, missing more than half of them. Then, out of nowhere, he’d felt some rush of power sweeping over him. His skirt had changed, getting much, much longer. And his folding fan…… For a moment, it had shimmered before him.…… Then, it seemed to grow.…… When it dropped properly back into his hands, his weapon wasn’t a folding fan anymore, but a bamboo club with his old folding fan on top of it.
More than that, Kaifeng had felt something tugging at him, something on a soul-deep sort of level.… For whatever reason, it had told him to swing his club like a baseball bat—and when he listened to that impulse, dozens of ghostly shades clawed their way up out of the earth. None of them seemed like anybody Kaifeng recognized, and they didn’t seem to deal physical damage. But as they set upon the youma, their attacks made it freeze in place. Shivering, it had almost seemed pitiable as Kaifeng rushed in to deliver his last attack. Part of Kaifeng even twisted with guilt over smacking the thing’s neck hard enough to dust it……but he could really only manage so much guilt when he knew good and well what youma liked to do when left unconfronted. And yes, more youma lurked out there in the city, in need of someone to stop them.
But the changes that had set in while fighting it merited some time and closer consideration.… So, Kaifeng settled on a bench, hopping up to sit on the back of it rather than sitting properly. Oh, the new skirt had some nice swish to it—very fun.… Wasn’t long, though, before the silence grated on his nerves too much to bear. Since he didn’t feel any other auras out in this particular park, Kaifeng retrieved Xingyi’s old violin case from his subspace pocket. He tucked the jet black violin itself beneath his chin.
A deep breath, held for a count of ten.
A soft sigh.
Then, Kaifeng began to play—the same wistful, longing tune he’d remembered Xingyi playing right after he and Selenga had gotten the violin.… At least, Kaifeng played what he could recall of it. Somehow, even though he couldn’t be certain about anything with these memories from another life that flooded back to him up on his Wonder, he felt as if the song had some parts missing.… Still, it sounded lovely, trembling so sweetly out of the violin. Maybe practicing it more would help him remember the rest.
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Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2023 6:58 pm
Helene’s arrival felt….disorienting. Dizzying. He knew, as soon as he felt grass beneath his palms, that he was no longer on his own planet—much of the vegetation had died, and what was left was much drier and hardier than this. This was…soft, not marred by the plague that had devastated his world.
He had landed on his hands and knees, but he pushed himself up, looking around and taking in the palace he had found himself.
Green. That was the first thing he noticed—so much green it made his chest ache. His world…his world had not looked like this for millennia. Not since…before.
And there was a song.
Helene’s heart rose into his throat. He knew that song. Knew its composer. But this was not Saturn, not the desolate field and grandiose tower of Kaifeng, and so it could not be….
He thought he had buried his grief. Left it behind, because he could not afford to drown beneath it. But it crashed over him like a dam breaking, like a tide that threatened to sweep him away. It stole his breath, sat as a weight on his chest, and he stumbled forward, towards that haunting memory of a song. Perhaps he had finally lost his mind, after centuries of loneliness, after living so long past when he should have been able to rest, and be reborn, and perhaps meet Xingyi again. Perhaps this was all a dream, and he would jolt awake on his world, and the ability to save it would slip ever further away from him.
Neither of those things happened.
He ducked out of the tree line, into a more open area, and there—playing the violin—was a figure who was so achingly familiar that Helene was sure, for a moment, that he was right. In his loneliness, the grief had come back, had caught him, was making him hallucinate. And yet, still, from his lips tumbled that familiar name, with a voice gone scratchy and rough from disuse.
“Xingyi?”
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Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2023 6:59 pm
Kaifeng probably should have expected someone to come along, at some point. Michel had already warned him about such things before, back during the Star Festival, on the night when Kaifeng had gotten struck by the strangely non-lethal lightning. Making noise—even if it was honestly very necessary in order for one to stay more or less sane and not feel like rats were gnawing away at one’s nerve-endings—was a very good way to attract attention, and like as not, one probably didn’t want that attention. But even the arrival of another White Moon aura didn’t give Kaifeng pause because……well, why should it have? Even if this senshi or fellow knight wasn’t necessarily a friend, they also probably weren’t a foe, so things were probably more or less safe, right?
Hearing them speak made Kaifeng’s playing stop dead. That they said that. specific. name. made Kaifeng’s breath snag in his throat. Trembling as much as the notes of the song had done, he lifted his gaze, and felt his eyes go wide at the sight of—“Huanxi?”
It……it had to be him, didn’t it?
Powered up, yes, but in all the memories Kaifeng had retrieved up on his wonder, he’d never heard the name Huanxi used as a senshi. All Xingyi ever seemed to call him was “Huanxi,” even when he was powered up. “Huanxi” with a laugh and a smile that seemed like a ray of sunlight amidst dark clouds; “Huanxi,” while rolling the eyes and groaning in exasperation (and the underlying fondness, always the underlying fondness and the fear of losing what they had); “Huanxi” like the only word that mattered in a prayer to save a life; “Huanxi” as if the life that needed saving was Xingyi’s own, and this senshi was the only one who could pull off that rescue.
And it had to be him, didn’t it? The sherbert green hair, the lilac skin and horns, the sunset colors on the fuku—all of it looked the same, and he had Kāifēng’s little wispy friend buzzing around excitedly, so……it had to be Huanxi. Right?
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Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2023 7:00 pm
The voice was different. Subtly so, but not the same one he remembered. And Helene would have thought his memory had simply degraded with time, but these were memories so well-worn, so repeatedly recalled, that it felt impossible. And there were differences in the face, too, and in the bearing—enough little details for Helene to be sure that this was not Xingyi. Which—of course. It couldn’t be. Xingyi was dead, and the dead did not return, not as they were.
But this person knew him. Knew his name, on sight.
“You are…Xingyi’s reincarnation.” It hurt, to speak. How long had it been since he had? Still, he continued. “The next Kaifeng of Saturn. You remember me.”
They were not questions, because it was obvious. There was simply no other explanation.
And still, he moved forward. Stepped into arm’s reach. Extended a hand, and rested it on that almost-familiar cheek.
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Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2023 7:02 pm
Watching Huanxi stumble toward him, Kaifeng rushed to get the violin back in its case. He meant to run forward and meet Huanxi, to help keep him steady after whatever had brought him to Earth and left him in such a bad way. But Huanxi reached him as he was getting Xingyi’s old violin back into his subspace, where it would be safe, and……oh. Having him so close knocked the breath out of Kaifeng all over again. His hand was warm against Kaifeng’s cheek, and looking up at him, Kaifeng leaned into that touch.
As he nodded, he told Huanxi, “Liánlí.… I’m Liánlí now—or, when I’m not powered up, anyway. And……” Another nod, which also meant nuzzling at Huanxi’s palm. “Of course I remember you. Every memory that’s come back? Up at Kaifeng? They’ve all had you in them.”
Which just made sense, if you thought about it. Why wouldn’t he remember things about Xingyi’s husband?
Very gently, Kaifeng reached up to curl a hand around Huanxi’s wrist. “Come home with me? I—if you want to? It’s safer there, and there’s water—y’know, for your throat?” It sounded as though speaking hurt for Huanxi.
Whatever happened, though, one fact was clear to Kaifeng: he could not—would not—allow Huanxi to slip away. A chance to get to know him at all had dropped into Kaifeng’s lap out of nowhere, and he had to take it. Had to make sure that Huanxi got well—since he sounded like he obviously wasn’t—and make sure that he didn’t disappear and take with him this chance that Kaifeng—that Liánlí—had wanted so badly.
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Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2023 7:03 pm
”Lianli.” The name tumbled off his tongue, easy and warm and familiar even if it was brand new. “You are…so like him. But so different, as well.” A soft, fond sigh passed his lips. “I am…glad that he remembered me fondly. That you seem to remember me fondly.”
It almost seemed impossible, after how things between him and Xingyi had been, and after how Xingyi…
After how he died. How Huanxi had, in the end, failed him, but not being there when Xingyi needed his support the most.
The urge to lean forward, to close the distance between them and finally kiss Kaifeng after all this time, to press his lips to lips that were not Xingyi’s, but were so like his, was almost overwhelming. It would not be the same, but….perhaps this was good. A second chance. To correct all the things he did wrong before. To finally express the sentiments that he had kept, carefully locked in his heart, for a thousand cold, lonely, empty years.
“Where is…your home? What world is this? I…” He stopped, for a brief moment. Finding Kaifeng—Lianli—had almost made him forget. In truth, he had no idea where he was, or really, how he got there. “I felt…called. Away from my world. And I found myself here. But I do not…know where here is.”
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Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2023 7:03 pm
……Oh. Oh, no. Kaifeng had met some of the other senshi from space before, but not so soon after their arrivals. He nodded without thinking about it, even though Huanxi hadn’t asked anything with a simple yes or no answer baked into it. “It’s……welcome to Earth? It’s our year 2023, though, uh……I don’t know, maybe you measured years differently back then, especially not living on Earth in the first place? I mean, we don’t even all have the same opinions about the year number. Like, it’s 5784 on the Jewish Terran calendar—it only just changed over for them a couple days ago, I think?—and the standards for measuring years used to be really different in China—that’s, uh, where my family—my blood family—traces our roots back to.…”
Which, thankfully, was true both in the sense that most people tended to think of blood family, and just……about Qiye and Ming-er/Selenga. Qiye was Kaifeng’s cousin, Ming-er was hir husband, that meant they both counted as blood family and blah blah blah, even if neither of them was Da-jie, or Qiang-ge Qiang-er, or the twins, or Zhìháo’s parents.…… But that was for the best, probably. Considering how Huanxi had gone off at a bunch of randoms who’d just asked Xingyi to do his job as the Knight of Kaifeng—even if it was a miserable, wretched, horrible part of the job that nobody would have envied—Liánlí didn’t want to know how badly Huanxi might have lost it on Zhìháo’s parents, or his grandparents, or frankly even Qiang-er and the twins, when they’d been stuck in the same shitty circumstances, even if Qiang-er and Yi-mei had chosen to be bullies about it.
Well. Maybe some part of Liánlí wanted to know. But definitely not right now, not when Huanxi had only just gotten here and needed someone to look out for him.
“So……planet Earth,” Kaifeng said again, “and this is Destiny City, Virginia? And home isn’t far. My old place would’ve been but Táotáo and I just moved—oh, she’s, uh. My dog. She can be a bit shy with new people, but she’s really sweet, and I’m sure she’ll love you……Huan-ge?”
To go along with the (possibly presumptuous? maybe not?) affectionate nickname, he offered Huanxi a hopeful smile, a bit uncertain and not too big, but achingly full of hope for all of this to please, be good—for both of them, ideally. To go along with it, Kaifeng gently squeezed Huanxi’s wrist. When he’d thought about trying to find Huanxi before, he’d imagined someone else in the same position as himself, born again, on Earth, with an entirely new life and new memories, new experiences that didn’t entirely line up correctly. And a reincarnated Huanxi wouldn’t have been bad, not at all. Neither was it bad for the Huanxi to find him like this.
All of it was simply different from what Liánlí/21st Century Kaifeng had expected. And different, in his experience, generally meant good.
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Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2023 7:04 pm
Earth. Helene knew of it, of course—the Knight Academy was there, and there had been rumblings of strange things happening shortly before his moon was cut off from the wider universe. The greater details were a little confusing, but he managed to follow along well enough—indeed, here as on his moon, it had been a thousand years since he’d had any contact with anyone outside.
His stomach lurched. He worried, briefly, about those that had still been alive—his brother, his brother’s husband, the messy remains of Xingyi’s family. How many of them had died, in the intervening centuries? Were any of them like him, blessed/cursed with a life that refused to end, left to carry on and protect their worlds from the rot that wished to seize them?
He supposed the only way he would find out would be to find them—still carrying on, like him, or reborn, like Lianli.
“You will have to tell me as much as you can, of this world, and what it is like. My memories of Earth are…many centuries out of date.” To say the very least. “I have been aware of the passage of time, on my world. It has been…difficult. But I am glad to not be alone anymore.”
That lovely, hopeful smile did things to his heart.
“Bring me home with you,” he said, voice soft. “I have waited…a very long time, to find you again.”
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Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2023 7:04 pm
Logically, everything Huanxi was saying made perfect sense. He’d come from space. He’d be alone for so long, and out of touch with the rest of the universe. But listening to him still made Liánlí’s heart ache for Huanxi’s sake. When he’d thought about trying to find a reborn Huanxi, that had been one thing—one that had mostly made Liánlí feel sorry for himself, because there were so many billions of humans, and none of them looked particularly like Huanxi (since, well, he wasn’t human), so how would he have known where to start?
But the reality……? Oh, the reality had been so much worse. “Will tell you more at home, but…” Giving Huanxi a very soft look, Liánlí shifted his grip to hold and squeeze Huanxi’s hand instead. “Huan-ge isn’t alone anymore. Both because……there are other senshi like you in town? I’ve met a couple of them. Not all of them, I’m pretty sure? But I know Fang and Daedalus at least, and I can send them signet ring notes if you want to meet them? At least, until we can find a Mauvian and get Huan-ge his own phone. That way, you can call people yourself, if you make friends to stay in touch with?”
Briefly, it occurred to him that Huanxi could, in theory, meet another cute knight who he might like better.… Liánlí was not Xīngyì. Just because they were both Kāifēng of Saturn, even if they had the same starseed, that didn’t mean that Liánlí was the same as Huanxi’s actual husband. He could fall in love with some other boy and that would be his right, it wouldn’t be fair for Liánlí to protest? But how was he supposed to take it when Huanxi showing up like this had hit him like When I’m with Brittany, I finally understand what people are talking about when they talk about love?
Jealousy wasn’t cute; Liánlí knew this because it was one of the Things Zhìháo Did that most annoyed him now, as Liánlí.
Liánlí didn’t like to see himself as A Jealous Person, not least since he Was Not Zhìháo Anymore.
But the thought of some hypothetical cute little twink in Saturn colors sweeping Huanxi off his feet as soon as it set in for him that Liánlí wasn’t really the husband that he’d lost? Oh, that thought made jealousy burn in the back of his throat and itch to preemptively strike down every other remotely male-attracted Saturn twink he could find. For that matter, maybe he could wrap up the Pluto and Ida twinks in that, too. Ida twinks had similar colors, and Pluto was kinda spooky like Saturn in mythology, right? If Kaifeng needed to make his point known to the Pluto twinks out there, then he could do that.
Much easier and kinder, though, for him to smile and say, “Plus? Huan-ge has this A-Li, now. Never needs to be alone again.”
—And then, as easy as breathing to lean in and up, to take a deep breath, and to kiss Huanxi on his beautiful mouth.
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Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2023 7:07 pm
Helene nodded, slowly. It would have been absurd to assume that his survival was a unique case; still, it was reassuring to know that Kaifeng already knew of others who were like him. Who had survived the centuries, and come to Earth, themselves, rather than being reborn.
Perhaps there was hope for his brother. Perhaps he would not have to search for a reincarnated Zhiguang—the thought gave him heart.
“Mm. Will be glad to meet them, and to receive guidance from Mauvians.” He would like, he thought, to regain his lost power, but that felt like a distant, distant priority. Especially with Lianli’s hand wound in his. With Lianli looking at him so fondly. When it mattered so much more that the new Kaifeng remembered him, and remembered him fondly.
“I—” He began.
And then, Kaifeng was kissing him.
There was a rushing upsurge of emotion, a thousand years of pent up feelings, of adoration kept locked carefully away where it couldn’t shatter the ever-fragile thing that he and Xingyi had.
But the new Kaifeng—Lianli—Lianli, it seemed, wanted him. And Helene wanted, too.
His free hand moved to Kaifeng’s waist, balancing himself as he leaned into the kiss with fervor and heat, heart racing fast enough that it might beat its way out of his chest.
This—he had longed for this. Dreamed of it. Ached for it. And here it was, in his hands.
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Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2023 7:08 pm
Oh, yes—yes, this was the good s**t.
Distantly, Kaifeng made a mental note to send signet ring messages to Fang and Daedalus in the morning. He’d need to send one to Elliott, too. Elliott was a good cat, a fun cat, wonderful Mauvian, very helpful. Surely, he’d be able to get Huanxi one of the phones that White Moon senshi had, and whatever those glamour things were so Fang and Daedalus could pass as human when they powered down into Todd and Soren. The thought gave Kāifēng some pause, because he really liked the way Huanxi looked as himself……but he also needed to be able to go out and do things on his own. And even in Destiny City, going out as an Obvious Alien sounded like it could cause some problems.
But all of those thoughts, while important, paled in comparison to the kiss.
To the all-consuming fire that raged through Liánlí on a soul-deep level as he and Huanxi shared this kiss. Something about it felt electric. Or maybe that was something in the air. Didn’t matter, not really. Huanxi’s hand was warm, his touch gentle, and his lips sweet—
—and dry.
Very dry.
As he came up for breath, Kaifeng powered down into Liánlí and looked up at Huanxi, his expression soft and aching with concern. “Come on, Huan-ge,” he said, squeezing Huanxi’s hand again. “I’ll make you dinner and catch you up some on what’s going on in the universe these days?”
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