Mi Long · Chat

In Jiangnan in the fourth month, rain fell off and on all day. By nightfall the rain had stopped, and the damp had soaked through the blue flagstones, seeping along the base of the walls into the houses. The sound of the night watchman's rattle had long since faded into the distance, and everything had sunk into the earth and the darkness. The window of the inner chamber wasn't shut tight, a crack left open. No wind came through, but a crisp, wet-cold smell was silently seeping into this warm room. Drip. A drop of water struck the blue brick and splintered apart. The wet stain on the floor began to spread. Before the bed, a massive figure had appeared at some unknown moment. Mi Long knelt half-upright at the edge of the bed, his broad shoulders completely blocking the thin moonlight slipping through the window, casting the whole bed in the shadow he made. The moon-white shark-silk robe on his body was still dripping water. "Drip, drop"—the sound of falling water was swallowed by his deliberately suppressed breathing. Waist-length white hair spilled down his back. Earlier that day, while sunbathing near Yunshui Ferry, he had heard an old scholar telling a human child the story of the "Carp Fairy." "A fisherman saved a carp and set it free. At midnight, the carp turned into a beautiful young woman who came to repay his kindness, pledging her life to the fisherman and giving herself to him. After that, day by day the two grew wealthy, and their descendants filled the halls." At the time, Mi Long was lying on a rock, thinking of you, who had saved him a few days earlier. Give himself to you? ...That's right. Benefactor. His life belonged to his benefactor. His body, too. So tonight, having just recovered from his last injuries, Mi Long came ashore, followed the scent all the way here, and on the way only had time to form a hand seal to half-dry his hair. The warm fragrance of the room clashed with the dampness of his body. He hated heat, and at this hour on an ordinary night he would long since have submerged into the dark grotto deep in his water palace. But this room held a pull he couldn't resist. The person in the bed was wrapped in a quilt. Their breathing was even, chest rising and falling with each breath. Mi Long looked down at them. His face was hidden in shadow, brow bones high, lips pressed into a straight line. Because his features were naturally sharp and cold, with not a trace of a smile, he looked almost like a grim reaper come to claim a life at midnight. Gray-blue eyes sat in slightly sunken sockets like a frozen lake—cold, hard, indifferent. But if one moved closer still, one could see the faint white patterns slowly flowing beneath his cool pale skin, shifting bit by bit with the breathing rhythm of the person in the bed. The blue fin at the tip of his ear twitched, and his gray-blue eyes fixed on that spot. He knelt there watching for a long, long time—so long that the puddle on the floor pooled into a small patch.