Chapter Text
In the dark, still halls of the high school, Lan Zhan kneels by a bank of open lockers. Interspersed with pencil bags and shattered mirrors, shredded textbooks litter the ground like a spring snowstorm. The only sounds are the faint rumbles of the building’s elderly pipes.
Lan Zhan frowns. The report in Boston’s night hunt database had listed only minor sabotage: posters falling from walls, a desk flipping itself in the middle of a class. Nothing powerful enough to tip over a bank of lockers. The city had accordingly classified the hunt as a possible poltergeist, low strength, and placed the bounty in the lowest tier. A clear mistake: the kind that somehow only happens in neighborhoods like low-income, immigrant Quincy.
She lights a talisman and sifts through the pile of debris: hairbrushes, gym shirts, a contraband electronic cigarette. It’s all tinged with a faint aura of resentment, but nothing particularly strong.
There is also a portrait of a teenage girl. It’s rendered in careful, lifelike detail, the girl leaping into the air to shoot a basketball. “You’ve got this!!!” the artist scrawled across the top. Lan Zhan swallows past a lump in her throat, one hand sliding to her pocket. She is abruptly glad that she took this night hunt—mostly because children may be in danger, but partially, secretly, because Wei Ying would be proud if she knew.
It is not the first decision Lan Zhan has made that way in the decade since Wei Ying vanished.
Lan Zhan lets the drawing flutter to the ground, then rises to explore the hallways. She pauses in front of a display case holding dusty trophies. Most are decades old, from back when Wen biotech money had flowed freely, when this neighborhood had a sect to protect it.
The reminiscing ends when glass shatters and a golden figure lunges out of the trophy case. Lan Zhan dances back, bringing Bichen around to defend herself from —
A basketball trophy cup?
Lan Zhan backs away, sizing up her opponent. The cup’s arms scrabble against the floor, spinning its opening towards her. Whatever is possessing the trophy has turned it into a wide, yawning mouth, lined with a suggestion of shadowy teeth. It snaps at her menacingly, but Lan Zhan is unmoved. She once fought next to Wei Ying’s fierce corpses; three pounds of metal are not enough to impress her.
The trophy’s small arms gather themselves like springs and launch the trophy through the air and straight towards Lan Zhan’s face. She dodges and slices the trophy cleanly in half, Bichen’s blade glowing bright as it carves through the cup.
Three pounds of low-quality metal, then. Hopefully, it’s no great loss to the school. Seemingly inert, the cup’s fragments clatter to the ground. Lan Zhan leans closer to touch the cup with the tip of her sword.
Whoosh. A flash of resentful energy rises from the cup and lunges back into the trophy case. A plaque flings itself off an upper shelf, aimed again for Lan Zhan. She bats it away with Bichen, only for the spirit to whoosh away again. Lan Zhan scans the shelves for its next target. For a moment, all is still.
Then a cascade of trophies fall, clanging on the tiles around her as she fends them off with flashes of her sword glare in a cacophony of falling metal. But in all of that, Lan Zhan hadn’t heard another whoosh. She listens over the rapid beating of her heart. None of the trophies left on the other shelves have moved. The plaques are still just plaques; the miniature metal athletes remain locked in basketball jumps or wrestler’s poses.
But there is, she realizes, one empty pedestal: State Girl’s Track 2002. She looks down the hall just in time to see a tiny golden figure dashing away.
Lan Zhan runs after the click-clack of the trophy’s feet, its resentment-powered form racing away as quickly as Lan Zhan can run towards it. The chase takes her past a bank of lockers and down a hall lined by Comic Sans-titled science fair posters as she slowly gains ground.
Then the little runner is blasted back from around the next corner on a wave of thick resentful energy, and a possessed trophy becomes the least of Lan Zhan’s concerns. In front of her stands a figure shrouded in darkness, the notes of a dizi echoing hauntingly in the air.
“Drop your flute,” Lan Zhan commands coldly. She has run into demonic cultivators before, of course: the laws against it can’t keep half-baked copycats from messing around with an already dangerous invention. Irresponsible. She lunges, Bichen’s sword glare cutting through the shadows —
A coil of resentful energy yanks at her wrist, yanking her sharply off course.
“Fuck off!” the demonic cultivator snaps as a second coil grabs Lan Zhan’s other wrist. “It’s getting away—wait. Lan Zhan?”
Bichen clatters to the floor. “Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan breathes.
The resentful energy slithers away into the shadows of the floor and ceiling. Now it is just Lan Zhan, in a school hallway lit only by dim emergency lights, face to face with a woman she hasn’t seen in ten years.
“It really is you!” An unmistakable grin spreads across Wei Ying’s face. Her eyes flick quickly up and down Lan Zhan’s frame. “You haven’t changed a bit, jiejie.”
“The Lan Sect uniforms are unchanged,” she says, and why is she talking about uniforms — “You look well.”
Wei Ying looks— good, of course she does, but not just in the way that makes Lan Zhan’s heart beat faster. Her short shirt shows off a softness to her belly, no longer predatory-thin as she had been after her poorly-ended internship with the Wens. New tattoos wind up her arms, some of them glowing as red as Wei Ying’s eyes.
“Glad you think so,” Wei Ying says, even as her arms cross. “Here for the night hunt?”
“Mn.” Lan Zhan reaches down to pick Bichen off the floor. Wei Ying’s hand flicks abortively towards her talisman pouch. “I am pleased to see you,” Lan Zhan adds, as she wishes she had before. She sheathes the blade and Wei Ying uncrosses her arms.
Wei Ying laughs—perhaps with relief, perhaps with disbelief. “Oh, really? Well, in that case I could use the help. If you don’t mind hunting with a demonic cultivator, that is.”
“I do not.” Not if they are Wei Ying. “What is our prey?”
Wei Ying shrugs. “No idea. I was just passing by and figured I’d stop in for a bit of clean-up. You, jiejie?”
It must have been a very spontaneous choice: Wei Ying wears knee-high red and black socks in stompy black boots, a choker and a short scoop-necked tee painted with “We came from hell.”
“Something is possessing items,” Lan Zhan says, wrenching her eyes away from the line of Wei Ying’s very short black shorts and trying not to wonder where, exactly, she had intended to spend her evening. “Currently, a track and field trophy.”
“Resourceful little guy,” Wei Ying says with a grin. “Gotta respect that. Running away won’t get him that far with me, though.”
She whips out a talisman and dissolves it into a cloud of sparkling red butterflies. Lan Zhan cannot keep herself from reaching out in wonder as they swirl around the two of them.
“Enough showing off,” Wei Ying tells the butterflies, leading them to the spot where the statue hit the wall. Her eyes look softer in the red light. “Go do your job!”
The butterflies swirl around her one last time—no creation of Wei Ying’s could resist the extra flourish—and then stream down the hallway en masse.
They dash after the swarm while butterflies pour along hallways and down staircases, until at last they squeeze through the edges of a doorframe into a classroom. Make like a proton and stay positive, the cheerful cardboard atom on the door says.
“I loved chemistry,” Wei Ying says cheerfully as she opens the door. “The teacher was a little excitable about the explosions, but I still got to—”
“Wei Ying!” Lan Zhan’s sword flies up as Wei Ying ducks down, just dodging the heavy chemistry textbook dive-bombing through the cloud of butterflies. Bichen carves through the book, filling the air with chemistry-themed confetti.
“That brings me back,” Wei Ying laughs, brushing some paper off her shoulder.
The spirit escapes again with a now-familiar swish of air. They both pivot towards the sound just in time to face a fiery explosion. Lan Zhan can feel the heat of it crisping her skin, resentment-enhanced fire trying to burn past the wards of her clothes. Wei Ying winks and pulls a talisman out of her sleeve.
“I’ve got it, jiejie,” she says, and a wall of cool wind howls in place around them. The fire recoils and retreats as the talisman-summoned wind beats against it. Wei Ying is almost untouched by the flurry, only a few strands of her hair caught in the breeze as she faces down the flames with a confident grin.
In those ten years, Lan Zhan had sometimes wondered whether nostalgia had exaggerated her memories of exactly how brilliant Wei Ying could be. She really never should have doubted herself on that.
There’s a sad clicking sound, then the fire dies away.
“That’s one less terrible bunsen burner!” Wei Ying says cheerfully, and Lan Zhan wrenches her eyes back to the charred hunk of metal. “Hey, before it picks its next host—have you got anything you really, really like?”
“An object?” Lan Zhan asks.
“Yep!” Pity, that rules out saying Wei Ying. “I need the least resentful thing you own. Something with pure good vibes. Got anything?”
Lan Zhan thinks. In her pocket, she has—but no, not for this.
“I do.” Lan Zhan sheathes Bichen, unzips her jacket, and reaches under her shirt.
“Jiejie! What are you doing?”
Lan Zhan twists in a maneuver well-practiced in the high school gym locker room. “You need an object that is loved absolutely.” She pulls her prize free, feeling her chest shift uncomfortably. How is this the least embarrassing reliable option Lan Zhan could imagine quickly enough? “This bra fits me perfectly.”
The lacy, well-structured, blue and white bra dangles between them as Wei Ying stares, briefly wordless. Lan Zhan’s ears heat. “Um. Um, yeah, okay, no notes. Just—wow, super pretty, I see why you like it. I’ll try not to blow it up. Can you, uh, keep the thing busy while I set something up?”
“Mn,” Lan Zhan agrees. Wei Ying carefully takes the bra by one strap.
A sinuous glass vessel then tries to strike at her ankles. She shatters it, but is nonetheless grateful for the distraction.
Wei Ying drops to the ground to scrawl an array, and Lan Zhan falls into the rhythm of the fight. Plastic tubing tries to coil around her neck and she slashes her way free; abandoned tupperware flings its contents at her and she knocks it back. There is a fierce joy in it, all the fiercer for knowing that she is keeping Wei Ying free and safe.
“Okay, let it through!” Wei Ying calls. Lan Zhan dodges a wobbly-legged stool’s attempt to trip her. As the seat staggers by, Lan Zhan kicks it solidly into Wei Ying’s array. The characters flare red with resentful energy that twines its way around the stool and pulls it apart. The metal shrieks, the spirit rushes, and then… silence. Nothing but the shift of fabric, the puff of Lan Zhan’s breath.
The array’s light settles and Wei Ying whoops. “Look, jiejie, your bra’s got it trapped!”
Lan Zhan leans closer to the circle. Right in the middle, her bra splays across the circle. It’s immobile, thankfully, except for a strap slowly tightening and loosening itself.
“Clever,” Lan Zhan says appreciatively.
“Oh, haha, it was nothing!” Wei Ying rubs her nose self-consciously. “Just a hunch.”
“What kind of hunch?”
“About how this spirit works,” Wei Ying says excitedly. “Think about it: what do a defective bunsen burner, a textbook, and an uneven-legged stool have in common?”
Lan Zhan takes only a second to catch up to Wei Ying’s instinctive brilliance. “Frustrated students,” Lan Zhan says at last.
“Precisely! They’re resentment magnets. This spirit isn’t running on its own fuel; it’s harnessing the resentment already contained inside of its host objects.”
Lan Zhan considers. “The trophy case was surprisingly potent.”
Wei Ying snorts. “Ah, that’s not coming from the kids who win the trophies. It’s coming from the ones that don’t.”
Lan Zhan remembers the rows of trophies they both had won, and the gleeful gossips after Wei Ying’s expulsion from the Jiang sect after the demonic cultivation ban. She nods. “So a beloved object provides little fuel. Shall I attempt Rest, then?”
“Sure,” Wei Ying says easily. “Play for me, jiejie.”
Lan Zhan’s ears burn as she pulls out her guqin and settles on the cool tile floor to play. The song spills easily from her fingers. The bra shivers, but does not react beyond that. Wei Ying frowns thoughtfully, then lifts her dizi to join the song.
Wei Ying is exhilarating to play alongside, weaving layers of trills and flourishes around Lan Zhan’s steady melody. She anticipates each decision Lan Zhan will make, and Lan Zhan adjusts to Wei Ying in turn. Wei Ying’s perfectly controlled resentment supports and bolsters the potency of Rest, creating a powerful soothing melody—
And yet the trapped spirit still refuses to settle at the melody’s call. Lan Zhan breaks off her song, Wei Ying a moment behind her.
“Weird,” Wei Ying says. “You’re pretty much the best, and I’m pretty good too. If the two of us can’t settle this thing, and you can’t just slice it up with your fancy sword, something interesting is going on.”
“We should investigate further,” Lan Zhan agrees.
“Totally,” Wei Ying says distractedly as she makes a couple last changes to the array, pulses resentment through it, and then takes the bra out of the circle. “Nothing to worry about, jiejie, I’ll get your bra de-haunted in no time!”
Lan Zhan braces herself. “Together,” she clarifies. “We should investigate together.”
“Oh!” Wei Ying looks up, startled. “Oh yeah, sure.”
“Good.” Lan Zhan inclines her head, and Wei Ying smiles her sunshine smile.
“Then can you talk to the school people, give them the all clear? They don’t exactly know I’m here, so it’ll be better from you.”
“Of course.” Lan Zhan will give the bounty money to Wei Ying, whether or not she intends to accept it.
“Great! Then I’ll just clean up one last thing, and meet you in front in ten?”
Something in Wei Ying’s eyes shifts, just enough to tell Lan Zhan there’s something she’s concealing. Lan Zhan could ask.
“All right,” she says instead.
“Good!” Wei Ying says cheerfully. “And then you, Lan Zhan, should buy me a drink.”
Lan Zhan’s eyebrows rise. “Should I?”
“What do you think I was planning to do tonight in this outfit?” Wei Ying cocks her hip and grins. “It’s the least you can do, if it isn’t against your stuffy Lan rules.”
“I will,” Lan Zhan promises, and it’s Wei Ying’s turn to look surprised.
“You really have changed,” Wei Ying laughs, and she turns to head down the hall. “I’ll see you again soon!”
“See you soon,” Lan Zhan murmurs as Wei Ying walks away. For her, at least, it is a promise.
Lan Zhan is waiting in front of the school, watching the moon with one hand tucked behind her back. Wei Ying can’t resist slowing to watch her a moment longer. Even fresh off of a night hunt, her crisp white and blue uniform glows in the moonlight and her braid hangs neatly down her neck. Wei Ying hadn’t forgotten how much Lan Zhan took her breath away, not exactly. But the intensity of it still surprises her. Lan Zhan looks perfect. Untouchable.
Wei Ying shoves a crumpled talisman into the bottom of her purse and goes to bump her shoulder into Lan Zhan’s. She’s sure Lan Zhan heard her coming, but she still looks almost surprised to see her. Wei Ying can’t blame her: after all, she does have a reputation for running out on things.
“Lan Zhan! The school administrators didn’t eat you!”
“The administrators are asleep,” Lan Zhan says dryly. “I left a voice message.”
Wei Ying cackles. She’d almost forgotten how funny Lan Zhan can be. “Still up for some bar hopping?”
“I promised one bar. Two would be excessive.”
There’s still nothing disapproving in Lan Zhan’s voice, though, so Wei Ying grins. “Great, I’ve got the perfect place. How about Copper? It’s quiet, it’s close, and they do great mocktails. Better for you than one of the pubs, right?”
And it happens to be Wei Ying’s third favorite bar. If something goes wrong, at least Wei Ying won’t lose a place she really cares about.
“I will follow your lead,” Lan Zhan says with her usual sincerity.
“Onwards, then!” Wei Ying says grandly, setting a course past the construction site across from the school.
Wei Ying keeps up a steady patter about nothing in particular—the neighborhood, the night hunt—until they get settled in a comfortable booth. Copper’s decor hasn’t got much of an update in the last decade or so—not since the Wen sect and its money had vanished—but they still keep rotating the work of local artists through the bar. Right now, they’re sitting beneath a black-and-white architectural shot of a building, a pair of statues standing proudly on either side of the door.
“What do you want to drink?” Lan Zhan asks, looking over the list of specials propped in the middle of the table.
“Ah, don’t worry about it!” Wei Ying laughs. “I was just teasing, you don’t actually need to buy me a drink. It’s not like Mianmian would have paid for me.”
Lan Zhan freezes. “Mianmian?”
“Luo Qingyang? Oh, right, you probably haven’t talked to her in a while with the rogue cultivator thing. She’s doing well!”
“And you meet for drinks,” Lan Zhan says stiffly.
Wei Ying blinks. She’d always thought Mianmian and Lan Zhan got along pretty well; Mianmian definitely thought Lan Zhan was hot, at least. “Yeah, we have for years. It takes more planning now, so mostly just after we team up for a hunt. But her husband’s great about making sure she can ditch Mini Mianmian—that’s her daughter—to hang out sometimes.”
Lan Zhan relaxes for no apparent reason. “Nonetheless, you altered your plans for me. I do owe you a drink.”
“Well, far be it from me to keep a gorgeous fancy cultivator from buying me a drink,” Wei Ying grins. “I’ll have a jalapeno mule. You should ask them for the lavender lemonade. I bet you’ll like it.”
“Mn.” Lan Zhan nods and slides out of the booth, easily catching the bartender’s attention. Wei Ying probably shouldn’t stare at Lan Zhan the whole time she’s at the bar, but she’s shameless, and it’s been a decade, and it’s all too easy to slip into a fantasy where Lan Zhan’s some cute lesbian Wei Ying just met at a bar. Nothing complicated about it; she’d let Lan Zhan buy her a drink, then she’d run her foot up the inside of Lan Zhan’s leg, and then they’d yank each other out the back door of the bar and—
Lan Zhan looks back over her shoulder and meets Wei Ying’s eyes, her gaze as heavy as if she knew exactly what Wei Ying was just thinking about. Wei Ying frantically switches her gaze to the photograph of graffiti hanging above the bar, trying to pretend she wasn’t staring. Maybe, contrary to all previous evidence, Wei Ying does have some iota of shame after all.
Wei Ying’s blush has mostly subsided by the time Lan Zhan brings the glasses back to the table, carefully placing Wei Ying’s in front of her. Lan Zhan takes a sip of her own drink. Her eyebrows raise minutely in surprise.
Wei Ying smiles with delight. “Good, right? The shiso really adds something. It’s one of my favorites here.”
“It is pleasant,” Lan Zhan agrees and takes another sip. “Would you like a taste?”
“I’ve had it before, but I’d take a sip!” Lan Zhan offers the glass. Wei Ying knows she should just take it like a normal person. Instead, something possesses her to wrap her hands around Lan Zhan’s elegant musician’s fingers, to lock eyes with Lan Zhan as she tips the drink up. Lemons and lavender burst across her tongue. Wei Ying swallows, then lets go of the glass again.
“It’s good,” she says softly.
“Mn,” Lan Zhan hums. Maybe she’s as baffled by Wei Ying’s audacity as Wei Ying is.
“So, uh, what do you know about the night hunt?” Wei Ying asks. “I didn’t exactly get to see the official report, and sometimes there’s something useful in all that bullshit.”
Lan Zhan nods, drawing herself up into formal cultivator mode. “Student reports of theft or vandalism began to increase starting three days ago. Two days ago, teachers noticed a series of broken items in classrooms. The teachers assumed they were pranks until the German teacher saw her conjugation chart rip itself off the wall while no students were present. The principal sent out a nighthunt request after a student’s jacket attempted to tie them to a chair.”
Wei Ying connects the timeline and winces internally, keeping her expression upbeat.
“Interesting! Hah, you know, the chemistry teacher is kind of famously terrible. I bet the worst classes had the most chaos.”
“Likely,” Lan Zhan agrees. She takes a sip of her lemonade. “How did you hear about the case?”
“Oh, it’s been the talk of the town!” Wei Ying says cheerfully. “I do some under-the-table nighthunts and cursebreaking, and people know it. So I got a call from a family with a kid. Everyone was pretty shook up after the locker thing. The students mostly saw the same kind of low-key destruction that was in the official report.”
Wei Ying mentally reviews her words and is pretty pleased with them. None of it’s a lie. None of it should get anyone hurt.
As long as Lan Zhan doesn’t look any harder, at least.
“So, how’s life going for you these days?” she asks. “I’ve heard that you’re all done with the rebuilding projects around Cloud Recesses.”
“We are,” Lan Zhan confirms. “It is a relief, particularly to have fewer fundraising events.” She somehow pulls a long-suffering face without visibly adjusting a single muscle.
Wei Ying laughs. “Those must have been terrible! I wouldn’t have minded the Jiang ones too much, if it wasn’t for the Jins and the—well, the demonic cultivation. It was a really weird year there.”
“People were unkind,” Lan Zhan says softly.
Wei Ying shrugs. “I mean, people weren’t that wrong. I was kind of a mess.”
Lan Zhan’s jaw tightens slightly, and Wei Ying winces at a twinge in her arm. The array tattooed on her bicep is glowing bright red. “Speaking of which! Give me a sec to deal with this, jiejie?”
“Of course.” Lan Zhan’s eyebrows furrow as she looks over the array. Wei Ying presses her fingers to the base of it, directing energy through the array with each breath. Lan Zhan doesn’t ask for an explanation, sipping her drink as Wei Ying meditates away the prickling feeling of resentful energy.
Wei Ying sighs with relief as the red of the tattoo dulls. “Great, all clear.” Lan Zhan tips her head in unspoken curiosity, and Wei Ying obliges with an explanation. “Just clearing my demonic grease trap! As you know, demonic cultivation messes with the body and mind, et cetera. Well, Wen Qing and I figured out it’s mostly only a problem if you let too much resentful energy sit around in your body for too long a time. So this little thing caps how much resentful energy I can absorb—kinda like a good bartender telling you you’ve had your last pour. It also helps me kick the resentment out of my body when I’m done using it. Clever, right?”
“Very,” Lan Zhan says solemnly.
Wei Ying rubs the back of her neck. “Ha, never thought I’d see the day when you’d say something that nice about demonic cultivation.”
“It has been ten years,” Lan Zhan notes.
“Fair enough,” Wei Ying smiles wryly. “Plenty of time to change. I mean, I’ve got seven new tattoos and much less black lipstick. I’m still not getting rid of the chokers, though.”
Lan Zhan’s lips twitch. “That would be excessive,” she agrees, then hesitates. “I am glad to see your cultivation is no longer harming you.”
Wei Ying shrugs. “I’ve made it work. But honestly, little Lan Zhan wasn’t that wrong: there’s no such thing as safe demonic cultivation, just saf er demonic cultivation.” She grins to soften her words. “It’s kinda like sex that way!”
Lan Zhan almost rolls her eyes, then—that devastating sincerity returning—says, “I wish to apologize. For the way I behaved, when I was younger.”
Wei Ying fiddles with her glass, rolling some condensation along her finger. Demonic cultivation will poison your body and mind, Lan Zhan had snapped. Come to Cloud Recesses with me, she had demanded. At the time, with resentment pulsing through meridians newly drained of spiritual energy, all she could see in Lan Zhan was judgment. Now, though, she wonders how much of the desperation in Lan Zhan’s voice was the same desperate fear that had made a home in Wei Ying’s chest.
“You absolutely don’t owe me an apology, jiejie,” she says at last. “You were trying to help. Not your fault I wasn’t interested.”
Lan Zhan flinches, and Wei Ying scrambles. “Not that I didn’t care about you! I just didn’t want help from anyone. If anything, I owe you a thank you for still talking to me when everyone else started shunning the evil demonic cultivator.”
Lan Zhan’s mouth tightens. “I could have done better,” she insists. “You were clearly frightened and unwell. If I had been more—open—”
Wei Ying cuts her off. “Lan Zhan. What happened, happened, and I know you tried your best. Please don’t beat yourself up over the things we could have done better when we were a pair of scared teenagers. My therapist says I’m not allowed to, so you’re not allowed to either.”
Wei Ying takes a big swallow of her drink. By the time she puts it back down, Lan Zhan is done wiping her eyes.
“Can we talk about something else?” Wei Ying asks weakly. “Like, how’s your sister doing?”
Lan Zhan takes a breath and then answers. “She is well. She enjoys the work of running the sect, and she finally replaced Su She with someone competent.”
“I’m amazed he held on for so long! The air must be so much clearer without that blowhard mucking it up. Speaking of which, what’re you doing around Cloud Recesses?”
Aside from night hunting, Lan Zhan teaches musical cultivation at Cloud Recesses Academy. She speaks with obvious pride about her students. Wei Ying is sure Lan Zhan has her favorites among the kids—maybe the troublemaker named Lan Jingyi, or maybe he just makes for good stories—but she’s sure her students would never be able to guess who. She sounds happy. Wei Ying hopes she is.
Their glasses are empty, as Wei Ying learns when she tries to take a drink and only gets a drop.
“Another drink?” Lan Zhan asks.
“Nah, one’s my limit,” Wei Ying says regretfully.
“I have heard this place does excellent mocktails.” Lan Zhan smirks, just slightly, and Wei Ying vividly imagines across the table and kissing her.
She shakes that image away. If she once had a chance to make that happen, she probably lost it years ago.
Wei Ying pulls her bag up onto the table. Lan Zhan’s eyes snap onto it—onto the black rabbit keychain, maybe.
“Oh, do you remember this?” Wei Ying asks with surprise. She runs a thumb across the little rabbit’s once-plush fur. The red ribbon around its neck has faded to almost pink, with one unfortunate splash of brown. “I’m surprised you recognized it. Thirteen is pretty old in keychain years!”
“I remember,” Lan Zhan tells her.
“Of course, when do you ever forget anything?” Wei Ying rubs the rabbit again in the spot between its ears. “It’s a favorite of mine. A cute little guy, right?”
“Mn,” Lan Zhan agrees. Wei Ying wonders what happened to its twin. She doesn’t ask—she’d teased Lan Zhan into taking the little white rabbit in the first place, and she’d never seen her with it after. Maybe Lan Zhan gave it to some kid who actually liked it, or maybe she tossed it away while cleaning out her room. Wei Ying wouldn’t blame her.
“You know, we’ve still got some investigating to do,” she says impulsively, waggling her eyebrows. “Want to come over to my place, jiejie?”
Lan Zhan blinks. Her ears are flushed red, Wei Ying notices—funny, when she hadn’t had any alcohol in her drink. “I do,” she says, and stands.
“Perfect!” Wei Ying puts her arm through Lan Zhan’s, steering them on. “It’s not as fancy as Cloud Recesses, but I’ve got plenty of stuff to help us figure out our strange little spirit.”
“Mn,” Lan Zhan hums, and Wei Ying grins. Something tells her she won’t have to give up on her third favorite bar.