Chapter Text
Zhuge Qing went out to the public areas to get some fresh air. He had been invited to an unofficial party set up by the other competitors. ‘Tomorrow, we will face each other again. But tonight, we’re all friends!’ they had said. And for a while, he had forgotten all his worries.
But as soon as the fires had gone out and the others had fallen asleep, everything came crashing down on him once again—a giant tidal wave sweeping him off the shore. He scrambled for air but to no avail.
He had thought that if only he could calm himself down after playing around, he could come back home with a clearer mind. He had thought perhaps meeting new people and testing his skills would somehow restore his faith in himself.
But all it took was one interview with—what was it again? Yaoxing Society? All it took was, ‘Just how high are you aiming? Do you think that your ancestor, Zhuge Liang, would be proud of what you have done today?’ and the voice in his head grew louder than it was three days ago.
No amount of playing around could smother it anymore.
So, he went out at an ungodly hour and meandered in the deserted streets of Mount Longhu. Up until he noticed that one of the stores was still open.
It was a tea and wine shop. There was a sign on the door written in elegant calligraphy that read, Welcome to Spring Tide! Please, come in. It was like any other building that had been rehabilitated and renovated for a business—some mishmash of architecture throughout history and was modernized, but was good at hiding said modernity.
It was… shiny, in a sense. The lights were almost neon and the newly varnished wood stood out in the row of buildings that wasn’t dilapidated per se, but they for sure had seen years of weather.
Also, Zhuge Qing was sure this building wasn’t here yesterday.
As a pursuer of Truth and a world-class snoop, of course, he entered the establishment. The inside was the same—an amalgam of modern and ancient architecture with a certain shine that sat right on the uncanny valley. It was smaller than he expected—just four booths that could probably seat four people each, six if you tried, and a long counter table with four bar stools flushed against the far-side wall.
One of the booths was occupied. A man was planted face-first on the table. Plenty of ceramic cups surrounded him, as well as two jugs by his head. Some of his long hair that had escaped his ponytail was wet, sticking to the table and on his face. A baseball cap covered his eyes to protect them from the warm but very bright lights of the shop.
On the counter with an unmanned register was a small retro television—the kind that still had a big box behind the screen and an antenna. It was playing some old-school animation, highly stylized that looked like an ancient painting.
“Leave this place,” the presumably protagonist in flowing Daoist robes said, his white hair in a low ponytail was swishing dramatically in the wind. “We don’t have much time now.”
Another character replied, a pink-haired woman in a denim skirt and a cropped top with a pink feather boa resting on the crooks of her elbows—an odd character design for what Zhuge Qing had thought to be an old wuxia animation, “‘When time and tide roll you too harshly, we’ll be out there somewhere looking for you,’ isn’t that what you always say? Surely, he’s here for a reason.”
What an odd coincidence. Wasn’t he just thinking about how he felt like drowning—like how he was being swept away by the tides?
A door opened and closed somewhere behind the counter—perhaps the kitchen or storage space, or whatever a tea and wine shop needed to operate.
A guy who looked like he was still in his early days of university came out from the back. A faint scent of smoke wafted through the air. The guy’s yellowing teeth as he gaped at Zhuge Qing and the ash that clung to his red apron indicated that he was just coming back from a cigarette break.
“Er… da-ge, sorry but we’re closed.”
“The sign at the door says otherwise.”
The guy cursed under his breath, then out loud he said, “Yeah… Bao’er-jie must have forgotten to flip over the sign. But we’re actually closed, and you should go.”
He hurriedly pushed Zhuge Qing out the door, but he side-stepped to evade the other. As he did so, he opened up a chart, unseen by mundane people and non-Qimen practicing Outsiders alike. Even if this guy wasn’t an Outsider, this place was not what it seemed.
“Aiyah, you’re trespassing, you know! If you don’t get out right now, I’ll call Bao’er-jie! Oh, fuck it—Bao’er-jie! Bao’er—” He violently coughed as he choked on his saliva when Zhuge Qing subtly pinched his fingertips and invoked the character kan. Whoever this guy was calling, it won’t end well for Zhuge Qing. He didn’t want to break into a fight that could get him into trouble.
Then the building shook ever so slightly, but it was enough for him to stumble. The guy pulled his hair out and turned to the television, “Ai! Shizhi, why didn’t you kick this guy out?!”
Somehow, the Daoist protagonist glared at the guy and actually answered, “I told you not to call me that. And I tried.”
The woman also spoke as if to chip in on an impossible conversation, “There’s only so much you could do when you’re stuck in a box while trying to pass as an ordinary show.”
“The cartoon is talking,” Zhuge Qing blurted out.
“We’re not just cartoons, darling,” the woman winked at him, and a pink heart emerged from her kissy face—outward it went until it broke out of the screen and onto Zhuge Qing’s cheek.
A manic grin crept onto his face. This certainly was the kind of weird that tickled his curiosity. “What is going on? What is this place?”
The guy groaned, “Here we go again…”
“Again?”
The guy waved off the question and just introduced himself, “The name’s Zhang Chulan. Those two are Zhang Lingyu, my nephew—”
“Please, stop calling me that,” the white-haired Daoist protagonist was still glaring at his… uncle?
“—and his girlfriend, Xia He—”
“But we’re open for anything,” the woman waved her feather boa coquettishly.
“No, we are not.”
“—don’t ask how they got inside the TV, nobody knows. Then there’s Bao’er-jie somewhere—”
As if on cue, a dead-eyed, pale girl with waist-long hair appeared in the doorway to the back, two knives in both of her hands, “Zhang Chulan. You called for me?”
“Ah… no need anymore. Please take those away, thank you,” the guy gestured to the two deadly weapons. Then to Zhuge Qing, he added, “She’s an invincible, god-like android. So don’t go messing around with her.”
“Android?” This all confused him, so were they Outsiders or not?
“Oh. The fox is here again.”
“Again?” He asked again. Did these people know him? Had he been here before and just somehow forgotten?
Zhang Chulan sighed deeply, as if he had been burdened by the weight of the world. “I’ll just let this guy explain it to you,” he pointed to the wasted guy in the corner booth.
“You’re going to make a drunkard exposition dump on me? What is this drunken master bullshit?”
For some reason, that made the other laugh hard, “Oh, this guy can’t be a drunkard—he’s allergic to alcohol! He goes all red and sleepy after just one glass.” They approached the table, and Zhang Chulan took one of the jugs to show him its contents, “See? It’s milk tea. He says that caffeine doesn’t work on him normally, but the sugar high makes him active and productive, so he drinks a lot of it. The crash would come down hard though.”
“And lethal. How is he still alive?”
The guy shrugged, “Because of something called ‘null entropy,’ I think? I don’t know. It’s why it’s better to have him explain it to you—he’s a physicist. He’s the only one who could make sense of our humble tea shop.” He shook the sleeping guy awake, “Wang-laoshi, we have a visitor.”
Wang-laoshi’s cap fell off his face, and the guy tried to shield his eyes from the sudden brightness. It took just a few more shakes before he was batting Zhang Chulan away from him. His face was nice—in a face-reading sense, he had the face of someone gentle and kind.
But as soon as his gaze fell on Zhuge Qing, there was neither gentleness nor kindness in such an expression—half-lidded eyes that were dark and guarded; his lips were in a lazy moue of disappointment that surely was uncalled for.
He turned to Zhang Chulan, “A-Lian, I didn’t go out this time, why are you still lumping me with this guy? Can’t you do the basics yourself? Wait—” he laid his palm flat on the surface of the table. “Are we moving already? And you kept him here? Zhang Chulan, did you just kidnap him?!”
“I told him to go!”
“I’m sorry, but what do you mean by ‘moving?’”
“You still haven’t told him?” Wang-laoshi incredulously asked Zhang Chulan.
“We were hoping that you’d be the one to tell him.”
“Why?”
Zhang Chulan rolled his eyes. “You know why. We figured you’d be a friendly face.”
“This guy doesn’t know who I am!”
“But you know who he is! You can handle him.”
“And if I can’t?” Wang-laoshi said it in a desperate tone that Zhuge Qing almost felt bad intruding.
Zhang Chulan gave the other a squeeze on the shoulder, “You can.” He turned to Zhuge Qing and gestured for him to sit. “Can I get you anything? Wine? Tea?”
“More milk tea for me, please. And you owe me big time.”
“Of course. And to you, sir?”
It took Zhuge Qing an embarrassing amount of time before he realized he was being asked. He just couldn’t keep his eyes away from the man who put his hair down, long flowing locks like waterfalls in his hands, so he could put it back up more properly. Even with just a simple ponytail, he truly had a nice face—elegant and beautiful like an untouchable fairy.
The fairy in question answered for him, “He can have wine. Just whatever’s out back. The shop should be able to cater to his tastes.”
“Your shop can read my mind?”
“Not exactly… Actually, we don’t know,” Wang-laoshi laughed nervously, but he truly didn’t understand what was there to be nervous about. “Zhuge Qing, what do you want to know?”
Had he ever told them his name?