Chapter Text
If nothing will be gained by changing something, it is better not to do so.
—
Everything changed the week that Xu Jin’s carburetor stopped working.
It was to be expected: his car was a 1960s SH760 that had survived to that day through minimal effort on the part of its owner. On its semi-annual checkups, the mechanics always shook their heads in disbelief, advising Xu Jin to let the car go. He ignored them. Not because he was especially attached to it—he called it the car and only remembered the make many years after it had gone out of production—but for the practicality. As long as the car still worked, there was no reason to get a new one.
On that Monday, he realised just how much he’d grown to depend on it.
A sunrise wake-up call, workout done and smelling of a high-end barbershop after his shower, Xu Jin put on his suit. A belt—fastened to hurt, barely felt—and a matching tie, he was doing it up as he ignored the mess that had become of his living room. The street was still sleeping; he revved his car up and gave up on the third try, the noise threatening to wake it up.
Xu Jin took the news without much grief. The car was a good car, but it was replaceable. The bigger problem was more immediate, Xu Jin still had to go to work. Wanted to. Should have. It was an important part of the daily charade.
There was an offensively red sports car parked right next to his SH760, but Xu Jin didn’t even consider driving it. He hooked his satchel higher on his shoulder and left them both behind.
—
Xu Jin didn’t like the subway.
His house was in a private estate for people who had personal drivers, not subway cards. The nearest stop was a considerable walk—purposefully so, Xu Jin had tried his best to stay off the grid—and it made his morning commute three times longer. He didn’t mind the walk. He didn’t answer to anyone about his time. But the car had always felt like an extension of his house: a metal shield blocking out the world, taking him from one known space to another.
The subway meant that he had to pay attention.
To the people walking in the opposite direction, the cat gazing at him from a bakery’s windowsill, the leaves rustling on the pavement. People looked at him, and looked away—he seems so different, a walking ghost—and he felt vulnerable, like he’d flown out of his cocoon too early. Ridiculous, when he was more of a butterfly carcass, kept aflight against his own will.
Getting the ticket—a multi-day pass, to be on the safe side—proved to be a bigger challenge than he’d anticipated. Paper tickets had fallen out of vogue some years earlier, and Xu Jin had never taken to the smartphone he got for a birthday. Kept safely in its original box, at the bottom of a drawer, the brick of a phone he actually used for his daily tasks couldn’t be used for the electronic ticket.
“You need an app,” the woman at the counter said, tapping her nails. “Or a smart card.”
“The card, please.” Xu Jin opened his wallet.
The woman pointed at a sticker on the glass separating them, black and white squares in a haphazard pattern. When Xu Jin frowned at it, she sighed. “You need to scan it.”
Several subway workers passed him along until one took pity on him and let him pay the normal way. By then, Xu Jin knew he was late. If the car hadn’t failed him, he would’ve already been settling into his office. He didn’t bother calling anyone; it was one of the perks of being a museum owner, one with impeccable work discipline and well-maintained professional distance.
The subway car was full and loud. Half the seats were taken up by uniformed kids, playing relay race with their phones, blasting bass-heavy commotion that reminded Xu Jin of the party he’d had to break up last Friday. Catching him staring, one of the teens lowered the volume on their amusement. Don’t stop on my account, Xu Jin would’ve said—if he was the sort of person willing to speak to strangers on the subway. Kids, at that.
Another man caught his eye at the next stop: stepping out onto the platform, swallowed up by the rest of the exiting crowd. A strand of hair, falling over brown eyes. Another stranger with familiar features whose nose would’ve turned out to be too round, whose hair would’ve been the right length but the wrong colour. Or worse, a wig, a too-young face turning to mock Xu Jin for letting his heartbeat quicken.
It was good that Xu Jin never got a second glance.
—
Xu Jin’s days had long since stopped being ruled by time.
The watch on his wrist was to give others comfort. The clock in his office had run out of batteries years ago and Xu Jin never asked his secretary to replace them. The museum was closed on Sundays, but he came to the office every single day. A small room the size of an ensuite closet, uppermost floor with a rooftop view, far from the administrative hub on the ground floor.
His days weren’t ruled by people, either.
His current secretary went by Suzanne—an overseas graduate, mispronounced on the regular—and Xu Jin had no idea what her real name was. He definitely knew the full name of the previous one when she started, but all he could recall now was the nickname: Xiao Xiao. Of the secretary before that, he could only remember that she had ginger hair.
All of them communicated with Xu Jin sparsely, the way he liked it. Quick morning briefs and folders of responsibilities dropped off at his work desk. There was almost nobody Xu Jin saw as often. Almost.
The moves used to rule them, once.
Leaving one manufactured life for another, settling into a new city the exact same way Xu Jin had into the last one. There was always a remote house, a job that let him keep his own hours, and a flimsy sense of purpose that he’d grown from the roots up.
He’d had to move so often through the last century, the changes no longer phased him. He might’ve felt excited about them, if he were a different man. Each a new start, a new chance, a new person he could’ve become.
But while the world had changed in ways he couldn’t even comprehend, Xu Jin never did.
—
“It won’t be cheap, I’ll say that much. At least ten thousand, maybe more. The carburetor itself is damn near impossible to find these days, and you should get the whole engine—”
“That’s fine,” Xu Jin interrupted. He wasn’t interested in Lu-laoban’s maths, he only wanted the final quote.
“I’m just saying, Xu-xiansheng. It’s only a matter of time before you have to invest in a new exhaust system. And the fuel pump should be changed. If I were you, I’d consider—”
“Can you fix it?”
“You know me, I’ll always do my best.”
“Can you send someone over, or should I arrange the pick up?”
The car would get towed the same evening, and fixed within a week’s time. A single drop of sand in the landscape of Xu Jin’s hourglass. It had been turned upside down for an eternity, with another eternity remaining, with no end in sight. A week was nothing.
Still, it meant seven more trips down the subway line. Seven more mornings spent passing people on the street, avoiding the gaze of the ginger cat, and dismissing the calls of the lady on the street corner, eager to sell him a styrofoam box of rice and homemade cured sausages.
“Everything alright, boss?” Suzanne asked, on her third and last errand of the day, dropping the prognosis for next year’s electricity budget next to the—already signed—acquisitions report from the morning.
“Of course,” Xu Jin said, with his customary director smile. Like the watch, he mostly wore it to put others at ease.
Suzanne kept her expression detached. “Miss Hong called again, about the Virtual Museum project. She asked if you have reconsidered.”
“I haven’t.”
“Alright.” She nodded, happy to have that dealt with. “Have a good evening, boss.”
Suzanne was a quick hire, when Xiao Xiao surprised Xu Jin with a baby bump. She was also a quick learner, despite it being her first secretary job. It took her less than a week—a drop of sand—to give up on making small talk.
Xu Jin was glad for her efficiency, and the ever-flowing hourglass of his life easily made the disappointment feel like relief.
—
On the third day without the car, Xu Jin left work even later than his store-closing normal.
A part of him hoped to beat the evening crowds, another wished his houseguest would get the point and stop waiting for him with gratuitous dinner appointments. Takeout and beer barely counted; Xu Ping was convinced immortality had cured Xu Jin of his garlic intolerance, and that the same also applied to his person.
Xu Jin picked up his own dinner on the way home. A convenience store container of soup that he could’ve gotten cheaper in any of the restaurants he passed on the way to the subway stop. But the store workers were busy and efficient, and—unlike the sandwich lady near the museum—didn’t try to amuse him with personal anecdotes.
(The sandwich seller’s niece had just graduated her accounting degree and started an internship with a tech company Xu Jin had never heard of. She was the youngest in her class—but of marriageable age, and very pretty—and the only one to survive the scholarship chop.
Such a waste of a nice young man, said with a sigh and the thump of a cup hitting the low table. I have a granddaughter who’s just come of age, would you like to meet her?)
There were still some school children in the subway car, hyper from their sugary drinks. Haggard office workers, men carrying their girlfriend’s purses. The bakery cat was sitting by a lamppost.
“Jin’er, wait up!” somebody called, and Xu Jin turned around so fast the cat scrambled away with a shocked whine.
Slow down, my legs hurt!
The voice was all wrong. The man was all wrong. His girlfriend listened, waited, and the man took her hand. They passed Xu Jin without a sideways glance.
Did you hear me, Jin’er?
The voice in his head was probably wrong, too. A different speech pattern, not indignant enough, more monotone than the man had ever sounded. Xu Jin shook the memory off.
—
“Finally! I thought someone abducted you on the subway. Are you—”
“Here.”
Xu Ping’s fake-concerned gaze turned to real concern as he caught the armful of groceries. Bottles of green tea and a variety of low-sugar no-sodium oil-free snacks, Xu Jin was halfway through reheating his soup by the time Xu Ping caught up with him.
“What’s this for?”
“Improving your diet.”
Xu Ping snorted, depositing the haul on the counter with the grace of an armless ghoul. “Life advice and free food?” he said, opening one of the green tea bottles and taking a long sip. “Someone’s feeling generous.”
Xu Jin didn’t respond, loosening up his tie and putting the soup—still in its plastic container—on the closest available bed tray. Attempting to slink past Xu Ping without any more words wasted, he almost spilt the hot liquid when an arm blocked the doorway.
“Thank you for your concern,” Xu Ping said, with no conviction, “but I’d rather die than eat like you do.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“For real.” This snort, unlike the first one, managed to pique Xu Jin’s annoyance; not least because some of Xu Ping’s spit landed square in his soup. “Don’t be concerned about me, little nephew. I eat well. I drink enough. I sleep like the dead—get it?”
Xu Jin didn’t bat an eye. His nightmares were difficult to deny, and Xu Ping was pointless to argue with. “I’m happy for you,” he said, wooden.
“No doubt.” Xu Ping levelled him with a pointedly doubtful look, then withdrew his hand.
The soup tasted of celery and Xu Jin gulped it down with spite. The conversation irked him—Xu Ping irked him—and he didn’t want to dwell on the reason why. Healthy as his own lifestyle was, Xu Jin fell asleep well into the morning hours.
—
Like Lu-laoban promised, a week after its collapse, Xu Jin would be getting the car back the next morning. On the last day without it, he still had to make it home unguarded. That was fine. He’d learned that the best way to ignore the world was to stare at his feet as he walked.
He had run out of his prepaid subway rides some hours earlier, and Xu Jin had no desire to go through the same buying pains as last time. He got Suzanne to print him the directions for the most efficient walking route from the museum, and the time not spent looking at his feet, he was busy studying the maze of streets that seemed to have sprung up in the past year.
He looked up at the traffic lights, waiting for the green. A busy crossing, people rushed past him on all sides. Brushing his shoulders, like their hurry took priority over propriety. He didn’t mind; the touches felt odd.
Something flickered up ahead and Xu Jin watched as the wrap screen on a nearby building turned from red to purple; it coloured the street with a lilac hue. A journey unlike any other, the display touted. An adventure you won’t forget, a landscape turned into a silhouette, then zoomed into an eye close-up.
A bond that can’t be broken.
The eye blinked open, and Xu Jin froze.
It wasn’t a real person, though the image looked extremely realistic. Blended into the violet clouds of the previous scene, half a face was now staring down at the busy crossing, and though Xu Jin was dimly aware that there were cars honking at him, his feet couldn’t move.
Coming soon, a brand new game from the developers of Ancient Hero Reborn.
A series of unfamiliar logos—one he recognised as the brand of Xu Ping’s gaming console—popped up in quick succession; a videogame advert, with his perfect likeness. A strand of hair falling over the eye, a mole under the right corner. The same strong nose. A plump upper lip—
“Xiansheng, are you sick?” a man exited his car, grabbing Xu Jin by the shoulder.
Xu Jin flinched and found countless people staring at him, the honks now so furious they sounded like fireworks exploding right beside his ear.
“No.”
Embarrassed, Xu Jin apologised to the onlookers with a tiny bow, and continued the same way he came, staring at his feet. When he chanced a quick look back, the wrap screen showed an ad for shoes.
He wasn’t sick, but perhaps it had finally happened: after centuries of being unable to do so, no matter how he wished for it, Xu Jin was finally going mad.
—
A spirit was supposed to weaken with age, but what if one’s age stayed the same, as their spirit weakened?
It had snowed overnight, and the braziers had burned out. With a gap between the window screens, he woke up to his bones feeling cold. He slept some more; they weren’t any colder than usual.
The white of the snow was too bright on Xu Jin’s eyes, though the sky was overcast. It reminded him of the border, and making his men do drills in the snow. Of an old injury, his abdomen prickling with the imaginary pain. Of Yan’er building snowmen—and snow dragons, snow palaces, entire snowscapes—that first winter they took him to Dayu.
The only winter they took him there, and Yan’er never played in the snow again.
Now, Xu Jin kept his days difficult, which made them easier to bear. Nobody could stop him to ask questions if he kept moving forward. Training, meeting, consultation, checking in with the Emperor, and retreating back into the same cold room.
Drinking, first, to feel a semblance of warmth, then falling asleep with morbid anticipation. The nightmares came with irregular frequency, and he hadn’t yet found a way to make them everyday.
When they happened, he always woke up lighter. Warmer. Some of the ice melted off his bones and condensed into a cold sweat. He was alone in the bed, but not. The ghost from his dreams still lingered, though it grew fainter as Xu Jin regained his wakefulness.
After years of his spirit eroding, the nightmares were the only times he felt alive. The only times he could see Wumei.
—
The red sports car was occupying Xu Jin’s spot when he brought the car back from the mechanic; it was parked at a rough right angle where it should’ve been parallel.
Xu Jin often wondered if Xu Ping only got his licence because he had paid for it. He drove like he had something to chase away, an invisible trail that put everyone sharing the road with him into jeopardy. He sold off his stupidly luxurious penthouse with only two days’ worth of grumbles; he categorically refused to get rid of the car.
“Thank you for the snacks, Lao Xu!”
Like his parking spot, the living room was—once again—occupied by his parasitic failure of an uncle. Hotpot brewing on the conference table, beer cans on the floor, and Wen Xing crunching happily on the puffed rice snacks Xu Jin bought the other day.
“You’re early,” Xu Ping said.
With a controller in hand, he didn’t bother taking his eyes off the TV as he reached for the snack pile and settled on a lollipop. It was offensively colourful and definitely not part of Xu Jin’s philanthropic bout. He sucked on it with provocative vigour, clearly itching for Xu Jin to comment. Wen Xing coloured. Xu Jin held his breath and continued walking.
“Would you like some hotpot, Lao Xu?” Wen Xing followed him into the kitchen, ignoring Xu Ping’s protests at the loss of his company. “We got a mushroom base. Only a tiny bit of garlic.”
“No, thank you, Wen Xing.”
Xu Jin fished out a ready-made salad from the fridge, and baulked when he found Wen Xing standing right behind its door. He wore a conflicted expression, eyes too big. Inwardly, Xu Jin sighed.
“Do you mind that…”
Wen Xing held the question back like it wasn’t obvious. False concern borne out of guilt, he and Xu Ping had taken over the living room many months ago and Wen Xing’s fortnightly qualms about it were probably even worse than the permanent beer stink.
“Yes,” Xu Jin said. He didn’t bother elaborating.
Thankfully, Wen Xing’s guilt also didn’t extend to following Xu Jin all the way to the bedroom.
—
Xu Ping and Wen Xing called them game nights. They were synonymous with date nights. Xu Jin considered them early nights.
Seeing Wen Xing on the couch—Xu Jin’s couch, a shade of ivory that had stayed unspoilt for three decades and mysteriously started breaking out in multicoloured spots ever since Xu Ping moved in—was his sign to hide in the bedroom. Quick dinner, earplugs, maybe wine.
He had worked hard on forsaking that particular dependence, Xu Jin wasn’t a hypocrite. Some nights, however, called for a drink. Game nights, date nights, early nights—whatever the name, they were a worthy exception.
Xu Ping had a room of his own. The guest room, but Xu Jin never had any other guests, so it’d probably been his own fault for inviting the universe to saddle him with another immortal-shaped problem. As far as Xu Jin could tell, Xu Ping only used the room for sleeping, stomping, and his dubious day job. Typically, never on the nights when he invited Wen Xing over.
As the owner of the house, Xu Jin should’ve put a stop to it right away.
But dealing with Xu Ping took effort, and effort exhausted him, and exhaustion reminded him that he couldn’t die, and he couldn’t live, but he could still feel the burden of an ordinary existence like some unfortunate cosmic joke.
“Watch out! There’s more of them!”
Xu Jin grabbed his wine—a medium-sized glass, three-quarters full—and glared towards Wen Xing’s yelp. The lights were off, the TV flashing, and the unmistakable sounds of combat made Xu Jin pause in the doorway, catching sight of the screen.
He almost turned the wine into a glassy puddle.
“What is that?”
“What—”
“Wait! Turn back!”
Xu Ping sat up with the unhurried grace of a man enveloped by all of his boyfriend’s limbs, eyebrows drawn tight. He looked from Xu Jin’s face to the wineglass and back again. “Are you okay?”
“I said turn back.”
“I don’t know what’s—”
“Can you do what I said—look, just give it to me!”
Xu Jin had never held a video game controller in his hands, nor had he realised just how many buttons the damn thing had. Wrestling it out of Xu Ping’s hold didn’t take much effort—a hit to the shoulder, Wen Xing’s ankle almost knocked the wineglass off its new perch on the table—but as soon as Xu Jin reigned victorious, the display went black.
Game over! A joyful voice echoed the text that panned across the screen. Start again, or die a quitter?
“What’s wrong with it?” Xu Jin shook the controller. Nothing happened. “Did it break?”
“You died,” Wen Xing announced sheepishly.
“He means that you got killed. In the game,” Xu Ping added.
Not sarcastic, for a change, and unnecessarily emphatic; Xu Jin wasn’t an idiot. He was a little slow, however. The game got tired of waiting for him to choose and rebooted on the title screen. Ancient Hero Reborn.
Xu Jin felt his knees shake and he landed on the couch, almost crushing Xu Ping’s arm.
“How do I get back to the palace?”
Xu Ping tilted his head. “The palace?”
“You were just there,” Xu Jin said, flinging his hand—the one with the controller—towards the screen. Wen Xing’s fingers twitched in the same direction, like he was afraid Xu Jin was handling a frisbee. Xu Jin almost rolled his eyes. He dropped the controller into Wen Xing’s lap instead; he might not have been any cleverer than Xu Ping, but at least he was more agreeable. “Bring it back.”
“He can’t. You died,” Xu Ping repeated, as if Xu Jin had done it on purpose.
“This isn’t funny.”
“Sure isn’t.”
Wen Xing did do something with the controller because the screen flashed again. Xu Jin turned towards it, feeling his heart beat so wildly in his throat it was almost choking him.
Xu Ping groaned. “Are you serious—it didn’t save?”
There was no sign of the palace when the game started again. A well-worn premise, the main character, Linlin, was a university student fresh off a failed exam. Fed up and dismissed, he stumbled upon an ancient talisman that transported him into the past. There, he became a nondescript wuxia protagonist, and most of the gameplay consisted of drawn-out fight scenes.
“The clothes are all wrong,” Xu Jin said, as Wen Xing defeated another ambush of bandits. “These sorts of robes only came into fashion—”
“—in the Ming Dynasty, yeah.”
“There’s no way he could pick up this much qinggong in two months.”
“It’s a game. What bugs me more are the QTEs. They’re so early 2000s.”
“Is this the palace you were talking about, Lao Xu?”
Momentarily distracted by nitpicking historical accuracy, Xu Jin almost missed it. Wen Xing was right. It was the same building as before, towering above the city Linlin had just arrived at, to look for a missing martial arts master. The palace, Xu Jin felt his skin break out in goosebumps. The one he had only spent a fraction of his life in, but, by the virtue of it being the happiest fraction of his centuries-spanning lifetime, he would forever recognise anywhere.
Xu Ping was frowning at the screen, recognition settling in and held back by some contrarian impulse that he’d honed over the years. “It does look similar.”
“It’s the same place,” Xu Jin said, voice shaky.
Wen Xing looked between them, dismayed. “What place?”
“The Shengjing Imperial Palace.”
“Shengjing—”
“That’s where we lived,” Xu Ping said, rubbing Wen Xing’s knee while looking at the side of Xu Jin’s face. He could feel it, it made the goosebumps worse. “In your first life.”
—
Wen Xing had once likened the memories of his past life to a jigsaw puzzle.
There were enough pieces so that when you looked at it from a distance, you could tell what the image stood for. Upon closer inspection, most of its pieces were actually missing, and it was just your mind, filling in the blanks to make the picture legible.
He remembered Xu Ping; recognised him from some video and turned up at Xu Jin’s doorstep over a year ago, blubbering a mile a minute about wanting to apply for the bodyguard job Xu Ping had been advertising at the time.
He partially remembered Xu Jin; flinching when he was the one to open the door, but unsure what caused the reaction until much later, when he recalled the assassination attempts.
He didn’t remember Dayu, or its Emperor, but knew he had left them both behind, following Xu Ping. Knew exactly how Xu Ping’s mother had died, but couldn’t remember his own death, at the hands of what had likely been pneumonia. He could retrieve an astonishing amount of detail—the names of men who had died by his hand, the minutiae of the years he’d spent in house arrest—but not what his duties actually consisted of. Prince An’s bodyguard, the title painted the portrait of the man he had once been, but the portrait itself was empty.
Not, Wen Xing corrected himself, then.
Full, but in the way looking at the moon makes you feel calm—you have no idea why.
—
“They probably just found a model of it,” Xu Ping said, breaking the silence in the living room. “Used it as a reference.”
The TV had been muted. Wen Xing was dozing on his shoulder. Xu Jin’s attention was stubbornly on the game. It had been two hours and three deaths, and they couldn’t seem to make any progress in the plot.
Xu Ping couldn’t, a fact Xu Jin would berate him for mercilessly—it was half his bloody job—if he had any thoughts to spare on him.
The palace. Yan’er’s laughter booming over the southwestern corridor, chasing him. The banquet hall, where they had their wedding. Wumei pressing him against the wall in the audience hall, making Zhang Ji stand guard.
“Saw a mockup somewhere, you know? Designers take shortcuts where they can.”
Xu Jin saw the mockup every single day, behind museum glass panels and sketched out on information guides, and he hummed. The hope that numbed his limbs felt like the most exquisite pain. It had been years since he felt it. A masochistic man masquerading as an apathetic one, he couldn’t bear to part with it—yet.
“It’s not exactly the same—there was that scary painting right here, remember?”
From a layperson’s view, the game wasn’t very good. The story was inconsistent, the dialogues repetitive, and the historical inaccuracies were—headache-inducing, to say the least. Linlin had left the city—the one with the palace—without finding the mysterious shifu. He had swiftly moved on to another quest: wooing a princess he’d rescued from a pair of thugs. Xu Jin watched Xu Ping fight bandit after bandit, wondering if it really was a fluke.
It would be dawn soon.
The leftover hotpot had grown cold and stale, and Xu Jin’s wine sat next to it, untouched. Wen Xing had given up on the game some hours ago, quiet one moment, snoring the next. Xu Ping had wanted to follow suit. One glare, and he slumped down against the backrest.
“Look, let’s wait for the next checkpoint, and then call it a night. A day. Whatever. I’m so tired my hands are shaking,” he said, extending them out with an exaggerated quiver.
“But—”
“You have work in two hours.”
Work was one of the things that kept Xu Jin going; right then, it was an altogether irrelevant concept.
Xu Ping must’ve read it off his face. “The game’s not going anywhere. It’s been out for years. We only started it because—”
Xu Jin never learned the reason.
Just then, a pair of bodyguards stopped Linlin from entering the palace. A new character appeared from behind them: a stocky man with a blurry face—the graphics budget had clearly gone towards the game environments—but Xu Ping fell silent without having to be shushed.
“I wouldn’t cross me if I were you,” the man on the screen had said. Brother to the princess, he held a sword to Linlin’s chest and smirked.
His voice was all wrong. The face was all wrong.
“You don’t want to make an enemy of Prince Yuanzheng.”
—
Xu Jin had called in sick exactly three times in his life.
Once, when he had intercepted a pickpocket on his way to his previous job—in a different city, he was working as a consultant at a large auction house—and the man stabbed him with a letter knife.
Three days in the hospital, two of which were wholly unnecessary; his body healed fast, to remind him he couldn’t discard it even if he wanted to.
(Xu Jin wanted to.)
The time before that, it was the flu.
With a persistent cough and a downright hallucinatory fever, Xu Jin had made it through several workdays before he was forced to admit defeat. He was technically attending university at the time—his third or fourth spell—but his workload was so light he filled his time with a part-time job in the regional archives.
Three days unable to leave the bed, three more of his lungs sustaining the aftershocks; the flu wiped out a quarter of the city, and another quarter kept reminding Xu Jin how lucky he had been, and how grateful he must’ve felt to make it out unscathed.
(He should’ve felt lucky and grateful.)
The third time was after they started Ancient Hero Reborn.
—
When the princess’s brother turned up again—two levels later, with a backstory of his own—they were all wide awake.
What seemed like a throwaway character, Prince Yuanzheng—not Wumei, he looked nothing like him—provided Linlin with a quest of his own. Reiterated an old one, to be exact. It had been the prince himself who launched the search for his shifu. The shifu, the one Linlin had seemingly forgotten about. A mysterious man who had disappeared some three years prior to the game events.
“He’s important to me, Lin-xiansheng. Find him for me, and I’ll be forever indebted to you.”
Xu Jin’s skin broke at the line, near his wrist, where he’d been pinching himself for the better part of an hour.
“Did he just—”
“He did.”
“That’s not how you speak about your shifu. I swear, if the guy turns out to look anything like you, I’ll—”
“I think someone knocked.”
Xu Ping’s elbow jab met empty air; Xu Jin had jumped off the sofa, feeling short of breath. Hands at his side—blood trickling from the spot his nails had pricked open—he marched through the house, locking himself out on the front porch. Breath in, breath out, he and anxiety attacks were good friends.
Once it passed and he rose up from his squat, Xu Jin started sorting his thoughts.
The palace could’ve been a coincidence. The name just as well. But combined with the story, the odd sense of familiar but not quite of the game world, and the poster that almost caused a pile-up at one of the city’s busiest intersections, Xu Jin couldn’t hold onto his scepticism. The hope had wormed its way in, spread around his doubts, and fed on them to fuel itself stronger.
When he got back to the living room, the game was paused. Xu Ping and Wen Xing fell quiet when they saw him enter, the nervous energy in Wen Xing’s posture almost endearing.
“Lao Xu, are you alright? We were thinking—”
“Who made this game?”
Expecting a quickfire answer—they were the resident gamers, for heavens’ sake—Xu Jin frowned as Xu Ping turned to Wen Xing, and Wen Xing reached for his phone. The results didn’t give him pause. When he turned the screen around, however, Xu Ping’s face drained of all colour.
—
“I’m surprised you let me in.”
A purposeful misinterpretation if there ever was one, Xu Jin came back to find his door unlocked, lamps alight, and his uncle sitting behind a desk, already sipping tea.
Xu Jin limped over to his bed to read, leaving Xu Ping to his own devices. Unfortunately, the man had a lot of practice, and even more patience, when it came to bleeding someone’s spirit.
“It’s spring. You should get some flowers in here, liven the space up.”
“Yan’er said you were going for a trip together? The hot springs, eh? Would love to join you, but I can’t leave them with the kids alone.”
“It’s so quiet here—you must get a lot of sleep. That’s why you healed so fast? Must be nice.”
Xu Ping drained the teapot and got up as if he fancied himself a new one. Xu Jin turned the page—another that he hadn’t read, tens of them now gathered under his thumb—and let him. It took him a moment to notice the shadow.
“Was it an accident?”
Xu Jin didn’t look up.
“I thought it wasn’t, but then—you wouldn’t. Not now.”
Desperate for a reaction, Xu Ping tried to fight the book out of his hands. Almost keeled over when Xu Jin took him by surprise, letting the book go.
“It was an accident,” he said, monotone.
Two days since the fall, the residual ache made his limbs feel brittle. The scars had almost healed. Xu Jin didn’t want to discuss it, and Xu Ping, staring at him from above, seemed to agree. His words came after a pause, rushed, like he was clearing his throat of phlegm.
“I heard they were surprised you made it.”
“You know rumours.”
“I had an accident, too,” Xu Ping said. “Fell off my horse and landed in a ditch. You wouldn’t know, it was just after he died.”
“I—”
“The physician thought I was a freak. Should’ve broken my neck, he said, smashed my head in. I was fine.”
“Congratulations.”
Xu Ping turned the book in his hands, bending the spine and twisting the cover. There were few things he held in high regard: his family, perhaps, people skilled at weiqi, and books. He looked around the room and hummed like he was conferring with himself.
“It seems you don’t keep mirrors here,” he said. “I get it. I also had days when I couldn’t stand to look at myself.”
“Glad you got better.”
“Makes two of us.”
Xu Jin pursed his lips. He took care to swallow another biting remark, knowing it would only urge Xu Ping into more nonsense. Xu Ping inclined his head, observing.
“The longer you deny it, the harder it will be. When you’re forced to accept it.”
Others will die, and you won’t. They will age, and you won’t. They’ll meet him again, and you won’t. Accepting something like that, Xu Jin would rather grow his denial into something monstrous, let himself be devoured by it, and live in the cavernous comfort of its stomach.
He’d let Xu Ping bleed his spirit dry, but his uncle had no space for it, either.
Xu Ping put the book down on a table, set the teapot brewing, and left.
“Let me know when you’re ready. I’ll be around.”
—
The video game developer was based in their city.
“Chengguan Gaming Company. It’s some indie studio,” Xu Ping mumbled, reading off his phone. Wen Xing, looking over his shoulder, went on with more details.
An up-and-coming independent company that released some phone adventure games, gained widespread attention for Ancient Hero Reborn, and its next game—the name still a secret—was among the most anticipated in its genre. “A passion project. They’ve been working on it for over four years,” Wen Xing said.
Xu Jin studied the outline of the game controller, frozen.
“Nah. That’s just corporate lingo for we don’t have enough money,” Xu Ping said. “The development is stalling. Word on Weibo is that they’re—”
“Look! There’s a video!”
The owners founded the studio back in university, poured their own sweat and tears and money into AHR to make it come out after graduation. Zhong Wumei said so in an interview, and repeated the same thing in a speech from 2019, when the game won an award for that year’s Smash Hit. “We saw there was a gap in the market,” he said, “of course people took to it.” Big things are coming, he smirked, just wait and see.
The man’s name was Zhong Wumei.
In all the years Xu Jin had been fantasising about the impossible, he couldn’t have imagined the way it would feel. Paralysing in its significance, like facing an enemy’s army and knowing the only way was to go through. Humbling in its fortuity, it was not Xu Jin’s life weighed against the life of another soldier, but whatever he had left of his heart balancing on the edge of utter decay. Exhilarating in its possibility, everything could go wrong, some things might go wrong, or they may just go right.
Having lost Wumei once, taking the risk was already a victory.
A man without a life had very little to lose.
—
“It’s not going through,” Xu Ping sighed.
He threw the phone on the floor like he wasn’t living out of Xu Jin’s pocket—or pretending to—and the fear of cracking it in half came way behind his need for dramatics.
Xu Jin picked it up and threw it in his lap. “Keep trying.”
To the pest’s honour, he had been trying for days. Xu Jin had extended his sick leave, indefinitely. Wen Xing left the house, eventually, but kept coming back each evening to bring them food; not much of it was to Xu Jin’s taste, but he was grateful to have someone else take over where feeding him was concerned. Keeping up a healthy diet was the last thing on his mind.
Now that they had found the company, his mind was flooded with information.
One of the owners—his name was Zhong Wumei—was a business graduate, and he founded the company with his best friend. Finding photos of Jiang Xuanyu was difficult, he only appeared in some of the press events. Zhong Wumei, however, had loads of them: snaps from a fanmeet, business headshots, pictures from several personal accounts. There were even videos.
“If you don’t like the game, then I have great news for you,” he said—at some Q&A event, Zhong Wumei part of the panel—and took a heavy pause. “You don’t have to play it.”
His voice was the same. His frown was the same. He looked exactly like the man Xu Jin had loved. And he could be just that, a perfect likeness of the man he had lost, an entirely strange new person for Xu Jin to project his grief onto; one that would only serve to remind him, in the end, that his husband was gone and that Xu Jin would have to live with it, forever.
He would have to do that, anyway.
For now, meeting the man became his foremost priority.
Several more hours with the phone in the middle of the living room table, the three of them sitting watch like they were performing some intricate ritual. Summoning ghosts, it truly felt like it, but nobody dared make contact.
“What kind of company doesn’t pick up their calls?” Xu Ping said, sucking on yet another lollipop. Wen Xing kept buying them in spades; Xu Jin had lost count of how many wrappers got kicked under the sofa.
“They did pick up, to be fair,” Wen Xing started.
“To refer us to the PR team,” Xu Ping interrupted, smacking his lips with irritation, “who’ll send a generic Thank you for getting in touch email in two to three weeks.”
Xu Jin didn’t want to talk to the PR team. Nor the HR team, or the user support team, or any other irrelevant team that would do nothing to make him feel better. When it came to getting what he wanted, he had always preferred a direct approach; it had been years since he truly wanted something, though, and dealing with a video game company’s inner hierarchy was not his forte.
He expected better from Xu Ping, still.
The man was—Xu Jin only picked up the term years after Xu Ping started using it—a lifestyle and gaming influencer. The video game industry should’ve been his bread and butter, he should’ve had more connections, and more ideas than putting the phone on a constant loop of ringing-to-voicemail.
When he said as much, Xu Ping just made the on-hold elevator music louder.
—
A couple of days into Xu Jin’s sick leave—wearing pyjamas, the game still unfinished, and his dinner untouched—he couldn’t cope with the atmosphere in the living room anymore. Hearing the other two men heave a sigh of relief after he bid them goodnight, Xu Jin went up to his bedroom and grabbed his phone.
(The smartphone, not the brick.
After Xu Ping managed to find pictures of Zhong Wumei, the CEO, he made the grave mistake of downloading them for Xu Jin’s convenience. His phone had quickly become Xu Jin’s version of a stress ball; one that he kept crushing between his hands and staring at, so much so that he might’ve permanently damaged the battery.
That was probably half the reason why Xu Ping took the calling duties upon himself. He forced Xu Jin to get his smartphone out of the drawer in the closet—he was the one who gave it to Xu Jin in the first place—made sure the library was well-stocked with Zhong Wumei’s pictures, and then he wrenched his own phone back, almost acquiring a wrist scar in the process.
Not Xu Jin’s greatest moment, probably, but, a) the harmed party was Xu Ping, who had once upon a time tried to kill him; and, b) could anybody blame him, in his state?)
He came back to the living room after a stroke of inspiration. Not even blinking at Xu Ping and Wen Xing’s general state of indecency—though it was questionable how they got into the mood, with the phone still ringing mid-table—he threw a blanket over them.
“How do I get them to hire me?” Xu Jin said, sitting down on the couch armrest, staring towards the Ancient Hero Reborn loading screen.
“They won’t hire you,” Xu Ping said, no-nonsense. “What could you possibly do at a game company?”
Xu Jin, having attempted some research, bristled. “I have a law degree. They have a legal team.”
“An 1800s degree in labour law, break a leg.”
“They need investors. I’m good at securing them.”
“For your museum, not for a game product. You don’t have any idea what they’re looking for.” Xu Ping sounded off, looking towards the ceiling and swallowing, like he was already regretting speaking out. “Listen, just leave it to me. I already have a plan. Just be patient, they’ll get in touch themselves, and then you can—”
“I could learn.”
Xu Ping sighed, the air ruffling the top of his fringe. “Sure. Go hire a private tutor.”
He tried to pull the blanket over his and Wen Xing’s head, to signal the conversation was over, but Wen Xing didn’t let him.
“Actually, Lao Xu, you said that the game was kinda wrong,” he said, wrestling to prop himself up against the couch and avoiding Xu Ping’s disappointed stare. “With the costumes? And the language—”
Xu Jin nodded. “It wasn’t accurate.”
“It was a complete mess,” Xu Ping agreed.
“Well, that new game that they’re developing. That’s also set in the past, no?” Wen Xing asked, looking from one to the other like he was expecting them to read his mind. No such luck. “They probably need a consultant. Someone who knows the history. Knows it so well, it’s almost like he’s lived through it.”
Wen Xing finished with a quiet smile, which Xu Ping immediately kissed off his face. “You’re so smart.”
“No, I’m just—”
Xu Jin left them like that. Earplugs, early night, and wine exchanged for more wonders of the smartphone; it had firmly joined the ranks of the car in his head, as another appliance whose purpose he’d come to appreciate, but whose intricacies he would never bother to learn.
He didn’t need to embrace modernity just yet; being a living relic was finally something to appreciate.
—
Xu Jin didn’t understand the concept of post-holiday malaise.
He never attempted to understand it; small-talking with the people who sighed and screwed up their faces at the mention of going back to work was at the bottom of Xu Jin’s priorities.
Even if he’d actually taken holidays, he doubted he would’ve understood; work was a thing that gave his days their rhythm, take it away and he’d be stuck—no, he’d be forced to contemplate how long he’d already been stuck.
The idea that there was something else out there, away from the work, something more enjoyable and more worthwhile, something that all these people saw as the thing work was stealing their time away from—that idea was as strange to Xu Jin as the prospect of working for money.
Suzanne was the one who cut his leave short.
“How are you feeling, boss?”
“Better,” Xu Jin said, though he was feeling the best he had in centuries.
“Can you make it to the shareholders meeting this Friday?” she asked, done with the niceties. “It’s time to start planning the fundraising gala.”
Xu Jin agreed, but not because he wanted to. He was the Xiaoyan Museum’s owner and director, but it could function just as well without him. He would forsake it in a heartbeat if it meant a chance of meeting Wumei. The issue was that the video game company wouldn’t hire him, and waiting around on the sofa was becoming unbearable.
“We are not currently looking to fill a consultant vacancy,” sounded Chengguan’s official verdict.
“Yikes. They really don’t care about the game quality,” were Xu Ping’s words.
“I need to convince them,” was Xu Jin’s response.
He went to work. The car started up just fine, after a week without an outing. He drove down the same roads he always had, passing other anonymous drivers. Not having to look at people’s faces or listen to their chitchat, he tuned his surroundings out into a buzz of static. There were twenty-odd folders waiting for him at his desk. Suzanne brought him coffee and summed up everything he’d missed in a rapid debrief.
He did the same thing the next day.
And the day after.
But nothing felt the same, now that he knew there was a Zhong Wumei out there, in the very same city, who could be passing down the very same street, or picking up his groceries in the very same convenience store.
Work became something to tolerate. A means to an end, before Xu Jin figured out how to get Zhong Wumei into the very same room—or, at least, within a hundred feet of himself. Not close enough to touch, he knew, a stranger coming up to make sure Zhong Wumei was real would definitely not be appropriate. Close enough to look at, and see other people looking the same way. Not a figment of Xu Jin’s imagination, and not a dream. A living breathing physical being who could yell at Xu Jin for his staring and frown at him in a way that would make his knees weak.
Luckily for Xu Jin, two weeks after coming upon Ancient Hero Reborn, the company announced it would hold an open day for university students.
—
“Put on the badge,” Xu Jin said, in a tone that communicated the pointed swear he was trying to substitute for punctuation.
Xu Ping smirked but pulled the orange lanyard over his head.
The entrance hall was teeming with students wearing their own.
(Xu Jin would be the teacher, that much was obvious from the start. Because of your general cranky old-man aura, Xu Ping decreed. Because nobody would put you two in a position with that much responsibility, Xu Jin maintained.
Wen Xing should’ve been the student. He looked the youngest, was the nicest, and could easily pass for a confused freshman who got lost on the premises and thus provided the perfect excuse for Xu Jin to mill about the place and just so happen to run into the CEO’s office.
Xu Ping should’ve stayed at home, his help starting and ending with printing out the fake badges.
Not a perfect plan, but a passable one.
Of course, that wasn’t how it went.)
The other students were rowdy, excited. Three different universities and various grades, Xu Jin and Xu Ping were shuffling between them as they approached the tourniquets, never lingering with one group long enough to be noticed. Xu Ping was playing on his phone—a thing Xu Jin thought would be out of place, but turned out to be a great blending mechanism—and Xu Jin kept playing with his clothes.
A blazer and a turtleneck, he couldn’t remember the last time he put his clothes on with a purpose; much less the last time he cared about how he looked. It was just that morning that he realised his closet consisted of different shades of grey. He wasn’t sure how to feel about it.
“Feels like old times,” Xu Ping said under his breath.
How? Xu Jin didn’t bother asking, but his glare spoke for itself.
“Snooping undercover,” Xu Ping elaborated, with a wistful sigh.
Xu Jin shushed him.
They made it through the security check without shifty looks. No other teachers attempted to ask Xu Jin who he was, and no other students paid Xu Ping attention. The moment the turnstile opened for them, he gave Xu Jin a rough pat on the shoulder, pulled his cap lower over his face, and slinked down the corridor with a: “If all else fails, just lay one on him!”
A proper teacher would’ve stopped him. Xu Jin tightened his hands into fists and exhaled.
He should’ve known that Xu Ping didn’t come with him for moral support. Xu Jin wasn’t the only one with an agenda. He wasn’t the only one itching to meet a ghost. Or, the only ghost trying to remind himself that he was once human.
Xu Jin didn’t need him, he’d spent whole centuries proving that point. But he was, now, a man who had only ever played one video game, just the previous week, and was given a quickfire industry crash course by two people who had never worked in the industry.
His nerves felt alien; it was almost nice.
—
Xu Jin trailed after the main group, keeping his distance. Observing—but not —how the students followed some random employee from department to department. Two floors in a high-rise, the company wasn’t big, and the tour was slow. Others kept asking mundane questions, and Xu Jin kept looking around, still pulling at the bottom of his blazer.
The employee talked about gaming mechanics, and the students oohed. She described the development joys and pitfalls, and the students aahed. She waved at someone behind them and the students turned, whispering frantically.
“Is it really him?”
“Yes, It must be!”
“Oh my god, I can’t believe Zhong-zong waved at us! Did you see?”
By the time Xu Jin spun in the right direction, he could only see the back of Zhong-zong’s head disappearing around a corner; he didn’t hesitate. Breath fast and lanyard flying, he got more heads turning as he chased after the man. Not quick enough to catch him, just in time to see him entering another room.
Xu Jin opened his mouth, but his voice wouldn’t come.
Dianxia, he would’ve called to catch the man’s attention, when they were a little more than strangers. Then they became a lot more, and the term stayed. Expanded. Mine, it meant—you’re dianxia to everyone else, but more than that, you’re mine.
Xiao Mei, a nickname grown out of spite. A purposeful taunt, rolling off Xu Jin’s tongue in good humour. You think you’re oh-so-clever riling me up, but it won’t work, it was meant to say. It would always result in a smug smile, because if Xu Jin used it, it had already worked.
Wumei, the vast majority of time. Laughed, cried, sighed, whispered, heaved. The only name Xu Jin would use when he thought about the man—the name he couldn’t erase, even when he tried to make the man nameless. His name, his person, nothing more and nothing less.
“Zhong-zong!” Xu Jin yelled, at last, and it sounded funny in his mouth. His voice was too desperate, the name was too formal.
But the man turned around, and Xu Jin immediately stopped pondering how a set of syllables could make him melancholy.
There were loads of Zhong Wumei’s photos on the internet, at different ages and angles to prove to Xu Jin that the likeness wasn’t just an illusion. He looked the same at sunset as he did at dusk, with features identical in a selfie or a professional portrait, under artificial lighting or by candlelight.
His hair was short, not like the last time Xu Jin had seen him.
(Hair long, wet, matted.)
His face was a little more youthful.
(Pale, with shadows under his eyes.)
Better than time-worn memories, and miles better than Xu Jin’s imagination.
(Dead.)
Zhong Wumei turned around and raised his eyebrows—just like he used to, twin pointed arches to hint at brewing consternation. He turned around and Xu Jin’s life hung in the balance—stopped, at last, at a time he needed it to move forward.
Zhong Wumei’s forehead seemed to furrow, his breath seemed to hitch, and his hand seemed to pause on the door handle—but despite the way Xu Jin’s hopes soared and Zhong Wumei’s eyes pinned him in place, they didn’t bear any recognition.
—
“Can I help you?” Wumei asked, a polite edge to his voice that stung worse than if it were hostile.
But it was his voice. Not distorted, nor imagined, and Xu Jin moved forward without realising. Without a plan, he didn’t know what to do and his intentions didn’t get any clearer as the distance diminished.
His silent staring must’ve been odd; whatever thoughts he vocalised at the moment would’ve been odder.
“Are you alright?” Wumei’s next question was more insistent. There was a security guard nearby, and he took a step closer. Wumei’s eyes fell on Xu Jin’s lanyard. He looked him up and down, raised eyebrows not budging. “Are you one of the teachers?”
He sounded indignant—in a special way that only Wumei could—signalling an internal battle with his own curiosity. Xu Jin hummed. He held up his lanyard, as if Wumei hadn’t read it already, and helpfully supplied: “I’m from The Northern University of Technology.”
“Are you?” Wumei tilted his head, a sardonic smile.
“Yes.”
“Good to know.”
His fingers jerked on the door handle and he shifted, like he was planning to leave Xu Jin behind, to mull over his awkwardness. The security guard could twist Xu Jin’s wrist behind his back, he was close enough; Xu Jin could twist away if it came to it. Not a first impression he’d had intended—he wished it wouldn’t have to be a first impression at all—but something about that awareness spurred him on.
“Well, enjoy the rest—”
“I’d like to apply for a job,” Xu Jin said, frank as he could be, “with your company.”
“Well,” Wumei repeated, and inclined his head further, “for the open positions, HR would be your best point of—”
“I think you could use a consultant.”
Wumei looked behind Xu Jin’s back and he could feel the security guard shift. “Unfortunately—”
“The setting in Ancient Hero Reborn was intriguing, but you were taking liberties with it. You got a lot of things right, but it made the inaccuracies very glaring.”
“A game can’t please everyone.” The words sounded parroted, like Zhong Wumei had to repeat them many times before. “If it tries, it’s sacrificing the—”
“Given Emperor Wen’s long-standing opposition, the alliance between the two kingdoms would’ve been problematic,” Xu Jin stayed the course. “Not solved by a single treaty. Certainly not one proposed by a complete outsider.”
Wumei widened his stance, shoulders rising. “Linlin was just a messenger. Emperor Wen was acting on behalf of his consort.”
“A fact Emperor Jiu would’ve used to his own benefit.”
“Are you a history professor,” Wumei’s eyes stayed firmly on Xu Jin’s face, not glancing at the lanyard, “Xu-xiansheng?”
“No. I’m from the Xiaoyan Museum.”
“A guest lecturer, then? You seem to have mistaken your audience.”
“I’m the museum director.”
Wumei’s eyebrows shot up higher, bewilderment clear. Curiosity, likewise. He opened his mouth and gave Xu Jin another once-over, like he had to reevaluate him in light of the new information.
“Zhong-zong.” The security guard cleared his throat.
His shadow had almost grown a weight to it, but he still wasn’t trying to wrestle Xu Jin to the ground, nor escort him out of the building, so that had to count for something. Wumei shot the man a look that was eerily familiar—though the guy was no Zhang Ji, earnest gaze and patience of a saint, name easier to recall than the face—and shook his head. The guard stepped back and so did Wumei, opening the door further.
He gestured Xu Jin in with a warning: “You have five minutes.”
His tone was cutting but intrigued. He didn’t budge as he let Xu Jin pass through, shoulders almost brushing. There was a hint of a smile in his eyes, and Xu Jin felt his own lips curl up on instinct. He was out of practice, like his face had to rearrange itself to allow for the smile.
Five minutes, in the scope of Xu Jin’s life, were less than a grain of sand. Faster than a blink. A downright laughable prospect. But five minutes or one, with Wumei letting him into his office, Xu Jin already felt like he’d won.
—
***BONUS DRAWINGS:***
