“So, Meilin.”

Meilin lowered the bread from her mouth and turned to Hei, who was seated next to her.

“What is it?”

“I know that you came to certain realisations just now, but there’s one that I think is very important. I want to double-check that you got it.”

Meilin shrugged her shoulders.

“Okay.”

“Mm.”

Hei paused for a moment.

“You realise that what you did was incredibly foolish, right? Running away from home like that, and for those reasons especially.”

Meilin lowered her head.

“I know that. I wasn’t seeing things properly.”

“No,” said Hei. “That isn’t what I’m talking about.”

He stood up and stepped in front of Meilin, placing both hands on her shoulders as he gave her a look of pity.

“Meilin…”

“… Yes…?”

Hei closed his eyes and shook his head.

His intentions weren’t clear to Meilin, but at that point, she started to grow anxious.

She turned to Tianlan, but he wasn’t even looking their way.

And Shin Mu looked just about as confused as she was.

When she turned back to Hei, she noticed something she had failed to see earlier.

This was a very specific kind of look she was getting, and it wasn’t the first time she was getting it.

It was the same kind of look her cousin gave her when she said she could take him one on one if she got serious.

The same look the chef gave her when she said she wanted to help prepare a meal.

It was the very same look one would give to someone who was fumbling around in ignorance.

In other words, it was the look one would give to a bumbling idiot.

“…”

Meilin’s eyes started to mist over.

“W… What did I do this time…?”

“Come here.”

Hei let go of her shoulders and pulled her head to his chest, hugging her as he said “There, there, Meilin. It’s all right.”

For some reason, tears started to stream down Meilin’s face.

She had absolutely no idea why it was happening.

And the hand that was gently stroking her head certainly wasn’t helping things.

“It’s all right, Meilin. Let it all out. The first step toward healing is to recognise that you have a problem.”

“But…”

At this point, Meilin had actually started sobbing.

“I… don’t even know… what I did wrong…”

“Hush. Don’t speak.”

“O… Okay…”

***

Tianlan exchanged awkward glances with Shin Mu.

Neither one of them had the slightest clue what was going on.

***

“You okay?” asked Hei as he placed his hands back on Meilin’s shoulders.

He watched as she finished drying her tears.

“Mm. I feel a lot better now. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Hei smiled then returned to his seat.

After sitting down, he noticed that Tianlan was staring at him in silence.

“…”

“…”

“… Okay then…”

Hei turned to Shin Mu, ready to proceed to the final step of the plan, but he could still see Tianlan through the corner of his eye.

“Is there something interesting on the side of my head, Tianlan?”

“…”

“…”

“Hei…”

“Yes?”

Tianlan furrowed his brows trying one last time to come up with his own explanation for what just happened, but he couldn’t think of a viable answer.

The only choice left was to just ask.

“What the heck was that?”

“What?”

“Just now. The crying. The consoling… What was that about?”

“Ah. It’s simple. Meilin had to realise at some point that trying to live out the things she saw in the movies was ridiculous, right? I mean where in the world did she get the idea that any of that stuff applied to real life?”

““What?!””

Tianlan and Meilin both shouted at the same time.

Meilin had come out of that experience thinking she had really come to terms with something extremely important.

She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she knew there was something there.

Or was there?

She had no idea now.

Tianlan, on the other hand, had his face twisted in ways they had never been before. As if the words he heard were so ridiculous that he couldn’t have been hearing them right.

“Are you saying she should stop superimposing fiction onto real life? You?”

“Of course. What kind of idiot does that?”

Tianlan felt like he had been transported into some alternate reality.

“You! You’re the idiot! You do the exact same thing as her!”

“What are you talking about? When have I ever done that?”

“When have you e- What are we doing here, Hei? Aren’t we in the middle of one of your episodes right now?”

Hei placed one of his palms on Tianlan’s forehead and the other on his own

“Are you alright, Tianlan? You’re acting up again.”

He turned to Meilin and Shin Mu, who were watching in confusion.

“Sorry about this, guys. Every now and then, my brother has these bouts of insanity. It seems to get triggered more when he experiences emotional scenes, so he usually tries to detach himself from such things. That’s why he may have come across as a little cold before. You’ll have to excuse him.”

“Oh.”

“So that’s how it was.”

Shin Mu and Meilin both expressed their understanding.

Seeing this, Tianlan’s jaw twitched.

“We’re not doing this, Hei.”

Hei gave Shin Mu and Meilin looks which they responded to by nodding their heads.

“You see? That, right there! We’re not doing it! You’re not about to have these people thinking I’m crazy. You’re the one who came up with all of this cold shoulder stuff. The fire and ice approach, right? Tell them.”

Hei had a helpless look on his face as looked to Meilin and Shin Mu.

“You see, when he gets like this, he often forgets how he got to where he is. His mind tries desperately to weave narratives that allow for a transition between what he last remembered and the current thing. It seems this time he’s invented some kind of strange two-pronged strategy that he and I are supposedly participating in to rationalise his own harshness from earlier. It’s tragic, really.”

“I’ll kill you; do you know that?”

“Sigh. This is the final phase. When he reaches this point, he sometimes fails to recognise even his own family. He also becomes quite defensive and will be quick to attack anyone who happens to be uncomfortably close. Fortunately, it seems he is still able to recognise me as his brother, so we don’t have to worry about that.”

Hei turned to Meilin.

“You may remember me warning Tianlan to be careful not to kill you earlier.”

“Mm. I remember.”

“It’s because Tianlan was in an agitated state at the time, anxious due to the presence of an unfamiliar person. If I weren’t there to restrain him, who knows what could have happened?”

Meilin lowered her eyes and thought back on that scene.

It was exactly as Hei described.

Now she knew why her mind seemed to grow sluggish at the time. She was instinctively afraid of the hidden danger.

If Hei hadn’t been there, then perhaps she would have only been moments away from death at the time.

The thought was terrifying.

She bowed to Hei.

“Thank you for stepping up for me.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Still. It must be awfully inconvenient living with a condition like that. How often does this happen?”

“Not too frequently, actually. We usually partner him with someone he knows when he goes to a new environment. It gets a little tricky at times because there are only a few of us who can stop him when he really gets going, but we compensate for that with numbers when needed. When we go back to the Shimmering Sword Sect – oh, you’re coming with us, right?”

“If it isn’t too much trouble.”

“Mm. When we get there, you’ll see his regular support members. They’re pretty hard to miss.”

“I see. Well, I’m looking forward to meeting them.”

Hei nodded his head and turned to Tianlan who had stopped speaking a while ago.

“It looks like he’s with us again. Welcome back, Tianlan.”

Tianlan had a strained smile on his face as he looked at Hei.

If he were being honest, he would have to admit that he was impressed by Hei’s ability to create these stories on the fly.

He even sealed it so tightly that Tianlan had no room to manoeuvre.

If he tried to explain that Hei was the real weirdo and that he very seriously implements knowledge from fictional books into his everyday life, would that not feed into the explanation Hei had already given? Shin Mu and Meilin would see it as Tianlan’s mind trying to rationalise why he was being called out for being strange. He would obviously have spun a tale to implicate the sane one rather than himself.

The same would be true if he were to explain that the very reason the two of them were there in the first place was because Hei had asked him to pick a random spot on a map, insisting that there would be something there.

Wouldn’t Hei just counter it by saying that his brother had suddenly requested that they come to this random spot in the middle of nowhere and that he was only there to indulge him and to keep an eye on him?

It was very well crafted.

Tianlan, still with that strained smile on his face, sent a private transmission to Hei.

“I’ll get you for this.”

Hei smiled in return. His was free from any strain.

“It’s your own fault for trying to mess with the performance. Now, get back into character so we can wrap this up.”

Tianlan narrowed his eyes.

“You may have won this round, Hei, but one day, I’ll get you back.”

“Oh? Is that so?” asked Hei in a flippant tone.

He even had the nerve to fiddle with his rings as if Tianlan’s threat was of no concern.

“Laugh now, Hei. While you still can.”

“Will do.”

***

Meilin and Shin Mu watched the silent exchange which seemed to grow more intense as time went on.

It even grew to the point that they could feel the tension in the air.

They turned to each other, then back toward the two boys.

***

Hei clapped his hands, returning the environment to its previous calm.

“Alright, Shin Mu. We’ve stalled for long enough. What do you say we get this over with?”

“Okay.”

Hei raised his hand up to his eyepatch, causing the chains holding it up to loosen.

He removed it and revealed the light grey eye underneath which seemed to be emitting a flame of the same colour.

“Fair warning. This is going to hurt.”

“It’s going to hurt? How much?”

“Tianlan. Hold him still for me.”

“Humph!”

Tianlan didn’t appear to be in a very cooperative mood from the outside, but he still used his qi hold Shin Mu’s body firmly in place.

He forced Shin Mu’s left eye open, revealing the iris, and restricted the area firmly such that there wouldn’t be even the slightest movement there.

Seeing that the other side was settled, Hei began with things on his end.

His left eye began to glow and strange mystical runes started to appear in the air in front of it.

They swiftly gathered to form a circle which perfectly overlapped the grey iris.

That circle flew over to Shin Mu’s own left eye, stopping just short of making contact.

“W… Wait! You still haven’t told me how much this is going to hurt!”

“Hm? Does it matter? Will you change your mind depending on the answer?”

“N… No… But I want to be mentally prepared.”

Hei shrugged his shoulders.

“Then imagine one of those times something went in your eye. You know, those times where, like, some dust gets in it or an eyelash or something, and it kind of scratches?”

“Uh…”

“It’s a minor inconvenience most of the time, but every now and then you get that one that feels like a tiny stone. You know what I’m talking about?”

“Y… Yeah… Is that-”

“You rub your eye a bit and it suddenly disappears. And you’re relieved.”

“I’m-”

“But then you’re like… Where did it go though? Did it dissolve, or is it still there? Maybe there’s some mechanism in place which flushes it out.”

“...”

“But what if they pile up? What if there’s a deposit of them somewhere behind your eyes? You know those times?”

“I know exactly what you mean. I’m just asking if-”

“Oh! And then there are those ones that get under your upper eyelid! Those suck! Every time you blink, they scratch your cornea. It’s so annoying! You know what I mean?”

“…”

“Hello? Didn’t you say you wanted an explanation? I’m trying to give it to you. Do you understand?”

“Mm… You’re saying it’s as bad as something getting stuck under your eyelid…”

“That’s exactly right.”

Shin Mu breathed a sigh of relief.

It turned out he had nothing to worry about.

He watched as Hei’s eye glowed more intensely.

“Now, multiply that by ten billion.”

“Mm.”

Shin Mu watched as the grey flame in Hei’s eye condensed into a single point.

Then he replayed those last words in his mind...

“Wait… Did you say ten bi-”

That single point of condensed flame sent a silver beam of light into Shin Mu’s eyes before he could finish his sentence.

And with that, he failed to achieve the goal of bracing himself.