“If everyone else dies too, I would probably be rushing to bring sweets back to the youngest orphans on the mountain, to be there with them so they’re not scared when the sky goes dark.” After a thoughtful moment, the shadowscape boy looked to the river of chaos at his side and smiled, coy and shy and exhilarated with the bold words finding footing in his mouth “But if it’s just me who dies, I would be content to remain in my Prince’s company until the light leaves my eyes and the world falls away.”

“You’re sweet—” Yuhui’s eyes softened, charmed as he was, turning his chest to look at his new friend from a more direct angle. “—But if you mean that, then say it with my name rather than my title so I can live as myself at your side.”

Enchanted by that direct escalation of candor, the future assassin, pride of Luanshi clan, sat a little taller. He wrapped his voice around his augmented words with a little more confidence, hand resting on the table next to Yuhui’s own.

“I would be content to remain in Tian Yuhui’s company until the light leaves my eyes and the world falls away,” he repeated. “Where will you spend this last day we have to live?”

Laike was romanced by the metaphor, happy enough to live in a world where tomorrow was not a promise.

“There’s a small courtyard just outside of my room that has a pond and fat bushes whose branches are overburdened with camellias. I’d spend it there, unless you wanted to find somewhere else—maybe a lonely hillside where we could watch existence be shorn from the skin of reality.” The black eyed boy looked at their hands beside one another, chest rising on an inhale he used to calm his rabbit heart, to mask a sudden bashful warmth gathering in his cheeks from all the less-than-noble thoughts crowding his head.

“Or we could get a pair of horses and see how far we can ride—since you said you wanted to travel.”

“You’d want to spend your last day alive with me?” Laike smirked, fingers accidentally brushing against Yuhui’s knuckles as he turned a little more toward his companion. “You’d forsake your best friend, your family… your girlfriend? For some orphan kid offa Buddha’s mountain?”

“I would have to say goodbye to them, of course, my friend and my family. I’m not in any romantic relationships though. When I was younger there was talk of a betrothal but I don’t know to who or if the arrangement still exists since I am a walking disaster.” The older boy put his chopsticks down. “Anyway, you’re my friend now, too. I enjoy being around you so… yeah. I’d spend my last day with you.”

Laike looked back at his noodles, a soft smile creeping quiet into typically sullen features. Suddenly, the sheltered youth decided their fates and announced it for the world to hear:

“Then we’re best friends. We will walk along the river together until the spring runs dry.”

“My stride will have never known such a joy before being matched by the length of your own.” Yu dipped his gaze, sweetbend of his lips given only in profile.

The prince sat back in his chair, content in their newly established closeness, happy to let the other boy finish his food without any further interruption. After a moment, he pushed his own meal away to allow its removal by the shopkeeper growing braver in the silence of catastrophe unseen, bill left to fill the space left by bowl. Fussing with a simple but elegant pouch tucked into his belt, Yu paid with whole numbers—his father had sewn kindness into his children from a young age, generosity woven into their making like a luxury they could afford to give, insistent that a seed of goodwill be planted at every opportunity.

Slightly disappointed that he didn’t notice his companion’s food being taken before he had a chance to pick out the good leftover meaty bits, Laike was quick to finish his own. He made sure to clear the side dishes of protein before he finished up his tea.

“You want to show me where the artifact arena is?” Lai was all good cheer when he rose, more comfortable in the prince’s presence in the wake of their newly spoken bond. Maybe it was the prospect of their tandem stride; the older boy’s exaltations couldn’t have been mere polite word. “And anything else interesting on the way—I want to learn.”

“Yeah, there’s so much to see still.” Yu followed Laike out of the shop, finding his place at his side again when they were on the street.

He wove them deep through throngs of people and into knots of bodies that constricted and released with regularity, always checking to make sure that the other boy was in arm’s reach. When they were halfway to the bottom of the road, the prince briefly paused at the back of a gathering crowd so dense that it began to infringe on the booth directly across from it. Those stalled onlookers stood enthralled by the sight of a beautiful young woman selling the latest styles from some far-off place, modeling her sleek frame in strange cuts of cloth painted garish colors, gaudy gemstones refined from old glasses glittering from her slender, fluidly shifting wrists. The merchant, meanwhile, shouted lofty claims about this unnamed land from his nearby stoop, blaring above the roar of equally doubtful and delighted faces through a piece of sheet metal hammered into a lumpy, makeshift amplification horn.

The Tian boy grinned when a man decked out in more traditional fineries marched up the street and pushed through the audience. He found his way to the front and began an argument that evolved into a back and forth volley on the back of a single fighting word spat through seething teeth:

“LIAR!”

Yu shook his head and pulled Laike along before the bickering consumed the whole crowd.

“People get so passionate about things in the market,” the older boy laughed. “Anyway, the arena’s not too far from here.”

As they walked on, Yuhui was careful to point out his favorite things: little specks of scenery, handmade signs he found appealing, the few vendors who went out of their way to be kind to him. He took Laike past a particularly deep shop offering used tack, they strolled by a family trying to clear out their current crop of leafy greens in cages repurposed from old-world construction barriers ripped apart. He went so far as to explain things that didn’t need explanation simply for the thrill of looking over to the boy from the mountain and seeing the darkness of his observation returned, all his handsome curiosity sending the prince’s nerves aflutter.

“Do they let you have romantic relationships on the mountain? Or is that strictly forbidden because of religion?” Yuhui’s question may have been forward, but they were best friends now.

“I don’t think it’s forbidden but it’s not responsible,” Laike replied, suddenly drawn back to gaze at Yuhui’s inquisitive face. Somehow his question rang louder than all the sounds of the market combined despite it being spoken in the close tones of just one boy’s voice. “It’s not about religion either. We pray we will fight valiantly, that we will be able to lay down our lives for the mountain to protect what lays dormant in her belly; we understand we will likely die before our time. It’s not fair to others when you know this. Besides: love is desire and desire begets suffering.”

“Hm. Doesn’t everything come down to desire though? The desire to protect your mountain? To fight? To have meat or candy? To even serve the mountain at all?” Xiao was correct when he deemed his brother unholy. Yuhui was lying when he said he could learn. “Is desire not intrinsically woven into every motion of every living being?”

“Yeah—but that doesn’t mean desire isn’t the source of all suffering. All things desire; all things suffer. The less a creature desires, the freer it is to simply be, content in the moment it exists within.” Laike grinned at his companion, teasing tone making his pretty mouth both an inadvertent taunt and a fond curse. “What do you desire? What makes you suffer?”

“Only everything.” Yuhui’s eyes rolled to the side, overstated and dramatic for the sake of poking fun at himself. “I guess I just don’t understand what makes one desire more responsible than another. If you decided that you were going to no longer give yourself to the mountain but instead to a person, would you be less free to be content in your moment of existence?”

“The mountain is a mountain; it is without its own desires. It simply exists. A person? A person is more complex than a mountain, fickle as the rain. A person is connected to others who also have their own desires. Maybe that’s where desire creates the most suffering—when desires do not match, there can only be pain.” Serious for but a brief moment, Laike’s face finally broke through a grin as they passed into a quieter section of the market. “Okay, okay—I concede: I’m not opposed to it. Being wanted sounds kind of nice in the stories.”

Yuhui caught Laike’s hand again and pulled him into an unexpected alleyway. It was a covered space, dressed in shadows. Countless specks of sun dotted the corrugated tin canopy far above them like out of time starlight. He stood before the other boy, a little shorter, lanky-limbed, eyes soft in the shade, gentle in the swell of silence so removed from the market’s hustle now echoing gently off the isolated avenue’s walls.

“I can show you what it’s like to be wanted.” Yu was a cunning thing, graceful in his every endeavor, beautiful when he shed all the pretentious gesturing of his upbringing and presented himself in his barest form: just a boy who was completely charmed by the other, a wretch who knew nothing but desire, a rainstorm with the heart of a monsoon. “Do you want to know?”

Shoulderblades to the chill of the wall, that shadowcrafted boy so blindsided by escalation couldn’t see where intent could lead. He was an innocent thing so naïve to his companion’s wants, eyes flitting to Yuhui’s face in a playful challenge divested from the nervous flicker of his shyest state.

“How are you gonna show me that?” Laike replied softly through an incredulous grin. He didn’t believe Yu would be able to accomplish this fairytale feat.

“I will give you a kiss.” The prince lifted his chin, angled his head curiously. “If you want it.”

“Why would you give me that?” Suddenly, the boy understood all the meandering threads of their conversation. He was wide eyed but he didn’t move, breath barely a tremble between them. “We just met today—I’m… am I… Yuhui…”

Laike was reduced to stammers and rapid blinks like his saccadic SOS would sort this out for him. After a moment of dysfunction, the boy settled into a sigh, unaware of what or how he should feel.

“Don’t play with me,” he said softly with his chin tilted down. “If you’re joking with me, Yuhui, it would cause me great suffering.”

“I’m not joking with you, Laike.” Yuhui hesitated in a step that wanted to press forward but was unable to. “Even when I have been joking, there’s been truth to the things I’ve said. Plainly put, I think you’re beautiful and I want to kiss you. You can tell me no, I can take no if you don’t want me to, or you don’t like boys, or if I’ve made you uncomfortable. I don’t want to push you to do something you don’t want.”

Reaching forward, that shadowstep boy caught Yuhui by the fold of a collar, the edge of his wide belt, pulling him into the step he hesitated to take. Laike rested against the wall, gaze haughty in its downward cant, observation amplified by proximity.

“Do it,” he exhaled, barely at the edge of an audible whisper.

The other boy was quick—a blush on an upswing, an incline so inclined to close the gap of sight between them and unite the sunstars splattering their alleyway on the absence of space in their closeness. His heels pushed him up, lips a timid greeting in the aftermath of his audacity, such a sweet and silent reprieve from the complications of harried words and the thoughts that made them. Somehow bolder, Yuhui’s hand slid along the curve of the boy’s jaw streamflow soft, a slip of affection that begged him to remain—

pleaded for Laike to linger in his first kiss like a test,

his second like a challenge,

his third like the gift of a memory that he hoped would stay with them both, enduring and defiant against all odds and shapes of status stacked against them.

Laike was a quick learner, a brilliant savant under the Prince’s keen tutelage. With his copper strand hands firm about Yuhui’s narrow waist, thumbs looped into his belt, that mongrel boy held captive by the mountain for so long pulled his beautiful minx of a companion closer, easier now without words to get in his way.

He gave the fourth kiss like he spoke this language

the fifth like a prayer fervent with teeth

the sixth like he’d pledge anything, fucking anything his Prince asked of him if he’d be awarded a seventh reprieve.

Even as Yu acquiesced, as his touch slid further into the shadows of Laike’s hair to find the shorn underside at the back of his skull, as he kept him in this kiss as though it was his lucky number, the older boy’s free hand lifted to press against the center of the younger boy’s chest. The Tian son’s open palm laid still, feeling the beat of his friend’s heart, trying to catch the rhythm of that dark-dressed boy for himself so he could have it and hold it and master it by experiencing its thrumming repetition.

The prince welcomed himself past the parting of Lai’s lips; he still wore his dried blood like it was his favorite color beneath the indigo sea of his silks, intent on dragging him deeper into the lightless suffocation of his fathomless desire.

Somewhere between eight and nine, Lai caught his friend’s hand. If the prince sought a heartbeat, he would oblige; he pressed royal fingers past the gap in his collar, till he found himself chilled by the older boy’s touch against his heatsink skin. When he finally broke for breath, he was transfixed—seeking his tutor’s black sky eye with his own fluttering gaze.

He wanted to speak, but he’d been robbed; he was destitute, bereft of word or sense. The hand he clutched was his last item of value and he’d be loathe to give it up.

Yuhui had his bottom lip tucked between his teeth when he gave himself to Laike’s line of sight, breath a steady fluctuation from his heaving chest. Exhilarated, his own expression was bright; lit by his fondness reinforced, corners of his mouth curled and full of conspiracy as they stood in the valley of day, shielded by nothing but a crowd’s non-interest in the lackluster wares drawing little attention just outside of their alleyway.

“That’s what it’s like to feel wanted,” the older boy said with the dreamy chime of a sigh.

Laike, slow as honey, slipped Yuhui’s hand up his chest beneath the layers of his black garments till his companion’s touch trespassed his shoulder, his collarbone, his throat. How was he expected to let go? How was Laike to return to the mountain when that star-crossed boy only wanted this moment stretched endless over the basilisk shadow of mid-day? The sheltered youth pulled his impish benefactor flush to his shape, dotingly kissed him again upon his cheek, again upon his jaw, again upon the corner of his mouth. “Do I make you feel wanted too?”

The older boy nodded in the light of his gentle smile, soaking up Laike’s traveling affections greedily, so parched for this type of attention from another. “Yes, you do. You’ve tilted my world in the very best way, Laike.”

No matter how contented either boy felt in that moment, how much they wanted to persist as they were until infinity claimed them, time always had other motives. Yuhui watched the way his arms fit around that boy’s neck, watched the shifting beauty of his expressions with a critical interest. He dipped his head and turned his line of sight to the entrance of their hideaway, exposing the line of his neck for a moment of brief observation.

“… But we should go.” The prince’s eyes followed the outlines of three men approaching. Their weapons flickered beneath the weird canopy stretched long above, menace exuded almost as thoroughly as the scent of old grease and recycled oil staining their skin and garments.