Waking up, Jiao Ziyu found himself in a bed that definitely wasn’t his own, and he wasn’t alone in it either. There was a body next to him, and Jiao Ziyu appeared to be curled up against it, head resting upon an arm and his fingers resting upon the smooth lapels covering someone’s chest. He didn’t have to look up to know to whom it belonged either; he would probably have recognised that spiritual signature anywhere.

So, what did one do, waking up to a situation wherein one was apparently snuggling with someone who was a friend but also not someone to be snuggled with?

Dismiss it as a dream? No.

Play dead? No.

Attempt to take advantage? No.

Beg for a thirty-second head start? Eh...

“Would you consider sparing my life if I went into seclusion and promised never to speak about any of this or to you ever again?” Jiao Ziyu finally asked, feeling vaguely hopeful about the outcome.

“What makes you think your silence holds any value?” Mingyue scoffed. “Sect Leader and that fool Cheng Kong were here earlier. I’d be surprised if word hasn’t spread to every corner of the Green Jade Peaks at this point.”

Uh. “They were here?”

“They were.”

“And they saw...?”

“Yes,” Mingyue confirmed, confirming that Jiao Ziyu was in fact about to die – for real this time around. But at least he would be immortalised in some sense; he would undoubtedly live on both as a legend and as a cautionary tale.

In other words, it was already over for him, so sense of self-preservation be damned. “Just out of curiosity, did we...?”

“Of course not,” Mingyue snorted. “You were under the influence of an aphrodisiac and in no shape to consent. I brought you here because I knew I had the antidote.”

“Oh.” Jiao Ziyu honestly didn’t know how to respond to any of that. “That’s convenient? Would you happen to keep a lot of those lying around?”

“I do keep a few of them in stock, yes,” Mingyue said. “Occasionally, they come in handy.”

Naturally, Jiao Ziyu was very much aware that there were plenty of unscrupulous cultivators on both sides of righteousness. But Mingyue’s apparent habit of hoarding antidotes likely had just as much to do with experience as it did with paranoia.

How could Jiao Ziyu possibly have failed to notice that? He was supposed to notice these things. Then again, he had been gone an awful lot, especially in recent years, and largely left monitoring internal matters to his two head disciples – maybe not his brightest idea in hindsight.

“Are your antidote hoarding tendencies privileged information or common knowledge?” he finally asked, just for the sake of reference.

“Privileged,” Mingyue said. “Yue would’ve known though. Undoubtedly.”

“Right...” Jiao Ziyu wasn’t all too sure he even wanted to know, but⸺ “Any idea on why that secret ex-disciple of yours would want to drug me? Does he hold a grudge against me for leading you to his hiding place or something?”

And why an aphrodisiac of all things? And that guy had admonished another for bullying the elderly?!

“Irrelevant,” Mingyue said, and Jiao Ziyu felt really inclined to disagree. However, as the other sat himself up, Jiao Ziyu became intensely aware of something else entirely.

“Uh, forgive me for asking but⸺ Why are we both in our inner robes and also why am I in your bed? I mean, not that I’m unhappy to be in bed with you or anything, but⸺”

“If you’re not unhappy, then don’t complain,” Mingyue said, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. “Do you honestly believe I’d be willing to share sleeping quarters – much less my bed – with just anyone?”

Uh⸺ “Not even with ‘Yue’?”

“Not what I meant,” Mingyue said. “I meant... carnally.”

Uh, there was no way that Jiao Ziyu hadn’t just hallucinated all that, right? “Did you just⸺?”

Fingers grabbed him by the chin, tilting his face upwards, and eyes like glaciers bored into his; Jiao Ziyu had always thought that they’d been unfairly pretty compared to his own relatively plain brown ones.

Granted, his own eyes had served him pretty well up to this point, because doing infiltration work was decidedly easier when one lacked any outstanding features. And⸺

“Ziyu, this has gone on for long enough,” Mingyue said, and Jiao Ziyu honestly agreed, but he didn’t dare to move even an inch, even as a surprisingly warm thumb brushed against his lower lip. “Stop avoiding me and give me a proper answer: Dual cultivation. With me. Yes or no?”

Huh? “Since when was that on the table?”

Mingyue scoffed, pulling away, and by the time Jiao Ziyu finally snapped out of his daze, the other was already gone.

What was that? A dream? A vivid hallucination?

Wide-eyed, he reached up to touch his own lips. He couldn’t just have imagined all that, could he? Well, in any case⸺

Jiao Ziyu got to his feet.

 

---

 

The skies were clear, and the moon hung low; a clear testament to that the hour was late – or early, depending on the perspective. The moon was bright but no longer full, some parts of it already swallowed up by darkness.

Coming to think of it, how many times had Jiao Ziyu not looked up at that moon and compared it to Bai Mingyue, who himself was named after it? It wasn’t his birth name though, much like Jiao Ziyu’s wasn’t his. Because masters granted special names to favoured disciples – that was what Jiao Ziyu’s own master and predecessor had told him at least.

As for Mingyue's predecessor, Jiao Ziyu could only recall meeting the guy about a handful of times. He still knew him though, to an extent: Bai Jixue had been cold, and with his penchant for various ice- and snow-related techniques, it wasn’t difficult to imagine why he’d earned himself such a name. Because while Bai Jixue had been beautiful like a landscape covered in freshly fallen snow, he’d also been harsh and frigid much like a cold winter night.

Having been brought up by someone like that, it was difficult to imagine Mingyue turning out any differently. Even his name suggested it; that he was someone that shone brightly yet ultimately remained ever cold and distant; unreachable and unattainable.

Because moonlight was fundamentally different from sunlight; it provided only a slight amount of light and none of the warmth.

But Jiao Ziyu still wanted it; he still wanted to bask in it.

“Bai Mingyue!” he shouted, because he had already run a fair bit of distance barefoot and in such thin robes and he was getting annoyed, honestly. Mingyue had accused him of avoiding things, but what was this now then?

It was like that ‘Yue’ with his ‘bullying the elderly’ thing. Hypocrites, the both of them.

“Who’s running away now, huh?! Don’t you have the guts to face me?!”

The night was quiet. Even the cicadas seemed to hold their breaths in trepidation. Or maybe they were singing; maybe Jiao Ziyu was the one unable to hear them over the sound of his gasping breaths, surging qi and furiously pounding heart.

Vaguely, he recognised the signs of an incoming bout of qi deviation. But he hadn’t had one of those in years, not since he’d been a young disciple. He’d always been stable, never a genius but always keeping steady. So, why? Why now?

Actually, no, it made perfect sense for it to happen now. It kind of sucked though.

Jiao Ziyu, now on his knees, spat out a mouthful of blood, blinking as he waited for his vision to clear. He had to calm down; had to get a grip. He usually had way better self-control than this. But⸺

“Need any help with that?”

Blearily, Jiao Ziyu found himself lifting his gaze.

For some reason, he appeared to be hallucinating that demon bastard, Youming Jun.

“You’re not hallucinating,” Youming Jun wryly informed him.

That sounded an awful lot like something a vivid hallucination might say. Regardless⸺

“What are you doing here?” Jiao Ziyu coughed. “Why would you even be here, in this place?”

This might be a somewhat secluded area, but it was still part of the Green Jade Peaks, home to the Windward Sect. Lesser demons wouldn’t have been able to enter and stronger demons wouldn’t have been able force entry without setting off multiple alarms. There were wards, barriers⸺

“Honestly,” Youming Jun snorted. He then withdrew something from his sleeve, proceeding to dangle it in front of Jiao Ziyu’s face; a jade charm? “You lot need to be more careful about giving out these things to people. Whether carved or partially carved, some of these things do contain enough innate spiritual energy to register as proper tokens, allowing the bearer to slip through the wards unimpeded. Not that I actually need one personally. I already know how to slip in and out of this place undetected.”

How? How could he do that? And why? Why would he do that? And why ever – if he could remain perfectly undetected for who knew how long – why ever would he call attention to the fact?

“You want answers?” Youming Jun smiled. “Sure, I’ll tell you. But not for free.”

Huh. “Can it wait? I’m kind of in the middle of⸺”

Jiao Ziyu coughed up blood, and the feeling in his stomach indicated that there was definitely more to come. Ah, this seemed serious.

“Looks pretty bad,” Youming Jun mused. “May I?”

The bastard didn’t even wait for a proper response, and the last thing Jiao Ziyu heard before he blacked out was: “⸺better appreciate this.”

 

---

 

Again, Jiao Ziyu found himself waking up in a bed that was most definitely not his own.

This time around though, he also woke up in inner robes that were most definitely not his own, but he found himself much too tired to really comment on either. He had forgotten about just how draining qi deviations were, and also how weird those hallucinations could get.

“That wasn’t a hallucination,” Mingyue flatly informed him.

Jiao Ziyu glanced at him, experiencing the weirdest sense of déjà vu. “And this?”

Mingyue sighed. “You can pretend this is all some weird fever dream if it makes you feel better. I won’t bring it up again.”

Really.

“You really suck at this, you know?” Jiao Ziyu scoffed, staring up into the ceiling. “You’ve been courting me? Since when? Because I’ve been living under the impression that you only find me vaguely tolerable and that you might just decide to kill me the moment that I annoy you badly enough.”

And that was true. How could it not be true? Mingyue had never said anything, and he wasn’t saying anything now either. And neither was Jiao Ziyu, because what more was there to say, honestly?

Well, quite a lot actually, but⸺ “I’m starting to see why that little hellion of yours decided to pull such tricks. If not for this, then you would’ve never said anything, would you? Make no mistake though, I won’t forget about this for as long as I live. Bullying the elderly? I’ll show those two rascals how the elderly strikes back!”

Mingyue scoffed. “Childish.”

Well, maybe, but⸺ “Don’t you want to get back at them?!” Jiao Ziyu hissed, sitting himself up and clutching his aching head. “They keep lumping us with those old geezers! Maybe you’re ready to become an ancient, but I’m not. I’m still⸺”

He was still in his prime, honestly. This was just a minor setback, really. He would be back to his normal strength in no time. Though of course, he would probably recover a whole lot faster if he⸺

Jiao Ziyu shook his head to dispel the thought, regretting it almost instantly.

“Ziyu!”

There was a hand supporting his back and another hovering just above his sternum, glowing faintly with qi. Then it withdrew, but Jiao Ziyu was faster.

“You⸺” Mingyue looked genuinely shocked at having had the tables turned on him. Well, he’d better get used to it, because Jiao Ziyu had⸺

⸺not really anticipated just how fiercely he would get pushed back down.

It was indeed fortunate that Bai Mingyue – his aloof immortal image aside – apparently favoured soft pillows over ones in solid jade. Because if not, then Jiao Ziyu could’ve possibly hurt himself in his current condition.

Jiao Ziyu was effectively pinned, but still smiled.

“So,” he crooned, interlacing their fingers. “Are you ready to hear my answer?”