27 Words in a Familiar Tongue

Paoxiao heaved a breath in relief the moment he managed to find a barely occupied corner to reside. A different one from before, without the creepy eunuch. After his breath, he turned toward the red-haired girl with a stern glare. Though he wasn't really angry, he felt that he should at least act it, to discourage her from doing this again.

"You can't go over there," he said with a sharp finger to the garden. "Li Yu Rong said no."

Nastasia nodded seriously and then laughed, her eyes crinkling up with a mischievous light. "You sounding man." she told him teasingly.

Realizing that he had not been speaking in the high pitched tone he had used earlier, he felt thrown. Paoxiao, in his haste to make her understand, had forgotten that he was supposed to be acting as a girl. Trying to play it off he, while stubbornly keeping to his male voice, said. "It's not like there's anyone to hear it anyho-"

Freezing mid-sentence, Paoxiao followed Nastasia's line of sight with his own gaze. Upon his turn, he found the young girl that had been saved standing beside them. She had her hands properly crossed over the other as she sat there waiting gracefully for them to finish before interjecting.

Seeing that they did not speak anymore and were staring at her, one questioning and one in shock, she quickly bowed her head with a deep inclination. "I really appreciate your help back there. Not only did you help me, but you also helped to save face for the Jiang family."

Hearing "Jiang family," Paoxiao felt a sense of familiarity, however, set it aside at Nastasia's perplexed frown. Knowing that she did not understand what the other girl had said, he leaned in and murmured loud enough for her to hear. "She's thanking you."

Enlightened, Nastasia waved her hand in dismissal. "I'm the one who couldn't walk the other way and ignore what was happening, so don't worry about it," is what she wanted to say, but it became, due to her small vocabulary: "Can't walk away, must help, don't worry." Ah, she really wanted to cry over her terrible and broken sentence. It must sound like a toddler just learning to speak.

To dispel the Jiang family girl's confusion Paoxiao, back to his act as a female servant, said. "My lady comes from a faraway land that doesn't share our language. Her words just then were merely to say that she did as she wanted, so you don't need to bother about it."

Jiang Ya Lin shook her head in disagreement. "Because you helped me I must do something in return. Should you ever have need of anything come to Commander Jiang's estate, I'll do my best to help you with-"

"Ah!"Paoxiao exclaimed, pointing at the girl in shock.

He finally realized how the "Jiang family" sounded familiar to his ears after she said "Commander Jiang." This little girl was the dirty little girl that had saved him while he wandered aimlessly looking for Commander Jiang's estate to deliver the missive he had been tasked with. That damned Li Yu Rong, although he had never before set foot in the Mortal Realm, sent him off without a map or a direction in which to go to find a place he obviously wouldn't be able to find.

He would never have placed the little girl in front of him as the one, face covered in dirt, that had shown him the way to Commander Jiang's estate. Now she was the perfect picture of a young lady, prim and proper, and nothing at all like the talkative tomboy that was a face full of smiles as she led the way for him.

"Little girl?" He asked tentatively with his voice unconcealed by his poor attempt at female mimicry.

Jiang Ya Lin, from the time he had yelped out his exclamation, had been looking at him curiously. From her observations of him, the sound of his voice, and the way he called her there was something familiar about this man dressed like a woman.

Something clicked and she exclaimed back. "Xiao-ge!?"

Though she had been immensely curious as to why her savior had a man dressing as a female for a servant, she held back her tongue not wanting to pry. Now that she knew that this man disguised as a woman was the arrogant but silly Paoxiao, that had visited her family home looking for her father, she felt it hard to keep silent. On each occasion that he had visited he had gotten lost and on each of those occasions, she had helped him to find his way. There had been many interesting conversations between them.

"Xiao-ge, why are you-!?"

"Shh!" He hushed with a finger in front of his lips. Then, talking in a girlish voice, he spoke in muted tones to avoid being overheard. "Only women can enter here, don't give my cover away. In order to protect my master I had to do this."

"I see, so you came here. I had been worried that you might get lost trying to find our estate again as I wouldn't be around to help you find it, but it seems I worried for nothing." She laughed lightly, almost seeming to chide herself for her self-perceived foolishness.

At first, Nastasia was watching closely the interaction between the two. Picking out the words she knew, trying to guess at the meanings of the ones she did not, while hoping to grasp at least a part of the conversation. It was quite apparent that the two were acquainted before this meeting, however getting the full picture of that meeting was quite difficult with her current level of knowledge.

As she occupied herself with this, Nastasia began to feel a prickling sensation on her back. It was the feeling one received when one was being watched. In the beginning, she had tried to ignore it; this was a party after all, so it would not at all be odd to be observed here or there.

It was the rising sense of dread that fell down and iced her spine that had the red-haired girl turning around, hoping to catch the culprit. Upon her turnabout, her gaze caught and held a sinister inky darkness that seemed a bottomless vortex. The longer Nastasia looked the more fear began to climb up her throat.

Attached to that gaze was a man whose dark hair had been braided and thrown over his shoulder, dressed in black robes with a red trim. Once her eyes had caught his own, his bloodless and thin lips twitched into a savage grin. Long legs began to carry his body toward her almost immediately after.

Panicked, Nastasia turned her head, trying to act as if she were apart of the conversation between Paoxiao and the young girl she helped from a tough situation. While her back was turned to him, Nastasia felt the man brush passed her, a frigid air following in his wake.

"I wonder if you've understood your situation yet, my dear?"

English!?

The words spoken by that man were in the "English" she had been so desperate to hear since she stumbled into this unfortunate predicament. Whipping around, her eyes darted about, trying to find him. Paoxiao's scolding words escaped her mind as she moved from the closed-off corner he had brought her to keep her out of sight.

Catching a glimpse of the man's -or what appeared to be the man's- figure, Nastasia took off toward the garden without a word once again.