27 Charades

"Are you alright now Little Cheng?" Lan Chang asked the little boy who was now almost entirely burrowed into her clothing.

She was not expecting him to have such a large reaction to the given freedom to act how he pleased, and she was certainly not expecting him to freeze up and then shut down, but it was certainly understandable.

Lan Chang could only imagine the horrors that he had faced while on the streets.

Ming Cheng must have been forced over and over again to supress his emotions and hide himself away behind a hard shield that kept him safe from the world that was constantly trying to beat him.

There must have been instances where his trust had been betrayed, leaving him decimated, and left to pick up the pieces from the shattered friendships.

Lan Chang knew that she couldn't do anything to change the past, and that the only thing she could do was facilitate an environment that would help Ming Cheng, as much as possible, to grow and recover from the traumas of the past.

It was all she could possibly hope for him.

Ming Cheng, sequestered away within her warmth, could only gaze in horror as the ghost lady from before materialised once more in Lan Chang's room, at first standing confidently as she had done before, until she abruptly collapsed onto the ground.

She did not move for a moment, leaving Ming Cheng's mind to wonder and race as thoughts of why she had come here, and why she had come now plagued him.

For a brief moment, Ming Cheng theorised if the lady was in a fact a former servant who had once occupied this room, passing away tragically and before her time due to some machination of the court which required her death.

It would make sense as she seemed to be limited to only materialising in Lan Chang's bedroom and her interactions with Ming Cheng only consisted of her voice in his mind, outside of this place.

However, looking down at her, Ming Cheng knew that her fancy robes were of much higher quality than that of a servants, with detailed and intricate embroidered birds and delicate hemming.

The amount of effort that looked as if it had gone into making the clothing looked even more so than the clothes of the Emperor's concubines, with their garments limited to more subtle patterns and flowers, rather than the bombastic mural of crisscrossing shimmering threads and interwoven symbols and animals.

The birds themselves looked as if they were rendered, on that fluid, graceful cloth, to be made out of fire, with patterned flames forming feathers that licked outwards outside the tight boundaries that Ming Cheng saw on regular birds outside hopping on the branches of the trees.

The majestic centre piece looked as if it was some sort of divine beast, exuding a sense and aura of power that dwarfed what dress offered stylistically and tried to exude.

The very stitching and style made the creature look as if were about to take flight, and pull away from the garment, throwing itself into the sunset sky where it would belong.

The lady on the floor was most certainly not a servant and Ming Cheng currently had no idea who he was.

Suddenly, without warning, her eyes snapped open, and as if she was a doll pulled up by strings, Ming Cheng watched as her body jolted upwards, just as he had seen once in a passing show on the main street of the city, when an old man from the countryside came with his puppets, during the festival.

And just like those puppets, the ghost lady fell back to her knees, just as if her strings were suddenly cut, as soon as she stood up.

She looked ill and on the verge of vomiting, like the women that Ming Cheng had seen suffering from morning sickness, and he watched as she brought a hand up to her mouth, unsure why she was doing such a thing; restricting one's own breathing was something was not to be done when facing nausea as restricting air flow would only hinder the recovery process.

The ghost then, once with the strength that she had managed to muster, stood up wobbling around, as if on the shaky knees of toddlers who had never walked before, stumbling backwards and leaning heavily on the wooden door, footsteps and actions silent throughout the entire disastrous motion arc.

She looked down at herself then in disbelief, and Ming Cheng, watching her examine the features of her chest, at her pulling her clothing inappropriately in directions that were not socially allowable, and raising up the bottoms of her clothes to see the full pattern on them, was struck with the sensation that he was watching someone new and unfamiliar with the concept of being a woman discover that they were in fact one.

It looked as if the ghost just happened to be some sort of interface before for singular, one line command instructions to be read out from, which would explain the short and efficient manner of speech given to him, especially from when he was being examined by the physician.

Ming Cheng watched the ghost then begin to maniacally tear out the hair ornaments and pins from her admittedly intricate and beautiful hair style. It looked deceptively simple, but there were simple so many hair pins in place that suggested anything and everything except simplicity played a part in the look.

The ghost tucked each and every pin that she had yanked out of her locks into her belt, almost absent minded in her demeanour as she did so, looking like she had no idea that she was taking the actions as she was doing them.

Her face occasionally twisted up in pain as she ripped out the occasional pin, letting a few strands of translucent hair fall to the floor as she finally yanked the wood, jade, or gold needle from her head.

And when all was said and done, she cradled the crown that she had taken off, and looked directly at Ming Cheng.

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