23 The Gentle
"Are you alright?" Lan Chang immediately asked him when Ming Cheng arrived to her with the plate firmly plastered against his chest.
When Qi Tao stepped forward to take it from Ming Cheng, the two of them had to work to physically peel Ming Cheng's fingers away from the plate, those tiny appendages moulded to grip the shiny, metal surface as tightly as possible, the prints left behind wet with droplets of sweat.
Lan Chang hugged Ming Cheng close to her chest, before pulling away slightly to crouch down to his height.
With her own delicate but calloused fingers, she lifted Ming Cheng's head up, and with narrowed eyes, examined him for the slightest trace of damage upon his skin, whether they be the indents of nails, or other pointy finger ornaments, or the bruises.
When she was satisfied that there were no scratch marks or red splotches on Ming Cheng's countenance, she pulled her hands away from his face, and pulled Ming Cheng to her chest, engulfing him within her large, billowing sleeves.
It was warm, where he stood in her loving embrace, his head resting on her shoulder, breathing in heavily in relief, the tension in his body bleeding away, sapping him of his strength and all the worry that he felt.
It had been so long since he had been held so lovingly, so tightly, and as if he really mattered to a real person.
He couldn't remember receiving this amount of love ever, and Ming Cheng felt tears spring to his eyes in relief and happiness.
He was grateful, so, so grateful that he had the opportunity to feel this.
Lan Chang could have taken him in as an obligation of hers to avoid the discomfort of living in a city like this, a city where those on the streets were cycled through a never ending system of life and death.
"I'm okay. I'm okay," Ming Cheng muttered into the folds of her clothes, beginning to pull away from Lan Chang.
She immediately tugged him back to her, squeezing him for one last time, before loosening her arms around him.
Ming Cheng stepped away and sighed at the loss of heat, and looked up at Lan Chang's concerned face.
Her eyes kept focussing on different parts of her face, her vision flitting around all over him, before being certain enough to nod and stand up.
"A-Yuan," she called out, "You're now on tray fetching duties. A-Tao, use your loud voice to run ahead to tell the servants station what the empty dishes are, and A-Qing, you'll be ferrying the empty trays to the servants service station."
She grabbed Ming Cheng's hand, gritting her teeth, and stood next to him, letting do his duties.
Xiao Ying sat watching the whole scene from his chair in the dark room that he now lived in.
It was a touching scene that he had written in when his mother had once again been busy at her job on his birthday. He only had the company of his neighbour on that night, the man only existing in the strange noises that his newly fixed radio spat out between the long stretches of static between each barely legible song.
The continued wakefulness of his state bared down on him.
He wanted to go to sleep.
He wanted to eat something.
He wanted to drink something.
He wanted to lie down and never make up.
He had done the bare minimum of what had been demanded of his current position.
He had reassured Ming Cheng of the relationship between his father and his uncle, and then he had advised him enough to survive the encounter of his father's lowliest and most intelligent concubine.
He wanted this to end now.
He just wanted to go to sleep.
With Lan Chang standing guard for Xiao Ying's charge, he would be free to rest.
He let himself fall off his chair and slink down onto the floor.
Crawling around on the floor with his eyes closed, Xiao Ying let his body collapse onto the floor.
His mind was so, so, tired, but his body was too awake.
This was some sort of hell for him to be in.
There was no escape from the situation that he was in. This was his new life, and there was no escape from it.
Tears poured out of his eyes as he let out a wretched scream.
He didn't care anymore about what may be on the other side of the door with the bronze handle.
There would be a demon for all he cared right now.
He was stuck here, perpetually awake until he was forced to suffer the entirety of his story in real time, no time skips to the interesting moments, two nights so far of watching Ming Cheng asleep in bed.
A loud bang suddenly echoed through the room and there was a faint, buzzing, ringing noise that followed.
Suddenly, Xiao Ying lost all feeling within his entire body. Something wet lay in the centre of his chest and there was a scream through everything that happened around him.
The world was dyed red, and Xiao Ying pressed his shaking, suddenly weak fingers, towards the wetness and brought the limb up to his eyes.
He couldn't tell what colour the liquid was, everything transforming into the same shade of burning crimson, the temperature climbing hotter and hotter, leaving Xiao Ying weaker and weaker.
He no longer had the strength to keep his head up and it fell back, landing harshly on the grey floors, his eyes rolling upwards into his skull as the world melted around him into nothing but smouldering black coals.
There was nothing left for Xiao Ying to see.
There was nothing left for Xiao Ying to think.
He was nothing now - a small part of the oblivion around him, and he only had one thing to say the divine beings around him, that left him with nothing in the world.
His life had been taken from him.
His dignity had been taken from him.
And as he fell into the abyss, Xiao Ying whispered out a final," thank you."
He then was nothing.
