Needles

Halun gritted his teeth while Mingyi poured a clay jar of alcohol over his wounds to clean them. He laid on his stomach, with his face blocked from Mingyi's sight.

Drops of cool alcohol dribbled over his open wounds, stinging like a thousand little needles stabbing at his raw flesh. On bare skin, the alcohol felt like ice running across.

The wood stove in the room didn't help to warm him on the wet bedsheets. His eyes wandered around the sparse but clean room.

He noticed the symbol of the Qisha syndicate carved in the wooden door panel and wondered about Yinyue's relationship with them.

Blood stains from his wounds flowered on the white bedding mixed with an overpowering sharp tone of alcohol. Halun's head spun a little from inhaling the fumes, almost intoxicating him in a drunk state.

"Stitching the wounds will hurt," Mingyi warned, while running a needle over the flame of a candle.

"What stitching?"

Halun never heard of wound stitching. It sounded more like his skin was a piece of cloth to embroider on.

He turned to the side. A gleaming needle held between Mingyi's fingers caught his attention.

Mingyi's frown made Halun realize his own reaction or facial expression revealed the fear of needles, a big weakness and a big mistake. He must show no weakness, even to the treating physician.

"If you fear—"

"Just continue," Halun said, interrupting Mingyi's words and turned away.

Halun didn't fear needles. He hated needles with passion.

His earliest memories came rushing back. The wind outside sounded like the sinister laughter of his half-siblings during his childhood. As a young boy, Halun found himself at their mercy. Whipped, beaten, bashed, insulted — those pains he could tolerate.

When he showed more fear of the needles, they stuck to using the torment just to hear him scream for their twisted sense of amusement. They would take acupuncture needles and insert them between his fingernails and the tender flesh beneath, despite his pleas for mercy.

They practiced that form of torture used on him until his father granted him his personal compound.

The sight of an acupuncture needle triggered unpleasant memories of the excruciating bolting pain shooting up from his fingers to his body. His hand trembled while his palms turned sweaty.

Unable to tolerate the idea of the needle going through his skin, he asked, "why don't you burn the wound and paste those medicinal herbs on the wound to let it heal?"

His physicians used heated metal to burn large wounds to seal off the bleeding and applied a huge patch of mashed herbs to the wounds for his previous injuries.

"Your wound will end up festering," Mingyi replied. "And it will end up killing you."

Halun survived infections of his wounds in the past — a few days of feverish delirium at most. So what if the pus from a festering wound stank? What didn't kill him made him stronger.

Halun felt the underneath of his skin crawling with imaginary worms at the thought of the sharp, pointy metal tips weaving through his flesh.

"I never heard of stitching. Are you sure it's even safe?" Halun frowned.

Mingyi gave him a nod to reassure him. "Safe. We stitch up on the battlefields. Soldiers survive stitched wounds. they don't survive open infected wounds. Besides, don't the Xirong also do that?"

Halun stared at him. Why did Mingyi, like everyone else, assume he knew about what the Xirong did? He hated the colour of his eyes, his height and any feature of Xirong heritage in him. That heritage brought him nothing but scorn and torment since he could remember.

Nomad, uncivilised, wolf eyes, barbarian — he learned absorbed those insults with grace over the years.

His mother was so powerless in the palace that another concubine poisoned her. She died, leaving him at the mercy of his half-siblings and their ambitious mothers.

If he let them had their way again, he would die.

"I don't see the connection between being Xirong and stitching my wounds," Halun spat.

"I thought you're part Xirong with those wolf eyes."

Mingyi's finger trembled with the needle in his skin. The slight movement brought on a wave of twisting visceral pain, causing Halun to gnash his teeth.

"Yes, but I'm a Taotang prince," Halun insisted.

He didn't want any involvement with the Xirong. Years of meeting his mother's people made him wary of them. He wasn't blind to their ulterior motives.

All of those meetings involved the Xirong Simurg, a powerful underworld syndicate arm of the Xirong Empire. They could have helped him, but betraying Taotang was a price too high to pay.

"Have to be proud of your roots," Mingyi said. "Xirong heritage still flows in your blood."

Halun scoffed at his words, but said nothing. The Xirong started from a scattered band of different nomadic tribes living in the death trap of a vast desert and grew into an empire over several centuries.

"To survive in a vast barren wasteland with scarce resources required wit and cunning," Mingyi added with a wry grin. "That's why they're an empire now."

"Old man, you'll be good as a Xirong recruiter," Halun said.

Nobody understood that his Xirong heritage was the bane of his existence as a Taotang prince. Nothing hurt more than the torment he received as a child in the Taotang Capital palace. His muscles tensed at those unpleasant memories.

Mingyi didn't speak while threading a fine silk string soaked in alcohol through the eye of the needle.

"So will this leave scars?" Halun asked.

Mingyi chuckled and replied, "Depending on how deep your wound is. Sometimes it doesn't. This will hurt."

"Relax or else the pain will be worse," Mingyi said while patting his chest. "You're the one who doesn't want a painkiller."

A sharp prick went through Halun's skin. He bit his lip to stop himself from screaming. His sense of manly pride was on the line. A thumb pressed down, followed by another prick.

The repeated motions became faster, moving with an uncanny rhythm. Halun closed his eyes shut and controlled his breathing.

The door creaked open, but no footsteps followed.

"Continue. Don't stop," Yinyue's familiar voice said.

Her sudden speech caused Mingyi to stab the sharp needle into his raw wound. Mingyi sighed. Halun kept his composure while clenching his fists until his knuckles turned white.

"My dear Grand Prince, you shouldn't be here," Mingyi said.

Halun harrumphed but said nothing. He imagined his hand strangling the life out of Mingyi. The needle entering his skin stung even worse than before.

"Why?" Yinyue asked while rummaging through Mingyi's leather needle holder, paying no attention to them.

"I'm a man," Halun said. "You're a woman—OW!"

The stab in his raw wound shot a pain through his body, which made his lips quiver.

His head swung back, making the pain in his neck worsen in a twist. A smiling Yinyue holding the needle with no sign of remorse or regret. Halun glared at her, imagining how good it felt to strangle her.

By the candlelight, Halun noticed she didn't look like a walking corpse, compared to her earlier appearance. Did she get rid of the corpse poison? But how? Even the antidote took days for the full effects to dissipate.

Her cheeks looked flushed with color. A certain liveliness returned to those former dead fish eyes of her. She didn't look so bad despite the clothes hanging on a small scrawny frame.

"What are you staring at?" Yinyue stared at Halun.

"Nothing," he muttered and averted his gaze.

Man or woman, Halun had no qualms killing them if they threatened his life like the earlier incident. If Yinyue didn't remove the dagger first, he would stab right into Yinyue's heart.

Mingyi shooed her away. "My dear Grand Prince, please let me do my work and stop disturbing the patient."

"I came for three long acupuncture needles," Yinyue said.

Halun raised his eyebrow at the mention of needles. Was the mention of its length necessary?

He hated acupuncture with all those needles sticking into skin. Why would Yinyue need long acupuncture needles? Not another test of his pain tolerance.

"Why do you need them?" Mingyi echoed his thoughts.

"Fun, laughter and joy," Yinyue said with dripping sarcasm.

She turned to face Halun and said, "we'll talk later."

"About?" He asked.

"About today's events," she replied.

He grew suspicious of her intentions and asked, "And what are those needles for?"

"Long acupuncture needles make the most tight-lipped person talk fast," Yinyue replied. "Do you want to try?"