#alwayskeepfighting

The Release

“Why not let him?” Wen Kexing asked.

Zhou Zishu laughed sharply, but Wen Kexing kept looking at him as though he meant it. He even went so far as to narrow his black, searching eyes at the edges, stripping the jest from them.

“Let him fly?” Zhou Zishu asked, stunned. “After all the effort it took us to catch and tame him?”

“I only think,” he said quietly, “that if you love something, perhaps it is better to set it free, so that it can return to you of its own accord.”

In which Zhou Zishu learns something about freedom and about love.

Illustration by @notoisstrange

Zhen Xin + Smoking

THE EAST PALACE 동궁 (2026). Dir. Choi Jung-gyu.

The Taming

“Won’t you come sleep?”

Wen Kexing had propped himself up on one arm, his head resting comfortably in one hand. Wrapped up to his chin in all the furs and blankets he had spread across the forest floor, he looked to Zhou Zishu like a caterpillar in a fluffy silk cocoon, just breaking through the tip with its head and arms.

“Sleep,” Zhou Zishu said, closing his eyes briefly in answer to Wen Kexing’s weary blinking. “I won’t go to bed.”

Wen Kexing drew his brows close together like mountains moving toward each other across his face. A gentle, dark valley lay between his eyes. “Why not?”

Zhou Zishu nodded toward the bird of prey on his arm.

In which Zhou Zishu attempts to tame a bird (and his silly little wife).

Illustration by @notoisstrange

Let Wenzhou eat part 2