"Can you not understand the Han language or are you deaf?" He doesn't even turn his head, but his footsteps stops the moment he slips into a dark alleyway. Mild light filters through the darkness, making the dust spectacles visible. "Do you know who I am? I can kill you if I wish." Voice calm, soothing, but no doubt holding a hint of annoyance and threat. Xiewang considering himself philanthropic, having forewarned his pursuer twice ever since he noticed that he was being followed. He knows he's not someone important, his judgement simply came from that person's aura and his hesitant steps. Not someone ordered to kill him or someone familiar with this area at all. "It's not so wise to provoke me, I assure you. Leave me alone while the choice is still yours." [ Mei Hanxue didi from Xie'er ]
The first question strikes discordant to Mei Hanxue's ears, like a chord plucked wrong, like an arpeggiation that comes crashing down with the grace of an apocalypse—the rest of Xie'er's words form belatedly to his understanding, following the mordant of dismay the forbidding lilt of a curse clothed in a quiet threat draws upon his heart. But how can he correlate the hinted derision woven within in these beautiful features to the face of his shidi who only looked at him with adoration and admiration both?
He had been certain that his Xie'er would have known him in any lifetime, that he would perhaps at least understand how to get in his good graces. Maybe a sweet and a song would not have done it this time but ... it was inconceivable to him that Xie'er could ever speak to him with the gelid unconcern he had just witnessed.
His fingers twitch where his hands hand useless at his sides, wanting so much to stroke his Xie'er's temple, smooth the lines of worry and wrath away from his brow. But this was not his Xie'er, in spite of how that unforgetable face still inspired the foolish canter of his heart. This Xie'er did not possess the ephemeral beauty granted to the disciples of the Kunlun Taxue Palace, and yet he found himself haunted by the unearthly sort of handsomeness he still possessed.
"How perfectly uncongenial," Mei Hanxue laughs, reverting to that cultured callousness he performed for unwitting young ladies and whoever else found themselves amenable to a brilliant smile and glittering eyes the color of young jade. Without thinking, he tilts his chin down, looking up at this stranger version of his shidi with eyes wide and searching.
"I have no wish to provoke you," he assures him. "Only, I am certainly lost, and I thought to follow you perhaps to find lodging. However, your secretive and circuitous path has brought us to rather unsavory districts, and I can only hope your route might eventually lead to somewhere less ..." He looked around pointedly. "Well, dreary. Drab, even."
This Xie'er couldn't care, so Mei Hanxue knew he ought to sweeten the pot. "Your kindness should not go unrewarded, of course. I can pay you for your direction. Perhaps even your hospitality? And your name, naturally." He pulls a half smile. "So that I know the name of my savior."
