#lbx

The excitement wears off soon enough. When the tea ceremony is held, Shen Yuan watches, hopelessly trying to stop the cup from hitting Binghe’s head. He lunges at Shen Jiu; let him be identified and exorcised, at least he would have done something with himself, however useless. It doesn’t work. Of course not—nothing can come between Luo Binghe and his fate.

Shen Yuan thinks about leaving. Many times. But every time he considers the possibility of going back to wandering the world, or just passing on… Well. There’s still a lot to see, isn’t there? It will get better. It will.

Only, it doesn’t. Not really.

There’s no harem; there’s no warm comfort offered to Luo Binghe by a sympathetic beauty, no wedding celebrations, no moments of gentle companionship, however brief, however superficial. There’s no camaraderie with his demon underlings, his generals, his allies; it’s all casual cruelty and dismissals, before it’s violence and subjugation.

There’s no joy. There’s no hope. There’s no ‘better’.

Something is wrong, that’s clear. Something is wrong, and Shen Yuan has no one to blame.

This is not the Proud Immortal Demon Way he knows.

Centuries later, when Luo Binghe begs for the heavens to allow him to die, Shen Yuan hears. When Luo Binghe rages against the passage of time, alone in the wreckage of his palace, left behind by everyone he’d ever known, Shen Yuan accompanies him. When Luo Binghe lies down in the Holy Mausoleum and refuses to get up, Shen Yuan waits, as he had for centuries, until Luo Binghe opens his eyes again and takes to the road.

They end up in a hidden realm so filled with Yin energy that Shen Yuan can channel it to manipulate his form into that of his former body. It’s not detectable by the living, but it’s there. He feels stronger, too. He can walk, float, fly, interact with what few other ghosts they encounter.

Still, Luo Binghe cannot see him.

Luo Binghe doesn’t talk much. Well, that makes sense, he was never in the habit of talking to himself, but still. It’s lonely.

They end up in a town where a diviner takes one look at Luo Binghe and offers him a free reading. Shen Yuan can’t enter her tent, well-warded against foreign entities as it is, so he waits outside.

She tells Luo Binghe of the little hanger-on he’s got. A powerful one, too, though he’s still getting used to his powers. He’s been here for a long time, she says. Since he was a child. He comes from far away—farther than even the most distant star.

Luo Binghe begins talking to him. Shen Yuan isn’t sure why, but he’s not complaining!

Luo Binghe also begins meditating again, trying to soothe the damage done by Xin Mo over the centuries. For every meal, he places a few fruits or snacks across from him on a plate he’d made himself, which he eats only after finishing his own dish. He makes space by his side whenever he walks on a narrow road. He stops at every landmark and tells stories about them, always starting the same way.

“Do you remember when…” becomes Shen Yuan’s favourite phrase.

One night, Luo Binghe sighs and looks across the table. Shen Yuan places himself so that he’s in Luo Binghe’s focus.

“What is it, Binghe?”

Luo Binghe doesn’t answer him, of course. Still, it feels like a conversation, when he says:

“I wish I knew your name.”

Shen Yuan frets. He’s been trying to manipulate the physical world, but he never got the hang of it. He’d tried drawing in sand, with water, just pushing things off shelves. And yet, nothing.

“I’m sorry, I wish—” he tries, but Luo Binghe is already talking again.

“I wonder if we ever crossed paths when you were alive.” He’s expressed this thought more than once. Shen Yuan never likes to think about how they’ve missed each other, how they’d been set up for failure from the start. “I wonder if we would have been friends.”

Shen Yuan scoffs. Of course not. Him and the protagonist? No way.

But—those cold star eyes, blindly searching for him, trying to land on him… They make him want to say, I would have liked that.

He reaches a hand out to touch Luo Binghe’s forehead. He’s taken to doing it whenever Luo Binghe broods, or makes a silly joke Shen Yuan wishes he didn’t find funny. It’s soothing.

He wishes Binghe could feel it.

When his finger touches the demon mark, it blazes. Luo Binghe gasps, that heavy gaze settling on Shen Yuan’s face.

Shen Yuan startles, and jumps away.

“No! Wait!”

Shen Yuan hesitates. Luo Binghe is looking around himself, eyes begging for even a wisp of Shen Yuan’s shadow.

He can’t deny Luo Binghe this.

He can’t deny himself this.

He reaches out again. This time, he cups Luo Binghe’s cheeks. When those eyes clear of panic and widen in awe, he whispers, softly, “Shen Yuan. My name is Shen Yuan.”

Luo Binghe looks like he’s been handed a treasure so precious he’s afraid to touch it. He hesitates, raising his hands in careful starts and stops, before taking Shen Yuan’s face in them, gently caressing the soft, cold skin of his face. His eyes dance with the haste he takes in memorising Shen Yuan’s features.

Then, he smiles. Helpless and weak and so, so precious. Shen Yuan has not seen hope so bright in Luo Binghe’s face since that fateful day on Cang Qiong Mountain.