it just idea

His mother, his dearest A-niang, died several months before, and as he'd promised her, he'd been slowly making his way to the nearest Cultivation Sect, Cang Qiong Mountain- but the path there was cold. So cold. And he didn't just mean the weather, it was the people too.

Binghe, despite everything, believed his mother's words. Good people do exist in the world, he has proof in way of his own A-niang; but there must be something wrong with Binghe, something inherently despicable or just grating to the senses that his poor mother just was too sick to feel or see, because even animals avoided standing in his path. He was a pariah to everyone and everything- and that. That was a problem.

Maybe it was part of his rare hints of good luck- maybe there was a God out there taking pity on him- but Winter had set in late this year. On one hand, this was great for everyone. More time to store food and supplies (if you had a home), more time to seek steady shelter (if you didn't).

On the other, when Winter- like a desperate new hire who'd never meant to cause trouble on its first day- came in, it came in scrambling and frantic.

For Binghe, it was the beginning of the end. He'd not been able to find shelter. He'd not even been able to secure a blanket, or extra clothes to wrap himself in. He was exposed, cold, and terribly, terribly alone as bitter, biting winds swept through his tiny alley and stole away even the heat from his lungs with its awful, chilling wails.

The last thing he remembers is noting how his teeth had stopped chattering; and then, like a miracle, the sleep he'd been chasing finally stopped running. His eyes closed, and for a brief moment, he felt warm.

Then he woke up here, in this dark place.

"H-Hello?"

His voice did not echo.

Binghe turned this way and that, hands clenched together tight enough to hurt. This place was dark as he'd never seen it. No moon, no stars...it was as if the deepest shadows had swallowed him whole, and now he was in the belly of some beast.

"Hello?" He tried to keep his voice steady, but it still cracked on the 'o'. Terror climbed; what if there was a creature out there? And now that it has heard his fear, what if it charges out from the dark to hurt him?!

No! No. Stay calm, Binghe! Be brave!

"........!"

Ah? A voice!

"Hello?" Binghe takes a few steps forward, "Hello?! I hear you! Can you help me? Can you tell me where I am?"

The voice continues on like it hadn't heard him. Maybe he was too far away?

He was! As jittery legs cross the unknowable distance, that inaudible voice becomes faint words, and those faint words- they sound upset. Furious, but also...sad. The same sad he felt when he came home and found his A-niang had passed without him.

Sympathy, hurt, and grief wells up from his chest, lodges in his throat, and burns his eyes. He walks faster now. He remembers what if felt like to be alone and feeling this way. He remembers it accutely. Maybe if he's kind and good to this other person, they can feel this way together, and it won't hurt so bad? A-naing used to say burdens shared were burdens made lighter, so-!

".....on't care...!" The voice cries, "...put me through hell...start all over again?! No! I refuse!"

Oh! A light! That must be where the voice is coming from!

There's also a new voice: odder, quieter. There's a strangely metallic, shinging echo in its words. Something Binghe had no comparison for. He just barely makes out "Needed" before the first voice explodes in a rage so potent that it brings Binghe to a frozen standstill.

"MY HUSBAND NEEDS ME! MY PEAK- MY DISCIPLES-" The voice chokes, stalls, then resumes with less volume, but so much more venom. "Why should I help you? Why should I fix *your* mistakes? What gives you the right to tear me away from the happy ending my husband and I- What gives you the *right*?!"

Oh. This- This was not a good time to speak up.

Binghe takes a step back; but then, from the nothingness behind him, a hand pushes him forward.

He can tell the touch was meant to be gentle. It landed on his back with the faintest touch, and only put pressure as it pushed, but whoever the hand belonged to was either strong or healthy, and Binghe was small and weak with hunger, exhaustion, and all sorts of little ailments he could no longer pinpoint after months or years of feeling them constantly.

All that to say, he tripped over his own two feet trying to regain his balance and fell onto his aching hands and knees with a yelp sharp enough to cut through everything.

The yelling stops abruptly.

"....Binghe?"

There were no footstep. One moment the voice is far, then next it is right above him. Large hands reach out and help him into a kneel, and when he looks up, he sees a man with sharp features, long, inky hair, and clothes far more expensive than even the masters his mother worked for would ever have been able to afford.

Binghe stares. He registers, with some distant, glimmeringly bright disbelief, that those same hands are patting him down and checking his hands and face for scrapes and bruises. Those hands are cold and calloused, he notes. They feel like hands that should be hurting him, rather than soothing.

-but those eyes, they're like his mother's. They look at Binghe with care and worry and warmth. They look at him like he means something beyond 'pest' or 'trouble' or 'dirty.'

At the same time, they're nothing like her's at all, and for the life of him, Binghe can't pinpoint *how*.

"...Um!" He suddenly remembers his manners, "H-Hello! This lowly one is Luo Binghe!" He bows clumsily, "Excuse this one for not greeting you properly!"

A cold hand pushes him out of his bow by his shoulder. Those green eyes watch him intensely, colored in shades of confused grief.

"Binghe, what are you doing here?"

Binghe opens his mouth, but that light answers for him, popping into existence with an odd bell sound.

[Character: Luo Binghe has died.]

"...huh?"

The man turns to him sharply while he gapes at the odd light. The hands are back, patting him down more thoroughly, turning his head this way and that. "Impossible. How? There's not a wound on him that could have led to that!"

[Character: Luo Binghe succumbed to the elements. ._.)]

.....oh. So, when he fell asleep just now...

Binghe doesn't even have a moment to mourn himself before the man is turning a snarl onto the light. "You let him *freeze to death*?!"

[It was unintentional! This System only looked away for a moment. ( •̯́ ^ •̯̀)]

The man sputters, hisses, and then slaps at the light with clawing fingers. "Now is not an appropriate time for your stupid Koamojis! Fix him! Fix him right now!"

His hand passed through it harmlessly, but the [Σ(°ロ°)] and quickly followed up [Please do not hit this System!] Said that, even if no physical harm was done, this light still registered it as an attack- or atleast a sign of displeasure.

"I'll hit you more if you don't put this boy exactly where you found him!"

[ >A<) System can't do that! This System already said it needed User's assistance: this is what this System needs help with!]

Binghe quickly becomes peripheral in this argument, but not lost. Somehow, this light- a spirit?- was responsible for him. It was...some kind of guardian? Meant to keep him alive and 'monitor him throughout the plot'.

For some reason, it failed. It wouldn't say why, but Binghe recognized this sort of confrontation. The man, like an experienced, valued hire on a farm to a disfavored, incompetent 'young master', was scolding this System at length, giving it no quarter as he tore into it with words Binghe only vaguely understood because of context clues.

In conclusion, Binghe is in a precarious position. At the moment, he's newly departed. Freshly dead. His soul is still tethered to his body, but if this man does not assist, this System spirit will have no choice but to lift the stasis it currently has on him and allow him to return to the cycle of rebirth.

The man doesn't want this. He seems to care for Binghe dearly, and is enraged on Binghe's behalf that his life was cut short too early, but at the same time, System-Spirit seems to be demanding a price the man just isn't willing to pay.

It sounds like, maybe, whatever it is that System-Spirit must do to bring him back might require the man to stay with him? Possibly forever.

Maybe it's selfish of him, but Binghe...doesn't mind that. Maybe even hopes for it, just a little. After all, this man's first reaction to seeing him was to check if he was unharmed, and his second upon hearing of his possibly very permanent death was to grip onto Binghe and not let go. Someone like that- shouldn't he hold on back just as tightly?

"But..." The man turns a helpless look onto him. There's a hint of shine in his eyes. "My husband..."

Oh. *Oh.*

Binghe scolds himself. This man isn't like him. He has a home, a family: people he obviously cares very deeply about for such a stern face to come near tears. Binghe has no right to ask him to give it that up- not when he isn't even sure he *wants* to go back.

"Sir," There's a tight feeling in his chest, but Binghe ignores it in favor of grabbing the hand holding onto him and tugging it free. The man, strangely indulgent of him, lets him, watching Binghe take it into both his small hands. In return, he gives the man his best beaming smile, hoping to assure as well as comfort. "It's alright. You can go."

The man's eyes widen, then settle into deep sadness. "Oh, Binghe..." He pulls his hand free and then, with both palms open, gently cradles Binghe's face. A thumb brushes under one of his eyes. "Silly boy, you don't even know your crying, do you?"

Ah? Oh, oh no...! Binghe flinches back and frantically wipes at his face, but the damage is done. The man watches him struggle with himself for just a moment, then lets out a great, shoulder slumping sigh.

"I will stay," he say to the spirit. "I will fix your mistake and keep him alive, and in return you *will* figure out some way for me to return home. Do we have a deal?"

[ . . . ]

Why can’t he just take out the broken puzzle piece? Is he stupid?

Christopher

And Xar doodls