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The door flies open right on the midday hour mark, when the candle that he lit this morning is exactly half gone, and Shang Qinghua immediately dives underneath his desk and throws his arms over his hand.
“I’m almost done!” He calls out desperately. “Just give me a few more hours, I promise I’m almost done!”
Following this, a silence in his office, long and inspecting, takes place. Shang Qinghua, despite all his instincts screaming otherwise, peeks his head up over the edge of his desk and gulps. The person standing in his door, who is surveying his admittedly very messy office (it’s not his fault! Paperwork breeds like multiplying cells! Why doesn’t anyone understand that?!), and looking very, very unamused.
“Ha, um,” he scrambles back to sit on the chair again, trying to get his thundering heart under control. “H-Hello, Shen-shixiong! This — I — I wasn’t expecting….”
Shen Qingqiu finishes his examination of his workspace and locks his gaze upon Shang Qinghua. He steps smoothly into the office, and shuts the door behind him with sure but quiet movements. A cold sweat breaks out down Shang Qinghua’s spine.
He swallows. He reaches forward and grabs up the paperwork he’d been pouring over before this interruption and holds it feebly before himself like a shield.
“A-Actually, shixiong…. If shixiong has something he wants from this shidi, I-I’m afraid it will have to wait. Wei-shixiong demanded these requisition forms be looked over and approved before tomorrow a-and there… there are a lot of them to go through…. I think he waited until the last minute — Oh! And Liu-shidi, he — um, he sent in his audit reports late again, so I have to go through those too and I’m really really sorry but whatever you have for me I can’t —!”
“Stop your babbling.” Shen Qingqiu snaps. Shang Qinghua’s jaw clicks shut so fast his teeth hurt a little. Ow.
He watches with wide eyes as his shixiong — who is now scowling heavily, nooo — begins to flip through the various stacks of parchment and scrolls that sit heavy upon Shang Qinghua’s desk. Too terrified to tell him that, actually, only the sect leader should be looking through those ones, Shang Qinghua remains quiet.
Really, nobody tells Shen Qingqiu what he can or can’t do. Those who have tried before are —
Well. They’ve all seen their sect leader.
“These.” Shen Qingqiu slips a smaller stack of documents out from the middle of one of the piles and holds it up. “The supply logs from the previous joint peak night hunting expedition. They have yet to be filed?”
“Shixiong,” Shang Qinghua’s eyes water in frustration, and he holds up his sleeve to cover them. “I meant to, I did! But — but when I was going to get to them, Qi-shimei came in with a cart full of delegated peak maintenance reports! She said if they weren’t done before noon she’d — Ah.” He shudders, peeks over his arm, and goes pale at the way Shen Qingqiu’s eyes have narrowed viciously. He hurries on, voice growing smaller. “I’d just finished them when Wei-shixiong brought me his backlog requisitions….”
He trails off, because the expression on his shixiong face has gone colder and colder the longer he spoke.
“Why haven’t you chosen to delegate?” The man demands from between his locked teeth. “All these disciples that you have, and you’re telling me you can’t delegate a single task to them?”
“Shixiong,” Shang Qinghua’s eyes water again and he sniffles pathetically into his sleeve. “Shixiong, I do delegate. This stuff in my office here, this is all the work only peak lords have the security clearance for. Everything else I delegate to my disciples, because I can’t… I can’t….”
Shen Qingqiu stares down his nose at him, and Shang Qinghua stops talking. He drops his gaze and listens as the man silently turns on his heel and stalks out of his office, closing the door with a solid thump.
He wipes his eyes with his sleeve and drops his arm defeatedly into his lap, frowning down at the water stains his stupid tears have left in the fabric. Silk is so fucking dumb, you can’t walk through a room without it picking up dirt somehow. It’s why he changed his peak robes to darker colors, because at least black doesn’t show where you’ve been all day.
And seriously, it’s just so much easier to scrub blood out of clothes that aren’t white or beige or pastel.
He shoves his paperwork to the side and folds his arms before him, letting his head thunk down on them with an exhausted sigh. The door opens slightly again and a head peaks in.
“Shizun?”
“A-Kao,” he mumbles into his arms. “I’m gonna die.”
His head disciple gives a polite sound of acknowledgement. “I’ll have someone prepare some of the spiced tea imported from that Eastern desert oasis, then.”
“I love you,” Shang Qinghua says fervently, and listens as his favorite disciple huffs a quiet laugh.
“Will return shortly.”
The door closes again, and with it, Shang Qinghua closes his eyes.
Jin Kao is true to his word, as always, and in fact brings a light snack of fruit and a pastry along with the tea. Shang Qinghua plows through it at record pace and is energized! He’s halfway through the requisition forms for Wei Qingwei when his door is slammed open once again.
He flinches. Taking a fortifying breath, Shang Qinghua glances up and immediately loses all color.
“Shen-shixiong is back!” He shakes, voice wobbling. “With — with Z-Zhangmen-shixiong, ah…!”
Shen Qingqiu stalks into the room, side stepping Jin Kao whose arms are laden with the empty tea set. The head disciple wisely flees into the corner, watching with a narrow gaze as the Qing Jing peak lord all but drags their venerated Sect Leader across the office to stand before Shang Qinghua’s desk.
Shang Qinghua trembles as they both loom over him. What did he do?! Shixiong, what he’s said before was completely reasonable! There was no need to go and fetch your overbearing ge!
Shen Qingqiu points a finger at Shang Qingh— oh wait, not him. At his desk. At the mountains of papers littering his desk.
“If you have time to relax and drink tea in your spotless office,” the second in command sneers at his superior, “then you have time to pick up the slack so that our shidi can do the same!”
Shang Qinghua gapes. He stares up at them with round, round eyes, uncertain as to what’s going on.
Yue Qingyuan, for his part, quails under Shen Qingqiu’s steely and unrelenting gaze. His shoulders are tense, and the way in which he looks around Shang Qinghua’s office with a startled look, only to then turn it upon Shang Qinghua himself, just screams ‘bro, you live like this?’
Not by choice! Shang Qinghua never asked for this, Yue-shixiong! The paperwork just never stops!
Shen Qingqiu pivots sharply, glaring down at him instead. Ah!
“What are you doing?” The man says. “Get up.”
“Ah?” Completely bewildered, Shang Qinghua only stares up at the man in confusion.
“Honestly.” Shen Qingqiu sighs under his breath — a sharp and stilted sound of frustration.
He rounds the desk himself and grabs Shang Qinghua by the upper arm, hauling him up from his chair and dragging him away from the desk.
“Th-This—?!”
“Sect Leader,” Shen Qingqiu nods at the desk. Yue Qingyuan only stares blankly at him, and so he sneers. “These forms must be finished. And the next stack. All by a peak lord — I’m taking Shang-shidi for a well deserved break, so I can’t do it, and Wei-shidi was the one to submit them in the first place. Of the four foremost peak lords of the sect, only you have time and clearance to do it.”
Shang Qinghua sways, shocked. If Shen Qingqiu didn’t still have such a bone-crushing grip on him, he might have even fallen. The other man steadies him immediately, and the sour look on his face sours even further.
Yue Qingyuan’s face is pale. “Qingqiu-shidi….”
“It isn’t as if you were busy with anything else.” Shen Qingqiu plows on past whatever refuting the sect leader was trying to pull. He shakes Shang Qinghua roughly by the arm, and Shang Qinghua rapidly blinks away the spots from his vision. “Look at our shidi, he’s nearly dead on his feet. Are you telling me that you would make him work more , when it’s already clear that he’s overworked?”
Yue Qingyuan pauses. He glances around the office another time, shoulders lowering in slow increments. His resolve is crumbling visibly to everyone in the office.
Shang Qinghua silently mouths ‘overworked’ to himself, stunned.
Finally, the sect leader sighs. “No, Qingqiu-shidi is right.”
Shen Qingqiu snorts. As if to say ‘of course I am.’
Yue Qingyuan steps around the desk and slowly takes the seat that Shang Qinghua had just been forcably vacated from. He eyes the stack of paperwork that are piled high, not just on the desk but on the floor and the shelves surrounding the desk, and an expression of regret eclipses his face.
“This shixiong had not realized Shang-shidi’s workload was quite so…” he trails off, trying to fish for the right word, and finally lands on, “heavy.”
“It’s the Sect Leader’s duty to ascertain that all those under his sect’s banner are taken care of. Those directly under his command even more so.” Shen Qingqiu sniffs disdainfully. “You have no excuse.”
Yue-shixiong bows his head. “No, this one does not.”
“I’m taking Shang Qinghua to Qing Jing to recuperate.”
“Yes.”
Shang Qinghua pales even further. He ducks his head down and glances over to the corner into which his head disciple had squirreled himself away for help.
Jin Kao stares back, an expression of smug victory on his face, and doesn’t say a single word.
This traitor! Unfilial disciple! Shang Qinghua takes back what he said about Jin Kao being his favorite. He’s replacing that brat as soon as he’s able to escape Shen Qingqiu’s clutches.
Shen Qingqiu yanks on his arms, dragging him out of the office. He cranes his neck around, and the last scene he sees before the door slams shut is Jin Kao setting down the empty tea set, picking up a large stack of papers from one of the various spots on the floor, which he then ferries over to the desk at which Yue Qingyuan has picked up the half-finished requisition, looking it over with a frown.
Huh. He’s never seen his head disciple look quite so intimidating before. The boy is practically looming over their sect leader with a dark expression.
That’s a little strange.
He doesn’t see beyond that, though, because Shen Qingqiu slams the doors shut again and drags him off his own damn peak.