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From the day she was old enough to dream, Ji Yunhe has imagined a thousand ways to die.
She doesn’t remember her parents, but she remembers wishing that she was killed like them, taken out on the spot. Golden arrows to their chests, she thinks it was, or maybe it was swords slit across their throats, dotting crimson freckles onto her chubby face. Please, jiangjun, she’d wailed, her mother’s blood on her cheek and her father’s on her jaw, with her too-small hands gripping onto one of the court soldier’s sleeves. Kill me! I don’t need this life anymore!
Fate had never given her what she wanted back then, and it does even less so now.
If her life in Wanhuagu was being taunted in a bird’s cage, then life in Beiyuan— no, just her Yunyuan— is the most beautiful kind of hell. In any other universe, she might truly think it to be a romantic getaway, if she could reach out a hand through a window without it being pulled back, or walk a hundred li in the snow and have enough time to make angels out of it.
Chang Yi, that silly fish… He’s always there like her second shadow, indented in every step she takes and every breath she exhales.
She wakes from her slumber and he’s standing by her bedside, as if waiting to confirm that she hadn’t fled from him in her sleep.
He summons up her breakfast, the medicine that grows more bitter with each bowl. With it, she has to eat her tasteless meals that are getting harder to swallow without throwing them back up. It’s not that they aren’t seasoned— she just can’t taste the differences between them anymore.
If Chang Yi doesn’t stay to go over his reports, he doesn’t seek any further conversation and leaves her, slamming the doors behind him. It’s those moments that make her feel the most like his prisoner— his interrogation on her health ends, and she remains to serve her sentence.
What else can she do but go to sleep and pray she won’t have to open her eyes again?
It’s a great life she has, isn’t it? Living her remaining days like a corpse walking within its coffin, screaming for the final nail to come. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say she haunts this prison of hers like a ghost, unable to pass on; but even a ghost is more fortunate than she is, able to float through these walls into the world beyond.
She’s tried to, of course. She’s tried everything. Blankets over her head, her face pressed into her pillow, accomplishing nothing but gasping, breathless sobs. Stripping her bedsheets to hang from, interrupted by her jailer’s footsteps— and if she’d looked any closer, she’d see the terrified flicker in his eyes. The charcoal pots she’d schemed for, only to have their red embers blown out. A jade hairpin to her neck, and the white-knuckled grip stopping her on her wrist.
All she wanted was to be the rotten meat on the skewer. Just eat me alive, Chang Yi.
She knew a thousand ways to die, and yet she couldn’t get close to completing one. Her foot was already a step past death’s door, but all she could do was accept being dragged back over the threshold day after day. To die on her own terms was the only choice she could make for herself, but even that was stolen from her.
What she’d done couldn’t ever be forgiven, but this… this seemed a little too cruel.
(But wasn’t she to blame for being the whetstone that had sharpened this knife?)
Once, she catches a star streaking across the swath of night. Foolishly and desperately, she makes a wish, shouting it to the barren lands below.
Meng Po, I’m begging you. Pour your soup down my throat and send me off. I’m tired. Grant this dying person their wish that was denied of them all those decades ago. Let me rest in peace.
***
“What do you think comes after death?”
Luo Jinsang’s hand wobbles. The half-filled teacup she’s holding shatters onto the floor. She flinches at the noise, but Ji Yunhe doesn’t, acting as if she hasn’t heard anything at all. She continues to sit patiently, waiting for her friend’s response.
“Yunhe, you—” Luo Jinsang jumps up, stepping over the ceramic shards to grasp at her hands worriedly. “What kind of stupid question is that? ‘After death?’ As if any of us will let you die to get the answer!”
Ji Yunhe smiles and brings a hand up to pat her head. “Ah, Luo Luo, I’m just asking, no need to get so anxious. Indulge me, won’t you? I’m curious…”
“No!” she exclaims, the knit between her brows getting tighter. “Yunhe, I won’t! You can’t make me! Look, I’ll leave right now, and you won’t get any words out of me!”
But even as she says as much, Luo Jinsang makes no effort to move. Her eyes are still wide and shining with barely-restrained tears, the same expression she’s worn every time Ji Yunhe has spoken about the state of her life. It’s almost funny how it’s never changed.
Ji Yunhe chuckles. She goes to smooth the knit out herself, her freezing hands brushing across her friend’s warm temple.
“But if I don’t have Luo Luo here accompanying me, how can I sleep well?” she says lightly. “If that Da Weiba-yu were to find out you were responsible for my lack of good sleep, I’m afraid you wouldn’t be able to visit me anymore either…”
“Don’t use that Daitou-yu to threaten me!” Luo Jinsang pouts, but the tension within her gradually eases at their banter. “He’s the reason why you’re like this!”
“Alright, alright, don’t get upset,” Ji Yunhe soothes. “It’s not his fault, I understand why he’s keeping me here, and I deserve it. If there’s someone at fault, it’s me. Just let him do what he wants. As long as I can see him, it’s not bad. Everything is fine.”
“Yunhe, look at yourself! Thin as paper, and you’re still defending him,” Luo Jinsang whines. “Turns out loving someone makes even the smartest people stupid.”
Ji Yunhe pinches her cheek affectionately. “Xiao Hudie, are you calling me stupid?”
“I would never, Yunhe!” she protests, sounding genuinely wronged. “But if the shoe fits…”
Ji Yunhe raps a fist on her forehead. Luo Jinsang yelps, batting her hand away.
“Whether or not I’m stupid, I can see right through you,” she snorts. “Don’t think you’ve changed the subject. I was the one who taught you all of your tricks, Luo Luo. The disciple rarely manages to fool their master.”
“Who’s your disciple!” Luo Jinsang scoffs. “I can recognize you as my master, but you’re my best friend and I’m your person, so I won’t kowtow and call you shifu! As for your question— I won’t respond to it!”
Ji Yunhe hums. “Then if you won’t answer, do you want to hear what I think about it? I’ve spent a while contemplating it, you know. We shouldn’t let my brain power go to waste.”
“What?! Yunhe, just drop it! I don’t want to hear you say the word ‘death’ again!”
“Sometimes,” Ji Yunhe sighs, “you’re even more stubborn than me.”
She stands up, walking over to the bed, and sits down on the edge of it. She watches Luo Jinsang’s expression wrestle with itself— she looks as though she wants to join her, but allowing her friend to immerse herself in fantasies of an afterlife goes completely against what she stands for.
A world without Ji Yunhe is not one she can bear to love, so she can’t die, not without taking her along too.
A beat passes. Luo Jinsang throws up her hands, mutters curses under her breath, then gets up and plops herself down onto the bed beside her.
“I knew you’d listen,” Ji Yunhe grins.
“Shut up,” Luo Jinsang grumbles back. “It’s not because I want to. I just feel like if I leave you alone right now, you’ll throw yourself out the window the moment I shut the door.”
“I considered it,” she replies cheerily. “But we’re not high up enough for me to get anything out of it but some uncomfortably wet clothes and an aching back.”
Luo Jinsang gapes at her. “You considered it— Ji Yunhe, you’re really so— let me tell you, if it wasn’t for me looking out for you all the time, you would have long been dead! I would hit you if you wouldn’t fall over from just one punch!”
At the empty threats, Ji Yunhe aches with fondness. How good had she been in her past life for her to meet someone like Luo Jinsang?
“Luo Luo, living among these rebels has turned you into a cruel tyrant,” she teases. “What happened to the delicate butterfly who fluttered around me and bothered me for spirit stones?”
“Me?” Luo Jinsang gasps, mock offense in her tone. “A cruel tyrant? Are you joking? There’s only room for one cruel tyrant, and it’s that jiaoren of yours.”
Ji Yunhe winces. “Ah. He’s… not mine.”
She’s selfish enough to keep the truth of her betrayal to herself, but not enough to lay a claim to him. She’d lost that right once she made her choice on that clifftop, cutting the red-thread tying them together clean from her wrist.
Luo Jinsang seems to think otherwise, fixing her gaze directly onto the jiaoren marking on her ear. “Uh huh, sure. I must be mistaken, then.”
Ji Yunhe doesn’t know what to say to that. There are her excuses: He marked me to keep an eye on me. He marked me to remind me that I’m his prisoner. He marked me because he had to, not because he wanted to.
But there’s also the smallest part of her that whispers: He marked me because he chose me.
Luo Jinsang notices the drop in the mood and immediately rushes to lighten it, her hands flurrying about. “Your— your question! I thought of something! I’ll— I’ll talk first, okay?”
Ji Yunhe nods. “Go ahead.”
“I guess… I guess that after death, it’s dark,” Luo Jinsang begins. “You wait in the darkness as a judge decides where to place you. If you’re entering the reincarnation cycle, soon you’ll find yourself with a bowl in your hands, riding on one of Meng Po’s boats to reach Naihe Bridge.”
“If you’re not going into your next life, it could be a land full of clouds and flowers and mystical creatures that you appear in instead. Or maybe a land with rivers of boiling lava and ferocious beasts, but they won’t eat you because you’re already dead and you probably don’t taste very good. But those places aren’t important!! It’s much more interesting in our realm, Yunhe. There’s plenty to explore and discover and spend spirit stones on, don’t you agree?”
“Luo Luo has quite the imagination,” she replies, the corners of her mouth lifting. “But there’s not much left in this realm for me. Even if there is, I can’t go and do it, with how… well. That Da Weiba-yu won’t approve of it.”
Luo Jinsang’s face crumples. “Yunhe…”
“It’s fine,” she adds. “It’s my turn to speak now. Luo Luo, do you still want to leave?”
Luo Jinsang hesitates, but eventually shakes her head. “I’ll stay.”
“Good.” Ji Yunhe shifts her gaze to the window, where the rest of her icy kingdom lies. “I hope that when I die, I’ll see the sea.”
When, not if. She knows her death as a certainty— within the unknown of the ever-changing, it’s the last one she has left. It’s a shame she won’t get to decide its details.
Luo Jinsang keeps quiet, but Ji Yunhe can hear the gnaw of her teeth on her bottom lip. If she keeps biting at it, it’ll tear skin and draw blood.
“It’ll be a boundless sea, next to sprawling mountains and a lush forest. There won’t be any frozen lakes or snow here, only the shining light of the sun. I’ll be standing on the cliffside alone, waiting for someone that will never come. Someone that I pushed away long ago, to the point of no return.”
“The air will be fresh and crisp, and I can speak without seeing the words form into frosted smoke. I’ll shout for the heavens and earth to hear: I’m finally, truly free! I will never be trapped again! I’ve held onto this heart and this body for too long, Lao Tianye! Now you can let me go!”
Her voice cracks with her hoarse declaration, and she turns back to meet Luo Jinsang’s eyes. The tears held within them have spilled over, painting her friend’s expression into drizzling rain.
“Yunhe, are you really so tired of living?” Luo Jinsang cries. “Isn’t there… you won’t at least stay for me? What about our island? What about the… the spirit stones that you owe me?”
“It’s not that I won’t stay with you,” she says gently. “I’m dying, Luo Luo. I’ve made my peace with it. There is simply no place for a corpse on an island as heavenly as ours. In fact, I look forward to the day I meet the sea, so that our island can remain pure and untouched.”
“But I— But I don’t want to see you drown,” Luo Jinsang sobs, taking her hand and clasping it tight to her chest. “Yunhe, you can’t drown! I won’t forgive you if you do!”
Ji Yunhe just smiles wryly and grazes a thumb over her cheekbone, feeling the salt on her skin, festering from the open wound that she’s created.
“It won’t be drowning,” she murmurs. “It’s when I will be able to breathe again.”
***
When Ji Yunhe dies, it’s not the sea that she dreams of, but the cliffside.
She doesn’t stand alone either. Among the crashing waves and misted fog, Chang Yi is in front of her, silent as carved jade. He gazes at her, and she understands, then, what she has to do.
“Da Weiba-yu,” she greets softly, “Actually, I wanted to tell you… I never betrayed you. But I didn’t dare to. For the bigger picture, I told a lie, fooling everyone and even managing to fool myself. I was just afraid that… afraid that everything I did was a mistake from the very beginning.”
“Making the decision for you was a mistake. Forcing you to leave was a mistake. Stabbing you on the cliff with my blade and breaking your heart was also wrong. Allowing this innocent heart of yours to be shattered into pieces was wrong. Allowing you, who was gentle as water, to become someone unrecognizable, was also wrong.”
She exhales, and it aches. “But what’s the point of saying all of this now? This relationship between you and me… has no way to turn back. Da Weiba-yu, forget me. Let yourself be free.”
She receives no response to her confession but the howl of the wind.
Her vision glows white. From one moment to the next, she is no longer on the precipice, with the sea within her reach. She is swallowed back into the snow-bellied pits of Beiyuan, the borrowed time in her body frosting over.
For once, this Yunyuan of hers doesn’t feel like a prison, but a liberation.
At some point during her drifting, she’s lifted a bone-wrought hand up to Chang Yi’s face. She’s lost touch with her senses for weeks now, but here in his arms, her blood runs with simmering heat. Her fingertips burn rough on his cheek, caressing it, and she can’t tell if the fire is his or her own.
This is the last time I’ll hurt you, Chang Yi.
Suddenly exhausted, her eyelids slip closed, her eyelashes wet with grief and guilt. Her hand drops to her side, withering into numbness.
Yunhe, she thinks she hears someone sing. Yunhe!
Of all the deaths Ji Yunhe has imagined for herself, this one is by far the kindest.