Chapter Text
Tick, tick, tick, tick…
The Seat of Divine Foresight was largely silent except for the sounds of a ticking clock and the rapid scratching of Fu Xuan’s pen against parchment. The day had been getting long (longer than they had already been, since there was just so much to do), and nearly everybody aside from the guards that stood at the door of the Seat at all times had packed up and headed home for the night. The only person left in the cavernous room was Fu Xuan, sitting at the desk fitting for somebody with a stature and presence like Jing Yuan, and not the tiny woman that she was, made even smaller by the massive holographic chess board in front of her and the giant window behind her.
Tick, tick, tick, tick…
The sky behind Fu Xuan, outside that massive and excessive window, exuded such a deep and vibrant indigo that it was hard for her to face away from it. The stars that numbered into the thousands, peppering the sky like seasoning on an Aurum Alley delicacy, never failed to make Fu Xuan pause and admire the world that she lived in: a place full of beauty and color in every corner, with those stars always there to watch over her. It was a shame that she always had business to attend to that pulled her away from the beauty of the Luofu. She couldn’t remember the last time she was able to smell the wonderful fragrances of the many restaurants that lined the streets, to truly admire the sky and give it the time and space it deserved, and to revel in the sounds of the Luofu.
Tick, tick, tick, tick…
Her arm had been aching for hours at this point. Her fingers wanted to cramp up and give out, her handwriting becoming slightly more and more messy, but she told herself that she needed to at least get this one last thing filled out before she could begin packing up and heading home for the night. Of course, this “one last thing” she wanted to get done was one of the single largest and most complex documents she had on her docket, so she had been at this one task for nearly three hours. Her vision began to blur, and the characters on the page began to lose their meaning. Her writing began to slow down, and it took longer and longer for her eyes to focus on the lines of text she had to read. The muscles behind her eyes began to ache.
Tick, tick, tick, tick…
“I should finish this tomorrow,” Fu Xuan said to herself, standing up and feeling her legs complain at suddenly being forced to move after hours of sitting still. She figured that she was reaching her limit, a point where, if she were to continue working, her speed and efficiency would reach such a poor state that it would be quicker overall to go to sleep and carry on working tomorrow instead of trudging on. She began to pack her things—brushes, ink, and a couple of scrolls and books she wanted to take home just in case—and threw it into a bag that she threw over her shoulder. The sudden weight of the bag across her shoulder reminded her of how tight her shoulders were. She needed to do something to destress before she went to sleep, she figured.
Her walk home was quick. Even though she was short, she still had a quick stride and tended to speed ahead of taller people when walking alongside them. She did it unconsciously, of course, since a stroll through the Luofu almost always meant an important discussion was also to be had, but no matter how hard she tried, she found that she would pull ahead of whoever she was walking with. But under the indigo sky peppered with stars, she got to walk at whatever pace her legs wanted to carry her at, and so she zipped through the largely empty streets of the Exalting Sanctum.
You were just complaining about how you don’t get to appreciate the Luofu, Fu Xuan told herself. She slowed her walking gradually, until she stopped entirely, forcing herself to take in the world around her. She never spent time in the spaces between. To Fu Xuan, the world was made up of places she had to be, and when she wasn’t at one of those places, she was in her mind, planning out her day or formulating plans of attack or sorting out lists in order of most urgent to least. Because of this, she largely didn’t know what was around the Luofu, or what shops or landmarks adorned the streets she walked nearly every day. As she forced herself to plant both of her feet into the stone street beneath her, taking in the scenery, she almost laughed at herself when she noticed a games parlor that she had completely forgotten existed even though she passed it every day on her way to and from work. It was one of the only few store fronts that still had people in it, with a couple of tables filled with people playing celestial jade, backed by a warm glow of firelight that radiated through the admittedly chilly air which Fu Xuan was just now feeling, a wind brushing against her bare shoulders.
Fu Xuan shivered, and, before leaving, took a moment to examine the people that were sitting underneath the ornate awning, jeering at each other and slamming tiles against rickety tables and drinking tea. Many of the faces were unfamiliar to her, but she did notice one person she did recognize—not by face but by clothing, since her back was turned to her. A small woman dressed in her uniform of dark green and black slammed a tile onto the table, causing her opponents to groan at their apparent and unexpected defeat. Fu Xuan figured that Qingque had been at it all day, since the only time she stayed at the parlor this late was when she lost track of time, and she only lost track of time when she had been playing for a while.
She was a frustrating woman to work with. Nothing to her seemed serious. Every matter that she was assigned was seemingly able to wait for a round or two of celestial jade, even when Fu Xuan insisted that was not the case, and that her duties had to be completed as soon as she could. The only reason Fu Xuan kept her around in the first place was because she knew that she was capable far beyond what her demeanor and her performance records would suggest. In the rare occasions that Qingque was able to, or more often when she was cornered into doing work, she was actually quite good and regularly brought up some rather clever insights that never failed to impress Fu Xuan. The amount of effort she put into doing just enough work and nothing more told Fu Xuan that she was incredibly good at optimizing, and she hoped that one day, when her duties permitted her, she would be able to unlock the potential of that woman.
It also didn’t help that she was incredibly cute.
Fu Xuan had gotten to the point where she stopped denying the fact that she found her attractive. It had been quite a long time since she had found anybody attractive (the last one being a foxian who left for the Yaoqing long before Fu Xuan could ask her anything) but for some reason which was completely beyond her, the more she began to spend time working around Qingque, and the more she was forced to scold her for not doing her job, the more she developed a soft spot for her green eyes and the cute puffball she wore in her left pigtail and her general aura of chaos she exuded at all times. Fu Xuan thought nothing of it, or at least she tried her best not to. Work came first, and in recent months, more work than ever had been piling up on her desk, so there was less time than ever to think about such frivolous things like a love life. And besides, Qingque wasn’t her type.
A gust of wind rushed its way through the street to which Fu Xuan shivered. The light of the parlor flickered briefly, but recovered and continued to light the street with a constant, tender. and comforting orange. Fu Xuan took one last glance at Qingque, then continued walking home. Qingque had not noticed the master diviner nor had she noticed the wind. She simply continued to play Celestial Jade and drink alternating rounds of tea and sorghum wine.
It was quite late, but Fu Xuan did not care. If she attempted to go to sleep, she knew she wouldn’t have been able to anyways, so instead she sat on her porch overlooking the vast sea of clouds and the dome of dark blues and indigoes peppered with stars that sat atop it. In front of her sat a low table, and atop it was a tea tray which held a gorgeous ceramic gaiwan , a small glass pitcher, a strainer, and a couple of small pinming tea cups. Beside the tray, a thin yet elegantly carved piece of wood with a subtle curve sat, holding in it a small pile of tea leaves. In front of the tray was a stick of incense, which Fu Xuan lit while the water which she had set alight earlier heated up.
Her eyes were heavy, her head ached, and her muscles felt devoid of any strength. She could feel her fingers tingle and sting whenever her wrist moved incorrectly while preparing the tea ceremony, and her hands and fingers shook to a startling degree.
And worst of all, she wanted to cry.
She grounded herself with her breathing by taking a deep breath with her nose, letting the scent of the incense fill her nostrils and calm her, and then letting it out through her mouth, her posture relaxing every so slightly, her desire to cry fading slightly only to well up again which she controlled with yet another breath, back and forth like how the water on a beach retreats and advances against the sand.
As she waited for the water to heat up, thoughts of her day started to seep in her mind. Her thoughts would continue to drift towards topics of work and personal affairs and things she had to attend to in the morning, but each time they did, she returned her focus to that of her body: the aching she felt, the instability, how the clothes she wore felt against her skin, how the wind felt through her vibrant hair. She repeated this until she felt the water was hot enough. Before she stood up to grab the water, she took the lid off of the white porcelain gaiwan and guided the golden tea leaves into it. She then grabbed the water, sat down again, and poured it slowly over the tea leaves before placing the lid atop the gaiwan again.
As Fu Xuan went through the motions, her mind wandered. And although her mind flashed through thoughts of work, she found that a large majority of the thoughts she had as she counted to thirty before separating the tea from the tea leaves were about Qingque. She didn’t entirely know why, she had never had this happen to her before, but the wicked and mischievous smile of the girl who refused to do work stuck to the front of her mind’s eye. But she did not fight it. If that’s what her mind wanted to focus on, that’s what it would focus on as she poured the first brew of tea over the tea pets that sat on the tray and prepared water for a second brew.
“Where are those reports, Qingque?”
“Give me a minute, Boss!”
“I have already given you three days worth of extensions, what makes you think we have room for one more minute?”
“There is always more room for another minute.”
“You may always say there is room for one more until there comes a time where everything falls apart due to your insistence on ‘one more minute.’”
“Excuse me guys. Okay fine what do you want?”
“I am asking if you have those reports or not.”
“I got them started.”
“How much have you done?”
“I don’t know, I’d have to show you.”
“I can take what you have completed so far. There are other hold-ups in this project anyways, so you have extra time to finish these.”
“Thank you, boss.”
“Don’t thank me, I have nothing to do with this.”
“I’m going to thank you anyways.”
“Where is the work you’ve completed?”
“On my desk. Should be on it. I was working on it before I came here to play. I got bored really fast.”
Maybe it was that she was the most recent thing she had seen. The last person that Fu Xuan had seen that she had recognized was Qingque, so maybe her mind, needing something to fixate on that wasn’t work, stuck to her.
She continued to make tea and to think of Qingque, and she noticed that, as she poured the second brew of tea into the small cups and brought the fragrant red liquid to her lips, she was actually smiling.
I probably need to sleep, Fu Xuan thought. She let the rich taste of the tea wash over her mouth, and she felt her shoulders release nearly all of the tension that she had built up in the past couple of weeks. It was incredible.
She continued to make tea for quite a while longer, until her eyes became so heavy that she could barely keep them open. She didn’t even properly clean up after herself. She simply went to bed, letting tomorrow’s her worry about it.