Chapter Text
Anakt Garden was beautiful in the way a cage could be beautiful if enough gold was laid over its bars. At first glance, it looked almost holy.
Endless stretches of white stone pathways curved through fields of anemones so vivid they seemed to bleed into the air itself, red petals trembling beneath an artificial breeze. Glass domes arched high overhead, their surfaces catching fractured sunlight and scattering it across the grounds in pale halos, so that everything shimmered faintly, as though touched by divinity.
The sky above was not a sky at all.
It was a screen—perfectly programmed blue by day, painted in careful gradients of lavender and rose by evening, stars appearing -once night arrived. Never a cloud out of place. Never rain unless scheduled. Never darkness deep enough to hide in.
Everything was curated, controlled....Even the birdsong drifting through the garden came from hidden speakers nestled inside the flowering hedges.
Rows of white dormitories stood at the perimeter, their windows identical, their doors smooth and seamless enough to resemble hospital wards more than homes. There were no locks visible, though every child knew the doors sealed automatically after curfew.The practice halls rose farther beyond, tall and silent as mausoleums. Their polished floors reflected performers at themselves with merciless clarity, forcing perfect posture, perfect movement, perfect smiles.
Everywhere, there were cameras.
Not obvious ones.
Those would have been kinder.
These were tucked behind flowering vines, hidden in carved stone cherubs, nestled inside the black glass eyes of decorative statues that lined the paths. They watched with patient, mechanical devotion.
The children learned quickly never to look for them.
It was easier to pretend they were not there.
At the centre of it all stood the oldest part of Anakt Garden: the performance pavilion.
Circular and vast, built from pale marble streaked faintly with crimson veins, as though the stone itself had once been forced to swallow blood. Its ceiling opened to the false heavens above, and its acoustics were impossibly flawless. A whisper there could bloom into song.
The children called it beautiful.
The older ones called it something else.
A waiting room.
Because everyone raised within Anakt Garden understood, eventually, what the flowers were fed with.
Not soil.
Not water.
But memory.
The countless children who had sung beautifully and still not beautifully enough.
Their names were erased from every record. Their ashes were scattered through the flowerbeds at dawn, so that each spring the anemones returned brighter red than before.
And so Anakt Garden bloomed endlessly—
lush and radiant and immaculate—
a paradise carefully watered with the dead.
For the children walking beneath its glass sky, it was all they had ever known.
Which was the cruellest thing of all.
"Lan zhannnn"
Wei Wuxian emerged from behind the tree, laughing like the kind of gleeful laugh a child has when they are clearly uncertain of any dangers, yet with a closer and apparent look could tell Lan Wangji that this Wei Ying has cried for at least an hour in my absence, curse that wen boy who won
" I missed uuu"
"Mn"
"What 'mn'? ya, I was here sitting, and you were only busy there doing whatever kind of thing ur grandest guardian was telling you... I thought of making or telling you something important before I go onto the carrier and yet look at you. A whole lot of stuffy face, you little fuddy duddy. You ignored me like you always do and went off to-Yyyyaaa lan zhan, you know how I miss you? Yet you go off when I want to tell you something I found out about... Hmph."
"Just tell me," said Lan Wangji, hardly able to hush the laugh he was about to have while looking at his beloved's (or better said, crush, but his childish mind prefers the former, he says it "sounds fancy" like that) angry, puffed-up face.
Wei Wuxian loved to babble about anything and everything about early humankind. It has been extinct for more than 3000 years, yet it makes his heart pace involuntarily fast when he speaks of it, as
isn't it weird how we were here before them, yet we are the ones to be put on stake? how fucking shith-
He has always been the rebellious kind, which is why his guardian, Madam Yu, has been unnecessarily abusive towards him. Even though the lad always used to go off with a smile on his face, a face of youth and glee was all one could see in his face, even after his brother had already been eliminated from the stage after 3rd round. He didn't want that to end like it; he even offered to go in place of Jiang Cheng, but again, when has his luck ever favoured him?
It was not hard for Lan Wangji to be able to make a stoic, emotionless face. He had been practising it since he was taken by his uncle and guardian, Lan Qiren, for not to mix his own actual feelings with the face he wanted to show off- to remain the cold-hearted nonchalant chick boy or whatever
Lan Qiren was known for a utilitarian view of humans, for he held verry refined and wealthy demeanor and was associated with the "upperworld".
His best human-pet is
Lan Xichen (brother of Wangji)
and L-
"-an zhan, you know, once upon a time, mankind had religion and believed in something like god....they believed that which could not be solved by human strength, was the Will of the Lord. They also believed that the entire universe revolved around the Earth.
"Mn..I have heard of them."
"Yes, yes! From the moment humanity left the universe, we all have seemingly forgotten about god's presence. It is said that humans thought that whatever was unreachable, places one can't reach, that connected with the sky was... where the 'gods' lived. "
" Ridiculous"
While the anakt garden is marketed as a music-specialised kinder garden or a peaceful boarding school, it is actually a high-security training facility designed to grow humans as pets for the Sunshot competition.
Walking across the artificial beta fishes, Wei Wuxian closed the distance between him and Lan Wangji and did his smile that could calm even the worst of tempers.
"Lan Zhan, if belief in god is human, if all I can do as a human is to believe...
Then you, my dear, are my God, my universe"
Lan Wangji stood confused for a few moments, then, without missing a beat-he huffed and whispered
"Ridiculous"
