When Yue Xing stepped out of the study, his first thought was that he would surely collapse. The guard gave him a sideways glance as Yue Xing stood propped against the wall, his eyes fixated on the floor as if he was about to fold in on himself.

  Yue Xing pressed an awkward smile onto his lips, producing a sound that was neither a laugh nor anything intelligible at all. With his knees still all wobbly, he began the walk back.

  The rain had picked up again, though it was oddly soothing. It was loud enough to drown out most of his thoughts for the time being. And with the evening drawing near, the wind was cold enough so that Yue Xing didn't have the same luxury of cruising around the manor as before.

  Once he pushed open the door to his room he let out a relieved sigh finding it empty. With not a care for the early hour, Yue Xing kicked off his footwear and climbed under the thin blanket.

  It was incredibly cold. It was freezing. There was a puddle forming under the window where the frame came loose and the rain could freely wander in. It was slowly seeping between the floorboards.

  His heartbeat felt unbearable. There was something wrong with it.

  Yue Xing pressed his eyes tightly closed, but even then he couldn't shake Song Chang's face from his mind. He couldn't shake his voice as he told him he'd arrange something for him.

  Was Song Chang truly willing to teach him? Or was he merely doing so to save face in front of others? Yue Xing couldn't decide.

  The man seemed noble, in the honorable sense of the word. At first, Yue Xing had been terrified of him when he first arrived—well, he still was, if only a little less so. He couldn't have even begun to imagine what a noble lord of his position would do to someone at his complete mercy.

  But Song Chang wasn't horrible. Or if he was, then the man was putting on a very convincing act at least. If Yue Xing thought about it hard enough, he could convince himself that the man wanted to teach him out of the goodness of his heart, and not out of some profound form of prestige.

  The thought made a warm feeling spread throughout his chest. One that he hadn't felt in a very long time.

  The last person who tried to teach him something useful was Dage. Yue Xing remembered it well.

  He was just two weeks over twelve years old. The winter was already starting to settle in through the late autumn months, and there was an almost eerily serene silence that set over the village.

  Yue Xing sat by the stove, his thin, coal stained hands outstretched towards the flames. His mother had gone out with Huan-jie some one hour ago to go see the widow across the street. His father was caught up in work, slaving away before the hot kiln a few houses over, while Erge did his best to help him by tidying up the workshop in his stead.

  Yue Xing was alone in the house until the door opened with a loud thud and Dage’s form appeared in all his fuming and beaten up glory. Yue Tai was only eighteen at the time, but he had already seen his fair share of trouble.

  He was exactly what the aunties whispered about and called a ‘problem-child.’ A rude young man with a fiery personality, always angry, always fighting, never content.

  Yue Xing had adored Yue Tai ever since he was the tiniest little baby. Dage wasn't a bad person in his eyes, and he wasn't a so-called problem-child. Dage was nice, and caring. He tucked him in on the coldest nights and chased away the bullies with an incredibly fierce and scary expression.

  That afternoon Yue Tai was covered head-to-toe with mud. The boy stormed in, slamming the door behind himself and started mumbling to himself angrily. “Stupid Qin Zhi, just because Uncle Zhi is his grandpa he thinks he can get away with anything…” Dage grumbled, storming through the small home and finding a rag to messily scrub off the that had mud caked on.

  Yue Xing watched with big, blinking eyes. He was used to his brother's outburst by now. Mostly.

  Yue Tai discarded the rag, sparing Yue Xing a single glance and dropping down before the stove with a huff. “Stop staring.” he said gruffly, but the bite in his voice wasn't directed at his younger brother.

  Yue Xing still eyed him curiously. In the dim lighting his brother’s face was nothing more than a gray mush with a few streaks of yellow where the fire from the stove reflected.

  They sat in silence for a long while, minutes stretching on until they felt like hours. Just the crackling of the embers and their soft breaths filling the gaps between the silence. It was nice.

  After a good long while, Yue Tai spoke up. “You're a smart kid, Xing-er.” he said simply. Yue Xing blinked, once then twice, expecting Dage to elaborate. For a moment it seemed like that was going to be it, but then Yue Tai opened his mouth again. “The world is a horrible place for smart people like you.”

  To say he was shocked by his brother’s sudden words would have been an understatement. Yue Xing had no idea where Yue Tai was coming from. Dage continued anyway.

  “Everyone is full of malice. Everyone's always looking for people they can pin blame on, and the first ones they find are always the smart ones. Even emperors always get rid of their advisors and ministers first.”

  “What are you talking about?” Yue Xing asked, getting more and more confused by the minute. Yue Tai sighed, lifting his hand and messing up the younger boy’s fair, much to Yue Xing’s quiet protest.

  “I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think you're destined for great things, though that comes with great risks.” Yue Tai pulled his hand away, casting his eyes onto the fire, the embers dancing in the reflection of his eyes. “Although for now, I think it's better if you pretend you're stupid.”

  Yue Xing was completely taken aback. Him? Destined for great things? And if he was truly as smart as Dage said—which he didn’t feel like—, then why would he need to pretend to be stupid? Wasn’t it a good thing to be smart?

  “Dage…” he whispered into the silence between them, all those questions on the tip of his tongue, yet left unsaid.

  Yue Tai resumed talking as if he hadn’t heard Yue Xing speak his name. It was as though he was completely taken by the moment. He must have had these thoughts for a long time, Yue Xing pondered. It must have been nice to finally get something so heavy off his chest.

  “You've got a shy and meek personality. That's a good start. It makes you feel unimportant to most people.” He reached for the metal rake they used to poke the fire and stabbed right in the middle of the burning charcoal. “It's better for people to think they can use you, than to put a target on your back.”

  Yue Xing chose to remain silent for once.

  Yue Tai tossed the rake. He turned his head and with a grave voice he said something that Yue Xing could never forget from that day on;

  “The moment you stand out from the crowd, your life will become indefinitely harder. When that time comes, I won't be there to protect you anymore, Xing-er.”

  They didn’t speak for the rest of the evening. When their mother came home with Huan-jie, and their father arrived later that night with a dirty looking Erge, Yue Tai pretended that nothing had happened at all.

  But Yue Xing couldn't. He couldn't sleep that night at all. Yue Tai’s grim voice echoed in his mind, his brother’s heavy eyes burned into his memory. He felt dread creep up his spine, like something horrible was going to happen imminently.

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  The soldiers arrived the next day. With their polished, expensive armor and tall horses they looked down on the poor villagers when they declared their need for able bodied men to serve the empire against the attacking forces of Jihan. Yue Xing didn’t even know they bordered a nation called Jihan.

  His father and Dage were taken that day. Their mother had wailed and begged the soldiers not to take her husband and son, but they barely even spared her a glance among all the other women who were doing the same, already mourning their loved ones.

  When the war ended years later, some of the men returned. Most didn’t. Yue Xing never saw his father or eldest brother again. The memory of them lived on, in cold, stone tablets and ashy incenses.

  After that, Yue Xing could only ever think about the last words Yue Tai had spoken to him. ‘The moment you stand out from the crowd, your life will become indefinitely harder.’

  On that cold autumn afternoon, tucked under a thin mockery of a blanket, with teeth clattering and water dripping onto his mattress, Yue Xing decided he was more than willing to take that risk now.

  Yue Xing was done pretending he was a foolishly docile boy. While it was true that his knowledge was far behind that of most in the manor, that didn’t mean he couldn't learn.

  There was one thing that Yue Xing definitely was, and that was a fast learner. If Song Chang was willing to spare him even the tiniest bits of teaching, then Yue Xing would just suck it up like a sponge.

  The call came almost half a month later. Yue Xing didn’t even know where his head was while helping out Auntie Ye with the Mid-Autumn Festival preparations. To say the kitchen was a mess would have been an understatement.

  Amidst the chaos, Yue Xing didn’t even notice the girl named A-Fang standing over the threshold. It was only when he accidentally passed by her while carrying a basin full of water that the attendant called out to him, startling him so bad he almost dropped the basin again. The staff was already mad at him after doing it once before.

  “You! Yeah, you. Yue Xing, or whatever your name was. Come here.” The girl’s voice carried over even the clamor of the kitchen, stopping not only Yue Xing himself in his tracks, but everyone else as well.

  His face burned as he felt the stares on the back of his neck. Of course, the kitchen staff acted as if they weren’t being nosy, but they were horrible at pretending.

  He set the basin down, wiping the water on his trousers before he stepped over to A-Fang with a curious expression. “Do you need something from me?” he asked, fanning himself with his hand. The kitchen was way too hot.

  A-Fang frowned, huffing. “Not me. The magistrate asked to see you. Apparently he promised you something, or whatever.” A-Fang puffed up her rosy cheeks as if playing messenger between the lord and a servant was beneath her.

  Yue Xing wondered if she was always like this, or if maybe she was still angry at him for bumping into Song Chang all those weeks prior. In any case she couldn't have been that much older than Yue Xing, so he couldn't really understand why she was acting all high and mighty. She reminded him of his Huan-jie.

  “He did.” Yue Xing nodded, and a whisper rippled through the kitchen at his words. Yue Xing was sure that whatever rumors were circulating before were about to get a thousand times worse.

  A-Fang swiftly tugged him out of the kitchen, pulling him behind herself as they passed through the hallways. She hadn’t even let him change out of his stained robes in lieu of something even a little more appropriate for whatever Song Chang had apparently ‘arranged’ for him.

  Though study was the same as when he’d first visited it, the air that surrounded it felt a lot less charged. Song Chang was lazily painting strokes on a piece of paper before him, chin propped on the palm of his hand. Yue Xing wasn’t an expert in scholarly work, nor was he even remotely literate, but he was pretty sure that Song Chang wasn’t doing any work at all, and instead merely doodling to appear busy.

  A-Fang stepped forward, bowing and greeting the magistrate, something which Yue Xing quickly copied. After that, A-Fang left with a huff.

  Song Chang’s face lit up at the sight of him, or maybe Yue Xing was just imagining things. He was probably the man’s way out of a day’s worth or boredom. “Yue Xing. Come, sit.” Song Chang motioned to the opposite side of his desk, and Yue Xing could only hesitantly comply.

  “How have you been?” Song Chang asked. It should have been a simple question that came with a simple answer. ‘Good,’ ‘Fine,’ maybe even ‘Bad’ would have been sufficient answers, but Yue Xing found himself at a loss for words.

  Well, how was he?

  He was taken from home against his will, stuffed into a room with ten other people, forced to sleep under a broken window—he was pretty sure he was getting ill too.

  On the flipside, the people were generally nice. Sure, they gossiped behind his back, but they gossiped about everyone, really. Ye Huiqing was nice, like a warm blanket, even when she softly chided him for slipping up. Su Yan had promised him something of an alliance, a friendship if he dared to think so boldly. Whenever they passed each other in the corridors, the young man would always smile at him as they greeted one another.

  Even Song Chang himself wasn’t as terribly horrible as Yue Xing had imagined him to be. He had even given him a handkerchief and invited him to his study. He was beginning to suspect that the man felt similarly as bad about the whole exchange as he himself did. He saw it in the way Song Chang looked at him. His lips smiled, but his eyes were pitying him.

  Yue Xing exhaled, letting his lower lip go from where he worried it between his teeth without even noticing. “I’ve been… Well.” he answered with a hum. The answer seemed to please Song Chang, the way his shoulders slipped a little, as if relieved.

  “Good, that’s good. I’m glad.” the magistrate said.

  Song Chang pushed aside the papers on his desk, his drawing stuffed under a pile of scrolls. “I promised you I would help you out with your… Problem.” He cleared his throat, pulling out a fresh sheet of paper and a few neatly carved brushes.

  Yue Xing’s eyes widened at the motion. Surely Song Chang didn’t mean he was going to teach him himself. For the past two weeks Yue Xing had assumed that he would simply get him a teacher, probably the cheapest one, and then carry on with his life. But he should’ve known that no self respecting teacher would want to teach an illiterate teenager.

  “Why do you look so surprised?” Song Chang asked, looking up from what he was doing, which was— Was the county magistrate grinding ink?! Didn’t he have an attendant for that? Or a junior servant, a scribe? Yue Xing didn’t think that Song Chang would be this bored.

  “Nothing.” Yue Xing shook his head quickly.

  Song Chang finished grinding the inkstone, the scent of the dark liquid filling Yue Xing’s nose. It was oddly soothing. Song Chang dipped a brush into it before dragging the bristles over a paper to form a neatly calligraphed character, then another one.

  He blew on the ink before passing the paper over the table and placing it in front of Yue Xing. “Let’s start here.” Song Chang said, handing over the brush to Yue Xing as well. “That’s your name. Those are the characters for moon and star.”

  Yue Xing stared at the paper in his hands for a moment. Was that really his name? It looked so even and elegant, though he supposed that was fighting for what the symbols meant.

  He exhaled slowly, placing his sheet down on the table. The brush felt foreign in his hand. He tried to remember how Song Chang had done it. He looked so graceful when the brush was in his hand, and he wrote the strokes with swift precision. Yue Xing wasn’t sure his own crude attempts would come anywhere near it.

  He leaned in close to the paper, nose almost buried into the ink until the strokes were clear before his eyes. His first attempt could only be called horrible. Yue Xing was inclined to say that if they had let a common chicken into the study it would’ve produced similar, if not better results.

  He frowned, gripping the brush hard.

  “Not bad.” Song Chang said, which made him frown even more. Of course it was bad. And he didn’t need to be coddled, thank you very much.

  “It’s ugly.”

  “It’s definitely a start.” Song Chang smiled, pulling the sheet from him to take a closer look at it. Yue Xing couldn't see it well, but he was pretty convinced he saw the edge of Song Chang's lips twitch in a not at all well-concealed smile.

  “Write it again, let me see how you do it.” He gave the paper back.

  Yue Xing tried again. Then again. And again. He tried until the paper was filled with his clumsy attempts, and his fingers were soaked in ink.

  He could never get it just right and he was getting terribly frustrated. Song Chang seemed patient though, which was a blessing in and of itself. He gently instructed him not to grip the brush too tight and to mind his posture, or to pay attention to the order of the strokes. Who said this man was short tempered? He seemed perfectly content with Yue Xing messing up over and over again.

  After what felt like hours, Yue Xing managed to produce exactly one copy of the characters that were at best eligible. They weren’t perfect, that was for sure, but the progress was more than trilling. Even Song Chang himself hummed contently upon seeing the finished product.

  Riding on the high of success, Yue Xing wasn’t content. “Teach me more,” he said eagerly. Song Chang smiled, letting out a huff of a laugh.

  “All right, all right. What do you want to learn next?”

  “Everything.”