Chapter Text
Shi Qingxuan is once again relegated to keeping watch. Isn’t she always?
She doesn’t mind it, because she doesn’t particularly like to fight. She can if she needs to, she’s stronger than she looks and she’s been training in martial arts since she could walk, but she’d rather not. To her, there’s no joy in inflicting violence, and it shows. Far too often she’ll let the target go or stop to pet a cat along the way and piss off every single member of the hunting party.
It’s better that she’s here. Even if she knows she’ll never make her parents proud like her brother does, it’s better this way.
Her parents always wanted her to be something she’s not, to be vicious and unwavering, but that’s not something she can do. She looks into the eyes of the vampires they kill and despite herself, she sees a person – not a human but still a person. Surely those things aren’t mutually exclusive? While she may be afraid of the things that go bump in the night, the things that her family hunt and are hunted by, she doesn’t hate them.
Her parents do hate, that much is clear from their malice. It makes sense, their lives were devastated by one particularly old, particularly vindictive vampire who left them both crippled, bedridden, and unable to conduct their daily lives without help. When she was younger she’d sat by their bedside and tended to them, listening to their vitriol.
The Shi family are born to protect humanity, their ancestors were protectors and they must follow in their footsteps to keep the balance. They only kill vampires, and vampires aren’t alive so it isn’t really killing. They have a sacred duty to the world which only they and other vampire-hunting families can fulfil. Blah, blah, blah.
She loves her parents, and she means no disrespect, but she’d be lying if she said she really believes this stuff with her full heart. She’s not like Shi Wudu, who has had a singular focus for his whole life. Her brother gains nothing but praise for all his achievements; for every vampire he extinguishes, their parents love him more, and Qingxuan becomes even more forgotten about.
She’s just waiting for the day they forget about her enough that she can go dancing at night instead of standing out in the cold while her brother and his friends slaughter an entire clan of vampires behind the door she’s guarding.
If she had been born a regular person, she would be at a bar right now, flirting with a pretty stranger, dancing and laughing, carefree. Or maybe if her brother hadn’t scared everyone off, she’d have settled down by now. Maybe she’d be cuddled up on the couch or out on a romantic date with someone who loves her because she’s her, not because of her contributions to a legacy she didn’t choose. She wants to make art and buy pretty clothes without considering how functional they’d be in a fight, and she wants to read poetry and just live without all of this nonsense.
Instead, she spends at least eight hours each day training with her brother in how to kill, and at least five hours every night procrastinating actually doing any killing. She has a few kills under her belt, sure. Nothing impressive though, a single digit number that makes her parents grumble disappointed comparisons between their children and wonder where they went wrong (aloud, so that Qingxuan can hear them of course). Most of them had been accidents, or her taking credit for someone else’s kill just to have one more on the tally to get Ge off her back.
Her mind always drifts when she’s left alone like this. She shakes herself and focuses on the night. She looks past her breath as it condenses in the air, checking for looming shadows or footsteps. The street is eerily quiet, almost too quiet. The only sound in her ears is the screeches and cries, thuds and slams coming from inside the house. Something feels wrong.
It’s like every house on the street is empty. Some lights are on, but there’s no movement. Nobody is stirring at the noises, not a single car has passed by, no sounds from people’s televisions playing in their houses. No voices of concerned neighbours. Why had it taken her so long to notice that?
She is frozen for a moment, looking around frantically before she hears an almighty crash from inside the house and a scream that sounds suspiciously like–
“Ge!” She bursts through the front door and is hit with the stench of blood and viscera. There are limbs all over the floor, she recognises the dismembered ones as vampire limbs by their glassy, pale white skin and the fact they do not bleed. But still, there’s blood everywhere. Human blood.
She scans the room to find Pei Ming bleeding, slumped against a wall and cradling his wound. It doesn’t look like a bite, there’s a stake in his stomach instead. An intention to kill, not to feed. Ling Wen is nowhere to be seen, and Shi Qingxuan panics for a moment because if any of her brothers' friends are to perish, Ling Wen might just be last on the list of ones she’d want to see hurt. She’s the only one of them she really likes, the only one who just efficiently kills who needs to be killed without the chase of glory or praise for it.
Her eyes finally land on her brother, a knife being held to his throat by a tall, pale vampire.
“Go, Qingxuan, get out of here!” He bellows, but she doesn’t move.
She’s not leaving them here, is he crazy? She can’t leave them all to die.
She’s looking around again for the third person she’d come with when the vampire holding the knife to her brother’s throat laughs, a terrifying sound that fills the stale air with malice.
“The little Shi,” They say, blade still pointed at her brother but looking at her now. A chill runs down her spine because now that she looks closer, she recognises them, she knows them.
He Xuan. The one who’d crippled her parents, who’d burned her grandparents alive. The one she’d heard about since she was a little girl, their family's own personal version of the bogeyman. If you don’t train hard enough, if you’re not strong enough, He Xuan will get you and you’ll long for a quick death.
Now they have her brother.
“Leave him alone!” Qingxuan screeches, and thoughtlessly charges toward the vampire, nimbly skipping over the dismembered body parts and aiming a kick toward their head. He Xuan dodges easily and she is sure she sees Shi Wudu roll his eyes at her attempt.
“Careful, it’d be a shame if my hand faltered and your brother lost his life, no?” He Xuan sneers and Shi Qingxuan is almost shaking with anger.
“Leave him, let him go. Take me instead!” She demands.
“Don’t be stupid, Qingxuan. Run!” Shi Wudu urges her but she ignores him completely.
She musters all her courage to step close to He Xuan and glare at the vampire with a face she hopes is as angry and terrifying as she feels at that moment. Even if her throat stings in a way that’s threatening tears, she holds it together. Just about.
“I won’t run, I would rather die than let them hurt you.” She addresses her brother, and He Xuan raises an eyebrow at her. They look perfectly calm and composed, almost amused by the situation. It’s all the more chilling to look this vampire in the eye and wonder if this was their plan all along. To wonder if they are enjoying this.
“How shameful! I’d rather die than have you sacrifice yourself for me,” Shi Wudu returns.
“Heartwarming,” He Xuan drawls, tone dripping with sarcasm. “What a shame I’ll ha–”
Their words are stopped when the hand that’s holding the knife is thwacked open and the blade clatters to the floor. It’s a blur, but she sees Ling Wen’s raven hair whip past her as she tackles Shi Wudu out of He Xuan’s grip. He Xuan reels backwards for a split second as Shi Wudu and Ling Wen find their feet again.
Where had she been hiding? Had she been watching this whole exchange waiting for the right moment? Maybe Shi Qingxuan shouldn’t have interfered at all, she should have trusted them to figure this out for themselves. But how could she? When the one they faced is the one who’s tormented their family for centuries?
“I wasn’t finished yet,” He Xuan snarls, as if the hunters had just done something very rude. There is a moment where nobody moves, nobody even dares to breathe. She's staring at He Xuan, watching them like they're a tiger waiting to pounce. And then they do just that, they pounce, inhumanly fast. Too fast for Shi Qingxuan’s eyes to follow, so she realises what they are doing a little too late.
She’s been picked up and tossed over their shoulder like a ragdoll and carried halfway down the street when she comes to her senses properly and blinks. He Xuan is running and the world that passes them is a blur, she tries to look for street names, for anything that might help her orient herself, but it’s all happening too fast. The world whizzes by her in lines like something from a cartoon.
She starts to kick, scream, and hit their back. With every ounce of strength in her body, she struggles to get free, she calls for help and screeches at the top of her lungs as her fists hammer against the vampire’s back and her knees make contact with their gut over and over as they run. A single one of her punches is enough to knock out a human, but she can’t get the right angle like this, and He Xuan is not human. They are one of the oldest vampires she’s aware of, and therefore the most powerful. Her efforts feel akin to a toddler throwing a tantrum, and she begins to cry, tears spilling from her eyes and running over her forehead into her hair as they carry her upside down.
“Shut up,” They warn her. She screams again in response and they slow down. For a moment, Qingxuan wonders if He Xuan has relented and is going to put her down, but no. The next thing she feels is the back of her head hitting hard brick and a ringing in her ears until the world fades to black.
Oh fuck, my head hurts… She thinks as she wakes. She tries to bring her hands to her head to rub the sore spot and soothe some of the aching but she finds herself restrained. There’s metal around both of her wrists and ankles, but it’s warm, like she’s been sitting there for a long time.
Her heart thunders in her chest and she panics, pulling and tugging at her restraints when she remembers what happened, and where she most likely is. She doesn’t scream, though, she just tries to wriggle free for an immeasurable amount of time until her heart rate finally slows again and she takes her time to look around. The cuffs on her limbs are cutting into her, thanks to her struggle.
It’s quiet here, so quiet that she can hear the ticking of an old clock from somewhere outside of the room. The room she’s in, in and of itself, is certainly not bad. She’d rather not be trapped here, of course, but she’s been placed on a mat to cushion her from the wooden floors. The walls are cold but they’re covered in an intricate wallpaper with flowers painted throughout; while she’s tied up on the floor, there’s even a large bed on the other side of the room, a vanity, and a side table with a lamp by the side of it. It looks like a luxurious bedroom of the past, and although there’s a thick layer of dust on some of the surfaces, it looks well preserved.
What the hell is this place?
Her throat is dry and she rasps the first time she tries to call out. The second time, she succeeds and hears footsteps coming down the hall.
He Xuan opens the door and she represses another bout of panic at the sight of them, looking exactly as they’d always been described.
Their hair is long, black and pin straight, tied back neatly in a ponytail that sits high on their head, not a single strand out of place. Their clothes are simple and black with bits of gold on buckles and hardware, and it contrasts strikingly with their pale skin. Their features are neither feminine nor masculine in any clear way, there’s a softness to their eyes and mouth but their jaw is exceedingly sharp and chiselled, their brow prominent. The only part that’s now missing is the traditional black robes they would usually wear, the ones they had been wearing when Shi Qingxuan had been captured. The ones that made it pretty impossible to determine anything about their body beneath it. Shi Qingxuan can’t think of a single reason why they’d want to hide the curves beneath their clothes, looking now at the clear lines of muscle leading to a slim waist and roundness of their chest, it seems ridiculous that anyone had ever struggled to tell their sex, but maybe that’s the point. The mystery of it all.
He Xuan is beautiful, but all vampires are. That kind of comes with the territory but He Xuan is gorgeous even for a vampire. It doesn’t make them or their presence or the fact she is trapped here by them any less terrifying.
“Please, can I have some water?” She rasps, pleading with her captor. This a small request, one that shouldn’t be difficult to fulfil.
He Xuan stares at her coldly for a long moment before leaving the room again in silence to return with a glass. Silently, they crouch down and hold the glass by Shi Qingxuan’s face, waiting for her to open her mouth. She’s frozen in fear for a moment and just eyes the glass suspiciously.
“I thought you were thirsty,” He Xuan prompts, tone flat, tired. They take their hand to her chin and press the glass against her lips. “Come on, if I wanted you dead I’d have a much more interesting method than poison.”
Shi Qingxuan relents that actually, that’s true. Why waste fresh blood by poisoning it? It wouldn’t make any sense, and she did ask for this. So her lips part and she gulps down the water in the glass, feeling the coolness of it soothe her throat and help relieve some of the general crust she could feel on herself.
“Thank you,” She says, when she finishes the water in the glass, and Xuan eyes her suspiciously before standing upright and stepping back.
Tension fills the air again as the pair stare at each other, Shi Qingxuan tied to the floor by metal chains and cuffs like a poorly behaved animal, and He Xuan towering above her with an ice-cold look in their eyes. The room hadn’t felt cold before, but a shiver overtakes her body and she curls her legs inwards, bringing her knees to herself. Her hands were still held out either side of her body or else she might have curled herself into a little ball.
“Do you know who I am?” He Xuan asks her.
“Of course,” Qingxuan responds. There’s a beat of silence.
“Good,” They say, pacing a few steps across the room. “And are you scared?”
Shi Qingxuan hesitates. She knows her answer should not be yes, she should put on a brave face, just as her family had taught her. She should hold her head high and make them proud by being fearless in the face of monsters. She tries, she tilts her chin up to look at them with defiance. “No,” She lies.
Her voice shakes.
“How brave,” He Xuan teases, their voice full of sarcasm. “Brave, stupid, or lying. As I can hear your heartbeat, I’d say it’s the last one.”
Shi Qingxuan swallows hard and tries her best not to cry even as her eyes sting. They’re right, she feels like her heart is trying to kill her with its speed and she desperately wants to run. She wants to turn back the clock and run when her brother had told her to, let Ling Wen deal with it instead. But, she can’t, she’s here, in what she can only assume is He Xuan’s lair, restrained and helpless. A tear tracks down her cheek and she catches He Xuan watching it fall, expressionless.
“What do you want?” She asks instead of answering.
“Why don’t you take a wild guess?” He Xuan replies with that sarcastic tone that’s starting to grow far too familiar.
“I don’t know, He Xuan! I don’t know why you do this to everyone I love, to me. I don’t know why you’ve done this at all! Why can't you just leave us alone? What do you want? What do you get out of causing so much misery?!” She shouts, but her voice is swallowed by the room, and between choked sobs, it doesn’t sound nearly as angry as she wants it to. It sounds desperate. “I’ve heard about you my whole life, how you’ve ruined every single one of my ancestors without any remorse. What reason could you possibly have for that? How can I know what you want if I don’t know why you want it?!”
He Xuan’s jaw is tensing as if she’s hitting a nerve. They clench their fists and then crouch down again to look Qingxuan in her tear-filled eyes with a cold glare.
“You think you’re the victim? You and your family who pride themselves on killing others?” They ask her, and the question throws her off a little.
She’s formed half of the thought in her head plenty of times before, she doesn’t like killing, and she doesn’t enjoy inflicting pain. The vampires they kill still have feelings, conscious thoughts, and sometimes even families. It was always justified to her since she was young, though. They may have thoughts and feelings but they’re monsters, they’re undead immortals who feed on humans for survival. She’d never questioned it much beyond that, because it’s all she’d ever known, but perhaps it isn’t right to be so proud of what they do, to be so unbelievably thrilled at the prospect of taking lives simply because vampires are a certain type of life.
She splutters and shakes her head. “I– I just don’t know why you hate us so much. There are other families, the Lings, the Peis, they all do the same thing as us, but you’ve never bothered them.” She says eventually, focusing on the matter at hand once more. “You said if you wanted me dead, I’d be dead already. So what do you want? I don’t understand.”
Xuan seethes visibly at this, clearly not appeased by her answer. They turn away for a moment and throw that glass she’d drank from against the wall in an act of frustration. Qingxuan cowers closer to the wall and tears roll out of her eyes even quicker.
“I’m sorry, just help me understand, I don’t want to die, please.” She sobs, resting her forehead on her knees in her best attempt to hide her face, sure that her makeup must be smeared everywhere by now.
“You don’t even know what you’re sorry for! Oh, your blissful ignorance. Do they really not tell you?” He Xuan demands and Qingxuan shakes her head without looking up. She doesn’t dare to face them.
There’s footsteps and Qingxuan braces for an impact, but one never comes. Instead, a hand fists in her hair and yanks her head back to look up at He Xuan from her place on the ground. They spit at her and it lands square on her cheek. She flushes and bites her lip to hold back another sob of fear and humiliation in her throat. “How can you be so naive?” They demand of her, as if she could have an answer, as if she could respond even if she did.
Shi Qingxuan is silent, holding back sobs as her limbs shake.
He Xuan loses interest in the answer to the question but holds her in that spot regardless as they speak. “Your family took mine from me, and now I take you from each other, one by one.” They say, coldly. “I bet they tell you I work alone, don’t they? They tell you I’m too evil for the other vampires to associate with? That’s not true. I had a life, I had a wife and a family and every room in this house was full of them. We kept to ourselves and we fed off those who were convicted of crimes, those who nobody would miss. And yet your ancestors still saw it fit to obliterate them all.”
He Xuan releases their grip on her but she can’t look away now, even as she sobs so much harder that her vision blurs.
“They tried to burn this place down, they tried to take me down, too. Do you know what they told me? That I deserved it. They said they did the righteous thing, that this was their duty,” He Xuan shakes their head in disgust. “So I vowed never to let a family like that continue unchecked.”
Shi Qingxuan doesn’t know what to say. Of course, she’d never been told this, her family knows her far too well. If she’d been told this she would have immediately sympathised. She’s the one who gets left behind on hunts because she doesn’t like to kill anyone, after all.
She’s stunned into silence, even her sobbing stops for a long moment and she just gazes at the other one with a look of confusion as she questions everything she’s ever thought about them.
“I didn’t… I didn’t know, I’m sorry.” She whispers.
“Would it not be the logical conclusion for this grudge? Did you never think to question it? What else could it possibly be when your family is the one who so regularly slaughters entire clans of vampires in a single night?” He Xuan demands.
Shi Qingxuan feels stupid because, of course, they’re right. It makes sense and she certainly should have seen this coming but she didn’t and she still feels blindsided.
“I- I- I’m sorry.”
“I don’t care if you’re sorry, Shi Qingxuan.” They snap and storm out of the room in a flash. The door crashes shut and when the sound has stopped echoing around the room, she’s once again left with her own thoughts.
She has no idea what time it is, there’s no clock in the room and the curtains are tightly closed. There’s no sense of whether she’s been laying here for a few hours or a day, she hadn’t thought to ask. Her arms still hurt from the restraints instead of being entirely numb, so maybe she hasn’t been here too long. Her head is throbbing and she feels filthy, desperately in need of a shower and a good meal because yeah, she’s also starving.
None of those requests feel reasonable to make after the bomb that He Xuan just dropped. It all makes so much more sense now that she knows this - her family killed He Xuan’s loved ones, so he kills or ruins them, generation by generation. If they have been living alone for centuries then of course they will fixate on this revenge, trying to fill the emptiness left behind. They’ll be reminded every time they walk past an empty room that used to be full, reminded of why it isn’t full any longer. Of course, they harbour a grudge. Why wouldn’t they?
She wonders if her brother knows about this grudge, about the reason behind it all. She wonders if her parents know. If the knowledge of it truly got lost between generations or if it’s something they decided to keep from her specifically, knowing she has a soft heart and independent mind - perhaps they kept it from her out of fear of rebellion. If they’d told her, would she have rebelled?
Possibly, but maybe not.
They had good reason to suspect that she would. She’s always challenged the authority of her parents, of her brother. For the most part, she behaves herself but there have been multiple occasions where she’d simply refused to take part in a hunt, or when she’d questioned their methods. Surely there’s a more humane way to do it? She’d asked, and she’d been met with the age-old response: Why should we care? They are not human. She’d shown enough distaste for it that she’d been relegated to standing watch instead. Still, she’d never left. Still, they are her family and she loves them.
She’d never had the courage to fully step away from where she came from. She didn’t know where she’d go, and she didn’t want to leave everything she knew behind, everyone she loved. Even with her daydreams of a normal life, she’d known in the back of her mind that she didn’t know how to do that or where to start. She was isolated by her family, she didn’t know anyone who didn’t know her parents or her brother, so where could she even go? They made leaving impossible, it’d be committing herself to a life of homelessness and struggle. Why would she do that when living in the family mansion and standing guard at night was so very tolerable?
Shi Qingxuan now felt sick because she’d gone along with it from the start. Her only excuse is that it was easy, that she had never been pushed to a point where it became too hard for her to remain. Even then, she’d always known in the back of her mind that something was wrong, that she didn’t like what her family did, but she’d never made any real effort to change it. Doesn’t that make her just as bad as them? He Xuan would be well within his rights to kill her, surely.
She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know if this knowledge could have changed anything, if she even has the capability of changing now. Is it all a little too late?
These thoughts storm through her mind until her arms do go numb from being held up by the thick metal cuffs and she drifts in and out of a nightmarish sleep. There’s no sense of time, the only indicator being that she gains a desperate urge to use the bathroom.
The door opens again, she has no idea how much later and she looks up to see Xuan enter the room again, this time with her cell phone in hand.
They silently walk over and turn the phone to Shi Qingxuan, her mind is not working clearly enough to understand why until the phone clicks to indicate unlocking and they step back to scroll through some messages.
“Shi Wudu has not even called,” They say flatly as they scroll through the notifications. “In fact, nobody has. It’s been eighteen hours, don’t they care?”
Qingxuan reckons with this, trying to hide her feelings as they flash across her features but failing tremendously. “Hahaha, of course, he cares. He’ll come, you’ll see. You’ll see!” She states confidently, despite her spiralling lack of certainty. “They have my location, and they know you took me. Why would they need to call?”
“You have Face ID active, I turned off your location before we got here.” They turn to look at her then, instead of the phone. Qingxuan looks away, unable to take the scrutiny. “That’s fine, we’ll just have to open the conversation.”
He Xuan approaches her again, and they are looking even harder. Thus far, they haven’t really even touched her besides a tug at her hair but Qingxuan still tries her best to shy away from them, cowering as they step closer. She can't move much, but she still tries. They take a sleeve of the silky blouse she’s wearing and with one sudden movement rips it off and throws it across the room. Next, their hand collects some dust off the floor and smears it over her arms. Shi Qingxuan doesn’t know what they’re planning, but she starts crying again, eyes screwed shut as she tries to will herself to stop being so fucking pathetic.
“Good, the tears will help. Now, just some blood,” He Xuan states calmly, their voice detached and cold, but the words make Shi Qingxuan finally lose it and she pisses herself in her jeans. The stain spreads slower than the smell and she starts properly sobbing with embarrassment. There’s no comment from He Xuan, but she feels the slightest prickle on her numb arm that she assumes is the aforementioned blood. With her arms elevated like this for so long, she can barely feel what they did so she dares to look and is surprised to find a short, shallow slash to her forearm that is surely bleeding plenty but doesn’t even look deep enough to scar.
“He Xuan, I-” She starts, confused.
“Pissed yourself? I know,” They retort with their jaw clenched tight. They wipe their hand through the blood trickling from the cut and smear it over her face, then her neck.
Shi Qingxuan is confused. They’re being… Gentle? Perhaps gentle is the wrong word, there’s no tenderness, but they’re certainly not hurting her. She stops fighting the restraints to get away from them and gives them a curious look instead as they finally wipe off their hand on their own thigh and step back to get a better look. “Be good and look miserable for the camera and I’ll let you clean up after.”
What is going on? Qingxuan can’t make sense of it. Apparently, her confused look is close enough to looking miserable, because He Xuan takes a picture and types out something on her phone.
It’s then that she realises what they’re doing. They’re staging a picture to send to her brother to initiate whatever it is they want.
“Why do you want him, not me?” She asks, looking up at Xuan with tears in her eyes.
“He’s clearly the only one who actually hunts. I’ve been watching you for years now. If I end up with both of you, that’s fine, but he’s the one I want. Why do you think I went in for him and left you outside unscathed?” They respond as if it’s obvious and Shi Qingxuan is stunned back into silence, her mind whirring.
“I’m still a vampire hunter.” Despite herself, she challenges the notion they have that she’s not worth pursuing. “I’ve still killed, and I train every day just like him.”
He Xuan scoffs, the sound echoes harshly through the room. “I’ve decided not to hurt you, are you trying to change my mind?” They ask, and this time their words really do achieve silence from Qingxuan. “Besides, not all things are equal, if vampire hunters were fish he’d be a shark and you’d be a koi fish. One is dangerous and the other is just there for decoration.”
Qingxuan’s mouth hangs open in an “o” at the insult. Under normal circumstances, she might have pointed out that this means they think she’s pretty, but this is He Xuan, they have her held hostage, and the implication of her being useless compared to her brother is abundantly clear. It wounds that part of her that she tries so hard to ignore, thinking if she pretends it isn’t real then it’ll all go away and one day she’ll just wake up feeling good enough. Fake it ‘til you make it, and all that.
“That’s mean…” Qingxuan mumbles after a moment and He Xuan just stares at her, as if asking: Are you for real right now?
Her phone chimes then and interrupts them, He Xuan unlocks it themself – they must have changed the password while Shi Qingxuan was busy crying – and their face goes cold at the response. “You’re calling me rude?”
They turn and show the chat history to Qingxuan. At the top of the screen, there’s the last message she’d sent to her brother, and “Okies!” with a bunch of heart emojis after it. Beneath, there’s the picture of her looking like she’s being tortured and the message: “You can have her back if you come to Blackwater Manor.”
Shi Wudu’s reply is what stings though, he replies only with a simple: “I won’t play by your rules.”
Her mouth doesn’t leave the “o” that it’d formed, instead, she breathes out a shaky breath and shakes her head. He must already be looking for her, right? He Xuan had given him a location so surely he’s just saying nice try to try to keep the element of surprise? He’ll be here in a few hours, she’s sure of it… Somewhat sure of it.
What if she’s got it all wrong, and he really does care far more about saving his own skin than he does about her?
The hurt is clear on her face, the one that’s covered in her own blood and tears. She tells herself she’s acting, so that if Shi Wudu is just trying to maintain surprise then she doesn’t give away his plan. She almost has herself fooled, but He Xuan is smarter than that, they’ve been watching both of them from afar for too long to be fooled.
“This room is yours. The door on the right will be locked, and the door on the left has a bathroom where you can get cleaned up. I’ll get you some fresh clothes and some food. You’re only staying here until your brother comes to get you and then you can go.” They say plainly and then reach to undo the cuffs on her arms one by one.
Shi Qingxuan stares intently at their face but she can’t read them. Once her arms are free she sighs in relief and stretches them out, bends them and soothes the sores the restraints left behind with a sigh. When her legs are free she just sits there in shock.
“Thank you…” She says quietly and He Xuan just nods once in response.
They’re turning to leave when she calls out once more: “Wait... I’m sorry to ask but do you have any uh, anything to eat?”
Xuan pauses to think for a moment. “Fine.” They say as if that’s an answer, and then they really do leave.
She gets up on wobbly legs and takes herself straight to the bathroom. It looks a little less ancient than the room she’s in, there’s a tub with a tap, a sink, and a toilet. If she’d placed the bedroom somewhere in the early 19th century, then at least this was more in the late 19th to early 20th. Namely, modern plumbing. She doesn’t know much about history, but she’s seen enough real estate to hazard a pretty good guess. While she longs for her high-pressure rain-style shower head more than ever, at least she can clean herself up.
She turns the taps to start filling the tub and dares to look at herself in the mirror. Although she’d seen the picture of herself and knew vaguely what to expect, she hadn’t exactly inspected it closely. She’s covered in blood all over her neck and face, her arm still dripping with it a little, too. Her poor beautiful blouse is torn and her eye makeup has left so many tear tracks down her cheeks that it’s become blurred into one mass of black and red smears all over her face. Her lipstick is smudged and her hair is a mess. She has quite literally never looked worse.
She washes her face in the sink with some soap and then tears off another slice of her blouse to use it to wrap the cut on her arm. It’s still bleeding a little, and she doesn’t need that infecting the bath water. When she finally strips down and climbs in, the strangeness of it all sets in. Mostly, the strangeness of the fact He Xuan seems to be actually kind of nice.
Sure, they’re not perfect, they kidnapped her after all, but she can’t help but think that things could’ve been a lot worse. She contemplates what she’s learned as she bathes the filth off her. Are they a monster and they’re just lulling her into a false sense of security so they can hurt her later, or are they just a person with a strong sense of vengeance that had been overly villainized in the stories? Are those two ideas even mutually exclusive? Does her brother’s response mean he’s not coming? Or just that he’s going to do something else to free her?
When she emerges from the bathroom with wet hair she finds a pile of black clothes on the bed, and a paper bag with some fruit and a single steamed bun. Insanely, imagining the ancient and mighty He Xuan in line at the grocery store, picking out some cherries for her, because they had no human food in the house to feed her with makes her laugh out loud to herself.
She dresses in the clothes, eats the food and falls back to sleep shortly after, completely exhausted. When she wakes, there’s an empty glass on the bedside table and her clothes and the mat are gone from the room, though the chains and cuffs are still ominously fixed to the wall. It’s more than a little freaky that He Xuan had been in there while she was sleeping and she hadn’t even noticed, but she just goes to the sink and gets herself some water rather than thinking about it too hard. It’s not like they’d hurt her at any point yet. There’s a cut on her arm but it’s no worse than she’d got while sparring with her brother or during training. She’ll be fine.
She gets some water and stretches for a while, opens the curtains, and paces the room. It’s almost sunrise, and she has a feeling she’d slept for a long time because that means she must have been here for at least a full 24 hours now.
She braids her hair, and takes it out, then braids it again. She does some stretches and paces the room. It’s around midday, probably, according to where the sun is in the sky. (She’s not all that in touch with nature, so she can’t be sure.) Her stomach growls angrily so she finishes the cherries that’d been left for her but they don’t hit the spot at all. She needs something substantial, protein, a real meal. But she won’t complain, not when the previous day's conversation keeps thrashing its way through her mind like a hurricane, destroying long-held beliefs and loyalties in its path.
Her brother still hasn’t come for her, there’s no sign of him even as it gets to the late afternoon. There’s no sign of He Xuan either, which also makes sense she supposes, as vampires are supposed to sleep through the day. That’s what she’d always been told… But there were lots of things she’d been told her whole life that she doesn’t necessarily trust anymore. She is starting to question everything, and the more she thinks the shittier she feels.
She needs to get out of here or else madness might kill her before He Xuan gets the chance.
To distract herself, she dampens a flannel from the bathroom and starts cleaning up the dust. It’s not exactly an effective cleaner but at least it’s getting rid of the thick layer of residue on all the surfaces. She tries to open the window and is surprised when it swings on its hinge, opening the whole way. It’s only a small pane that opens but in theory, she could fit through there. Perhaps He Xuan is just confident enough that she won’t throw herself off the fifth floor and risk her life, or perhaps they just didn’t think of her trying to escape this way.
Either way, she proves their lack of concern to be the correct choice as she simply enjoys the fresh air and the fresh clean room, watching the sunset. She sings songs in her head to keep her thoughts clear, and by the time there’s a knock at her door later, she’s found herself sitting on the windowsill, humming out loud.
There’s a brief pause before the knock but they don’t wait for a response before opening the door. He Xuan has another brown bag in their hand and tosses it onto the vanity before freezing in their spot. A look of confusion seems to pass over them as their eyes scan over the room, and Shi Qingxuan can’t tell if it’s because they don’t spot her immediately or something else.
“You… Cleaned,” They state, surprise ringing clear in their voice. So that was it, they didn’t expect her to have made use of her time here.
“It’s not like there was anything else to do.” She says simply, shrugging as she hops down from her spot by the window. “You didn’t even leave me any books or a TV – I may as well do something useful.”
He Xuan eyes her suspiciously but this time she meets their gaze, rising to the challenge. They’re not all that scary now that her hands are free and they’ve shown that at least in the immediate future, they’re not going to kill her. Sure they’re tall, impossibly fast and strong, and yeah they have sharp teeth that they use to quite literally consume people but with the fading sunset streaming in through the window, they don’t look quite so cold. Their skin doesn’t look so pale in the warm, golden hour glow and she thinks that if they haven’t hurt her yet, they probably won’t do it now.
“Oh, shit… Sorry, the sun!” She yelps and reaches to pull shut the curtains.
“It’s fine, it’s setting right now.” They say, eyes boring a hole in her back, she can feel them without even looking to check. She feels their scrutiny and it sends a chill over her, she wishes she could tell what they were thinking as their eyes pass over her.
“Right… The older you get the more you can start to like, handle a bit of sun exposure, right?” She asks inquisitively.
“I’m not going to answer your questions on the weaknesses of vampires.” Xuan snaps.
Qingxuan blinks at them, confused. Part of her wants to jump in and defend the fact that she already knew that, and it was a rhetorical question, but somehow she doesn’t think it’d go over particularly well. No need to brag about everything she learned about vampires while she learned to kill them, to the vampire who has her held captive for revenge. That seems rather silly. She’s in a much clearer state of mind than she was yesterday, at least.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” She says instead and crosses her arms defiantly as she meets He Xuan’s loaded gaze.
“Then how did you mean it?”
“I am just trying to be nice, and make conversation. I have nothing to do in here and I just want someone to talk to, okay? I’m bored. It’s making me stir-crazy,” She says, pouting, doing her very best to do all the things which usually get her exactly what she wants.
People don’t tend to say no to her, not about anything important. Surely she can convince He Xuan that they want to give her free roam of the house? And then she can look for a way out, or at the very least resist going completely nuts while she waits for someone to come and get her.
Someone’s coming to get her, right?
Right. Ge wouldn’t leave her.
She’s absorbed in her thoughts so deeply that she doesn’t notice the puzzled look that He Xuan is giving her, the narrowing of their eyes and the careful appraisal.
“You’re worried about being bored? You want to talk?” They ask incredulously.
“Well, when you say it like that you make me sound silly, hahaha…. I just… I don’t want to be stuck in here alone again, not for another day. Can you at least stay for a while?”
Is it pathetic to beg for company? Maybe. But He Xuan doesn’t seem so scary anymore, now she knows they’re not looking to kill her, not immediately at least. Qingxuan doesn’t do very well when left alone with her thoughts, so the centuries-old vampire seems like a much better option than more time alone.
He Xuan doesn’t move, and Shi Qingxuan smiles. She takes it as the closest thing to an invitation to keep talking that she’s going to get.
“I like the decor in here, it’s very vintage. Like, I can totally tell that this stuff is probably hundreds of years old but it’s still really pretty, which is cool.” She is babbling, but she doesn’t care. “Is the rest of your place like this? Can I see?”
“No.”
“Please,” She gives her best attempt at puppy eyes. “I won’t touch anything, I promise.”
He Xuan gives her a flat look, annoyed at her antics already.
“I’ve been cooped up in this room all day, I’ll go stir-crazy, my legs will stop working if I don’t use them,” Qingxuan says.
“This is a hostage situation, not a vacation. What makes you think I care if you go crazy?” He Xuan responds and, well, they’ve got her there.
Why should they care? She’s here because they want Shi Wudu, that much was made incredibly clear, so why would they need to give a shit about whether she’s comfortable and happy?
It’d make Shi Wudu come faster if he thinks she is in real danger, right? Then why hasn’t he come here already?
“How long has it been?” She asks, hoping that maybe her sense of time is just wrong and it’s not been a long time, and maybe then it’s fine that he hasn’t come to get her yet, maybe he’s just getting things ready.
“Coming up on forty-eight hours,” They say, and it makes Qingxuan sigh heavily.
Someone will be here soon. She has to believe that. The alternative is far too much for her to deal with in her current fragile state.
“Do you have any more food?” She asks, and He Xuan nods.
“I’ll get you some more later.” They say.
She immediately wants to try to distract herself from whatever that train of thought is, from the sting in her throat when she thinks about how it’s been two days and nobody has even come to get her yet. She could be dead!
“I-” Her voice cracks a little and she clears her throat. “Haha, sorry…” She laughs nervously. “Thanks… I think that might help. I think…”
She trails off because she doesn’t know what she thinks anymore. It’s all too confusing. It’s too much. She flops back down on the bed and stares up at the ceiling for a moment. There’s a cobweb up there that she’d missed, at least that’s one thing that can occupy her mind, she’ll have to save it for tomorrow.
“I don’t know, sorry.” Qingxuan sighs and rather dramatically drapes her arm over her face, thinking that way at least if she cries He Xuan won’t see it. She doesn’t want them to know that she’s starting to freak out, starting to think nobody is coming and that she’ll be here, alone, forever. Or at least until He Xuan gets annoyed or hungry enough to kill or eat her.
“I know this isn’t a vacation, I know. I just… It’s not like I’m trying to act all entitled but if I’m going to be stuck here for a while I could at least be like, helpful. It doesn’t have to be horrible for both of us. I cleaned this room in a day with just a rag and some soapy water but if you have supplies, I could do the whole place. I wouldn’t mind, really. It’d be better to have something to focus on, or else the time passes so weirdly and I don’t know if I’ve been here for a day or a week, it feels like a month. I’d do a good job, I swear, and I’ll mind my business. I just… I don’t wanna be locked up in here on my own,” She finishes because she needs to take some deep breaths. She’s got herself all worked up so that her breathing is shuddering and there’s a welling up of liquid in her eyes.
After a few deep breaths, she calms herself down enough to look up to them. He Xuan hasn’t responded yet, and sure, they’re not exactly chatty, but they usually respond to direct questions.
They see the spot that they were stood in by the door was is empty and after a quick glance around the room she confirms that they’re gone, and the door had been locked silently behind them. When did they leave? It’s been a while since she looked over to them, had she been talking to herself the whole time?
All her efforts in calming down are wasted because now that she’s alone again it takes less than a second before she’s turned her face into the sheets of the bed, crying quietly into the sheets, leaving behind a salty little wet patch where her tears fell.
She doesn't know how long it is before her door opens again, a few hours maybe. Long enough for the tears to dry but not long enough for her eyes to stop stinging.
"Come with me," He Xuan says simply, and Qingxuan scrambles to follow them out the door.
The halls are kind of like a maze, all ancient stone and winding between rooms. She stays close to them, following barely a pace behind.
"All exits have been sealed. You're allowed out of your room only at night when I'm awake. You should remember that I can hear you anywhere in this house, so try anything and you'll lose your right to leave your room," They warn.
She nods and then realises they can’t see her and speaks up. "Thanks."
"You can clean, you can eat whatever you like, and you can read whatever books you like from the library. Don't bother me when I'm in my office. If a door is locked, do not attempt to open it, you cannot just go wherever you wish in my home. If I call for you, you come immediately. Do you understand?"
"I've got it," She promises. It's pathetic but although her stomach is churning with nerves, she's just relieved to have somewhere to walk around and be a little bit freer.
They round another corner and get to a wide open space, it's plain but more modern than the rest of the house, clearly more lived in. Large heavy heavy-looking doors with multiple bolts close it off from the outside world, and there are no windows, but the dust is less thick and there are obvious signs of life in there. Most notably, a table laid out with a selection of food.
"Naturally, I have no need for a working kitchen, so this is all you get." They point at the table, and Qingxuan can't help but chuckle. Of course, they don't have a kitchen, that's such a fun little quirk. They must have gone to get this food just for her, which is kind of sweet if she conveniently forgets the fact that she's a hostage and simply more valuable alive than starved to death.
"Thank you, this is… nice." She says, trying a smile in their direction.
"This is pragmatic. Don't forget your place." They respond, but it doesn't manage to kill her smile.
They walk over to take a seat at the table and she follows suit, taking the seat next to them and tucking into some food. It's an odd assortment, but she's too hungry to be picky. There's an abundance of meat, all of is raw and none of it refrigerated, which she avoids entirely. Food poisoning is the last thing she needs. The fruit is very edible, but the oddest part is the assortment of tinned fish, instant noodles and other non-perishables. It's like they raided a butcher's shop and someone's apocalypse prep pantry. Half of this is useless without an oven or stove, but the other half is edible enough. She has barely eaten more than a few snacks over the last few days so even plain steamed buns seem like a welcome meal, and with fruit and some nuts too, she soon fills herself up.
"You don't eat meat," He Xuan comments as she finishes up a handful of grapes.
"I do, haha, but it'll make me sick if it's raw, and you said you don't have a kitchen." She reminds them softly, feeling far less tearful now her stomach isn't screaming out with hunger pains.
He Xuan looks thoughtful at this and she watches them from the corner of her eyes.
"It's okay, don't worry, I like fruit, too," She comforts. "Give me a couple of days and maybe I can figure something out. At least a way to boil water so I can make the noodles or something."
They give her a weird look that she doesn't quite understand, but her mood has been lifted significantly enough that she doesn't let it linger for long. She picks up a cherry and chews it thoughtfully instead.
"You really don't have a kitchen? When was the last time you had a human in here?" She asks.
"When my family was killed," They say after a pause long enough to set Shi Qingxuan’s teeth on edge.
"Oh… Sorry. I didn't mean to--" She starts but He Xuan has already stood up and is making their way to a door just off the main hall.
They don’t talk much, and they are certainly temperamental but they’re not so scary anymore. Not when they aren’t looking at her with murderous intent but instead with a coolness that says they don’t care if she lives or dies. They must care a little bit though, right? If they’re letting her out of the room? If they’re feeding her and making her more comfortable? Or perhaps it’s just wishful thinking, as Shi Wudu says, her naive need to see the goodness in the very worst of people.
"This is my office, remember the rules. The library is over there, if you want to start cleaning then the supplies are down that hall, third door on the right." They say, and with that, they're gone.
She’s left alone to wander the halls of the house, and she does as she’s told. She doesn’t open any locked doors, she doesn’t even touch things if she doesn’t know what they are. It’s not like she’s free, just the size of her cage expanding but still, it feels a little bit like freedom after having been in that one room for a day. Or was it two days? Two days, right?
It’s been longer than just a day, but if she dwells on that thought for too long she’ll start to dwell on how nobody has come to get her and then she’ll start to spiral.
Instead, she busies herself with stretching and walking around to acquaint herself with the layout of the place. A few laps around the house and she thinks she’s figured out where everything is, she thinks. Maybe. She at least knows where her room is in relation to the major places. There is even a kitchen, and just when she is about to call He Xuan a liar she tries using the appliances only to discover they all are very much not working and are all covered in a thick layer of dust. If she has to take a guess, the stove looks like it was from the late 1800s and had probably not been used since, if ever, it seems to be connected to a gas line without any actual supply. She has no idea what to do with that so she leaves it behind her, it’s as good as no kitchen at all.
The door to He Xuan’s office is still closed, so she starts idly looking through the food that is laid out on the table and sorts it into piles, things that she’ll eat, things she won’t, things that she’ll eat if she can figure out a way to cook them in this house that doesn’t have a working kitchen.
She meanders around and idly dusts things off while humming to herself. It’s so mind-numbingly boring that it makes her feel like a caged animal, but a little bit less so than before now that she’s out of that tiny room. It’s been years since she’s done any cleaning herself, her brother had long since given up on teaching her the value of hard work and allowed her instead to hire housekeepers, so she’s just mimicking what she’s seen them do before.
She misses her room, her bed with its silk sheets, her fridge with her water filter and her wardrobe full of pretty clothes. But, she reasons to herself that this isn’t so bad, that this isn’t forever and that He Xuan isn’t as evil as she’d once thought they were – or at least, they don’t want to kill her right now, they’re happy to have her as their own personal maid service instead.
When she finds a clock she takes note of the time and spends a few more hours singing to herself and wiping down surfaces she can spot with the most offensively thick layer of dust on before she takes herself off to bed. He Xuan doesn’t emerge, she doesn’t hear a peep from them in their office the entire night, not even when she takes herself to bed at 4 am.
Her dreams are horrifying, filled with viscera and screams and loneliness. When she wakes, she finds a glass of water and some bread on her bedside table, her door locked once again.
It’s still light outside but the sun is starting to dim, she guesses it’s the afternoon sometime based on the view from her window and she stares out of it longingly for a while as she braids her hair.
She can’t help but cast her mind back over what He Xuan had told her. She eats, and between every movement of her jaw, she wonders why exactly they’ve decided to let her live. The need for revenge is not one that she’s ever felt herself, after all, she’s always been intimately acquainted with the safety that befalls anyone whom Shi Wudu loves, but she understands it. He Xuan, in particular, seems to be utterly devoted to revenge, she’s not seen them do anything else, and they don’t even make any trouble in the world for anyone besides her ancestors. They’re never involved in the silly little power games that most vampires like to play, so why haven’t they hurt her yet?
She’s still a Shi. Surely to them, it shouldn’t matter which sibling is a shark and which is a koi fish.
Maybe they’re not as set on revenge as they seem to be, maybe they’re truly not as bad as her family would always say. Maybe.
She resolves that if anyone can convince them that her family isn’t so bad after all, it’d be her, she’s known to be the most charming in the family (not that it’s a particularly competitive race) and at the very least He Xuan doesn’t see her as a threat. Small acts of kindness, perhaps, will be the way forward.
He Xuan opens the door after the sun sets as expected, and Shi Qingxuan practically skips out to say hello.
“Oh good, you’re here. It really is so boring while you’re sleeping,” She says pleasantly.
“...” He Xuan replies.
“Anyway, look, I made you something. You can use it as a bookmark since you like books so much.” She hands them a piece of paper folded into a simple origami flower, nothing extravagant (she didn’t have access to the resources for something extravagant) but perfectly made nonetheless.
They look at her with an unreadable expression for just a few precious moments, and she thinks maybe they’re trying to figure her out. All too quickly the moment is over and they are turning on their heels to stride confidently away from her.
But still, they keep the paper flower tucked neatly between their fingers. Shi Qingxuan beams a bright smile as she follows them down the hallway.
He Xuan disappears into their office again immediately, and Shi Qingxuan sighs. This time, she focuses on the library, dusting the shelves one by one.
Some of the books are in languages she doesn’t understand and some she can’t even place the alphabet of - is that Cyrillic? Arabic? How many languages do they even speak? She finds plenty of very old books, leatherbound with yellowing pages and a typeface so tiny that is strains her eyes to even attempt to read them. Mostly textbooks, or ancient texts, scientific literature or historical recounts of major events.
Where’s a trashy romance novel when you need one? She wonders to herself.
The shelves stretch from the floor to the ceiling, and she figures out pretty quickly that the most loved books (the ones with the least dust on them and most creases in the spine) are always kept within easy reach. As she climbs up the ladder to reach the ones at the top, it makes her cough and splutter as the dust gets into her lungs. Gross. He Xuan desperately needs a housekeeper, how do they live like this?
She climbs back down the ladder and turns, about to go and fetch herself a glass of water when she spots He Xuan standing in the doorway. Or, looming, maybe looming is a better word. They’re tall and imposing and practically in silhouette due to the dim lighting of the library.
She laughs nervously, wiping her hands together to get rid of some of the dust.
“Hey, um… How many languages do you speak?” She asks.
“Why?” He Xuan counters.
“I just saw a lot of books in languages I don’t recognise.” She plays with her hair now, twisting it around her fingers, fidgeting just for something to do.
“Some of them are dead languages, not spoken by anyone anymore,” They say.
It doesn’t really answer her question, but it’s a full sentence so she’ll take the wins where she can get them. She smiles.
“That’s cool, where’d you learn them from?”
“Books.”
“Right, makes sense…” She chuckles, then sighs. “Do you wanna eat with me? I was going to grab something to eat now.”
He Xuan gives her another strange look with an expression that Shi Qingxuan can’t figure out, and they don’t answer, but no denial is as good as an affirmative to her so she loops her arm through He Xuan’s and pulls them to the food table.
She’s really not sure what gave her the urge to grab their arm, but by the time her brain was telling her “Hey, maybe don’t grab onto the vampire that has been killing off your whole family for generations and drag them to have dinner with you? What the fuck?” it was already far too late.
He Xuan looks confused, but they don’t get mad, so at least there’s that.
She chats to them over lunch, telling them about how she’s never seen so many books in one place, letting them know that she thinks they must be really smart to have read all of them. Especially the ones in different languages. He Xuan lets her know that the library contains only a small portion of the books they’ve read in their life, that they give the ones they don’t think are worth keeping away.
“Wow, so generous!” She beams at them, her mood escalating rapidly as she enjoys some of the fruit on the table. Fruit always boosts her mood, it’s like candy except it doesn’t make you feel sick if you eat too much.
He Xuan snorts, “Hardly, there’s just no point in holding onto things I don’t want.”
Shi Qingxuan smiles, and without thinking bursts out with: “Well, you must want me real bad, then! Hahaha!”
She’s laughing and they are giving her a weird look again and she’s not sure what to do with it all. She’s not sure how to react so she just keeps laughing.
“Y’know, because you’re keeping me here?” She tries.
“I got it,” They say flatly.
They stare at one another for a moment until Shi Qingxuan pretends to make herself busy eating grapes again. He Xuan continues to watch her, which, for some reason doesn’t freak her out as much as it probably should.
“You know, there’s not a lot of light in here but a coat of paint could really brighten the place up. Some warmer and lighter colours, you know? The peeling dark purple wallpaper with the wood is like, a vibe, but I read something once that said brighter colours can actually make you happier,” She says, changing the subject. She had read the thing about colours on someone’s blog, not in a book, but He Xuan didn’t need to know that.
“Hm,” They say, noncommittal and seemingly disinterested. Although, not disinterested enough to stop watching her.
“You’d just need to get me some paint in a colour you don’t totally hate!” She continues.
“Clean first, then we’ll see.”
Once again, it’s not completely a no, so she smiles at them again and they retreat to their office.
They’re pretty nice. All things considered, she’d expected He Xuan to be a lot scarier, when really they are just…. Quiet. That’s okay, she can talk enough for both of them.
She cleans again, all day, sweeping and mopping the floors. When He Xuan emerges from their office again they narrow their eyes at her.
“It’s time to go to your room, come on,” They say.
She sighs and nods, not quite tired enough to sleep yet - she’d have to lie there for a few hours, which means she’ll be overthinking again, and thinking is probably her least favourite thing to do.
Hoping to delay her loneliness a little more, she skips up to He Xuan’s side and nudges them softly. “Hey, do you have like, any other clothes? Maybe ones with some more colour?” She asks, tugging at the black shirt they’d given her on the first day. It’s dirty now, stained, and she’s concerned it’ll start to smell. Vampires have fantastic senses of smell, surely they don’t want her to smell either.
“This isn’t a shopping mall.”
“But like, surely you have more clothes. You are wearing fresh clothes! I can do your laundry for you, too.” She pleads with them, giving them her biggest roundest eyes in the hopes it’ll soften their icy exterior.
“Shi Qingxuan. This is not a mall or a summer camp or somewhere you’re making your new home. You’re my hostage not my new roommate, so act like it or else I’ll end up losing my patience.”
Shi Qingxuan knows she’s getting scolded, she knows that the words should hurt. They do, a little. She’d been trying so hard to forget about her situation that it’d almost worked, it would’ve worked if it wasn’t for He Xuan’s bouts of brutal honesty.
She’s still not afraid though, not like she was at the beginning of all this when she’d been captured and thrown over He Xuan’s shoulder. She’s seen their true colours now, their true intentions, and she doesn’t think they’re as scary as they think they are.
“I just didn’t want to smell bad, okay? Vampires have a strong sense of smell, if I start smelling like 5 day old clothes and cleaning products then it’s gonna hurt you more than me.” She retorts, voice not quite as bubbly and bright as before.
They push her into her room, not hard enough to hurt but certainly a push. The next day when she wakes there’s food, water, and a stack of fresh clothes at the side of the bed. She can’t help but smile to herself when she sees it.