Chapter Text
Jin Guangyao didn't normally hate the sound of paper. He also didn't normally feel so wound up when reading sheet music.
But this was a … a special occasion. This was a special piece of paper and a special piece of music.
It's utterly pointless to look at it, he already memorized it backwards and forwards and in two different rhythms and four keys, but he kept thinking maybe he would find his resolve somewhere in the musical notation.
So he smoothed the paper out over his desk, in his private room, his qin sitting just behind the paper, and put his fingers on the strings. Again.
Each note he struck made his heart settle, the familiar movements of the Song of Cleansing filling the room. He shut his eyes, and let his mind drift.
He almost felt Lan Xichen's fingers guiding his own, for a brief moment when his mind drifted lazily to a stop. He missed (with every inch of his heart and soul) the way the Lan Sect Leader sat so close to him when he taught the smaller man how to read music. How warm his proximity made Jin Guangyao's perpetually cold body. He missed his er-ge, whenever he was not there.
Jin Guangyao was corrupting this, too, like everything else he laid his hands on (Mingjue, Huaisang, fuck, all of Qinghe). This one tiny solace he had found in playing music would be another weapon soon, another sacrifice in the endless string of sacrifices that was his life.
Beneath his fingers the song changed, he changed it. He had made his bed, perverted Cleansing and now he had to lie in it and play for the audience of himself. He didn't put any power into the notes, not with no one here to direct them at other than himself. For all his self-obsessed, narcissistic self-loathing, Jin Guangyao wasn't stupid (which really was all he had going for him). He left most of his desire to tear apart his own body back in Qinghe, when he was sent away with a sword wound in his chest and a punctured lung that should have killed him, by all rights. His scrappy cultivation shouldn't have been enough to keep him alive.
The music sounded eerie, more so than he thought it would when he was only looking at the altered sheet music. Anything from a book called The Collection of Turmoil would, of course, sound eerie. Would Nie Mingjue notice how unsettling the song had become? It felt impossible for anyone to be able to overlook it. Perhaps the eeriness came only from his knowledge of what could happen if he put just the faintest wisp of cultivation behind the notes.
Like always, the thought tempted him briefly, like it did every time Hensheng came out of the curved sheath around his waist and the realization that his sword could wrap so easily around his own throat came and went (maybe next time).
But Jin Guangyao was tired, and sore, and cold (always) and in more than enough pain. His chest ached from where one of his father's vassals had kicked him to the floor not five hours ago. Without interference from his golden core, he would have at least one broken rib. Likely more.
As it stood, he was lucky enough to escape with an ugly boot-shaped bruise on his chest, another bruise on the back of his head where he hit the ground, and the words of his father ringing in his aching head, tinged with laughter.
"Yaoyao, don't be cross," he chuckled. He hadn't moved from his seat, not when his son hit the ground or whined in pain or struggled for a solid minute to get back up. When he could hide his pain, he would. When he couldn't, he would make everyone looking at him watch, and sustain himself on the generated pity or scorn until he was healed (like the leech he was).
The man who kicked him bowed and said some half-assed apology about how it was all in good fun. Jin Guangyao had bowed back, returned to his seat, made himself small and unassuming as he nursed a probable concussion and tipped the rest of his alcohol into the roots of a plant when no one else was watching.
After the pleasantries were over, and Jin Guangyao was alone with his father, Jin Guangshan sat his elbows on his knees and looked his son in the eye for the first time all day.
"So. Tell me about Nie Mingjue. He and Sect Leader Lan arrive tomorrow."
Guangyao nodded. "I can start soon, father, once I get him away from Er-Ge. I successfully retrieved the score I needed last time I was in Cloud R--"
Jin Guangshan had tossed up a hand lazily, cutting him off. "I don't care about the particulars, Yaoyao. Just give me results."
So he'd excused himself, thinking that he was (even more) a fool for believing that his father would care to hear about all the work he had done, about the carefully made plan and how little his son liked it. It didn't matter that he asked. All he wanted to know was that Guangyao was still working on it, that it was still in his mind.
"I don't care about the particulars."
Of course he didn't.
He still was fairly certain it was not safe to sleep. As a child he'd sat at the bedside of more than one of the brothel sisters, as she lay dizzily after a client had gotten too rough. He knew what recovering from a head injury entailed.
This was his own first concussion, as far as he was aware. He'd protected his head while rolling down the stairs of Carp Tower to avoid this exact same predicament. When he was tired, he wanted to sleep. Even the rats that lived in the lowest levels of the tower deserved that much.
He rested his hands on the strings to quiet the qin. It was the early hours, likely two or three away from sunrise.
Tucking the page from the collection of turmoil into his sleeve, he stood up, brushed himself off, and placed his hat back on his head. If he stayed here, his bed would only keep calling to him.
Pacing up and down the front stairs of Carp Tower when no one was watching was one of his favorite things to do, counting the steps and remembering how each one felt.
This, the very edge of the second landing, was the spot that broke his right shoulder, as well as his right arm above the elbow. It was where his body first impacted after missing the top flight of twenty-six steps completely (he hit the tiling so hard he was shocked the impact didn't leave a crater in the shape of his body, but there was no visible mark on that spot then or now). He broke a rib at the same time, and cracked his hip, the whole right side of his body lit up in agony. Then the next noteworthy step, eight down from the previous, was the one that broke his rib on the left side, because he had tried to stop his momentum instead of giving in and rolling, like he should have. Which he did, after, in too much pain to try and stop himself again. After that, he remembered how he'd rolled without further injury beyond aggravation of those already there, until he hit the last stair and rolled across the ground and broke his right arm again, this time below the elbow.
The old injuries hurt, still, but it was good practice at hiding pain. Not that he needed more practice. His feet always ached. His head usually hurt. His right side prickled and tingled at seemingly random intervals. He was cold.
He was used to it.
(Maybe he hadn't left as much of his desire for self-harm in Qinghe as he thought)