The Stone King's Lover (石王的愛)

Chapter 10

Wen Reian

2004 years after The Long Night

Sanlín City

<Cherry Tree Brewery>

After chasing lead after lead, Reian and Yi-jun had finally been directed to a tavern that the ghost-bride's fiancé frequented. With only two people there at midnight, the owner and a young man seeming to be two drinks away from falling over, Wen Reian carefully approached the latter...

"Excuse me?"

The man at the table could only be in his early twenties, but the shadows on his face and weary eyes made him seem much older. Reian's heart twisted at the numbness in the stranger's eyes. The emotional void was eerily similar to the energetic one that he felt from Xie Yi-jun.

"W-who are you?"

The boy stepped forward, bowing slightly.

"My name is Wen Reian. I know this might seem strange, but we have news of Mei Lumin. About what happened to her,"

The man's eyebrows drew together as his lips pursed into a thin line.

"I already know what happened. Now please, go away..."

Reian stood taller, "Did you know what happened to her spirit?"

The man looked at him again and this time his eyes held tears.

"What do you mean? Mei Lu's spirit-"

"Yes," Reian nodded. "We think she might be still bound to this world by something. Specifically, to the church."

Watching the man's reactions carefully, Reian could tell he believed him, even just the slightest bit...

"You think she's still here too, don't you?"

"It doesn't matter what I believe-"

"Of course it does!" Reian exclaimed. "If she can't move on, you may have the power to help her."

The man took another long drink of what appeared to be by color and smell, a kind of rum. Reian had never partaken in such a thing... for a disciple in training it was out of the question-

"Even if it was her, I wouldn't go. I... I can't go back to that place."

The man sat the drink down with shaking fingers, but before Reian could start up again with his half-baked reasoning, he heard a soft sigh behind him.

In his urgency he'd almost forgotten Xie Yi-jun. The King had been so silent and had no sense or color for Reian to detect. Startled, the boy stepped aside when the King pushed past him and approached the fiancé. The King sat down across from the man who regarded him with curiosity and fear, and Reian watched dumbfounded, as Xie Yi-jun suddenly grabbed the drink and downed it, the fiancé staring on in shock.

"What the hell-"

"Those are exactly my thoughts..." Yi-jun interrupted the stranger, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. "Exactly,"

"W-why?!" The man sputtered.

Xie Yi-jun remained so impassive that not even Reian could predict what he would do next.

"I'm thinking, what the hell? Why does this good for nothing get to sit here and drown in his pain, when I have pain too but I don't get to numb it with this shit you call alcohol."

Xie Yi-jun wrinkled his nose and Reian nearly gasped aloud at the subtle movement, while his ears turned red again at the King's loose lips...

Before the stranger could respond, Yi-jun continued.

"You see, I left my lover less than a month ago. I wake up to find he's been dead for the last seven centuries. What am I to do? I contemplated ending it all, drinking until I hit the floor, but I am forced instead to keep going in this pointless world in which I am nobody to anyone. And yet, I would do anything at all, for the chance that you have right now..."

All Reian could do was watch the exchange going on between the two.

The man looked hesitant to speak, "Chance?"

Yi-jun nodded. "My lover's been buried for centuries, his soul moved on, probably recycled so many times by now that he no longer knows his own name. If I was given the chance you have, knowing that his soul needed to be saved or set free, I would weep with joy. A chance to maybe see him again. And I could sleep at night knowing that he was at peace, instead of wondering where in God's name his soul ended up..."

Xie Yi-jun shook his head at the man, sighing.

"You think you're unlucky? No, at least you have a chance to say goodbye. My last words to my lover were; see you soon. My last words were a lie,"

The tightness in Reian's throat was causing tears to form at the corners of his eyes, but he quickly blinked them away.

He wasn't sure what to make of what Yi-jun had said, but he felt a profound sadness and homesickness in his soul at the thought of what the young King was going through in this very moment...

I wish I could feel his pain, his energy. I could maybe help. Why are his walls up-

"You... you were really asleep for seven hundred years?" The man said, and the King just nodded.

The fiancé paused, tears falling in silence.

"Mei Lu didn't even want to get married," he whispered. "But I begged her. She didn't like the idea of being surrounded by so many people, not to mention all the flowers they grow near the church. She's been frightened of bees since she was a child... she got stung once and it nearly... nearly...."

He wiped his eyes, sighing deeply-

"Anyway, I told her there would be no flowers. I promised her. Two days before the ceremony, she went to the church to pick something up. A wedding was happening that day and she didn't know. Hundreds, thousands of flowers. One sting. It's the most ridiculous thing and yet it was what took her from me... when I found out, I couldn't believe it. It was like fate telling me it was all my fault for asking her to do something that she feared in the first place."

Wen Reian felt like he was spying on some private conversation between the two, and yet Yi-jun suddenly motioned for him to come closer.

"Reian and his friends can help her let go of the fear that must be keeping her here, although I suspect it also has something to do with you."

"Me?"

Yi-jun stood and to Reian's surprise, the man followed his lead...

"If I died two days before my wedding and had to be bombarded by happy couples day in and day out after death, I'd probably act the same way. Come on,"

Reian was impressed and a little shocked that Yi-jun's tactic had worked. His speech had definitely been intense, but the fact that the young man had believed him and trusted him so immediately must be a sign that Xie Yi-jun's emotions weren't fully sealed off. Perhaps it was just Reian that couldn't feel them?

"Are you coming?"

Blinking, he met the young King's dark eyes once again.

"Y-yes."

Yi-jun's gaze scanned him entirely, as if checking he was okay, then he turned without another word and began leading them all back to the church. As worried as Reian was for his mentor and friends, he was perhaps even more worried by the words that he'd heard from the young King tonight-

"If I was given the chance you have, knowing that his soul needed to be saved or set free, I'd weep with joy. A chance to see him again..."

He must really not think I am Jin Songcai then, Reian thought. Because he's said nothing about it to me.