Blood Cultivation

what counts

Jiang Cheng had a storm on his face when he approached, which while perhaps a normal sight to most, was something that Lin Meili had had the pleasure of not seeing too often when she was in his company. But Wei Wuxian was with him, so maybe that was the reason. When they were close enough to speak without shouting, Jiang Cheng shouted anyway, but they were alone in the gardens and anybody who heard them knew well enough to stay away.

"Lin Meili," Jiang Cheng said without preamble, "would you mind telling me why my nephew suddenly has the gall to joke about being an orphan? To his da-jiu's face?"

Meili hadn't expected that to be the source of Jiang Cheng's current displeasure, nor for him and Wei Wuxian to appear to be agreeing? On something. Even where Jin Ling was concerned, they usually agreed but argued like they didn't because that was how they communicated.

"It's a little bit unnerving," Wei Wuxian added, his customary carefree smile a bit tarnished on his face. "Jin Ling is usually much more defensive whenever anyone brings up his parents and he hasn't brought them up himself in a while, either."

"I think it's the joke that he made some weeks ago." Meili knew that sounded bad. "It wasn't a very good joke, it-, wait, I can explain. Will you let me?" She held her hands up in the air when the storm only threatened lightning in response to her words. "There's a bit of a story."

"So tell it." Wei Wuxian sat down on a rock and leaned back on his hands. "I like stories."

Jiang Cheng said nothing.

"Right." Meili started to pace a little, remembering the details. "So, we were having breakfast one day when Jingyi and Sizhui were visiting, and Jingyi was complaining that I spend much more time in Lanling than I do in Gusu. Sizhui was trying to get him to calm down. Jin Ling said I could have more than one home, that "even though Wei Wuxian lives in Cloud Recesses, it doesn't mean that Lotus Pier stopped being his home. He just has two of them now," and Sizhui smiled, which tends to shut everybody up," Meili watched Wei Wuxian try not to show how affected he was by Jin Ling's words and continued.

"He threw a bun at Jingyi and Jingyi said that he has no manners, and Jin Ling said, "I'm an orphan, what do you expect?" which kind of knocked everybody out a little and then Jingyi said "what do I expect?" and there was a tussle and it was mostly forgotten." Meili smoothed her robes for something to do with her hands. "At a later date, I was supervising them drinking well-watered liquor and Sizhui was talking while eating and Jingyi was pretending to scold him and then Sizhui said, "I'm an orphan, what do you expect?" which made Jingyi start crying and so everybody was focused on him but I knew they all remembered what was said the next day by the way they were looking at each other."

Jiang Cheng still said nothing, but Zidian was remarkably quiet as well.

Meili plunged ahead. "Then on a separate nighthunt, I was tugging on Jin Ling's hair and he said I should act my age and I said, "I'm an orphan, what do you expect?" And this time we all took a minute to acknowledge it and then Jin Ling said, "Well, it's true. We're all orphans. Who cares?" and if Jingyi says he didn't start crying again, he's lying, but we were kind of all crying. From then, we just kept saying it at different times and it became something of a way to interrupt a moment. Whenever there was a feeling someone didn't want to process or discuss right there, they'd just bring back the "I'm an orphan" line to excuse their behavior and because the rest of us understood, we'd just go along with it. And I think at this point it's much more a statement of fact than a grievance.

"It's similar to how when one of us doesn't know how to comfort the other over something, or we can tell that they don't want to be comforted, we'll just say something to make them angry or upset, so that we're the reason for it instead of whatever was hurting them from the inside. "I'm an orphan" is just a fact, it's just a little bit of truth that we're more comfortable with now. We say it to distract from what we can't or won't talk about because it's something that we can. Perhaps it started as a terrible joke, but it's our joke. It knits us together, just like talking about breaking someone's legs." Meili crossed her arms. "You can't tell me that it's not code for "I love you" at this point."