Chapter 3: Splinters and Splashes

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Ping skipped lunch today; he wasn't feeling hungry, though he did grab an apple to take with him. He walked through the camp, marveling at the quiet; with everyone eating, the only sounds were the occasional burps and the wind ruffling the tents.

He found himself walking automatically to the stables to visit Khan. He hadn't ridden him in a while; perhaps they'd go on short ride to the ravine and back. Ping could shoot arrows from his saddle, a skill in which Shang had commented on about his natural ability for.

Shang...

Ping frowned when he thought of the captain. He didn't usually frown when the older man came to mind, in fact Ping suddenly felt a lot brighter when he did, but recently...

He felt like Shang was avoiding him.

When they ran up the mountain each morning, Shang would usually run next to or near him; now Ping couldn't get close to him, whether it was because Shang was way in front or shifted away. And even in archery; when Shang made his rounds to check their aim, he barely looked at Ping's shots; he didn't even look at PING! The same with hand-to-hand and sword training; Shang never met his eye and offered only brusque words of encouragement, when before he would show Ping exactly what he meant.

Ping frowned deeper in concentration. Before WHAT? When had Shang started acting so...weird?

Ping was so deep in thought he wasn't aware that the stable hand—a man named Yuu a few years older than Shang—was feeding the horses until Ping walked straight into the water basin for the horses, splashing the drinking water on the dirt floor and soaking himself.

(POV change)

Shang walked behind the first row of tents after his meeting with Chi-Fu. The recent memory made him boil.

"You think they are ready for war?" Chi-Fu sneered, looking down at the sitting captain like a teacher to a student. Shang glared at him.

"They've completed their training with flying—"

"Ha! 'They've completed their training.' Those boys are no more fit to be soldiers than you are to be captain. We move out when I decide me move out, and not a day sooner."

Infuriated, Shang stood up, toppling over the stool. "Listen! You can't—"

"Careful, Captain," Chi-Fu said slowly. "Your father may be the general, but I am the emperor's adviser. And by the way," he added, swiping the tent flap open, "I got that job on my own. You're dismissed!"

Shang angrily left the tent after uselessly knocking the flap out of the way.

Now he made his way back to his own tent, far away from the pompous, useless, son of a—splash. Shang paused when he heard a ruckus coming from the stables.

He ran over to the wall and gazed in through the small opening of a window, seeing Yuu laughing almost uncontrollably, back up against the wall and hands clutching his sides as tears ran down his eyes.

Shang's eyes widened when out of the large water basin rolled Ping, clothes sopping wet and hair hanging down in loose, drenched locks. He licked his lips and shifted for a better view and then turned away, cursing himself. For almost three days he had managed to keep a distance between himself and Ping. He thought that if he kept away from the soldier, he'd be able to make these unnatural feelings evaporate.

But it just got worse.

He couldn't mock-fight Ping without calling it off after a few minutes because his pants got too tight; he couldn't talk to him for too long without slipping up and embarrassing himself; he couldn't even look at him for fear he would start staring. Which he did. Several times.

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