TIAN GUAN CI FU Fan fic stories

THE GHOST OF PUQI VILLAGE

CHAPTER 1

When Xie Lian had found out he was getting a housemate, he hadn't quite been sure what to think.

It's not like the house is big, after all. It looks like it was probably an old shrine before a previous owner bought it and added an extension that expanded out from the back. The entry room is sparse, a kitchen and dining area on one side and a surprisingly large bathroom with a huge tub in the room just off to the left.

Out the back, there's a little corridor with two bedrooms on either side and a small sunroom, which Xie Lian suspects was probably a playroom for the previous tenant's kids, but which now has been turned into a general living room with a beat-up sofa and a TV that's probably about fifteen years old. Xie Lian doesn't even use the second bedroom, hasn't even been in there since he moved here, so there probably is space for someone else, it's just...

Jun Wu hadn't even asked if he was okay with a housemate, which he'd tried not to get annoyed at. Instead, he'd sent a strangely worded email telling him that he'd found someone to rent out the spare bedroom in the house at Puqi Village, and that he'd see him when he next came by for the rent payment.

Xie Lian had heard no more of it until the morning that Hua Cheng moved in, waking up early in the morning to the distinctive sound of someone moving their stuff into the room opposite his.

Hua Cheng is absolutely not what he'd expected. Puqi village is out of the way, miles from the nearest town. It's suffered from the classic issue many villages face; that of their youth leaving for the bigger cities for better jobs and lifestyles.

Xie Lian is the oddity for wanting to move here.

He'd expected maybe a middle-aged man, someone who was likely stepping down from the more labour intensive farm work and thus was wanting to downsize his living quarters.

Xie Lian was not expecting six-foot-two of utter beauty, inky black hair and porcelain skin, pale despite his obvious profession as a farmhand. He's well built, naturally lanky from his height but lean. His toned muscles are obvious through his shirt, and not to mention the fact that his breeches leave nothing to the imagination.

He's fairly sure farming breeches aren't supposed to be tight.

Either way, he looks like he could throw Xie Lian through a brick wall if he wanted to, and Xie Lian would probably let him.

And that smile. Sometimes it's a smirk, other times it's a genuine smile, but all of them are accompanied by a glint in his eye that makes Xie Lian feel like he's intimately sharing an inside joke with Hua Cheng. He could drown himself in it, in that playful grin and the endless abyss in those cheeky black eyes.

And look, the point is, hot housemate aside, he does actually like Hua Cheng. He's nice, and easy to get along with, treats Xie Lian as though there's nothing that he wouldn't do for him. Most of the time Xie Lian doesn't think he deserves to live with someone who is so good, and the rest of it he spends basking in how warm Hua Cheng makes him feel.

Xie Lian had honestly been a little concerned at first, worried that having a housemate who spent the better part of the day out in the fields and the rice paddies would mean he would come home covered in mud and track it through, but Hua Cheng is always so clean, and Xie Lian really likes how he smells. He's not sure if it's a subtle cologne or simply just Hua Cheng, but it's a clean smell, reminding him of cotton clothes hung out to dry on a windy day mixed in with something earthier, like freshly pulled pine needles.