Beiji

Chapter 5 (Pt. 1)

Wan Xue was so out of sorts from the whole matter that he went back and checked that the door was locked several times before finally removing his clothing behind the screen and sinking down into the steaming hot water. He didn't own a tub, so he had taken few true baths in his life, and now he leaned his head back, his hair floating across the water, as he enjoyed the warmth.

He wasn't sure how long he stayed like that before he even bothered to wash himself, but by the time he was finished, the water had cooled considerably. It was still warm, just not steaming the way it had been. If Meng Yuan wanted to bathe...Wan Xue thought to himself that it would most certainly be the first time he'd ever needed to use someone else's bath water.

He dried off with a towel, ignoring the bruises that still littered his body, and began to dress himself again in the same clothes he'd been wearing before. That was when he realized that the money pouch was missing. The papers were still in the pocket where he had left them, but...

Frantically, he searched through the clothes, then the rest of the room and even his pack before dressing hurriedly and yanking the door open in a panic.

Meng Yuan, who was standing just to the right of the door, looked up in surprise, startled by the abrupt motion, but still opening his mouth to speak anyway. Wan Xue's skin was barely dry, his clothes sticking to him and his hair dripping with water, and Meng Yuan forgot what he was about to say. Wan Xue ignored him, looking both ways down the hall, but his money pouch was nowhere to be found.

His breaths grew shorter, and to his horror, he found there were tears burning at the back of his eyes.

"What's the matter?" Meng Yuan asked. He was holding a pastry in one hand, and he used the other take Wan Xue by the arm and pull him back into the room and out of the hallway in case anyone else walked out at that moment. "Hey, what's wrong?" he asked, setting the food down on the table after closing the door. When he turned back, Wan Xue had his arms wrapped around himself, his eyes closed, and a tear leaked out past one eyelid, tracing its way down his cheek.

Still wet, his hair clung to his face on one side, and Meng Yuan thoughtlessly pushed it away from his face and tucked it behind his ear. Wan Xue didn't react, surprisingly, so he also wiped the tear from his cheek. When nothing succeeded in making him open his eyes, Meng Yuan turned back to retrieve the pastry, prying one of Wan Xue's hands from around his torso and placing the food in his palm.

"I asked for this downstairs. I thought you'd like it. I added it to the bill. I hope that's okay."

How could it possibly be okay, Wan Xue thought, when I no longer have the money to pay for anything? He didn't even open his eyes to see what it was Meng Yuan had placed in his hand.

"Oh, and you dropped these earlier," Meng Yuan continued. "I didn't get a chance to give them back before you pushed me out the door." Since it had worked the first time, he pulled Wan Xue's other hand away from where he was hugging himself and placed the key to the room there along with his money pouch.

Wan Xue's eyes flew open then, when he felt the smooth fabric of the pouch that had been given to him and heard the slight jingle of the money within. He felt as if someone had just stopped the world from collapsing, and he closed his fist around both of the items that had been returned to him and pressed them to his chest.

Meng Yuan had opened the pouch, of course, and seen all the money there, which meant that Wan Xue had lied the night before when he agreed that he didn't have the money for more than one room. It didn't make sense to him why he would have lied, why they couldn't have had more than one room and he couldn't have slept on a bed, but his thoughts on that were long gone, as was his intention of asking about his reason for doing so.