You owe me! [FINISHED]

Chapter 8

It was just a passing comment from his disciples asking why they haven't seen a hair of their Liu-shishu for months.

That had made Shen Qingqiu pause and thought for the first time how Liu Qingge's presence had become something so natural in Qing Jing Peak.

Shen Qingqiu takes in the state of his bamboo house, like he had when he first entered this place when he was still a new disciple.

A pair of teacups against each other placed in a rack on his small kitchen. Next to the rack we're tea leaves that was gifted to him, though majority of it came from Liu Qingge and his taste in tea was surprisingly decent.

There's also bandages and other medical items in one of the cabinets in his room that he had acquired from Qian Cao Peak. Liu Qingge has a knack for returning with an injury. No matter how big or small he'd make a beeline for him instead of the actual healer to patch him up.

Beside the bandages, there are medicine vials and jars containing things like Shen Qingqiu's own mix of soothing essence and some experimental concoctions.

The stacks of books by his desk that had records of different species of beast had increased exponentially due to all the creatures - whether dead or alive -that Liu Qingge brought him and the Peak Lord of Bai Zan was amenable enough to recount to him what little he knew of it when he had fought any beast. Sometimes they would even go out with some disciples to personally observe.

There's a new shelf containing all the random trinkets that was given to him. Most of them were useless other than the fact they are aesthetically pleasing in the eyes. Whenever Liu Qingge gives him some useless thing he'd give him something that was equally useless to the Bai Zan Peak Lord in return. He still remembers the complicated look on Liu Qingge's face when he gave him one of random books about spiritual cultivation.

There's even a few spare clothes of his shidi in his wardrobe. What was next? A spare bed? Thankfully he found none of that.

Shen Qingqiu wonders how he had not been offended at the growing invasion of his space. Even Yue Qingyuan doesn't have this much on his home and that man visits almost every day for no reason compared to Liu Qingge who only comes seven to ten times a month.

He glances out the window of his bamboo house. The sky of the early afternoon was dark foreboding the incoming rain. Shen Qingqiu decides that going to clean up all the mess.

———

In the morning, Shen Qingqiu startles awake, shivering in the cold morning air. Some snowflakes are even drifting in. He remembers closing it the night before, and gets up to close it, before he notices.

His house felt empty and devoid of sense of warmth just because he removed all those little things.

Shen Qingqiu stumbles back on his bed in a daze. He knows he wouldn't change his decision when he realized how much he had let Liu Qingge in his life and it's best that he build up his walls once more, if given the chance to do it again, but he didn't think it would be like this.

Unrelenting loneliness sinks into the spaces of his heart for the first time in ages. It feels like parts of his life had been ripped out, and it's ten times as devastating because Shen Qingqiu himself was the one who did it.

"Ah, damn it." He muttered to himself willing for himself to go back to sleep and forget it.

He doesn't.

Before the sun even rises he put back all the things that he had removed from his house. Only when everything was back in place was he able to go back to sleep.