voidtreckernet | Jelly day 16

Who: Xingchen and you!
Where: Kitchen, dining car
When: Jelly 16, on platform day, today
What: Helping assemble a belated birthday party!

[With his vision and sight returned, Xingchen discover a simple joy of learning to cook again. To see food, working with food and utensils in the kitchen, he can feel being more useful. Wearing an apron, the kitchen is starting to smell really good, but he realized he needed help]

Hello? Hi, everyone. You know, I not good at aligning the days with the calendar, but I realized my birthday is actually last week on the 25th. While it was belated, I was exhausted from the last mission. I don't celebrate my birthday for years from where I'm from, considering I lived in poverty, so there wasn't much to eat.

I would like to assemble a lunch and dinner, a birthday party today. I haven't baked a cake yet, but this is where you can help. You can meet me in the kitchen. I'm looking to assemble ice cream as well.

If you like to eat, come a little later today to join me. It's on me and my treat.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He pokes his head into the kitchen dining car that night, attracted to the scent of whatever's wafting free, and having been running on overstimulation and overwhelmed since standing on the platform earlier that day.

The blue hoodie is familiar in the sense of new familiarities, recognised as a symbol of scant meaning but some guiding purpose. He's already slipping inside with a cheerful, "I see we're on the same team, but you hardly look like you're cleaning," starting in on easy banter that doesn't have to mean anything as awareness starts to catch up. He stops, surprised in spite of himself: he'd seen Xue Yang alive and well earlier, even after having watched him achieve the opposite of either state months ago, in the haze of Yi City. This shouldn't be that different, but Xiao Xingchen had been... Xue Yang's wholeness would in some future life be probable. Xiao Xingchen's would not have been.

He hesitates, lifting a hand as if to debate if he should be holding both palms out to stave off some realisation or not, instead stumbling into a confused, unbelieving, "Xiao Xingchen?" Another pause, and an awkward addition of, "Shishu?" over that of daozhang. The fact the man wears no bandages over eyes that are certainly present is yet another layer of confusion, to the point he wonders, am I seeing things? A continuation of a question he's been asking himself all day long.

Their last encounter is tragic and unfortunate. They met once. When he was alive trying to capture the criminal delinquent Xue Yang. The last time they met, he was in a coffin in Yi City, resting forever. His soul was broken in fragments. Xue Yang has no way or any skill in his cultivation to repair it, so he seeks the help of Wei Wuxian.

It was surreal to someone once dead alive again and doing well. When he sees his nephew approach, making eye contact, he has easily taken him for the other one who accompanies his husband.

He smiles brightly with a look of recognition. "No, I'm not cleaning, but I am on team blue with you. My dear nephew are you here? I'm cooking and baking a cake to make up for my birthday. If you like to help, you could, but I heard you weren't good at cooking."

With the gift of sight, he can also see his expression of confusion. "Yes? Is something the matter? Are you all right? Do you need to talk?"

One meeting, then an extended view of his corpse or his life through A-Qing's eyes, when she still could see, is something else altogether. Seeing him hale here and so... so something, what words was he supposed to use? It wasn't like he even knew his martial uncle well, only by reputation and technicality. The whole of circumstances around his kindness being part of his undoing was tragic; and he'd seen it all from that outside perspective, A-Qing not innocent herself, per say, but no harm visited and Xue Yang...

"... No, no! I'm fine, it's just been an eventful day, hahaha..." His laughter is weak as it trails off, and he shrugs past the confusion of it all, latching onto: "Ah, celebrating your birth? That's--" Nothing he can say is common to him, but it's a nicer thought, celebrating one's life over one's death. "That's nice. Really nice."

It's not his story, either way. He shakes his head, finally moving further inside the kitchen car. "I have no idea how to bake, and I can cook... if anyone's been poisoned lately!" Not reassuring, but exactly true for the time being.

"If you say so." He can't help but feel worried. "If there is anything I could do to help, I'm glad to help. You brought my eyes for me, so I must repay back in kind."

Since Xingchen definitely thinks that his nephew on the train is also this one! He smiles brightly, "Yes, we're celebrating my birthday. I cooked this meal and baked this cake for every crew member and passenger on the train. You are definitely welcome to eat and have a slice. I heard you like spicy food, so I can add chilli peppers for you."

Even more information that he can at least start slotting into place. Him, or more his other self, had helped return... or bought back? What in the world did that mean? He smiles, feeling at a loss, and just shuffles further in. "Hah, uh, no, that's fine, I don't need anything special."

If he was introduced to siracha sauce, on the other hand, he would be a happy, happy man. Hesitating, he lifts up his empty hands. "It's just, well, you know. I'm kind of your other shizhi. Or the same one, just... I only arrived today, and he—who you're thinking of—has been here."

He tilts his head, trying to follow. "Your other shizhi?" He listens, trying to follow his story.

"So, you arrived today on the platform while my other nephew the one that I know..." He halts as his brain nearly crashed. "How many nephews I have? I have one."

Gathering his thoughts, so terribly confused. "There's two of you? Or twin brothers? I have two nephews?"

Wei Wuxian can't help it—he laughs, brightly and with a shake of his head and two shaking hands. "Just one, my parents only had one son, but we're, I don't know, you've been here longer, you obviously have. Lan Zhan told me sometimes people show up here twice, I have to assume we don't all remember the same things. For one, I look like me. I've never changed."

Wei Wuxian here has, and while it's not something so startling, he's still shorter and prettier than he'd been prior to whatever happened in their parallel and diverging lives. Wei Wuxian himself doesn't know. "I suppose it's like being twins? There's a thought to horrify most the people we know."

"You met Hanguang-jun, that's good." Upon listening to that explanation. "Oh. I see...it's the train. This could be an anomaly of the multiverse, so now there's two of you from different stream of time. So you're the same nephew I knew and had met before I gave my eyes away...and after."

He trails off and halted a few moments, considering Xingchen is very sensitive on the subject of his past. He trusted his nephew most of all to understand him.

"I know of your mother and father. I remember, it doesn't seem so long for me, but it has been many years. They're good people. Very kind. I missed them a lot, a great deal. Imagine the very thought of having two of you! She'll be very happy and proud of you. I know I am."

He's not sure what to say to that in the end, because as Xiao Xingchen had said before, he knew of his mother, but had never met her. Not hard to understand when at one point, before his death and Wei Wuxian's return to the world from a place of nothing, they'd been of an age.

Still, they share a master, and share, perhaps, a certain kind of thinking. It's enough to be touching, though here he rubs at the back of his neck, smiling with lips hiked up higher on one side. "Thank you," he says, because it's better to say, then waving it off after with his other hand. "But I don't know that I'd claim there's so much to be proud of. It's really... I'm glad to see you, shishu. I'll leave you to your cooking—I tend to get... spicy when I'm involved."

His grin now is far less awkward, and he waggles his fingers in a wave before ducking back out of the door to head into the carriage down. It really is nice, but he's not mentally ready for any deep conversations, he realises, not with his martial uncle, and not about his parents. The ones he can't remember more than in the vaguest sense of an impression, traveling a road, laughter, and the donkey he road, mother at his knee, father leading the donkey.

Jelly day 16

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