Chapter 1
The Stairs Came Calling
Pain erupted throughout his body like a stream of river finally breaking through a dam, lasting second after second rooting through to his chest where power once surged giving him strength and life. He remembered those days where he was incapable of anything like a baby bird fallen from its tree.
A strained cough echoed in his ears as blood fell from his mouth like a pitiful waterfall. His eyes fogged up stinging and as he heaved he didn't stop his chaotic footsteps. His hand placed at his chest was to stop the blood from his chest, but he could still feel the warmth of his blood seeping through his clothes. Without thinking he continued his movements. He refused to-
"Shizun," a flat voice reached his ears, stopping him just before he began descending down the stairs.
His legs shook every time he took a step to face the one calling, catching multiple wine-like eyes as they merged into one.
Those eyes got closer, eyes belonging to his second disciple, who stepped towards him slowly, unafraid. In his disciple's left hand a round glowing orb shined brightly only dimmed a little by the darkness of blood its coated by. In his other hand Juéshì Zhǔzǎi, the sword personally gifted by him was hanging at his side like an airy cloud.
Gasping with a sharp breath, he spoke, "Wh-Why?"
His disciple, a human, stopped his movements five long steps in front of him. His eyes shifted away staring into the grounds of their sect, ashamed, not towards himself but towards him, his Master, his teacher.
"I can't let you destroy Xiao Shidi." The flat tone of his voice changed into a soft like tone and yet as his disciple returned those wine-like eyes to him there was nothing but contempt. "Not Like Da Shixiong."
His face scrunched up in disgust. Formed at the thought of his other disciples.
"Goodbye-" He gurgled caught of guard as his disciple, now standing in front of him, looked down at him with that continued contempt in his eyes. Juéshì Zhǔzǎi had swiftly gone through him like butter. "Goodbye Shizun."
He spat out the blood trapped in his throat onto his disciple's face and like dust on his shoulder he was pushed off, descending, falling down the endless stairs, darkness taking away all the pain that he had brought on himself.
^*^
"-Qiji!"
"Jiang Qiji!"
Jiang Qiji jumped up from his desk, chair falling backwards at the force. His heart thumped loudly in his ears. His voice cracked in response to the one calling his name. "Ye-Yes!"
He rubbed his eyes roughly, in effort to wake up faster and despite his best effort he felt his eyes struggling to keep open, giving up, he focused instead on his heart clutching his chest, gasping, face crumpling.
"Jiang Qiji don't tell me you just woke up!" His mother shouted. Her voice getting louder step by step as she neared his door. Her gentle face appeared as she opened the door of his room after knocking. She paused, looking at him up and down. "I scared you?"
He nodded shamefully.
She sighed in exasperation, "today's your birthday. You shouldn't have stayed up reading."
Upon inspection her apron was filled with a white powder, easily identified as flour, and as she stepped forward towards him, she smelled of vanilla extract.
Her hands reached towards his cheeks and without thinking twice he placed his face in her hands. Her thumbs caressed his cheeks as his heart stopped throbbing twice the amount it was before.
"Mama, I wasn't up reading," He whined, "look!" He said, but before he moved, her hands forcibly kept him in place.
"Let me look a little more," she said, pleadingly.
He closed his eyes in response, giving her his time.
Unlike his father who always seemed stoic or standoffish, his mother was the kind of woman that no matter what opinion a person had she would give her undivided attention and she'd listen so intently that she'd listen for 2 hours with no complaints. It was one of the reasons my father fell in love with her. She always enjoys every second she spends with that person, living in the moment.
As Jiāng Qíjī relaxed into her hold, his head began to tip and as if on cue, he felt the big pull of his mother's hands. Two big kisses landed on his right and left cheek.
"Mama!" He exclaimed.
"Okay, now show me what you came up with. Your grandma's been telling me to wake you up. She wants to see you." Her hands went to his hair pulling it back, playing with what was probably already a mess.
"Grandma's here?" Jiang Qiji's eyebrows furrowed. "Wait, when did she get here?"
His mother's eyes thoughtlessly roamed around the room, before she shook her head smiling, "Your grandparents came last night around 3 in the morning. Didn't you hear them when they arrived?"
Jiang Qiji thought about it for a second. His mind had been racing rapidly last night. He remembers getting ready to go to sleep, grabbing his phone to read a novel he's been trying to catch up on. Then-
He turns to his bed. There lies his phone, long forgotten on his bed, still a mess from the day before.
He stopped reading the novel after a part made him too uncomfortable to continue. His mind came up with a different possibility of how the scene in the novel could have gone, but before those ideas even began to branch off, his mind shifted into a character of his own. Converting itself into new characters, creating a large world filled with many possibilities, and before he knew it, he spent the whole night and the next morning writing in a journal that had other scratched out ideas. His imagination flourished so much he fell asleep right on top of his notebook.
Jiāng Qíjī's mother, who had been watching, shook her head once again, a smile on her face. "Are you going to show me what you came up with?"
"Huh?"
"Oh yes, so. . ."
With vigor Jiang Qiji spoke, heart racing again. He flopped his arms around as he spoke, apologizing to his mother for almost hitting her and then again for almost spitting at her. His energy was inexhaustible despite his pale complexions and the big bags under his eyes.
His mother, out of worry, began to frown. "Dan," she said. "Breathe."
Jiang Qiji blushed, looking away. The use of his English name pulling him away from the clouds and back down to the ground, steadying only his mind. He focused on the heat of his mother's palm in the center of his chest, noticing his own chaotic heartbeat to her calm one. A minute or two passed realizing he had been so excited, the pain on his chest had been a ghost in the background. He looked into his mother's eyes and thanked her quietly.
His mother nodded her head, then said, "let's hear more about it downstairs, it sounds too interesting for you not to continue."
"Alright," He shook his head enthusiastically.
"Bring your notebook so you don't forget," She touched his cheeks again, scratching off a bit of saliva that had dried on the corner of his lips hidden away. She scrunched up her nose, but didn't say anything more.
"Mm, I'll meet you downstairs."
She nodded and left, closing the door behind her.
He quickly began to change, removing his clothes as if he was on fire. Afterwards he ran out the door downstairs in excitement, but as he landed down stairs, he remembered he had forgotten his notebook.
"No Running, Jiang Qiji! You know this!" His mother yelled from the kitchen.
"It'll be quick!" He yelled back, running back upstairs to get his notebook, but just as he lifted his leg to descend downstairs his chest began to hurt. A sharp echo of pain coursed through his body making his legs weak and before he knew it, he was falling.
Jiang Qiji died.
^*^
Before Jiang Qiji could open his eyes, there was an ache all around his body, throbbing through him. It was stronger around his stomach, but even then, it didn't feel as terrible. The pain coursing through him was insignificant to the pain he'd felt before he fell down the stairs. It held the record of the highest pain recorded on his body and mind.
Heart attacks were never on Jiang Qiji's list of ways he wished to die. He doubted it was on anyone's list or that they even had a list in the first place, but his heart had been born with a defect, and every few years he'd have to renew his heart with a stranger's heart.
His heart has long since been dead. It was something that always made him think those dark thoughts no one should be thinking about his age or any age. He was utterly grateful for those people. The people who decided to give the last of themselves to save someone else. He always thanked them by living with careful vitality.
His throbbing head pulled him out of his thoughts, opening his eyes, all he could do was squint. He was incapable of moving his hands or legs. Only his fingers and toes twitched in response. With his eyes adjusting to the light, he realized that there was a tall curvy ceiling over his head. Tall and of a shade of green pastel with dark brown wood going with it. The rooms of the Hospital were never so tall or curvy or pastel. They were plain and simple, with big curving hangers all around to cover him and other patients able to give them a small amount of privacy. As he began to breathe erratically, he breathed in the smell of the room. The scent of different herbs, instead of the nasty stale smell of stinky unwashed patients or medicine, covered his nostrils.
Jiang Qiji couldn't help but wish to smell his mother's scent instead of the current enveloping scents. Every time he woke up from surgery, his mother's scent wrapped around him. His unease would disappear as if the ground was tipped over, but her presence had balanced the world, which is why Jiang Qiji found it strange when there was no sign of her for a long time, heart speeding up again he pushed up his courage.
"Ma-ma?"
There was a sigh of relief when he spoke, even if his throat felt dry and cracked. The happiness coursed through his mind, relaxing his erupted heart and body. After learning the many possible things that could go wrong in a surgery or the possibilities of his heart stopping for far too long there was one thing that scared Jiang Qiji more than death: the losing of his imagination. His mind was the root of everything, the root, the connection of every inch of his body. If he could not move, he would be unable to write.
"Hello?" He tried.
"Is anybody there?" And he tried again.
And again and again.
"Hello!" He screamed as loud as his voice allowed him too, his accent coming through his voice.
He was just about to yell again when a woman wearing traditional clothes appeared in his view. She was gorgeous, as if she had come out of a drama. Half her hair was pinned up by a hairpin made of a translucent-like material with the dangling of gems glowing in different shades of the rainbow. Not to mention the clothes on her were the kind of hanfu Jiang Qiji's mother used to wear on special occasions, always complaining how sweaty she got in it, but the woman walked with pristine etiquette as if she has been doing it all her life. The woman's hanfu had a combination of green and white brocade, extenuating her gentle features.
"You're awake," her voice was gentle and soft, reminding him of his mother's voice, invigorating the feeling of safety he had begun to feel just by her presence.
He nodded, his eyes didn't leave her face. He'd never met anyone outside his mother and grandmother as beautiful as her. His own good features had stemmed from his mother's side, his father had been handsome, but not as much as the beauty of his mother. Jiang Qiji couldn't help the heat that came over his face as he mumbled the word 'beautiful'.
"How do you feel?" She asked, looking at him up and down.
With the bit of heat left on his cheeks, he said, "a little numb."
"Your body has gone through a great trauma. I will give you a pill to counteract the numbness." She said then paused as her hands grabbed his wrist, "You woke up too early I had expected you to continue sleeping for longer, even so the pill won't cure you, so don't move around to much. . . I will return." She let go of his wrist placing it down softly, then bowed and stepped away from view.
Jiang Qiji had no idea what was going on, no matter how sweet and motherly she seemed, his body and mind kept screaming at him with questions.
He closed his eyes for a long time, before he felt a small tap on his shoulders. Opening his eyes again, the woman was sitting next to him, a jade bowl in her hand.
His eyes widened, realizing her movements were far too quiet or there's the possibility he fell asleep, neither should be possible. He hadn't fallen asleep, there was something of the place that kept making him uncomfortable, so there should be no reason to have fallen asleep, unless he did without realizing.
He squinted his eyes at the woman in front of him, but quickly removed himself from his thoughts as her gentle atmosphere pushed away all his impossible thoughts .
"I will place the pill a in your mouth, and I will slowly pour some water to ease it through." She speaks, eyes intently watching him.
Without thinking, once she place her fingers above his mouth, he opened it. He scrunched up his face at the thickness of the pill now rolling through his mouth. He tried to swallow it, failing and only as the flavor began to touch his taste buds, he gagged, allowing the pill to finally slip through.
The cold of the jade bowl was placed at his lips gently coursing his lips open.
The eyes of the woman before him had not changed, immovable, even at the trace of discomfort in Jiang Qiji's face. She kept her eyes on him. The only change her body showed was the tilt of her head.
Removing his eyes from her Jiang Qiji opened his lips and began to gulp and gulp like a dehydrated dog. Breathing out a soft huff of air when he had finished, smiling with fulfillment.
"Once the others arrive, you will have already gained all functions in your body." She stood up, disappearing from view for a small moment before reappearing again. She sat again at the same spot as before.
"My mother and father are coming? That's good. What about my grandparents? I probably scared them too much in just one lifetime this time. My grandparents . . ."
Jiang Qiji kept talking even as he felt hands on his neck. They were warm and the way her hands circled around his neck made him relax. He spoke as if his mother was right beside him, massaging him.
"Your-?" Her hands paused.
With the movements stopped he finally focused in where her hands were. He slowly but surely lifted up his head when he noticed the clothes material placed on his body. The clothes he was wearing were not the usual western style gowns he expected to see. He knew he wasn't in a normal hospital, but even when he had gone to different traditional like places at the request of his grandparents as long as you asked they gave the normal modern like hospital gowns. Instead, he was wearing the kind of nightwear seen in historical dramas.
Putting his head back down, his brows furrowed with a half-smile pushed far back right on his features. He sighed, in exasperation. He began to command his body to move and slowly the movements in his hands and feet began to feel better. From there he tried to move his other joints.
"Do you know my name?" The woman's voice made him look up. Her face still held the same gentle look with the tilt of her head.
"No." he shook his head.
He continued his quest to move, determined to move from this bed. Removing himself from this solid surface away from his back was the mission. He breathed out a fresh breath of air this time, happy that he could even feel the feeling of the bed. Soon enough all his joints began to move. He tried to get up completely but even then, it wasn't possible yet.
"What's your name?" Interrupting his thoughts again, the woman's head was now tall and straight.
"Jiang Qiji," he responded.
Jiang Qiji didn't notice the twitch of her eyes going wide and her body going still, too preoccupied with how amazing that pill was for it to have given his movements back to him in such a short amount of time.
