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Wen Kexing wears red.
It stains his white zhongyi in blooming patches, dyes his hands and face sticky with smears of slowly-cooling revenge. There's a place behind his eyes burning with the same hue; a bright pool in his mind he's sunk into deeper and deeper with each slash of his knife under that layer of skin, that he knows he will never surface from again in this life.
He's dressed the whole of Gui Gu to match him today. Fitting, to have the monsters welcome in their new lord with all they have left to offer. A suitable sacrifice, though he will take yet more.
As he slowly approaches the stone ledge, looks out through the feral haze still lingering on the edges of his vision, over the tumult of screams and flashing weapons and falling bodies, Wen Kexing lifts his chin and breathes in the sick stench of blood. He cannot muster a smile but the satisfaction bubbles in his chest like a dying breath. This is what they have always deserved. This is what he has fought so many years to achieve.
Later, he will have to look Luo-yi in the eyes as he puts her on her knees with the rest of them and not falter. Later still, he will have to wash his triumph from his matted hair, clothe himself clean and soft before he retrieves little A-Xiang from where she's hidden.
For now, he holds himself still against the chaos and waits. When those left standing below finally notice him, pale and wild-eyed and drenched in the colour of spilled life, he holds aloft his gruesome trophy and casts it at their feet. An accusation; a demand.
A moment of unnatural quiet falls on the cavern. And then one by one, his ghosts kneel.
---
Wen Kexing wears red.
Silk spills over his shoulders and drapes down his front, seeded over with intricate beadwork in the same range of shades--even the golden headpiece shining against his sleek hair gleams red with the ornamentation at its core.
A-Xiang fiddles with the tie of his sash, tugging his waist this way and that, a couple of pins held sourly in her mouth. Wen Kexing ignores her distracted muttering and spends his gaze on the slice of his reflection he can catch in the mirror from this angle; washed over in amber, it still showcases the deep crimson radiating from him now.
Red, for violence. Red, for outcasts. Red, for revelling in death.
Red, like his dreams at night, like his vision overcome with rage. Red, like memories of his mother--the rouge on her lips, the berries in her apron pocket, the splatter across her shoulderblades on the cold ground.
Red, for all the lives yet to be claimed by his schemes and his deadly hands. Right now they stand so starkly pale and elegant against the brilliance of his sleeves. But red, even so, for all the blood he spilled to reach this position.
Red, because he is a ghost.
In a matter of minutes, he will leave his Wuxin Zisha to the safety of her maid duties and begin the next stage of his plan. He can see it now, feel the rhythm of events building under the very stone of these caverns: his hand around Diao Si Gui's throat, his voice echoing across the hall, the buzz of fear emanating from reluctant subordinates still stewing in their own malice.
Settling into the posture of a devil, he shoos A-Xiang off and sends her to fetch some walnuts. It's time.
---
Wen Kexing wears red.
He has no more white, not with him anyway; most of his clothes are back on the boat that he, in a great fit of foolishness, sent on ahead to Yueyang, and last night's clothes are completely out of the question after that dunking in the water. Not to mention the, ah, activities afterwards.
Wen Kexing does not wear dirty clothes. Even ones he enjoyed dirtying.
Strange, though, to look down and see this fabric harsh against the sunshine greens of this forest morning. Like a different person entirely. How many months has it been since he wore this colour? Right now he is Wen-da-shanren, no matter what fissures have formed in that facade due to A-Xu and his entire harebrained trek across the Jianghu. A harebrained trek that Wen Kexing has certainly endorsed, of course.
He can hear A-Xu shuffling around their camp now, just waking up. Won't this look so strange paired with his pretty soft blues and pretty soft face? He'd really rather match him, for the aesthetic of it. Especially--he sighs wistfully--now that he's seen A-Xu's actual face, and found it just as devastating as he expected.
But, alas, this is all he has. He supposes he was going to find himself in red in front of A-Xu eventually.
Before his mind can venture too far down that path Wen Kexing slips his final layer overtop. This one is green. A rich, emerald green, delicate embroidery in pale thread. He'd purchased it immediately when he'd laid eyes on it in the shop. He thinks he used to like green. And what better to offset the red than something so alluring and human?
Comforted by this, he gets out his fan and flicks it open. Perhaps he can steal a kiss before breakfast.
---
Wen Kexing wears red.
He hadn't planned on it, but it was the only way he could get out of wearing Siji Shanzhuang blue; A-Xu had insisted on getting everyone new winter clothes and kept trying to sneak things into Wen Kexing's pile.
The only argument he could make without giving himself a headache, without acknowledging the panic growing like a soft blossoming thing in his chest, was the approaching New Year and how it would be more auspicious for him to wear red. For them all to wear red. He and Chengling certainly were going to, at least. And if the esteemed Zhou-zhuangzhu wanted to consider himself above such things and wear blue, well, that was his business.
A-Xu's eyes had softened in that way Wen Kexing loves, and hates, and needs, and then he'd agreed that this should indeed be the case. When the delivery came today, though, it had an unexpected change: Wen Kexing's red, a deep hue, begins and ends with the ostentatiously fur-trimmed coat. Everything else is green.
A compromise, then, it says. The path back to the human world is still yours, it offers. I know you are a ghost, but you are mine, it declares.
Who is he to argue?
Carefully he puts on every layer. Later, A-Xu will take the red one off before pushing him onto the bed, as if such a thing is so easy to shed. And he will let it happen.
Right now, he adjusts the thick scarlet on his shoulders and unlocks a box he has not opened since the day he became Gui Gu guzhu. He can think of no better hairpin to complete this outfit.
When he sets it firmly in his hair, his hands don't even shake.
---
Wen Kexing wears red.
There is no other colour he would deign to wear. There is no muted shade or obfuscating accessory he wouldn't sneer at the offering of. The truth exists to make his soul bleed; it has done nothing else since he woke up with the last of his hidden memories, and it is only right that he bears the fullness of that hard-won pain and reclaimed rage now.
After all, today is an important day.
Today the Gui Gu guzhu, in all his glory, is leading his ghosts to battle to settle a score and retrieve his stolen beloved, and he will do it as himself and nothing less.
Today the second disciple of Siji Shanzhuang is taking his place at the right hand of his shixiong, at the feet of his zhuangzhu, and he will withhold nothing from his fealty.
He retains only his hairpin to remind himself of the ways the person he has become is different from the person who left Gui Gu nearly a year ago--the person he has become has so many more reasons to burn everything down, and so many more reasons to keep that from happening.
An observer might say that his outfit was resplendent, embroidery and gilt accenting his natural beauty to set him apart. Wen Kexing, for once, cares very little about how it makes him look. All that really matters is the colour. Everything else is just a perk.
With an insatiable hunger gnawing at his gut, he smooths down the layers of fine fabric and bows one last time to Qi Ye, gratitude too thick in his throat for words, before standing as tall as his station demands and turning toward the gate.
His hands itch for blood and his arms ache for the lack of his zhiji. Soon he will have both.
---
Wen Kexing wears red.
It's the first time in three years.
He laughs when he opens the box A-Xu hands him with a challenge at his brow, laughs when he puts it on, laughs so hard he has to sit down hard on the bench behind him, laughs until he nearly sheds tears from it and A-Xu comes behind him to wrap him up tight in arms that allow safety from even his own mind.
It's beautiful, this--this thing he has on. This extravagant creation. More beautiful than anything he's ever worn or ever imagined wearing in his entire life. Even more beautiful than the blues and greens he spends his time in these days. Not because it's more extravagant, or more finely accented. Not even because the fabric flows back a good few paces behind him when he walks. It just is, because of everything it means.
And he'd thought it was a cheeky nod to his identity, to the overlap of traditions--as if they're anything like traditional. He'd expected that to be the end of it.
But A-Xu makes him wait while he goes to dress, himself, as if it's some great secret, and when he comes back out--
When he comes back out from behind the screen, Wen Kexing almost falls to his knees again; he would were he not still seated. It's too much, to see a sight like this, to take in that smug satisfaction and realise in a rush that A-Xu truly means to give him every piece of this ceremony tonight. His zhiji, his shixiong, his beloved, looks stunning. Looks, for perhaps the first time, truly like his. Because standing before him, head held high and lips twitching in amusement and hands folded perfectly in front of him...
Zhou Zishu wears red.