westwhere | sa-hareth | arrival (mingle log)

Beitang Moran. But you can call me Chen Wang if that is easier to say.

There was something profoundly funny about the sheer ironies of his life. Mingyu laid on his back in his bed, tangled in fine, for-paying-customers sheets. He would miss the structure of this work. They would move on and the world's oldest profession would naturally follow, but it wouldn't be like this. A shame.

It was such an effective distraction on top of the coin.

Men slain. Lashed to pillars. Arms severed.

He could not outrun Fox's ghost. He did not want to, he just wished he could figure out how to live like this and breathe.

He was well into his drink by the time the knock came upon his door and he didn't get up, barely lifted his head. It was just Lee Chang. Sounding apologetic, awkward, cowed. A fool.

"Come in, kitten," he summoned, bloodshot eyes fixed on the fox tattoo on his left wrist. He knew Lee Chang had only reached for the nearest excuse to come visit, but he wasn't going to let the man off that easily. If he was going to pretend to be here for a simple errand, he would be sent away once his errand was complete.

"Incense is in the cupboard."

Mingyu noticed their mistake in the same moment but was not carrying the same recent traumas as Lee Chang so he did not hesitate to grip the man by the arm and take off running, dragging Lee Chang along if necessary. The monsters they'd set loose looked hungry, and Mingyu wasn't sticking around to find out if the guard's corpse alone would sate them.

He didn't stop until they were in the kitchens, until he found a door to lock behind them once they'd entered.

Breathing hard, he glanced over at his companion to see how Lee Chang was holding up.

[He blinks]

Beitang Moran. [It's a good try, though with poor inflection on half-remembered and unfamiliar syllables.] Chen Wang. Is that more like a nickname then?

Edited 2021-04-17 20:14 (UTC)

It's a title of sorts. I will answer to both names.

[Ad yes, he tells people that one because hearing his name being butchered is painful.]

[A title. Eleven regards him for a moment, but he is rather tired]

Chen Wang, then. If it's not a title you enjoy though, I can learn your name sometime.

It's fine. They are both my name in some way. You don't need to worry about it.

"That's quite a family. Sounds like your parents kept busy," Mingyu remarks, eyebrows lifting briefly. And here he is, a sad only child. While he views Five as young, he remembers being that young, that lost. He doesn't belittle the boy's problem simply because he's a boy. "I'm looking for someone as well. Searching for people uses the same basic steps, so I don't mind keeping an additional ear out for your... five siblings."

Okay.

[Eleven stands] I think I'll go rest then. It was nice meeting you. Thanks again for talking with me.

Mm, yes, I've been thinking of that myself. Our legal means here are limited as outlanders, and I understand most of the group is not partial to the kind of work I have taken up. Given our pressing financial needs, what remains is illegal means.

[ Picking up his teacup, Mingyu blows on the contents and takes a slow, pensive sip before going on. ]

You were actually royalty back home, then? That's not just how you're getting your rocks off having the cute foreigners all call you '宸王'?

He watches the man for a while, relenting somewhat as he studies him. This had been his initial idea anyway. Play up the lost child routine. The flaw is how much it actually makes his skin crawl the longer he puts on the act.

Does it really matter right now anyway? They could have already passed through here for all he knows. So he flexes his jaw, and seems to be able to successfully subdue the hostility he was indulging in.

"Hargreeves." That comes out with a held breath. He just had finally managed to gather them together, and they scatter again. It's exhausting trying to keep those idiots alive. Having said that much, he runs down the names: "Vanya, Luther, Diego, Klaus, and Allison. If you happen to run into them."

Fortunately for them both, or perhaps just for Lee Chang, he wasn't a man that took to pretending very well, and his excuse had been just that - an excuse to talk privately to Mingyu. So he steeled himself and stepped in, his brow furrowing as he saw the bottle.

"... I owe you an apology," He said as he stepped to the edge of the bed, not looking at the cupboard, not yet.

"In my haste I was thoughtless and careless. I should not have asked you."

Lee Chang's body, at least, remembered well how to flee - and as soon as Mingyu started pulling him along, he made good example of it, not even breathing very hard by the time they arrived. (He was too used to long runs away from zombies.) His mind, on the other hand, was somewhere else entirely, his brow furrowed tightly.

"No," he murmured to himself, "It's not right, they can't-- they can't speak--"

Lifting an eyebrow at the comment, Mingyu blew a plume of smoke directly at Lee Chang, then put his cigarette out. Setting it aside, he patted the space next to him.

"Are we dispensing with the idea of cups entirely?" he teased, shrugging out of his robe as he spoke. He was pulling a spare from a small pile of folded laundry on the floor that he'd salvaged from the mess to put on since apparently the smell of the smoke was bothering Lee Chang's delicate sensibilities.

One eye half closed as the smoke passed him, giving Mingyu a weary look but not saying anything.

"I had assumed you were providing the cups," He said wryly, before looking up around the room. "Though I suppose I should not have assumed."

He carefully averted his eyes as Mingyu stripped, even though the thin robe had not exactly left a lot to the imagination anyway. He found a pair of cups intact, took those, and came over to sit where Mingyu had indicated.

After a moment, and with a low sincerity:

"Are you alright?"

So I guess boring is best. [ mina grins and shoves some food down her mouth yet again ]

"Do you think it killed him?" Mingyu asked abruptly, making no outward response to Lee Chang's apology. He took another long drink from one of the several bottles strewn around his bed before going on. "I ask myself a lot. If it killed him. I don't think they would've severed it there if they meant to kill him. If it was to dispose of the body, they would've done the dismemberment post-mortem, surely. But it feels like it should have killed him, doesn't it? The pain, the despair."

He paused, the look in his eyes hollow as he caressed the unmoving fox tattoo.

"...you don't need to be sorry that you brought it up. It's never far from my mind."

Edited 2021-04-17 22:46 (UTC)

"... It is a wound men can survive," He offered after a moment, before stepping over and carefully picking up one of the bottles off the bed to put it on the table instead.

"It was a clean cut." He, too, would forever have Fox's arm burned into his mind. "So it was removed for a purpose. And with the kind of magics your world has - It seems unlikely to cause death."

He picked up another bottle, not looking at Mingyu, just cleaning slowly. He wasn't sure if Mingyu would even register the enormity of the task, but then, did it really mean anything any more?

He was no one.

"If pain and despair were enough to kill, Mingyu, we both know men who would never have survived."

"Different plague," Mingyu suggested once again, but didn't elaborate because who wanted to admit his source was mostly zombie movies? Lee Chang definitely didn't know what a movie was.

"You couldn't have known," he went on. "I couldn't tell there was anything wrong until it was very wrong either."

As he spoke, he looked around the kitchen for something to arm himself with.

"I've been worse," Mingyu replied airily, dismissive, slipping on his second robe without bothering to sash it. He sat up to make room for Lee Chang where he was lounging, then almost at once slid down to lean against the man as he'd previously been leaning on his perch.

"I'll endure. It's what I do."

Then he reached out for the bottle, ignoring the cups, and took a long swig before passing it back.

He let out his breath in a low sigh, eyes fluttering shut.

"...well done. It's good drink."

Lee Chang stood there, looking back towards the way they'd come, still covered in the blood and gore of the last zombie attack he had dealt with.

A different plague.

"Or a changed one," He breathed, more to himself than to Mingyu. "Where under the sky are we...?"

He managed to shake himself out of it a second later, joining Mingyu on his quest, pulling open foreign-looking cupboards and draws in his search. He finally found what looked like a cleaver - a large butcher knife - and looked back at the door.

"I have to go back. If they get loose--"

Edited 2021-04-18 00:02 (UTC)

Mingyu smiled grimly at that, as sharp and foreboding as a headman's axe.

"We are the men who would not have survived," he agreed, listening to Lee Chang tidy his space for a few seconds longer before he caught the man by the wrist when he reached too close to Mingyu's face.

Gripping it tight, he shifted his gaze to meet Lee Chang's eyes, his gaze dark and empty but, at least, present.

"Have you fallen so low, my king?" he whispered roughly, echoing words recently overheard.

He looked a little helplessly at Mingyu - now flopped fully against his side - then at the bottle thrust back into his hands. I should annihilate your entire family for your insolence, he joked darkly to himself, and then let out a sigh as he raised the bottle to his lips.

A new world, new rules. New everything.

New Lee Chang.

He drank.

He let out an answering breath once the liquid had burned pleasantly down his throat, and then he passed the bottle back to Mingyu. "What is it you actually want?" He asked ruefully. "Surely anyone could have brought you decent drink."

Mingyu immediately stepped in, caught Lee Chang's arm by the wrist. He was deeply inconvenienced by his lack of magic in this moment, as there was nothing he could do about a reckless man with a knife except try to talk him out of it.

That was what magic did, he supposed. Corroded at all else until there was nothing left. Talk was all Mingyu had before, and it got him by just fine. Now—

He took in a deep breath.

"They are loose. This place had problems before you, it'll have problems after. You'll, what? Go back? Die so you don't have to look your mistake in the eye? Leave me here to fend for myself? What did I say about big heroic gestures?"

He didn't reply to the first part. He was not prone to despair, at least, or if he was he covered it swiftly with a driven need for action. He did not linger in his despair. To do so was to die.

So, perhaps, Mingyu was right.

He froze when Mingyu caught his wrist, and turned his gaze down to him.

"I am no king, Mingyu," he replied quietly. He couldn't even consider himself ever having been one, though he had, for a short time. No. He thought of himself as the traitorous Crown Prince. And that man was dead. "Here or anywhere."

sa-hareth | arrival (mingle log)

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