"Gratitude," he offers like alms unto waiting hands, empty and cored of warmth. Alone, Sizhui's wounds will rest and stitch themselves together, flesh seeking morsels of fellow flesh, bone and sinew. He is a child, prone to a child's sicknesses, the immortality of creatures too ignorant to know themselves short of invulnerable. Too soft.

But then, she flatters in the way of girls taught to coax kindness of men with words, to turn their vanity against them — and Lan Wangji opens, like sunflowers to light, and pretends the easiness of courtesy that his brother excels at. A nod, where the smile falters, sheen stale.

Dust flickers on his fingers, the chipped, gravelly base of his bowl. He swivels it, loose-gestured when he leans to transplant a ladle of Wei Ying's millet into the girl's potion. Let him eat of Lan Wangji's share.

"They are residue." This, in the tempered voice of the master professor, remembering the dusk days of the jingshi at work, tea and damp and the errant hope of disciples, bright-eyed and at a loss, to receive their teachings in Hanguang-Jun's private quarters. Spirit of mischievous courtesy, the girl asks as they would ask.

"That which remains in the wake of feeling." A pause, ill-measured, his mouth dry. "Resent. Loyalty. Longing."

Two of these matters, easily invoked by the infantry. The third — and his eyes skirt them — perhaps. "If they understand us disparate from their suffering, they leave us be."