David

"So," said Alice. "What is there to do around here? Are we supposed to just sit around and cultivate?"

The twins looked affronted. "Cultivation is our top priority and it should be yours as well."

David remembered one of Wen's rants from a boat ride that seemed to have happened a lifetime ago. "Yes, master said that if you don't cultivate whenever you have the chance, you might never have the chance again!"

Alice snickered.

"If you're not cultivating, you're not advancing. If you don't advance, won't you feel shame about everything your masters have done for you?" David wagged a finger at Alice, who was chortling now.

"You-" said the twins, apoplectic with rage.

"I didn't think people were this dramatic in real life," said Alice, with the intent of causing more drama.

"Ignore them," said Qitai. "They've been like this since they've arrived. Profound scripture this, dao of that and the other thing."

"We will be unmatched under the heavens!" the twins whispered together, incensed.

"You're not even unmatched in this room," said David, who felt a jolt of secondhand embarrassment for the pair and thus disliked them immediately. "Your lives might be short. Enjoy yourselves."

Before an actual fight could break out, Kanhu stood quickly. "None of us have left this building since we arrived. There must be something exciting going on in Tianbei - the city's too large for nothing to be happening."

"We should go eat," said Alice. "Do any of you know of any cuisine Tianbei is particularly famous for?"

Feiyan stared at her in horror. "But senior sister, what if we get fat?" She threw a quick glance at Leng Qitai, who wasn't actually fat, but was definitely the stockiest person in the room.

Alice folded her arms. "Are you a cultivator or not? When's the last time you even ate a meal?"

Feiyan bit her lip and looked upwards, trying to remember.

"If you have to think about it, I think your waistline can survive a celebratory dinner," said David. "We are allowed to leave, right?"

Kanhu and Qitai looked at one another. "Well no one's said that we can't leave," said Kanhu. " But are you sure you want to eat here?"

Looking from face to face, David was glad that he wasn't the only one who was confused. "What's wrong with eating here?"

"Well," said Kanhu uncomfortably. "We're up north. The food is awful here."

"The food in the north is perfectly fine," snapped Feiyan, who often took offense to things completely unrelated to her. "Xijing is in the north."

Kanhu sneered at her. "A decent meal in Xijing? That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard this year. You eat lotus leaves with every meal, and sometimes lotus seeds if you're feeling particularly brave. Everyone's heard the stories of the Emperor being delivered rice noodles and soy sauce from Minghai. I hear you can't even get a cup of milk tea in Xijing that isn't sour."

Feiyan turned an interesting shade of red. "The lotus is the greatest of plants. The lotuses from the Paper Grove are exported to every corner of the world."

"If the Paper Flowers are so great, why are you here in Tianbei?" asked Kanhu.

"Maintaining the prosperity of the House of Zhu," said Feiyan. "Maybe the Kingdom of Yi wouldn't have a single pretender prince if they sent their cultivators to Tianbei instead of awful Southern Continent sects like the Three Wisdoms or the True Sutra."

"Those are two of the best sects in the world," Kanhu protested.

"Kind of strange then," said Feiyan, who sensed weakness. "Your family bundled you across the Ming Sea instead of leaving you with either of those two fantastic sects."

Kanhu clenched his fists. "Everyone knows that after the Yellow Demon Cult stole the Healing Hands Scripture, their territory split the Southern Continent in two. The Kingdom of Yi- we trusted the wrong hero with it."

David and Alice exchanged glances. David adopted a morose tone, as he was supposedly from the Kingdom of Yi, even though he could barely keep the smirk off his face as he delivered Chan Changshou's excuse for losing the scripture. "The hero doesn't always win. Geopolitically speaking, there are a multitude of reasons for the rise of the Yellow Demon Cult - thirty years worth of reasons. I heard the hero in question duelled the Princess of Damnation for three days and nights over the Ming Sea with the White Letters Scripture of Dongjing and barely escaped with his life."

Chan had, in truth, lost the Scripture after being chased down like a rat across the islands of Minghai and, inexcusably, had failed to make it to the aegis of the Still Waters - the sect that owned the city, but it cost nothing to defend a friend's reputation. Besides, all of this had happened before David had been born.

Feiyan gasped. "I heard the Princess of Damnation is a fair maiden by day and a vulture the height of a pagoda by night. She’s the sort of demonic cultivator who can rival even the sect masters of the Nine Great Sects."

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Who in their right mind refers to themself as the Princess of Damnation," muttered Kanhu.

"It's a question of power. If the Kingdom of Yi had eradicated the cult, then you could call yourself the Prince of Damnation and no one would bat an eyelid." It seemed Feiyan wasn't done needling the boy.

"Are we going to go eat or not?" asked Qitai, a touch louder than the conversation. He looked exasperated.

"We're not leaving," said the twins.

"No one invited you," said David. "Either of you."

"Sure, whatever, don’t come, no one cares," said Kanhu, before the twins could protest.

"You three,” Kanhu continued, “get changed into sect robes. That's the one rule they did mention - we have to be dressed in our robes at all times when we're outside."

Feiyan's lower lip trembled. "How am I supposed to get changed without maids?"

No one could find an answer for her.

Feiyan batted her eyelashes at David. "Perhaps older brother can help me?"

David and Alice spoke at the same time. "Absolutely not."

“As usual, no one cares about poor Feiyan!” Feiyan pouted. When no one assured her otherwise, she stormed off in a huff towards the nearest room that hadn’t been claimed. The quiet click from the door was at odds with how hard she appeared to have slammed it.

“I really hate that girl,” said Alice cheerfully, as she pulled David into another open room.

A circular cushion sat waist-high in the center of the room, wide enough for David to lay on. It was stitched of a yellow, embroidered cloth that looked awfully stiff. In the corner was a single square table with a pair of carved wooden chairs. Alice tossed her new sect robes onto one of the chairs. David did the same.

As the door closed behind them, a flat silence settled over the room. It was reminiscent of the inn David and Alice had spent a night in, back in Ping’an. The only light in the room came from the soft blue glow of stylized characters on the doorframe - soundproofing.

Alice took a running leap at the cushion-thing, but it looked even less satisfying than David had expected. Alice neither bounced nor sank. The cushion had decided, instead, to sag unevenly.

“This room is great,” Alice groaned into the fabric of the not-bed. “I love it here.”

“I do as well,” David said, injecting as much campy cheer into his voice as he could.

“And our fellow disciples are so interesting. The only thing missing from the perfect sect orientation experience is an all-expenses paid lobotomy.”

“They’re not that bad,” said David, who wasn’t quite as melodramatic. “They’re fifteen. They’re basically freshmen.”

“Tai Kanhu is so full of shit,” said Alice, in English. “Zhu Feiyan has bricks for brains. Leng Qitai can’t seem to find a personality in any of those teacups.”

“Tell me how you really feel,” said David, who was smiling. He sat down next to Alice. The cushion wasn’t as uncomfortable as it looked.

“Leng’s a poison cultivator right? What are the chances we can convince him to gas the twins?”

“Let’s keep the body count to less than three a week,” said David. They both began to laugh, then stopped.

There was a second silence in the room.

“What is wrong with us?” Alice whispered.

The silence stretched.

“When I was ten or eleven, my piano teacher at the time organized a recital for her students, and I was playing about as well as I could at the time,” said David. “But there was something wrong, and no one seemed to notice. Halfway through the sonata, I realized that the entire piano was tuned a half-step up.”

Alice flipped herself over to give him an incredulous stare. “No one noticed? Your piano teacher didn’t realize you were playing in a different key?”

“Nope,” said David. “Eight kids played before me. And two after. I told my piano teacher afterwards and she didn’t believe me. Pulled me outside of the venue and told me she was disappointed because I was making a scene.”

“I can picture it. Tiny ten year old David trying to decide if he should knock his piano teacher out,” said Alice, who’d found his hand and curled it into a fist. She giggled.

“I wasn’t even angry,” said David, even though he must have been. “It just felt strange. As if you woke up one morning and the sun rose from the west. Anyway, the point is that it feels like that here.”

“You mean in this world?” Alice asked softly.

David shook his head. “Just here, in Tianbei.”

A third, less contemplative, silence. From the way she tapped out some compulsive pattern on his knuckles, Alice was clearly bothered by something.

“Was the piano actually out of tune?”

David nodded triumphantly. “It was. Some girl’s dad videotaped the whole thing with a camcorder and sent cds of it to all the parents. And then I found a better piano teacher.”

Alice smiled and stood up, then walked out of his line of sight. There was a rustle of clothing. “Pretend you’re not looking.”

“Huh?” David turned around.

“Too slow,” said Alice, winking. She was now wearing the colors of the Ascending Sky. She sat down on one of the chairs and threw his robes at him, then leaned forward. “You should get changed as well.” She leered at him. “Take your time,” she said, pointedly licking her lips.

David waited for Alice to turn around.

When it became clear she wasn’t going to, David rolled his eyes and turned his back to her. He then shrugged out of the light grey robes of the Falling Leaves and replaced them with the black of the Ascending Sky.

“Excellent,” said Alice, from right behind him. She snatched his old robes and stuffed them into the pouch Zhou had given them, then slipped the flute back into his hand.

“You’re such a creep,” said David, chuckling.

Alice draped her arms over his chest and pushed herself off the ground. David felt her breath ghost over his ear. “We’re going to be living together for a little while, and every single night, I’m going to watch you sleep.”

“What is wrong with you?” David’s shoulders shook - partly in laughter, partly in an attempt to shake Alice off of him, but she clung on stubbornly. David gave up and stumbled towards the door with Alice’s shoes knocking against the back of his calves.

When he opened the door, Feiyan was standing immediately outside, flanked by Kanhu and Qitai. “What were you two doing in there?” she stuttered.

“Just talking,” said Alice breezily. “Did they help you get changed?”

“No!” Feiyan shouted. Kanhu looked vaguely offended.

They made their way through the living room to the red door and passed through it one after another. As they walked out into Tianbei, a pair of voices followed them. “We hope you’re properly disciplined for this.”

“Yeah?” Alice shouted back at the twins, still perched on David. “I hope one of you dies a horrible death and the other becomes capable of independent thought, so it hurts that much more.”

Feiyan threw Alice a nervous glance over her shoulder.