Snapping his head up, Nafan met his attacker’s eyes and stiffened in shock.

They were blue… the young stranger’s eyes. The muscles pulling back on their dilated pupils were dark and vivid, like the cerulean of a pure evening sky. They stared back at him, and he could see his reflection in their wide eyes – a blur of gold, glistening in the warm lamplight.

“Ah – I’m so sorry!”

A voice, shrill in mock worry, shattered their exchange. A hazy figure rushed between them and shoved the blue-eyed boy away, freeing Nafan from his stupor.

Blinking, he coughed and saw the pretty face of Wang Tianxi lean over him. She offered a hand and helped him to his feet, then helped him limp to the nearest chair, all while apologizing through rather clenched teeth.

“It’s fine,” he said hoarsely, gaze still flickering blearily to and fro as he unconsciously searched for the boy from earlier. He spotted, with a strange feeling of relief, the boy trailing after them. His pretty face was scowling, and his feminine robes had fallen back into place.

“Don’t help him, Tianxi-xi,” the boy growled, crossing his arms and shooting Nafan a dirty glare. “It was his fault to begin with.”

Sighing, Tianxi turned to boy and flicked him in the nose. “Be quiet. I told you not to cause trouble.”

The boy yelped and abruptly covered his nose with both hands as his blue eyes pooled with moisture.

Nafan chuckled, and his voice came out breathless with disbelief.

“You shouldn’t do that. They’re really sensitive there.”

I must be dreaming…

He had been thinking that his luck was much too good to be true. But this would explain it. A dream, yes…

Tianxi and the boy turned and stared at him with their brows furrowed. Their gazes were intense and strangely spooked, as though they were really looking at a ghost.

“… Hey.”

After a moment, Tianxi turned and mock-whispered into the boy’s ear. Still plenty loud enough for Nafan to hear, though.

“Do you think…?”

“He’s not human.” The boy nodded decidedly, eyes narrowing shrewdly as he continued to pin Nafan down with his glare. “He must be a demon. He used some sort of magic on me, after he touched my foot, he took control of my body or something, I couldn’t move it anymore.”

“I knew there was something strange about him.” Tianxi nodded along in apparent agreement. “What do we do? Should we throw him out? Hand him to the soldiers?”

“Whoah, wait!” Nafan said hastily, lifting his hands with a nervous laugh. “I’m human! I’m – I’m – I’m a doctor!” he stammered, bringing his hands together and fidgeting. “I specialize in, uh, Chi therapy. I just used your pressure points to manipulate your body for a bit, that’s all.”

Though a human shouldn’t have pressure points there, he thought with a pang of mingled confusion and excitement. Unable to help himself, Nafan gazed in hopeful fascination at the boy’s face, unconsciously admiring his azure-blue irises. He’d heard that they were breathtakingly beautiful, but…

“… What should we do?” Tianxi asked again, apparently deciding to ignore him.

“... Wait,” the boy said, his voice lower now, calmer, as he cast the man a wary look. He seemed to hesitate, but eventually sat himself down across the table from Nafan. “Who are you?”

“I… I just told you,” Nafan pointed out with another nervous chuckle. “I’m a doctor.”

The boy paused for a moment, then spared Tianxi a glance and muttered. “Get me some strong alcohol. I want to pass out.”

Tianxi’s eyes lit up in surprise before she scoffed and hit him irritably over the head. “Be serious.”

“I am being serious,” he growled, rubbing his head and casting her an injured look. “Hurry up. Get some for him, too.”

“Ah, I’m okay –” Nafan began hastily, only to cut himself off when the boy shot him a rather threatening glare. Subdued, he lowered his hands under the table and smiled meekly at his unexpected companion. In the background, Tianxi sighed again and left.

It was silent for a while. The boy avoided his gaze, fidgeting instead with a chopstick that had been left on the table. He twirled it, fingers moving so fast that Nafan got dizzy just from watching.

It took many tries, but eventually, Nafan managed to say something.

Or croak, was more like it. He broke off with a cough, flustered by how unintelligible his question had been, but the boy seemed to understand him anyway.

“My name?” The boy tilted his chin and gazed down at him with a condescending glare. “Why should I tell you?”

“I can tell you mine,” Nafan offered half-heartedly.

The boy raised an eyebrow irritably. “Why the hell do I want to know yours?”

“My name is Nafan von Tethys,” Nafan announced anyway, managing to bring a smile to his lips.

At that, a spark of interest glittered through the boy’s blue eyes. He paused, lips stretching into a sudden grin that revealed his irregularly sharp incisors.

“What? You’re not a fan of titties?”

Nafan smiled patronizingly as the boy snorted and began to chortle.

“Is that really your name? Not-a-fan-of-titties?!”

“You can call me Nafan,” Nafan said hopefully. Phew… looks like he’d gotten the boy to relax a bit. He didn’t mind being laughed at – if anything, he preferred it. The alternatives were usually worse.

In the background, he saw Wang Tianxi approach with a massive black bottle of liquor on a tray. When she saw the boy laughing, her eyes lit up in surprise and she cast Nafan a suspicious look.

“Hey, listen to this,” the boy chuckled brightly, reaching up to rap the back of his hand on Tianxi’s chest as she bent over to set the tray down. Annoyance passed briefly through her face, but the boy remained oblivious as he pointed a finger at Nafan and guffawed. “His name is not-a-fan-of-titties.”

“Don’t be silly,” Tianxi said, also sitting down beside the boy. She seemed to have decided to join them, Nafan noticed in faint relief. Maybe he could get some information out of her, too.

“No, really!” Snickering, the boy grabbed the bottle and pulled the cork off with his bare hands. “Can I call you Titties?”

“No, please call me Nafan,” Nafan said, managing to sound pleasant as the boy pushed a cup of liquor towards him.

“You should listen to him, Khyriel.” Tianxi sighed, holding out her own cup in a gesture for the boy to pour her some as well. “Or he’ll make your body do strange things again. He’s a pervert, you know. It doesn’t matter how handsome they look, I can always tell.”

Scoffing, the boy cast him a side-ways look. “He’s not handsome. But it looks like he has money, so it’s fine.”

Deciding to ignore what they were saying about him, Nafan leaned across the table a little and took advantage of the boy’s distracted glance to capture his gaze.

“Khyriel?”

He spoke slowly at first, making sure to pronounce it right – it was a bit different from the way Tianxi had said it. It had been a while since he’d heard that dialect.

“Is that your name?”

Again, they froze. Then, slowly, Tianxi turned her head to stare at Khyriel, while the boy continued to stare at Nafan.

“… I’m just a doctor.” Sensing that something was possibly going to happen, Nafan lifted his hands nervously.

“… And what brings a doctor here, this far away from the main road?” Tianxi took the initiative to ask, when it became obvious that Khyriel was too shocked to speak.

“Oh, I… uh, got chased out, I guess.” Suddenly reminded of his predicament, Nafan drained his cup of liquor and grimaced as the sharp liquid stung down his throat. But still, the burning feeling provided some comfort as he felt it trail through his body, and he was grateful when Tianxi refilled his cup. “I… somehow ended up sleeping with a nurse and a patient from the same hospital. They got in an argument, and the word got out, and the nurse was the mayor’s precious daughter, so…” Shrugging, Nafan averted his gaze with a hoarse laugh. “Out I go.”

“See. A pervert.” He caught Tianxi’s whisper as she leaned over to murmur in the boy’s ear.

Khyriel snickered, but it was distracted-sounding, and he trailed off as he drained his own cup.

“And what about you? Youmei Inn, was it?”

Changing the subject, Nafan leaned back in his chair and offered them a friendly beam.

“I’ve been wondering for a while now, is this an inn or a brothel?”

It wasn’t common for either of those establishments to be run by someone as young as Wang Tianxi. Khyriel looked about the same age – only a bit younger than him, he’d guess. Eighteen, maybe nineteen. They looked like they knew each other well, despite the stark contrast in their demeanors.

Tianxi was maintaining her composure, sitting with proper posture and avoiding the alcohol. Her straight, black hair was neatly pinned behind her head, and her clothing was colorful but modest.

Khyriel, on the other hand, was acting like any other young man might act – lounging back in his chair and downing his alcohol with shameless gasps. He had been wearing makeup, but he seemed to have forgotten, and was smudging it over his face as he rubbed his eyes.

Tianxi answered with an airy shrug.

“A bit of both, I guess you could say. It’s supposed to be an inn, but with the war, some people will do anything for money. I don’t handle or own any of the women here – I’m simply giving them a place to try their luck.”

Khyriel slammed his empty ceramic cup in front of her in an implicit demand for a refill, and she trailed off with a sigh.

“Slow down, Khyriel. You know you’re not exactly the best drinker.”

“I said I wanted to pass out, didn’t I?” Khyriel pointed out irritably, gazing into the clear liquid with brooding blue eyes.

“So an inn-brothel place, this far away from the Yellow River,” Nafan continued, pulling his gaze away from the boy and offering Tianxi’s pretty face a friendly smile instead. “Business isn’t as bad as I thought.”

“You’re not from around here, so I suppose you wouldn’t know,” Tianxi mused. “My father and grandfather ran this inn for a long time before me, before they passed away together in the war. It may seem like we’re in the middle of nowhere, but we’re not. There are several small merchant communities nearby, and a supply town just a couple kilometers south. We’re between Linzi and the Yellow River, so travelers drop by often as well.”

“Oh, Linzi! Then I’m not as off-track as I thought I was,” Nafan said, brightening in relief. After losing his position in the palace, he’d travelled all the way across the Middle Country to the coastal state of Qi. It was one of the last states that had yet to face the wrath of Qin, the power-hungry, self-appoined capitol. Nafan had stayed here for the past eight or so years, wandering between coastal cities, but it seemed his luck had run out. Because of his foreign appearance, most communities wouldn’t accept him as a local doctor, so he was being forced to use his last resort.

To the northwest was Qin’s greatest rival, a state called Zhao. The border was an active warzone, which meant death, injuries, and a dire need of doctors. They wouldn’t reject anyone who offered to help… even if they were as suspicious-looking as Nafan.

“Off-track? Where were you trying to go?” Tianxi asked, eyes widening in faint interest. Beside her, Khyriel mumbled something under his breath and tilted his chair dangerously far back.

“I’m trying to get to Zhao,” Nafan confessed sheepishly.

“You must be mad.” Tianxi shook her head, but she was smiling now too as she re-filled everybody’s cups. “Walking straight into war speaking the enemy dialect.”

Grimacing, Nafan reached for his cup. “I’m working on the dialect. I’ll make it disappear by the time I get there.”

“You can speak my dialect just fine,” Khyriel muttered, audibly this time. Attention caught, Nafan glanced at the boy and promptly found himself captured by those intense blue eyes.

“…Khyriel Kanare,” the boy grunted, tilting his head back and pouring liquor into his mouth. The translucent liquid glistened in the candlelight as it trickled between the boy’s lips.

"That’s my name."