309 Promises to the Artis

By that time, Zixu already got a fire started. She looked away when he went to skin the rabbit. As an artist, she didn't mind anatomy or any of that from a technical standpoint, yet blood and guts could still make her a bit queasy when excessive. It just wasn't her kind of thing.

When Zixu moved on from skinning to skewering the rabbit on a stick and roasting it over a fire, she turned to look, at last.

During the time that Mimi was gone, he had set up a contraption made of sticks to stand over the fire he built. Now, with the rabbit impaled on a stick, he placed it over the fire and allowed it to sit there.

"It'll be done soon enough," he informed. "I really wish I had some salt or other spices."

"I'm sure it'll be fine," Yujia assured. Mimi and Roubao were playing together a few moments ago, but now, they were sitting and watching the cooking rabbit attentively. At this sight, Yujia had to ask, "Will we split it with them?"

Zixu glanced over and shook his head. "Mimi probably already ate. She usually catches two rabbits, eats her first kill, then brings the second one back. We can feed Roubao some, though."

"Alright." 

Slowly and meticulously, Zixu turned the rabbit over the flames, just to ensure that it would be evenly heated. 

"Didn't you say you learned how to do this from your business trip?" Yujia decided to ask.

"Indeed. Though, to be fair, I saw it being done before that specific trip I just came back from, but I got practice and experience through the trip. Funnily enough, the other merchants traveling along with us called me 'Chef Yu,' once I cooked for all of them, despite my resentment of that nickname." Upon saying this, Zixu cracked a grin.

She wrinkled her nose. "Is that so? It's just evidence of your spectacular cooking skills, isn't it?" 

He shrugged his shoulders. "I prefer your 'Great Chef Zixu' more."

Raising her brows and laughing, she declared, "You just want more compliments." 

Zixu raised his eyebrows as well, giving her a know-it-all smirk. 

Yujia leaned forward. "Tell me more about your trip."

"It really wasn't too spectacular. I covered all of the highlights through my letters," he replied lightly. 

"You wrote it yourself that you didn't have enough space. Surely, there were exciting details that you left out."

"You're so curious," he pointed out, turning the rabbit on the spit again and tilting his head.

"Fair." He kept his head tilted as he thought. "I guess I should tell you about the time when the boat traveling down the river to Luoyang almost sank."

"What?" Yujia's head snapped up. 

"Yes. There turned out to be a slight leakage in the boat that we boarded, and it was halfway swamped with water before we realized that it was sinking, halfway through the night when everyone was mostly asleep. A lot of our cargo ended up getting waterlogged and had to be dumped."

Quite distraught, Yujia exclaimed, "You never told me about this!" 

"I didn't want to make you worry." 

"You wrote me a letter about being forced to resort to cannibalism."

"In my defense, that was a joke."

"You didn't think that it would still make me worried?"

"You were worried about me?"

"Yes?" 

"Aw." Zixu smiled brightly. "I'm glad to know that you care enough about me to worry."

She stared at him, eyebrows deeply furrowed. Seeing his nonchalant and humorous tone, however, her eyebrows unknitted. 

"Ah, whatever," she finally replied. "Next time though, if anything dangerous like that happens, you have to tell me. You could've drowned in your sleep."

"Alright. I, Yu Zixu, promise to tell you about everything dangerous in the future." Zixu held up his hand in an oath.

She looked at his perfectly determined gaze and let out a small laugh. "No need to be so serious."

He set his hand down. "Well, now that I gave you my oath, aren't you much less worried? I just don't want you to be worried." 

"It's not necessarily a bad thing." Yujia pursed her lips. "Didn't you say before that if I worry, it's because I care?"

"Fair enough, again." 

"So, tell me. Did anything else happen on the trip?"

"Perhaps there was a brief moment on the trip where a horse spun out of control during a rainy day and almost rode off a cliff."

Yujia stared at him again, eyes widening. How many more dangerous things were there that he hadn't yet talked about?

She didn't need to ask him. He continued on, listing off every unfortunate event that happened during the trip. There were mountain bandits. There were more freak accidents. There were more unlucky incidents due to nature and weather. There was a merchant that traveled along with the group that attempted to scam them, and when he was discovered, he took a dagger and tried holding Zixu as a hostage for ransom. 

The sheer amount of life-threatening things that occurred on the trip seemed insane to Yujia. She had no idea how Zixu even came back from it, safe and all in one piece.

Before she could say anything more about the huge list of events, Zixu conveniently turned to the rabbit. "Oh, it's almost finished cooking," he said, changing the topic.

Taking it off the flames and making a precise cut into the meat with his knife— which he had cleaned and washed in the river after doing the skinning— he took a careful look at how thoroughly the rabbit was cooked, through the light of the flames. What he saw didn't seem to satisfy him, since he placed it back over the flames.

"It's edible at this point, but a few more minutes won't hurt," he told her. "In the meantime, enough talk of all these risks and perils. Do you want to hear about the brighter parts of my trip?" 

Thinking of how horrendous her mental image of that business trip had become, Yujia agreed quickly. "I would love to."

She would really like to listen to some positive things to lighten the mood, which had inevitably darkened due to all the talk of danger.

"I suppose I should tell you more about Luoyang. The city has quite a lot of stories, actually," he said, sitting back. 

His tale about Luoyang began. Once he finished discussing the city, he went on, talking about other highlights of the trip. Yujia listened to him talk about the sights and wonders carefully, practically falling into the world that he had seen through his stories. She grasped onto his every word. Someday in the future, she wanted to be able to go with Zixu and revisit all of the places he had talked about.

And for a few seconds, Yujia envisioned it. 

She could see the two of them throwing aside all the burdens of the city and going to travel the world. She could see the two of them growing even closer, starting from sharing their stories to sharing all of their worries, dreams, and secrets. She could see the two of them finding a picturesque small cottage near the mountains, waterfalls, and fields of flowers, then deciding to settle there. She could see the two of them dressed in red, bowing to the earth and sky, sharing a cup of wine, and falling under the red drapes. She could see the two of them growing older, their children playing beneath their knees, while they painted together. She could see the two of them aging under the faint sunlight until wrinkles lined both of their skin and their hair turned white, but at least they had smiles on their faces as they chatted with each other. 

But then, Yujia blinked. 

Zixu's stories had arrived to an end, and they were back to the present.

As he turned his attention back to the rabbit, she called out, softly, "I want to go traveling with you."

"Let's do it." He smiled. "One day, let's go touring the world. I'll take you to see all the places I talked about, and we can go beyond that, to anywhere you desire."

"Just the two of us?"

"Just the two of us," Glancing over at the dogs, he added, "and the dogs, of course."

"Of course." She grinned. "How could we forget the dogs?" Roubao prodded her with his wet nose again. She had her gaze focused on Zixu's eyes. "It's a deal then. A promise."

"A promise it is."