The autumn hunt bonfire banquet was held at the hunting grounds north of the royal city.
Helü Xiong had ordered three large tents erected. In front of the tents, bonfires blazed, with whole yellow sheep and freshly hunted hares roasting over the flames.
Jugs of mare’s milk wine and fruit wine were piled up beside the haystacks. Attendants used long-handled wooden ladles to scoop directly from the jugs into coarse earthenware bowls, the liquor splashing onto the grass, glistening amber in the firelight.
The number of attendees from various tribes was double what had been expected—some came to see the autumn hunt’s grand prize, some came to see the young master who had been away from the royal court for so long,
and some had heard that the young master had brought back an exceptionally handsome young man from the Central Plains, and wanted to see if he really was as “impossible to look away from” as the rumors claimed.
When Xiyu followed behind Que Zhi into the banquet grounds, the murmuring fell silent for a brief moment.
He wore no hat. His hair was pinned up in a simple bun with a silver hairpin, the rest cascading down his back, making the nape of his neck look as pale as if it had just come out of a porcelain shop.
On the way there, he’d mentioned he didn’t have proper hunting attire, so Que Zhi had pulled a brand-new short vermilion robe with yellow brocade and cinnabar lining from the cabinet and slipped it onto him—the cinnabar red made the natural thin flush at the corners of his eyes even more vivid, like the juice of an entire pomegranate crushed into the glow of a setting sun.
The old Khan sat on a bearskin-covered couch in front of the main tent, holding his wine bowl, watching his son lead the young man to sit beside him. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes slowly gathered into a smile.
Helü Xiong sat next to him, tapping the rim of his bowl with a roasting skewer, leaning over to pat Xiyu’s knee and ask if he could drink.
Xiyu honestly said no—on the road, he’d only drunk the water he carried.
Helü Xiong waved his large hand: “That won’t do—once you’re at the hunting grounds, you have to drink!”
Then he had someone bring fruit wine instead: “Fruit wine is sweet. It won’t get you drunk.”
Western Regions fruit wine was different from the Central Plains variety—it wasn’t clear rice wine, but a sweet syrup of grapes and wild berries mixed with honey and aged in mountain caves for a full year. It went down as smooth as silk, the sweetness masking the alcohol, so that drinking it felt like drinking juice.
He raised the coarse earthenware bowl to his lips and took a small sip. It was wonderfully sweet. He took another sip.
Soon the bowl was empty.
Que Zhi rose to offer a toast to the old Khan.
According to Shuo custom, before the autumn hunt, the young master had to toast the Khan with three bowls of mare’s milk wine and present the first hunt of the season—that afternoon he’d hunted a yellow sheep, already roasting over the bonfire.
Xiyu sat alone at his seat. The various tribal chiefs and young commanders, seeing him unaccompanied, came over one after another with their wine bowls.
They asked how far he’d traveled, whether it was true that he was a friend the young master had made while forging iron in the Gobi.
Their gazes all paused when they landed on his face, lit up by the vermilion robe—
then their eyes drifted to his tear mole, his silver hairpin, and his thin sleeves through which the firelight revealed the outline of his wrist bones, their look one of pure, straightforward admiration.
Xiyu wasn’t nervous.
He just pushed the silver hairpin a little deeper into his hair, revealing the curve of his neck below his earlobe, gilded pale gold by the firelight, and looked at them with those peach-blossom eyes,
saying he’d run into a traveling companion in the Gobi, never expecting that companion to be the young master of the royal court.
The old Khan overheard this and burst into laughter.
Helü Xiong slapped his knee and said, what do you call that—good brothers are family, that’s what you Central Plains people say, right?
Que Zhi returned from his toasts to find that Xiyu’s fruit wine bowl was already empty, with a new half-bowl added.
He moved the half-bowl of fruit wine in front of Xiyu to his own side and asked how much he’d drunk.
Xiyu’s cheeks were flushed with a light tipsy pink, his eyes misty and unfocused. Slowly, he extended one slender finger toward the flickering, dancing candlelight,
staring at it in a daze for a long while, his fingertip gently swaying as if carefully counting something.
After a moment, he slowly extended a second finger.
The two fingers stood side by side against the firelight, his expression exceptionally serious, carrying a hint of stubborn, childish earnestness brought on by the wine,
as he corrected with perfect gravity: “One and a half bowls. The second one… he poured it.”
He pointed a finger at a young commander who had just walked away, blinking as if he’d just identified a wrongdoing.
Que Zhi moved the fruit wine bowl farther away and pulled him up from his seat.
Xiyu stumbled as he stood, his forehead bumping into the stiff, dark blue hunting robe on Que Zhi’s chest.
He stayed there, leaning against him, tilting his face up to look at him.
The bonfire light made those peach-blossom eyes shimmer like rippling water. The thin red at their corners now burned vivid and unrestrained, as if casting another layer of deeper, richer crimson beneath the collar of his vermilion robe.
“Que Zhi.”
“Hm.”
“You look good in this color. You usually wear dark blue—like the far side of a snowy mountain. Today this one is like the patterns on a saddle—beautiful.”
He reached up and tugged at the belt of his hunting robe, his grip light, as if pulling the reins of a restless horse,
or as if checking that the knot on this belt was tied by the same hands that tied his usual cloth sash.
“You look better today than any other day. I’m telling you, from head to toe, you look good. Everyone’s looking at you, not me.”
Then he buried his face in his chest, his voice muffled:
“Look at me. Don’t look at them.”
Que Zhi steadied him and glanced around.
The bonfire illuminated the curious yet friendly gazes of the tribal commanders—
some whispering among themselves, some holding their wine bowls and forgetting to drink.
Que Zhi looked down at the person in his arms and said, “I’ve been looking at you the whole time.”
Que Zhi lifted him in his arms and carried him across the bonfire and through the crowd, heading toward the royal tent.
There was no one along the way, only the evening wind brushing against their cheeks.
Xiyu lay in his arms, raising a finger to poke at the lapel of his hunting robe.
The fruit wine was hitting him now. His voice carried a soft, sticky drawl, every word as if soaked in honey, or as if picked from the embers of the bonfire:
“I like you. Very, very much.”
“Back when you gave me that bun on the Gobi—and it turned out to be mutton filling—right then I knew something was off about you. Suspicious.
Then you gave me raisins, and I thought, how does this person make me feel the way Old Zhou did when he gave me candy as a kid? But no. It wasn’t that.”
Xiyu mumbled a long string of words, lumping the origins of the bun, the mutton filling, and the raisins into some vague sweetness shared between Old Zhou and Que Zhi, a single tear slipping from the corner of his eye.
Then he looped his arms around Que Zhi’s neck and reached up to brush aside a stray lock of hair from his forehead.
His fingertip traced up along the hairline, and he pecked at the left side of his chin.
He missed—only caught the stubble.
Xiyu wrinkled his nose, reached out to touch the prickly angle of his jaw, and mumbled that he’d shaved today, but not cleanly enough.
Then he shifted his weight to the left, and this time his lips pressed against the corner of Que Zhi’s mouth—very, very lightly. A pause. A withdrawal. Then he rubbed the tip of his nose against his,
and tilted his face to plant another kiss on the cupid’s bow of his lip—then a third—as if dissatisfied that the first one hadn’t landed right, or as if he just wanted to do it a few more times.
Xiyu’s voice was low and murmuring, his whole demeanor impossibly soft:
“The third one was my own addition. The one you gave me earlier tasted like raspberries. This one is fruit wine.”
He gently pressed his lips together, as if savoring the lingering taste on his tongue, his small face flushed with the rosy tint of drunkenness, innocent and earnest.
He paused, shot Que Zhi a glance with a hint of childlike mischief, and mumbled quietly:
“Next time, cherries—I saw one on the table while we were eating, and I hid it. I’m not giving it to you now. I’ll give it to you when we get back.”
Que Zhi sat Xiyu down on the bed and lowered his head.
His thumb wiped away the tear clinging beside the mole at the corner of his eye, then slid up half a finger’s width, pressing gently against his reddish lower eyelid.
Then he leaned in, slowly and solemnly, and kissed him on the lips.
Not the brief, testing touch of last night—this was a real kiss, carrying the sweetness of fruit wine and the warmth of the bonfire.
Xiyu didn’t pull away. He leaned into his embrace, both hands clutching the front of his hunting robe, clumsily returning that newly learned kiss, bit by bit, back to him.
The bonfire crackled, sparks shooting up into the night sky.
The tribal chiefs and commanders around them froze, wine bowls in hand, collectively stunned by the scene before them.
Helü Xiong dropped his roasting skewer into the fire. The old Khan’s hand, holding his tea bowl, paused mid-air.
Then he took a sip of wine and instructed someone nearby: “Go prepare some hangover remedy for that lad Xiyu.”
And muttered quietly that his son at this moment looked just like his own father did back when he was courting the Queen.
Que Zhi finally let him go.
Xiyu leaned against his chest, burying his face in the front of his hunting robe, his ears burning redder than the bonfire.
Still dazed, he clutched at his lapel and mumbled: “You bastard—I didn’t even hear what you said back to me before you kissed me.”
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