Chapter Text
Jianyi had never been religious, but he certainly knew how to research a problem. When he found the girl he'd been interested in that week praying - praying, good God - that she'd pass her exams it made him lose what very little respect he'd had for her. Not that he dropped the interest until he'd fucked her, of course. He lay in her bed as she snuggled against him, examining the piece of parchment she'd been clutching. To his disgust he found it difficult to read. Who the fuck wrote this sort of ultra-formal Chinese these days?
"Hey, what is this?"
"My granny gave it to me," she said sleepily. "It's very lucky. The Seiten Sanzo wrote it himself! It's from the scriptures."
"Huh. Which one?"
"I don't know really. I just hold it and pray to the Merciful Goddess - Jianyi, what was your viva for the doctorate like?"
"A piece of piss," he said absently. "I tore them to shreds."
"I wish I'd finished my PhD by seventeen," she sighed. "I hadn't even started undergrad."
"Well, I'm a lot smarter than you," he said, and smiled to make it sting less. The silly cow couldn't help be impressed by someone doing postdoctoral work while he was still a teenager. "Ready for round two, um, sweetheart?" She looked at him in a way that made him feel something for a moment. Perhaps he should have bothered remembering her name.
The next morning he looked at the piece of parchment again, taking in the old-fashioned handwriting, the precise strokes of the brush. A brush, for fuck's sake. He turned it over and scribbled a note on the back in ballpoint: Thanks for a magical night. Must dash, I'm expected in the lab. J. No one could say he wasn't polite.
He was annoyed to find Shao Juncai already in the lab. He hated anyone getting in before him, especially that loser. Mornings were his time for sitting there psyching himself up to get his game face ready for another meaningless day. He smiled cheerfully as he slipped his lab coat on.
"Morning, Juncai! You're up bright and early. Still trying to catch that worm, I see."
Juncai's work on invertebrates was the most boring heap of ordure Jianyi had ever had the torture of casting his eyes across. He'd never worked out how the asshole had got funding for the project in the first place, but some woo-woo organisation big into shit like sustainability and helping the darling little flowers or some such vomit-inducing nonsense had shelled out big time for him. What a farce - the moment the asshole got his degree he'd be off to big Pharma like anyone with sense.
So why are you still here? his mind whispered. He smiled even more cheerfully, before he could scowl. No one got a PhD at seventeen, that was why. No one got a post-doctoral fellowship directly afterwards, that was why. Because he didn't want to work in a corporate lab researching what he was told to, that was why. Because he didn't know what else to do and thought he might be going fucking mad, that was fucking why.
"Shouldn't you be off somewhere preparing for your adulthood ceremony?" Juncai said, not looking at him.
"I'm not quite nineteen," Jianyi said innocently. "I've more than a year to think about that." God, look at his face! He dialled up the innocence in his smile a notch, wondering if he could induce an aneurysm. He strolled over to his workstation and started reviewing the previous day's data.
Qian Fengnan and Yang Hui straggled in eventually, both looking hungover. Jianyi proved how kind and caring a young man he was by bringing them each a cup of tea from the ever-filled urn on the back bench. He'd have died before giving Juncai one. Fengnan gave him a weak but genuine smile, Hui, a thumbs up. He was oddly glad that Fengnan was OK with him again: they'd never really done anything, but she had joined him for drinks after his graduation and they'd both got wonderfully, majestically drunk and she had, at last, allowed him to at least finger her as she jerked him off. That didn't count for much in his view, but she'd been weirdly awkward around him for nearly two months afterwards. She was OK now, though, and he was glad. Anyway, he'd been well over his desperate desire to fuck her before he'd had his fingers in her, it had mostly been for nostalgia and the sake of achievement, and he'd made sure she got off. He smiled fondly at them both. No one could ever say he wasn't generous in that regard.
"Good night?"
"Too good," Hui mumbled.
"Free drinks with the historians," Fengnan said faintly.
"You've got to stop hanging out with the idlers in the Humanities," Jianyi said. "Their degrees are all in alcoholism."
"It's why they have so many parties," Hui said into his desk.
"You're all pathetic," Juncai said. "Ni doesn't care about you two, it's some sort of social experiment in masquerading as a human being, you know that, right? He's probably wondering if you're both woozy enough to forget if he bent you over and fucked you both in the ass."
Fengnan flushed scarlet as Hui giggled weakly. Jianyi had a clear image of picking up one of the bunsen burners and shoving it, lit, down Juncai's throat. He blinked. That would be - unproductive. Fengnan wasn't meeting anyone's eye, and maybe that asshole had just destroyed whatever progress she had made with her weird feminine problem.
"Your mother would have been ashamed to hear you speak to a girl like that," he said instead, as coolly as he could. Juncai's mother had died the previous year, and he had come back from the funeral red-eyed and silent. His grief was probably still persisting, irrational though it was. If his mother died - he thought about it an instant - well, what would be the point in excessive sadness? It wouldn't bring her back to life, and she could be quite annoying at times anyway.
Juncai stared at him, wordlessly. Then he turned and walked out of the lab.
"That was harsh, man," Hui said.
"It would seem to have been accurate as well," Jianyi said. He smiled at Fengnan. "Don't mind him, you know how he gets. I like you a lot, Nan-Nan, Juncai's always been weird about that."
"Course you like her," Hui said. "She's like a big sis to you."
"That's right," Jianyi said with perfect sincerity. "The big sister I always very much wanted."
He met Fengnan's eyes and held her gaze. After a long, silent moment she put her hand over her mouth and smothered a giggle. He grinned. Girls liked a guy who could make them laugh; she wouldn't be weird now.
"Huh?" Hui said peering at them over his thick-rimmed glasses. "What's the joke?"
"Just that it's good having a little brother," Fengnan said.
"Hey," Jianyi said. "Do either of you know about sanzo priests? Someone I know, one of the final year undergrads, is really into them."
"You can't possibly need religious trivia to score," Hui said, brightening. "You're luckier than the average nerd!'
"I bathe," Jianyi said cheerfully. "And I go down." Fengnan swatted at him ineffectually. "Sorry to offend, Big Sis Nan-Nan, but I'm a truthful kind of guy."
"Don't sanzos all live out in the countryside?" Fengnan said. "Fighting for farmers' rights or something?"
"They travel around," Hui said. "Come on, you two must have watched Sutra-Bearers of Tomorrow when you were kids - it wasn't that long ago for you, Jianyi!"
He looked blankly at Hui as Fengnan made noises of agreement. Damn, he was going to have to admit to ignorance. He hated that, even if it was ignorance of something worthless, as he very much suspected this was.
"No clue," he said.
"Come on, it was always on repeat on the weekends - the cartoon? With the five kids teaming up to fight monsters and learn the value of friendship, telling the truth and being good little Buddhists?" Hui sang a few bars of some saccharine theme song off-key and a memory sparked in Jianyi's mind: his younger brother and sister glued to the TV as he rolled his eyes and stalked away, looking for peace and quiet in which to read.
"Three human boys and a youkai one, and a human girl with a horrible squeaky voice?" he said. "She had pink and green ringlets for some reason, always needed the boys to get her out of trouble and was terrified of mice, as if her characterisation wasn't sexist enough already."
"Yeah!" Hui said eagerly. "Man, I had such a crush on Su-Su when I was a kid . . ." He coughed, looking embarrassed. "I mean, she was the token girl, yeah. She wanted to be the Seiten Sanzo."
"I liked Little Bao, he was so funny," Fengnan said. "The little youkai," she clarified as Jianyi looked at her. "You really didn't watch it? He was sort of the comic relief, although they were all more or less hopeless. He was always falling into the bad guys' traps, or getting caught by his own innate greed, that sort of thing."
"Wow, that sounds a bit racist," Jianyi said, his eyes widening in imitation of the overly sincere first year girl he'd thoroughly debauched the year before. He was going to poke at Mom with this information for sure. What sort of mother let impressionable children watch that sort of thing?
"I never thought about it like that," Fengnan said, looking surprised. "It was just a funny kid's show, and they were always the best of pals by the end of each episode. Didn't your parents let you watch cartoons?"
"They were strict about TV," he said vaguely. Why does he never watch anything but nature documentaries aimed above his age range? He smiled happily. "They had views on what was child appropriate."
They got down to work, the topic of cartoons set aside.
Later that day Jianyi downloaded a couple of episodes and watched them in mind-numbed distaste as the child-characters got into hijinks and misadventures in their quest to become worthy of one day becoming sanzos. Only the highly-rated episode he kept until last as an inducement to keep going proved of real interest as the characters became embroiled in a slightly more interesting plot and in the end were rescued by a new character who turned out to be a real historical sanzo. He forced himself to endure the inelegant infodumps - "Oh, wow! You're the Maten Sanzo!" "Yes, children, that's right. Remember, in Buddhism, when it comes to carrying the great Sutras of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth no distinction is made between men and women or between humans and youkai!" and the final monologue to the viewer by the youkai child giving a potted history of the particular Maten Sanzo. Then he searched out episodes in which other sanzos appeared. He watched them, then read the latest issue of Science cover to cover to try to apologise to his brain.
The next day he surreptitiously looked up articles in journals he had never before known existed. Religious Studies? Was that even a discipline? Everything emphasised the difficulty of the training for the sanzo priesthood, and the rarity of acceptance for potential candidates. There were only five positions available at any one time, and no fixed method of actually becoming a sanzo after training, not that his quick research unearthed. But it was hard, that was clear. It took years of dedicated work and it required mature men - usually men, for all the talk of equality - of purity, faith and exceptional moral character. There'd never been a young atheist who'd turned from science to religion and shown the ancient traditions what a man of modern thinking could achieve. He sat back.
Not yet.
He told no one. His father would whine and complain and that was just tiresome. His mother would - he frowned. She'd cry, and he didn't like that. The annoying tone went right through his head. She cried more and more often when he spoke to her these days and he couldn't work out why. He didn't like that either. He never said anything untrue to her - sometimes a little blunt, yes, but it was better to be honest. She herself had always told him not to lie. When she cried it was irritating, and - something else. He wasn't really sure what the feeling was, but he preferred it when she didn't cry.
He divided up his belongings - he didn't have all that much, though he'd have too much to be a monk. He sniggered a little at the thought. Fengnan could have all his notes on his current research - she'd only ever been kind to him from the start of his doctoral program, never asking anything in return. That was a trait that would get her nowhere in the real world. This was a way of repaying her. His savings he decided he would selflessly divide between his sister Huangming and his brother Pei, with instructions the money was to be used on education. God knew the little fuckers needed it. To rub salt in the wound he left a note giving all his past schoolwork to Pei, who detested science: Hey, Puke, I know you're behind on this. Hope my grade school homework's helpful in bringing you up to speed! Hang loose, kid. J. He could imagine Pei's face, especially when Mom praised his thoughtfulness. What a laugh. Seeing as it might be the last thing he could do to stop his mother crying, he wrote a note for Huangming too. Ming-Ming, you were dressed like a slut last New Year's, cut that shit out. If you get yourself knocked up it'll kill Mom. If you don't know how to get yourself on birth control or you need an abortion, write to my friend Qian Fengnan at my school address and she'll sort you out. J. Fuck it, he might as well write to his parents as well. Dad, I have to do this. I'm treading water and I'm going to drown. Jianyi He sat there, his pen poised over the paper and wrote again, quickly, his eyes half-unfocused. Mom, I'm sorry. I love you. Yi-Yi Shit. She'd cry for sure. He stuffed the notes into envelopes - put Huangming's in with another's for maximum drama? No, maybe not - and simply threw the rest of his belongings away. He left a letter of resignation, a simple note for the labmates he vaguely cared about and was gone. His farewell present for Juncai would be a while coming; he had a response to one of the moron's articles in an upcoming journal that would turn the idiot green. It was a pity he wouldn't be there to see it, but on the other hand it was probably a good thing neither of them could be arrested for attempted murder once Juncai read it.
On the bus he looked over his notes. The Maten Sanzo was a youkai, so that guy was out, only youkai disciples need apply. The Kouten Sanzo lived on top of some mountain in India, and Jianyi couldn't be bothered going that far. The Uten Sanzo was a mystery; he hadn't found much about him. The Muten Sanzo lived up north in some backwoods place where everyone probably married their sisters, and was rumoured to have already picked a successor from his army of disciples. The Seiten Sanzo - maybe not the same one who had written the scripture verse for whats-her-name's granny, but so what? - lived near the Yangtze and had no disciple at all that Jianyi had seen mentioned. Perfect.
By the time he stood in front of the gates of Kinzan Monastery he was tired, hot and dusty. The walk up from the country town had taken more out of him than he'd expected, and days of travel on smaller and more local bus lines had left his legs cramped and his back sore. He looked at the rope hanging from a bell: the gate was open, so should he ring it, or just walk in? He decided to simply enter when he saw a couple of teenage boys watching him, young faces curious under their shaven heads.
"Hi," he said, smiling brightly. "I'm Ni Jianyi."
"Hello," the biggest of them said. He was probably seventeen or eighteen, and held himself like he was hot shit. Jianyi smiled more widely. He'd known plenty of boys like this. "What do you want, Ni Jianyi?"
"I was wondering if any of you aged and venerable sages could point me in the direction of the Seiten Sanzo-sama?"
They stared at him, whispering between themselves. The big guy looked at him in a challenging way and Jianyi rolled his shoulders to loosen them up. He'd kept up with things in the University martial arts club. The doctors had said it was a good way of managing aggression productively. It was also a good way of beating the shit out of people who thought he was a skinny nerd.
"Why'd you want to see the sanzo-sama, Ni Jianyi? What's that posh city accent? Are you here looking for prayers to get you through your exams?"
"Going in reverse order: no, I'm finished with exams, I'm from Luoyang and I'm going to become his disciple."
They all hooted with laughter, seeming genuinely amused. It was more than an unknown person with ambition, he realised, it was some other joke he didn't understand.
"You are shit out of luck, Luoyang," one of them gasped. "You're way too old for him. We all are."
"He'll want me as a disciple," Jianyi snapped, and they laughed even louder.
"He's got real rarified tastes," the big one said, trying to ape his accent, "but sure, come on, we'll show you the way."
They led him down a neatly swept path past a temple with a shining gilded roof, through a small courtyard and finally to a little house facing a lawn and the woods.
"That's his house. Shhh," the big guy said. They all held their breath. Jianyi heard a man's voice reciting . . . a nursery rhyme? "Looks like he's home," the big guy said with a malicious smile. "Just go ahead, he's not so formal."
Jianyi gave them all a suspicious glance, then walked around the corner of the house. Sitting on the edge of the porch was a man in long undyed robes, his long fair hair in a high ponytail, his sanzo's sutra cast about his shoulders. Perched on his lap was a small fair-haired child dressed in a little tunic, tapping a tiny finger against the man's bamboo breastplate in time with the rhyme being chanted, his face solemn. The man's voice died away and he regarded Jianyi quizzically, a pleasant smile on his face.
"Oh, hello. Who are you?"
"Sanzo-sama," he said, his mouth suddenly dry, and went down on one knee. "My name is Ni Jianyi. I present myself as your new disciple."
Silence. He looked up. The man appeared . . . gobsmacked, Jianyi decided, was the correct term. His eyes, which had been crinkled up in a broad smile as he gazed on the little boy were now wide in surprise. They were a very lovely pale hazel, almost gold. The child on his lap regarded Jianyi in silent distaste.
"I'm not sure that can be right," the man said. "I have a disciple already -" He patted the child on the head. "I don't need another one."
"With respect, Sanzo-sama, that is a little boy. I am almost nineteen and able to carry out any task or duty you set me."
"He is a little boy," the man agreed, his smile blindingly bright. He turned it on the child, his face besotted and happy. "Isn't he adorable?"
"Master," the child said in a clear piping voice. "Kouryuu isn't adorable! Only babies are!"
The man made a repulsively emotional noise that Jianyi had previously heard girls make when confronted with kittens, then looked straight at him, still smiling.
"Thank you," he said. "I'm so sorry you came to see me for nothing. Have a safe trip home!"
Confused, Jianyi withdrew and found the teenagers waiting, grinning in triumph.
"Now you understand," the big guy said.
"That was really the sanzo?"
"Oh, yeah, that's Koumyou-Sanzo-Houshi-sama, sure enough. With his little -" he made air quotes, "disciple. He likes 'em small and blond. Tough luck, pal, we've all faced disappointment."
"You should ask for some food before you walk back down to get the bus," another said.
He hadn't kept enough money for a fare back. His letters would have reached everyone by now - he'd have to ask his parents for money and crawl back with everyone knowing he'd failed unless he could maybe hitchhike to another sanzo's monastery. Fuck, he should have set out on the hippy trail for the Kouten Sanzo's place.
Jianyi took a breath. He shook his head. So the Seiten Sanzo was some sort of disgusting pervert who couldn't see quality when it was right before him. It was just a hurdle to overcome and he'd never failed at any task in his entire life.
"I'm staying," he said. "Koumyou-Sanzo-sama's going to take me as his disciple sooner or later, you'll see."
"Luoyang, you're fifteen years too old for him," one of them sniggered. "But give it a go, this place is light on comic relief."
They drifted off, leaving him alone behind the little house. From the porch he could hear the sound of the nursery rhyme being chanted once more.