Dusk.
Chu Ge and Qiu Wuji strolled along the edge of the residential compound, walking straight into the glow of the sunset.
They'd said they were coming out to eat dinner, yet they had passed several restaurants without so much as a glance.
As if the whole point of coming out had been simply to walk.
"Um... the Tianyuan Sect's Origin-Returning Liquid. So that was a thing too..." Chu Ge kicked a pebble along the roadside as he steered her onward. "In that case I should write that Elder Yang of your sect refines a new tonic for nourishing the divine soul. Then you won't have to go buy from outsiders anymore."
Qiu Wuji suppressed the strange feeling squirming in her chest. "Isn't that... a little too much of a cheat?"
"Somebody was spouting things in public that only belong in this world, and she doesn't think that's a cheat."
"..." Qiu Wuji tilted her head away and muttered, "I never wanted to follow your settings anyway."
"Change whatever you like in private. Just be careful when it's out in the open. Say you blurt out something about subways or taxis in that world — it'd be way, way too jarring. I can't even describe it."
Qiu Wuji pouted. "Oh."
Chu Ge was charmed straight out of words. He lowered his head and kicked at the pebbles, saying nothing more.
A single leaf drifted slowly down by the roadside. Qiu Wuji caught it without thinking. It fluttered in her palm, letting the evening wind tease it, yet it never blew away — like a butterfly dancing in her hand.
"Seeing a fallen leaf is what made me realize autumn is here," Qiu Wuji said suddenly. "Your world is hotter than ours. I kept thinking it was still summer."
"Mm... I had no idea either. I thought it was late summer too. It wasn't until after Qixi that I found out the start of autumn had already passed."
"You. You can't tell the four seasons apart or name the five grains."
"I can write books."
Qiu Wuji rolled her eyes and ignored him, still watching the leaf in her palm, a faint smile on her lips.
She liked autumn.
It was the season that belonged to Qiu Wuji.
What will my first autumn in this world be like?
Chu Ge stole glances at her smiling face and mumbled, "Unfair. You've got something in your hand and I don't have anything."
Qiu Wuji was briefly baffled. It's just a fallen leaf. Pick one up if you want one. You're even kicking a stone around and I don't have one of those... So she asked, "What is it you want to hold?"
"This." Chu Ge mustered his courage and caught her other hand, the empty one. "Now it's fair."
Qiu Wuji froze. I actually want to hold it too... Why is he so nervous that even his muscles have locked up?
Her very next reaction was — I should probably hit him. This is lecherous behavior.
But that first reaction had already come and gone, and blowing up a full second late would look awfully strange...
Qiu Wuji kept her head down and said nothing, and they walked on hand in hand, both staring at the ground — one kicking a stone, one watching a leaf — pretending nothing had happened.
Mm. It's not like we've never held hands before.
Qiu Wuji secretly listened to his heartbeat and found it racing faster than her own, as if it might leap right out of his throat. She couldn't help but find it funny. Honestly...
"Ahem, ahem." Chu Ge cleared his throat twice and hunted for a topic to change the subject. "My mom introduced me to a capable guy. Sounds like he might be able to get you an identity."
"Eh?" Qiu Wuji's attention was diverted clean away. "Really? I've searched a lot too, and it seems really hard."
"Should be possible... some special channels most people don't know about — he probably knows more about that sort of thing." Chu Ge briefly laid out what he'd learned, then said, "By the way, when you get the identity, are you still going to use the name Qiu Wuji?"
Qiu Wuji blinked. "Of course. Is there a problem?"
Chu Ge said, "It's just that the name feels perfectly normal in a xianxia world, and kind of weird in a modern one."
Qiu Wuji's willow-leaf brows shot straight up. "So in the modern day I'd have to be called Gu Ruoyan to be normal, is that it!"
"Huh?" Chu Ge's face went green. Since when does a woman's logic work like that?
"That's not what I meant..."
Qiu Wuji lifted her chin at the sky. "What's so odd about it? You've had Chu songs closing in on all four sides all this while, and you're still alive."
Chu Ge: "...So shall we go get our ID photos taken?"
Qiu Wuji's eyes narrowed. "You're not trying to trick me into getting a marriage license, are you?"
Chu Ge choked, caught between laughing and crying. "How do you even know about that?"
Qiu Wuji gave a "hmph."
As if I'd ever tell him. I looked up "does living together make you husband and wife" ages ago, and one answer said you're only legally married once you've got the license.
This world is so strange. Husband and wife need somebody else to issue them a permit?
Still, that's a good thing — it means we're completely clean!
Chu Ge laughed. "You don't have an identity, so you couldn't get the license even if you wanted to."
Qiu Wuji shot back instantly. "Who said I wanted to get the license?"
"Mm-hm, mm-hm." Chu Ge said. "Then shall we go take our ID photos?"
"Why do you keep emphasizing 'ID photos'? It really feels like there's something else in your words. Like you're not simply talking about needing ID photos."
"Because only an ID photo can make you look a little less like a fairy descended to earth. If they wanted everyday photos of you, I wouldn't hand them over."
Qiu Wuji: "..."
Chu Ge hauled Qiu Wuji into a photo studio. The photographer uncle sucked in a sharp breath. "You've got some moves, young man. Your girlfriend really is a beauty."
Chu Ge just smiled and didn't answer; Qiu Wuji scowled and didn't answer either.
Feels like it's hard to even explain ourselves now...
"Miss, chin down a little... a little more, yes, and tilt to the left..."
Qiu Wuji swallowed her grievances. She was sure the man was deliberately making trouble for her; she'd felt perfectly straight sitting there, and under his directions she'd only gotten crooked.
Why is this so much trouble? Our image-capturing treasure gets it done with one casual snap...
"Click!"
The flash went off. Qiu Wuji, as if granted a pardon, made to bolt — and was caught again by a smiling Chu Ge. "Hang on. How about a photo of the two of us?"
Qiu Wuji's expression turned dangerous. "And you still say you're not tricking me into getting the license..."
"No, no. Who uses a full-body shot for a marriage license?"
"Full-body?"
"Right. Come on, come on, stand here..."
Qiu Wuji looked where he pointed: a landscape backdrop, fake as could be. "Can this thing even look decent in a photo?"
"Sure it can. We can even do some post-processing, work up drifting cloud and mist so it looks like you're standing among immortal mountains. Come try it and see how it comes out."
Qiu Wuji hesitated, a little tempted. Standing shoulder to shoulder with him amid green peaks and drifting clouds... what would that be like?
She followed without quite meaning to and stood beside Chu Ge.
Her hand had somehow ended up in his again…
"Hey, closer. Yes, yes, a bit closer..." The photographer uncle coaxed them along patiently. "Aw, miss, don't be so shy, it'll only take a second... Aw, standing that far apart won't photograph well — it wrecks the compositional structure of the shot."
Chu Ge wanted to gift him an Alliance Leader title on the spot. This man understood his business far too well.
It was Qiu Wuji's first time being photographed, and she plainly didn't know any better. Whatever the uncle said, she swallowed her pride and did it — otherwise she'd be "wrecking the composition."
Our image-capturing treasure doesn't need any of this! What a stupid camera!
"Smile now — say cheese~"
"Click!"
In the frame, Qiu Wuji was clinging to Chu Ge's arm, pressed in so tightly that his hand was nearly buried in her cleavage. Both of them wore the same dopey grin, and looked utterly foolish.
And utterly innocent.
"Truly awful." Photos in hand, they left the studio, and Qiu Wuji scowled her way through her ID shots one by one. "This doesn't look like me at all!"
Chu Ge was all smiles. "Good that it doesn't. Not looking like you is the whole point."
"If it doesn't look like me, then how do they know it's me?"
"At a glance it doesn't. Look closer and it's still you." Chu Ge was still smiling. He couldn't stop looking at the photo of the two of them in his hands.
The Qiu Wuji in that picture — that one really looked like her. Not only looked like her; she looked sweet.
Qiu Wuji knew exactly how silly that photo was and was too embarrassed to look at it much, and the look on his face annoyed her thoroughly. She kicked him and said sourly, "Let's go eat!"
"After all that editing — does this look even a little like your Cloud Horizon Sect?"
"Pfft. Cloud Horizon Sect is ten thousand times prettier than this." Qiu Wuji said, "If you've really got the guts, then come inside and leave a picture there. That would be the real thing."
There was something to that. This world was supposed to be real, and the world in the book counted as "fake."
But the green hills and white clouds in this photo were only a backdrop, fake — the green hills of Cloud Horizon over there were the real thing.
The Qiu Wuji over there was the true body.
A peerless sect master who overawed an entire generation.
Chu Ge thought about it for a long, long while, lost in thought, then smiled faintly. "One of these days, I'm going in."