Overheard at the Stables of Koi Tower - 12 Days of Mingcheng
Prompt: Pure. Read on AO3 here.
The barest dusting of snow started to fall as Nie Mingjue crossed the yard, returning to the stables after dinner. It was a rare occasion, but they had no guests, no foreign dignitaries that night at Koi Tower, and so all he needed to do that night was do a final check on the horses, then he could actually prop up his feet and read for a while.
A puff of steam escaped the door to greet him as he entered - the smell too familiar to be bothersome anymore. He walked through the stables and checked each stall with an idle eye. At the end, he turned to slip out the back toward his own quarter – a simple servants’ house for the stablemaster, – when his ear caught on the sound of a voice.
Surprised, Nie Mingjue turned his head, angling his ear toward the sound, trying to make it out a little better. Definitely a voice. A deep murmur. He took a few steps in that direction.
His eye caught on a light then, out of place in the stables, which were almost cavernously dark after dinner on a winter night. The light flickered against a wooden door frame leading toward the dog pins. The dogs bedded down in a little area tucked away in the stables - Nie Mingjue likely wouldn’t have even noticed the bare flicker of light if he hadn’t heard the voice.
Nie Mingjue was not alarmed, he was more than capable of handling a run-of-the-mill rogue. Still, his pulse sped up in anticipation. His hand grasped instinctively for a sword that was not there. He stepped closer, making his steps quiet as the snow outside.
Who was the man speaking to?
“- it’s just, why did he have to go off and get into trouble anyway?” the man griped, tone surly. Dripping with exasperation. “He’s always making trouble! And then everyone else has to go around and clean up after him.”
Very slowly, Nie Mingjue poked his head around the open entryway to peek at the dog pins and the source of the voice. The man was turned away from him. He relaxed, releasing his breath. His hand lowered from where it had come to rest on his belt.
Then his lips twitched when he realized that the man was alone and talking to, well, the dogs.
“So now I have to - what? Drop everything and become a damn servant? Just to go chasing him down?” the man, in servant's robes like Nie Mingjue, huffed out a weary sigh and slumped against the wall.
He was sitting on a little mound of straw, right by the rails of the dog pin. The three dogs were watching him, comically enthralled by his diatribe. Their eyes did twitch over toward Nie Mingjue and his head in the entryway, but they showed him absolutely no interest otherwise. Usually the dogs liked him well enough - he might have been a little injured if he wasn’t so amused.
“I’m just - He just -” The kid seemed to work himself up, almost stuttering with frustration. “I - I’m worried about him, Princess!” In spite of his obvious fury, the kid set a hand down very gently on top of one of the dog’s heads and rubbed between her eyes. Her tongue lolled out in happiness. “I hate this. I’m worried about him! Damn it. Why is he such a fucking disaster?”
Nie Mingjue was bewildered. Had this kid… named the dog… Princess?
He had no idea what this kid was in his stables venting about, but it was almost unbearably endearing. Too pure for words. He wanted to laugh. But he also was loathe to disturb the moment. Something about it clenched painfully around his heart. He saw his brother before him, talking to his songbirds or making up whimsical stories for random people they passed on the road. It was difficult to tell the kid’s age, but he wouldn’t be surprised if the servant in front of him was around Huaisang’s age.
“He’s just - there’s no trace,” the kid’s voice tipped further toward despair. It was obvious now that his fury before had been fueled by concern. Whoever this missing disaster of a person was, he was clearly missed dearly. “We can’t find anything anywhere. Wen Qionglin and I have looked all over, talked to everyone.”
Now A-Ning was someone Nie Mingjue knew. The personal servant for First Young Master Jin Zixuan, a well-respected person among the servants himself, even if he was incurably shy and underconfident. Nie Mingjye didn’t know him very well, but he liked him well enough. To imagine him getting along with or assisting the fiery kid before him though, well, that was curious. Maybe A-Ning was a little less timid than Nie Mingjue had believed.
“Love, you won’t believe it.” The younger man took his hand off of his so-called Princess’ head and placed it under the chin of the next dog, giving a vigorous rub. Nie Mingjue clamped a hand over his mouth and ducked out of the doorframe, leaning back against the wall to ground himself as he tried to laugh silently into his hand. “Jin Zixun runs a whole secret fighting ring in Lanling City! And that utter dick caught us down there and forced Wen Qionglin to fight. I totally thought he was going to get his ass kicked. I was legitimately worried for his life. But Wen Qionglin destroyed that guy. You should have seen it. It was - it was - well, I’ve never felt more glad that a guy was on my side before that, not the other way around.”
Nie Mingjue couldn’t help it. He snorted, then clasped the hand around his mouth tighter.
“What was that?” the kid gasped.
Nie Mingjue tried to edge, quiet as a mouse, along the wall and away. Honestly, he didn’t even know why. He was the stablemaster. This was where he belonged, not that kid. But for some reason, he got a feeling that if he caught the kid in the act, he’d be embarrassed and wouldn’t come back. And for some reason, Nie Mingjue didn’t like the idea of depriving that kid of his nighttime debrief with Princess and Love.
“Oh, well, right, you all will know if someone else is around before I do. And you would tell me, right? Wouldn’t you, Jasmine?” he said, at last, and Nie Mingjue slumped back against the wall, blowing out a breath.
Jasmine, Princess and Love, then. Nie Mingjue grinned in the dark.
“Anyway, I’m glad you’re all here. I don’t know what I’d do without you, really,” the kid said, sounding a little melancholy, entirely too lonely. Nie Mingjue’s smile dimmed with sympathy. Loneliness - that was a thing he knew. Having no one’s company but your own to keep. “I - I mean, I know I sound like a crazy person. Maybe I am. You hear that, Wei Wuxian? You’ve finally fucking driven me crazy. Are you happy now?”
Wei Wuxian… now that sounded familiar. Another house servant, he guessed. Nie Mingjue couldn’t conjure an image in his head of the man.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you all really want,” the kid griped, sounding falsely put-upon, teasing. Nie Mingjue heard a little shuffling around, and he crept closer again, poking his head around in time to spot the kid pulling scraps of bread out from his robes.
Dinner scraps.
Nie Mingjue scowled. He had half a mind to - no, damn. He wasn’t going to scare off this kid, was he? He made him think too much of Nie Huaisang, panged too much of his own loneliness, stirred up the desire in him to share his troubles with another, a desire he thought had burned out long ago. Nie Mingjue didn’t want to be the person to take this one comfort away from him.
Nie Mingjue rolled his eyes and ducked his head back out, realizing that he was going to have to monitor this kid’s visits now, see how often he was coming to talk to the dogs and determine if he needed to scale back on their food, all because Nie Mingjue was too damn tender-hearted to kick him out.
It was just so odd, not only was he not human, but he was now somehow a hero? Or something the grail determined was heroic enough to be able to be some sort of summon. How long had it been since he was summoned by this master? A few weeks at most? Looking down at his sword that he always carried with him, a small sigh escaped his lips. How was he even suppose to be a caster? He knew some magic from when he was alive, but that was about it.
Hearing the door open to his room. He quickly looked up at it and saw her. “Welcome back Master.” It was still such an odd phrase to say, but in a way, it also felt nice to say almost as if he was meant to fight for someone and their wish.
Lissa nervously stepped into the room. She was chosen to be the new servant to a royal person and this was her first day of training. She had no grace and was clumsy, so, she was very nervous about someone trying to teach her how to be non-clumsy, graceful and poise.
She looked around the room, it was nice and she liked it. She had to like it or at least tolerate it, she would be seeing it a lot she thought.
Forget hope and despair. He just doesn’t care about those, as long as he survives.
At first the idea of cannibalism repulses him but he starts eating human flesh when he can no longer find any other food to keep him alive. The first times he hides more than anything, only leaving his several shelters to kill someone and get food. Eventually, he understand it would be easier to show himself as an easy victim, staying outside most of the time, and uses this strategy to draw people to him which eventually lead also the SHSL despair to him.
He never has to give his name, so he eventually forgets about his fake ID and almost about his name as well. He’s nicknamed “the White Oni” by the survivors and SHSL Despair, mostly to acknowledge him as something close to a natural disaster, and he eventually takes it as his name. When he’s in Towa City, he just presents himself as Servant.
His clothes quickly become rags, so he sometimes take some from the corpses when they’re not too dirty or destroyed.
He always carries two weapons on him: a survival knife hidden in a pocket inside of his jacket (that he never changes), his most frequently used weapon, impossible to steal from him but hard to get even for him so impossible to reach in case of a sudden attack, and a pack of needles coated with very lethal poison. He doesn’t use the last ones often, only to hit an opponent he can’t beat before fleeing, because he won’t be able to eat the body. Most of the time, he leans on his reflexes to react quickly, since he knows a lot of self defense moves.
The chain was given to him by the kids, and he loathes it because it makes him more likely to be pulled by it, so it’s an inconvenient during a fight.
Because of his former work, he is used to a particular way of talking that strikes the others and make him very good at persuading. It’s mostly what let him convince the Warriors of Hope to keep him alive.
He’s actually AWFUL at giving a non creepy vibe but really, all he tries to do - very discreetly - is plan the children’s downfall. But he spends most of the time messing around.
He’s extremely suspicious of everybody and won’t ever allow contact with anybody (more because he’s afraid of people touching him than because he’s afraid for his life)
He does makes the deal with Fukawa but for another reason: he wants to get a chance to talk with Komaru alone now that she’d proven she could very well participate in his long term plan to take out the kids.
He’s not a part of SHSL despair but he’s close to the students, mostly because it’s far easier for him to survive. He remains with them most of the time, especially since he has a good relationship with Ibuki, Pekoyama, Koizumi, Owari (though she makes him very uncomfortable sometimes), and mostly the impostor who he relates quite a lot with. On the contrary, he’s absolutely terrified of Kuzuryuu, and quite a lot of Tsumiki too, and hates quite a lot Souda and Hanamura.
Surprisingly, he almost never get any contact with Junko though.
