According to Xiao Wei, the wedding preparations were still ongoing. Apparently, he’d decided to go through with it even knowing Ira’s true thoughts. Ira was pretty happy; it meant that he got to marry Xiao Wei and thus the other man would be contractually obligated to give him all the cuddles he wanted.
Without any problems, they set out again the next morning. Of course, only after a large and filling breakfast during which Ira almost ate his own weight in food until his stomach actually hurt from eating too much.
Humans had such weak bodies.
It was a lovely day for traveling. The sun was shining, hardly a cloud in sight. And every cloud that they did see while on the road was the kind of sparkling white that made Ira think it had been artificially made. But no, it really just looked like that. Nature had some pretty awesome colors now that he thought about it.
Birds chirped, wings fluttered, leaves trembled on the trees, the wind gently swept along any leaf foolish enough to fall from its nest, monsters and demonic animals cheerfully slaughtered heaps of people straying too far from the protected roads… nature was beautiful. He should really get out more! At the very least, even though he didn’t care about making sure his frail human body got enough vitamin… C? Or was it D? Anyway, that vitamin that humans got from the sun that was vital, that one. He didn’t care about it, but he could get some very pretty pictures like this.
Clenching down on Xiao Wei’s hand, Ira sat with his face right up against the carriage’s window and was staring outside without blinking. In fact, he went so long without blinking that he started crying.
…Perhaps he shouldn’t override the body’s automatic functions?
Oh, well. A little crying is good for you. (Or so he’s sure he’s heard somewhere.)
Brushing the tears off his cheeks and rapidly blinking until he stopped crying, Ira leaned back a little from the window. He turned his face partly to look at Xiao Wei, only to find that the man was already looking at him, a small smile playing on his face. Ira blinked the remaining tear out of his eyes and turned fully.
“It’s pretty,” he said in defense of his behavior.
Xiao Wei snorted. “Yes,” he agreed. “The view is beautiful.”
“You weren’t even looking outside,” Ira rolled his eyes, not even bothering to go along with Xiao Wei’s white lie (…what even was a white lie? How could a lie be white??? Lies don’t have colors!).
“Doesn’t mean my view isn’t gorgeous,” Xiao Wei smoothly said.
Ira’s mouth parted. He licked his lips and pressed his hands to his cheeks, trying to feel if he was blushing. It felt like this was a blushing moment. But he couldn’t detect any difference from his hands alone, so he used his overhead vision to examine his face. The change was minimal but when he compared it to his usual readings, it did seem like he had the tiniest reddening to the tips of his ears.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Hmm. Ira was cute when he blushed.
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“Thank you for the compliment,” said Ira, because you were supposed to do that, right? You said thank you when you were complimented and gracefully acknowledged the fact that you were superior.
Xiao Wei grinned, “Your welcome, my love.”
“I accept your welcome, my dear,” Ira said, not one to be outdone. He wasn’t sure what he was outdoing, but he could still outdo it.
Obviously.
Just for good measure, he leaned forward and quickly kissed Xiao Wei. On the mouth, too. Just to be super clear that he was winning this affection contest.
However, Xiao Wei would not so easily lose. He, too, had a competitive streak. Wand so while Ira was kissing him, Xiao Wei’s hand landed on Ira’s head and pulled him closer, the fingers digging in between the loose strands of hair below his hair updo. The fingers gently swept through his hair and messaged his scalp and Ira gracelessly sagged against Xiao Wei.
Let Xiao Wei bear his weight for a bit, Ira was feeling a bit too weightless to remain on earth without an anchor anyway.
He groaned when his lip was bit and parted his lips, Xiao Wei’s tongue suddenly probing ahead. Was that a good word for it? Ira didn’t know. This kind of kissing was not his favorite, as had a tendency to get kind of messy. And also, it felt weird having someone else’s tongue in his mouth. Sometimes it felt like he hardly had enough room for the one tongue that he did have so where was he supposed to fit this other tongue?
Ira bit down on Xiao Wei’s tongue, breaking the kiss enough to grimace at the human man. Xiao Wei leaned back as well, “Not good?” he asked, furrowing his brows a little.
Ira shook his head, “No tongue.”
Xiao Wei nodded and they went back to kissing.
Several hours later, late into the evening, the carriage stopped by their next inn. Ira was half dozing at this time, his eyes half-mast and trying to slide closed every time he blinked. He tried very hard not to blink, but it wasn’t going very well since he’d set his eyelashes to do so automatically.
Rubbing his eyes and yawning, he stepped out of the carriage after Xiao Wei. He placed his hand on Xiao Wei’s arm as soon as he was down on solid ground and leaned against him, letting his head rest on Xiao Wei’s thick shoulder.
It wouldn’t hurt to close his eyes for just a little while, surely. Just a bit. Just, maybe rest them for a second. Just resting them…
Yeah, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that the next thing he was aware of, he was lying on a bed and five hours had passed. It was the middle of the night, the night sky visible out the windows when Ira snuck out of the bed to go to the toilet.
Thus began a long search.
When Ira returned to the bedroom after his fruitful visit to the bathroom, he found Xiao Wei just where he’d left him. Sleeping on the bed with the blankets entangled in his legs and his limbs splayed out.
Ira stopped at the foot of the bed and gazed the man. He took some pictures for potential blackmail material (Xiao Wei’s face looked pretty stupid when he slept) before he climbed onto the bed. He climbed over Xiao Wei’s limbs, throwing himself down beside the other man and tugging on the blankets until they came loose. Then he swept himself into them and scooted as close to Xiao Wei as possible.
Instantly, an arm wound around his waist and hugged him closer. “”Where’d you go?” mumbled Xiao Wei sleepily into Ira’s hair.
“Toilet,” muttered Ira, closing his eyes to go back to sleep.
Xiao Wei hummed, squeezing him tighter. Ira simply settled into the embrace and drifted off into dreamland. This time he was watching a drama he’d seen once that he really liked; liked enough to shove it in his database.
It was several hours later that the day properly began and Ira properly woke up. Xiao Wei was gone this time, the bed empty save for Ira. Ira, in realization to this great offense, simply turned over on his stomach and went back to sleep for another twenty minutes before he awoke again. This time, he rolled out of the bed and nimbly landed on his feet.
Padding out into the room, he checked every part of it for a trace of Xiao Wei but could find none. He frowned as he got dressed, frowned as he took care of his hygiene, frowned as he left the room to find food. He even frowned as he ate the food he’d found.
Well, for a little while. But it was really good food and he couldn’t keep it up for long.
He exhaled softly once his stomach was once more full. Leaning back against the scruffy chair, Ira smacked his lips and licked the stray taste off them.
There weren’t many people at this inn. The whole place almost smelled scruffy, if that was an actual thing. The clothing the people wore were discolored, like they’d just been put together haphazardly with whatever cheap fabric the tailor had left after all the rich folks had gotten their stuff custom made. There were cracks in the chairs, in the tables, in the china. Plenty of people had were slouching an awful lot.
But most of them were smiling, and seemed happy enough. Who was Ira to judge? It wasn’t like he had any money, he was just mooching off Xiao Wei. And it was going pretty well, too, in his opinion. Much better then his Host who was busy doing…
Ah, shit. He’d forgotten his Host existed, hadn’t he?
Crap.
The woman was running on a mountain road with so much laundry in her hands that she couldn’t even see over them. Extremely poor planning, that. Was she honestly expecting to not trip with such a big load blocking her entire view?
Well, she tripped. Definitely. There was no mistaking that yelp and all that fabric (truly, she’d been carrying a lot) flying freely in the wind as he desperately flailed her arms in a futile attempt retain her balance. She still fell over onto her bum.
All this happened in the span of about one second, of course. But Ira saw enough to know that it was a ruse, as another disciple of the sect (male, boring) ran up to help her. She babbled something about needing to bring the fabric to somebody, he babbled something about letting them know the reason for the delay while she went to get medical care because she’d sprained her ankle.
She, a cultivator, had sprained her ankle.
What kind of melodrama was this?!
Ira heaved with his rage, barely containing the urge to upend the whole table to display his emotions. Instead, he rose to his feet and stalked off to find Xiao Wei. He continued to watch as his Host was first brought to the healer, carried on a flying sword by male disciple number one, and a small pit of jealousy opened in his heart.
He, too, wanted to fly on a sword!
Okay, that was it. He was going to find Xiao Wei (that had done a really thorough job of disappearing, would he just stop moving already? Every time Ira tracked him down, he left to go somewhere else and they had circled through the whole inn five times now, it was starting to get ridiculous, okay.) and they were going to fly on a sword.
Ira couldn’t do it on his own because this body’s cultivation was useless, but Xiao Wei had a sword and was a cultivator, it would be a breeze for him. Or Ira would just steal the sword, kidnap a cultivator and force them to fly him around like his personal chauffeur.
Both plans sounded good to him.
Nodding to himself, Ira barged into the room Xiao Wei had most recently entered and made certain he was covering the only exit. Narrowing his eyes, he glared at Xiao Wei. “Sword,” he said and held out his hand, “We’re going flying.”
A/N: it’s still Sunday if I don’t go to sleep that’s how days work right
Haha first sentence that comes out of Ira’s mouth is always the funniest
And now he is jealous of the host.
Thank you for the chapter
I bet Silas is dying of cuteness overload