Later— as the sun stained the far flung city-scape before them as scarlet red as its namesake, and the whole sky was alight with the blindingly joyful colors of spring, a sharp rap on his door knocked him out of his reverie. “Come in.” A few seconds passed, and then— as decidedly determined as always— Lexi strode into his office. “What brings you?”

“I wanted to speak with you about your… options. I take it you’re going to be teaching more full time next year?” There was a sort of redesigned exhaustion in her voice, echoing off years spent running the library all by herself… a sort of knowing, that this was the way things were and would be, and that nothing she could do would change that.

Luckily for her, though, she was totally wrong. Mingtian narrowed his eyes. “Who told you that?”

“I got the impression from Yuxan, untrustworthy as he is, but more so from…” she waved her hand in the vague direction of the park, and Mingtian understood— “you, yourself. You enjoy teaching.”

“I enjoy being a librarian.”

“And being a formations expert, and… yes, I understand. Clearly, whatever made you run to East Saffron and take up a menial job in one of the poorest precincts indicates that you have far more grit to you than the average person Yuxan deals with, but still… it would be better for you. Whatever you’re running from, the Bloody Saffron Sect would be able to protect you.”

“You’re not talking about teaching under Yuxan, are you?” It all started to come together. Slowly, in fits and starts as he began to comprehend what she was leading to— but slowly, he began to understand what she was getting at. “You have a plan with this.” Now he was slightly intrigued. “Go on.”

Lexi nodded, slowly, a grin spreading across her face. “I’ll admit to it being not entirely altruistic. No, I’d love to see Yuxan’s face when he realizes that you’re not going to be teaching in the 32nd Precinct…” she was quiet for a long moment. “I think that if you put your mind to it, you could get a professorship in the University of East Saffron. Your knowledge of formations is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. Mortals should not know so much about the inner workings of the divine.”

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“Cultivators aren’t divine,” he shot back just as fast, before grimacing slightly and zipping his mouth shut. No need to bring Heavenly Realm politics into this whole thing, fiasco enough as it already was… no, that would just make everything far more confusing and worse and dumb and… “I think you’re suffering under a misapprehension, Lexi.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“I do not want to teach. It was only by a quirk of circumstance that Yuxan managed to pressure me into it anyways…” he sighed, standing and leaning against the window, and letting the soft light of it flow over his skin, and feeling the whole slick vastness of spring… “after this semester, I plan on returning to being a librarian full time.”

The shock that flashed across Lexi’s face was amusing, as she stared at his mouth ever so slightly agape— but it was that spark, that faint bloom of hope that brought a smile to his face. She laughed— bitterly, almost rapturously giddily, a smile adorning her whole face… “oh, Yuxan isn’t going to like that. He isn’t going to like that one bit.” For whatever reason, she didn’t seem all too put out about that. “Whatever your reasons are, Mingtian… well, I’m glad to have you here.” She opened his office door, standing for a moment in the portal between interior and out, glancing back over her shoulder— “you certainly make things a whole lot more exciting.”

Then she was gone, and Mingtian was alone again, left alone with a roil of complex emotions in his gut— his soul, in a way—

Happy enough, he supposed, over the course of things that did not truly matter.

In the sense of the closing of days, of springtide newness, as winter loosened its clawed grip on the world and East Saffron’s festival drew close—

Satisfied.