Chapter 51: Chapter 49: Red and Gold Scales

Lang Lang always felt a bit uncomfortable in Lin’s practice. The walls, floor, and surfaces were always intensely scrubbed with something that smelled like vinegar and salt every three days, there were multiple shelves and drawers and cabinets full of all sorts of ingredients, and there was the faint twinge of humid sickness. The smell made him uneasy and also had a habit of ruining his appetite.

There was a lower floor as well, and he could hear the faint hollow sound of the floorboards beneath his feet. There was another smell, the scent of the deep sea, a strange sharp marine aroma. Beneath was a murky large room, with more ingredients, and sharp tools he had been assured were only used with good intentions, books, strange flameless lanterns, and most recently some of his bone chimes.

He could also smell them both, Lin and Zhu Er, below.

She had been gone for three days and he had grown impatient. There was nothing wrong with checking in, although the good doctor might get irritated. “Lin?” He called out.

It was barely a moment before he heard Lin coming up the stairs, the scent of medicine and blood preceding him as he moved quickly to Lang Lang with a frown. “Might I ask what brings you here today?”

“I wanted to see Zhu Er,” he answered weakly, putting his hands together and tapping his thumbs against each other. “It’s… it’s gotten pretty lonely at my shrine and I just wanted to see how she’s doing.”

Lin’s hands went to his face, dragging them slowly downwards as he moaned, “you’re interrupting me because you’re lonely? Why can’t you go patrol with Sister Hua or bother someone else? There’s a thousand people here who would be happy to play fetch with you.” The bandage on one arm slipped slightly and Lin wearily fixed it.

“Sister Hua is busy making flower arrangements for a wedding, and I can’t just go bothering people about their day!” Lang Lang mumbled, still twiddling his thumbs.

“You bother me plenty of times when I’m about my day. You’ll even pull me out of the water when I’m resting,” Lin’s voice was flat and unimpressed.

“I didn’t know that time!” Lang Lang whined defensively, “I didn’t know fish sleep with their eyes open! Raven didn’t teach me that!”

“He should have taught you a lot more than what he did, I agree!”

Lang Lang was about to protest in defense, but a shriek interrupted his thoughts.

“LANG LANG!”

He shoved past Lin, mindlessly seeking out the noise that needed his help. The stairs creaked loudly in pain beneath his paws as he ran into the murky room below, dew immediately attaching to his fur as he snarled and lunged atop a table that a small shivering girl laid on. His head swiveled around as he looked for anyone, anything in the gloom, growling low.

“Get off the table!”

Lang Lang blinked and looked over at Lin, who was already down the stairs as well. “Didn’t you hear that? She’s afraid!”

“Being in that form and snarling is not helping her,” Lin said, before leaning forward slightly to look Zhu Er in the face. “What happened?”

Her eyes were wide, twitching in their sockets as they looked from Lin to Lang Lang and then fixed upon nothing. She brought her hand up to her mouth, “noise!” She said. “A noise! I heard a noise!”

“A noise? Like what?” Lang Lang asked, getting off the table and readjusting to being on two legs again. “What did it sound like?”

Zhu Er stared at him blankly.

“...What noise?” Lin prompted.

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Zhu Er furrowed her brow. She was shivered but Lang Lang realized there was a bit more color to her cheeks than he remembered. She brought her hand back to her mouth, “noise here?”

“A voice?” Lin tipped his head. “Did you hear us upstairs?”

“Yes! Voice! A voice!” She nodded, “not yours. Or Lang Lang’s!”

Lang Lang looked around. Besides the usual stuffed shelves, tables, and now the bone chimes he could see nothing else. There was nothing he could feel besides the coldness of the sea, but Lin had said that was a normal thing for him. Lang Lang preferred warm things. “Maybe, maybe Zhu Er had a nightmare?” He suggested, his hand reaching out to gently rest on her cheek. “Nightmares can’t hurt you when I’m here!” He smiled. She looked at him in curiosity, itching her side. Lang Lang’s eyes followed her hand to a large scaled patch on her side and he turned around to look at Lin. “What’s that?”

“What’s what?” Lin replied.

“That.” Lang Lang’s finger pointed to the glossy scales, golden with red streaks.

“Part of her treatment,” Lin answered, moving over to one of the smaller tables and picking up a lump of decayed flesh, still wet. “I’m going to give this to Sister Hua.”

“Is Zhu Er going to turn into a fish person like you?” Lang Lang asked.

“No,” Lin shook his head. “Not unless you’re giving me permission to rip out her soul,” Lin’s face then soured. “Why are you looking at me like that? Did you understand all of that?”

Zhu Er shrank back a little behind Lang Lang.

“It’s fine, Zhu Er. Lin is just joking,” Lang Lang assured her softly. “But he still hasn’t really answered my question.”

Lin sighed so loudly and for so long he seemed to deflate. “It’s just fish flesh. Sometimes for particularly bad injuries, we’ll take the flesh from fishes and apply it to the wound after cleaning it. Fish and human flesh can be…. Remarkably similar.”

Lang Lang’s gaze rested on Lin’s bandaged hand. “Where did the fish flesh come from?”

Lin pulled his sleeve down slightly in a vain attempt to hide his arm. “This is nothing to worry about, I’ve done this before and I’ll recover before long.”

“I don’t doubt you know what you are doing, Doctor Lin, but please don’t cause too much harm to yourself,” Lang Lang gently admonished. “Thank you, Doctor Lin.”

“I’m a doctor, first and foremost. The sacrifice of myself for the lives of others isn’t particularly unexpected, it no longer hurts.”

Lang Lang wanted to say more but figured that anything else would be wasted. Lin was a melancholic and solitary person at the best of times, an old man in a young man’s body. Even when Lang Lang found him in the burnt ruins of a village by a river, the little boy he met already seemed weary of life. According to Raven, most Fish People were like that.

“Is it safe to take Zhu Er back?” Lang Lang asked.

Lin took a moment to respond, his gaze was resting on the bone chimes on the ceiling. “Yes, I’ll come over to drop off her prescription there. I hope she likes drinking tea.”

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